HRIS

The Future of HR with Gamification

When one first encounters the term ‘Gamification’, the impressions and images created in ones mind tend to focus around the word “game” – Images of your 14 year old son spending hours in front of his game console protecting the planet from a group of renegade creatures with fire power that would impress any military leader. It’s these images that for many HR people is a trigger to dismiss the notion that the principles of gaming have no place in the realm of HR or HR Technology.

If I cast my mind back, HR has actually used gaming principles in much of its work, particularly in areas like learning. Think back to some of the training courses you have attended, where you had to work in groups to create an output that was compared to the other groups, or your team output may have been ranked or voted as ‘best’ , your facilitator may also have used a visual display of how teams were tracking overall against each other. You may have attended an assessment centre where you were ‘playing out’ the role of a manager or at the end of a training session you received an award for being the ‘best participant’. Outside of the learning space, gaming principles have been applied to recruitment and performance management, and typically result in a form of recognition.

Gamification is really talking to the natural human needs and desires to achieve, compete,be recognised, have some control over the outcome and be entertained. The advent of technology has allowed these human needs to be expressed through computer based games – its a highly successful industry, to the extent that it has over taken video and DVD as the number one form of entertainment in the UK.

So the question is, can these computer based gaming methods and approaches that satisfy human nature and instincts, be transposed into the broader HR technology environment? The answer is absolutely yes, but not necessarily in all parts ~ and it should be focussed on peoples behaviour, not the HR system per se. I asked my colleague Andrew Butow, who has great experience in gamification to identify some of the critical success factors for gamification in HR technology. He suggested the following:

  • people interact with the tool frequently
  • people have a variety of interaction points
  • there exists a community that people care about recognition in
  • interaction points are easily quantified
  • adoption is a high priority
  • frequent feedback is important

These are valuable guidelines and should prevent organisations trying to add gaming principles that wont have any value. As an example, if you were thinking about adding gaming principles to your HR ESS system, it probably wont achieve its objectives as ESS is not a frequently accessed tool in most companies, nor does it add any value to place me in position “1” on the leaderboard for changing my home address. However if you had a knowledge management tool, or were using tools like Yammer, gamification could be a very clever way of building a culture of knowledge sharing. Saba has recently announced a product that does just that (see article). I can also see gaming being applied in the areas of recruitment (eg. Referral schemes, or agency effectiveness), Performance Management ( recognising excellent behaviour, sales achievements, accolades received from peers), Learning ( turning e-learning into a business simulation game, your contributions to knowledge sharing and mentoring).

What HR does not want to do is use gamification as a form of control or mechanism to get staff to comply to HR administrative needs – gone are the days of being the ‘People Police’ – if used in this way, it is likely to backfire and create negative perceptions of the HR function. I also think that gamification needs to be integrated into a company culture – for people over 35, the gaming principles wont be new, but the application through technology will be. The younger generation will easily accept and play along (excuse the pun), but older employees will need encouragement and assistance over time (remember to move from an in-box on your desk to email days).

Let the games begin !

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Is your HR System geared for Work 3.0

I’m not normally one to jump on the acronym band-wagon, but ‘Work 3.0’ is definitely emerging as a real issue for many organisations ~ especially from an HR strategy and systems perspective. One of the messages from Work 3.0 is the notion that the workforce will be made up of lots of people providing specific skills to resolve specific outcomes, based on an on-demand working model.

The growth in crowd sourcing on-line businesses that essentially allow prospective employees to bid for a piece of work,  is a good indicator of this trend, although I would hasten to say that the growth of these businesses are not an indicator that organisations are shedding full time employees to be replaced by on-demand services. I think there will be a far more gradual shift to a on-demand workforce through natural attrition and opportunity. Practically the type of work suited to crowd sourcing is fairly limited and is currently best suited to outputs that are clear-cut and easily definable, and where the risk is low. As we see technology improving in terms of speed, collaboration capability and the ability to create a sense ‘closeness’ and ‘trust’, we will see the opportunity for jobs outside of the low risk category growing.

