Already a few years back I was dreaming of Ambient HR (Link). Back then it was a nice idea, an ambition which was not possible to make reality – but now, three years later this looks different. Ambient HR is what the next step in HR Tech can be and should be.
Recap
Let’s recap quickly – what is Ambient HR. Ambient HR starts off with the idea that the HR function is a supporting function that needs to enable the business to work. It has no reason to be on its own, make its own agenda or strategy. It needs to be an enabler – and as such, it needs to stay very close to the business. This is true for strategy, for policies, for anything HR stands for – and this also includes HR Technology. Josh Bersin is seeing it in a similar way when he talks about “Systems of Work” and where the HR Technology sector should head to.
Ambient HR Technology is seamlessly integrated into the daily work routine of an employee or people manager. It is not an add on, a separate system and interface that a people manager or employee needs to log on to, it is not a system where a people manager needs to find its way around and what needs to get done – it is rather integrated into the regular workflow.
How to make it happen? – the foundation
Well, when I first wrote about it, I wasn’t sure when this will be feasible. Now I am happy that we are almost there and can actually put it into practice. It is not yet anything that comes off the shelf, but the ingredients are there and can be mixed in the right way to make it happen.
What do you need? – first and foremost you need a strong HR back office system . something like a Workday or SuccessFactors or Oracle Human Resources – or if you have a smaller company one of the more new and niche softwares like ADP Vantage or Cornerstone. These will not only provide you with the back office infrastructure – meaning the database, but also with the additional “services” you need to make Ambient HR happen. This is something that was not present in the legacy, monolithic ERP based HCM systems.
You need AI – but don’t worry, this is one of the integrated services. AI a few years back meant that you needed to have special Data Scientists and AI engineers that programmed specific solutions just for you – or that you had to search for the right and fitting add-on to your system. – Just to find out that it doesn’t work so seamlessly. Believe me been there – done that, failed. But now AI is integrated into a Workday or a SuccessFactors (and others). The only thing you need is to enable it and to have data, clean and vast amounts of data. This is where it still gets a bit tricky (a) because you need to have clean employee data for all your employees (this also means that they can be categorised) and (b) best is if you can compare and benchmark with 3rd party data. This is where GDPR and data privacy come into play and will complicate things still. But it is doable.
The AI will support you significantly on Data Analytics. This is the next steps on your way to make it happen. Through AI and Data Mining your back office system is learning what is “going well”, what is “not going well” in your workforce and provide support on these topics to bring them to action. As an example: With AI and Data Analytics, your back-office system can identify who might be at risk of leaving the firm and can let the People Manager know – or it can identify who’s salary is inadequate based on tenure, performance evaluation as well as comparison with similar roles.
The Integration
This is one part of making Ambient HR happen. The second one is as important. Until now, all intelligence is within the HR system – and people managers, employees would have to sign on to it, look through the intelligent data and take the right action. This is still clunky and takes away the focus from what needs to get done.
The Integration is key now. The question is: What is your company wide system of productivity? What is it that your company uses to get work done? – is it Salesforce? Is it Slack? Is it Microsoft Teams? – whatever it is, this needs to be the place where HR Tech and the People Manager or Employee meet. Utilising that same interface and platform where anyway a big portion of your Employees and People Managers are busy on a regular basis.
Using this, the next step is the integration – where another (not so) new technology comes into play: bots. Bots that are integrated in your productivity platform and that build the bridge between this platform and your back-office HR system. These productivity platforms know already who you are, what your job is and what you need to get done – they can use all of this information to legitimate you towards the HR back-office system and provide you with a slick interface – in fact, no interface – but a bot (or multiple bots) that will make it easy for you.
These bots should (a) be reachable for every Employee and (b) approach Employees and People Managers as well. Let’s take the above example – your HR back-office system identifies that one of your direct reports is underpaid. It can reach out to you via the bot in your productivity system, check when you have the next 1:1 meeting scheduled with this direct report and let you know in advance via a message that you should review pay – it can even let you know how much of an increase you should action. – and if you are happy with the proposal, you can just reply to the bot after your conversation with your employee and trigger the necessary actions – no need for you to log onto your HR system, no need to dig deep into an uncommon interface. The necessary action is done without additional effort from you as a People Manager.
From here
This is not rocket science – and some companies are already there. Especially productivity platforms like MS Teams are ready for this and HR 3rd party providers are building out the bots.
A nice example is jibble – a time tracking App – that allows you to clock in/ out via bot in Teams and other productivity suits. This is where we need to get to – this is bringing HR ambiently into the workplace – and making it relevant and fluent to use for the workforce.
Chief HR Officer 