Category: Future of HR

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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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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?

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The anachronism of digitalizing your workforce

After a long summer break, this is my first post again. But I wasn’t all lazy – was reading and contemplating a lot, so you can expect a few more regular posts. I have also upgraded the backend of my blog and you can enjoy all posts now with full encryption and better performance.

Today, I would like to focus on a topic I haven’t spent much time on in recent posts but which I am thinking through in quiet times a lot. It is a bit of an anachronism of the digital age I have to say, but it is a real issue I see. It is about enabling your manufacturing and field sales workforce with (individual) digital services. Of course, different companies are on different waypoints at this time, but it is a topic that many of you, I am sure, can relate to.

Enabling your non-office based workforce with digital capabilities is not new, but when you want to scale it in the same way and fashion you do with your knowledge workers, it runs into a few difficulties that need to be resolved. The work set up of these employees is in most cases still fundamentally different from knowledge workers.

Digitalizing knowledge workers

Knowledge workers of today are in many of their work aspects already digital. All of them have a digital device to help them get their work done. This might be a desktop PC, a laptop or a tablet and a smartphone. There are many ways that modern technology has provided to enable them to work digitally. From an HR perspective we can easily build on these to deliver digital HR services – mainly self services for regular employees and managers. These workers also have almost everywhere easy access to print a document or to digitize a document (aka scanning). It is a ready made infrastructure for us to deliver our services. The only thing we have to think of is how to get our services delivered with a superior experience (ok, that is of course not easy but let’s continue the thought process). In addition to this basic infrastructure to utilize, we can rely on two major aspects that make it easier to digitize HR services for knowledge workers – (a) all knowledge workers have a foundational digital understanding and don’t have any barriers to using such technology as well as (b) if anything happens to the infrastructure, your IT department is on the rescue. And this is not because your self services are so important, but because knowledge workers have an almost zero productivity w/o their digital devices. All is set up in a way to minimize downtime.

Digitalizing non-office-based workers

If you now take this and apply it to your non-office-based workers, the story writes very different. In many aspects the work environment of these workers is often not digital. Of course, there are modern factories that are fully digital – but does that make every employee digital-enabled? The fundamental differences that need to be taken into account are (a) the foundational knowledge to build on, (b) the available infrastructure, and (c) the available support.

Non-office-based workers have a very different starting point into their digital journeys. They often don’t utilize “regular” computers in their every day work-life. Maybe they operate highly sophisticated machines, maybe not – in many cases, the only digital device they use is in their private life: smartphones. They don’t operate on a regular basis with PCs at work or at home and many haven’t seen a Windows screen or have utilized a physical mouse or keyboard to interact with their digital devices. So if you want to move them to digital you have to decide if you prefer to teach them (on an ongoing basis) how to interact with mouse and keyboard and PC or you meet them where they are which are touch-based smartphone interfaces with Apps. For me it is an easy decision – you always want to go the path of least friction if you want someone to do something “for you” – and let’s face it, as much as we communicate that self services empower employees and managers, this is not too true for non-office-based workers in their environments.

But once you solved that one topic, the infrastructure comes in the way. Factories were not build with self-services in mind. So having WiFi across each area, having sufficient internet speeds and places where devices for self service can be served is difficult. This is a fundamental topic that requires enablement – and in many cases HR is one of the first ones to require this, and so it is on us to get this going. – especially with the additional privacy and security requirements. You cannot just place devices in spaces that are exposed and don’t provide any privacy.

And once you solve that, the next two topics come into play: For full digital enablement you need to provide scanning and printing facilities. Both is again nothing that by default is enabled or present in a manufacturing environment. And both is again nothing that a regular non-knowledge worker uses on a regular basis. Enablement requires targeted solutioning. Printers by now are easier to enable thanks to being smart enough – a “follow-you” printing capability, enabled with the regular clocking/ entry badge is easily explained and works magic. Scanning on the other hand is not so easy. Where would the scanner be? Where would the scanner scan to? How do you enable simple & private scanning and saving/ filing of the scanned image? – this is a really difficult question. Scanning a document, then finding it, uploading it and deleting it so that the next in line doesn’t’ find it by chance is too difficult and risky. You need to enable webcam/ photo-based scanning, immediately into the App of usage/ the App that requires the upload. That is the only privacy-save way to make it happen. And let’s not forget: What are non-office-based workers used to? – phone-cameras. So this kind of approach is much easier and friction-less than teaching them utilising regular scanners.

