Ten things to watch in 2014

At the start of the New Year the marketing/branding/digital design firm JWT releases a really cool and interesting collection of '100 Things to Watch' for the upcoming year - a collection of new ideas, trends, technologies, societal shifts, etc. that are meant to stimulate thinking and generate discussion. Many of the 'things to watch' are kind of uber-trendy and destined to be largely unimportant and fleeting, (fast food tofu, Oculus Rift, and Chinese Wine), but others, particularly the tech trends that JWT identifies have the potential to be more significant, enduring, and even influential in the design of workplaces and the nature and manner in which work is performed. And last year we even had some fun talking about some of these items, 'Adult Playgrounds' in particular, on the HR Happy Hour Show in the past.

The entire JWT slide presentation is embedded below, (email and RSS subscribers may need to click through), and after the deck I'll pull a few of the 'things to watch' that are likely to be more relevant and meaningful to work and workplaces.

JWT: 100 Things to Watch in 2014 from JWTIntelligence

So which of the 100 things should you as an HR and Talent pro be on the watch for?

Here are just a few from the JWT deck that I think you should keep an eye on.

6. Ambient Commerce - As a means to improve customer service, 'ambient' systems will use data and signals to track consumer needs, anticipate them in advance, and provide products and services before they are even requested. This is the 'smart refrigerator' that orders more milk for you one day before it thinks you are going to run out (or it spoils). For our workplaces, meeting this expectation of our customers is going to require us to spend more time and resources on new systems and methods to better understand what our customers are likely to want to do next based on what they have done in the past.

8. Arrested IRL Development - Growing up online and attached to your smartphone could mean an entire generation of new workers with less or even limited understanding of how to work, communicate, and socialize in real life (IRL). For HR and the workplace this could mean more time and attention spent in new hire onboarding programs on things like running and participating in meetings, writing and communicating more formally, and even how to handle yourself at a business meal or corporate cocktail hour.

11. Beacons - These are the signals that network-connected smartphones send and that are going to be increasingly used to identify, track, and customize the on-site shopping experience for customers at all kinds of venues. Retail store, museums, and even sporting events are just a few of the potential applications of this technology. For HR and work the implications are vast - but the first and most likely could be in retail or other high customer touchpoint businesses. Workers can be given much more specific, targeted information about customers and prospects prior to making initial contact, and will be required to process and evaluate much more information prior to engaging the customer as well.

25. Contemplative Computing - This is a big, catch-many things kind of idea, but the important element is meant to answer the question of 'How can our computing/devices/social networks become less of a distraction and burden and more of a helper, guide, and trusted advisor?' For work and workplaces, it is almost certain that many of our employees are already feeling significant information overload, (that is getting worse by the day), so smart organizations will take steps to ensure the systems and devices that employees use are not placing even more stress on them, and rather, are actually helping them get their jobs done, (which will make them less stressed out).

35. E-cigarette Regulation - This could be a big 'nothing to see here' kind of trend, as it can be really simple, especially for workplaces, to interpret and treat E-cigarettes the same way most of us treat tobacco products already (banned at work, we won't hire you if you use them, if you do use them be prepared to pay 476% more for your company-sponsored medical insurance, etc.). But if the E-cigarette market continues to grow, and employees and customers push back on rules and regulations that restrict their usage, then HR will need to sort out the best way forward. Or you could just pro-actively ban them tomorrow and not worry about this one.

37. Equal rights for men - This one might provoke some calls of BS from readers, as the workplace has pretty much always been a man's world, so rather than try and convince you on this, I will just pull the quote from the JWT slide and let you make your own determination if or when this trend might impact your organization. 

According to our research, men feel it has become harder to be a man today, and harder to succeed in the working world as a father and husband. Watch for a rise in male-focused support systems and advocacy groups as society comes to understand that many me would be well-served by some of the mechanisms in place to boost women.

41. Glanceable User Interfaces - Think about the best, most helpful, and easiest to use apps you have on your phone right now. Chances are they provide just the right amount of information to make a decision or get a needed update in just a glance or a swipe. So much of how we process, take in, and interpret signals and information is happening on tiny screens that we operate with one thumb that designers and developers are challenged to make what is presented on the first glance be meaningful and relevant. For you, it means one thing primarily - distill your delivery of information as far down as possible, and make it work on a 4-inch screen. Unlike this post, which is going to clock in at over 1500 words I bet.

