Author: Volker Schrank

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The AI Battle – we are getting it wrong

My recent posts were all about next level or future HR – with AI mindset first, opportunities and wrong turns we could take in the coming probably more days than years – seeing the announcements from OpenAI, Google and Microsoft (and others) just this recent week makes you think that the AI wave is coming even quicker than we thought. It is amazing what is possible already, but we also must be sure to take off any pink glasses we might wear. We are very much still in the early days and AI is not the solution for everything. Despite the fact that every company and every VC is now heavily running towards it and pushing it (Goodbye NFTs and Metaverse). This will end up in many many failed start-ups (if they actually make it after SVBs failure – the question is how they will be able to get funding – but this is a different story). We are at the beginning of the AI hype-cycle – still an important one, a historic moment in time, like when Steve Jobs showed off the first iPhone (which did not take off then, but it took some time and the App store).

Do we get it wrong?

When talking about AI, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI it is often talked about a war around search and the end-user internet. Even Satya Nadella has shared that view in a by now very famous and for sure historic interview with Nilay from the Verge (watch the video) “I want people to know that we made them (Google) dance”. And yes, of course search is one of the biggest markets out there where just a 1% share increase means many Millions of $s. But I would argue that we get that wrong – not that this is a fight and that this might lead to more search market competitiveness, but that this is the interesting fight to watch.

What is interesting is that it very much looks like Google and mostly Microsoft will win not only the AI, but the Business AI war. Both are already actively pushing applications into the enterprise world, into their enterprise solutions. This is the best approach to make money and get quick traction – and it could be a journey to overthrow the current leaders in HR enterprise technology. I mean, look at Oracle’s webpage, look at SuccessFactors or ServiceNow – they all have one thing in common: Absence of AI mentions on their homepages. Only Workday is actively marketing this area. They have AI on their webpage and during their Innovation Summit they announced that they invest in AI and have a roadmap (read more here from Josh).  – but also let’s be clear, they all have missed the first boat and now need to quickly catch up or become obsolete. And the problem is that even if they think AI, they don’t think “AI first mindset“. They try to “upgrade” their solutions with a little bit of AI here and there. This will not lead to a winning position (happy to talk to you if you believe I got this wrong), or as Oren Harari famously said “The electric light did not come from the continuous improvement of candles”. If at Google there was panic and chaos when Microsoft announced Bing with ChatGPT, I do hope that there is hell at Workday, SAP, Oracle and ServiceNow seeing how Microsoft and Google push AI into the enterprise market. Interestingly I haven’t seen or heard anything like that, which is telling. 

The new wave of HCM

Their products today are “digital first” at best – some of them have last upgraded their UX/UI years ago and don’t even look & feel current anymore. And looking under the hood, they continue to be dumb transaction focused almost ancient machines despite all the marketing nonsense. They need to reimagine themselves quickly – or acquire AI knowledge and capability to overhaul their core. This is now an unexpected point in time where the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant from 2022 is more than outdated. A new playing field has been established with new rules. Who will win? – and to have a chance to win, who will actually show up on the playing field? Stop trying to fix your current product, start from scratch is your only chance.

Google and Microsoft (and other AI players) are there and Microsoft has more than enough enterprise experience and HR technology experience to get into a new leading position if they wanted to. The time is up for what was great in 2022 – it is a new era that is starting and everything has to be rethought with an AI mindset first – and, and it would not be this post from me if I would not mention it, EX first. These are the two new leading aspirations. Build a new system that is thought of AI first with an EX goal. This is a massive task of course and it won’t happen quickly. But we might see a new era of HR systems. – remember, it took SuccessFactors and Workday years from existence to full functional scope to eradicate SAP HCM. And it will take another decade before the new winner is at the top – but the foundation for this winner is laid out now, today. 

I think it is the most exciting times now to be in HR and especially HR Technology and Experience. It is so wild to watch but also be part of it. Let’s let the game begin! – and if you are building one of the new exciting AI first HR systems I would love to talk to you!

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Digital First mindset is so yesterday…

I haven’t talked about my dream for a long time, but it is still in my head and it is my long-term goal that I want to achieve from an Employee Experience perspective. I haven’t talked about it because it got lost a bit in the day-to-day work stuff as well as day-to-day research activities. But I was recently reminded of it when I had a great conversation with Microsoft.

