Category: Future of HR

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The HR Data Treasure

I know, in times of GDPR it is kind of daring to think and write about what we can do with HR Data. GDPR has brought a kind of paralysis to many functions when it comes to Data utilisation. But if not we as HR dare to overcome this, who will? We are the ones to dare.

And looking at those data (of course having GDPR in mind, as it is a regulation we need to respect), there are still many interesting and worthwhile applications that would bring HR Services forward. The main theme I want to write today about is actually quite safe in terms of GDPR – and in line with my previous post about being invisible.

What holds true for HR practitioners and our HR function, needs to hold true for our HR Services as well. The best HR Services are those that either are not required or are actually not seen by our end-users of HR Managers and Employees. Only the 3rd option is to have barrier-free and simple, easy to use HR Services. Now, how do we get there? – Data is the key

Operating in HR, we know that every day a massive amount of HR Services is asked for and delivered through whatever mechanism you have in place. In an up-to-date set-up, these are delivered mainly through either BPO or in-house Shared Services. This brings with it a concentration of data. If we only knew what we know… but we do. Ask your Service Center colleagues and they will tell you how much they know and understand by just seeing the meta-data of the Services they deliver every day. What Services are in high demand? What Services are unusually quiet? – They know. But what do they do with it? What do you do with it? – most of the time nothing. Maybe you do volume analysis, maybe the data is utilised to find out which processes should be focused on in terms of user experience and improvement. But there are other key applications for those data.

Proactive Services

Take away all PII from your data, take away all noise (e.g. massive transactions like re-organization efforts) and what will be left is a fantastic set of information that you can explore and utilise without any issues or complications of GDPR. Still, it will bring you massive insight into your own organisation. What are the most transactions used? What are the main Services asked for? Where? By what kind of workforce? When?

Increasing visibility

What you will see is an increasing treasure of knowledge about what is going on in the organization and you can harvest that. You can harvest that to provide increasing visibility of this demand to your organization, e.g. inform your HR Business Partners about this so that they understand the pulse of the organization, but also inform them about any concerns that those data tell you like rising Employee Relations case numbers or similar.

In addition, you can utilise this data to also increase the visibility of the most demanded services. Make it easy on your Knowledge Base to find exactly those topics. Promote them and make it easy to use for the organization. And in your centers, get your workforce ready for exactly these transactions.

This kind of preparation and visibility is important in the moment, but also over time. Knowing beforehand which transactions, which Services are in demand when, and applying this knowledge to your Knowledge Base and to your center workforce will improve the Service level and satisfaction on both sides – Center and People Manager/ Employee.

Offering before demand

A more interesting application for this Data Treasure though is actually “before-demand” Services. Understanding your data tells you that there are specific patterns. The easy ones are that if a People Manager (or employee) is letting go of a person (leaving), the likelihood is high (the exact likelihood is told by your data) that one of the next activities of this manager is to start recruiting, filling the position that is about to be open/ available. So why would you want to wait until the People Manager comes to you with this request? Use your data to start Services before you are asked for them. – in this example, what could you do?

  1. Understand if you have all required information to start recruiting for this position. If so, go ahead and passively prepare the talent pool.
  2. Offer Recruiting as the next step to the People Manager – in your Service Desk if you have a conversation, in your written communication (e.g. when confirming the previous Service, make it easy to start the next one via a direct link/ button) or even as part of the workflow

The key is to utilise the treasure of information to enable more seamless interaction and Service to your users. It is as easy as Amazon is doing it with “People who bought this, also bought…” Let’s use this vast, impressive set of data and bring your Service and the organization to the next level.

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Be invisible

With all what is going on and with everything said for 2018 and 2019 about the importance of HR and the HR agenda, let’s pause for a minute and reflect: What is important, what needs to be done – and what is HR’s job?

Don’t get me wrong, I am in full alignment with what e.g. Josh is saying about 2019. I believe that he is right and we do have some serious issues to tackle around productivity as well as around wage stagnation and income inequality. And who would disagree with the changing nature of skills requirements (which is actually always true – as the economy is changing constantly, constantly new skills are required. The only thing that changes is “which” skills are in need). I would not disagree. Where I though believe we need to be careful is to say that this is HR’s work to do.

