Tag: #AI

Posted on

Digital First mindset is so yesterday…

I haven’t talked about my dream for a long time, but it is still in my head and it is my long-term goal that I want to achieve from an Employee Experience perspective. I haven’t talked about it because it got lost a bit in the day-to-day work stuff as well as day-to-day research activities. But I was recently reminded of it when I had a great conversation with Microsoft.

What is a great Employee Experience about

But let me start with this: What is a great Employee Experience about? – as I had shared in the past, for me the best experience is one that seamlessly works, without effort, without need to learn or remember anything. It should be ambient. With everything we have done so far, this goal was not in reach. We worked on creating much better experiences than we had in the past for our processes and systems – but it was everything but ambient. You had to log into a system, you had to find the right service, you had to reach out to get information – may it be around policies or processes or may it be around your team. Yes, we made it more effortless and easier to navigate – but it still required an effort by you.

Ambient HR

Ambient HR is the opposite. It sits quietly in the background, it doesn’t bother you, it doesn’t require anything from you – but when you need it it is there and will support your requirements. And if it believes you should need it, it will reach out to you. Wouldn’t this be great? – you log into your work on a Monday morning and you are directly contacted with a message along the lines of “hey, your team member Carol did a fantastic job in the Myth project. Do you want to recognise her for this? – you could send a message or even do a monetary award. Please let me know” – I would love this support. You have your own People support at your fingertips. But where would this come from? – well, the information for this are already there. In your current systems. Carol did finish that project and had updated her Objectives with feedback from her project manager and the way your company rewards great work is via monetary awards. It just needed to get joined up and presented to you – and from there you can actually just indicate that you want to initiate a monetary award…

This is my dream, and I wanted to achieve it till 2030 – but maybe now it is closer than I thought?

The AI first mindset

And this is when I had a chance to chat with Microsoft. Of course, as many of you these days, I reached out to Microsoft to talk about OpenAI, ChatGPT and how we could integrate it into our current tech stack and improve the experience. And there are, as you know, plenty of ideas on how you can utilise AI to improve the experience and automate chats and processes and more.

But, and this is a big one – but you can also completely reimagine the Experience. It is the same like with “Digital first”: Don’t try to digitise your analog processes, reimagine them digital first. – and therefore the direction should be: Don’t use AI to make your current processes smarter, reimagine everything with an AI first mindset. This is for sure something we all have to learn first. It was not easy to learn “digital first mindset” and it was just “yesterday” when we believed we got there. And now it is the next one and it is even bigger “an AI first mindset” in recreating experiences, in transforming the way work is done. – Digital first is so yesterday….

The new Experience with AI

It is another, even bigger revolution on the horizon, actually not on the horizon but already close to our doorstep. Of course, we won’t be there tomorrow, but probably the day after tomorrow. And with that let me get back to my conversation with Microsoft. Of course, we have talked about how to integrate AI into the current processes and systems and how such a generative AI can be an exponentially better ChatBot than what we have today. But then we went off and into the AI first mindset. What if we can reimagine everything from that perspective, what if we could have as the only interface an employee and people manager needs to have a small bubble at the bottom right of your screen (or anywhere you can imagine). And what if this is not just a bot to answer questions (more or less well) or a bot to bring you into the actual software interface? What if this is the only interface? And it is reaching out to you as much as you are reaching to it. It keeps track of your actions, requests and HR needs and keeps you posted on this, as well as fulfils any need you wanted? – we would go “back in time” to a white gloved HR service, just that it is not by a human – and that it is always 100% customised to you as it knows your data, your team and your direction.

I agree, it is also a bit scary and the critical guardrails need to be defined so that it is a support and not more than that. It is already now more than a dream and we need to make it happen now – forget about digital first mindset, it is AI first mindset as of yesterday!

Posted on

Can you remind me, which year do we have?

Let me be straight forward at the beginning: I continue to be very excited about AI and especially about the race we are currently seeing around conversational AI between Microsoft/ OpenAI and Google (and others). This will truly revolutionise the way we operate and interact with technology. As I have written here, I immediately see two very interesting and beneficial use cases that I am actively pursuing (and there are many more).

But the more I dive into AI, the more I am wondering which year we have and if we are going back to “the good old days” of Taylorism and Fordism? – just a short recap “[…] the task of factory management was to determine the best way for the worker to do the job, to provide the proper tools and training, and to provide incentives for good performance.” Taylorism or Scientific Management did see the employee as a work tool to be optimised, as an anonymous body, not an individual – and was often criticised for that (afterwards). And I believe that this criticism was and is right. What we need and what we should strive for at work are individuals, is diversity – not only of backgrounds, gender, race, but also diversity of thinking and working and leading.

Now, when I then read about additional “interesting” applications of AI as a coach to employees, or even further, see the application of it – may it be in MS Teams or in Apps like Humu – or read articles like this, I am left speechless, truly. It seems to come down to a blind believe that technology and AI will make us all better at work because it can analyse “us” and propose “better” behaviours, more effective and efficient behaviours. Am I the only one who is shocked and scared?

We basically propose to go back more than hundred years to improve workers behaviours and outputs – with the only difference that a hundred years ago we at least had the decency to have humans improve humans – where as now we leave this to machines. I see where this is better?! I am not sure I agree with the ethics around this. Just imagine how far this could be driven? If you mix this with Neuro-Science you very quickly go from “suggestions to improve your work” to “manipulation to increase your output”. And because it all comes somehow through the back-door as “new and shiny” AI, we don’t recognise that this brings us back to dark times that we all believed we had left behind. Of course it is just one article, but read this one here and enjoy the sentence of “Enable technology to work on the worker (and the team)” – I am still speechless. Am I the only one?

AI is the new breakthrough technology, there is no doubt about that. It will radically change the way we work, we interact with technology, we search for answers, we analyse data and we hypothesize. A new, not yet elegant, but very powerful tool is been given to us and we need to see how we use it best, where and which use-cases have the best payback and how we bring it from investment to return (of investment). But with any tool, with any new approach, we must be careful and not forget that there is always a downside. We must invest as much research in the downside as in the upside and we must be careful to not use AI in any use case there is, but only where also from an ethical perspective, it is the right thing to do (not to mention that in any case it needs to be cost efficient – don’t forget how much power and energy-consumption these large language models still require). 

And to close my post for this week, let me ask you to go out there and test & learn with AI and don’t forget to jump on this train as it is a radical and fundamental enabler for so much of our work – but to also make sure you have your ethics straight and your ideas and solutions maybe independently reviewed. AI is truly the future also of HR and Employee Experience.

Posted on

ChatGPT – another Web 3.0 hype?

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

ChatGPT is different

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

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

What to do with ChatGPT

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on

Employee Experience Predictions 2023

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

1. Employee Experience continues to be a key topic

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

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

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

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

3. The EX Tech market will normalize

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

4. Current investments have to sweat more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. AI will finally provide a compelling case

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on

The societal impact: Shared Services 4.0

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

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

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