What is a great Employee Experience about

But let me start with this: What is a great Employee Experience about? – as I had shared in the past, for me the best experience is one that seamlessly works, without effort, without need to learn or remember anything. It should be ambient. With everything we have done so far, this goal was not in reach. We worked on creating much better experiences than we had in the past for our processes and systems – but it was everything but ambient. You had to log into a system, you had to find the right service, you had to reach out to get information – may it be around policies or processes or may it be around your team. Yes, we made it more effortless and easier to navigate – but it still required an effort by you.

Ambient HR

Ambient HR is the opposite. It sits quietly in the background, it doesn’t bother you, it doesn’t require anything from you – but when you need it it is there and will support your requirements. And if it believes you should need it, it will reach out to you. Wouldn’t this be great? – you log into your work on a Monday morning and you are directly contacted with a message along the lines of “hey, your team member Carol did a fantastic job in the Myth project. Do you want to recognise her for this? – you could send a message or even do a monetary award. Please let me know” – I would love this support. You have your own People support at your fingertips. But where would this come from? – well, the information for this are already there. In your current systems. Carol did finish that project and had updated her Objectives with feedback from her project manager and the way your company rewards great work is via monetary awards. It just needed to get joined up and presented to you – and from there you can actually just indicate that you want to initiate a monetary award…

This is my dream, and I wanted to achieve it till 2030 – but maybe now it is closer than I thought?

The AI first mindset

And this is when I had a chance to chat with Microsoft. Of course, as many of you these days, I reached out to Microsoft to talk about OpenAI, ChatGPT and how we could integrate it into our current tech stack and improve the experience. And there are, as you know, plenty of ideas on how you can utilise AI to improve the experience and automate chats and processes and more.

But, and this is a big one – but you can also completely reimagine the Experience. It is the same like with “Digital first”: Don’t try to digitise your analog processes, reimagine them digital first. – and therefore the direction should be: Don’t use AI to make your current processes smarter, reimagine everything with an AI first mindset. This is for sure something we all have to learn first. It was not easy to learn “digital first mindset” and it was just “yesterday” when we believed we got there. And now it is the next one and it is even bigger “an AI first mindset” in recreating experiences, in transforming the way work is done. – Digital first is so yesterday….

The new Experience with AI

It is another, even bigger revolution on the horizon, actually not on the horizon but already close to our doorstep. Of course, we won’t be there tomorrow, but probably the day after tomorrow. And with that let me get back to my conversation with Microsoft. Of course, we have talked about how to integrate AI into the current processes and systems and how such a generative AI can be an exponentially better ChatBot than what we have today. But then we went off and into the AI first mindset. What if we can reimagine everything from that perspective, what if we could have as the only interface an employee and people manager needs to have a small bubble at the bottom right of your screen (or anywhere you can imagine). And what if this is not just a bot to answer questions (more or less well) or a bot to bring you into the actual software interface? What if this is the only interface? And it is reaching out to you as much as you are reaching to it. It keeps track of your actions, requests and HR needs and keeps you posted on this, as well as fulfils any need you wanted? – we would go “back in time” to a white gloved HR service, just that it is not by a human – and that it is always 100% customised to you as it knows your data, your team and your direction.

I agree, it is also a bit scary and the critical guardrails need to be defined so that it is a support and not more than that. It is already now more than a dream and we need to make it happen now – forget about digital first mindset, it is AI first mindset as of yesterday!

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Can you remind me, which year do we have?

Let me be straight forward at the beginning: I continue to be very excited about AI and especially about the race we are currently seeing around conversational AI between Microsoft/ OpenAI and Google (and others). This will truly revolutionise the way we operate and interact with technology. As I have written here, I immediately see two very interesting and beneficial use cases that I am actively pursuing (and there are many more).

But the more I dive into AI, the more I am wondering which year we have and if we are going back to “the good old days” of Taylorism and Fordism? – just a short recap “[…] the task of factory management was to determine the best way for the worker to do the job, to provide the proper tools and training, and to provide incentives for good performance.” Taylorism or Scientific Management did see the employee as a work tool to be optimised, as an anonymous body, not an individual – and was often criticised for that (afterwards). And I believe that this criticism was and is right. What we need and what we should strive for at work are individuals, is diversity – not only of backgrounds, gender, race, but also diversity of thinking and working and leading.

Now, when I then read about additional “interesting” applications of AI as a coach to employees, or even further, see the application of it – may it be in MS Teams or in Apps like Humu – or read articles like this, I am left speechless, truly. It seems to come down to a blind believe that technology and AI will make us all better at work because it can analyse “us” and propose “better” behaviours, more effective and efficient behaviours. Am I the only one who is shocked and scared?

