HRE Column: Succeeding with HR Tech - Part 2

Once again, I offer my semi-frequent reminder and pointer for blog readers that I also write a monthly column at Human Resource Executive Online called Inside HR Tech that can be found here.

This month, I continue the topic of 'Success with HR Tech' that we covered first in February with a look at some of the external factors that impact HR Technology projects. In the March column, we pivot to examine a few of the internal issues, challenges, and opportunities that perhaps have even more of an impact and influence on success with HR tech.

These are two of the major themes that we will be focusing on for the next HR Technology Conference - the nature of 'success' with your HR technology initiatives, and we will focus on the key issues, themes, and considerations for HR Tech projects, vendor relationships, and internal program/project best practices that are essential for success, and that will be covered in more detail at the Conference this year.

In the piece, I take a look at some of the issues and considerations that HR leaders should keep in mind as they build a business case for HR tech projects, evaluate potential solution providers, organize and staff project teams, execute their implementations, and finally deal with the important topics of change management and user adoption.

Here's an excerpt from this month's piece in HRE Online:

Last month’s column focused on the “success” theme while looking at the considerations and questions you should ask of prospective HR tech solution providers prior to purchasing any HR technology solution. This time around, we will look at some of the internal factors that are vital to customer success in HR tech.

The organizational elements of success with HR technology will be highlighted this September at the HR Technology Conference and Exposition^® in Las Vegas, and the combination of information and best practices on these “outside” (or provider) elements—along with the “inside” (or organizational) elements—will provide HR and HRIT leaders with the foundation for overall HR tech success.

Here are a few of the key internal elements that organizations must address when planning, executing, evaluating and achieving long-term success with HR technology.

Creating the business case

Almost every organization’s HR technology initiatives require internal justification, a budget and executive support, and the means to define and secure these commitments is usually the business case. But for many HR leaders, preparing a technology-centric business case meant to form the basis for HR technology investments is not always easy.

Here are a few of the key questions that the HR technology program business case should answer.

The purpose: What specific business problem needs to be solved?

The importance: What is the negative impact or value of the missed opportunity by not solving this problem?

The benefit: Stated in quantitative terms, what happens to the business if we do solve this problem?

Potential approaches: What are some plausible ways to address the business problem?

Recommendations for action: What are the specific recommendations for next steps? Give special attention to how HR technology will support/drive the business problem’s solution.

Managing the vendor selection

Once the organization’s business case has been approved, perhaps the most interesting and difficult process begins: making a technology and vendor selection.  Successful organizations process through and address many of the following considerations when making such selections:

Identify “must-have” business requirements. Recognize the necessary business-critical capabilities—ones that directly impact the business problem your business case defines—so that you can ensure they can be supported by the selected technology solution.

Be honest about “nice-to-have” requirements. Take care to understand the difference between critical system capability and other functionality that some users may love but are not fundamentally important to support business processes and solve business problems. No HR technology solution will meet 100 percent of a company’s requirements. The key is knowing that not all requirements are the same.

Understand the internal factors for success. Who will be the users of this solution? What specifically are their needs? How is their ability and capacity to embrace and adopt new technology? Not all technology solutions are a “fit” with all organizations. Make sure your unique and specific organizational attributes are aligned with the technology provider.

Gather your candidates. There are increasing sources for HR leaders to create lists of potential solution providers for their HR technology evaluations. From traditional research reports, crowd-sourced software review sites, recommendations from peers, to previous experience with specific solutions, there is plenty of market information available. At HR Tech, we will help you understand how to make sense of all this information to help you narrow down the list that gives your program the best chance for success.

Assess the providers. Once the short list of technology providers has been created, HR leaders should approach assessment and evaluation in a thorough and consistent manner. Key considerations in this process include the ability of each provider to meet your prioritized requirements, how each solution matches or fits your organization’s user profiles and culture, how the provider aligns with your goals and vision, and finally, how you assess the provider’s willingness and ability to be a true business partner, not just a technology supplier...

Read the rest at HR Executive online...

If you liked the piece you can sign up over at HRE to get the Inside HR Tech Column emailed to you each month. There is no cost to subscribe, in fact, I may even come over and plant your spring garden, take your dog for a walk, or re-surface your driveway.

Have a great day!

