Category: Innovation

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ChatGPT – another Web 3.0 hype?

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

ChatGPT is different

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

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

What to do with ChatGPT

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

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

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

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

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

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Employee Experience Predictions 2023

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

1. Employee Experience continues to be a key topic

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

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

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

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

3. The EX Tech market will normalize

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

4. Current investments have to sweat more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. AI will finally provide a compelling case

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

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

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

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

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

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The infinite game – Employee Experience

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are you in for the infinite game?

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The structure to ensuring the right Employee Experience

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Return of the Metaverse?

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

The Metaverse fails already

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

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

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

The concept though has potential

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

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

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

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

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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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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.