We basically propose to go back more than hundred years to improve workers behaviours and outputs – with the only difference that a hundred years ago we at least had the decency to have humans improve humans – where as now we leave this to machines. I see where this is better?! I am not sure I agree with the ethics around this. Just imagine how far this could be driven? If you mix this with Neuro-Science you very quickly go from “suggestions to improve your work” to “manipulation to increase your output”. And because it all comes somehow through the back-door as “new and shiny” AI, we don’t recognise that this brings us back to dark times that we all believed we had left behind. Of course it is just one article, but read this one here and enjoy the sentence of “Enable technology to work on the worker (and the team)” – I am still speechless. Am I the only one?

AI is the new breakthrough technology, there is no doubt about that. It will radically change the way we work, we interact with technology, we search for answers, we analyse data and we hypothesize. A new, not yet elegant, but very powerful tool is been given to us and we need to see how we use it best, where and which use-cases have the best payback and how we bring it from investment to return (of investment). But with any tool, with any new approach, we must be careful and not forget that there is always a downside. We must invest as much research in the downside as in the upside and we must be careful to not use AI in any use case there is, but only where also from an ethical perspective, it is the right thing to do (not to mention that in any case it needs to be cost efficient – don’t forget how much power and energy-consumption these large language models still require). 

And to close my post for this week, let me ask you to go out there and test & learn with AI and don’t forget to jump on this train as it is a radical and fundamental enabler for so much of our work – but to also make sure you have your ethics straight and your ideas and solutions maybe independently reviewed. AI is truly the future also of HR and Employee Experience.

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ChatGPT – another Web 3.0 hype?

I am not sure if I should even ask who hasn’t heard or read about ChatGPT. I don’t think you can escape it? Look here or here or here. It looks like another hype is exaggerated like a year ago with NFTs, the ongoing Metaverse debate or crypto/ blockchain. All of these are OUT by now. The value of NFTs in general has bottomed. With Crypto I am not sure if it has already hit bottom with the FTX scandal or if this is still to come. There is for sure still some more money to lose. And looking at the Metaverse, I know that my friend Davis has a different view (and he could be right in the long term), with the latest changes and lay offs at Microsoft and Meta’s focus on efficiency, it is clear that there is still no use case to make it a thing for the business world just yet. 

ChatGPT is different

But ChatGPT is different, apart from it being only one of the big revelations of AI lately (and see my predictions for more to come), it lays out clear use cases. It doesn’t place AI or the product at the heart, but the application of it, the solutions it can bring to real, existing problems. The not only promise but reality of efficiencies and productivity. This is what makes it so different from the Metaverse or NFTs or Blockchain which are products still in search for a problem to solve. 

And if you needed ay further proof of that, I suggest you read the blog post from Microsoft or have a look at this interview with Satya. There is no doubt, OpenAI has managed a breakthrough and started an arms race on AI. This is fascinating and fantastic – and will bring tons of new use-cases to all of us. But before looking into the future, let’s look into the today. And this is where ChatGPT can already add value.

What to do with ChatGPT

Now, looking at ChatGPT (and wider AI), what is the game changer? What makes it a productivity driver, especially in the Experience world? Well, there are multiple areas of application where it can bring big benefits. Don’t get me wrong. Of course ChatGPT isn’t an off-the-shelf plug & play solution (yet). There is still work to do and GDPR, Privacy and further questions to answer – as well as the required computing power to make it work properly. BUT the applications I can see clearly already. 

Chat directly: utilizing the ChatGPT engine with your internal knowledge base and significantly improve your chat functionality. Just imagine if your employees could reach out via Chat to answer any of their HR questions and can interact with true conversational AI, a conversation that feels almost human, is able to answer with context of the previous conversation and can surface everything your team could do as well but always ready, always on, always right. This can deflect significant traffic from your employee-supported Tier 1 Service Desk which will help to reduce costs and focus on more value added services. And at the same time, because of how big a jump this is from the current Chat engines, it will also increase the Employee Experience. So two wins in one.

Another area is the speed to market. ChatGPT can provide additional capacity and capability in your technology teams. Have a look at this video where developers just tried to see what happens if they ask ChatGPT to develop its own integration (integrates GPT-3) with ServiceNow. Check out also what Microsoft was able to achieve on GitHub with CoPilot. AI will take hard coding work off your team and provide it quickly to review and implement. Of course, it won’t be flawless, it makes mistakes. But it will learn, will improve quality – and will further accelerate the output your team can bring. This is an amazing win. 

These are just two use cases where AI, where ChatGPT can provide almost immediate value – today. This is why it is a true game changer and will have a different, more immediate future than blockchain or the Metaverse.  

