Revolutionary HR Tech: Part 4 - What does culture look like? - #HRevolution

Note: For the rest of this week, (or longer if I can't manage to get it all done in time), I am going to run a short series of four posts inspired by a session at last weekend's HRevolution event in St. Louis that I facilitated along with the fantastic Mike Krupa. 

In the session, we asked four teams of attendees to imagine, envision, describe, and articulate a new (or at least new to them), kind of revolutionary HR technology solution that would improve or enhance some aspect of HR, talent management, recruiting, strategy, etc.

The teams were each given a context to work in that roughly correspond to the major sub-types of HR technology tools today: Administration, Talent Management, Culture/Brand, and finally Insight/Analytics. The teams came up with some really clever and thought-provoking ideas in a really short time, and I thought it would be fun to share them (as best as I can recall them), here and try to keep the HRevolution discussions on this topic moving forward. We will consolidate all 4 revolutionary HR tech ideas into one paper that we will post here and on theHRevolution site as well.

Ok, let's hit the fourth and final HR tech idea - from the 'Culture' team, an idea for a new technology that I will call 'Culture is a Mirror'.

'Culture is a Mirror.'

That is the title/slogan/concept that the Culture team came up with when thinking about organizational culture, and what a revolutionary HR technology that could help the organization understand, define, and reinforce its culture would be based upon.

Their idea was that culture exists as a reflection of what people do, what they say, how they interact with each other, (and the outside world), and only by holding up a proverbial mirror to these actions and interactions can we begin to assess and interpret an amorphous idea like 'culture'.

So what might this kind of revolutionary tool, this 'mirror' for culture be able to do? Here are a few ideas, and my apologies to the 'Culture' team if I have left out (or invented) some of these:

1. Scan/review internal communications for things like tone, language choices, emojis, exclamation points, used of ALL CAPS, etc. to take a measure of the nature of internal exchanges and how people 'talk' to one another

2. Review existing 'culture' measurements against business performance and individual achievement. Things like engagement surveys, pulse surveys, participation in volunteer days, time and attendance trends, etc. The mirror would hold these measurements up in a way that allows the organization to compare if what it 'feels' about culture is actually reflected in actions and data. 

3. Incorporate recruiting data and analytics (both internal and against peer companies), to reflect and compare whether or not the internal ideas and beliefs about culture are holding true when viewed through and external lens. It seems like often what the organization believes about its own culture does not always hold up, or at least fails to get completely and properly communicated to candidates and the public. The Culture Mirror tool would present the organization a way to compare these perceptions about culture, and make recommendations to take remedial actions as needed.

4. Finally, and perhaps the most interesting idea that the 'Culture' team came up with, the Culture Mirror tool would be highly visual, using a Pinterest or Instagram-like design and interface to help 'show' these ideas around culture, perception of culture, and what the 'mirror' sees when examining all the factors that combine to create culture. Are people smiling at work? Are they dressing in bright colors, or all in black? Do they seem happy when they walk in to the office, or are they trudging along, staring at the floor? The Culture team wants a technology that brings the idea of culture to life, in a highly visual way.

What do you think? Sound wild? I love the idea.

Actually, I love all four ideas that came out of the 'Building Revolutionary HR Tech' session. It is amazing what can happen when smart, engaged, and interesting people can do when there are very few limits to what they can imagine.

Thanks again to everyone who participated in the session - it was loads of fun for me too!

Final note: Big, big thanks to our HRevolution 2015 sponsors - Globoforce, Quantum Workplace, and The Arland Group. 

Revolutionary HR Tech: Part 3 - Beyond Workforce Planning - #HRevolution

Note: For the rest of this week, (or longer if I can't manage to get it all done in time), I am going to run a short series of four posts inspired by a session at last weekend's HRevolution event in St. Louis that I facilitated along with the fantastic Mike Krupa. 

In the session, we asked four teams of attendees to imagine, envision, describe, and articulate a new (or at least new to them), kind of revolutionary HR technology solution that would improve or enhance some aspect of HR, talent management, recruiting, strategy, etc.

The teams were each given a context to work in that roughly correspond to the major sub-types of HR technology tools today: Administration, Talent Management, Culture/Brand, and finally Insight/Analytics. The teams came up with some really clever and thought-provoking ideas in a really short time, and I thought it would be fun to share them (as best as I can recall them), here and try to keep the HRevolution discussions on this topic moving forward. We will consolidate all 4 revolutionary HR tech ideas into one paper that we will post here and on theHRevolution site as well.

Ok, let's hit the third HR tech idea - from the 'Insights' team, an idea for a new technology that I will call 'Beyond Workforce Planning.'