Who is accountable for leadership and people management?

I am a proud HR practitioner, but I am also a strong believer about HR being a true back-office function. And I am not talking about HR Admin – I am talking about the core topics of Talent Management more wider People Management. Yes, HR needs to set the agenda, tone and strategy when it comes to these topics, but HR is not the one to own or execute this. It is each and every People Manager, starting with the CEO and not stopping before the last People Manager in the organization. HR is there to support, educate, coach – but not to own and execute the People Agenda. This is often mis-understood – and I know that we as HR professionals feel more important and proud if we actually are at the fore-front of these topics. But we are a small function and cannot and should not own these topics. It is for us to be the invisible master-minds and conductors of the People Agenda, with the emphasise on “invisible”. Let’s not be in the way, let’s not be too visible, but lead from behind.

Be invisible

Leading from behind also means to me to not be in the way, but to enable the People Agenda. Let’s not come up with new policies or police our People Managers how to be People Managers – coach and enable them to do the right things the right way because they understand and believe, not because they “have to”. No one likes HR policies – not even HR, and so let’s do away with them as much as possible. And also, let’s stop being the People police and hand this over to our People Managers. Only if they own the People Agenda, HR can be successful. This is what we need to do, this is what will make us successful and will make the organization successful. And so, as much as I agree with our core topics for 2019, let’s be clear: It is on us to enable and coach, but not to own these topics. We and with us the organization will only be successful if each and every People Managers owns these topics and holds them true every day.

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What's on for HR in 2019

A new year has started – it is still fresh, and so let’s look at it from the perspective of HR. I know, I am not the first one to do so, but have my fair opinion to share.

2018 as a year in not only HR but our global economy was a difficult one – but all in all successful. It was though already impacted by recession signs and negative policies (e.g. tariffs, beginning trade wars, etc.). 2019 will see, I am certain, unfortunately much more of this. The US will move on further with their “America first” policy, and important countries like Brazil and Italy with their new right-wing governments will have another hit at our economy. Also, the current economic upswing is already lasting for almost 10 years. This is a crazy long time, so let’s get ready for a correction.

During economic corrections, the work of HR is a not so nice one. It is about lay-offs and cost-cutting. And as much as these topics are not sexy, it is important “how” we handle them as HR professionals. – it is our imperative to make these typical recession steps not about the recession, but about the next upswing. We are setting the stage for the next growth (or not).

(1) Be smart about cost-cutting

Very often, we are asked to cut down on all HR costs – regardless what they are. We need to be smart here and ensure that cost cutting does not hurt the long-term strategy and success of the company. Don’t cut to harsh into development of your people as they are the key to future success. Recession is the time of investment to be ready for the next upswing. This is counterintuitive, especially when you talk to your CFO – but if we in HR are not taking care about future readiness, no one will.
Recruiting is the next typical cost cutter: Hiring freeze. Don’t go there. This will hurt your employer brand and people won’t apply at your company anymore. In a recession, smart talent is more available and easier to recruit than in any other time. Keep your doors open and get the right talent in to make the next upswing (don’t wait for it to come to you, M A K E it).

(2) Utilize the opportunity to refresh (the right way)

I am sure that you had already analysed what is going well and what is not going well in your organization. But it is hard to persuade colleagues when things go well. But now the time has come to make bold moves, to change structures and re-organize, if required to transform. Let’s set this up for new success.

(3) Ensure that the tone is set in the right way

Be sure to set a positive tone throughout any action. Make sure it is not about “surviving the recession” but about “setting up for success”. It is important to keep morale and trust high in these times – especially to keep your key-talent on board. They will be the first ones to leave, keep them and place them in charge of success. The messaging is at least as important as the actual actions you take.

I strongly believe that these are our HR imperatives most likely needed for 2019. We need to understand the situation and of course support what is needed and right to do – but if we as HR are not taking care about setting up for the future, not sure who will. Recessions are huge opportunities to be even more successful. This is what needs to be understood. They are not a threat. – regardless of what others say. Let’s be the architect of the future – once again – and see 2019 as a huge opportunity.

