The pandemic has created new challenges to organisations across most industries, that many were not prepared for, none more so than the travel and transportation sector. Although leisure travel has resumed and the demand on freight services is rising, there still remains extreme uncertainty in the industry. The pressure on margins and market share is higher than ever before. As a result companies are looking for new ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency throughout their organisations and Human Resource departments are not immune from that drive.

Over the past few months, Intergence, an IT and Digital Change consultancy, have conducted a series of webinars demonstrating the compelling reasons why the industry must fast-track digital change projects to survive. In September, Intergence teamed up with Adonis, a HR and Payroll consultancy, to present the benefits of digitizing HR operations and empowering your teams. To view the recording of this webinar click here.

Konrad Thomasson, Intergence, opened the discussion with an overview of seven digital strategies the sector should adopt to manage the much-needed evolution from complex, legacy IT infrastructures, to far more agile models. With a solid foundation hinged on software driven networks, businesses would have the capability to respond to changing conditions, enabling scalability at far reduced cost.

He also highlighted the importance of enabling effective flexible working and adopting a cloud-based strategy that would mean staff could continue accessing key applications and services anywhere, anytime.

One of the digital strategies he homed in on was extending self-serve to other parts of the business including HR operations. “When employee self-serve software is implemented, employees can update personal data, certifications and accreditations. This is a great way to reduce manual data entry and its associated issues and costs”

Per-Ove, Adonis, then demoed an employee self-serve solution focusing in on 5 key benefits organisations can achieve from such systems:

Time Savings – manual data entry takes an awful amount of time. By allowing employees to update and manage their own personnel data you free up HR professionals to focus on more strategic tasks.

Employee Engagement – empowering employees to maintain and control their own personnel data increases engagement of your workforce. This, in turn, reduces staff turnover and recruitment costs.

Accuracy – when your employees have responsibility for their own data, nothing gets lost in translation. Your data is more accurate and up to date meaning that you have more actionable insights into your operations allowing you to improve strategic decision making.

Compliance – Employee Self-Service reduces mistakes and omissions, which in turn reduces the potential for compliance breaches. Having visibility of compliance levels over time will not only reduce the cost of reporting overheads but will also allow you to plan operations and training much more effectively.

Absence & Training Management – employees request leave or book training courses. Managers can see at a glance who is available at any given time. In addition the ability to see trends in absences enables you to identify potential issues and plan accordingly.

Konrad closed the webinar, reaffirming the compelling reasons for the industry to accelerate digital change. “The future of travel and transportation is uncertain at best. At worst organisations are facing reduced services, mass redundancies, and even bankruptcy.

Those organisations that are able to adapt and evolve to this rapidly changing climate will gain a competitive advantage. Fast tracking digital change is the key to survival!”