Let me cut to the main point of this blog – your HR system and its capability to manage an on-demand, and physically dislocated  workforce. There are a number of challenges that immediately spring to mind:

Hiring: Hiring someone to do a piece of on-demand work is simple – A line manager can go on-line, place a work requirement, wait for responses, select the resource you like and away you go. Of course this is reminiscent of ‘cowboy’ recruitment we have seen in the past and has a wide range of risks. So how will HR departments manage the hiring of these types of resources ?

If your organisation doesn’t have a sound practice to hire and manage contractors currently- this is a signal that you are going to have problems in Work 3.0 environments too. HR systems need to assist in managing the  process, provide tools to validate employee/organisation fit, manage post work assessment (performance management) to name a few. In my view I haven’t seen any HR or Talent tools stepping up into this space. We should also not assume that current system  functionality in Hiring, Assessment and Performance management can simply be extended to this new category of employee – it has very different requirements.

Classification of the employee: One of the basic HR functions is to know how many people work in your organisation – in many organisations this only means people paid through the payroll system. In my view this is a misrepresentation of the total workforce and its associated cost. The reason provided by HR is often indicated as a lack of system capability to track contractors who are paid through invoicing to finance. Work 3.0 will further exacerbation this issue, and HR organisations need to quickly get on top of this so that the workforce count if properly represented.

Data sharing: Crowd sourced employees will want to share information with organisations and want their employer to feed them information back – this data could be stored in commercial social networking tools such as Linked-in, Facebook, the crowd sourcing platform or their own personal database. The ability to share information between a corporate HR system and external and individual social / cloud tools is a new concept for HR vendors, but will become a prominent need in the next few years.

Payment: How you pay a crowd-sourced employee or on-demand employee can be challenging, particularly if they are in another country where you don’t have a physical presence. Its not so much the movement of money that’s the issue, but rather compliance to local tax regimes.The recording of time against a task will also be an important area for development and integration.

Hyper specialization: Crowd sourcing or on-demand working will give rise to the concept of hyper-specialization. Activities will be broken into a multitude of tasks in order to take advantage of an on-demand workforce. For a line manager, this brings in new dynamics to manage a team of people collaborating on a common output – Line managers will need new tools to help co-ordinate work across tasks and teams of physical and dislocated employees. Some HR systems do a decent job in supporting project environments, but its not the norm, and in future they need to provide better end-user management tools outside of the ‘Project Manager’ type tool mindset – tools that will facilitate teamwork, team management, performance management, completion tracking and communication.

Strategic Workforce planning and Talent Management: The on-demand workforce will provide new opportunities to manage the ‘supply’ side of long term talent management needs, which could ease the fears around the ‘war on Talent’ – however most workforce management tools are geared towards the traditional employment model. Workforce planning tools are emerging as an important components of an effective HR environment, particularly in the area of predictive modelling techniques. The crowd sourced employee adds an unknown layer into this equation that will need to be understood in order for WFM tools to be put to best use.

We are heading for an exciting time in execution of work in our workplaces, but we do need HR systems to start providing tools to better manage this future environment. What are your views.

HR Dashboards: All chalk and dust..

956386I have a good mate and ex-colleague at Deloitte, Lyle Cooper. We regularly have  debates (typically over email given the time difference between Australia and South Africa) over topical HR issues. Last week he asked me for my views on HR Dashboards, and how prevelant they are:

The question was : “would you say that Dashboards and scorecards are prevalent  or do most HR depts. get by with standard reports or specifically collated reports (not from an automated tool).”

I though I would share my answer with you and see what others are thinking:

My Answer:

Personally I  haven’t seen a major take up of front end strategic visual tools by HR ( there are lots of individual HR staff that have developed  tools and systems for themselves that are visual displays / dashboards ) and most HR departments are still generating their strategic reports and manipulating them prior to distribution to executives and managers.

