Conventional HR is dead; Long live HR technology
Having attended and been involved with a number of discussions recently on the future of HR, it has become clear to me that whilst HR focusses on the skills of their (internal) clients and particularly leadership skills, there is a lack of engagement with HR on the skills they need themselves to remain relevant in this new landscape. Another observation is that the talent development budget is still directed at 10% of the workforce and that HR forms a really tiny proportion, if included at all.
The view that tech will play a dominant part, if it is not already doing so, is clear and undisputed, however, how is your typical HR colleague supposed to take on this responsibility with limited tech background or exposure and remain relevant? The other observation is that the only message you hear within the HR world is that their work load is increasing. So how can they gain the skills within limited time available to gain the experience required? Yes, this could all be left to the lone HRIT person, but that’s a lot of responsibility for them and is only a short-term fix. It also raises the question of why does HR have its own, separate HRIT person anyway?! Why is it a silo and why isn’t the wealth of knowledge of the broader IT team leveraged?
Josh Bersin’s most recent report has an interesting table illustrating how he has seen HRtech progressing. I find it fascinating, as, of the many HR leaders I have met over the past year, the majority are still in the ‘automate’ phase! I haven’t met a single person who has the rest sorted and is really focussed on productivity, even if it’s a strategic objective.
It is, unfortunately, leading to a general passivity in HR, with a shrug to ‘the business’, who isn’t engaging or allocating the resources to support this change. Old, disjointed systems, in some cases no systems, manual tracking and admin… some of the more basic tasks, for which there has been technology around for a number of years are still not automated.
There is far too much tech out there (23k products and counting!) for HR to really be able to assess the market and choose the right one – help is needed. So, here are a few of our favourites:
Candidate attraction:
CandidateID, the founders have a marketing background and you can tell! It’s a marketing tool, repositioned for the candidate market, which puts your candidate pool into the red, amber and green categories based on their online activity. Green candidates are proactively looking, red are not looking at all. Amber are the hot spot of candidates, who are open to opportunities and who, with the right content, could be enticed. It’s a candidate driven market and certain skills are highly competed over, so having a content marketing tool, tailored to enticing candidates through the door is invaluable.
Candidate screening: there are 2 drivers behind my engagement with AI for candidate screening – firstly the diversity benefits; eliminating the conscious and unconscious bias (as well as boredom!) of screening cv’s and secondly the fact that they are matching culture fit, which is such a differentiator. The companies that I like are Good&Co, which uses a FitScore tool to assess the culture of your organisation, as well as the applicants and advises on the matches. It is fully transparent for candidates too and is a jolly tool to use! Predictive Hire uses a questionnaire to assess company culture, with which to screen candidates and Seedlink uses linguistics.
Needless to say that using technology is only an enabler and that you need to understand your culture in the first place that will support you in getting the business results. And secondly that you ensure that your leadership is aware and fully able to articulate and embrace this culture, reflecting this in everyday discussion and decision making. Only then you can put the technology to good use. Too many times I have noticed as well that people do their talent acquisition really well but they are a revolving door. This is because once joining the organisation, people don’t see the follow through in the way the business operates and their employee experience and worse, feel sold to as a result.
On-boarding:
There are not many companies who really do on-boarding (pre & post start date) well (unless they have been supported by Effra consult of course ;-). Yet there are so many studies providing comprehensive statistics illustrating the importance of it from engagement, retention and productivity perspectives. A really simple and easy to use solution that I like is called HROnboard: an intuitive messaging system, which keeps contact with the candidates from offer until a period of time after they have joined. It immerses them into the company culture and norms as well as prompting managers and team to check in and welcome the new joiner. The content can be uploaded as you see fit and includes videos, podcasts, reading material, etc. It is also very useful for internal mobility, to settle staff into their new location and tea
Learning & development platforms:
Filtered and Learn Amp to me are the future of LMS platforms, they are Netflix-like, so easy to use and intuitive, accessible on any device, with learning prompts based on what you have chosen previously. They can be used for external content, including such as TED talks and HBR articles, as well as for developing and sharing your own content intracompany, including everything learning – from technical skills to mindfulness.
Coaching tools:
There are 2 interesting tools here. Emoquo is a personal online business coach (a coach in your pocket). Using typical scenarios that one is faced with, using mini drama videos and experts’ knowhow, they come across as real and relevant. They’re bite-sized, easy to use, personalised to you and accessible as and when you need them. In addition, Emoquo provides an analytics dashboard showing the emotional wellbeing of an organisation. Open Blend facilitates face to face contact, rather than removing it and includes a performance management module. Through online learning and prompts, it enables people managers to enhance the performance of the modern workforce. The framework facilitates coaching-led one-to-ones focused on an individual’s wellbeing, key drivers and performance.
Engagement tool:
ThanksBox helps organisations improve employee recognition, reward recognition and behaviours and have a platform for communicating, collaborating and sharing ideas. The dashboard can be used to feed into your standard performance appraisal and the linked rewards are a nice bonus tool.
I think we made our point clear: being in the known of HR technology is a must have for any HR/business professional who wants to ensure that all things people is organised as such that it frees up the time of the HR resources on value adding activities which cannot be automated i.e. making final hiring decisions informed by the insights generated by data and technology ; pinpointing the needs to increase the leadership skills to bring the culture about, supporting change and transformation to keep the business relevant and sustainable.
That is why Effra consults focusses on all things people to boost business performance. This will only happen when we truly understand, embrace and make use of (HR) technology.
I had the pleasure of collaborating on this article with Rachel Barnes, who is extremely knowledgeable on HR technology, working till recently with the Sandpit and collaborating now with Effra consult.