With the re-invention of the tablet, charged with enough computing power to rival your standard laptop of five years ago, and smart phones now commonplace, the question is no longer a matter of “should human resources (HR) capitalise on this medium to better support the workforce?” but “How can HR do so?”

Mobile applications for HR are now available to approve or deny salary changes, manage time off requests or manage employee training schedules – all from a mobile device. While this may clear a lot of time and convenience hurdles, organisations should ask some of the questions below before embarking on a mobile HR application initiative:

Does your organisation support mobile devices and infrastructure? From QWERTY phones, touch screens to tablets, you need to make sure you have enough connection and local Wi-Fi infrastructure to support the increased bandwidth demand.

Can your organisation afford mobile devices? Cost will be a concern when you’re dealing with data usage (or transfer) and most mobile devices use up a sizeable amount of data to get things running in the background.

Are your mobile devices secure and compliant? Security is paramount. You need to deploy a multi-level security scheme, i.e. password upon entry, VPN, encryption of local data and recovery or remote wipe capabilities for lost devices.

Do you know which workers need mobile applications? Not all workers require a mobile device to do their jobs, and not all of those provided with a mobile device should be given access to mobile HCM applications.

If you answered “no” to any of the above, a mobile HR application can wait. If you answered “yes” to at least one, you probably have mobile applications deployed to some extent and are looking to enhance and extend its capabilities.

Workers could greatly benefit from the ability to access certain HR applications at any time. Here are some of them:

Worker Directory: This is an essential feature of mobile HR applications. Most HCM vendors are beginning to provide this in their latest releases and have abilities such as search by name, title, location, etc.

Learning: Mobile learning applications for tablets could have the greatest impact and benefit for workers. Organisations can provide highly interactive intranet resource applications for the latest news, product launches or events.

Workforce Communications: Intranet portals, email and twitter make up the bulk of formal workforce communications. Publishing important workforce communications through a mobile RSS-type feed will help ensure no information will be missed and can be read anytime.

Workforce Analytics: There are several mobile-only providers who can build mobile dashboards off information coming from data sources like Excel. These applications can easily push data out, they are practical, relatively inexpensive and can be deployed quickly. In addition, all of the major business intelligence vendors provide mobile applications today.

Recruiting: A mobile recruiting application is a great way to keep candidates engaged through the sometimes tedious hiring process. It’s an effective medium by which to inform candidates of upcoming interview schedules and provide background on the organisation.

Not all HR applications should go mobile right away though. Some human resource applications are just too time intensive or just too complex to have on a mobile device, such as:

Performance Reviews or anything requiring lots of typing: Do you really want a manager or co-worker providing feedback on a worker’s performance while grocery shopping? Other major areas to wait on for the same reasons are: new hire paperwork, termination paperwork and entry of a resumé.

Compensation Planning or any very complex transaction: Mobile applications are great for taking one to two actions such as an approval and adding a comment to that approval. They are not ideal when you have to take multiple actions.

Mobile devices and applications are in your workers’ everyday lives and human resources has a great opportunity to improve the engagement and productivity of its workers by providing targeted, action-packed mobile applications that will help motivate workers. The challenge now is whether HR will be able to convince their C-Level executives (CEO, COO, CFO) to pursue this. Mobile HR applications must meet the demand of the workers; otherwise they might develop what they need on their own. And when HR ultimately delivers, it will be difficult to change what’s already been adopted.

Humair Ghauri is the Senior Director of HCM Product Strategy at Oracle.