More from the 'Robots are making people obsolete' front lines

I was fully prepared to write up a 'There's no way a robot could have done what I did this weekend' piece after having spent most of it painting some rooms in the house, building some furniture, and hanging about a million pictures and posters on the wall. The work was too imprecise, too unstructured, and required too much moving about in tight, crowded spaces for any robot (based on my current understanding of mainstream robotics capability), too manage.

So after doing all that work over the weekend I felt pretty good about my ability to remain (reasonably) useful and relevant moving forward. I mean, between coming up with sort of interesting blogs, and general domestic tasks, (I am also very handy with a chainsaw), I had a hearty chuckle to myself, thinking about the doomsayers, (sometimes me too), fretting about the impending obsolescence of the human worker in the face of technological innovation.

But these good feelings kind of dissapated a bit when I caught this piece on Fashionista (What, are you surprised I follow Fashionista?), on how some enterprising drones took the place of some fashion models at the recent Dolce & Gabbana show in Milan.

Turns out drones can 'model' as well as (or better), than the human fashion models (at least in some instances). From the piece on Fashionista:

It’s 2018, and as further proof that we’re already living in the future, what’s more fashionable than drones? Drones with handbags, according to Italian luxury fashion house Dolce & Gabanna, which sent a bunch of flying drones down its runway during the house’s fashion show in Milan on Sunday.

Here's a look at the drone runway models as seen on Twitter: (if you can't see the video, click through)

Here are @dolcegabbana’s Nice Boys pic.twitter.com/lrA7KLUPJP

— Tyler McCall (@eiffeltyler) February 25, 2018

Make progress against the robots in one area, (painting a room in bad lighting and full of odd angles and corners), and lose it in another, (looking glamorous while showing off the latest in designer handbags).

All this reminds us that the path to workplace automation, and the more widespread loss of jobs for people, is going to progress in spurts, in fits and stops, will surprise us in some ways and shock us in others, and is, probably, still inevitable.

Have a great day. Let me know if you buy one of the D & G handbags.

HRE Column: Succeeding with HR Tech - Part 1

Once again, I offer my semi-frequent reminder and pointer for blog readers that I also write a monthly column at Human Resource Executive Online called Inside HR Tech that can be found here.

This month, I talk a little about the one of the major themes that we will be focusing on for the next HR Technology Conference - the nature of 'success' with your HR technology initiatives, and review some of the key issues, themes, and considerations for HR Tech projects and vendor relationships that are essential, and will be covered in more detail at the Conference this year.

In the piece, I take a look at some of the issues and considerations that HR leaders should keep in mind as they evaluate potential as well as current HR tech providers in order to have the best chance of making the 'right' HR tech decisions, and ultimately, succeeding with HR tech. This month's column talks about culture alignment, a focus on customer success, measurement and goals and more. Next month, we will take a look at 'success' from the internal point of view, and look at some of the most important organizational factors and decisions that set up your team for success.

Here's an excerpt from this month's piece in HRE Online:

Anyone who has had the good fortune to participate in the full cycle of an HR technology-implementation project knows well that such efforts usually consist of numerous milestones, dozens—if not hundreds—of tasks and components, scores of internal and external resources, significant investments of funds and time and myriad opportunities for sub-optimal outcomes or outright failure.

Choose the “wrong” solution and your HR tech project could flounder. Forget to ensure some critical capabilities will be supported in the new system in time and the “go-live” date could be compromised. Fail to procure the right experts to serve on the project team and progress could languish. Lose control of the project’s scope and end up with delays and cost overruns. And there are a hundred other reasons why well-intentioned HR technology projects fail to deliver.

With apologies to Tolstoy for paraphrasing his famous line about families, I would argue that successful HR tech projects are all alike; unsuccessful HR tech projects fail in their own way. While understanding why some projects succeed and others fail is important for any organization, it’s even more vital to prepare for and execute HR technology strategies in a manner that maximizes the chance for success.

As co-chair of the HR Technology^® Conference and Expo, I am focusing on developing considerable content around the “Success with HR Technology” theme. With that in mind, I thought it would be helpful to examine the nature of customer success and highlight some considerations that HR and HRIT leaders should keep in mind as they continue with workplace technology planning, purchasing, implementation and post-implementation activities in 2018.