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Integrated Talent Management – the true Value Function

Integrated Talent Management (ITM) – another buzz-word for HR, right? Another consulting topic to sell services to an organisation, right? Another attempt of HR to become more strategic, right?
Actually no – ITM, which is not new, but gains more and more traction these days, is finally bringing HR to where it needs to be – out of the way and at the same time focused on where it creates value.
The fate
In recent years, HR’s story was very much about downsizing, Shared Services, or even doing away with HR. And I would truly agree with doing away with HR if your HR people and your HR function are in any way similar to what is describe in that article. HR as a policies, compliance and control function is not obsolete, but can significantly be reduced. In fact, just mix and match with your compliance function and its ok.
The problem is that many HR functions and HR colleagues and leaders have lost the focus on the true value of HR: people and their impact on the company success. I don’t want to debate today how this has happened, but instead focusing on why HR is the true value function.  Let’s recap the resource based view of the firm where people are the true differentiator, the true competitive advantage of the firm and start from there.
The past is the future
Talent Management, and especially Integrated Talent Management is deeply rooted in that space and in that idea of people being the differentiator. And you know what – it is right. People are the main differentiator, people are what makes a company fail or be successful. People are what makes you different – and what cannot be copied or imitated by any of your competitors. And this is why we truly should focus on this competitive advantage and focus HR on making this competitive advantage even stronger.
ITM is all about that – focus all your efforts on bringing in the right Talent at the right time to the right job – and from there develop and move your Talent in the organisation slowly but steadily to utilise it to become more effective as a firm. Success is about having the right people at the right places, doing the right thing. And this right thing is also enforced by HR and its processes – Performance Management. And ITM is as much about getting people in as it is about moving people out – either when the time is right or when the Talent needs a different experience or when it in fact is no longer the right Talent. Companies change, strategies change and this impacts what kind of Talent you need. ITM does all that – and it does it very successful: Have a look here or here.
Watch out the HOW of ITM
This is where HR can create tremendous value for the company, where HR makes the difference of becoming a successful or a futureless organisation. One very important aspect of this is however, that HR should not make the same mistake it did in earlier days: Thinking and demanding that HR is the one and only department and HR people are the one and only people who can and should run ITM, should care and decide about your Talents.
HR colleagues sometimes are not trusting others and sometimes are over motivated to get a seat at the table that they want to do everything on their own, want to prove themselves and their company how great they are and what value they can bring. And this leads to actually very often the opposite: HR being in the way and not creating value. HR being wanted “away” by the rest of the organisation.
ITM needs to be and is about the organisation and its Talent, not about HR. Yes, HR is the function that needs to create an ITM backbone and needs to ensure that the organisation is on the right path. But the actual owners and drivers of ITM are all employees and our people managers. ITM is about everyday actions and everyday focus. Nothing that HR can or should do – HR needs to be out of the way so that employees and people managers can execute ITM – every day. And this not with the help of restrictive policies and hand-holding, but with creating the right environment and infrastructure so that employees and people managers can utilise the full potential of ITM.
If you will, ITM is doing away with HR – it is bringing Talent Management back in focus, and it is doing away with HR people being at the forefront of people’s topics. And by that, making HR truly strategic and positioning it where it should be: as the true value function.
 

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Shared Services 4.0 – at a crossroads