And last but not least, the support needs to be in place. IT support needs to be reachable, on site and ready to come to the rescue when something goes wrong. – but where do you have this today still? I guess most IT helpdesks are outsourced and require you to make the effort. Just imagine this situation for a worker in a manufacturing environment. How to reach out to IT services? This is not easy to solve. Your IT helpdesk usually is focused on least human interaction as well as off-shore phone support. Your manufacturing workforce doesn’t have the time to get in touch with them (they only have small breaks before they need to return to their work – and their work is not where the digital device is, and it is not really in their interest to make it work). So either you convince your IT to have a higher on-site presence or you need to find an alternative.

Now, these are all issues and complications that can be solved – but they are not simple to be solved. I am sure many of you have faced those and hopefully solved them to enable your non-office-based workers. If not, I will provide my view on how to enable this digital journey end-to-end in my next post. Have a great week ahead!

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How (not) to democratize digitalization in HR

In my last post I made a strong argument and case for a digital first mindset – especially in HR Operations. And I am still standing behind this – but with all transformations, you can and will often get them not 100% correct first time around. And I am seeing and experiencing the same with the digital transformation of HR.

As I wrote, digital first mindset is not only an abstract theme, but you need to experience it in practice to really see the influence, learn the outcome and see how it transforms processes and practices. One way that is often used to have the first hand look and feel experience is Citizen Development or low-code, no code applications. I love low-code, no-code Apps as they are bringing really powerful tools in the hands of many and so can bring quick digital first mindset transformation with them. At the same time, there is a considerable downside to citizen-development that must be looked at and also mitigated – especially in HR. Why are we in HR again so special you might ask? – because of the data we are processing. These data are special and require protection.

Democratize digital HR

Democratizing digital (HR) is something that you have for sure heard over and over again. And another hype you have heard over and over again is “low code, no code”. This is one of the big topics I am sure that many of you are faced with currently. Probably all at different stages. At many of these stages, I am seeing companies getting it not right, but overreaching what it should be used for and can be used for. It is not a one-size-fits-all and not a super-power to solve every problem. In fact, I am seeing it creating lots of (not new) problems in HR to solve for:

  • Data Privacy
  • Data Security
  • Support
  • Updates

One thing is clear, we need to automate and digitze more HR admin processes to drive out costs to reinvest into our function (see Employee Relationship Management). But we also need to be careful around it. The deal with low code, no code Apps is (in the good and in the bad) that anyone can create them and deploy them. There is no automatic governance in place like you have it with bigger technology solutions. You don’t need to have a separate contract, you don’t need a server or open any firewalls or similar. You can just click & play. Just create your idea and get it started. This is powerful and will easily transform your mindset to being more digital first. At the same time though you are opening up to a few concerns that you have to master – best with a reestablishment of governance.

The concerns

Low code, no code Apps in HR will very likely deal with HR data – what else would you do? And unfortunately, HR data is highly sensitive and requires special data privacy and data security protections. Out of the box none of this is in place with low code, no code. Anyone can create such App and feed it with data from your HR system (provided they have access to download data or receive reports from your HR system – but this is usually already a big group). And once the data is in there, it is as save and private as the App is – mostly not at all. 

This though is not everything. Low code, no code Apps are often ideas and deployments by a single person that was curious, had an idea and put it into practice. What happens if this person leaves the company? Or even just switches jobs? – suddenly you have a low code, no code App that is no longer looked after. There is no support in place anymore, no one that can or would do any App updates. If you are lucky, this means that the App will be automatically retired without any data in it. But this is in my experience the most unlikely scenario. More likely that it is forgotten with data – and is somewhere in your network and potentially exposed. For sure though it won’t see any updates anymore and this makes it more and more vulnerable. Worst case though, it is in continued use without anyone looking after it which means that new data is fed to it constantly without security being looked after. This is a nightmare.

The solution: Install strong governance or go for special App-development-tools. 