Creating a culture of customer success

During some recent research, I was encouraged to find that the concept of customer success has gained strength in recent years as an important measure and barometer for HR and enterprise technology providers.

While each provider may have its own way of defining customer success, the important thing is that more of them are intentionally making the concept of their customers’ success a fundamental yardstick of self-measurement. Prior to selecting any new HR technology provider, HR leaders will not only want to ensure that customer success is one of the important (if not the most important) ways they self-examine, but you will also want to see demonstrable proof of their customer commitment.

Read the rest at HR Executive online...

If you liked the piece you can sign up over at HRE to get the Inside HR Tech Column emailed to you each month. There is no cost to subscribe, in fact, I may even come over and shovel your driveway, take your dog for a walk, or scrape the ice off of your car.

Have a great day!

Automated narratives

We are soon going to reach, if we haven't yet, 'Peak Artificial Intelligence' I think.

There have been a million examples of 'AI will replace XYZ' or 'AI for 'Insert your favorite process here'' pieces and developments in the last couple of years, and if you and your organization is not at least thinking about incorporating AI into your business processes, well, the conventional thinking goes, you are going to be left behind. I suppose time will tell on that. I think the adage (was it from Bill Gates?), that we tend to overestimate the impact of new technology in the short term, and underestimate its impact in the long term probably applies to AI as well. AI is definitely coming to a business process near you, it is just a little unclear how long it will be and how much impact it will have on your organization, people, and business.

But one fairly common theme in all the talk about AI (and automation more generally), is that it will effect and potentially replace more mundane, repetitive, rules-heavy, and precisely defined processes and roles (at least initially), while leaving creative, nuanced, complex, and more sophisticated processes and roles to the humans, (at least for now). Robots are going to take the wareghouse jobs and maybe some/most of the cashier jobs, but 'creative' types like marketers and advertising folks for example would be largely safe from automation. While Watson can win ay Jeopardy! and Google can build a machine to win at Go, no AI can come up with say, one of the amazing ads we just saw on the Super Bowl. Right?

But wait...

Check out this excerpt from a piece on Ad Week - 'Coca-Cola Wants to Use AI Bots to Create Its Ads'

Coca-Cola is one of the most beloved brands in the world and is known for creating some of the best work in the advertising industry. But can an AI bot replace a creative? Mariano Bosaz, the brand’s global senior digital director, wants to find out.

“Content creation is something that we have been doing for a very long time—we brief creative agencies and then they come up with stories that they audio visualize and then we have 30 seconds or maybe longer,” Bosaz said. “In content, what I want to start experimenting with is automated narratives.”

In theory, Bosaz thinks AI could be used by his team for everything from creating music for ads, writing scripts, posting a spot on social media and buying media. “That’s a long-term vision,” he said. “I don’t know if we can do it 100 percent with robots yet—maybe one day—but bots is the first expression of where that is going.

It is one thing when a manufacturing executive states that he or she wants to automate some or most aspects of a manufacturing or assembly process and reduce levels of human employment in favor of technology - we are coming to expect that robots and tech and AI are simply inevitably going to do those jobs in the future.

But it is kind of a different thing entirely to hear a 'creative' executive from one of the world's largest companies and most recognized brands to openly discuss how technology like AI can and probably will begin to take over some or even most parts of a highly creative, expressive process like developing advertising content. We don't, or at least I don't, like to think of these kinds of tasks and jobs as ones that could also fall into the category of 'We are better off having a robot do that'. I mean, (trying) to be creative is mostly how I make a living. Emphasize the 'trying' part.

'Automated narratives', for some reason that term stuck out for me when I read the Ad Week piece. Hmm. Probably need to think about that a little longer.

But while I am pondering, I will end with the disclaimer that this post, (and so far, all the posts on this blog), was 100% produced by a person. Although some days I wish I had access to a blog-writing 'bot.

Have a great day!

New tech won't just replace workers, it will track them even more closely

I won't do another run at the 'Robots are going to take all the jobs' gimmick today, there is plenty of that you can find pretty much everyday and everywhere. No, today I want to highlight two examples, from different perspectives and contexts, about how tech will not just replace some/most/all jobs one day, but along the way tech will continue to provide ways for employers to track/monitor/coach/guide/punish/reward employees even more closely.