47. Hashtag fatigue - What once was a clever way to help organize and make findable related information on social networks has morphed in many instances into an incredibly annoying game of 'Look at me and look at my stuff'. If you are a heavy Twitter user you know what I am talking about - people and brands 'hashtagging' unrelated (or even every single update) content with a popular or trending hashtag in a desperate and pathetic attempt to be noticed. If you do this personally or as a part of your HR/Recruiting game, you should stop. #Imeanit.

50. Human Touches - This is the natural backlash to an increasingly technology augmented and disconnected world. JWT sees opportunity for organizations that can figure out ways to supplement their technological interactions with customers (or for HR, employees or candidates), with personal and more human touches. This is not going to be easy for most, as the same technologies that enable processes to succeed at scale simultaneously work against the ability or capacity to allow more human contact. If you can figure our the best way to balance these conflicts however, you will likely have an edge in the markets in which you compete.

63. Minute to read it - In our increasingly busy, over-stimulated, and time-crunched world accurate estimates for the length of time it will take to read a report, process a transaction, or even sit in a meeting or phone call are becoming more and more important. How much more could you get done if you could only be more precise about how long it will take to actually get something done? For HR and Talent - maybe pushing back on your HR Tech providers to build this kind of predictive estimation into their tools would be a start. Think of annual benefits open enrollment or processing a self-appraisal. Giving employees and up-front (and smart, as it should be a learning algorithm) estimated length of time to complete would be a real win in most organizations.

That was 10 things that I thought were interesting and/or had some potentially relevant implications for HR and Talent pros, but looking through the entire list I could not stop at 10, so here are two more bonus trends to consider in 2014:

72. Robotic Security Guards - You know I could not resist shoe horning some Robot content into a piece like this, right? To me, this one is kind of a no-brainer. The technology already exists, the demand for this kind of solution seems likely to be significant, and it could even be a way to slowly introduce 'companion worker' type robots into more settings. In 2014 you might just have your first interaction with one of these.

97. Verified Reviewers - Ever wonder if those Yelp or TripAdvisor reviews that you rely on to make restaurant or travel decisions are actually real? Or if they are being left my people with similar tastes and sensibilities as yours? Well this trend, similar to the traditional old school newspaper movie or food critics, points to a future where the usually anonymous online reviewer ascends to a more verifiable (and possibly influential) position. What might that mean for your HR or talent role? Probably something that points to the importance of strong and trustworthy brand advocates, be they external to the organization, (thinking former employees most likely), or internal ones (that have developed a reputation for integrity that moves beyond company or brand shills).

So that's it - another epic take on the upcoming trends for next year, (I am sure you are sick of them).

What do you think? On the mark? Crazy?

Time will tell.

If you take a few minutes to have a look through the entire list, let me know what other 'Things to Watch in 2014' you think will impact the world of work.

Welcome back

Happy 2014!

It's good to be back as it were, after a couple of weeks of running old posts, not writing much of anything new, and more or less laying low and attempting to keep warm. I did learn at least one new phrase over the holidays, 'Polar Vortex', although it is assuredly one I could have done without.

Prior to the holidays kicking off, as I was scrolling back through the 2013 blog archives to find what I thought were some of the better and most representative posts to re-publish it during the last two weeks it struck me (finally) as to what this blog is really about, or perhaps said better, what topics and subjects about which I am actually interested in learning, sharing, and offering opinions on.  For me, 2013 was mostly about three main subject areas:

1. Advances in robot technology and the increasing automation of the workplace and of other technologies (like self-driving cars, Google Glass, etc.).

2. Macro economic, demographic, and societal trends that impact our organizations and our professional lives. Things like the aging of the workforce and the true or possibly not true skills gap that gets bandied about from time to time.

3. How data is changing work, the practice of HR and management, and even our personal lives as well. In that vein, my single favorite post from 2013 was the one about the trucking company that is combining operational data from the trucks themselves with ‘softer’ HR data to make managerial interventions.

There are some other things mixed in there for sure, like sports and HR and the occasional rant/take on the (tiresome) ‘Company culture is more important that anything’ meme that will never seem to go away. And I will (naturally) use this blog to help promote those things that do keep the lights on, like the HR Technology Conference, HRevolution, the HR Happy Hour Show, and other miscellaneous things I will be doing in 2014. But for the most part the blog will remain about what I think are the most interesting and most important ideas and topics that affect the way we work and the way we interact with technology to do that work.

Since this blog, or most anyone's personal blog for that matter, is just an outlet and a hobby more or less, it naturally is going to reflect my interests, Whether or not anyone else finds them interesting is another matter. My sense from a cursory scan of site traffic over the years suggests that there are at least a few of you out there, but your numbers certainly aren't growing too much!

