HRE Column: How to choose which disruptive HR tech solutions to chase

Here is 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, in the aftermath of the HR Technology Conference and still thinking about all the innovative and potentially disruptive HR tech solutions that continue to appear in the market, I thought about how much more difficult it must be getting for HR and business leaders to assess and evaluate and decide which types of disruptive technology to pursue.

Note, I am not really talking or thinking about specific technology evaluations like, "Which ATS should we license?", but rather larger questions of "Which types of potentially disruptive HR technology would benefit our organization, given our needs and our circumstances?", and "What should be the impact of these technologies on the organization and our people?"

I came up with three general categories or impacts that potentially disruptive HR tech can (and perhaps should) have on the organization, and some thoughts on how HR leaders can better evaluate new HR tech in this model. I tried to describe what this kind of categorized impact assessment looks like in my HR Executive column. From the HRE piece:

One of the highlights of the recently concluded HR Technology Conference and Exposition^® was the record-breaking Expo Hall, which featured nearly 400 technology solution providers offering an almost dizzying array of tools, technologies and innovative approaches to help organizations with HR, talent-management, employee-engagement and other workplace challenges.

But such a plethora of modern and innovative technologies also presents quite a challenge for HR and business leaders in that the growth of the HR-technology market and landscape has made the identification, research, assessment and eventual selection of the "right" technology solution all the more challenging. Probably the most frequent type of question I get from HR leaders over the course of the year is: "There are so many HR-tech solutions out there; how can I figure out which ones I should give my time and attention?"

Note that this kind of question is different from "Which applicant-tracking (or learning-management system, or payroll solution) system is the best one?" I do get those questions too, of course, but probably less frequently than in the past, as most HR leaders today understand that there is never a universal "best" solution for anything, but rather a "best" solution for the individual organization, and its unique goals, requirements and circumstances. Lately the discussions and challenges I hear about from HR leaders seem more focused on trying to make sense of a complex and growing HR-tech market, and how to best take advantage of all this growth and innovation.

One way for HR leaders to approach these kinds of challenges and determine how to spend their time and resources is to consider innovative and potentially disruptive HR technologies across a set of three criteria or broad categories of impact. I'd like to take a look at these three broad-impact categories and offer examples of how new HR-technology solutions fit into each.

Category One: If the HR solutions reduce or eliminate organizational barriers for HR and employees

There are a slew of HR technologies that are necessary and essential for organizations to either own or license for regulatory and compliance reasons. In other words, every organization that has regular employees has to, at a minimum, have a way to pay them, and to complete all the required tax filings and payments. This category is not really about those kinds of technologies. (If your organization has a critical need to solve such compulsory challenges, then you probably should take care of those before entertaining the idea of adopting new or disruptive HR technology.)

This category is more about enabling organizational success via the elimination or reduction of the friction points that can hold people back from getting work done effectively and efficiently. You can get to the direct impact of implementing technologies in this category by asking questions such as, "Where does our employee's workflow get bogged down?" or "Where do we have data manually replicated in multiple systems?"; or simply by asking teams and leaders can simply be asked to talk about "What is it that makes my job more difficult than it needs to be?"

Some real HR-technology solutions that help to solve problems in this category include learning systems that can surface content and assets in real-time and in context when employees need them the most or even more technical solutions that better integrate, validate and keep clean key HR-data elements and values across multiple systems. Almost every new HR-technology solution you introduce into the organization should solve at least one important "barrier" problem and eliminate a pain point for your targeted audience once it is adopted.

Category Two: If the HR solutions help to elevate customer service -- for internal customers or external customers

At the HR Tech Conference, one of the more interesting technology developments I remember seeing was an example of a deeper integration between an employee self-service type of portal and the company's HR-shared-service-center knowledge base and help-desk functionality. The idea here is that if employees were viewing their payslips or benefits enrollments and needed more information or had a question about the information they were viewing, they could, with one click, launch a "help" ticket or process to indicate to HR they needed assistance. HR practitioners would not only see that the request was made, they would automatically have all the needed context from the page or subset of information the employee was viewing...