Part of the problem that Dashboard tools are not effective when used (or  if used at all) is because the business requirements eg. measure total workforce numbers & cost, is not accurately supported by HR departments and their systems. There is also still a lot of mistrust of HR data. Another reason is the lack of system capability knowledge generally in HR environments. Where I have see positive movement is when ‘new age’ HR senior resources are appointed ( execs that don’t come from an HR background ) – they have see decision making tools like Dashboards and Scorecards work in finance , procurement, marketing etc. and know the value that such tools can offer if they work correctly. The other thing that is pushing change is when HR departments have placed analytics people in their structures or CoE’s – they tend to increase accuracy of data and use the outputs to help support decision making. 

So while Dashboards are not the norm, these days I’m seeing more standard reports being generated that look a lot nicer – use of graphics etc. are definitely being used ( sometimes to hide the real answers though), but not seeing a lot using interactive graphics eg. Business objects type tools.

I should say again that I see a difference  between the use of dashboards at an executive vs operational level. The former is the area that is not doing well in my view ( ties into the maturity level of HR ).

So, should HR be going down the Dashboard route? In my opinion ….Yes , but the back end HR/People data must be trusted first, it must contain the data to support business decision making (not HR decision making…. there is a difference) and the dashboards should show direct lines of influence or effect on a business strategies (eg. What is the contribution from HR strategies on the annual 20% growth target). Dashboards for operational management is probably less useful, and the line managers need for this data is likely to be supported in MSS tools and tools like instant Analytics  (Workday approach).

So let me know your thoughts and experiences on the use of Dashboards in your HR world…….All ‘Chalk & Dust’ or ‘working well.

10 Things HR Transformation

Dug up an old presentation on HR Transformation. I remember putting this presentation together and at the time wondering how much of this would come to fruition in the general HR/Talent departments. I am pleased to say that there has been some movement in the right direction, but HR is generally still struggling to add visible, direct and aligned value to the overall business.

Of course it would be wrong to paint all HR departments with the same brush ~ I have seen some fantastic strategic changes in some clients where the HR role is integrated and critical to the overall business strategy – the CHRO is recognised as a real business agent. But in other (and sadly most companies) they are still little more that payroll/personnel departments. This is not to say that all HR departments should be strategic – in many organisations its not needed and there is no executive desire for a strategic role. The issue really is when HR tries and wants to be strategic, but just cannot get there. Often this is due to an incorrect level of HR Maturity, wrong HR leadership or an executive that needs education.

Enjoy the slides and let me know how you rate your HR department against the 10 focus areas.

 Click to Launch: 10 things HR transformation http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/8193759

HR System 2020 : Challenges & Opportunities

HR System 2020 : Challenges & Opportunities

My recent slides from the presentation I did at the Mastering SAP HR Conference in Sydney. The focus was on the future of HR systems, but rather than focus on the future features of such systems, I took a look at how the rise of personal measurement, and in particular health measurement, will impact the HR and broader work environment.

HR Systems 2020: The Challenges and Opportunities http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/8167048

The Future of HR Technology – Personal HR Databases

Its bound to happen sooner or later ~ the uptake of web2.0 or social networking tools has seen a large portion of the working population, students and scholars setting up pages that contain a fair amount of personal information on education, job history, life experiences etc. HR Professionals also know that people don’t stay in jobs as long as they did 10 years ago, and in that process of moving between jobs, much of that history of training, development programs, performance appraisal information and other data that is stored on the organisational HRIS is lost.

For many organisations hiring new staff – they have the proverbial forms that they ask to be filled out, but I would guess they tend to get far less information that they would like – often because the new hire can’t remember all the detail or couldn’t be bothered or the HR department has a policy to start from scratch. With web2.0 applications and cloud computing coming of age, there is no reason to source data from the new employees “Personal HR Database or Cloud” and likewise as information is updated on the in-house HR information system, a copy of that record can be provided back to the individuals cloud.