But regardless of traffic or comments or social shares, I personally still find writing on the blog to be fun, challenging, and beneficial. And I do want to thank everyone that has visited in the past and that will stop by in 2014.

As always, I welcome comments, ideas, suggestions, etc. I will note, and this is is mainly for the PR types that might see this, I am really not that interested in running guest posts from people I have never met, publishing your client’s infographics about anything, or writing about anything that is ‘under embargo’.

Ok, that is it  - have a fantastic, successful, and fun 2014 everyone!

REPRISE: On the display of the spoils of victory

Note: The blog is taking some well-deserved rest for the next two weeks (that is code for I am pretty much out of decent ideas, and I doubt most folks are spending their holidays reading blogs anyway), and will be re-running some of best, or at least most interesting posts from 2013. Maybe you missed these the first time around or maybe you didn't really miss them, but either way they are presented for your consideration. Thanks to everyone who stopped by in 2013!

Spending a couple of hours combing through the 2013 archives to find the ones to re-run these last two weeks made something incredibly clear to me - I was obsessed with robots. So for the last REPRISE post I had to find something that was not about automation or scary robots or our increasingly frightening future. The below post was one that I liked a lot, and it was NOT ABOUT ROBOTS. This was a look at where and how we choose to display things like trophies or awards says about us, our workplaces, and what we value. The piece originally ran in September 2013.

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On the display of the spolis of victory

Last night I attended the back to school open house and curriculum review event held at the middle school that my son attends. It was altogether an interesting and well-run event, the school is one of the finest in all of New York State, the teachers were energetic and engaged, and the administrators are committed to high academic standards and to creating an environment of respect, inclusion, and student success.

Actually in the several years my son has attended schools in this district I have been continually impressed with the quality of instruction and the emphasis on achievement.  And by that I mean academic achievement. Sure, the school has all the requisite sports teams that most other schools do, but I never get the feeling that the sports teams are all that important, and certainly not nearly as important to the overall school and local community as they can be in other parts of the country.

The tour around the school progressed and at a point late in the program we reached a large, windowless  classroom located sort of in the way, way back of the school that is the home to for lack of a better term, the 'gifted' or 'extra special' classes. You know the kinds of classes where students that are doing well in their regular courses get to extend and stretch into new and different kinds of assignments and activities. Some of the projects the kids take on involve exploring in greater detail aspects of their more formal course work, while others are completely new endeavors like movie making or creating school and community service projects.

One of the activities associated with this 'extra' instruction class is the classic Academic Challenge Competition, that I remember from back in the day as the 'College Bowl'.  You know, this was the contest that pits teams of students against other schools in a Jeopardy! like setting to see which schools team has the most, (and fastest), knowledge of math, science, history, geography, and so on. As the teacher was describing the Academic Challenge team and telling us parents about how the team competes in various competitions, she remarked how our school's team had been pretty successful over the years, winning or placing in many top-level competitions. 

As evidence of this success, she pointed to a large shelf on one side of the long room that was the home of two or three rows of similarly sized and shaped trophies, and said something like 'And you can see a few of the trophies our teams have won over the years over there."

I thought, as I looked at the dozen or so trophies that were won for academic successes and were being kept in a room way in the far back corner of the school, that it was kind of funny that even in a school not known for and all that focused on sports that the similar prizes won for winning the odd volleyball or lacrosse or soccer title over the years were prominently displayed in a custom and large glass covered trophy case in the school's lobby, within the sight lines of everyone entering the school.

I suppose it matters, at least some, how we present, display, and commemorate our successes. 

Note: That is it for REPRISE WEEK(s), thanks for checking out some of these older posts and I will be back with fresh, juicy content next week. I hope you have a fantastic 2014!

REPRISE: Happiness and HR Data - Coming to a Delivery Truck Near You

Note: The blog is taking some well-deserved rest for the next two weeks (that is code for I am pretty much out of decent ideas, and I doubt most folks are spending their holidays reading blogs anyway), and will be re-running some of best, or at least most interesting posts from 2013. Maybe you missed these the first time around or maybe you didn't really miss them, but either way they are presented for your consideration. Thanks to everyone who stopped by in 2013!

If 2013 was the year of Robots and Automation, then the first runner up for topic of the year would probably have been Data and Analytics. The below post was my personal favorite example of the topic and what the future (the near future I bet) will hold for how data about people will be combined with data about machines and mashed up with process design in order to drive business outcomes. The piece originally ran in August 2013.