For a while now HR technologies to support workforce planning have existed, so the category itself is not a new idea. But at HRevolution the 'Insights' team took a revolutionary approach to envision what truly transformative workforce planning technology might look like one day. Here are some of the capabilities and features of a 'next-gen' workforce planning technology as imagined at HRevolution:

1. Continuously updated and dynamic - most workforce planning tools rely on point-in-time scenario planning and a defined set of assumptions that result in a kind of static or fixed result. A revolutionary workforce planning approach would be be continually evolving as inputs to the plan change, external factors update, and the technology itself 'learns' how business and people conditions impact the workforce plan.

2. Deeper integration with talent acquisition technology - while many workforce planning technologies that exist today can and do 'talk' to the ATS for example, the Insights team imagined a more robust level of integration where assumptions on time to fill and expected labor costs could be enhanced or even replaced by actual data from the ATS and other recruiting technologies. These too should be continuously adapted to reflect current market conditions and the overall results and recruiting outcomes the company is experiencing.

3. A window to the outside world - I think the most interesting aspect of the Insight team's ideas for a more modern, revolutionary workforce planning technology was their idea for a tool that could leverage a more expansive set of external data points and measurements as inputs and influencers on the workforce plan. No organization, and no workforce plan and strategy exists in a vacuum: things as disparate as macro-economic trends, weather conditions and forecasts, politics, demographic shifts, increases or decreases in competition - these and numerous other factors all play a role in how the organization will perform, and the human capital needed to fuel that performance. What if the revolutionary workforce planning tool could overlay these kinds of data elements and trends on top of the more traditional elements like expected sales growth, retention rates, and expected compensation increases? In addition, this modern workforce planning tool could run sophisticated analyses to inform the HR analyst just which external data elements are most correlated, and possibly predictive of workforce needs, capacity, and costs. It would be really cool I think to have workforce planning and the outside, external world mashed up in order to make better HR decisions.

Ok, now the vendors who make Workforce Planning tools can chime in below in the comments and tell me that we are all crazy at HRevolution. And we just might be.

So that is the third Revolutionary HR tech idea, stay tuned for the final installment of the series to see what the Culture team cooked up.

Final note: Big, big thanks to our HRevolution 2015 sponsors - Globoforce, Quantum Workplace, and The Arland Group. 

Revolutionary HR Tech: Part 2 - The Cult of High Potential - #HRevolution

Note: For the rest of this week, (or longer if I can't manage to get it all done in time), I am going to run a short series of four posts inspired by a session at last weekend's HRevolution event in St. Louis that I facilitated along with the fantastic Mike Krupa. 

In the session, we asked four teams of attendees to imagine, envision, describe, and articulate a new (or at least new to them), kind of revolutionary HR technology solution that would improve or enhance some aspect of HR, talent management, recruiting, strategy, etc.

The teams were each given a context to work in that roughly correspond to the major sub-types of HR technology tools today: Administration, Talent Management, Culture/Brand, and finally Insight/Analytics. The teams came up with some really clever and thought-provoking ideas in a really short time, and I thought it would be fun to share them (as best as I can recall them), here and try to keep the HRevolution discussions on this topic moving forward. We will consolidate all 4 revolutionary HR tech ideas into one paper that we will post here and on theHRevolution site as well.

Ok, let's hit the first HR tech idea - from the 'Talent' team, an idea for a new technology that I will call 'Higher and Higher Potential Identification.'

First off, while this team had the most amusing on stage pitch for their idea, I am going to take the liberty of skipping over the 'religious' (and funny), overlay to their idea and focus on the real talent management issue that the 'Talent' team correctly and at least initially landed on that was the focus of their Revolutionary HR Tech.

And that issue is one that just about every HR/Talent professional has had to wrestle with at some point - how to help managers and other leaders, (and HR itself), get better at the identification and cultivation of so-called 'High Potential' employees. On 99% of the 9-box grids that HR or Talent Management technology providers have rolled out, the two axes that form the grid upon which employees are plotted are 'performance' and 'potential'. And while the argument on how or even if to determine 'performance' is a never-ending and voluminous debate, the 'potential' side of the equation seems to get less attention and consideration.

So the 'Talent' team's essential idea was a technology solution, which would have several elements - assessments, analysis of interactions, identification of profile traits that might be suggestive, and even a wearable piece of technology that would help to build up a kind of 'potential' score for each employee. This potential score would be tied to additional opportunities and developmental exercises as the employee's potential score continued to grow, to the point in time where they (hopefully), maximize their potential in their organization and role. Other, external metrics like business performance, engagement indicators, even practical data sets like attendance and health care claims could be compared to these potential measurements to determine if active and intentional interventions to increase and finally maximize employee contributions based on their greatest potential would be worthwhile.

It was a pretty big, audacious idea (especially in that the Talent team only had 20 minutes to conjure it), and I think it is one that has been really neglected in the HR Technology space.

Could we actually build a technology that would truly be successful at assessing and cultivating potential? I am not sure, but if we could, it would certainly be a Revolutionary HR Technology.

