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The anachronism of digitalizing your workforce

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

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

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

Digitalizing knowledge workers

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

Digitalizing non-office-based workers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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How (not) to democratize digitalization in HR

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

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

Democratize digital HR

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

  • Data Privacy
  • Data Security
  • Support
  • Updates

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

The concerns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Embed digital transformation to invest in human relations

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

Digital Mindset First

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

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

Why is it important to be Digital Mindset First?

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

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

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

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

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Employee Relationship Management

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

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

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

The idea of Employee Relationship Management (ERM)

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

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

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

The structure of ERM

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

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


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

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Do we need to rethink HR?

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

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

The problem

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

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

Reconsider what HR is about

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

ERM – Employee Relationship Management

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

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Keep it simple – the Impact counts

The research around people practices is wide and deep and we know today much more about how this works than 5 or 10 years ago. This is fantastic and helps us in our daily life as HR professionals. But it also sometimes leads us down the wrong path when we design new processes and practices. We think too complex and subsequently design too complex.

Sophistication vs. Simplicity

We all pride ourselves in knowing the latest and best in management of people and people processes. And that is indeed very important and required to make sure we can have a positive impact in our so critical resource of people – today more than ever actually. So when we design practices like Management of Talent or Performance or highly sophisticated Rewards systems we bring in all the latest research and theory that we have read up or learned via workshops or educational sessions. We pride ourselves about it and prepare fantastic presentations for our fellow HR colleagues to show what we are planning and how it all should work.  We bring it then from the powerpoint slide into action and … are surprised that somehow the reality looks different? We somehow don’t get the outcome we expect? Maybe there are even colleagues that complain about our fantastic idea?

So what has happened?

Why is that? We have done it all how it is laid out in the research and theory we have learned? – and we made a big effort in building it into the tech stack and process. We even ran detailed education sessions for everyone in the organization that is supposed to take advantage of this new practice and strive because of it. But this is not what we see – not what is happening. What we often see is a mediocre adoption, and if colleagues must participate, they do often so with the bare minimum of engagement and focus. They hardly take advantage of what we offer. Of course, you always have some that totally strive for it and are the happiest and greatest in this new practice. But these are the minority. 

We might not like the answer, but it is very simple. We fell into the Sophistication s. Simplicity trap.

The reason of why this happens is that we design not with the consumer in mind. The reason why is because we are failing to provide clarity on what we want to achieve – clarity for our consumers. What we should never forget is that our consumers, our colleagues that we actually want to support with this new practice are not HR colleagues. They are sitting in Finance, Sales, Marketing, R&D, and other departments. They have a different day job than figuring out HR practices and how they might take advantage of it. HR and our practices are not front and center of colleagues’ minds. Their actual work is. In addition, what we were able to create as HR professionals, we were able to create because we know these HR practices inside and out. We breath them every single day, educate ourselves on them every single day and understand the latest and smallest tweak of wording or process that (theoretically) makes it more nuanced and impactful.

Problem though is that our non-HR colleagues don’t have this knowledge, don’t get excited about the latest nuance – and are mostly not interested or don’t have the time to take a learning course on “how to do Performance Management” or “how does our Rewards system work”. So what should we do then? – should we make them take the course, should we mandate education on these topics? – in the end, we know that if they would understand and take advantage of our practices and processes, we would strive more as an organization, right?! It is not too much to ask for…just these few hours every quarter or so – and then when we make some updates again of course.

This is the wrong thinking

This unfortunately is the wrong approach. First of all we must understand that HR is and continues to be a support function. We don’t make money, we don’t directly increase sales or reduce costs, innovate new products, etc. – this means that we should not demand to take a big share of mind in our colleagues’ heads. But that we should make sure we minimize share of mind while ensuring that we can provide sufficient lubricant to make our colleagues strive. Because, and let me be clear here: I believe in HR and our practices.

But what I also believe in is impact. And that is what we sometimes forget when designing sophisticated practices: Impact. The only way we get impact is when our colleagues outside HR actually understand what we “want” from them and can and are taking advantage of it. Performance Management can only work if our colleagues actually intuitively understand how it works and how to use it. A Rewards system that is supposed to “pay for performance” can only work if our colleagues actually understand (and buy into) it. Only if they understand it, it will truly apply and work for them (and for us). People need to understand what they are doing and why – only then it works.