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Happiness and HR Data - Coming to a Delivery Truck Near You

Sometimes in all the conversation in the HR/talent space about the increased use of data, Big Data, and workforce analytics by HR leaders and organizations that practical, innovative (and possibly somewhat creepy), examples of how all this data coupled with better tools to understand it all are sometimes hard to find. Or hard to understand. Or not really specific enough that they resonate with many HR and Talent pros.

Lots of the articles and analysis about data and analytics for HR end up reading more like, 'This is going to be important', or 'This is going to be extremely important and you are not ready for it', or even 'This is going to be extremely important, you are not ready for it, but I (or my company) is ready to help you sort it out.'

Fortunately for you, this is not one of those kind of articles.

Over the weekend I read a long-ish piece called Unhappy Truckers and Other Algorithmic Problems on the Nautilus site, that provides one of the most interesting and practical examples of how a better understanding of HR data, (among other things), is helping transportation companies plan routes, assign work, and execute managerial interventions, often before they are even needed.

At the core of most transportation and delivery problems is essentially a logistics challenge as the 'Traveling Salesman' problem.  Given a fixed time period, say a day or an 8-Hour shift, and set number of destinations to visit to make sales calls, how then should the traveling salesman plan his route for the maximum efficiency. 

For a salesperson making four or five stops in a day the problem is usually not that hard to solve, but for say a UPS or FedEx delivery truck driver who may have as many as 150 stops in a day - well that problem of math and logistics gets much, much more complex.  And, as the piece from Nautilus describes, the Traveling Salesman problem is not only incredibly important for transportation companies to try and solve, it becomes even more complex when we factor in the the delivery drivers are actual human beings, and not just parts of an equation on a whiteboard.

Check out this excerpt from the piece to see how one (unnamed) delivery company is taking HR and workforce data, couples with the realization that indeed, people are a key element,  and baking it in to the classic math problem of the Traveling Salesman:

People are also emotional, and it turns out an unhappy truck driver can be trouble. Modern routing models incorporate whether a truck driver is happy or not—something he may not know about himself. For example, one major trucking company that declined to be named does “predictive analysis” on when drivers are at greater risk of being involved in a crash. Not only does the company have information on how the truck is being driven—speeding, hard-braking events, rapid lane changes—but on the life of the driver. “We actually have built into the model a number of indicators that could be surrogates for dissatisfaction,” said one employee familiar with the program.

This could be a change in a driver’s take-home pay, a life event like a death in the family or divorce, or something as subtle as a driver whose morning start time has been suddenly changed. The analysis takes into account everything the company’s engineers can think of, and then teases out which factors seem correlated to accident risk. Drivers who appear to be at highest risk are flagged. Then there are programs in place to ensure the driver’s manager will talk to a flagged driver.

In other words, the traveling salesman problem grows considerably more complex when you actually have to think about the happiness of the salesman. And, not only do you have to know when he’s unhappy, you have to know if your model might make him unhappy. Warren Powell, director of the Castle Laboratory at Princeton University’s Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering, has optimized transportation companies from Netjets to Burlington Northern. He recalls how, at Yellow Freight company, “we were doing things with drivers—they said, you just can’t do that.” There were union rules, there was industry practice. Tractors can be stored anywhere, humans like to go home at night. “I said we’re going to need a file with 2,000 rules. Trucks are simple; drivers are complicated."

Did you catch all the HR/talent/workforce data baked into the model described above?

Payroll, time and attendance, life events that likely would show up in the benefits admin system, scheduling are all mentioned, and I bet digging deeper into the model we'd find even more 'talent' elements like supervisor or location changes, time since a driver's last compensation increase, and maybe even 'softer' items like participation in company events or number of unread emails in their inbox.

The specifics of what bits of talent data aere being incorporated into the process matter less than the fact that in the example the HR data is being mashed up so to speak with the 'hard' data from the truck itself (which is another interesting story as well), and analyzed against past driver experiences to alert managers as to when and where an accident is more likely to occur.

There is even more to the problem than the technical observations from the truck itself, and the alogorithms' assessment of the HR/Talent data - things like Union rules and contracts factor into the equation as well. 

But for me, this example of taking HR data and using it not just to try and 'predict' HR events like involuntary turnover or a better or worse performance review score, and apply it to real business outcomes, (the likelihood of accidents) represents a great example of where 'Big Data for HR' is heading.

I definitely recommend taking a few minutes this week to read the entire piece on the Nautilus site, and then think about some the next time the FedEx driver turns up with a package.