So that is the second idea, stay tuned in the next few days for what the Culture, and Insights teams cooked up.

Final note: Big, big thanks to our HRevolution 2015 sponsors - Globoforce, Quantum Workplace, and The Arland Group. 

Revolutionary HR Tech: Part 1 - Clean Data for All - #HRevolution

Note: For the rest of this week, (or longer if I can't manage to get it all done in time), I am going to run a short series of four posts inspired by a session at last weekend's HRevolution event in St. Louis that I facilitated along with the fantastic Mike Krupa. 

In the session, we asked four teams of attendees to imagine, envision, describe, and articulate a new (or at least new to them), kind of revolutionary HR technology solution that would improve or enhance some aspect of HR, talent management, recruiting, strategy, etc.

The teams were each given a context to work in that roughly correspond to the major sub-types of HR technology tools today: Administration, Talent Management, Culture/Brand, and finally Insight/Analytics. The teams came up with some really clever and thought-provoking ideas in a really short time, and I thought it would be fun to share them (as best as I can recall them), here and try to keep the HRevolution discussions on this topic moving forward. We will consolidate all 4 revolutionary HR tech ideas into one paper that we will post here and on the HRevolution site as well.

Ok, let's hit the first HR tech idea - from the 'Administration' team, a tool called 'Oscar.'

The idea: Every HR tech project plan starts or has near the start, a step called 'Clean up the data.' And that step is miserable. Over time and with growth, most companies possess numerous systems for HR and workforce processes and functions. And with the growth of an organization's systems footprint, the challenge to keep data not just in synch across systems, but to ensure the data is 'clean' (accurate, up to date, correctly formatted, validated, etc.), becomes daunting.

While the Admin team is aware that there are some existing HR technology solutions that help integrate HR data across systems, the team felt like simple file-transfer type information from System 'A' to System 'B' is not good enough. After all, if the Employee's date of birth is not correct in System 'A', then sending over that bad piece of data to System 'B' does nothing to help with the real issue - inaccurate employee and workplace data that can lead to a myriad of downstream problems.

So that is were 'Oscar' comes in. 

Oscar is a tool that would sit over an organization's existing HR technology solutions and would serve to monitor, audit, validate, and clean, (or at least raise exceptions as needed), the core elements of the organization's HR data set. Think employee names, dates of birth, employee ID numbers, locations, salary, hours, and many more potentially. These kinds of data elements usually exists in multiple platforms, systems, and can be acted upon in numerous ways, which often results in data getting out of alignment, or 'dirty'. Oscar would learn where to look for these conditions, and raise alerts to the needed administrators, HR analysts, managers, and employees as needed to ensure action is taken before 'bad' data gets propagated.

Think of it as a kind of an HR-based identity theft monitoring tool that instead of being on the lookout for a gang of shady credit-card spoofing thieves, instead is constantly waiting patiently and vigilantly for bad HR data to raise it's ugly head, and to take action to stamp it down.

I think this is a cool idea, and definitely one that HR pros, especially in larger organizations would love.

Would it be complicated to build? Sure.

Does it, or elements of it, probably exist in other tools already? Maybe.

But is it a 'revolutionary' idea for HR tech? Most definitely.

So that is the first idea, stay tuned in the next few days for what the Talent, Culture, and Insights teams cooked up.

Final note: Big, big thanks to our HRevolution 2015 sponsors - Globoforce, Quantum Workplace, and The Arland Group. 

PODCAST - #HRHappyHour 195 - #HRevolution 2014 Recap

HR Happy Hour 195 - HRevolution 2014 Recap

Recorded Thursday, November 13, 2014

Hosts: Steve Boese, Trish McFarlane

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, hosts Steve and Trish reviewed the HRevolution 2014 event, held November 7 and 8 in Grapevine, Texas.

Steve and Trish talked about several of the big themes from the HRevolution event - the Disruption of HR and workplaces, the importance of creativity in HR and in business, and the need for HR professionals and leaders to take more time to actively think about innovation and new ways to do both HR and business.

This was a great event to be a part of, and in the best HRevolution tradition, the discussions, (like the one Trish and Steve have on this week's show), are ongoing, and the community of HRevolution friends, (and HR Happy Hour listeners), are keeping the ideas and conversations alive.

Additionally, Steve forgets what day it is, ('Is today Wednesday?') and Trish tosses out some potential locations for the next HRevolution event to be held in November 2015.

You can listen to the show on the show page here or using the widget player below.

Check Out Business Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Steve Boese Trish McFarlane on BlogTalkRadio

And remember to subscribe to the HR Happy Hour Show on iTunes or on your favorite podcast app, (I like Stitcher Radio) - just search for 'HR Happy Hour' to find the show and to subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

This was a fun conversation and thanks for checking out the show!