Read the rest of the HR Exec column here 

Good stuff, right? Humor me...

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 rake your leaves car or clean out your gutters or even help you pass out the candy on Halloween. 

Have a great weekend!

CHART OF THE DAY: On Tesla and Disrupting Markets

Quick question for a busy Monday - which auto maker have you seen the most reporting and commentary about in the last few years?

Maybe General Motors - the largest US auto maker and who has been in the news plenty in recent years, mostly for a slew of recalls.

Or possibly one of the major Japanese or Korean manufacturers like Toyoata or Hyundai that seem to be continually closing the gap in US market share from the traditional leaders, GM and Ford.

No, I bet the auto maker you have read and heard the most about lately is the electric car maker Tesla, who for lots of reasons, (innovative products, charismatic leadership of Elon Musk, and interest in modern and ever cloud-based technology for cars), has garnered insane amounts of press and media coverage. 

So here is another question for you, and the subject of today's Chart of the Day - How much market share does Tesla actually have in the USA? Take a look at the chart below, courtesy of The Truth About Cars, then some quick comment from me. And as always, comments remain FREE.

 

Some thoughts:

1. So according to the chart for the first half of 2015 Tesla's USA market share is, well, we don't know what it is because on this chart Tesla does not actually register. They must be included in the 1.9% of 'Other'. 

2. According to a similar data set over at Autonews.com, we see that for the first 6 months of 2015, Tesla sold about 10,200 cars in the US out of a total market of approximately 8.5 million vehicles.  So if my math is right, that puts Tesla's US market share for the first half of 2015 at 0.12%. That's a little bit more than a tenth of a percent. Other makers in the same general space in the market as Tesla include Maserati, Bentley, and SmartUSA.

3. Here is why this is interesting to me, and where I think that there are some parallels to what we see in any technology market. There is a completely outsized focus on Tesla relative to their actual position in the market and one could argue, the market value of their business, when placing it in context. The pundits and the media, even what passes for the HR/Talent media, love, love, love to focus on the 'new' story, often at the expense of the most relatable story for their audiences. Chances are you have seen 1,493 stories about Tesla in the first 6 months of the year. Chances are also pretty good you don't know anyone that actually owns a Tesla.

4. It is awesome in HR and Talent to think about what is next, what is likely to dominate how organizations are organized, how people are engaged, how workplaces will function in the future, but the truth is the vast majority of us, (and our leaders), have to think about the next 6 months of 2015, not what the world of work will look like a decade from now. It is important to think about this when reading about HR's version of Tesla, which of course is Zappos, and whatever new experiments they are running over there.

5. Tesla probably is the most disruptive and innovative auto maker in the world, but the truth is the real impact of their disruptions won't be seen until they truly can deliver sufficient volumes of more mass-market cars, (Tesla's are $100K or so, high-end luxury cars today), and/or the big boys like GM or Toyota decide to try and compete more directly in this segment. It is the same in HR whether it is Holacracy or 'no resume recruiting' or 'no more performance reviews'. It takes a long time in mature industries for these disruptions to move past 'niche' and into the mainstream. Your challenge as an HR/Talent pro is to know when to move with the Teslas and Zappos of the world and when to lay back and lease the newest Camry. 

Interesting stuff...

Have a great week!

OFF TOPIC: The Collateral Damage of Gangnam Style

You might have caught the news last week that the video Gangnam Style has been viewed so frequently, (2 BILLION plus times), that it actually 'broke' YouTube, whose underlying code had been unable to store and display a video views count above 2,147,483,647.

YouTube subsequently fixed the bug, if it even could be called a bug, and now assures us that it can handle a views count maximum of somewhere north of 9 quintillion.

Let's hope that Gangnam Style, (or Grumpy Cat or Celebrities Reading Mean Tweets or anything else) doesn't ever get too close to breaking YouTube again.

Why?

Because there is a cost of sorts in all this YouTube watching. An opportunity cost really, for all of us. A few months back, before Gangnam Style broke YouTube, the folks at the Economist did some calculations to estimate what else humanity might have been able to accomplish with all the time spent (140M hours at that point), watching Gangnam Style.