In my view, there are two ways how to mitigate the risk while making sure that you continue to get the fruits of such tools as well as develop a digital first mindset. One is to install a strong governance, educate everyone with access to HR data and low code, no code Apps around the security and data privacy aspects. In addition, have every App proposal and final App go through a review process to make sure that the idea is viable (and potentially scalable vs. a solution to a none existent problem, or even a solution where a different solution already exists) as well as a review process of the final App to confirm data security and data privacy. In addition, make sure you have clear App owner accountabilities defined which includes the support network for the App as well as a clear process if the owner leaves the company or changes jobs. And last but not least, build a global inventory of all low code, no code Apps and quarterly review ownership, privacy, security and version control. Like this you can also retire what is no longer in use in a save way.  If you install this sufficiently robust, you can have a great low code, no code ecosystem.

The 2nd way to get more control over it is to utilize specific App development environments that already include and apply the data privacy and security standards of your HR environment.  One of those is Workday Extend (which of course only works if you are using Workday). With such integrated platform it is seamless and easy to ensure the right governance is in place and working – and especially data is save and secure as there is no need to extract data from your save environment and within the App, the same security model is applied. Of course, it is not as versatile as other low code, no code applications. It always depends on what you are striving for and how much built in security and governance you need or prefer vs. relying on offline governance.

With any of these you can though make sure that you continue to innovate and build solutions that will increase efficiency and improve experience – at the same time you will continue to build a digital mindset with a focus of digital first. And this is what it’s all about.

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Embed digital transformation to invest in human relations

These days it is not that fancy anymore to call oneself HR or Human Resources. But in the end, we are still about the humans, about the employees, and I believe that this is something that should not be out of fashion at any time. Regardless what the discussion is about AI, about Automation, or about Outsourcing – people will be people and need to have a human connection – especially to HR. As you have read in one of my last posts “Do we need to rethink HR“, employees have spoken and the statistics say that the HR Experience Score has a big influence on the overall engagement and retention. This is something we should not deny. But at the same time, we must continue to bring the HR function into the 21st century and digitize the hell out of it. Is this a paradox? – No, I don’t think so and will tell you why.

Digital Mindset First

In today’s world, Digital is not only a hype or something that your IT department needs but what the whole company needs (I know, I am not the first one to call this out): a Digital Mindset first. And of course, who is better positioned to lead that change on something that is important for the whole company and each and every employee than HR?! – well, indeed, no one. But before you can actually do that, can actually be there, you have to yourself not only understand what Digital Mindset means, but also how to operationalize it daily in your day-to-day activities. Live it to share and teach it. Today, I don’t want to go into the company-wide enablement, but more into the HR focus of it.

Let’s start with a definition – what is Digital Mindset? – “A digital mindset is a set of attitudes and behaviors that enable people and organizations to see how data, algorithms, and AI open up new possibilities and to chart a path for success in a business landscape increasingly dominated by data-intensive and intelligent technologies.” (HBR article “Developing a Digital Mindset“). 

Why is it important to be Digital Mindset First?

It is for sure not easy to transform into such mindset, but it is important – in fact, I believe there is no way any HR role can be successful in the coming decade without a digital mindset first. We must be more agile and more data-savvy, must utilize more of all the information we have to provide a superior experience in all aspects of HR. In this, it doesn’t matter if you are in Operations, CoE or Business Partnering. The direction and focus might differ, but the foundational digital mindset is required in each and every aspect:

  • Business Partners need to be digital first to lead their functions into the digital first mindset and century. They need to showcase how this works in practice to “win-over” the function and make it happen. But they also need it in the ever changing and more complex HR world – without data-savviness, business partnering won’t be able to solve for the talent shortages, retention and hiring issues we slowly face (that’s right – I don’t think that what we feel and see now is in any way shape or form transitory. It will get worse with every year now.)
  • CoEs need to be digital first to move the talent practices of today into the digital age. With so much data and possibilities at hand, they need to analyze, understand and act quickly to adapt any practice to make it work better for the overall performance of the company. May that be in rewards, performance or engagement or any other talent practice
  • And last but not least, Operations – here I see even more need to be digital mindset first. Operations requires today still the biggest number of HR employees and so this area will itself feel the talent shortage heavily. To mitigate that, automation and smart datagraphs are required to reduce the manual work and requirements for “more” employees. At the same time, Operations sits at the heart of process and technology reengineering – and this by itself requires heavy digital mindset first utilization. And last, but not least, to stay true to the human relation and to “do” Employee Relationship Management, you need time and resources. Resources you will only get once you have automated the core HR Operations activities.