So what now?

So how will we get to such state? – the answer is pretty simple…as simplicity is what we need. Designing for it though is everything but simple. What will help here is “Design thinking”.  Design thinking guides us the way and there are a few core principles I suggest to take into consideration:

(1) Always design from the consumer perspective, with the end-user not only in mind but being at the heart of the design process. 

(2) Lay out the key achievements you want to reach. What are the 1 or 2 goals that you want to reach? Or the 1 or 2 problems you want to solve? Be clear about it and don’t ask for too much.

(3) Make sure you understand why your consumer should care about these achievements. What is in for them? Not what is in for you and HR. They must understand and buy in. 

(4) Design simple and intuitive solutions – as soon as you need a training course or a multi page guide book to understand/ follow the practice or process, it is too complex

(5) Make sure you implement a measuring system as part of your deployment so that you can assess if you achieve your 1-2 key outcomes. – if not, you will know fast and can course correct

If you keep these 5 principles at the core, you have a pretty good chance that your practice or process will be successful and you actually have an impact. Simplicity will bring us forward as a function, I am sure about it.

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The HR Tech Market is diverging – should you follow?

After a few post with minor tech focus, today I will bring a full tech focus back to this blog. It is the beginning of the year and we are all trying to figure out what to do this year, where to focus and invest. It is also the time when many Analyst reports come out. One of the topics I see getting more attention is the inflation of tech tools in the HR space. It is amazing how much money went into this space the recent years – but on the other hand, not too surprising as there were tons of money in the financial system. This money though has led to many new players entering the HR tech market with specialized solution around single topics like surveying, well-being, talent marketplaces, skills management – and many more. So what to do with this trend? Should you follow?

A brief history

The trend I describe above is nothing new. For those of you who are as long in this function, you will see remarkable parallels to the 2000s and even before. The HR tech market always sees waves of divergence, followed by waves of conversion. This is what brought us where we are today with significantly improved integrated systems like SuccessFactors or Workday (from the old PeopleSoft or SAP HCM). There are always new ideas out there that make it into specialized products to “add on” to your existing tech stack. Some of them stick, some of them are acquired and integrated into the bigger integrated platforms – and some are quickly dismissed as not value adding. This has been the game in the past, and I believe that this is what is happening now as well. With money slowly getting more expensive and scarce, many of the recent start-ups will dry up or be integrated (e.g. Peakon into Workday) into the bigger integrated systems. – but also, some will stay with us for a while.

What to do?

The question now is for every HR tech lead – but also for the HR functional colleagues – what should you do? Are these trends lasting? Is it important to have an e.g. internal Talent Marketplace? – do you need a specialized skills-solution? Of course, I cannot answer this question for you as I don’t know your current tech stack or workforce or situation. But I would like to provide my thought process around these solution and the HR tech market situation to guide any decision you might need to take.

For the last 20+ years, the integrated solutions have always resurfaced. Why is that? – It is because of its simplicity around the basics, table stakes like Master Data Management, statutory reporting as well as integration into the wider enterprise tech stack – may it be payroll systems, or identity management systems, etc. I suggest that the majority of enterprises (1000+ employees, multiple countries) should have an integrated, central, single system of records. The importance of such system for the functioning and efficiency of the wider organization cannot be underestimated. But it also is the key system for your core HR work – including your core HR self-services like personal data management.

Now, when you have such system anyway, should you build on top with specialized solutions? – I would give that more than one thought. Of course, any specialized solution gives you the “best of breed” for the specific case. But wait, all the high-glossy promises and shiny demonstrations you get from the sales teams of such solutions – will it work exactly like this in your environment? Will it therefore really bring this additional value? The answer is more often NO than yes.

First of all, any HR system to work requires data, people data – you have these people data in your integrated core system, so you need to build an interface (or do you really want to work with separate master data?). Interfaces like this are by default complex: are they bi-directional? what data do we send/ receive – which truth is stored where? – and it gets even more complex when you go for more than one system, especially if the two specialized systems are supposed to talk to each other or work from each others insights. This complexity adds a lot of workload to your HR tech team. But it is not a one off – it is a regular review and adjust as most of these systems are SaaS based and have heavy upgrade cycles of twice or even more annually. In each upgrade cycle you have to review and test and potentially adjust your integration. 