The next evolution of Shared Services is already on our doorstep – or maybe already reached your centers: Robot Process Automation (RPA).
Robots are great: they work 24/7 effortless, don’t make any mistakes, don’t want any special attention, are easy to maintain and low cost. They just sit either on your IT infrastructure or even on a Laptop right next to your other Shared Services colleagues. This is why they are the next evolution of Shared Services. You don’t have to go anymore to any low cost country to have low cost service delivery – you can have it anywhere. But that also means that you don’t need so many employees anymore to run your services. The positions Shared Services have created, the great impact on low cost labor markets is now turning around also to these countries (also, as in the first place, these positions were moved away from high cost countries). This is a true negative impact – and I have written about that here.
Employee Experience
Today, I would like to argue that this does not have to be the case – or at least not with full weight. This is due to another, very positive trend in (not only) HR and Shared Services: Employee Experience. The new way of Design Thinking (introductory video here) paves the way towards a more employee centric design, a way that actually is pretty close to what HR (with management and leaders of the company) should anyway do every day: Give employees everything to make them more efficient and effective in their daily work and provide an inspiring and motivating environment and experience. This is the way to create great business outcomes. And when I say “design”, this means structure, technology and process. Everything should and needs to be designed from the employee perspective: What do our employees need and want to be successful in their jobs? What do they need from HR or Shared Services? How do they get this in a fast, efficient way with a positive experience? These are the questions to answer – and one part of this chain of questions is also leading to the “right” process and channels into Shared Services.
Access to solve your problem
Coming back to robots: Robots are great to solve structured and rule based problems and processes. They are unmatched by any human. And we should truly let robots do these kind of activities as we will reach two of the top Shared Services metrics: Timeliness and Quality. A robot will be as fast as the infrastructure let’s it be – and it will create 0 defects. Wow, awesome. The problem though is that for a robot to be that perfect it needs perfect data input – and this data input is coming from employees directly. This creates two problems to solve from an Employee Experience perspective.

  1. The problem or question or request that the employee has MUST be standardised, too. It needs to fit into the “capability-box” of the robot.
  2. The employee needs to exactly know what he or she wants.

Now, both is often the case – but not always. Very often, an employee or a people manager has more complex topics to solve (or at least this is what an employee or people manager might think). In this case, Shared Services needs to help employees and people managers to quickly address any concerns, questions or challenges so that the employee or people manager can go to focus on their day job asap. There are two ways to help employees in this thinking and resolution process: (a) a fantastic, easy to use, complete and employee focused Knowledge Base and (b) good old fashioned direct human contact to an expert. And in some cases, employees want this human contact because of the sensitivity of the request or issue. In the end, we talk very much HR topics that can be sensitive.
And this is where I believe we should re-invest some of the robot savings: Tier 1 – chat, call, messaging support through human experts. This is still the major domain and best experience to get via a human contact. I believe that we need to “up” our game in solving employee and people manager challenges when they occur, quick and with an awesome Employee Experience. And for this, a human Tier 1 plays a big role. Do not let your employees and people managers search your knowledge base when they don’t know what to search for or need help. This costs a whole lot of productivity – and causes frustration. Give them the opportunity for the best interaction for any request they might have and this can either mean (a) opening a case that a robot can immediately execute (b) search the knowledge base to find the right thing to do fast or (c) “talk” to a Tier 1 Advisor to address any questions and execute your request.
This is the right experience we should create as Shared Services – we should shy away from utilising robots to create additional savings only. Let’s reinvest for the best Employee Experience.

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Ambient HR – the next revolution of HR Technology

In today’s world, the challenges and requirements towards HR are manifold and changing on an almost daily basis: Customer expectations, our social and cultural environment, technology – everything is changing more fast paced than ever. And that of course has a big impact on companies well. HR has to find the right answers to this changing environment – of course. But today I would like to write about a very old topic that is still very much present in our daily business and HR lives: The actual connection between HR and the business – or in more concrete terms, the connection between the people or line managers (at all levels) and what HR has to offer them to support.
There are many different areas of potential connections of course, and one specific connection that is especially frustrating and truly very rarely working seamless. The administrative pieces of people manager work.
I believe we all as HR professionals understand and advocate for people managers to be the owner of the people relationships and people management – and this ownership means that they should manage their teams and employees end-to-end. This actual accountability is today not really a big debate anymore. It is understood and accepted – but the debate starts where the act of actual management of people, the conversations, decisions, recommendations have to be turned into action – the act of initiating a pay raise after the conversation with your employee, the act of initiating recruitment after you have reached agreement with your manager about that role. This is where it often gets clunky.
Of course, modern HR systems like Workday or SuccessFactors make it easier than ever before and also very often straight forward. But: As a people manager you still have to:

  • Log-on to the system
  • Find the right process/ action
  • Understand what needs to be done
  • Fill in all required information (hopefully you have them or know where/ how to find them)
  • Send the request off… and wait

This does not feel right in today’s world. And this is where Ambient HR as an idea comes to live.
HR processes should only be there for two reasons:
(a) to support the business in what it needs to achieve
(b) to adhere to local legal regulations
(b) is something we cannot really change. But (a) is something where HR technology and processes need to seriously upgrade to toady’s technology possibilities. I imagine Ambient HR as a way to overlay the actual work that people managers are doing with the required HR actions. Let’s take the above cases.
A pay increase for example, should be initiated based on a conversation between people manager and employee. Ambient HR is connected to all systems people managers use in their daily work and so also to the calendar account. It notices that the people manager has set a career conversation with his/ her employee and automatically does two things:
(1) before the conversation happens, it pops up on the people managers computer and asks what this career conversation is about (e.g. new job, performance improvement, promotion, etc.) and based on the people manager’s choice, provides on the spot, just in time support (e.g. what needs to be taken into consideration, how the process works, how long it takes, what exactly needs to be done by the people manager  – all in context of the employee the manager is seeing) and recommendation (e.g. how high a pay raise could maximum be).
(2) after the conversation, the people manager receives the next pop-up window, asking for action with a pre-completed form based on the employee the manager has seen as well as the choices the people manager took in the first step (e.g. it is a promotion conversation). The manager just has to review and send off. All work done.
With such an integration, the administrative part for the people manager’ job to set in action what he/ she has discussed or decided to do becomes a simple, not time consuming and effective process. And similar integrations are possible with other systems at work like Time & Attendance, like your Sales System, etc. – and because of AI, contextual information and actions are easy to realise – it is like Google Now for work. Ambient HR is immersive in your day-to-day activities, not a nasty add-on, but an integral part of how you work – you don’t have to remember what, when how – it will tell you. And it will learn throughout your work day to be better every time it supports you.
Of course, you need to trust this system as it has access to all your data – but hey, you trust Google or Amazon or Facebook at home with your private data and at work such a system already houses your most sensitive data: people data. So why shouldn’t you trust it to listen in to your daily activities as a people manager?
Ambient HR is the future of HR Technology and it needs to start today.

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Digitalisation of the workplace – further differentiating our workforce…and society

