HRE Column: On Disruptive Technology and How it Changes HR

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 a presentation I am giving at the upcoming Inforum Conference in New York City.

When thinking about how much technology has changed and progressed over the last decade, I was drawn to the idea that these kinds of big changes in consumer and personal tech (smart phones, social networks, messaging apps, etc.), eventually begin to impact and influence the workplace. That is what I will be talking about at Inforum, and was the concept I kick around in the HR Exec column.

Here is an excerpt of the HR Exec column titled "The Next Wave in HR Disruption":

There are two ways of thinking about the future, especially as it concerns technology. One way is to see a future in which change is mostly incremental and tomorrow is barely distinguishable from today. The other, and more interesting, way is to envision a future in which technology advances so rapidly and profoundly that tomorrow is almost unrecognizable from today. I think that given the amount and pace of technology change that the latter view is closer to reality than the former.

I've been thinking about technology change and the disruption it can drive as I've been preparing for a talk I'll be giving at the upcoming Inforum event in New York next month. The focus of the presentation will be digital transformation and the impact it is having on talent, work and HR technology itself. It strikes me as almost incredible just how much most of us (me, for sure) have been impacted in our personal and professional lives by technologies that were either introduced or came into mainstream usage within the last 10 years or so.

I've selected just a few of the most disruptive tech innovations of the last decade (grouped by a general similarity to each other). For each, I examine how these technologies have, thus far, impacted human capital management and HR tech, and what might be coming in the future of HR tech.

iPhone (2007), iPad (2010)

Perhaps the most disruptive and profound technology advancement of the last decade has been the smartphone and its cousin, the tablet, two categories largely created and led by Apple. I don't have to opine on how much these technologies have changed our personal and professional lives -- the fact that many of you are reading this on a phone or a tablet makes the argument for me. The implications and opportunities for HR technology are clear, with many having already been realized. Every major HR-technology solution today has at least some mobile applications, and many of the leading solutions have developed extensive mobile capability -- particularly for the vast majority of employees who use HR systems only sporadically, and only for a few select functions. Simply put, you have to support employees with HR technology solutions that work flawlessly on the devices employees want to use, keeping in mind that for most, the desktop is the least preferred method of interaction. Mobile is now so prevalent that smart technologists don't speak of a "mobile strategy," now it's just a "strategy."

Twitter (2007), Facebook (2008)

Can you remember life before social networking? I can. I actually kind of miss it, too. But there is no doubt that the so-called "killer app" for mobile devices has turned out to be social networks, in all their many flavors and permutations. Social-networking concepts have encroached into the organization for some time now with features such as an activity feed and liking, sharing and commenting becoming part of a wide range of enterprise and HR-technology solutions. Specifically, we are starting to see this trend play out in the learning-technology market, where many of the modern learning solutions such as the Oracle Learning Cloud, for example, draw heavily from social-networking concepts such as user creation of learning material and surface the best and most popular content for users....

Read the rest over at HR Executive... 

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.

Have a great long weekend!

Be careful when evaluating for user experience

Over the weekend I read an interesting discussion online about one organization's software selection process, i.e., should we select solution 'A' or 'B'. In the end the company went with solution 'B', and the decision was largely based on the idea of 'user experience' or usability. The specific details don't matter here, (which is why I am not linking to the source), but it made me think that I should write about UX this week. And that made me think that I have written about UX a dew times before, and it might make sense to re-run a couple of those posts this week. So here goes - more from the archive on UX and usability....

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From November 2014 - There's more to User Experience than usability

Here is a quick take and a diagram on UX that I wanted to share on a cold, kind of snowy Wednesday in my part of Western NY, (and thankfully not too snowy, lake effect snow is a funny thing, one side of town can get buried in snow, while a mile away sees hardly anything at all).

I was plowing through my Feedly last night, (while watching my Knicks fail, admirably however in Milwaukee), and I came across this really interesing piece on API design from the Nordic APIs site. 

I know what you might be thinking: Really, you must have a terribly exciting life, reading about API design and watching basketball. And you would be right! It is terribly exciting. 

You don't have to read the entire piece about API design, (I admit, it gets a little ponderous near the end if you are not really, really into APIs), but I wanted to share what I thought was the most interesting and perhaps relevant part of the piece, a diagram called the UX Honeycomb, originally developed by Semantic Studios. The diagram is meant to portray the facets or elements of User Experience, and as you will see, there is much more than 'usability' at play here.

