Blockchain technology is associated with financial markets and cryptocurrency but has been impacting other industries and affecting the way businesses process information. It helps transforms repetitive, laborious, and expensive processes that require a lot of data gathering and verification, which makes it a perfect tool for logistics companies, finance institutions, and HR processes. While many of the ways that blockchain could impact HR are theoretical or not currently in place, blockchain has many capabilities that are not yet being capitalized on.
How blockchain can change human resources.
Here are some ways that blockchain automation technology has the potential to disrupt and change HR processes.
1. Global hiring
Blockchain has the potential to facilitate cryptocurrency payments, which may help to overcome businesses sending payments across borders to global employees. Blockchain-invested multinational companies may choose to create their own currency that can be easily transferred to global banks regardless of currency or exchange rates. This can increase a business’s pool of candidates and potentially allow them to source more diverse and more qualified candidates instead of being limited by location and geography.
2. Increased employee privacy
HR departments deal with sensitive employee information regularly, from bank accounts where checks are direct deposited to social security numbers that are on tax forms to addresses and other private employee data. Blockchain technology is essentially a decentralized database, where information is not kept on just one server, making data leaks less likely.
3. Decreased fraud
In addition to better security, one of the main benefits of blockchain is that it is a transparent record of transactions and data. This helps to increase transparency and enables employers to better verify candidate information. In this way, it decreases candidate fraud and gives employers more clear data from which to make hiring decisions.
4. Better employee sourcing
Down the road, blockchain paired with automation will enable businesses to make better and faster recruitment decisions and help organizations source better quality candidates. Blockchain has the potential to make resumes obsolete by creating a database of employment information for everyone. A public blockchain employment record would work as an advanced version of LinkedIn profiles, with the employment verification built in. This can make recruitment faster, easier, and save employers both time and money in their hiring process.
5. Time-keeping
Another way that blockchain could disrupt or change HR is in how time and attendance are tracked for employees. Some blockchain technology already exists that allows for the storage of biometric data like fingerprints that organizations could use to store unique employee identifiers to better track attendance that would increase accuracy in playing wages or claims. HR would have access to real-time records that couldn’t be disputed for accuracy, decreasing pay errors and frustration for both HR and payroll employees.
6. Better compliance
A lot of HR responsibility is ensuring compliance. HR professionals are tasked with making sure both the employee and employer are in line with employment laws. HR employees need to track all relevant tax information and all employment categorization. Blockchain databases could give HR teams an accurate way to keep records and ensure compliance across the business.
HR is a business process that has many repetitive tasks and is filled with record keeping and both data processing and storage. Automation software has helped many businesses increase efficiency in processes, but blockchain could be the thing that revolutionizes processes completely. Blockchain has the potential to create better HR processes, address HR pain points, and help your business source better talent to help grow your business. As more and more companies embrace blockchain technology for their everyday tasks and overall strategy, blockchain implementation may be a crucial element of business technology that helps businesses stay competitive and successful.