The future is bright and shiny – AI, RPA, IoT will make our lives easier and will help us getting into a more balanced way of work and life. – does that sound familiar? Right! The same claims were made with the introduction of computers into our (work-) lives and later with the online economy. And what was the result of both? – you know it: even more work and less freedom for those who still had a job – and an even more growing number of people w/o jobs. Sure, each revolution has also created new jobs – but not for everyone. Each revolution created jobs for a smaller and smaller talent pool. Why? – the skills, the requirements, the capacity one needed to have to fulfill these new jobs were more and more difficult to have or build. Many employees were just not able anymore to learn these new skills or to even think in the new categories that these new business models required.
At first – during the early revolutions, this was dealt with by early retirements – but this gets more and more difficult as employees need to work longer to be able to have a life as retirees, as well as there is a growing number of middle-aged employees too far away from retirement that cannot meet the requirements.
Don’t get me wrong – I am all in for the digitalisation of the workplace. I am a big fan of digitalisation and the chances it opens up at the workplace (and in private lives). But we need to change the way we handle the implementation of such revolutions.
In the past, businesses, the econcomy as a whole had always the same reaction: “Way we work”-revolutions led to new employees that can fulfill the demands of faster and more (let’s face it – besides many great outcomes, the recurring theme is that with each new revolution, workload increased, turn-around times decreased) while many old employees were squeezed out (and old not necessarily being used for age, but for long-standing). Companies used the easy way out. The pool was big enough and the outcry of the ones squeezed out was sufficiently small. Now, my thesis is that we are reaching an inflection point where this way of working – the way we actually do business is coming to an end.
Let me tell you why:
(1) More and more western countries are starting to have social uproars, to a great extent due to rising unemployment and increased social jealousy – the haves and the have-nots
(2) Even the part of the population that still has a job (the “Haves”) is struggling – struggling because of workload, increasing speed and required new skills.
(3) Job related illnesses that are psychological/ mental nature are raising and have surpassed physical illnesses (see here). Psychological triggered missed-work-days are having a higher negative impact in companies than physical triggered missed-days.
The next revolution of digitilization is quickly approaching and the populare opinion on what needs to happen is the usual: work faster, build up new skills. Problem is: Humans are NOT bots, cannot just as easily be reprogrammed or get a new, father processor. As after each work-revolution there will be loosers – just that this time I am afraid the added loosers will bring the system to the tilting point. The part of the workforce that will still be able to follow and be the winners of each revolution will be too small to stabilize the system – a system where the average age of employees in western countries is rising. And with rising age, adaptability and speed are decreasing – this is fact. Another key message from last years INSEAD “The Global Talent Competitiveness Index” reads “Low-skilled workers continue to be replaced by robots, while knowledge workers are displaced by algorithms”  (see here for the detailed analysis of our global workforce). – another group of losers. Also, just look in many of today’s boardrooms (and let’s leave the Silicon Valley out for a moment) – how many boardmembers are truly immersed in today’s ways of working? Social Collaboration, Social Media, “Appinization” – these are for many of them interesting concepts, but that is it. There is still a very large number of senior leaders that ask there assistants to “print their emails” so that they can “reply”. And they are supposed to lead us into the next revolution? – but this is a different story for a different post…
My statement is that we need to drastically change the way we do business from “employees that serve the company” to “companies that serve the society”. The solution is not to stop the future (although this is currently very much a popular theme in Trump-America), the solution is though to actively shape the future in a way that it serves society – and I mean each and every member of it. And not how we did it in recent industrial-revolutions: In a way that it serves the Shareholder alone. We must understand this now – or we will face the consequences of the path we are on – and although I am repeating myself, the signs are more evident than ever: Brexit, Trump-America, Alt-Right and other popular extremists on the rise.

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The societal impact: Shared Services 4.0

One of the big themes and big discussions today is Industry 4.0 – what is meant is the next industrial revolution via IoT (Internet of Things) and further integration, communication and automation of machines. You can read more about it here. It will for sure have another big impact on worklife, culture and society.
What I would like to talk about today though is Shared Services 4.0 – which I believe is going down a similar route like Industry 4.0 – and therefore the same naming convention 😉
Shared Services 1.0 – 3.0
When you think about Shared Services from its origins in the early 90ies till now, it was about the following themes:

  • Process standardization
  • Process rationalization
  • Self-services
  • Near- or off-shoring of work

And subsequent near- or off-shoring of jobs. Because of Shared Services, many former colleagues in HR (or in any other (back-office) function) have lost their job, were in need to find a new job. Some of these colleagues had luck and found a new job – some of them for longer, many of them for short periods only. Why that? – quite frankly it was not one company that implemented Shared Services, but many – and with it 10.000s of jobs, all the same kind of jobs were near- or offshored. And only some former employees of these jobs understood it right and found their work-future in upskilling towards jobs that could not (at least for a period of time) get near- or offshored. A big majority though did either not understand that “rule” of life-long learning or – and no offense – were not capable to perform the next higher-level job. These former colleagues have lost contact and access to their job market – they are the lost people of globalization, being not unhappy anymore, but angry – don’t see any perspective other than turning back time. And as we all know, you actually cannot turn time back (at least not yet ;)) – and even if, there are sufficient people that don’t want to do that. In any case though, there are winners and lost people that now rather fight against each other than try to repair what has been damaged for the greater good of all.
If you think in broader terms though and at a global scale, you must admit that the majority of the jobs were not made redundant, they were just relocated. And so, the Shared Service economy has born new winners – countries like India, Costa Rica, the Philippines, a big portion of the Eastern European countries have “received” 1000s of jobs and with it managed to catch up with western countries, created new middle classes and brought young people into great starting jobs – with big potential for international careers.
Shared Services 4.0
The new waves of innovation and thinking in the shared services industry though will have different effects. Nothing will really change with the losers of the first waves – except that the distance between their knowledge and capabilities and the job requirements is growing. It is more and more unlikely that these former colleagues find a new job similar to their old one – they either stay unemployed or go for 2-3 parttime jobs which still cannot feed their family at home.
What is worse though is that the winners of waves 1.0-3.0 will turn into losers as well. – and the upskiled colleagues from the first rounds will lose their jobs, too. RPA and AI are the keywords.
Robot Process Automation (RPA) will slowly but surely eat away the lower qualified jobs in Shared Service Centers. Robots are getting sufficiently smart to execute without break, without mistake most of the standardized work within centers. Recent studies show that by now 80% and more of standardized work can be transfered to bots. And in turn, 80% of new colleagues will lose their jobs.
But it does not stop with RPA – AI, the next evolution is already on its way. Today mostly too expensive to replace low-cost country colleagues, but tomorrow (and it is almost literally tomorrow) this will change and not only standardized work will get automated but even more complex work where situational assessment and decision making are required. I know that most of the readers cannot wait to have AI in their life – me, too – but in their private lives, not at work. At work, this will lead to the next “let go” of colleagues – now though again in both western countries as well as low-cost countries. New losers of globalization are created.
 