Even though most organisations are recovering from an economic downturn, we should not take our eye off the ball when it comes to effective talent strategies ~ the information that the employee does not provide because its not available or he forgot, could negatively influence your workforce planning, particularly as that sector of technology is making huge strides in the development of predictive modelling tools. Critical skills, or other skills and attributes  that an individual has acquired over the years are not know and organisations don’t leverage these strengths for the benefit of the employer and employee.

From an Employee Value Proposition, what a great attractor it will be for potential employees to know that you will automatically update their personal database with relevant HR information. Although I have no proof or seen any relevant research, I am almost  certain that most people will keep their personal HR database regularly updated more that they will inform their HR department of changes ~ especially if its linked to a popular social network. As people remember things or find old data whilst cleaning out a drawer, they will be more inclined to update their personal HR database because they are frequently interacting with their web 2.0 tool anyway.

How would these personal cloud databases operate. Well firstly, I think this would be a simple addition of services for the likes of Linkedin or Facebook – Account holders will simply update the pages with relevant personal information and have options to allow it to be downloaded by an employer or not. The pages will be flexible enough to receive “flat file” information from most HR systems that will  automatically be provided to the employee personal URL and the employee is then notified every time an update is made from his employers HRIS or the employer pulls information from the personal HR Database or cloud.

In the longer run, I can see Personal HR information systems being embedded into these personal cloud tool, that will allow peoples to do typical HR analytics on their own data eg. How marketable am I in the Financial industry? or do an  online gap analysis with a future employer prior to submitting a resume or application. How has my salary trended with similar jobs…

The creation of personal  HR databases will need some discipline from users – we have seen a number of horror stories with people being “too free” with their personal data and this leading to work related issues. But with the growth of web 2.0 there is a natural tendency to be more perceptive about control of your own data.

If this becomes a trend, then what will be the future for in-house HR systems and tools like Employee Self Service or workflow. What I have observed is that web 2.0 is providing people with power and ownership ~ thats not necessarily what current in-house HR Systems provide! –  let me know you thoughts and watch this space for some views on this soon.

What HR systems will need to support in the next 10 years

[Rob Scott wrote] An interesting statement indeed. For the last decade most vendors have focused on giving us more and more transactional capability in their HR systems because that’s what they thought HR departments needed.

To be frank about this, we have far to much functionality in most products  and vendors are struggling to keep up with the competition created to have the “Most Functionality” ~ Companies buy into products only to discover that the “core” of that particular system is fine, but the additional functionality tends to be weak, poorly integrated and is basically a “Pig with lipstick”. Future HR systems will need to refocus and support HR departments in different ways.

This is the paper I presented at the last IHRIM conference in Orlando, Florida (refer to previous blog). Its proved to be a very popular talk and we will be presenting it again via a web cast on 5 November 2008. If you are keen to enrol, click on this link http://www.ihrim.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=395&Itemid=1.

HR Technology needs to be thought of as Strategic

[Rob Scott writes] OK, I first need to set the scene….Earlier this year I was presenting a paper at an HR Technology conference in Orlando, Florida. The conference was attended by a spread of various levels of HR people. I did a presentation on the future of HR Technology and had a good turnout at my session (about 150 delegates).

Although the focus of the conference was on HR technology, my presentation naturally included links to HR Strategy, as I hold the firm belief that you can’t separate the two concepts and still expect to get the best value from either your new HR Strategy or your HR Technology (pretty obvious I thought). Now here is the key observation. I was amazed at the amount of people that I chatted to after the presentation who did not see this as an obvious link. They liked what I was saying about HR Strategy and HR Technology and were agreeing, but had not really thought through the implications before.

