Category: Innovation

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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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Why the HR structure is industry agnostic but not time agnostic

Every company’s HR Function needs to look different, needs to be composed of different building blocks – and this is even more true when you have different industries: An HR Function for a major Retailer should be based on different building blocks than the one for a Financial Services company. This is what Consulting firms tell us and this is what we see out there – therefore, it is right.
Is that so? I see that different. The general concept of the HR Organization can always be the same. Every company needs the same foundational building blocks:

  • Talent Management
  • HR related Business Consulting
  • HR Specialists
  • HR Admin

And any company that does not see the need for any of these is definitely missing something. Now, don’t get me wrong – I don’t say that every HR Function should look the same. I am just saying that actually the differences needed are not based on industry or country or workforce – but based on firm and HR maturity.
To get the basics out-of-the-way: The way how you fulfill these 4 foundational building blocks can be very different – you can outsource, you can consolidate them into unified roles if size does not allow for separate roles, you can have contractors supporting you, etc. – but you will always have all four foundational building blocks. If not, than you miss out or… and this is where my point is coming…or you are at a different state of maturity. What does that mean? The HR function is evolving since its beginning and there is still no end to see to it – where HR will be in 10 years from now or even in 5 years from now is a very interesting question. Only thing sure is that it will look very different from today. HR is still no stable function, no commodity, but still finding its purpose and its direction, defining where it should play and where it shouldn’t. This is all influenced by many different topics like workforce expectations, regulations, management needs, etc.
HR does not stand still and won’t – and any differences that there are between HR Functions of different firms are not based on industry or size, but on maturity of both the HR Function and the firm itself. HR is 100% a support function and needs to support whatever the firm needs to be successful, and only the firm itself knows what it needs – there is no personalized model per industry or country or workforce, but there is a basic model which needs to be adjusted to the needs and maturity of a company. What is right and fitting perfect today, is wrong and too tight or too loose tomorrow. Don’t go into the trap of “if my competitor is doing it way A, I need to do it way A” – look inside your company only and listen what is needed, what is wanted – and use this to shape your HR organization, every day.

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HRIT: Are we still converging or already exploding?

I have recently spoken about HRIT and SaaS already but now I feel that there is still much more to that topic than I have written before. When you think about HRIT and SaaS I believe that at least 90% of you are thinking Workday or SuccessFactors. That is my experience. Also, when you speak to consultants, this is what you get as an answer – take Workday or SuccessFactors, maybe Oracle Fusion. But that’s it. But if I look into the history of not only HRIT, but also consumer technology I must wonder if this still is the right answer. In addition, the clearness of consulting advice you get towards these two/ three solutions makes me cautious.
Think about consumer tech. Since the Apple iPhone introduction which is celebrating its 10 year anniversary next year (yes, time flies, and also yes – 10 years ago there were no real smartphones!), we are on a path of convergence. Most of our technology, most of our daily tech interaction is with the iPhone or any other smartphone for that matter:

  • Consumer grade cameras and also video cameras are or have been replaced by the phone
  • The Walkman, Discman, MP3 player as a separate device has disappeared and was replaced by the phone
  • Your landline phone has disappeared
  • You are utilizing your computer much less for internet browsing or similar
  • Your TV or home Hi Fi system remote controls have merged into the Phone
  • There is an App for everything
  • and more and more and more

In essence, the phone was becoming (and still is) the monolithic device that steers our lives and that we would probably miss most if we lost it. However, this trend is rapidly changing. The App industry is going down, phones now are turning modular (see here or here) or are enriched with additional, separate tech tools. The consumer tech industry is bringing back gadgets, Apps are no longer a lasting business model (except for the global big players). After 10 years of convergence, the phone is exploding and bringing back gadgets that are not multi-purpose, but specialized, that are not ok to use, but the best for a specific use-case.
And now think about the history of HR tech. The real HR tech started truly with systems like SAP HCM or (Oracle) PeopleSoft. These systems started out as “better” payrolls and converged into monolithic HCM suites for any use-case of data admin, payroll, recruiting, performance management, self-service, etc. But at some point in the years of 2000 (more towards the middle and end), these monoliths were “exploding” and the newest trend in HR tech was “best-of-breed”. You did still use your HCM monolith, but only for some core applications and only because it was the knot that hold everything together. But you mainly worked in specialized Apps for Learning, Performance Management, Recruiting, etc.
Today, it seems like we are again for a long time – at least for the last 5-6 years – back with monolithic systems. It is just that they are called different now (SuccessFactors, Workday, Fusion). But why should we be at any different point than consumer tech today or HR tech 10 years ago? – I actually believe that we are even closer to the explosion in HR tech than in consumer tech. Why so? – we are at the perfect storm of two catalysts joining up:

  • HR significantly evolving and repurposing important topics like engagement, performance, compensation, succession, learning
  • Tech significantly evolving with a multitude of start-ups that are now no longer consumer focussed, but B2B focused like tinypulse.com or everwise.com

This perfect storm will bring up the question of how the new monoliths can integrate with best-of-breed, and that at a faster pace and probably not with standardized interfaces to connect and exchange data. It will bring up the question of how we should think and prepare for that future – today.

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Technology: Being ahead of the curve

My recent posts have been about best-practice vs. best-fit and especially their application within HR. Technology was one of the areas where I was clear that a best-practice approach suffices. I am not going to change my view on that. However, would like to argue that specifically in technology, one should look outside of what is happening in HR to what is happening in real-world technology. And that for the first time, HR could be ahead of the curve? – what do I mean by that?
When you think about HR technology, there are a few visible trends that all HR technology firms are going:

  • automation
  • going digital
  • analytics

I believe there is no doubt that this seems to be the future. And I have to say that I am not against that future. I just believe that we should be more differentiated around it. The current view (and I am happy to have a conversation around that) is that in these three topics, you see the future of HR technology. Probably right – question though is, if this is also the future of HR?
Ahead of the curve?
Before going further into that topic, let’s have a look outside of HR. Let’s have a look into consumer technology – in the end, all of above HR technology trends are based on consumer technology trends.
Automation: In HR technology, the trend is really towards more automation and integration. Get things done in the background and without human intervention as much as possible. We have seen similar trends in consumer technology a few years back. We went to all integrated systems and software – there was an App for everything on your iPhone or Galaxy. However, if you look into consumer tech now, you see that the trend is fading – actually reversing. People are going back to non-integrated technology in certain areas. If you think about photography for example, the hype in the recent years was to have it all on your phone and within apps. All integrated end-to-end. However, this is clearly changing with the current trend to separate cameras. Back to specialized products in hardware rather than all in software, back to distinct products and hardware specialization. Sometimes even to analog photography.
Going digital: Going digital seems to be the only idea, the only way to go down for all of HR – probably for all of a company if you see the trends and measures in technology. And again, consumer technology led the way to this path. Probably, there is no real way out of this – and probably there should not be a way out. However, a bit more differentiation should be applied. And again, consumer technology leads the way. What was the most significant product on this years globally biggest Consumer Electronics Show (CES)? – it was an analog audio device – actually a record player. A vinyl record player – and it was most favored around the younger generations.
Analytics: HR analytics, workforce analytics will bring us the insights to lead and manage the organization of the future. Predictive analytics are the solution of all of our issues – if you have a look into the HR technology trends and marketing, this is what you read. And again, this is based on consumer electronics. Many of the analytics products in the HR space are based on consumer editions like amazon or Netflix have developed and are using. The same algorithms used in these consumer based technology is driving HR technology. Now, interestingly, there are some consumer companies that believe to be ahead of the curve and are using something new: human curated playlists or recommendations. Apple is one of these – and the claim and believe is (which was so far not proven to be wrong) that there are specific topics, where the human analytics and understanding is superior to technology. And the success of this seems to prove them right.
Now, these are just a few examples that I currently see in play. You can argue any of these, but you cannot deny the fundamental shift in consumer behavior and technology. It is of course, not a shift back to the ancient time – but it is a balancing act from “all digital” to “digital where it is good, but analog where it is still superior”. I believe that this is the right move to do in consumer tech – and also I believe this is the right thing to do in HR tech. We are currently not on the road to the balance, but to all digital in HR tech. Let’s be for one time in HR ahead of the change curve and go now to the balance rather than needing to invest and roll back in a few years from now. Our workforce seems not only to be ready for the balance, but demands it (younger people buy vinyl, prefer curated playlists and buy themselves discrete products rather than all integrated tech). In my next blog I will play out what this exactly means for HR. But until then – any thoughts from the audience?