Exiting times are coming our way. 2023 will be the year of AI breakthrough and true uptake. I cannot wait to see more and to bring more value of it to our businesses. 

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Employee Experience Predictions 2023

An exciting year for Employee Experience (EX) has ended and an even more exciting one has started already. 2023 will continue to be a year of Employee Experience focus – some things will just be a continuation from 2022 – but EX will also be different in 2023. Here are my predictions for 2023:

1. Employee Experience continues to be a key topic

As in 2022, the era of EX is only starting. Unemployment continues to be at all time lows. Certain profiles will continue to be highly sought after. A twist is that suddenly tech-profiles are more affordable as the Amazons, Metas, and Apples of this world are correcting their significant over-hiring of the pandemic years. This will bring with it opportunities for the old economy to attract these talents with boring job-security at more affordable rates. But to keep the current workforce and attract these now suddenly available tech talents, EX needs to be at its best and win them over. Having profiles available does not equal easy hiring. Employees do not want or see any need to scale back on their demands. We might get a recession, we might not – depending on whom you ask, predictions on that are different. But what they all have in common is that even if we go into a recession, it will be mild and it will be a very different one from what we have seen before. It will be a recession that is not including the job market. Despite everything that has happened already – the war in Europe, the energy crisis, the supply chain crisis – job markets continue to be stable. There is no reason that this will change. Another thing that won’t change is the shrinking workforce. OECD countries are seeing their labor participation rates no longer growing. There is no additional labor available anymore – especially not highly skilled labor.

These factors lead to a continued importance of and focus on Employee Experience across all industries. 

2. But there is a twist in how to look at EX

But there will be a twist in how companies look at EX. For a long time companies have invested money in EX without the clear RoI understanding. It was a topic that was hyped and demanded investment. This has led to companies not thinking too much about metrics and the benefits case. The economy might not go into a recession, but money is significantly tighter in 2023 with continued higher costs of investment due to increasing interest rates across the western hemisphere. This will lead to companies exercising more scrutiny on investments and making sure that whatever is invested in makes it to the bottom line. EX must contribute to the bottom line more clearly than in recent years and the metrics for this have to be built and implemented. This will mean a refocus on where the money goes in EX and if more investments will be made in new EX categories and areas. It will also mean that glossy programs without impact are stopped. EX will focus on its core which is long overdue.

3. The EX Tech market will normalize

The same will be true for the overall EX Technology and Solutions market. The years of easy and cheap cash for start-ups is over. This will also impact the EX market. We won’t see many if any new players in this market in 2023. Existing EX tech providers have to proof their business case and become profitable within the coming 2-3 years or will go down even more in evaluation and eventually not be able to raise additional capital. At the same time the existing top players in the HR Tech market will continue to look at providing the required tech to their customers. They have already proven their profitability and will not let this opportunity go by. We will see a new wave of consolidation across the HR and EX Tech market. A pattern we have seen many times before and which will be interesting to watch. Who will acquire whom? Which players will have to exit the market? Is there maybe a new player on the horizon to test the current hierarchy of core players? Will a new Workday form as we have seen in the last consolidation? This will be an interesting market to watch for investors and EX enthusiasts – and a difficult one for decision makers in companies that are (still) in the market for EX Tech. Which company will survive? Which will be acquired – and by whom? Which will be no longer existent in a year from now? – if you need to make a decision now, it will be tough. I am confident that in a year from now though, there is more light and a clearer indication of winners and losers.

4. Current investments have to sweat more

Given the above trends, EX leaders will definitely look at getting more from their current investments and pushing for more out of their existing install-base. Most companies have invested a lot of money in the EX space in the recent years. Now budget is tight and the market is uncertain for which EX Tech to stay relevant. This will lead to EX leads focusing on what they have and how they can get more out of it. The pressure on existing providers to increase the experience of their solutions, to increase investments, to improve solutions will elevate in 2023 – and will contribute to the consolidation. Not every provider is capable of doing this or succeeding with it. But EX leads will have no other choice than to push their providers more than ever before. They will be asked to deliver more with less and their partners have promised exactly that – now it is time to deliver on this.

At the same time, pressure will be on internal teams to also achieve more with less, to get an elevated experience with the possibilities and technology at hand – without new investments. Internal EX teams have to become smart and have to see how they can get more out of what they have through unpaved territory or intelligent combination of what is already implemented. 

