HRE Column: Making Better HR Decisions Using HR Tech

Yes, you may have noticed that I have been writing a little bit less frequently here on the blog. The combination of a ton of travel in September, helping deliver the largest HR Technology Conference ever, and keeping the growing HR Happy Hour Podcast Network going are all taking up quite a few cycles lately. But I am still writing over at Human Resource Executive where my latest column just posted.

The piece is titled How Technology Helps Us Make Better HR Decisions and is a reflection on some of the more important topics in HR and HR Tech today - data, and making sense of data, and understanding how modern HR tech can help us make better HR and Talent decisions.

Here's an excerpt from the piece on HRE:

With the HR Technology Conference just completed a few weeks ago, I have had some time to attend a few industry events, record new episodes of the HR Happy Hour Podcast, and give a presentation on data, technology and decision-making in HR and talent management.

In preparing for that talk, I referenced two highly recommended books, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellberg; and Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb. While neither book is “about” HR—or even the workplace—both provided some excellent frameworks for thinking about information, data, technology and AI, and had great examples of how understanding these “non-HR” concepts can help those of us in HR get better at making talent decisions.

I thought I’d devote this month’s column to sharing a few ideas from those books and my own personal thoughts on how we might want to view our people challenges a little differently.

1. Data don’t always mean what you think they mean.

How Not to Be Wrong opens with an extremely interesting tale from World War II. As air warfare gained prominence, the challenge for the military was figuring out where and in what amount to apply protective armor to fighter planes and bombers. Apply too much armor and the planes become slower, less maneuverable and use more fuel. Too little armor, or if it’s in the “wrong” places, and the planes run a higher risk of being brought down by enemy fire.

To make these determinations, military leaders examined the amount and placement of bullet holes on damaged planes that returned to base following their missions. The data showed almost twice as much damage to the fuselage of the planes compared to other areas, most specifically the engine compartments, which generally had little damage. This data led the military leaders to conclude that more armor needed to be placed on the fuselage.

But mathematician Abraham Wald examined the data and came to the opposite conclusion. The armor, Wald said, doesn’t go where the bullet holes are; instead, it should go where the bullet holes aren’t, specifically, on the engines. The key insight came when Wald looked at the damaged planes that returned to the base and asked where all the “missing” bullet holes to the engines were. The answer was the “missing” bullet holes were on the missing planes, i.e. the ones that didn’t make it back safely to base. Planes that got hit in the engines didn’t come back, but those that sustained damage to the fuselage generally could make it safely back. 

Read the rest at HRE Online...

You can also subscribe on HRE Online to get my monthly Inside HR Tech column via email here. I promise it will be the most exciting email you will ever receive. 

Thanks for checking out the column, the blog, the podcasts, the 'Alexa' show, and all the nonsense I'm now in my second decade of churning out. 

Have a great weekend!

HRE Column: Five Things I'm Looking Forward to at HR Tech #HRTechConf

I have been a little slack in posting links back to my monthly column over at HR Executive Online but fear not gentle readers, I have not abandoned this essential public service.

So without further delay, here is the link to my latest Inside HR Tech piece at HR Executive - 5 Things I'm Looking Forward to at HR Tech.

From the piece:

This is the last Inside HR Tech column prior to the HR Tech Conference in September and, since I am pretty well consumed at this point with the final plans for the event, I want to use this space to reflect on the HR-tech market and the themes that have emerged during this year’s planning for the event.

Great HR is simple and complex at the same time.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the last several weeks working on one of our featured sessions, “What It Takes to be a Most Admired Company for HR,” a panel discussion featuring the CHROs from several of the world’s most well-known and successful companies (Delta Airlines, Walt Disney Co. and Accenture, to name a few). After talking with each of these CHROs about their business, their challenges, and their approaches and philosophies about the role of HR, I’ve noticed two important things. One is that every one of these leaders spent most of our conversation talking about their company’s culture and the role of HR and the CHRO in building, strengthening and promoting their culture. 

The other is that, while each CHRO focuses intently on culture, how that manifests in specific HR and talent practices and programs is very different in each organization.

Succeeding with HR technology is paramount for HR.

I talk with many executives from the leading HR-technology-solution providers and, in the past year or two, the phrase “customer success” has come up more than ever. Now that cloud-based SaaS delivery of HR technology is the de facto industry standard, providers have been forced to focus on the success of their customers as a primary driver and metric. While that focus is a positive development for customers, it is not enough to ensure your organization is truly set up to succeed. And since the HR-tech market keeps growing, even understanding your options is becoming more difficult. This complexity and the importance of customer success with HR tech are why we focus so heavily on this topic at HR Tech, with a series of expert sessions covering both the “functional” elements of success (such as business case, vendor selection and implementation teams) as well as the more “technical” aspects (including cloud migration, integration and testing)....

Read the rest of the piece over at HR Executive Online...