But ok, this is the back-office. It is ok to be complex if the value of the specialized solutions outweighs such investment. Does it? – yes, in theory – and in the high-glossy sales presentations. Bringing the value into practice in your organization though  might turn out to be more difficult.

The Experience Case

Every new technology adds not only complexity to the back-office, but also for the front-office. Employees need to know “where to turn for what”. And usually, HR tasks are not common daily tasks for them, so adding any complexity where they need to think which system to turn for what task is tricky. Employees require a simple, intuitive entry point that guides them through. Any add-on system you bring to add value will make this job more difficult and could lead to employee frustration and less likelihood of system usage. It doesn’t stop there though – every new system has a new and different UX philosophy than your other systems in place. This means that if your employees make the effort to remember where to turn to for what task, they might get frustrated as they don’t know and need to learn how to use the new system. This brings hesitancy and frustration – not ideal for a good experience and system adoption. And last but not least, depending on how you set up the integration between systems, there might be an additional layer of frustration: currentness of data. In today’s world, employees expect seamless integrations and seamless exchange of information. So, if you just changed e.g. a reporting line in your core system and then went to a separated engagement system and you cannot see this move/ change of reporting line, you get frustrated – and call for escalation of this case. The system is not working as expected.

Now, the above is not necessary your situation, but often close to what I have seen in organizations. Does the perceived value of a specialized solution continue to be superior and value adding after the above complications? – if the answer is yes, go ahead – or check out what potentially less superior but fully integrated solution your core system offers. It might be sufficient for what you need and it might be much easier to implement and achieve adoption (and potentially cheaper as well). And only adoption actually pays out, not the theoretical superiority. Sweat your current assets as much as possible, drive the innovation agenda of your current tech partners to get it where you need it to be. This is cheaper, more efficient – and very likely more effective as well.

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Thinking Further – the Experience Organization

In one of my last posts I introduced the CXA – The Chief Experience Architect. Today, I would like to spin the wheel a bit further and introduce the concept of a new Experience Function. 

Home is where the heart is

The home-base of the Experience Function is the HR Function – my home for a long time and where my heart is. But not only because of this. It is also the home-base due to its main interactions with employees. HR processes and policies are guiding each and every employee every day – they are experienced by every employee every day. This makes this function special and the best home-base for a new Experience Function. However, not all of what currently sits with HR should be part of the Experience function – and, some aspects that HR tried to push out need to come back as well. 
Let’s think of the HR function in its facets of 

  • Centers of Expertise or Excellence that are accountable for setting the philosophy and policy on core experiences like Performance Management, Talent Management, Rewards, etc.
  • HR Business Partner that are the key-account managers and the business interface to other functions or business units
  • HR Operations – often nowadays consolidated under Business Services entities – that are delivering day to day HR processes (or experiences)
  • and last but not least HR Technology that is enabling the above mentioned philosophies, policies and administrative activities

I know, I already put it out there in the way I described the different building blocks of the HR function – but to be explicit: three of the above (CoEs, HR Ops and HR Tech) are forming the main experiences that employees see and feel on a daily basis and therefore should be part of the new Experience function. One not – HR Business Partners.

Re-think HR

This basically concludes that we need to rethink what HR is when we want to build up an Experience Organization. I propose to focus HR truly on Business Partnering. Having true experts in Business Partnering continues to be a real asset and a differentiator in the Human Resources space. Focus on the overall team and key individuals to make them better, to build the right team and to support the strategy are core. Going back to the resource based theory that I also mentioned in my earlier posts (here) the only asset a company has, the only strategic differentiator that is not imitable is the human resource – as individual as well as as collective, as skills as well as culture. Everything else is sooner or later easy to imitate or substitute – not though the human resources. And a focused HR function on business partnering can make sure that this resource is making an even bigger difference than it does today. Especially, if such core-HR function is freed up from all the operational matters and daily administrative burdens. It can take business partnering and managing the talent serious and will be accepted in that regard because it is what it brings to the table. In the more traditional setup – regardless if within HR or within a business services function – business partnering is often interrupted by HR operations or administrative HR processes not functioning the way they should. If you once and for all split this out completely, business partnering has a real chance to flourish.To support proper business partnering, certain aspects of CoEs that are not focusing on philosophy or policy, but on active management of talent or organization effectiveness should be placed into this core HR function as well, so that it can work and function independently.

