Creating 'Psychological Personal Space' at Work

Blame the 'open plan' office design that pretty much takes away individual privacy or blame the workplace information overload that causes many office dweller types to feel like no matter how much they are working, they never seem to feel like they are getting much accomplished, modern work and workplaces can seem really, really frustrating.

People always in your face, or at least in your peripheral vision, few quiet places to retreat to in order to get some peace and quiet and really focus, and more and varied incoming requests for our time and attention, (emails, texts, Slack messages, etc.) than ever before all conspire to make it really hard sometimes to do our best work - or any work for that matter.

Wouldn't you like, at least sometimes, to fence yourself off from these kinds of distractions? To be able to, even if you don't have a physical 'retreat' space to head to at work, (not counting going to sit in your car in the parking lot), create some kind of semblance of private and personal space - to be alone with your thoughts, your work, yourself? 

Enter a new idea from the fine folks at Panasonic - the 'Wear Space' - a kind of combination privacy screen and set of noise-canceling Bluetooth headphones that functions like a set of horse blinders, except for people. The Wear Space wraps around the user's head, blocks most of their peripheral vision, allowing them to focus on their work that is in front of them. The nature of the Wear Space also signals to the wearer's pesky co-workers that they should probably not bother or disturb the person, as he/she clearly does not want to be illuminated by tales of how you spent your weekend or what is on the menu for lunch today.

According to one of the Wear Space's developers - the Wear Space is supposed to create a “psychological personal space” for the wearer to help them concentrate, particularly in noisy, distracting, open-plan offices. The device isn’t intended to just isolate the wearer but also communicate with others, telling them: Go away, I’m busy.

I don't have too much more to offer on the Wear Space as a technology, but just to say that if we need to invent a kind of ridiculous looking combination head covering, noise canceling, giant barrier to wear in order to try and cut down interruptions and distractions at work probably means that we are not taking enough time or care in designing work and workplaces so that these kinds of gimmicks are not needed in the first place.

We all probably do need some way to find 'psychological personal space' when we are at work. It probably should also be something not that hard to find as well.

Have a great week!

Expanding the Capabilities of Voice Assistants

Amazon recently was granted a new patent for an advance in the capability of it's voice assistant, 'Alexa', that enables the Alexa to detect a user's emotional, physical and behavioral states, just from the the user's voice and other audio signals. The technology would allow Alexa to recognize audible cues, such as a sneeze, or a cough or a certain cues from the user's tone of voice, and interpret those cues, along with the words the user has spoken, to better understand how a user is feeling, mentally and/or physically, and provide  tailored responses based on that information.

Have a look at the image below, courtesy of this piece on Business Insider for a graphic of how this kind of an interaction, and how Alexa will attempt to use these audio cues to respond.

The image may be a bit hard to see, so I can try and spell it out for you. The user indicates that she is hungry, but while trying to say the sentence "I'm hungry", she both coughs and sniffles. Alexa responds by asking 'Would you like a recipe for chicken soup?', a very specific response to the statement 'I'm hungry.' In this case Alexa has 'heard' the user's cough and sniffle, and the statement indicating hunger, and replied with an offer of a recipe for chicken soup - a type of food long associated as one that people who are sick would appreciate. Alexa doesn't 'know' the user is sick, the user has not stated that in words, but the cough and sniffle, behaviors that can often indicate an illness of some kind, are included in Alexa's consideration of the best reply to the user's 'I'm hungry' statement.

As the interaction between Alexa and the user continues, Alexa asks the user if she would like Alexa to order her come cough drops, to which the user replies 'yes' - still having never explicitly indicated to Alexa that she is sick or experiencing and symptoms of illness. Alexa submits the order for the user and will let her know when it is completed.

This is a simple example of how Alexa, or any voice assistant technologies really, are likely to evolve over time, to move from simply being 'order followers' to something much more sophisticated and potentially more powerful. Instead of just following commands kind of like a well-trained puppy, Alexa would be able to suggest actions, directions, products, etc. that perhaps the users had not thought about yet themselves, but would find relevant, timely, effective, and engaging.

