Human resources is, in some ways, a lot different than it used to be -- and some of the professionals looking at groundbreaking HR strategies are recognizing the need to integrate new technologies, new approaches and new outlooks to their work.

Bill Groah is one of these people -- as a founder of Technica, Groah has been active in building the company and handling many aspects of human capital management. As Technica grew to employ nearly 300 people, it became a “team of teams” generating $150 million in revenue last year.

Groah, a graduate of Virginia Tech and the executive vice president/chief information officer of Technica, recently talked about some of the company's internal models and what he has learned over the course of his career.

“Many of the key trends in HR are in reaction to increased mobility of the workforce.” Groah told HR Daily Wire on March 8, explaining how many people change jobs a dozen or more times during their careers. “This means there needs to be increased automation for candidate discovery and review, onboarding and ramping up new hires. Due to this trend in increased movement during a career, both the employer and employee will need greater portability of information.”

Groah contrasted an ideal HR system to some of the modern health services portals we see in the healthcare field, where patients can self-manage their own data.

“The generation entering the workforce today is much more comfortable with having their personal data online, due to their participation with social media,” Groah said. “Employers will expect to be able to interface with these repositories, with the employee’s permission, during the interview, review period and eventual on-boarding process.”

As for challenges that HR teams are facing, Groah described the tough job of handling a decentralized workforce and diverse sets of partners including service vendors, regulators and internal business units. A primary goal, he said, is to break down organizational silos and help information flow well through a company, allowing executives and leaders to gain a better view of the relationships that make a business run.

The new generation of workers and managers -- brought up in a web-enabled, social media powered information environment -- expect access and exchange of data to be a click away.

As for Technica’s particular approach to HR, something he has had a hand in, Groah said the company invests heavily in the development of its staff.

“Technica strives in the recruiting aspects of HR for upper-echelon creative, innovative talent and engages prospective candidates with pre-screening reading, research, writing and sometimes technical code tasks as part of the selection process, so that the best teams are constructed to support each other and are optimized for specific customer programs, projects and tasking,” Groah said. “The company always strives for a creative collegial and enjoyable work environment while proving the best IT operations and solutions. Technica takes great pride in the fact that much of its work makes the world safer and better.”