The Wall: An Old School Self-Service Example

Over the weekend I spotted out in the wild a classic example of the oldest of old-school Human Resources supplied Employee Self-Service implementations - the Wall of Forms, (see picture on the right and click the image to view full-size).

Years ago, these displays of paper forms to support employee transactions like changes of address, set-up of payroll direct deposit, benefits enrollments, expense reporting, and on and on were once common, particularly prior to the emergence of automation tools designed to simplify these and many other employee initiated processes. If you as an employee needed to get something done, you walked over to HR, picked up a form, filled it out, (hopefully without needing too much help), and turned it in. If you HR or Payroll department was really cool, the person accepting the form whipped out a big red-ink stamper thing and stamped 'Received' on it. Click image for full-size

But as time passed, and more and more HR organizations of all sizes were faced with the insistent pressures to become more efficient, to reduce the risk and impact of errors inherent in manual processes, and often sold the promise of 'chance to do more strategic things' with the decentralization of many manual and administrative tasks, (let's save for a moment the debate of whether and to what extent this has really happened), the 'Wall of Forms' method of employee communication and entry point for HR/Payroll administration seems to be a relic of a bygone age.

And while that is altogether expected and mostly necessary, when I looked at the Wall of Forms pictured above, I couldn't help but be struck by the effectiveness in design from this old-school presentation. Sure, it is not pretty. Sure, it doesn't make one marvel at the amazing use of white space or offer much in the way of personalization or customization, (as far as I can tell, the 'wall' appears and presents exactly the same no matter who is looking at it). And sure, it won't port well to the iPhone or iPad.

However the wall does a few things really well that should not be completely discounted in this age and world of self-service. Here are just a few aspects of this old-school Employee Self-Service portal, (yes I called it a portal), that those of us that design and deploy these kinds of systems should keep in mind:

1. The Wall requires no training. Once the employee knows where the Wall actually is, then no further specialty training is necessary.

2. Maintenance is simple. Once a form is no longer needed, or a new one needs to be added, maybe 15 minnutes of someone's time is required to make the changes to the Wall. Like a good SaaS product, once the Wall configuration changes are made, they are immediately available to all Wall users.

3. Everything you need is there. While many system designers are wondering how to shrink applications and functionality to 'fit' smaller and smaller form factors for mobile and tablet, the Wall happily and unapologetically expands as needed. There are over 30 form containers on the Wall, and room for more as needed. If processes/rules/regulations etc. require that many forms, then why not have a system that puts them all within view?

4. Help is only a few feet away. The door right next to the Wall is the main entrance to the facility's Human Resources department. Can't find something on the Wall? Have a question about something you have found? Take two steps to the right and find someone to ask. Sure, this method of front-line, in person help can't scale really, but for this facility it probably works. Here, like most of the rest of the world, employees really don't want to spend much time at all futzing with HR processes and paperwork. They have better things to do.

In technology, heck even in general life, it can be pretty easy to turn down our noses at our less than enlightened or 'lower-tech' colleagues. It's also common to fall into the trap of thinking that applications and strategies that worked 15 or 20 years ago have no relevance today - after all everything has changed, blah-blah-blah. But I am not so sure about that.

I think we still can learn from organizations and designs of the past and when we work to combine the best ideas from back then with all the amazing capability and potential of our technologies today, then we can really see the greatest impact on our workplaces. 

What do you think? Do you have any 'old-school' practices that still work for you in your organization?

Just Click 'Send' Already

You know you've been there - staring at a lengthy email message for far too long, poring over every sentence and even word to make sure it is just right. That your content, structure, tone, and message are exactly what you had intended whether or not your intention was to inform, convince, persuade, attack, defend - whatever.

You just have convinced yourself it has to be just perfect before you hit send. Do it already!!!

But we forget when we are writing these paeans to perfection what we actually do as we are reading our own email messages. We literally scan through them in seconds, micro-seconds maybe. Who is it from matters most, who else is on copy is next in line of importance, followed by the subject line, and then and only then the content.

And by the content, the first 40 words or so mostly. After that, we either begin to space out mostly, or a few new messages, IMs, Tweets, and such have begun competing for our attention. Forty words, about twenty seconds of reading, tops.

So if you've been been staring at that one silly email for about an hour or more, or it has remained a 'work-in-progress' hiding in and out of your 'Drafts' folder all day long, just do yourself a favor and click 'send' already.