The initial reporting on this patent from Amazon focuses, (naturally), on Amazon's business strenghts - surfacing and presenting product recommendations to users that match what the users want and need at the right time, and then helping the users order said products and delivering them to the user as quickly as possible. But I'd like to think about how this kind of innovative application of voice technology may apply one day at work and in workplace settings. Here are just some possibilities:

1. An employee accesses their voice-assistant HR system to request some HR information. The voice assistant 'hears' coughs and sniffles like in the above example and suggests that the employee may need some rest, or even to book an appointment with the company's mobile app that provides 'on-demand' medical consultation service.

2. An employee completes a project and the voice assistant asks her to give some feedback on how she thought the project went. The VA senses some stress in the user's voice, and her project summary indicates some real issues with some members on the team. The VA can send information to the project team providing some recommended further actions and remedies for the situation, as well as tips for the project leader to deal with this employee's frustration.

3. If in the interaction with the HR voice assistant, the VA senses some general anxiety or stress, it could present the user with a prompt to enable the workplace wellness voice application or skill, or suggest some common stress remediation approaches or exercises. The user may not have ever searched for or even be aware of these services, but the VA can sense they may need them in the moment.

These are just some ways that more intelligent and sophisticated applications are evolving in the voice assistant marketplace. And just like almost every consumer tech advance of the last 30 years, pretty soon these capabilities will be available in workplaces - and employees will demand them.

I think voice is the most interesting tech sandbox right now - I am really interested in how it will play out.

Have a great day!

CHART OF THE DAY: How much are you using your smart speaker?

Have you finally jumped in to the 'smart speaker' game? Whether it's an Amazon Echo device, something from Google, or one of the emerging third party manufacturers who are shipping devices that run voice operating systems from Amazon or Google, there seems to be no doubt that this technology is still growing, and maybe faster than you think.

Some data from the recent Adobe 'State of Voice Assistants' research suggests that after the holiday shopping season concludes, almost 50% of US households will own a smart speaker of some kind. According to the Adobe data, about a third of US households already own a smart speaker, with another 16% reporting the intention to acquire one this holiday season. And here's another chart from the Adobe research, one that shows that the vast majority of smart speaker owners are increasing their use of the technology. Have a look, then some pithy, insightful, and still FREE comments from me.

Three takes on the data:

1. Really significant numbers of both current smart speaker owners, (76%) and non-owners (38%), report increased usage of the technology in the past year. The number to me that is really shocking is that 38% of non-owners are using these technologies more. I confess to not really knowing where or how these folks are using these tools more, but the fact that almost 40% of them are, leads me to believe that a decent number of them will become owners very soon. Said differently, over three quarters or current owners are using their devices more, as are a really healthy percentage of non-owners. You'd love to report at the end of the year that 76% of your employees engaged with any of your workplace technologies more this year.  

2. One reason for the growth in usage? The sheer number of use cases keeps increasing. While the Adobe data also reports the most common uses of smart speakers are for streaming music, getting news and weather updates, and setting alarms and timers, a growing ecosystem of applications and skills are making these devices more useful, fun, and engaging. A full 32% of respondents reported using calendar and scheduling capabilities on their smart speakers for example. And 13% have used them to help with managing finances. Bottom line, the sky seems to be the limit for more and more innovative applications and users seem eager to expand their use of these tools.

3. If you are in an HR or HR tech role, and have not started to think about how to incorporate these technologies into your delivery of HR information and services, in 2019 you really should plan some time to do so. Your employees are more and more likely to be using these tools and are becoming more comfortable with engaging with them. And pretty soon (if it has not happened yet), these speakers will be in offices, meeting rooms, common areas, cars, and possibly everywhere else. They offer a way for you to engage your employees with access to information, help, support, and more advanced activities in an interface format that everyone already understands - 'Alexa, set up a meeting in Friday with the Marketing Team'. What could be simpler?

Finally, since I think you know by now I am all in on smart speaker, I wanted to remind readers that we have a special version of the HR Happy Hour Podcast on Alexa for Amazon Echo devices. If you are an Echo user, just add the 'HR Happy Hour'Skill to your device's Daily Flash Briefing to get a short HR Happy Hour Podcast a few times a week.

Have a great day!

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!

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!