The point of the UX Honeycomb is to make sure that designers understand the various components that encompass UX, and to also emphasize the center element - 'Valuable'. So while for UX professionals, 'usability' remains important to overall UX, it is not by itself sufficient. And it is also a great reminder that the elements like 'useful', 'accessible', and perhaps most importantly for HR readers, 'credible' remain critical.

And the way that the elements of the UX Honeycomb seem to have really close applicability to lots of what HR in general and HR technology projects in particular is the primary reason I wanted to share the diagram. Whether it is a traditional HR-led initiative like training, or performance coaching, or rolling out a employee wellness program, or a straight up HR systems implementation, evaluating your approach against these UX elements I think makes a ton of sense.

Is what you are doing, or trying to get others to do, useful, usable, desirable, credible, valuable, etc.?

I think you have to be able to check 'Yes' on just about every one of the elements on the UX Honeycomb no matter what the project is, in order to have a chance to capture the attention and the time of your users, employees, and leaders. I am going to keep the Honeycomb in mind moving forward, and I think you might want to as well.

Anyway, that's it.

Stay warm out there today.

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I probably should have updated that last line to say 'Stay cool out there today' - have a great week!

Discovering the Next Great HR Technology Company

Quick break from the normal fare to give a quick update and share some information about the upcoming HR Technology Conference that will be held October 4 - 7, 2016 in Chicago.

For several years at the Conference we have presented an "Awesome New Startups for HR" session that has featured many of the most innovative and exciting new HR technology startups that have emerged in the last few years - many of whom have gone on to even bigger and better things since they "launched" at the show.

This has always been a fantastic session and one of the highlights of the Conference, but in the planning process for this year's event, we thought about how to make the "Awesome" session even more awesome. I will skip all the bad ideas and just get to the great one we landed upon - let's make the "Awesome New" session a little bit more like reality TV - in our case the show "The Voice".

If you are not familiar with "The Voice" the primary feature that distinguishes it from other reality talent shows is that a panel of expert coaches guide and champion the talent that is vying for the crown. These coaches on the TV show are experts and stars in their own right, and their insight and advice helps the contestants to not only compete on the show, but will help them in the future as well. It is not every day that an unknown singer gets some personal coaching from an established star.

So what we are going to do this year at HR Tech is borrow from the main concept of "The Voice" and morph the "Awesome Startups" idea into something we are calling "Discovering the Next Great Technology Company", that will take some of these concepts and bring them to the event in Chicago.

To do that, I am partnering with my own team of HR and HR Technology experts - Jason Averbook, Trish McFarlane, Madeline Laurano, George LaRocque, and Kyle Lagunas who will help find, coach, and determine the 'Next Great Technology Company' that will win that illustrious title at the Conference in October. More details on this amazing session are coming soon, but there is one bit of information that I want to communicate right away - the process and information for HR technology startups to apply to be considered for this honor.

Here are the important details:

HR Tech startups can submit to be considered and get more information at:

http://www.hrtechnologyconference.com/ant.html

One that page you will find instructions, information, and the link to the application forms. There is no charge to apply, but the deadline is coming up fast, so interested HR technology providers should not hesitate in applying.

And one last note, because I know I am going to be asked - the "Awesome New Technology" session at the Conference for larger, established HR tech companies will once again be held at the event, and it uses the same application form at the same link as above. We have not, (this year anyway), given that session the reality TV make over just yet.

Thanks for your indulgence on this, and please do share the post and the link to apply to these sessions with any innovative HR tech company you know.

PODCAST - #HRHappyHour 249 - HireVue, Digital Disruption, and the Big Lies in HR

HR Happy Hour 249 - HireVue, Digital Disruption, and the Big Lies in HR

Recorded LIVE at HireVue Digital Disruption 2016, Park City, Utah

Hosts: Steve Boese, Trish McFarlane

Guest: Mark Newman, Founder & CEO, HireVue

LISTEN HERE

This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve was joined by Mark Newman, Founder & CEO of HireVue, the leading technology provider of video-based technology solutions for talent acquisition, assessment, and talent analytics. HireVue essentially created the category of 'video interviewing', but now are much more than just that, with new technology on assessments, coaching, and deep learning now a part of the overall talent platform. On the show Mark shares the larger HireVue story and then talks about the three 'Big Lies' in HR and Talent - one, We NEED more candidates;, two, Millennials don't want long careers with any one company;, and three, The War for Talent is back on.

