In general, when we talk about blockchain, it is always associated with Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. Besides being the backbone of the world’s largest cryptocurrency, blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize multiple industries and sectors by making processes more secure, reliable, transparent, and time efficient.
The World Economic Forum defines blockchain as an open, decentralized database of every transaction involving value: money, goods, property, work, and many others. Blockchain technologies can help organizations realize digital transformation and drive innovation. The blockchain is very beneficial for the HR function as every single data will be verified.
Some of the areas where blockchain will impact HR and its processes are mentioned below:
Attract Right Talent: By using blockchain technology, it will be easy for HR to attract the right potential candidates. Blockchain can identify who is visiting your company’s website or Career page in real time, effectively engage with them, and then generate relevant jobs.
Background Verification: Verifying a candidate’s background is one of the most important steps in the cycle of recruitment and selection. Once a candidate is selected and the onboarding stage is in process, verifying the candidate’s background information requires both time and financial investment. However, the use of blockchain will eliminate the role of the third party for background verification. E.g. If a candidate maintains his or her personal information online and can create blockchain for the same then, in that case, it would be easier for the employer as well to verify those details. If education and work history of a candidate were maintained over a secured platform like blockchain, it would eliminate a lot of stress and cost involved with the background verification process.
Freelancing: Freelancing is on the rise in recent years. For a majority of the medium-sized companies, freelancing is cost effective and is an alternative to hiring someone on the permanent payrolls. This is generally done in case of some niche skills or if the project requirement is for a shorter duration. Both the parties work together for a particular time and particular task and both separate once the terms and conditions as per agreement are met. Blockchain will improve the services for both freelancers and employers. The blockchain is a secure, reliable and private way to store their data. Since it does not have any centralized authority, there are no chances of fraud or biased transactions. In the network of the blockchain, a single person cannot make changes in the data unless other users approve of it. This helps to build an additional level of trust and transparency within the users involved in the network. It also helps to improve the overall experience of freelancers.
Payroll: The world is highly globalized and that results in the growth of the distributed workforce. Compensation is always a complicated process especially when it comes to managing benefits for employees deployed globally. For employers, who do hire internationally there are certain challenges which they face like different tax laws, change in exchange rates, visa validations and employment laws. However, with blockchain, this situation can be simplified and become more secure. Blockchain can easily handle tax issues and cross-border money transfers. In the future companies can use blockchain-based cryptocurrency as their standard currency for international payments. This will help to simply cross-border payments for both HR and Finance team. Blockchain also prevents frauds and protects data.
Blockchain technology can be of great use to HR, as it will ultimately prepare organizations to cope up with the changing workforce. So in order to be blockchain ready, we should continuously read about it. Technology experts have predicted that this technology will drastically change the way of doing business.
Want to explore the other benefits of blockchain? Join us at our #BlockchainForGood hackathon this weekend. Find out details here.