REPRISE: The State of the Future

Note: The blog is taking some well-deserved rest for the next two weeks (that is code for I am pretty much out of decent ideas, and I doubt most folks are spending their holidays reading blogs anyway), and will be re-running some of best, or at least most interesting posts from 2013. Maybe you missed these the first time around or maybe you didn't really miss them, but either way they are presented for your consideration. Thanks to everyone who stopped by in 2013!

Since it is New Year's Day, and I am purposefully avoiding writing an inane 'predictions' post  (Wow, do you really think mobile will be big in 2014?), I found the closest thing to the same kind of piece in the 2013 archive. The below post took a look at what people who make a living attempting to see the future, i.e. Futurists, talk about when they get together to talk about the Future. The piece originally ran in July 2013.

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The State of the Future

Pretty much every HR/workplace/talent blog or blogger has at one time or another taken a stab at defining or predicting the 'Workplace of the future' or tried to opine on 'The future of work.' Speculating on the future is kind of fun for a blogger, I know I have done a bunch of pieces like that over the years. Those kind of posts are also fun due to the complete lack of accountability towards the accuracy of any of the predictions. I could post that intelligent and full articulated robots like Atlas, (aside - Atlas is super cool, and I have to post about him/her/it separately), will replace all HR/Talent functions in the organization by 2020 and pretty much feel confident even if I am wrong, no one is going to call me out about it seven years from now.

But there is another category of folks that spend even more time waxing philosophic about the future - actual futurists. People who spend pretty much all their time trying to spot new trends, consider what new technologies may emerge, (and how existing ones will change the world), and often try to help companies and governments with long, and even really long-term planning.  

And when futurists get together, they talk about the future - duh!. And just like in the HR space when after a big event like SHRM or HR Tech there are articles posted that reflect not just on the event itself, but also on the industry overall. And often these 'state of the industry/discipline' pieces are more interesting than specific or detailed event reports. A really good industry thinker is concerned more with and attempts to make these larger connections and conclusions by piecing together, comparing, and connecting lots of smaller data points.

So why did I start this post talking about futurists?

Because over the weekend I read this really interesting piece titled Dispatch From the Futures: Thoughts on WorldFuture2013, about a recent conference for futurists, and the overall state of that discipline - a kind of 'State of the Future' if that makes sense. 

In the piece, the author breaks down what he/she, sees as some of the challenges facing the folks who get paid to see into the future, and while I encourage you to check out the entire piece, I'm going to drop a couple of the issues raised here, as I think they do resonate with folks in the HR/Talent space.

From the Futurist:

Radar or Canvass?  Is foresight and the work of futurists primarily focused on scanning for dangerous futures (radar) or building new ones (canvass)?  Again, this is a false dichotomy, but an important one.  My sense is that governments and larger corporations focus on radar, while innovative companies focus on the canvass.  And this thought experiment leads me to one of the more interesting questions posed at WorldFuture. 

HR takeaway?

When faced with something new - like the emergence of social media, or of wearable technology, or of changing demands of a new generation of workers - how much time do you spend thinking and preparing for the worst, or at least thinking about things through a lens of risk mitigation? What percent of your time is spent developing ways to positively leverage these changes?

From the Futurist:

New Novelties vs. Megatrends: There is a tension between learning about entirely new future scenarios on one hand and exploring the evolution of already identified megatrends.  Take 3D printing.  Most of my friends at WorldFuture were already well aware of 3D printing and its impacts on the futures.  But, despite the fact that most futurists were all over 3D printing several years ago, this tech is still in its infancy and could revolutionize manufacturing and commerce.  It’s a huge and important trend worthy of study regardless of how long it’s been on your radar.

HR takeaway?

It is really easy to want to jump two or three steps ahead of the organization and push for adoption of the very latest and coolest new thing. But are you getting the most benefit out of the 'old' tools and technologies you already possess? Chances are there is a lot of untapped potential in things that seem old, but really are new to you and your teams. You don't always need to be first to adopt something in order to seem cool.

From the Futurist:

Resilience:  Although very few sessions covered this topic, many of my discussions were on resilience.  If the industrial era was about efficiency, perhaps the near future will be most about resilience, as people and societies develop hedging strategies as a means of coping with dramatic change.  How might we classify these resilience strategies? 

HR takeaway?

Are you assessing candidates for something like resilience? Are you coaching managers and leaders to instill this trait in their teams? Do you even consider yourself and your HR shop to be resilient? If the futurists are right about this one, it seems like you should be thinking just a little about how or not your organization stacks up here.

Like I mentioned you should take a few minutes and check out the entire piece here and I will let it go at that.

You might think that the Futurists are kind of the modern-day snake oil hucksters, but one thing is for certain - the future is coming for you and your organization whether you are prepared for it or not.