Smart Contracts for Smart HR People
Three-Minute Read skimming the surface for non-techy business people.
If you’re a hardcore Solidity programmer or Blockchain Engineer, you can probably flip the page.
This is for the business people out there. The process owners. The people that manage big stuff for the big enterprise. Or the small one. The folks that really need to understand Blockchain in a non-technical way and in their world and on their terms.
My business process is Human Resources and the Technology associated with it, but Smart Contracts will be utilized to re-imagine many other business processes.
This thinking is so new in HR, it remains to be seen if this will apply to mainly just the Web3 Gig Economy or to the broader FTE employment world. I am thinking they will all look a lot alike, at some point in the not so distant future, so it may apply to both.
All we hope to do here is cover a few high points at a layperson’s level so that we can all try to get ahead of this tsunami headed our way.
And it is coming.
Smart Contracts are digital contracts and are the elemental building blocks of Web3. Smart Contracts are the instruments through which digital assets are transferred and guaranteed as to provenance. The Smart Contract facilitated the NFT explosion and became misunderstood in the process.
A brief word on Blockchain:
When I think of the underlying Blockchain Technology, I envision a Railway System with a gleeming and seemless high speed rail, the Chain, supporting a sequential and interlocked set of boxcars of data know as Blocks.
The Blockchain Railway Cars are an empty framework at this point, uncluttered from any meaningless or corrupt data from legacy systems. The opportunity to re-purpose certain business processes onto a new, gleeming, empty Blockchain-based platform is a significant one. Just like with the previous ERP system replatforming, that are now so cluttered with bad data, we have a chance to re-design and optimize business process and then deploy that process onto a fit for purpose Blockchain.
A start from scratch opportunity. A do-over.
Back to Smart Contracts. Smart Contracts are immutable digital contracts deployed onto the Blockchain.
Smart Contracts are the instruments by which transactions are defined and become automatically executable, as in the transfer of a highly valuable NFT with certain community privileges, such as the Bored Apes Yacht Club.
For us in HR, the first Smart Contract arrangement we encounter is likely to be the Employment Application. The Web 2.0 Employment Application process is so fantastically bad for so many reasons, I will not take the time to enumerate them here. It’s Bad.
Under a Web3 Smart Contract, a Candidate could apply to a job with their own secure portable and re-usable Employment Application and provide only the details needed for the Hiring Company to make a skills and capability assessment. This will prove highly efficient as compared with the current resume farming process and all the ghosting that goes with that approach today.
This will offer a much improved Candidate Experience, which is sorely needed.
Swipe Right to apply.
If the Hiring Company wants to hire the Web3 Candidate, then a Smart Contract based package including Offer Letter, Employent Agreement, NDA, Non-solicitation, etc. etc. would be delivered. The Candidate will then accept and the terms of agreement are immediately in effect.
The now hired Candidate could be automatically provisioned, under the original Smart Contract that hired them, with all needed Onboarding related transactions.
In the case of a pure Gig Economy contract employment transaction, the payment terms and deliverables are clearly spelled out in the Smart Contract governing the deal. The Smart Contract in this case encapsulates the entirety of the employment agreement and once completed, is closed, paid out and recorded permanently in the Blockchain.
In the case of Full Time Permanent employment, the new Hire’s entire Onboarding package including provisioning and registration for all employment related services can be articulated and executed from the Smart Contract.
Imagine all the forms and standalone sign up procedures that could go away. This will offer significant efficiencies and User Experience improvements throughout the Onboarding process as well as greatly improved data integrity and personal information security protection.
Smart Contracts could fire up Payroll. Enable Benefits enrollment. Provision all needed security badging, equipment deployment and any other company specific new employee stuff.
Internal Mobility comes to mind as a good potential downstream Use Case.
GDPR Compliance is right behind as a great Use Case.
Really, the potential for rethinking how we do business processes is right there. It is like a blank canvas and we have the benefit of knowing what we do not like about the current Web 2.0 processes and technology.
There is so much to cover but I think we will leave it there for now, adhering to my 3-minute read rule.
As intended, these are quick hit pieces that only scratch the surface of Blockchain and are presented from a layperson’s perspective. The engineers are working on all this gear and as developments occur, we will cover them best we can.
I would encourage my HR colleagues to earmark some time and energy in 2023 to become modest experts in the HR perspective on Blockchain. It is coming.
Selfishly, I hope you will consider tracking our little project into Web3 HR Technology.
Thanks for reading.
Happy 2023!