5. EX Tech will be more and more like consumer tech – the bad way

All of us know this now for years from our technology products at home – we are beta testers. Companies have shipped and are shipping products before they are actually ready for the end user. And this attitude has shifted from consumer tech to corporate tech as well in the recent years – and it will continue to be the trend. Many new functionalities or ideas are only half baked but rolled out to corporate users to see what they do with it, if it sticks, etc. – this is not good for the overall  product quality and not good for the overall reputation. But let’s face it: It did not lead to any consequences in consumer tech and it won’t lead to any consequences in corporate tech – because everyone is doing it. And this trend will only increase this year and the following years for two main reasons.

Tech providers are under more pressure, as I outline above, to deliver more with less and to support their customers to address the increasing EX pressures. But also, the pandemic will only now truly kick in with its consequences. Due to development cycle timing, the actual impact of not being co-located, of not being able to collaborate as before, of needing to adjust to a significantly different way of working that we all were not used to is only felt now. There was less creativity which produced less new or groundbreaking ideas, leading to less product innovation. You cannot innovate or generate new ideas in a vacuum, without knowing what the actual issues and problems are that your customers are facing – and this was the situation the tech providers faced: Product Managers were at home, Customer representatives were at home – no one met their customers anymore, no one was able to truly immerse in the requirements of their customers. And developers were also at home – alone. The quality control process that was in use before (which already led to beta testing post deployment) did not work anymore and needed to be adjusted. We will all feel the consequences of that in the coming 2 years before we are back to post-pandemic innovation and quality processes. 

This is nothing that only impacts corporate tech – it is the same for consumer tech (outside the obvious requirements we had on remote work), e.g. take Apple, who has not managed to keep their innovation promise of moving all Macs to their own ARM processors – and it is not clear if they will manage this year. 

6. Reality will kick in: Buy what you see, not what is promised

Corporate Tech companies have promised heaven and have delivered a different reality. I am sure that most of us have already experienced the stark difference between the sales promises and the implementation reality. This realization will even more kick in in 2023 and increase the pressure on both, us as EX practitioners as we have over-promised solutions as well as the solution providers to finally deliver on their promises. Of course you always want to get what you were promised, but often you just let go when you are at the 80% stage (good old pareto principle). But with the continued EX focus and pressure (see above) to deliver more with less, we need to find a way how to deliver our own aspirations and promises as well as the marketing ads from the Tech providers. Anyone that is still in the market for new EX tech – buy what you see and not what is promised, and anyone that has already deployed: Push your solution provider to deliver on the promises. 

7. AI will finally provide a compelling case

Closely connected to above is AI which, in the recent years, has been significantly oversold while it underdelivered in the HR space. I believe we all have struggled with the implementation and acceptance of Chatbots, not even talking about the RoI of these.  Last year meant a breakthrough for AI as demonstrated by Dall-E and (more relevant for us) ChatGPT. Of course, bots are still “dumb” and it will continue to cost time and effort to ensure correct answers. But the interaction model, the conversational approach is finally at an acceptable level that can enable true RoI in the sense that it will be able to deflect  workload from service desks with an acceptable level of experience. This will finally bring the next stage of efficiency to HR Shared Services.

But not only in that space we will see AI delivering. AI will be more and more embedded in products and solutions. It will less and less be THE selling argument or shiny new object, but it will just quietly enable smarter workflows and data entries as well as automatic reviews and approvals. As I have written earlier: A Technology comes out of the hype-cycle and into reality when it is not sold as a separate item for which you should buy it but as a build-in feature that is only mentioned as a supporting technology to enable the actual problem solving. We will see this in AI in 2023. 

8. It will be another year of failed Metaverse and Crypto promises

If you haven’t yet invested in the Metaverse or the Blockchain in EX or HR – don’t do it in 2023. It will be another failed year with big ideas and little to no actual use cases that bring the RoI. Apart from the real VR/ AR use cases in Learning/ Training, I do not see any game changer on the horizon that will bring this market from over-hype to anything that actually makes a difference. And I expect many Tech providers to realize it as well (probably not Meta though…) and disinvest in that space. This space has to wait until there are finally compelling use cases. – a colleague of mine has a bit of a different view here. I interviewed him on this and will soon publish the podcast with it.

And with this, I will close my predictions for 2023 – let me know what you think. Do you agree? Disagree? – what big trend have I missed for 2023?

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The infinite game – Employee Experience

Through one of my newsletters I read I was reminded of James Carse’s “infinite game” theory today. I forgot how much I like it and how much I believe it is actually a very true theory of our today’s world in Employee Experience. If you did not come across it yet, have a look at his books, or take the short-cut via his interview with Simon Sinek. I can only recommend a deeper immersion – but of course, this depends on your interest of such theories. From where I stand, it always helps to understand such theories and thinking as it actually is what underpins our daily doing – at work and at home. And understanding why and how certain things are the way they are is often helpful for your approaches and strategies.

