Which 'Breakthrough Technology' might actually break through?

Later on this year at the HR Florida Conference and Expo Trish McFarlane and I will be co-presenting a session titled "Thinking Outside the (In)box - What These ‘Big Trends’ Mean for HR and Recruiting", what will be (hopefully) a fun and challenging look at what some of the big tech, demographic, and economic trends will mean for HR and Talent Management.  I have been a big believer in the importance and need for HR and Talent pros to think more expansively about how things like wearable technology, the shrinking (and aging) workforce, and (see yesterday's post), massive and rising levels of student loan debt will impact their organizations and talent programs. So I'm always on the lookout for what's new, what's next, and trying to think about whether the latest piece of high-tech gadgetry might change the way we find, align, collaborate, and coach in the workplace.

Recently, the MIT Technology Review (thanks MIT!), posted it's list of '10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2013', an interesting collection of new and new-ish innovations that they think will move past niche status and enter (or at least approach) the mainstream in 2013. Some of the items on the list - Baxter the Industrial Robot, 3D printing, and smart watches are probably familiar sounding. But some of the others like memory implants or deep learning represent some of the latest in technology innovation. Taken together the 10 technologies will certainly have some impact on work and the workplace this year and beyond. The challenge is, as always, for you as a Talent pro to think about developments like these and try and assess which ones might matter for your organization and your approach to talent.

One way to make sense of these kinds of lists is to try and put the technolgies into buckets or categories - something to help you prioritize and allocate your already limited time and ability to even attempt to process these kinds of innovations. I like to use three buckets (see below), and I'll offer my shot on whether or not the 'breakthrough technologies' on the MIT list should be on your radar in 2013.

I'll save the rationale for these categorizations for now, but you can come hear Trish and I talk about them at HR Florida!

Get on it - These are potentially important right now - you should be not just aware of these trends, but should be actively assessing how they will change either the workplace, the nature of work, or how you will engage talent.

From the MIT List - Baxter, Big Data from Cheap Phones, Additive Manufacturing, Temporary Social Media

On the come - Probably not going to hit you in 2013, (or maybe even 2014), but if you have your act toghether enough to be able to talk about talent needs in say 2015 and beyond, then this trend will probably come into play. Only talk about these with the C-suite if you have some serious internal credibility.

From the MIT List - Deep Learning, Smart Watches, Ultra-Efficient Solar Power

Discovery Channel - These are fun to talk or think about, but you probably don't need to give them more than 5 seconds of consideration unles your business is directly related to the technology in question. If not, then be content with catching up on them on the Discovery Channel in a few years and re-evaluate then.

From the MIT List - Prenatal DNA Sequencing, Memory Implants, Supergrids

That's my take on this latest list, and how to attempt to evaluate whether or not you need to spend time thinking about and planning for any of these new technology innovations as they pop-up. I'd love to get your take on these, or any other potentially disruptive technologies that are going to or are already changing your workplace and your talent game.

Technology, Service, and Dehumanization

My pal the great Paul Hebert had a fantastic piece over on Fistful of Talent titled 'What HR Should be Thinking About in 2013', an examination of some of the most important and interesting business and product/service challenges facing organizations, and how HR departments can or should be responding to these challenges. The entire piece is excellent, and I encourage you to read it all, but I wanted to call out two (related), trends Paul highlighted and compare them to another, different example where business, policy, and pragmatism seems to be at odds with what we 'know' to be sound business advice. Retro Robot

First - the two bits from Paul's piece at FOT:

CUSTOMER-FACING EMPLOYEES ARE YOUR BRAIN AND YOUR BACKBONE.

The crucial element in any customer experience is still people, no matter how much technology has transformed the landscape. The larger an organization, the more it relies on the thousand tiny decisions its frontline employees make on a daily basis. And listening to their collective wisdom is more important than ever.

NOTE TO HR:  Nothing really to add here – just go read that paragraph 100,001 times before starting your next initiative.

HUMAN INTERACTION HAS NEVER BEEN MORE PRECIOUS.

There’s almost no transaction that can’t be automated today, from buying groceries to learning about health issues. And customers are starting to resist. Look for places to act more human. 2013 reverses the trend toward automated everything, as humanity becomes the crucial differentiator between a beloved brand and a commodity.

