Can blockchain transform HR?

With companies such as IBM, Samsung, Visa, Walmart and Barclays using blockchain across a multitude of applications including tracking supply chains, developing ‘smart’ legal contracts and expediting the clearing process for financial transactions, the capabilities of this much-discussed technology are significant.

If you’re new to the concept, blockchain technology enables a record of transactions to be stored and verified across a network and validated in real-time. Transactions can be financial in nature or purely information-based, and because the network records each transaction (the ‘block’) and maintains a permanent and unalterable historical record of transactions (the ‘chain’), there is limited scope for fraud. Imagine a room full of people and one person lends money to another, with everyone in the room agreeing upon and writing down the exact details of the transaction and keeping the record with them, and you start to get the idea.