The Experience function Part 1

And when business partnering can flourish, so can the rest of the former HR function – but in a new function: The Experience function. Under a Chief Experience Officer and supported on the strategic setup and enablement (as described here) by the CXA, this new function will be the sole home of the Experiences an employee sees and feels on a daily basis. This new function is a newly formed organization that focuses on experience only – and makes sure that all experiences are treated equal. Now, when referring to “all” experiences, what does this actually mean? This includes of course the remaining pieces from the former HR function as outlined above:

  • all of HR Operations of course – and as always for the function that owns the Operations part – is the hygienic factor. Operations need to be delivered flawless and with a simple and engaging experience. This by itself is a big piece to get right and will focus a lot of attention to get it right: What is the right sourcing approach? How do I create a breathing Operational function? How much automation vs. personalization is required? – This needs to be set up and delivered right before anything else is looked at as this is core – no one will ask for anything else if payroll isn’t right or not on time. So get Operations right and make sure it is a focused, expert delivery activity.
  • but also the former HR CoEs should form part of such an organization as they conceptualize key moments in an employee’s work-life. What is the Rewards strategy and how is it connected to Performance Management? How are objectives set, measured and reviewed? What is the companies approach to Learning and how can it be delivered? What is the organization’s view on work-life balance, benefits and flexibility? How do we build an inclusive workplace for everyone? – more than ever the experience of these core policies and philosophies are important to ensure an engaged, motivated and long-term focused employee base. The Great Resignation might not be what we thought initially as it is more focused on US front-line workers, but also globally, we are seeing a shortage of key-talent and a focus of this key-talent to join companies where the Experience is right (see my predictions 2022). 

Being able to build ONE cohesive Experience strategy and making sure it is delivered as cohesive and frictionless as possible is core, and such an Experience function can take care of it as it owns the Experience end-to-end. Not only the administrative parts, not only the process & technology enablement, not only the philosophy – but all under one leadership team. This is the future of Experience Management and important to get right if you rely on your Talent (read your employees) to be the key differentiating factor.

The Experience function part 2

There is however, a but – as I wrote, it is important to have ALL of the daily touching and culture building processes and accountabilities within ONE function. Above though only focuses on the HR parts. What is as important and makes the extended case to split up the HR function is to include the remaining non-HR-based activities into this function. The additional core processes, philosophies and policies to capture are related to the workplace – the digital one and the physical one. These are the two other main experiences that touch every employee on a daily basis – regardless if home-office or office. Physical and digital workplaces define and form culture in the same way the HR philosophies and policies do. They are key moments for an employee to get their best work done on a daily basis – and they need to be frictionless, enabling and simple. Therefore, both should be carved out of their current structural set-up and placed into the Experience function. 

Like this, a true Experience function can be built that will be a differentiator in employee and therefore business performance. 

I know that I have laid out my case here in a significantly shortened way and have not brought sufficient light into every aspect of my thinking, my hypothesis and my conclusions. I will try to make this into a book about the “Future of Experience” – can though not promise when I will be able to deliver on that. But for now, this is my thinking and I will share further bits and pieces on a regular basis – as in 2021.

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2022: The year of Employee-centricity … and automation

Looking forward by looking back. My 2022 prediction is based very much on what we have seen and learned in 2021 and before. It is partially of course influenced by Covid19 and its implications – but I still believe that Covid19 did not actually change anything but just accelerated trends and what’s to happen anyway.