And remember to subscribe to get my monthly Inside HR Tech column via email on the subscription sign-up page here. The first 25 new subscribers get a coffee mug personalized with a picture of me. Well, maybe. 

Finally, you can still register to attend the HR Technology Conference, September 11 - 14 in Las Vegas. Use my code STEVE300 for $300 off your conference pass.

Thanks and have a great day!

WEBCAST: Discovering the Next Great HR Technology Company Final Four Reveal #HRTechConf

Quick note for a 'I can't believe summer is almost over and the HR Technology Conference is only about two weeks away' Monday.

Today at 4PM EDT on a special LIVE Webcast I will be joined by George LaRocque, Lance Haun, Madeline Laurano, and Ben Eubanks - the experts who helped select the seven semi-finalists in the HR Tech Conference's 'Discovering the Next Great HR Technology Company' competition.

On the webcast we will reveal the Top Four vote-getting companies who came out on top of our online voting process and who will advance to participate and present next month at HR Tech. We will also, by random draw, pair up each Finalist company with one of our expert coaches who will help them get ready for the big stage.

Register HERE to see the Final Four companies revealed LIVE in this special webcast on Monday August 27th at 4PM EDT featuring expert coaches George LaRocque, Ben Eubanks, Madeline Laurano, Lance Haun, and host Steve Boese.

It should be really fun, hope you can join us at 4PM EDT today!

ANNOUNCEMENT: Voting for the Next Great HR Technology Company is Open #HRTechConf

The competition for the Final Four places in the 2018 Discovering the Next Great HR Technology Company Competition at the HR Technology Conference is on!

Head over to the HR Tech Insiders site to read profiles, view screenshots, and check out videos for all seven semi-finalist companies vying for a place in the Final Four at the Next Great HR Technology Company session at the Conference in September.

From there, you can register your selections for your favorites in our online voting and on August 27 learn which four companies have advanced to the finals.

Good luck to all the companies in the Semi-Finals.

Voting will close at Midnight EDT Friday, August 24, so don’t hesitate – vote today!

A (slight) pause in the robot job takeover

Quick report for the last day of July from the robots are taking all the jobs frontier. It looks like, at least for now, one of the important, (and widely held) jobs that has seemed most vulnerable to eventual robot takeover may remain the province of humans a little bit longer.

The job is over the road truck driver, a job that has been in the news plenty lately, mostly in the context of pretty significant labor shortages. Shipping companies and manufacturers are having a hard time recruiting new truck drivers into what is a demanding profession, the existing supply of truckers are starting to age out of the workforce, and efforts to improve pay and conditions for truckers, (which in theory helps with recruiting and retention), have so far had mixed results.

These factors, combined with the seeming dozens of high tech companies actively working on self-driving transportation technologies have led many industry observers to predict that self-driving trucks and associated technologies would sooner than later begin to be introduced into the industry. It makes sense for sure, the combination of a human labor replacing opportunity, with a technology that has been in development for quite some time, and a clear economic need that continues to grow have created what most industry experts considered a kind of perfect storm for truck drivers. In fact, all the coverage and noise about how the profession of truck driving is doomed, (for people), probably is contributing to the current truck driver shortfall. Who wants to enter an industry where 5 or 10 years from now you'll be replaced with a self-driving truck?

But some news broke a couple of days ago that may give this entire narrative pause. Our pals at Uber, long-considered one of the leaders in developing self-driving trucks and technology is stepping back from their development efforts. From a piece covering the news in Venture Beat:

Uber is shifting resources away from the self-driving truck unit within its Advanced Technologies Group, the company announced today in an email to reporters. For the time being, it’s ceasing development on the autonomous freight platform it acquired from autonomous tech company Otto.

“We’ve decided to stop development on our self-driving truck program and move forward exclusively with cars,” Eric Meyhofer, head of Uber Advanced Technologies Group, said in a statement. “We recently took the important step of returning to public roads in Pittsburgh, and as we look to continue that momentum, we believe having our entire team’s energy and expertise focused on this effort is the best path forward.”

It's a pretty interesting move by Uber, who has had a bunch of other problems to deal with over the last couple of years, but to shift their self-driving tech development and focus from trucking to cars probably indicates the trucking problem is much tougher to solve than they realized.

Truck drivers, as it has been reported, do plenty of other things besides keep the vehicle between the white lines on the freeway. Load inspection and balancing, monitoring vehicle performance, consideration of local weather and traffic conditions, and finally, negotiating the often tricky and challenging last miles of a delivery and plenty more. Uber likely has found that solving all of these problems and delivering true 'self-driving' trucking solutions has turned out to be harder than it seems.

And that is probably a lesson we can take in other domains as well. As robots and technolgy advance in capability, it can be easy to underestimate all the added value and unique value that humans bring to their work. It's not easy building a self-driving truck that can replace a human truck driver.

It's probably not going to be easy to build technology to replace you or me either. (Let's hope).

Have a great day!