Chances are you are working yourself into a lather over something your recipients are going to consider for all of 20 seconds, as yours is likely one of about 200 messages they will see that day.

And if it is that important, that every word in the message needs to be just right, well then maybe you should pick up the phone and just call the person instead. You remember the phone, right? It is attached to that little device you carry around to get on the internet and send pictures to Facebook with.

But before you do that, you'd better practice your speech first.  Do you have a mirror handy? Good.

Hello Billy Ray? This is Steve. I wanted to talk to you about...

Ugh. Maybe I'll just send that email after all...

Love, Peace, and Technology

The other day someone I don't really know 'circled' me on Google+, and while that is not a particularly interesting or attention grabbing way to kick off a blog post, (I must have been absent the day they taught, 'grab their interest early' section in blogging school), I was struck by their tagline, or headline, or whatever the heck it is called on Google+.  It reads, simply:

Love, Peace, and Technology.

Kind of unusual, no? I mean the Love and Peace bits, well we've all seen them before, usually listed with Peace before Love I think, but somehow it seems to make more sense having the Love part first I suppose. But the third part about Technology? That is pretty out there. Do a quick Google 'look ahead' type search for Peace, 'Love and...' to see what pops up. 'Peace, Love, and Understanding', the old Elvis Costello song simply owns those results. Way to go Elvis.A meta 'Metta' reference.

Force the Google search to return hits for 'Love, Peace, and Technology, and the closest thing to interesting that hits on Page 1 of results is a blog called, oddly enough, Peace, Love, and Technology. It appears to be written by a technology teacher, or a teacher interested in technology, but either way, it doesn't seem to be too active, with the last post over four months old.

So it is a little disconcerting to the idea that peace and love and technology can, uh, peacefully co-exist when from what I can tell the definitive blog on the subject seems to have run out of inspiration some months back.

Perhaps it is an indication that the concepts can't really co-exist - that advances in technology can make us more efficient, save money, help us process things faster, better, more accurately and so on, but that technology doesn't really belong in the same conversation with Peace and Love. Technology has traditionally been the domain of the engineer, the builder, the craftsman - not typically the types we'd think were all that preoccupied or even concerned with ideas around love and peace. And of course so much of our most significant technological advances of the last two hundred years or so went toward technologies to help us get better and more efficient at blowing each other up on the battlefield.

The point of all this? Again, a fail on my part from Blogging 101 class. 

I suppose I think that I am disappointed that I founde the Google+ user's tagline of Love, Peace, and Technology so striking and unusual. It seemed so contradictory given our typical relationship and experience with technology as cold, efficient, and uncaring. I guess I want something much more meaningful than a well-intentioned but mostly barren teacher's blog to come up on Page 1 when someone Googles 'Love, Peace, and Technology.'

I think technology, and technologists can do better.

I have been thinking of a blog re-branding, maybe I will see of lovepeacetechnology.com is available.

In which I admit to my robot obsession...

Just a quick one today, and yes just like yesterday's post the subject is robots, and their slow, steady, inexorable march to world domination. And quite frankly I don't have a problem with all the robot posts, since my favorite source of inspiration and content, the National Basketball Association, seems intent on remaining in a labor impasse for who knows how long, and I have to write about something.How are you feeling? That will be a $50 co-pay.

So for a busy Friday, the day before getaway day to Las Vegas and HRevolution (tickets still available), and the HR Technology Conference, another dispatch from the Robots vs. Humans front lines, this time from Slate.com:

Will Robots Steal Your Job? - Why the highest-paid doctors are the most vulnerable to automation

Yep, another take on the upcoming, heck already started process of further automation and supplementation of traditional careers and functions by complex and dedicated robot technology. But like yesterday's post where I featured robot technology beginning to make inroads into farming, the piece from Slate shows us even highly specialized, highly paid, and highly complex tasks like the evaluation of medical samples for signs of cancer can and are beginning to be encroached by robot labor.

I don't keep reading and posting about these 'robot stories' here because I find them to be surprising, or that most readers might not be aware that automation in all facets of industry, from low-tech to high-tech is an unstoppable boulder rolling down hill. It can't and won't be stopped.

But why I like to read these pieces, and think about them, is more about our reaction and response to these developments.  And on that note, I'd like to end this post with the most compelling point from the Slate.com piece:

By definition, specialists focus on narrow slices of medicine. They spend their days worrying over a single region of the body, and the most specialized doctors will dedicate themselves to just one or two types of procedures. Robots, too, are great specialists. They excel at doing one thing repeatedly, and when they focus, they can achieve near perfection. At some point—and probably faster than we expect—they won't need any human supervision at all.