It will continue to stay true that HR won’t be allowed to “play” anywhere else on the enterprise agenda until the basics work flawless. You can throw resources at these foundational activities or you can be digital mindset first and find smart ways to automate, digitize and utilize artificial intelligence and like that create space for your HR Operations employees to invest in human relations and be Employee Relationship Managers. 

So what often is seen as the death of human interactions and the dehuminization of the organization in fact can and should lead to the opposite. A richer and more impactful relationship management which leads to increased engagement and performance. Digital mindset first and human relations are not opposites, but they need each other to be fully impactful in the HR function of the next decade. 

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Employee Relationship Management

I have started my train of thought in my last post referencing that we might need to reconsider what HR stands for and how we as HR best support the success of our companies. I believe we need to take a bit of a sharp turn. In recent years we have reduced our headcount and the higher the ratio of employees to HR was, the better it was – as it meant lower costs for the overall company. But this is not really where the value of HR lies. We are a back-office function, but one that needs to be more than just „service and forget“.

Understanding Marcus Buckinghams‘s research, we have a much higher share in achieving engagement and retention than what we give ourselves credit for. Employees demand us – and not really for solving their specific small administration issues – but for trust, as coach and as partner. Not only senior management, but every employee.

Now, how do we do this? – as I wrote, I don‘t think that the solution is to get back into the HR generalist ancient times, but we need to listen to our employees and the needs they have. Not because we are „Human“ Resources and it is expected, but to make sure our companies can perform and grow. Trust in HR is according to research a very important aspect of an engaged employee. This builds the business case and clearly lays out that HR needs to be more than a pure anonymous service function.

The idea of Employee Relationship Management (ERM)

But how do we do this? How can we be such a partner and coach to employees without going back to the HR generalist times? And how can we build a business case that makes economic sense and delivers more value than it costs? – my answer is Employee Relationship Management. We need to build out a new process of Employee Relationship Management.

Despite the naming, this process would not be a mirror of Customer Relationship Management, but with a similar intent. We would treat our employees as individuals that we need to serve and keep as engaged members of our organization. We don‘t want to sell them anything but we want to make sure they feel that they get from this relationship everything they came for while making sure that they stay engaged and committed to the company’s purpose and goals. It is proactive engagement management. And this can‘t be a telephone number or a chat or an AI – this needs to be a human connection and relation that we need to build. The basic idea is that this human connection would provide a trusted partner to the employee, taking care of the employee and its requirements of (career) development, connection and point of contact for this employee in case of any issues or concerns.

It is though not anything that should be seen as transactional or as rolling back self-services. Only an organized and structured self service offering will enable the financial playing field to make such ERM happen. 

The structure of ERM

So how would this look like? – It is despite the rolling back metaphors actually the next evolution of the shared service model. If you want to build such support in today‘s environment you need to make it human and efficient at the same time. It needs to be built with scale in mind. Therefore, I would not roll back anything you have in your GBS environment and continue heavily with self service and automation – and at the same time take a hard turn.

Build up an infrastructure for an Employee Relationship Management system that can hold all relevant information about your employees from career aspirations, specific future thoughts and coaching needs – similar like a CRM, but more of a Talent Management System on drugs. Next, transform your Tier 1 Service into one area that continues to take regular service calls in case self service doesn‘t work – and a second area that is actually significantly more senior, but also with language capabilities and on top with coaching capabilities. These Employee Relationship Managers will proactively reach out to their population to have check ins, coaching sessions, career conversations – to support the People Manager but also as a trusted partner for the employee that stays with the employee throughout its company-journey. 


This is of course only a rough draft of how I am envisioning the future model and I will provide more details in one of my next posts. But what do you think about ERM? Do you have something like this already in place? Have you considered it? Or do you feel that it is not adding any value?

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Do we need to rethink HR?

I had the pleasure of visiting ADPReThink last week and enjoyed a fantastic presentation by Marcus Buckingham from the ADP Research Institute. You can find his research here. He has shared his latest research about employee sentiment, engagement,  performance and retention. The new twist that I haven‘t seen before is that he also assessed an HR Experience Score which was really interesting to see and understand. I will leave it to you to read more details about it here.