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HR Innovation: best practice vs. best fit for HR

As laid out in my earlier post, there is an academic conversation going on about what is the right thing to do best-practice or best-fit. I have argued that both have their places and their positives and negatives. But how to think about it in the HR function specifically?
There are functions that are prone for best-practices – and these are functions that are highly regulated or live in a very stable and not changing context across organisations and geographies. These functions can most of the time just adopt a best-practice and will be successful with it. However, it won’t provide them any strategic advantage as other companies are using it as well – and it seems to be imitable.
When you think about the HR function though, there are two key differences to what I have stated above:

  • The HR function does not have a stable environment. On one hand regulations, labor laws and unions require different practices in different geographies. But in addition, not one workforce is like the other. You have big differences in the workforce mix like demographics, geographies, blue vs. white collar, research vs. production orientation, etc.
  • If you take HR seriously and if you take the resource-based view of the firm seriously (and there is no believe that we should not), HR and its practices are the key drivers and influencers of the workforce and all its attributes – and this is the key differentiator, the key competitive advantage. So why would you even think about adopting best practices and make your workforce more similar to the one of a different company? You would loose your competitive advantage. – of course you can argue that a poorly performing workforce does not have a competitive advantage and copying a competition’s practices will bring you into the same spot like them – but what do you really win by that? You are still always a step behind and won’t perform in close range.

This statement clearly makes the case for best-fit. However, best-fit is expensive and also makes mistakes as you are constantly trying something new – and you can’t always win. So does HR need to be that expensive? And does that really add value? – it does not. You have to go one level deeper and have to differentiate. The fact is that your workforce is the competitive advantage – not your HR organization as a whole. But your HR organization is the key driver of that competitive advantage – so how does that work together?
When we dissect HR in its parts, then it is a combination of people, organization, technology, process, and policy. Let’s leave the people out at this point and focus on the other four. Where does the core competitive driver sit and how does it drive the competitive advantage?
Policy is at the heart and centre of the HR practice – the policy says what is done and how its done. It truly defines the HR work and the core of it – and therefore is the core driver of the competitive advantage. You should stay away from best-practices in all people influencing areas (administration vs. talent). Use proven policies in the areas of payroll or workforce administration. You do not drive workforce effectiveness through these but just efficiency. However, if efficiency is your key advantage, don’t copy here.
Process is to be seen very similar like policy. However, the influence on the competitive advantage is much lower. Still, how you operate key talent processes like talent acquisition, performance management, succession planning or learning drives your competitive advantage. And if you focus on efficiency mainly, don’t underestimate the administrative processes of payroll and workforce administration. But usually these don’t bring much return.
Organisation brings policies, processes and people together. Organisation is basically the key example where a 50:50 cooperation between best-practices and best-fit are the best. There are proven organisational concepts out there that work in general for most companies as they are sufficiently holistic. However, the detailed application to your firm, the detailed design and implementation needs to follow your very own company context.
Technology – last but not least. Technology is the oiling machinery that brings it all into execution. If you are not a high-tech company that needs to be differentiated in that field to show your abilities, there is no reason for being different, for not going with best practices. Differentiation through technology is very expensive, can easily go into a dead-end and does rarely pay off. The influence of technology (as long as we talk about current technology) to the workforce is minimal. It is a pure enabler and needs to enable the policies and processes.
This is now my guide to best-practice vs. best-fit. As you can see, it should be differentiated and both best-practice and best-fit have its place and reason for being in HR. Let me know your thoughts on twitter, Linkedin or Facebook.

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HR innovation: Best-practice vs. best-fit