The short immersion on his theory is like this: “There are at least two kinds of games: finite and infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play. Finite games are those instrumental activities – from sports to politics to wars – in which the participants obey rules, recognize boundaries and announce winners and losers. The infinite game – there is only one – includes any authentic interaction, from touching to culture, that changes rules, plays with boundaries and exists solely for the purpose of continuing the game. A finite player seeks power; the infinite one displays self-sufficient strength.” (wikipedia)

I would characterize the wider business world as an infinite game – but it is a debate I don’t want to focus on in today’s post. For me, our focus on Employee Experience, our push to improve this Experience is an infinite game – a game that doesn’t have any winners or losers, a game where we don’t play against anyone, but only for someone – and a game that never ends. Would you agree?

On a daily basis we are trying to improve the Experience for our colleagues – and we should never stop, there is not any time that our job is done. We can always improve, provide a better, less distracting, less time-consuming Experience to our employees. Make sure through improvements that we add value to the overall company “game” of improving products, services, etc. – and we are not playing against anyone, we are focusing on the game itself. In this, we are pushing boundaries and changing culture. It is a massive game, a powerful game. 

This definition for me has a good and a bad – the good is that we are here to play the game, we are immersed, absorbed by it and find pride in our improvements. The bad that it can drain you because it never ends. I am sure that more than once you have deployed a great improvement to a certain Experience – and almost right after GoLive you received negative feedback or someone came with an idea on how to make it even better, bring it to the next level. This can be tiring if you don’t celebrate the achievements you had. It could quickly turn into a hamster-wheel if you don’t take care. 

On the other side, don’t get into this game if you don’t believe it to be an infinite game – if you want to win, if you just see it as a stepping stone to something else. I doubt you will be successful or happy in it. If you believe in and play it as a finite game, you play to different rules, rules that don’t apply to the game you are actually in. And by the definition of the finite game, you will lose – because you cannot win.

The infinity of it is what really intrigues me – you can learn every day, you can make a difference every day, you can delight your customers every day – even if you did not delight them yesterday. This is another positive angle to look at it. In infinite games you are sometimes ahead, sometimes behind – and knowing that, it should provide focus and strength on days that you are behind, on days where your new process, technology – regardless what it is – did not make a positive impact, where you are behind on the expectations of your employees… Because the next day is different, you were not defeated with that suboptimal experience yesterday, you were just behind, learned more and can focus on being ahead the next day, the next time. I find this rather fascinating and it drives me every day, it catches me every day, it fuels my engagement every day. 

Are you in for the infinite game?

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The structure to ensuring the right Employee Experience

In the recent weeks I had many conversation with other companies as well as some vendors and consultancies of HR and Experience (Technology). The conversations were manyfold – around payroll, around onboarding, which technologies best to use and how to utilize which technology best. All of these conversations were very insightful and I hope my conversation partners felt the same. There is always a lot that I take out of such conversations – always a big chance to learn new ways, new things, or even new obstacles that I haven’t faced yet and how to get over them. I have unfortunately not always sufficient time to have as many conversations as I want – but truly enjoy each and every one of them.

Now, across most of these conversations in the recent weeks there was one topic that stood out for me, but I believe also for my conversation partners: the team structure to ensure the right Employee Experience.

At some point in almost all of these conversations, the question comes up “Do you report into HR or Technology?” or “Are you on the HR or the Technology side of the business?” – my answer is always the same: Both. My team might have one solid reporting line, but it has at least one dotted as well. But I believe it doesn’t really matter. Important is that it is focused and oriented at both, HR and Technology. – and so is my team, built as HR and Technology Experts. 

My believe is that even more tomorrow than today, HR and Technology need to come closer together. An HR professional without Technology background and knowledge will not come far in our digital (HR) world, and a Technology expert without HR background will not be too sought after either. The actual power lies in smartly combining these two capabilities.

All future HR processes or solutions should be digital first, and for it to be digital you must have the right Technology capability – and the best is if that same capability also knows the what and why of “why you are actually designing and deploying this process/ technology” – what is the purpose , the ultimate goal and reason behind it. And you can only build that with both capabilities hand-in-hand. 

But not only that is important, in the end, it is not about deploying a technology solution to enable a process. It is about deploying a supportive, non-distracting, simple to use Experience for all employees, so that it is actually used and can deliver on the promise you made, deliver on why you actually built it in the first place. Only then it is a win, or as Josh Bersin put it in a recent fireside chat at #WDRising: “If they don’t use your process or technology, it is your problem to solve.”