Example 1 - from our pals at Amazon (the most interesting company in the world) - Amazon could make a bracelet that tracks worker's movements and buzzes them if they move in the wrong direction.

From the piece on Business Insider:

Amazon may be looking to improve its workers' efficiency in new ways.

As was spotted by Geekwire, the company was just awarded a patent for a device that would attach to its warehouse workers' wrists and track their movements using ultrasonic waves. In conjunction with a receiver unit, those ultrasonic waves could track where the worker's hand is in real time and guide it to pick out items, then pack them in boxes.

If the worker's hand moves in the wrong direction, for example, a slight vibration in the wrist would let them know.

The idea is to help reduce the time that Amazon warehouse workers spend looking for items, sorting through boxes and shelves, with the idea of helping them be more efficient at selecting the necessary items for a given order. But as the BI piece points out as well, this kind of technology could also be used to measure employee performance and improvement (or regression) down to the micro-level - the gesture.

I had a summer job working in a perishable food distribution center a hundred years ago, and we were measured (back then), on one metric - how close we came each day to completing our orders in the estimated amount of time allotted for them. So if a given order was meant to be completed in 30 minutes, and it took me 40 minutes to actually turn in the order to the shipping dock, then I would be at 67% (10 minutes overage on a 30 minute order). Each week we had to be a certain percentage rate, (I think it was 85%) in order to stay in good standing. Too many weeks below 85% and you'd eventually get canned.

Back then we thought that was a harsh, 'Big Brother' type monitoring system. But at least it did allow for some slack, for having a bad shift or two, and for a little bit of gamesmanship. It didn't take too long to find the gaps and wiggle room in the system, and find ways to beat it. And since we were provided a real-time update on our percent completion rate after every order, you could also determine come Friday just how much you had to hustle (or slide), in order to maintain the 85% for the week. Looking back on it now, it seems pretty reasonable overall, to both the company and the workers. But if we thought aggregated performance measurement and targets were 'Big Brother' back in the day, I can't imagine what we (or anyone), would think about performance monitoring and measurement at the gesture level. Wild.

Example 2 - From the world of sports, taken from an analysis of NBA player John Wall, and his case for being included on the NBA All-Star team this season. Here's ESPN's Zach Lowe providing a bit of data about Wall's performance this season:

Wall is shooting 42 percent, his lowest mark since he was a rookie, and he just hasn't played with enough vigor on either end of the floor. One measure of that: He has spent 76.57 percent of floor time either standing still or walking, the largest such share among all rotation players, according to tracking data from Second Spectrum.

Ball-dominant stars need to conserve energy. Some guys shift from walking to turbo mode without spending much time in between.

But regardless: Wall should not be freaking last. He too often stands around when he doesn't have the ball, or when a shot is the air and he might be able to help on the glass. He switches constantly on defense to avoid chasing his guy around picks.

That professional athletes have their performance measured and monitored to a greater degree than most other professions is not that surprising - after all metrics and statistics like points scored, rebounds, and assists have been a part of NBA box scores for decades. But what is new('ish) is the technology advances in both video capture and motion analysis that provide data on every step that an NBA player takes during a game. So now instead of just looking at how many points a player scored in a game, and judging his effectiveness based on a combination of things we can count, (like point), and an 'eye test' judgement of their effort level and hustle, NBA teams now can analyze and examine exactly what a player did every second he was on the court.

Look again at the statistic mentioned above - Wall has been walking or standing exactly 76.57% of the time he has been on court this season. His activity is being measured to hundredths of a percent for crying out loud. Can you imagine working in a job where your management had access to your effort down to that level? Every second you are supposed to be at work? Also wild.

These two examples (and I am sure there are lots more), point out that the impact of new technology on work and workplaces is not limited to total or direct replacement of workers and human roles. Technology also has the effect (or at least can have the effect) or driving ever closer measurement and control over workers and work performance. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing - organizations and workers have to be able to understand their work, how to improve, and companies need to continue to get more efficient in order to compete. But, there needs to also be consideration of the balance between measurement, control, and workers' ability to exist as people, in a setting that may not be replacing them, can be seen as de-humanizing them. And until the robots are ready, your organization still needs these people.

Have a great weekend!