I have written a few posts about HR Innovation – and what is not innovation. One topic that automatically comes up when talking about innovation is best-practices. Do we need to reinvent the wheel? Can’t we just take what works in a different company? – It has proven success, we can ask the same consultants that did it for company A to do it for us? Like this we won’t fail and we won’t need to experiment. And it is also much cheaper to get it like this.
Who hasn’t heard this? And what did you say then? – how can you disprove that a working, functioning practice (in a different company) does not work for you? – it is hard.
However, in academia for a long time, there is a controversy around best-practices. You have supporters of it as well as empirical evidence that this works. But you also have opponents to best-practices. And they also have statistical, empirical evidence. It is the old game of “you can never validate a theory, just not falsify it”. The opponents prefer a different model which is called best-fit. Before discussing further – what is the difference?
Best-practice
Best-practice means that a common, proven practice from a different company or a different organization can be copied and implemented in your own organization or company and it will work and produce similar positive results like in the other company or organization you are copying it from.
Best-fit
The best-fit model on the other hand says that not any model that works in a different company or organization will work in your own. But that it is more effective to implement practices that are linked to the contextual environment (and that can be various variables) of your company or organization.
In academia these models are on opposing sides and both claim to be the right ones. However, academia and business are not the same. So what does that mean now for HR innovation and for utilising one or the other? Well, the truth is like every so often in the middle – or at least somewhere there. There are common best-practices that can really be utilised across a wide range of companies or organisations and there are best practices that won’t work. The reasons for this sit within the specific best-practice: High-level best-practices like recognising that employee performance is directly influenced by the degree of involvement and ability are true almost anywhere. However, a working Performance Management System (consisting of process, technology, policy, application) will for sure work in one company as a best-practice, but copying it will fail for the majority of companies/ organisations. The level of the best-practice is important. Best-fit on the other hand will always work – as it is best-fit.
So why not then always use best-fit? – also an easy answer: It is expensive as you are constantly re-inventing the wheel and it is not always bringing the same fruits (meaning success) than the best-practice in the other company.
The question then is when to and when not to use best-practice and when to and when not to use best-fit. And the answer might be very different from function to function, but I will provide my professional and research based view for the HR function in my next post.
 

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Poll: What are the key HR Shared Services contact methods

Today, I am posting a different update than usual, am trying something new. I would like to hear you today first! This is an invitation for all of you and I hope you tell me your view. On what? – read on…
The story of HR Shared Services is a long one by now and we all made many different experiences and tried many different things. I believe that today we are in a pretty settled market (at least when we talk multi-national companies). And so I would like to ask for your feedback to a short poll (just two questions, promise) regarding today’s and tomorrow’s key contact methods for employees to get in touch with HR. You can find the poll here (SurveyMonkey-Poll). I am planning to leave it open for a while and provide all feedback in one of my next blogs – would be very happy if some of you provide me with their view.
Thanks, I am curious what to read and find out!

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How to and how not to innovate in HR

In my recent post I have made the case for innovation in HR. I believe that there is not much to argue about – other than of course discussing and aligning the conflicting investment wishes of all the different functions within a company. Therefore, the case alone is insufficient. Also the how and how not to is important to get the funds needed to finance any innovation. It needs to be clear what the ROI is.
Many organisations and especially HR functions have become much better in ROI and business case calculations – however, they are most of the time only seeing half of the game. Most HR business cases focus on the HR function only or are FTE and cost focused: How much costs can we save? How many FTEs can we ramp down? – As I have laid out earlier in one of my posts, the real business case and the real ROI of HR is not in that case. It is the wider workforce and organization effectiveness case. HR and HR’s costs are only a very small percentage of the costs and size of the whole organization – there is mostly not much to gain from anymore after years and years of downsizing and efficiency measures. The real case, the real size of the prize can be gained in HR’s original playing field: the wider workforce. This is what HR needs to claim, to influence and to calculate!  And this is in turn where the innovation needs to go. All innovation needs to have workforce effectiveness or efficiency in mind. Nothing else.
But stop here – how can this be measured, how can HR focus on that? – well, in order to be in such a position, a few house cleaning activities have to be executed. Of course all back-office processes have to run smooth and efficient. No one will listen to HR if they have their own house not in order. So the minimum entry fee is having payroll and personnel data administration in order. But that by itself is not yet sufficient – the infrastructure to innovate needs to be ready, too. A state-of-the-art HR technology (and on purpose I write HR tech as this is so much more than just your latest workday or success factors) which enables self-services, analytics, shared services, etc. is the necessary backbone needed. HR needs to be enabled before it can innovate – and is able to measure on innovation.
One of the issues I see though in today’s HR is the focus and dependence of HR on technology. In my previous post I have discussed the lack of innovation in both HR research and practice – probably some of the readers have thought “wait, what about all that new tech?” – and I will answer “Yes, there is a lot of innovation going on in HR tech”. But, the question is what is this about and what does it enable? And does it really have a positive ROI? The focus today more than ever is on HR tech for innovation – but I am not sure if this can be called innovation. If you have a look at a sample definition of innovation (check here or here), innovation is not only about “something new” or “technology”, but it is about “combining new ideas, processes or technology to create new value”. And this is what we have to do, where the focus should be. What is it, that new technology can be used for? Where is the workforce impact of new technology – the positive one of course!
Technology is not innovation or a case by itself – it should always be not more than an enabler. So implementing new technology is not what I call innovation. The combination of technology, process and new ideas is what brings innovation, what brings (monetary) value.