Technology is leading change in HR

Few functions have been disrupted by technology as much as HR in the last 25 years. Along the entire employee life cycle are a bewildering array of applications and tools that promise enhanced employee experience. Add to this mix terms like digital HR and it gets confusing quickly. For founders of growth stage startups or first time CEOs, pressed by the board to articulate a unified people strategy, HR technology is providing some of the answers. In this article, I outline a framework to think of investments in HR technology, data driven decisions, culture, and people strategy.

A typical people strategy essentially addresses a fundamental question — should we build, buy, or borrow talent to meet business objectives. Other important, related elements include — how we reward and retain quality talent, how we build a purpose led, high-performance culture, and how we continuously upgrade skills to be future ready. Underpinning the core question is the investment the business makes in its people strategy.

Skills as foundational blocks

A sound people strategy will derive from vision, purpose, culture and be built on foundational blocks — skills. To use an analogy, a skill is like a cell[1] in the human body. Cells do not work in isolation but provide and receive resources from other cells or from the surrounding environment. Similarly, skills do not work in isolation but depend on interaction with other skills, and the environment for meaningful output in the organization context. A combination of skills and experience will determine if business objectives are met. Much like cells, skills are microscopic, difficult to visualize in three dimensions, and exceedingly complex in function. Understanding what skills are required, in what proportion and how they are leveraged renders competitive edge.

In 2017, at the HR technology conference at Las Vegas, I was pitching a skills-based workforce planning application to potential customers. Our proposition — skills are foundational and identifying skill gaps provides answers to use cases like internal mobility, L&D, and talent acquisition challenges. Our corner of the room had to jostle for space with companies showcasing recruiting tech. They pulled in huge crowds. Cut to the 2022 HR tech virtual conference, recruiting tech continues to dominate but I am thrilled to see increase in investments in skills-based applications. From companies specializing in skills taxonomies, recruiting tech mapping external talent with company specific skills, internal mobility based on skills and experience, personalized learning content based on skill gaps, designing career journeys and more.

Skills as foundation blocks is not a new concept but technology has certainly accelerated its acceptance as foundational.

[1] Norman Herr, PhD., California State University

Employee listening

These past 2 years, the adoption of always-on employee surveys has accelerated. Notwithstanding lighthearted memes on survey fatigue, the shift is toward an agile HR and leadership acting on real time employee feedback. Aided by amazing innovation in technology, HRBPs can survey distributed and diverse employee groups without much ado. Short, quick, and focused surveys to solve for specific problems. This is a change from the giant annual survey requiring months of preparation, polling, slicing and dicing survey results for leadership review, and action planning. At this year’s HR technology conference live q&a, I asked Josh Bersin if employee listening would continue as a priority after we return to office, and this is what he had to say,

yes — employee listening will be important regardless of covid, it’s bigger every year and with more AI and sentiment analysis you really should invest here

Consequently, the terra bytes of data getting generated need to be mined for insights and interpreted and embedded into HR processes and programs.

People analytics

Aided by big data, tech and systems thinking approach to HR, people analytics (PA) is a fast-emerging and fascinating capability. Routed in data science, PA is a confluence of organization behavior, technology, legal, corporate planning, and knowledge of the business. If you are new to this area, begin with a defined objective. What business problem is PA solving? These are not HR problems as much as business, CXO or even, board level problems. E.g., why are some teams better at collaborating than others? which learning courses have been the most productive in terms of sales? how can we design content and deliver at scale?

Most common use cases of people analytics today are:

• Internal talent marketplace — do we have the skills to staff roles internally?
• Learning & development — who do we need to reskill and by how much?
• Retention — who is likely to quit and what can we do to retain?
• Diversity, equity, inclusion — how diverse, equitable and inclusive is our workforce?
• Mental health and wellbeing — current health and wellbeing programs, how effective they are

Personally, I believe that the thing analytics brings out best is the interconnected-ness of all processes in the employee life cycle, impact of values and behavior. I like to think of PA as a general physician diagnosing issues, providing input to specialists, coordinating best case treatment, and monitoring general health.

If you’ve come this far, I urge you to read a little further.

Change Management

As you have figured, I am advocating a different approach to your people strategy. One that is built on foundational blocks, measured regularly, and made better by feedback loops and relies on systems thinking. This contrasts with the existing way that HR is structured, staffed, and tasked.

Here are some points to ponder:

• Does the CEO believe that HR is equipped to address problems of collaboration, teamwork, productivity?
• Does HR have the right tools?
• Is HR adequately skilled in interpreting data and organization behavior?
• Does HR have adequate knowledge of the business and understands how the business makes money?
• Can HR design and deliver programs at scale?
• Is the rest of the CXO team attuned to making data driven decisions?

If you answered in the affirmative, then you’re already ahead on your people strategy.

If not, I recommend change management.

I recently came across this brilliant representation from Kurt Lewin’s change theory.

B = f(p,e)

Basically, any change in behavior is a function of a person’s characteristics and the environment in which they operate. Eg., if you want to drive ‘agility’ in the organisation, you need to see if that matches with individual behavior or mindset and the organisation context and environment.

How will you do this at scale?

By measuring skills, feedback loops and through analytics. Enabled by technology.