On reflection of this, It got me wondering why so many HR people still see HR Technology as a separate part of their lives, and have not generally started to question life beyond HR Transactional systems – why are they not asking what HR Technology can offer them at a strategic level ? This is an important question when one sees many HR departments starting on a transformation journey to add better value to their organisations, building HR Shared Service Centres, new age Centres of expertise and the all important HR Business partner. None of these components will ever reach the level of value-add that they potentially can offer, if the technology supporting these new HR organisations is not looked at with a strategic lens.

Not that I’m blowing my own trumpet, but my feedback ratings from the conference showed that 4.5 out of every 5 attendees found the presentation insightful, very useful and thought provoking. Mmmmm that’s more than 80% of the audience who found this strategic focus on HR Technology a “new and interesting concept”

So for every story I write about, I always try and look for some key learning’s for fellow HR Strategists, HR Technologist and HR Executives. Here are a few of my thoughts.

  • Senior HR VP’s need to consider raising the profile of HR Technology in their organisations beyond the transactional level
  • Appoint an HRIS strategist or create this as a part-time role for someone – the key skill here is not one of technical proficiency, but rather the ability to know how HR technology can be deployed to support strategic initiatives
  • Senior HR employees need insight and skill building on Strategic HR Technology
  • Senior HR employees who are driving out new HR strategies in their organisations need to be aware of the positive impact that a strategically focused view of HR Technology can have on the ability of HR to deliver better value to their organisation
  • Reposition HR Technology in the minds of HR folk and staff beyond that of a transactional system
  • Lastly, if you need help, get it – its worth it!

Can HR Technology save HR Departments

 [ Rob Scott writes:]

Will technology be the saviour of the HR profession? Human Capital management remains constrained by its own shackles, and seems to be struggling to move into its new transformed state of being a real strategic player in the organisation. Research shows that there is a definite move by most large organisation to transform Human resources management, but I still see much of this “wave” spinning off the back of technology change.

One of the reasons for this transformation via technology is the fact that HR is still largely administrative in nature, and until HR departments take real ownership of technology and streamline how the technology is used, many organisations will simply not allow HR to play a different and more strategic role in the organisation.

One of the issues I have grappled with in HR software, is it’s continued level of complexity. We still need resources in  HR departments to “Help Line Manage” the software. This is a crazy situation ~ and on top of it all HR often points towards the level of competence of the line manager and his lack of desire to manage people effectively as the reason for not using HR technology tools. I think we need to rethink the source of the problem.

The fact that we still need to put line managers through HR technology training tells an important story. Why have we not progressed to a point that using HR software is so intuitive that you merely have to know its there to use and using it is as simple as following on-line prompts. Using the organisational HR system should be like going to an ATM to draw money or using your on-line banking system ~ you never went on a training course to use those tools! ~ no wonder line manager and employees get frustrated with HR technology.

OK, so I hear you all shouting that ESS and MSS does make using the software easy, and I concede that this is partly true in theory. My personal experience with some very large organisations is that the tools are still underutilised and often do not support visibility of what is happening during transactions, which creates confusion and delays. Also when the transaction does happen, then core data is wrong eg. the Org structure is incorrect or a cost centre is old etc. In the end the line manager reverts back to someone in the HR department to help him sort out the problem. In short I still think the general experience for line managers is not pleasant. Another reason to doubt the effectiveness of ESS & MSS is that not too many HR departments have downsized (by 15-20%)with the introduction of these tools.

If the basic HR administrative systems are still too complicated then I suspect the more “strategic” HR components that are using HR technology eg. Talent management, Recruitment, Performance Management, Development planning etc. are facing an even bigger challenge.

So what is the answer? ~ Firstly we need to rethink HR’s approach to what is logical, and radically redefine processes so that it will make following an HR process (through technology) child’s play (I like Steve Job’s view on technology ” If a 5 year old can’t use it, its too complicated”).

Secondly I think HR vendors need a mind-shift. The development focus of HR tools is still strongly focused on collecting employee or applicant data and using it in a linear fashion. Getting the data is important, but I would like to see vendors spending far more effort in making their tools intuitive, calculating ,self learning and predictive. We need software that can provide more definite answers to a user and can take out the guessing work.