And because of all of the above, I believe that from latest today onwards, there is no space anymore for an HR IT department. Why? – because it by structure decouples HR and IT, it calls it even out separately. Therefore, it won’t be integrated – as much as you could argue now that it is about proper demand management, and consulting of the HR IT colleagues to the HR colleagues, as much I would tell you: Yeah, that was semi-successful in the past. In today’s world, it is all about Employee Experience and about delivering an integrated, seamless, simple and high quality Experience. And the only way you can do that is if you have an Employee Experience Organization that actually strategizes, designs, develops and deploys as ONE. An integrated  team of HR and Technology experts that focus on this every day, jointly – and can focus on very specific Experiences like “join” or “career” or “rewards” as an integrated team of cross-capability experts. 

If you don’t have your structure set up like this today, go there, do it, you won’t regret it. Important note though: Maybe your current teams are not up for such approach, that could very well be – but then the question is: Is it the right talent? What I am certain of is that if you build such an integrated team, you will attract highly capable talents and you will raise their future employability as they are set up for the future. The future of Digital Employee Experience.

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The Return of the Metaverse?

Just about one year after we saw Facebook rename itself to Meta and betting big on the Metaverse, Meta had more to share. Last week saw the big Meta connect keynote and update from Mark Zuckerberg on the state of the Metaverse. What did we learn? – we learned that Meta still believes that this is the future and continues to bet big on it – so far Meta sunk more than $15 Billion into this idea. Ok, they have sufficient funds (but for how long?) and can continue to push it. But will it land before they run out of money? I have high hopes for everyone that bets currently against Meta on the stock exchange. I don’t think their share price will ever reach again the highs of Facebook (lost more than 62% in the last 12 months and 5% post the Meta connect announcements). I continue to believe that Mark is trying to define and create a new world that no one has asked for. I am impressed by his focus and dedication – and at the same time puzzled how he can overlook all the signs that this is a dead-end or at best a new market that is much smaller (or very different) than what he imagines. 

The Metaverse fails already

There are many clear signs for that. Two that I find especially funny are the legs-meme and that not even Meta employees utilize their Metaverse (Horizon Worlds) or know what to do with it. When Meta introduced his Metaverse, all the Avatars were missing legs and the whole net made fun of that. Finally last week Mark’s Avatar got legs and could jump – awesome! I mean, of course it is more realistic (if you can even talk about this with this rudimentary graphics design) to have legs, but it is nothing to celebrate or put out one word tweets “Legs”. If this is an achievement that Meta is proud of, good luck. And then there are indications that its own Meta staff doesn’t utilize the Metaverse as it is too complex, buggy, not helpful in getting work done. And we should not forget that Meta planned to have over 500k regular users by end of 2022 and instead now has even less users than in Q1 of this year (looks like around 200k users).

What is still missing is THE KILLER-App that makes the Metaverse useful, as well as of course a big enough crowd to have social interaction with, a reason to join and come back regularly. What is also still missing is a clear focus – for whom is it actually? Why? Is it focused on consumers that should “live” in it rather than in the real world aka “Ready Player One”? Or is it focused on companies and collaboration at work? – I am not clear. And the announcement of the new Headset or Face-Computer like many journalists call it (read here) did not make it clear either. Of course it is an impressive piece of hardware, but for the price of $1.500 who can afford it? and for what? This is cost prohibitive for the regular consumer and also prohibits a wider adoption in the enterprise market.

But then there was the announcement of Meta and Microsoft? How does this fit in? I believe that there are multiple ways you could look at this. On one hand, it could be a strong statement that THE number one enterprise-software company is now bought in and supports the Metaverse in and with its core Microsoft365 (formerly known as Office) applications; on the other hand you could say that Microsoft gave up their own metaverse efforts (Hololens) as this market did not play out how they hoped and they focus their own efforts now again on what matters (read: and let Meta play with the Metaverse and just be there…). Regardless how you read it, I think we can agree that Excel in VR is not a Killer App.

The concept though has potential

But don’t get me wrong – I still believe in a few core concepts and ideas around the metaverse, just not Meta’s version of it. I think we can all agree the metaverses in the gaming industry are already today very successful and bring high revenues and profits. These have a clear focus and purpose: They are to play a game, to meet like-minded people from across the world and you don’t need a heavy, expensive headset to make it work. But the more encompassing ones like 2nd Life are small and not really profit-generating. Then there are different ways to look at the metaverse and different interpretations of it, like the one from Scott Galloway. 