The Situation

When you analyze the employment market from the last two years and predictions for this year, you see a very strong dynamic accelerated by certain trends but moreover realities to face:

  • Women left in significant amounts the workforce – this has been shown here as well as here. And the question for 2022 is if they will come back and how they might come back. Signs are positive – and I believe that these signs are a good indication. It is a matter of time though as the new variant is hitting us and many have more to shoulder now than before. So only when the pandemic transitions into the endemic stage, women will have the breathing space to come back – but not all of them and very unlikely to the jobs and environment they have been before.
  • “The Great Resignation” which in fact has been more of a reshuffle of lower qualified jobs so far (read here) has hit many companies, will continue and transform from  “missing hands” to “brain-drain”. Late 2021 analysis shows that the direction of the great reshuffle is slowly moving up the seniority and qualification ladder. This will continueand lead towards a difficult situation for employers as key managerial or individual contributors leave.  – leave to other companies, but also leave into entrepreneurship
  • Covid has accelerated trends across multiple areas by at least 10 years and keeping up with these changes and demands is not simple. But moreover, it led to employees rethinking their life plans and what they want to get out of their life, want to achieve, what they want to stand for. The push for purpose and meaning is getting stronger by the day, leading to a shift in priorities and what is important to join or stay with an organization
  • Remote work and virtual meetings are the new standard. And they do have their advantages – absolutely, but 2 years into the pandemic we also realize that this cannot be it. We are missing the human connection and the true team-building. Of course,  the Metaverse is here to the rescue (really?). But a rising demand for real face-to-face meetings and sessions can be identified and will influence how we work and where we work in 2022.

The consequence

If this is the situation, what does it mean for the workplace? – it is simple. Employers have to transition from “saying” that employees are their most valuable asset to actually treating them like this. We are accelerating into an employee focused economy where it will be difficult to get or keep key employees and where the impact on the top- and bottom-line will be very visible.

Of course, we should not just sit and watch but need to take actions to counter this consequence. And as you should never just bet on one horse/ action, I am seeing two key-trends exploding (in a positive way) in 2022 – Employee Experience and Automation. 

Employee Experience

Employee Experience was just a small idea at the beginning of the pandemic, but given where we are today, no company can afford to not focus on the daily experience of employees at and with work and most companies need to invest and center their efforts on the Experience to keep or get critical talent. And of course the focus needs to be on the Experience as a whole, not on single areas or items. The advantages are just too big and so will be the labor-market competition. We are in a clear supply-driven market with open positions on record highs and employees asking for purpose, balance and meaning. But Employee Experience not only helps keep or get the required employees – it will also increase performance and productivity if thought through well. And so my prediction for 2022 is that we will redefine and widen what Employee Experience means and employers will invest in it greatly. 2022 is the year of EX break-through.

Automation

But let’s be clear – regardless how great your EX efforts are, you will still run into employees that value the “Euro more” more than any experience as there are and will continue to be short-term focused employees. No judgement. And not to forget that the acceleration of trends through the pandemic has further increased the demand for very scarce  skills – and due to the pandemic the building of these skills has slowed down. The perfect storm…and the opportunity for the next level of automation. More and more tasks, also complex tasks have to be transitioned to machines – may it be simple automation, may it be more complex decision/ interpretation that requires AI models. My second prediction is that this market will continue to thrive and will drive up the value chain/ specialist chain of employees not to free up resources but to “fill open positions”. And with that will be looked at more positive by employees as well as it is transitioning into a state where Automation helps counter the talent and capacity crunch and won’t threaten your job.

These two are to be watched in 2022 – and if you are in the automation or experience market – congratulations, a year full of work and excitement awaits you🙂 

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The case for a Chief Experience Architect (CXA)

A lot is currently in motion when it comes to Experience and Technology. Apart from the big conversations around the Great Reshuffle the possibilities, changes and developments across Experience & Technology are getting nurtured almost on a daily basis, are a constant topic. A new area has been formed: Employee Experience. 

Employee Experience

Employee Experience has multiple definitions, can be seen and understood in multiple different ways – from a very narrow view of reinterpreting HR processes into experiences to a very wide view and subsuming each and every employee interaction within a company into it. I don’t want to say what is right or what is wrong – I don’t even think that we need such categories of right or wrong. Baseline is that in any shape or form, looking after and actively shaping the Employee Experience has a positive impact on a company’s ability to compete in the market. 

