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Apps and Human Resources: What’s Hot

January 5, 2011 by MSI

While many originally thought Apple’s iPad and it’s tablet competitors would primarily be used personally and not professionally, the convenient size of the iPad and the vast array of business related applications or ‘apps’ have made it an extremely viable tool in business. And, with an estimated eight million iPads sold in 2010, more and more people will be using iPads and tablets in the future to stay connected both personally and professionally.

Common apps beneficial to the general business user include News (Wall Street Journal, NPR, CNN, Pulse, etc.), Functional (Pages, Apple’s Word Processor, Keynote, Apple’s version of PowerPoint, Dropbox, a file sharing tool for multiple platforms, WebEx, for web based meetings and presentations and iBook), and Social (Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and more), but apps are available for the human resources professional?

I began my search by visiting Apple’s iTunes store to what was available. As an active iPad owner, I know what I use each day, but my valued apps are specific to my role and our Company, so I needed a broader perspective, and I was surprised by what I found.

While there aren’t hundreds of apps dedicated to human resources at this point, there are some really excellent choices. From an information perspective, I started with HR Executive Management and Workday apps, both of which provide excellent content and are free apps. There is also the HR at your fingertips app, which offers a glossary of terms, federal laws and how to create an employee handbook. There are also apps for tracking employee feedback, hiring processes and team motivation. And, many of the top software providers now offer apps for payroll, CRM and employee tracking including salesforce.com, hh2, ADP, SAP and Intuit.

So, if you are looking to use your tablet for business, there are a lot of great applications out there that will allow you to remain productive and a few that provide for some fun as well. From my perspective I could not live without my iWork suite of apps, The Weather Channel, iBooks, iTranslate, Twitter, Pulse, Amazon, Bloomberg, PS Express and Pandora, but I am sure that will change in 2011 as new apps are introduced every day.