Thirdly we need a lot more HR folk that don’t think in a traditional fashion about HR or HR technology. This is why we are seeing many organisations hiring non-HR trained people into HR departments ~ it is  to challenge the conventional thinking, which HR itself has not been good at. These new-age HR resources need to take on the task of putting technology on the top of the HR agenda, ensuring it is fully intertwined into how HR operates.

Future HR is not the “cry on my shoulder” department any longer, and that is a big jump for many traditionalist. Their role is to provide services to the organisation that will make it more competitive through its people resources. HR technology is the catalyst for HR to get out of the administrative trap and move into a value adding role – but the HR mind-set must change!

The Future of HR Technology
About 8 years ago I presented a paper on what HR technology would have to support over the following 10 years ~ with great excitement I developed 5 critical areas that would be critical to HR’s survival, and to a large extent most of those did materialise (The only one that did’nt was my view that smart-card technology would play a bigger part in HR systems), nevertheless the point I am making is that the HR technology future was pretty clear back then because 10 years ago it was about optimising the operational side on HR technology. Back then Peoplesoft was the ERP system and was a leader in the field, with SAP and Oracle trailing in the dust. They eventually all caught up and are pretty much on an equal footing now. These systems as well as other great standalone HR/Payroll tools did help reposition HR to become excellent administrators (granted many system implementation were flops ~ but that’s a people issue).But with the current hype to improve HR’s value contribution to the business and reposition itself as a strategic player, I find myself contemplating the role that HR software will play in achieving this. What will HR systems need to support over the next 8-10 years.Of course the short term (2 years) improvement areas are pretty obvious, things such as more robust Talent Management tools, improved and integrated Strategic Workforce Planning tools, integration of Enterprise 2.0 tools to facilitate networking and more sophisticated Outsourcing components off the back of your own HR software (eg. plugging your SAP system onto a payroll outsourcer payroll engine.To a large extent though, these short term improvements are really more of the same ~ all of the reputable HR systems have to some extent components of these requirements (except Web 2.0), and will continually enhance them over time to suite their customer demands. But surely there must be be something more fundamental required to support a Strategic HR department, something beyond simply saying we will provide more sophisticated reporting, (slice-and-dice , drill down etc), because these sort of things may help, but won’t make a significant change.Understanding the strategic HR department of the future, may give some insight into the tools they will need. The Strategic HR department of the future will be less focused on the administration of people (in fact I foresee that HR admin will be removed from HR departments of the future to form part of a combined HR/Finance/other call centre and shared services team) and will focus on being a measurable component of the success (or failure) of an organisation. The CEO will want to know what % the HR department is contributing to shareholder value in a clear and unambiguous manner ~ just as he does of other departments. In order to achieve this, HR will need to become far more clear about how to measure their contributions and will definitely need a different level of sophistication in its tools to achieve this. No longer will a CEO accept that training turnout was 98%, unapproved absence was down to 2%, turnover was stable at 15% and so on, because these measures are meaningless and open to hours of useless debate about their relevance. No in future HR will need to be accountable to absolute specifics ~ The CEO will make (for example) HR accountable for 3 of the 16% growth in net profit over the next 2 years, accountable for 10% of the savings required from marginal operations and 18% for the effectiveness of the next M&A.

A few gasps of air, I hear being taken by concerned HR directors…. but here is the deal, you cannot be a strategic playing in today’s organisations without being accountable for the success (or failure) of the organisation. HR cannot be the fence sitter or referee anymore if they claim to want a strategic status.

Anyway back to the point on HRIS ~ HR will need a new set of tools that allow it to cascade a business strategy more eloquently into an HR strategy that is measurable, it goes beyond a balanced score-card, its lends itself to a new level of sophistication.

More to follow, but your thoughts are welcome.