Of course, this is great for the bottom-line of a company’s balance sheet and maybe for its Shareholders. But what about the rest of the country? rest of the world? – it will only further grow the difference and distance between the “haves” and “have nots” and it will further spur societal conflicts that are already on the horizon – or already in our lives like Trump and Brexit.
It is on us to change this, it is on us to make sure that we take everyone with us on that journey. Again, it is not the solution to stop time, but it is time to stop spreading the difference between winners and losers, generating more losers than winners. It is on us – we in HR are the ones closest to our workforces. We need to listen and come up with a plan.

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Technology Disruption in the workplace – the societal impact

In the aftermath of the US elections, but also seeing what is happening in other countries like Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, the UK, I believe that we need to reflect on what we as Human Resources Practitioners are doing every day in our workplaces and what the effects are (supporting business reorganizations, restructurings, outsourcing, as well as our own HR outsourcing or low-cost job placement, automation, etc.). I don’t believe that anyone should now complain about a single election outcome in the US or of raising right-wing parties in European countries or of Brexit. Are we and can we really be surprised about that? – maybe if we have lived in our own bubbles for the last few years, but not truly when we think about what we in HR have done, supported, paved the way for in the last years: In essence, more and more lower qualified jobs have become obsolete or moved to low-cost countries. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to say that we have done things wrong or are the sole cause of what has happened in society – and I don’t believe that we need to justify what we have done. I believe we had sufficient supportive reasons for it. However, I believe that we are an integral part of the picture – and can and need support making it right again.
Now, what I want to say is that we probably have not looked at the societal impact of what we were doing. I strongly believe that we are splitting the workforce every day. Splitting it into the ones that can participate and the ones that can’t or are even ousted. Technology is a great enabler of our every day life – also at work. It is though also an instrument to split the workforce.
Let’s take the rise of the computer as one example with which the current revolution started – slowly at first, but now more rapid than ever. With the “normal” PC coming into the workplace, more and more activities could be dealt with via Computer – and you did not need an employee for it anymore. The normal computer has taken workplaces and transformed employees into unemployment.
But it is not only about “losing” your job. Let’s take Social Collaboration as another example – Social Collaboration is how we get things done at work now, or at least when we are young and grew up with it. But what does Social Collaboration do to Baby Boomers or Generation X colleagues? – No offence, but they are truly used to different ways of working and have a hard time to adjust, if they can. Social Collaboration can in fact alienate from the workplace. If you cannot participate, you are separated and slowly lose touch with your workplace, with your work.
And there are many more of these examples where I believe that for good reasons, we in HR changed the way our company operates, but maybe did not always think about the colleagues that we leave behind. And after all, I believe that being left behind at work or even losing your job is one of the main impacts or factors that places people on the losing side of Globalisation. It is explainable – it is man-made, and now we should not complain that these former colleagues or still colleagues that have lost touch and connection are unhappy and protesting. Inclusiveness at work is not only about the usual topics, it is also about technology.
BUT, in the same way we moved these colleagues to the other side, we can and should and need to move them back onto the winning side. This is the only way to keep us all together as a strong society where everyone can participate. This is the way civilised societies deal with these kind of things. It should not be about who screams louder or who is stronger – the elite (and yes, this is us) the elite needs to be the smart party here and needs to start listening and acting. Further separation and ousting of colleagues does only further nurture the fire that is burning. Globalisation, the way we live today, the way we work today, how small the world is, what we have achieved is worth fighting for – and we should fight for it. Just not in the way that these right-wing parties are doing it, not in a way that further alienates and makes people aggressive. But in a way that brings people together again – and this needs to start at the workplace. And we as HR are the ones that are responsible for the culture at the workplace, for how we work and for how we create inclusiveness.
And with this, I will start a new series of posts around how technology has shaped our workplaces in the recent years and future years to come and what the impact on workplace culture and society have been and might be. This is a topic that I believe needs more attention and explanation as it has such a big impact on our every day lives. And only when we understand, we can change something, and we can get back on a path of an inclusive society.