Mark shared some great ideas on how organizations can avoid getting trapped by these 'big lies' and how technology plays a role in managing these challenges.

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

This was a fun, and really interesting conversations with one of the most interesting technology leaders in the HR tech space.

Many thanks to HireVue for having the HR Happy Hour at Digital Disruption this year.

And also thanks to our sponsor Virgin Pulse, learn more about them at www.virginpulse.com.

Remember to subscribe to the HR Happy Hour show on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, or any podcast app - just search for 'HR Happy Hour' to never miss a show!

The obligatory Microsoft - LinkedIn take

If you regularly write or otherwise opine about technology, HR, HR tech, recruiting, or pretty much anything to do with enterprise technology, then Al Gore and the rest of the creators of the internet have decreed that you must have some kind of a take, any kind at all really, about this week's big news of Microsoft announcing its plans to acquire LinkedIn for $26B large.

So while EVERYONE else has probably weighed in on this a couple of days ago and the immediate window for 'newsy' analysis is past, I am going to direct my take in a slightly different direction.

Aside - before getting to my point I just have to laugh (once again), at all the experts and analysts and pundits who within hours of this announcement somehow were able to crank out 1,000 words explaining to the rest of us what this news really meant. No one, I mean NO ONE, was thinking about Microsoft making this move before it was announced, then to suddenly act as if you have it all worked out within an hour is laughable. And also a little insulting. And like this take, everyone will forget what you wrote after the fact. Tell us it's going to happen BEFORE it happens sometime and you will impress us. All of us can wax profound after the fact. Ok, rant over.

There was one slide in the official Microsoft public presentation and announcement on Monday that really caught my attention and that of all of this, might be the most interesting aspect of this deal in the coming years. Here's the slide from MSFT, then some free-range, organic, farm-raised comments from me.

Since the quality of the image isn't all that great, I want to repeat the key part of the text on the left side of the slide - "There is no one source of truth for an individual (that's me and you by the way), profile... In the future, a professionals profile will be unified..."

Those are the lines that I noticed the most in the entire announcement, and here's why I think they are interesting and potentially troubling for MSFT, for your organization, and for all of us as professionals.

Why? Three reasons...

1. While just about all of us have come to a reluctant realization that we probably should and do have a reasonably complete professional profile and history on LinkedIn, that realization comes from years of consideration about LinkedIn, and what LinkedIn was doing with our data. We may not love the fact that LinkedIn became a $26B company largely on the value of our profile information we supplied (for free), but we came to decide the personal value to us was at least worth the tradeoff that has now made lots of LinkedIn investors rich.

But will we be ok making those same kinds of tradeoffs knowing 'our' data and profiles are now owned by Microsoft? Will the 400M or so users be readily willing to give Microsoft the same kind of pass that we gave LinkedIn, given the perceived value to us? I am not so sure. Or at least I am not that sure it's a given that people already on LinkedIn won't be too bothered by this. And I know it is not a given that people who ar not yet on LinkedIn won't be given at least some pause turning over their profiles and history to an even more gigantic company in Microsoft.

2. From an organizational standpoint, just how excited are you as an HR or business leader with Microsoft's plan to make its (LinkedIn/Office/Skype/Whatever else they have) data become the "unified" professional profile for your employees? Aren't you at least a little bit concerned by having more and more of your employee's data about what they are working on and who they are collaborating with becoming at least potentially part of some LinkedIn-based unified and possibly public profile? Are you sure that this won't be even more of a competitive issue for you and your organization? There are still companies and leaders that would prefer their employees not be on LinkedIn at all - so they are not as likely to be recruited away by a competitor. 

3. Finally, from a personal angle how much do most professionals want their current organization to be even more aware of what an employee is doing on LinkedIn? Would you somehow get 'red flagged' as a flight risk if Microsoft's big data engine spots and alerts your organization's management that you recently looked at an external job posting or have just connected with two or three third-party recruiters? I know some of what all of us do on LinkedIn is potentially visible to our current management and company, but an even more embedded and universal profile (LinkedIn based), that in theory becomes the de facto internal corporate identity as well just exposes more and more of your LinkedIn actions to your employer, whether or not you want that exposure or not.

Ok, that's it for me, let me know what you think - am I wrong to not be leading the cheers for this acquisition?