Tag: #aheadofthecurve

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Generative AI – finally someone that understood the task

As I was on my way from the Knowledge23 conference in Las Vegas and going through my notes, pictures, and videos I took, I was still pumped with excitement. Of course ServiceNow has not forgotten how to have an awesome conference, but what really excites me most is that ServiceNow has understood the task of the day. And now, a week afterwards and with some distance, I am still very confident that ServiceNow is on the right path into the AI future.

Generative AI…

In so far no other presentation or announcement have I seen so clearly the commitment to (secure and private) Generative AI than during the days with ServiceNow. Of course, as the others, ServiceNow is stating that they have invested and provided ML and AI solutions in the past – BUT, and that is truly the trick here, they admitted that since GPT 3 the scenery and brief has changed. And they have taken on that challenge. They have an ambitious but thought through plan and roadmap how and where to utilize Generative AI and how it makes the business case for the core persona’s that interact with ServiceNow. They have solutions for developers, for admins, for agents and for employees – and the great thing is that these all work hand in hand. 

…easy to use

But they not only have a clear vision and roadmap on how to utilize Generative AI and multiple different ways on how you can make use of it (e.g. bring your own LLM or take what ServiceNow provides), they also have thought through how to serve it to the different personas in a way that is easy to absorb and provides clarity as well as assurance that nothing hidden is happening. They are looking into a new UI/ UX on how to interact, absorb and immerse into AI resolution of whatever you want to get done – may it be an answer to your HR question or developing a new case form. I really like how they are evolving the interface on their main portal solutions and bring together the Assistant and Search functionality into ONE. None of this is released yet, but coming very soon – so stay tuned.

Of course there is also bad news…

But also at ServiceNow not everything is fantastic. Not sure if you already saw the announcement around skills management and performance management…ServiceNow is moving into HCM territory. And my question is WHY. For years we had a (mostly) peaceful co-existence of HCM platforms or Talent platforms and ServiceNow as “Platform of Platforms”. And I am sure many of you are using ServiceNow as exactly that: A Platform that connects across the rest of technology you have that provides a seamless and attractive experience to employees as complexity reducer. That was and is their strength if you ask me. And of course, it was already in the past not always easy to make all different players be nice to each other – but now that ServiceNow is aggressively pushing into Core HCM territory, I wonder where we as customers of both ServiceNow and SuccessFactors, Oracle, Workday or others will end up. We are the ones that need to make sure they function seamless and integrate nicely – and now they go into competition. I am not sure what I should think about it and I am not sure how this will play out, but I am concerned.

The Leadership Team at ServiceNow is smart and Bill has led SAP for some time, so understands the HCM market very well – but I am not sure what their thinking here is or was. I am not convinced that this will add value to us as customers. We shall see…

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The infinite game – Employee Experience

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are you in for the infinite game?

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The structure to ensuring the right Employee Experience

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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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?