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We are too complex: Simplify and cut it out

In one of my earlier posts (actually from quite a while ago already), I have laid out how complex HR has become and what kind of different asks, topics, areas of responsibility came into HR and bloated this function. It is massive and not everything that was placed into HR belongs into HR – but that is a story I have already written. Today I want to focus on a different issue with a similar outcome – topics and responsibilities that HR decided to take on, decided it needs to take on.
How many HR policies do you have in your organization? How long do you need to read through all of them? – or what can you do without asking HR for permission today as a people manager? I guess not much? I just recently had a conversation with some of the leading HR SaaS vendors and what they call leading processes. These leading processes are still a self-fulfilling prophecy about what HR wants to hear, wants to do and believes is responsible for instead of rethinking people processes and transforming them in to the 21st century.
Let me give you an example: Organization Management. Leading practice is supposed to still be that an HR Business Partner or similar checks and approves a new position that a manager creates. How can that be? – why is HR involved in this process in any other way than the pure back-office to make sure that all next steps are triggered correctly? Why does HR believes it owns the people costs? Does in your organization Finance approve every expense that a manager has? Does Finance own the money of the company – or do they manage it only?
I strongly believe that although we have transformed HR probably more than any other function (this topic is going on since 1997 when Dave Ulrich started all of this) in the recent years, we did not truly change anything:

  • We have implemented Shared Service Centers to take on the back-office – but we did not revolutionize the back-office processes itself…
  • We have installed self-services “to empower people manager” – but in the end we just ask them to do the admin work of completing forms…
  • We have done away with HR Generalists and installed HR Business Partners – but in the end we just renamed them, did not change the what, how and why of their work
  • We have saved millions of $ in the HR function – but today less HR people do more work and we still did not truly enable the main part of this Transformation Business Case which is the workforce 

Of course, my above statements are not true to 100% of the companies and HR functions out there, but I am sure that at least two statements are true for the majority of HR departments. So what are we doing now? – is this what companies want and need? Is this what employees and people managers want and need?
Ok, let’s not really ask the “want” part of the questions, and focus on the “need”. We as HR need to scrutinize each and every HR process and have to ask us two questions:

  1. Does that HR process and/ or policy add any value to the company or the workforce? – and if the answer is no, just stop it, cut it out
  2. If the answer is yes, ask the question: Does the way we execute this process differentiate us from our competition?  – and if the answer is no, just cut it out and ask a specialized best of breed vendor to take it on for you

And everything that is then still left in HR and in your company: Simplify, streamline and ask what HR’s value add in that process is. I tell you, most processes will just run fine without HR interference. I am myself an HR Pro and I believe that sometimes we take us and our function to serious and important. Let’s jointly cut it out and simplify our, our colleagues’ and the whole company’s life every day. Let’s be only where we need to be, not where we want to be.