There's a message here for people far beyond medicine: If you do a single thing—and especially if there's a lot of money in that single thing—you should put a Welcome, Robots!doormat outside your office. They're coming for you.

Boom. Specialization, even high-touch, highly complex, valuable specialization that requires spending years training, developing, and perfecting, still that is no guarantee or security against a robot that van do it better, cheaper, and faster. Even if those skills are ones that society needs and highly values, that's no protection in the long term.

The message? Invent something new, stay one step ahead of the robot masters? You'd better be prepared to keep inventing.

Or possibly the message is to continuously explore, challenge, and differentiate yourself as being more than a highly trained, highly skilled one-trick pony. Because if all you are only bringing one thing to the table, no matter how wonderful and complex that one thing is, chances are, eventually, someone else, maybe ever a robot, can do it better.

I promise no more posts about robots for a while, unless the NBA season gets canceled!

Have a great weeekend and if you are heading out to HRevolution or the HR Technology Conference be sure to find me and say hello.

When the Robots Are Driving the Tractor

Last evening, as I stayed up far too late reveling in the latest Red Sox baseball club disaster, (sorry Red Sox fan - but your 'nation' has now surpassed Yankee fan for sheer obnoxiousness. You used to be able to pull off that 'lovable loser' angle pretty well, but ever since you won the World Series you have taken on this entitled and smug attitude that is really off-putting. So there.), I was skimming through a few blogs and caught this article on the Endless Innovation blog that stopped my cold:

'When Robots Run Our Nation's Farms'.

The piece is, obviously, about the development of robotic and other automated machinery to improve the speed and efficiency of many time, labor, and capital intensive farming practices. Additionally, this latest generation of agricultural robotics will also help farmers with higher-value and complex decision making. From the Endless Innovation piece:

A new generation of robot drones is revolutionizing the way we farm in America, with Kinze Manufacturing and Jaybridge Roboticsrecently announcing the first-ever robot drone tractor capable of farming without the need for a human operator. Video clips are already circulating online of the Kinze tractor, gracefully coordinating its harvest dance with other autonomous machines. Once this robot drone tractor becomes part of the agricultural mainstream, robots will decide where to plant, when to harvest and how to choose the best route for crisscrossing the farmland. Humans, except perhaps as neutral trouble-shooters, will be all but unneeded. So what does it mean when robots run our nation’s farms? 

It is a good question, and one the piece doesn't really have a good answer for, probably because these trends are still relatively new in large-scale commercial farming. But technology improving, enhancing, or replacing what was formerly human, manual labor and effort is certainly nothing new. We deal with this phenomenon every day practically in our homes and workplaces.

Last night I ordered a pizza online from a local shop, the order was automatically transmitted and printed out in the store, someone (it might have been a robot), made the pizza, and I received an email when the pizza would be ready for pickup. Since I had pre-paid online with a credit card, all I did when I arrived at the shop was tell them my name and walk away with the food. If we add in some theoretical process efficiencies in the shop, (RFID codes, automatic supply replenishment, delivery driver dispatch tools, etc.), it is pretty clear that the modern pizza shop could, like the modern farms described above, produce much more output that ever before, while employing far fewer people to do the work.

Since many of the folks reading this are involved in the development, analysis, implementation, and advocacy of the latest and most wonderful technologies that we believe will enable organizations and individuals to derive increased value, benefit, and (hopefully) profit assisted by our efforts, we'd also be wise to think about the longer-term effects of these technology-enabled improvements. What legacy to these technologies help shape and what happens to the organization left behind?

Going back to the 'robot-farmer' example - someone used to have to drive the tractor that we've now turned over to the new, unmanned system. Hopefully as a result of this breakthrough new technology, that farmer is now able to spend more time studying the markets, providing customer service, volunteering in the community, helping his kids with their homework, or heck, even getting to know his cows better.

Because that would be probably the only real and meaningful benefit of handing the keys to the tractor over to the robots. If the technology only serves to make the process more efficient, but not so efficient that the farmer needs to find another line of work to survive - well then I'd think most of us would be happy to pay a few extra cents for our tomatoes next year.

In case you are interested - below is a video of one of the 'robot driven tractors' in action - (email and RSS subscribers click through)

Have a great day!