There are multiple reasons as to why Employee Experience is important and there are multiple ways you can interpret Employee Experience – narrow or wide – but it all has one thing in common. Among cultural aspects, Technology is THE important factor to create a superior Employee Experience.  It is the enabler and driving force for Employee Experience. And at the same time Technology needs to be not the prominent aspect of the Experience. It is the backbone, not the front-end. It is there to improve and connect the experience, not THE experience itself. This is what many companies offering Experience technology get wrong – and also what many companies that go down the route of Employee Experience get wrong. It is not about Technology, but about Enablement. 
In the last 2-3 years many technologies have surfaced claiming to improve the Experience, some call themselves  Experience Platforms. I don’t want to judge them – some of them are really good and utilized correctly can make a difference. Others are just a technology in need and search of a problem (try to avoid these). You can easily identify them in the way HOW they approach and sell itself – they place the technology first, not the problem or actual solution they bring.

The Experience (market) will grow

This market has come from nowhere and will grow even further given the importance and clear business outcomes of Employee Experience. But also, we have finally entered (quicker now thanks to the pandemic) a labor market that places the seller, the employee in the focus as there are much more interesting opportunities for employees than there are employees for these open positions (of course, this is not in each and every field and not for each and every job-class the same – but the direction is clear). These employees can then freely choose which opportunity to take – and the Experience at work will form an important decision-criteria to join and to stay or leave. I don’t think you can at this stage underrate the importance of Employee Experience. If you are not yet there, go start quickly.
But where to start and how to get going? What is the right strategy? What are building blocks of a superior Employee Experience? How do I bring it to life? – these are very valid questions (and there are more) and there is not an easy answer – and also, there is no current role that is actually predestined to play in this field and bring a superior Employee Experience into the organization. Given the importance of Employee Experience – I make the case that it deserves and requires a specialized role – a “Chief (Employee) Experience Architect”.

The CXA

So, what is the role of such a Chief Employee Experience Architect? – it all starts with your definition of Employee Experience, narrow or wide. And within this frame of reference, the objectives at hand are very similar. 

  • Rephrase or define
    • What is the right, fitting Experience for your company? What does you company stand for and how does this translate for employees? If you have an EVP, you should be able to rephrase it into an Experience statement. This statement is your North Star, your direction and decision support. It needs to fit and be right for your company
  • Listen to understand
    • Second you need to build up a proper listening infrastructure. You need to understand the current employee sentiment. What is important for your employees, what isn’t. What is working well for them, what isn’t? – this is already the first area where Technology is important. For most companies, it is impossible to constantly listen to and understand employee sentiment without technology support. The right infrastructure will give you what you need with the least effort – and this is important as the sentiment is key to understand where your employees are but also transforming the Experience takes a significant effort – don’t waste too much energy listening
  • Identify the key areas
    • Based on what you heard as well as what you defined as your Employee Experience, identify the Moments that Matter – the areas where you should make a difference for your employees to have a positive impact on the sentiment. You cannot address all you hear but you need to get some key Moments right. These can be specific for your company or generic – depending on how you define your Experience and how your employees feel

And now it is time to actually make a difference.

Build a superior experience

Until now, it was all research – now it gets into practice. With everything you learned and prioritized, build your Experience design and strategy to enable it – and put it into practice. This is a real long-term journey – and actually never really ends as you always go back to “Listening to understand” and cycle through the steps again and again. When it was good to have technology support and knowledge as part of listening and prioritization, it is now key as Experiences at scale can only be build with the right technology architecture, platform(s) and extensions – while at the same time Technology should never be the visible outcome. It is a means to a superior Experience, not THE Experience. Technology is also the element that connects and simplifies Experiences across multiple functional areas. And this is another key – the Experience Architect needs to work across functional silos within a company to make Experiences happen. You cannot build a superior Experience just within HR or just within Workplace or just an Experience Culture – it needs to be End-to-End to make a difference, to have an impact. This ability is key, both from the Architects capacity but also the willingness of the organization.

Experiences are a composition of culture + process + technology + UI to connect and simplify what makes a difference (Moments that Matter) and you need to build multiple of such experiences to actually create a superior Employee Experience across the company. This is the job of the Chief (Employee) Experience Architect. If you don’t have it yet – go and create it.