HRE Column: Five Big Themes in HR Tech and #HRTechConf

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 and that archives of which can be found here.

As usual, the Inside HR Tech column is about, well, HR Tech, (sort of like I used to write about all the time on this blog), and it was inspired by the planning process for the upcoming HR Technology Conference, (October 4-7, 2016 in Chicago).

As the Conference program comes together one of the most common questions I get from people is if there is a theme or a main subject of focus at the event in a given year. And this year, as in the past, I don't generally set out to program to a specific theme or set of ideas, but rather the overall themes and ideas that people and organizations are most interested in tend to reveal themselves, and the program takes shape. On this month's Inside HR Tech column I take a look at some of these 'big themes', what they suggest for HR and business leaders, and point readers to sessions at the Conference that are great examples of how we will cover those themes at the event.

Here is an excerpt of the HR Exec column titled 'Five Big Themes in HR Tech'

The 19th annual HR Technology Conference and Exposition^® is fast approaching (Oct. 4 through 7 in Chicago) and, in my capacity as program co-chair, I get a unique opportunity to talk with dozens of executives from HR technology solution providers, organizational HR leaders, industry analysts and thought leaders as I review and prepare the conference agenda.

Through these many conversations, solution demonstrations and my participation in industry events, I try to get an overall idea on which trends, themes and important ideas are driving the practice of HR and are reflected in the HR technology landscape. This year, I'd like to share what I think are the five big themes and trends in HR tech, what they suggest for HR leaders and offer a little bit of a preview of how these themes will be covered in the upcoming HR Tech Conference.

1. Making Sense of HR and People Data

If there has been any single, consistently cited HR trend in the last several years it's the increased use of data and analytics in the practice of HR and talent management. This trend is still in the early stages of more mainstream and common adoption in organizations, and once again at this year's HR Tech Conference we will focus on some success stories of organizations that are making early and important progress in implementing analytical approaches and technologies to inform and improve people processes and talent-management decisions. As analytics and data-driven capabilities become more accessible and available in HR technology solutions, it will be critical for HR leaders to stay up-to-date on these latest developments, to learn from early-adopter organization successes, and to position themselves and their HR teams for what is coming next.

Featured Session: Using Predictive Analytics to Improve Hiring and Retention at Foot Locker

2. Engaging and Retaining Talent

Just as analytics remains an HR "trend" that does not show signs of diminishing in importance any time soon, the organizational challenges of engaging and retaining the best and most talented employees continues to rank high on the agendas of most HR and business leaders. As the economy continues to improve, and unemployment rates decline to near "full employment" levels (at least in the United States), talent management has likely never been more critical to the success of the modern organization. The stubborn skills mismatch in many in-demand job roles only adds to the need to improve talent-management practices. The HR technology marketplace, of course, is responding to these challenges, with an evolving set of solutions to help HR leaders and organizations with these important talent concerns.

Featured Session: Taking Talent Management from Antiquated to Innovative at White Castle

3. The Continuing Impact of Marketing on HR and HR Tech

A few years ago, we began to see more collaboration between marketing and HR in the areas of recruitment advertising, employment branding and candidate experience. Today, most HR and talent-acquisition leaders have seen the value of this increased amount of integration and collaboration, and the adoption of many marketing principles in HR and recruiting processes. It's not just Candidate Relationship Management systems where we see this manifest in HR technology -- in the last few years new HR tech solutions for managing HR and recruiting content marketing, crafting, shaping, and communicating the employer brand, and helping employees share their unique career stories with the outside world have emerged.

Featured Session: The Employer Value Proposition: What the CHRO Needs to Know

Read the rest at HR Executive online.....

You know you HAVE to clock over to HRE and check out the remaining big themes at HR Tech this year right? Well, hop over to HRE to find out.

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 take your dog out for a walk or re-seal your driveway if you do sign up for the monthly email.

And one last thing, the Early Bird pricing for the HR Tech Conference expires on Wednesday, August 31 - head on over to the Conference website to be sure in register before that great discount expires.

Have a great weekend!

Have a great day!

Have to advise your kid on their college major? Here's some data you may want to review

Time to dig into some labor market data!

(Note: all the data referred to in this post can be found courtesy of our pals at the BLS. While their site isn't the easiest to navigate, you can start at the 'Employment, Hours, and Earnings' page to get started with this kind of analyses).

I had a chat with a friend recently who was sending their child off to his or her, (I can't remember which, does not matter), first year of college this month. In the conversation I faked genuine interest by asking what the child was planning to choose as their major. I think the answer was 'Business' or 'Physics', like I said, I was faking interest at this point, but the entire conversation made me think about just what 'should' the child have chosen, forgetting for now what they are interested in/good at. If the child wanted to make a purely rational, economic decision, what might be the direction to head in terms of college major?

I confess to not knowing the answer, but a recent piece from the Nieman Lab about trends in employment in selected information industries, (copied below), at least provides one set of data points to (hopefully), better inform these kinds of economic decisions. Take a look at the Nieman Lab chart, (knowing by accessing the BLS data in the link above, you could create similar charts across other or all industry classifications), and then some comments from me after the data.

The point of the Nieman Lab piece was more or less 'Gee, what a crappy last decade it had been for the newspaper business, and the people working in it', but examining this kind of data a little more broadly can be instructive on a number of levels.  Sometimes this kind of data validates what we think we know or have observed in our own lives - do you know anyone who actually reads a newspaper anymore?

Other times the data can be a bit surprising too. I personally had no idea that employment in Motion Picture and Video Production had just about doubled since 1990. Are there really that many more films being made? Besides the Sharknado series I mean?

Back to the original question raised in the post - what should someone making what they hope to be is a rational, economically sound decision choose for their college major? 