The interesting outcome is that this HR Experience Score is ver strongly related to Engagement and retention – in fact, 51% of the variance of HR Experience can be explained by Engagement. This means that we are much more important as a function than we probably give us credit for. I find this an amazing finding while at the same time it makes me pause and look back to what we did with our function in the recent years.

The problem

We basically reduced ourselves into an operational arm that focuses on efficiency and effectiveness in delivering HR services and a business partnering arm that partners with senior leaders to review and define (people) strategy as well as help managers bringing this strategy into practice. – ok, we also have the CoE arm, but this one plays anyway behind the scenes and a regular employee only sees the results of this through the HR services and the business partnering.

But…what Marcus found is that in fact, employees want more than just services delivered. They look for much more in HR – and if they don‘t get this, the HR Experience is low and with it Engagement and retention. Employees want support from HR, want to have a trusted partner in HR, someone that cares about their career, well-being, performance and progress – outside the direct work environment that is manager controlled. Wow, employees want an HR person that knows and cares about them. Now that I write it, it is not so absurd. But still – did anyone consider this in recent years?

Reconsider what HR is about

This epiphany let me reconsider how we should think about HR and how we should reconsider the actual tasks we want HR delivering – and HOW we deliver these tasks. Don‘t get me wrong, I don‘t want to turn time back to the heavily staffed HR department of generalists. I still believe that these times are over. But I believe we need to reconsider a new role in our set-up. We should one more time look at other functions how they treat and care for their stakeholders, their consumers, their customers. The one that comes to my mind particularly here is sales and how they care about their customers and prospects.

ERM – Employee Relationship Management

We should install a new process of Employee Relationship Management. A process where we are not reactively delivering a service that an employee wants or has a need for, like requiring a verification letter or an update to their personal data, but a process that is part pro-active and mainly future focused. A process where we as HR create a relationship with our employees built on trust and common goals. Different from what we built in the past, we need to be again a function with a face, a function with a clear go to person for each employee. And this person should be a familiar name to the employee – and not the „next agent that is available“.
We need to change our approach and approachability. But not through installing local, F2F HR generalists that are again available for each and everything an employee wants – but something new, something different in line with our current aspiration as I believe this is a twist and not a reinvention of what we have been doing. I will talk about it more in my next post. – but what are your thoughts?

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Ambient HR – putting it into practice

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.

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Too much Analytics?

What is the biggest hype in HR today? – ok, truth is, there are a few, but HR & Workforce analytics are at the top of almost every HR Pro these days. And not only there – look at the leading HR software providers of Oracle, Workday and SAP SuccessFactors. What are they telling us as top of the line innovation and differentiation? – Analytics.
I am an HR Pro for some time already and I have to say that a few years back I would have been grateful fur such armadas of analytics, was actually craving for them. Today I am in a different place – why? I am worried that Analytics alienate us from our function and that it alienates people manager from their workforces even more than before. What are the issues?
Analytics everywhere – where is the human?
We are driving into a direction where it is easy to lose the individual employee in the ocean of analytics. Loose what a single employee cares about, feels, needs, etc. – We will know more about our workforce, but less about our colleague “next door” because we rely on the numbers we have at our fingertips rather than just “ask” our colleagues.

Do you speak Analytics?
Analytics is not just a report or a few numbers. It requires a lot of understanding, of education to really be able to interpret them. The issue with analytics is that on first sight they seem to be easy to understand and you can act – it is mathematical right? A simple equation. – actually, no. It is not. Who in your organization speaks “Analytics”? Truly everyone who has or will have access to them? Most likely not – in fact, it is a new skill to learn, a new language to speak.

Are you taking your own decisions? Or do you let the numbers decide?
The danger is high that managers and HR hide behind numbers and analytics to decide and defend decisions – even if the outcome is wrong. The tendency to go down this route is easy. Analytics and numbers bring you a black on white picture of the world, what was successful in the past and what wasn’t – why shouldn’t we blindly follow? Because any number, any analytic is based only on the facts of yesterday – and on predictions from someone for the future. This someone can be wrong – or right. But in any case it needs judgement to follow or not follow what the numbers are telling.
Tell me for yourself? Are Analytics a threat or an opportunity? – I believe its both, but it needs to be learned and implemented with care. It is a new concept, a new language to learn. Check your thinking here at HBR.