Here is the chart from the Economist that will proably make you weep a little bit for humanity:

Amazing.

One Gangnam Style equates to 20 Empire State Buildings, 4 Great Pyramids, and almost 2 new Wikipedias.

That is potentially the kinds of things we could have accomplished had we spent the time watching Gangnam Style in more productive endeavors.

Look, I am not sitting here saying I spend every waking minute in deep study, volunteering for the less fortunate, saving abandoned puppies, or helping elderly folks cross the street.

I waste plenty of time. I do.

But seeing this kind of data does make me pause a little. I know I can do better, and I only contributed 1 measly view to the 2 Billion count for Gangnam Style. 

I know I can do better. Probably you can too.

Have a great weekend!

Owning Disruption at #HRevolution

Submitting this dispatch, (yet again) from the Delta Sky Club on my way home from the wonderful HRevolution event held over the weekend in Grapevine, Texas. (Note: See below embedded the song that has been burning my psyche ever since I knew we were holding the event in a place called Grapevine).

One of the highlights of the event for me was a session, really a classic and engaging HRevolution-style discussion, on Disrupting HR that was facilitated by Frank Zupan and Tammy Colson, long-time HRevolution 'family' members'. It was a great discussion that at times traveled to the notion of 'disruption' itself, whether or not it even makes sense to talk about disruption in an HR context, and what might be some examples of people or organizations that have actually 'Disrupted' HR.

In the discussion, I felt compelled to actually participate quite a bit more than I usually do in HRevolution sessions, (normally I am running around herding attendees, making sure the coffee pots are full), and I think it was primarily due to how or what I think is driving just about all of the disruption in organizations today - technology.

For the first 150-odd years of workplace (HR and otherwise) technology, the 'disruptions' that were caused for workers and workplaces were introduced and driven by company owners who were looking to improve efficiency and profitability, and later (much later), by corporate IT departments who became tasked with finding, evaluating, and introducing new technology into the workplace.

Over time, HR departments, (and also sales and procurement and facilities and sales, and just about all other back office functions) never really 'owned' the technologies that they used to do their jobs. These were provided by company ownership, stewdarded by IT, and simply became the de-facto foundation for performing back office and administrative tasks. 

But today, (and what has been building really for the last half-dozen years or so), both back-office functions like HR and marketing have claimed much more significant influence and control over the kinds of technologies that they use in the workplace, and that can in turn, significantly impact, drive, and enable this notion of 'disruption'. This is driven by the cloud, SaaS, mobile, declining cost of computing, and the amazingly powerful smart phones just about every employee carries.

It doesn't really matter if you care for the term 'disruption' or not, there is not any doubt that for all except the most backward looking companies that new workplace technologies have changed the very nature of work. I suppose the question then becomes, with all this new(ish) ability to set the technology, (and consequently) the disruption agenda, is what will HR do with it?

In the past two decades the most disruptive new technology introduced to workplaces has to be Email.

And email was, is , and probably always will be 'owned' by a corporate IT department. HR's involvement with Email as a disruptive technology was/is merely to set and occasionally enforce standards for conduct, content, etc. 

Just what will be the next workplace technology that proves to be as disruptive as email remains to be seen.

A better question for HR leaders, and folks that want to become one such, is whether or not HR will be the driving force behind whatever this/these technologies end up being, or whether they, like in the Email example, end up being simply passengers (and sometime police) who are along for the ride.

Workplace 'disruption' will be owned by who is driving the technology agenda. It might be IT, it might be leadership, it might even be rank and file employees.

But if you're in HR and you want a say in the future of your organization, (and your career), you want to be a part of that conversation. You probably want to lead that conversation, actually.

Thanks to all the HRevolution attendees, speakers, sponsors, fellow organizers, and friends for a fantastic event! 

Oh yeah - here is the song I wanted to share, 'Grapevine Fires' by Death Cab for Cutie (email and RSS subscribers will have to click through to see the video).