5 Enablement Features Every HR Tech Stack Must Have

This article originally appeared on HR.com.

The modern workforce is geographically dispersed and on the go. No longer tethered to a desk, employees work on laptops, tablets, and smartphones—from anywhere there is a good internet connection. One need only visit their local coffee shop on a Monday morning to see all the working professionals clicking and tapping away on their devices.

This shift is forcing HR teams to modernize their teaching methods and technology. Effective, agile, streamlined HR tech stacks are imperative for revenue enablement in the new working environment.

HR leaders must be thoughtful when building their HR tech stack, however. Too many tools could overload employees, but too few will not get the job done. While the ideal setup differs for every company, your tech stack must be mobile-friendly, easily accessible, and integrated.

Consider these five capabilities carefully as you evaluate your HR technology.

1. Virtual Training

In today’s hybrid environment, businesses cannot survive without virtual training. Key to this is asynchronous communication capabilities, such as video recording.

Incorporating a centralized digital content repository in your tech stack allows employees to find and access training material whenever and wherever they need it. This ease of access and single location enable just-in-time learning. Instead of a new hire having to remember client call protocols from their first week of onboarding, they can review relevant materials right before their first call.

Virtual training also improves onboarding experiences and facilitates continuous learning to build a strong and empowered workforce.

2. Digestible Content

Your digital training content must be succinct and easily digestible. Traditional training course formats require significant time from both creators and learners. With today’s quickly evolving business landscape and already-overloaded schedules, maintaining these types of learning modules is not sustainable. Additionally, employees need more than one-time training to truly advance their skills, and they cannot just dip into an hours-long course for a refresher.

An effective tech stack should enable you to create bite-sized learning and training content. These shorter materials fit into a busy schedule and are easier to absorb. An added benefit: shorter content is simpler to develop and maintain.

Your tools should also allow you to generate new material quickly and efficiently for distribution to keep your employees updated on continuously changing products, competitors, technology, and processes.

“An effective tech stack should enable you to create bite-sized learning and training content.”

3. Collaboration

No one works in isolation, even when they are remote. Your stack needs collaboration capabilities, including:

• Communication: With employees located in many places, you need a communication tool to allow teams to connect and share ideas and experiences. This setup also promotes coaching opportunities.
• Content: You need to be able to pull in your subject matter experts to generate content. They have extensive experience and in-depth knowledge. Capturing their perspectives in recordings and documents ensures the valuable information is not lost if they leave the company. Employees also find this peer-driven content more engaging than theoretical classroom learning.

Communication tools build connections and a sense of community while also helping teams align messaging and share industry developments, customer insights and other information.

4. Performance Management

The training platform you select must measure and monitor employee success, providing easy-to-understand metrics. For example, you want to track and measure training effectiveness, such as course completion rates, employee competency and knowledge mastery. You can use this information to improve your training processes and meet specific employee needs.

5. Integration

The fewer HR tools you have and the more you can integrate them, the better. That is because switching between multiple tools slows employee productivity and reduces satisfaction. In fact, studies in psychology and neuroscience show that context-switching (which occurs when you jump between programs) is mentally taxing, increases stress, and disrupts focus. The average employee toggles between different apps and websites nearly 1,200 times daily. Each switch takes about two seconds, totaling four hours a week wasted on context-switching alone.

So, when you incorporate training material into a program already built into workflows, employees are more efficient and more likely to use it.

The biggest takeaway: No matter how you build your HR tech stack, it must support revenue enablement by empowering your employees to learn and grow. The features required to develop your workforce are wildly different from just a few years ago. Evaluate your workforce’s needs and preferences as you evaluate your options.

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