Oracle's new HCM Cloud adds an array of 'work-life' tools

Aiming to help organizations embrace what the company calls "modern HR," Oracle's updated Human Capital Management Cloud includes an array of tools designed to help human resources departments better recognize and support the intersection of employees' personal and professional lives.

An opt-in reputation-management application, for instance, gives employees a way to analyze activity on external and internal social platforms and assess how their talent is perceived by peers and social communities.

Also included are tools for managing employee wellness, work-related competitions and career development.

Oracle has also beefed up the analytics capabilities in HCM Cloud to give HR officers and line-of-business leadership better insight into questions such as what key skill gaps will be created by upcoming retirements, for instance.

The new release adds the ability to combine HR-related data from multiple data sources into a comprehensive view that can be shared across the company for coordinated workforce assessment and planning. A drag-and-drop user interface simplifies the process of adding such views into mobile briefings for an executive audience, Oracle said.

Finally, the new HCM Cloud also includes a new mobile tool for performance assessments along with improved workforce-optimization capabilities. An extended holiday calendar with an international outlook helps HR departments better track when global offices will be closed for public holidays. Better payroll management capabilities and industry-specific functionality are also included.

The new HCM Cloud is part of Oracle Applications Cloud Release 10.

As sales of traditional software licenses continue to wane, Oracle has been pushing ever more aggressively into cloud software, including 24 new cloud offerings announced last month.