As businesses adapt to remote work, modern HR management, payroll, and accounting solutions are needed to support employees and managers.

The increased importance of HR tools that support remote work has led to changes in advertising. How many brands are advertising and who are the biggest spenders?

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Digitalization in the Work-From-Home Era

The need for contact-free workplaces led to many office buildings closing down and teams going entirely remote. HR couldn’t have face-to-face meetings with increasingly-frustrated employees, accounting couldn’t handle physical papers in accounts payable and accounts receivable, and employees couldn’t clock in on a centralized machine.

While this distance work didn’t initiate digitalization in these areas, it did accelerate the adoption of these measures as leadership scrambled for solutions.

In the business accounting sector specifically, CFO’s quickly learned the value of not just digitizing individual processes, but of using a cohesive system that compiles all pertinent information in one place for decision-makers to access.

With 74% of CFOs saying that they plan to permanently grow remote work opportunities, those working in accounting and finance will likely have to adapt to new systems. 

HR Roles Changing Amid the Pandemic

While the pandemic has accelerated the rate at which businesses are switching over to digital systems for accounting, payroll, and HR, it has also shifted the needs of these departments.

For example, those working in human resources have to learn to manage and communicate with employees spread out across multiple locations, which is a different beast from a group working within the same building. What’s proper Zoom protocol in meetings? How do employees feel part of the group when separated by screens, and possibly time zones?

But on a much grander scale, HR teams are realizing the importance of prioritizing employee wellbeing. 78% of participants in a study by the American Psychological Association cited the pandemic as a significant source of stress, and rates of burnout are skyrocketing as employees try to balance work and personal lives when both are taking place in the same physical space.

New HR jobs have already come into existence to meet these changing needs, and more are on the way. For example, two new HR roles developed last year: Work from Home Facilitators and Future of Work Leaders.

HR teams who transition to digital management systems have a better chance of staying on top of these needs and responding to them quickly as the space continues to change.

MediaRadar Insights

With the changing demands on HR, accounting, and payroll systems came new advertising techniques and spending patterns by the companies marketing them.

For example, 2020 saw a slight increase in the number of brands that advertised their HR management software systems. There were 107 distinct brands in 2020, compared to 81 brands in 2019. 

However, even though there were more brands entering the advertising space, the traditional leaders mostly kept their positioning. Of the top ten HR management softwares advertising in 2019, six remained in the top ten in 2020, when print and digital ad spend is considered. 

In fact, not all of the 107 brands represented were responsible for any significant part of this increase in spend. The top five software firms in HR management this past year—Kronos, Criteria Corp, WalkMe, TriNet, and Ceridian—made up 61% of total digital ad spend in 2020.

When it comes to print, HR management systems follow the same trends as other B2B industries: spending is down and shifting into digital. In digital ad spend, HR management systems experienced a 5% increase—$1.09 million in 2019 to $1.14 million in 2020. 

Like other industries, flexible and data-informed digital advertising is becoming the norm for brands, and this pandemic only accelerated further adoption.

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