The other core-concepts I believe in are AR and VR. Both are very promising technologies which will have a big future. AR already via your smartphone is amazing and will be much stronger in the future and potentially bring up a huge new market at the intersection of online (AR) and reality. We might not like everything around it, but I see a big future for that in the commercial space – targeted, real world marketing with AR advertisements, shared experiences, immersive tourism and many more use-cases. 

And VR, too. VR can be a game changer in realistic enterprise learning efforts where it is important to not only read/ absorb but feel or try out/ do something specific to reach the full learning experience. We are also already there, not yet widely adopted, but the use cases are there and with reduced costs it will be even wider adopted. 

But both VR and AR and their use-cases are outside Mark’s Metaverse and will continue to be successful without it. I am sure about that.

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Re-thinking the role of on-site (HR) support

Last week I have shared my thoughts regarding digitalizing the manufacturing and field-sales workforces – or in more general: workforces that do not have a desk and computer to get their work done and that don’t need such skills for their job. One of the outcomes of this was the identification of an infrastructure and enablement support gap for these workforces. 

A look back

In recent years, all support functions, including HR have focused on getting the core job done, but only that – more and more grey areas, activities that could sit in between different functions have been neglected and left unspoken. As long as “someone” was still there to take care of them, it was ok – somehow. But as a next step, more and more functions have outsourced their service provisioning – may it be IT, HR or Facilities. And a key component of outsourcing is that you have a clear and set list of activities agreed with your outsourcing providers and they won’t do anything in addition. This has widened the gap between functional activities, and subsequently has widened the grey areas in between functions – and increased activities that somehow no one picks up anymore. Who is accountable for local on site communication, e.g. setting up banners/ posters or handing out leaflets? Who is responsible for functional agnostic trainings and initiatives? – well, in many cases there is no one anymore who can pick that up. 

Who still remembers the typical outsourcing & process design conversation when an activity could be done like 80%-90% remote, but there was a final, last piece that required on-site presence? May it be handing over a physical device or letter, may it be receiving a physical letter, telegram or whatever it may be. The generic answer of your outsourcing consultant was: I am sure there is someone else on site that can do that – for example the receptionist! … well, the receptionist is gone as well or outsourced. As much as I love digitalizing work, it still has its barriers and boundaries, and if we don’t care for them, the experience will break down. 

So what is the conclusion?

I am making the case to continue to have on-site support in place. But this is a combination of roles and functions. It is not a dedicated HR specialist nor a dedicated receptionist nor a dedicated IT support nor a specialized communications person. I believe that at the same time and for similar reasons that we should consider function-agnostic, general Tier 1 help-desk support (ONE number, ONE contact for all your employee queries, regardless if HR or IT or Travel or …), we should consider a function-agnostic, in-person Experience support on sites where there is not a fully digitalized workforce. There is more than enough work on site – and even if you go for a medium seniority and capability to be able to address the topics mentioned above, I am certain that the time saved for regular employees and managers to not be interrupted at their work, the disruption avoided because a process breaks down at the end with the final step which requires physical on-site handling or the disruption of a process not being initiated as it requires on-site initiation will not only make the experience case, but the financial case work. 

The Experience Function

Employee Experience is about minimizing disruptions to your workforce, engaging your workforce to bring the best every day, to do their core role best every day – and sometimes this requires non-digital support. We in HR are often the last ones to stop physical on-site presence and are therefore often the ones needing to solve for the grey areas – but also at the same time questioned as to why we cannot reach the anticipated and benchmarked “HR to employee” ratio, why we still need on-site presence of “that size”?! Just adhering to it and letting go of on-site presences is one answer – but I believe an answer that will lead to low experience and process breakdowns. At the same time, the on-site required true HR work does often not make the case for a full-time or even half-time HR admin person on site. This is why I believe we need to think bigger and need to think about E2E Experiences for employees and managers. If we consolidate all on-site work that focuses on the experience and requires on-site presence, I am sure we will be able to accommodate at least a part-time presence.  The difference is that this is an Experience resource, not an HR resource and therefore should not be counted in the typical HR ratio benchmarkings. Costs will be cross-funded if you continue to have separate functions.

The alternative though, if you look back to my article “Thinking Further – the Experience Organization” from earlier this year, could be a different direction. We must think broader than HR and become an Experience Function, and as part of such function, all of the above is within scope suddenly. Read the link above for the whole story behind it. I am a strong believer that now is the time to break-up HR and create an E2E Experience Function. What do you think?