Some topic or subject that maps easily to an industry group we think holds bright employment prospects for the future? 

I still have no idea I suppose. But at least I would tell them to not plan to work for a newspaper after they graduate. 

And then I would take a minute to explain what a 'newspaper' is.

Happy Wednesday. Have fun with the data.

Wanting to win is a great motivator. So is not wanting to come in last place

Over the weekend I was coerced had the opportunity to participate in a 2-mile time trial with my son's high school cross-country track team, and the results of which were pretty sad and interesting at the same time.

Let's step a bit to set some context. I heard about the Saturday morning time trial pretty late on Friday evening and was informed that the cross-country team coach encouraged the student runners to invite their parents and other family members to attend and even compete in the time trial, and in fact, many, many parents would indeed participate in the race. Armed only with that small bit of information, and since I am a very casual two or three times a week jogger, and I knew I could cover the two miles with collapsing, I agreed to show up early on run on Saturday morning.

Fast forward to the actual morning of the race and it turns out that no, 'many, many' parents were not intending to participate in the race. It was just me, one other older guy, (I say older, I probably had him by 8 or 9 years), and about 30 high school cross-county athletes lined up to race the two miles. 

My focus immediately shifted from ' I hope I can run a respectable time' to 'I can't let myself come in last place in this race', as a fairly decent-sized crowd of non-running parents, (as well as all the high schoolers), had gathered to watch the race (and eat donuts and bagels). 

After unsuccessfully feigning a pre-race injury in order to try and back out of the race, I was off and running with the 30-odd kids and the one-odd other old dummy like me tricked into doing this.

Here's how the rest of the race unfolded: first half mile or so I tried to stay connected to the back of the pack of kids, second half mile I lost contact with all but about five of the slowest kids, last mile or so I ended up passing a few kids, (most of whom I later found out were making their very first training run that morning).

And oh yeah, the other 'old man' in the race? He stalked me, about 15-20 yards back for most of the race and then tried to outkick me, (term used very, very loosely), in the last 50 yards or so. Once I realized this, I managed to speed up enough to hold him off at the tape. I ended up placing about 25th out of about 31 or 32. My time, while slow, was about one minute per mile faster than I would normally run.

What's the point of all of this, i.e., why place it on the blog?

I was thinking about how incented I was to raise my performance level not to win or even try to win the race, because there was no chance of that, but to a level where I simply would not be the worst performer. And it worked, to a degree.

The fear of being the worst, and having that be a public thing, drove me to perform better than I would had I been squarely in the middle of a typical pack of weekend 5K runners. I knew I had to push myself to beat even just one other person in the race and avoid the indignity of coming in last.

All performance is relative. It is true in running, and in most every other activity we take on that calls for measurement, (and rewards).  And motivation to perform to be the best, while certainly powerful and meaningful, isn't the only kind of motivation that can drive improved relative performance.

That's is from me. Happy Monday. Have a great week. 

PODCAST - #HRHappyHour 255 - Modernizing Performance Management

HR Happy Hour 255 - Modernizing Performance Management

Hosts: Steve Boese, Trish McFarlane

Guest: Rajeev Behera, CEO, Reflektive

Listen to the show HERE

This week on the show, Steve and Trish were joined by Rajeev Behera, CEO of HR technology solution provider Reflektive, who are helping over 175 organizations modernize their approach to performance management by making the process faster, centered around coaching, and enabling managers to become true 'people' managers and not 'task' managers. We talked about the challenges that traditional performance management processes present to organizations, like ones that focus primarily on a rating or a score above all else.

Many large organizations have moved away from traditional performance management processes, and on the show Rajeev shared some insights and ideas on how the organizations Reflektive works with are successfully combining modern technology solutions with fresh approaches to coaching and mentoring to improve individual and organizational performance, and better engage employees in their own personal and career development.

We also talked about the launch of the HR Happy Hour Podcast Network, summer vacation, and how much we all love Disneyworld.

You can listen to the show on the show page HERE, or by using the widget player below:

Performance management is undergoing significant and important change in many organizations. Reflektive is at the forefront of many of these changes, and this was an interesting and informative discussion.

And be sure to subscribe to the HR Happy Hour Show on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, or your favorite podcast app.

VIDEO: "Alexa, I hate my boss"

Earlier this year I blogged about and Trish McFarlane and I did an Episode of the HR Happy Hour Show loosely based on the annual Internet Trends Report by famous analyst Mary Meeker. In the most recent report, a fair bit of time was given towards the increase in capability and use of 'voice interfaces', e.g. tools like Siri, Cortana, and Amazon's Echo device.

Check out the video below from HR Tech provider ZipRecruiter on what an HR/Recruiting use case of the voice interface might look like incorporating Amazon Echo, (and it's 'Alexa' persona), and ZipRecruiter's database of open jobs. The video is really short, take one minute to check it out, then some closing thoughts from me after the clip. (Email and RSS subscribers click through).

Pretty cool, right? I admit it is kind of a simple, almost too simple example of the voice interface, (and I grant that this may even be 'real' functionality, just kind of an example), but I still was intrigued by the possibilities and potential of voice interaction with smart applications like Alexa to facilitate finding information and effecting interactions.

You could pretty easily imagine this video continuing with Alexa alerting the job applicant that her application is being considered, and suggesting a few times for an interview with the recruiter or hiring manager. Or maybe even the pre-screening type questions could just be 'asked' by Alexa right after the application is received, and the applicant can just have the conversation with Alexa rather than a HR phone screener.

At any rate, I thought the video and the application was very cool, I am not aware of any other HR tech provider working on something like this, so cheers to ZipRecruiter for thinking about the future and how technology will change the way we interact with talent and talent technologies.

Happy Wednesday.