NOTE TO HR:  This is my mantra for 2013 and on. Just change the word customer to employee in the previous paragraph.  It truly is about BEING HUMAN.  And you all SHOULD be the experts at it!

Both of these trends or areas of focus boil down to essentially the same thing - the return of the importance of real and human interaction at the most important customer touchpoints -, which for many kinds of industries are often the responsibility of the most junior and lowest-paid employees. Think call center reps, cashiers, customer service agents, food service folks, the guy who parks your car at the valet - you get the idea. So the advice from both Fast Company and Paul makes perfect sense - listen to your front-line staff, make your organization more 'human', don't jump to automation just for its own sake, etc.  

Hard to disagree with that line of reasoning. Or maybe not so hard. Take a look at an excerpt from another piece from the Wall St. Journal online titled, 'Can the Tablet Please Take Your Order Now?':

Carla Hesseltine is considering buying a few tablet devices for her bakery so customers can place orders for her signature M&M cupcakes on their own, straight from the counter.

The reason: She fears the $7.25 an hour that she currently pays her 10 customer-service employees, mostly college students, could rise, perhaps to $9 an hour under a pledge by President Barack Obama earlier this month.

In order for her Just Cupcakes LLC to remain profitable in the face of higher expected labor costs, Ms. Hesseltine believes the customer-ordering process "would have to be more automated" at the Virginia Beach, Va., chain, which has two strip-mall locations as well as a food van. Thus, she could eliminate the 10 workers who currently ask customers what they would like to eat.

Did you get all of that? A local cupcake shop thinks it smart, cost-effective, and beneficial to replace their front-line, low-paid workers, the ones that make up the vast majority of customer touchpoints, with a couple of iPads and a custom menu app that will allow customers to place orders without having to actually talk to any of the staff.

And Ms. Hesseltine's cupcake shop isn't the only one thinking about how technology and automation can reduce or even eliminate or at least reduce the human interaction between customers and front-line staff. More from the WSJ piece:

Tarang Gosalia, of Cambridge, Mass., hopes he can get away with having fewer employees waiting on customers at the three hair-salon franchises and one frozen-yogurt outlet he owns by using Square, a three-year-old technology brand designed to streamline credit-card transactions. He is planning to test it out starting in June to see if it will make accepting payments easier and faster for his staffers—and therefore allow him to downsize. About 70% of the 35 employees who work for his combined businesses currently earn $8 an hour, the minimum pay required in his state. Raising prices to offset the higher payroll costs strikes him as too risky, because he worries his sales may suffer.

Some entrepreneurs see a promising market in selling technologies to small businesses that might help them to streamline operations and do away with low-wage workers, or retrain them for higher-skilled jobs. An automatic hamburger flipper currently in development could replace low-wage line cooks at a beachside burger joint, for example.

FastCompany could very well be correct, that '2013 reverses the trend toward automated everything, as humanity becomes the crucial differentiator between a beloved brand and a commodity', but as the examples from the WSJ piece tell us, at least for small businesses, (and I bet many large ones as well), cost, compliance, and even the lack of available talent are still conspiring to drive organizations to at least consider further automation and technology-driven substitutions for human interaction.

Technology can be liberating, it can free up time and resources for people and organizations to actually provide better customer experiences, but it also can be really dehumanizing at the same time. When tablets replace counter help, when robots are the new short-order cooks, when the check-in, check-out and everything in between becomes just a series of user interfaces, touch screens, and customer-machine interactions, we are moving in the opposite direction from humanity as a differentiator.

I think the real challenge for HR and business in 2013 (and beyond) isn't deciding whether or not to automate, but rather making the critical decisions about where and how the organization can afford to automate and where it can't.

Have a great weekend!

Tech Things to Watch in 2013

At the start of the New Year the marketing/branding/digital (I confess, I am not completely sure what exactly they do), firm JWT releases a really cool and interesting collection of '100 Things to Watch' for the upcoming year - a collection of new ideas, trends, technologies, societal shifts, etc. that are meant to stimulate thinking and generate discussion. Many of the 'things to watch' are kind of uber-trendy and destined to be largely unimportant and fleeting, (chia seeds, bee venom, and faux meat), but others, particularly the tech trends that JWT identifies have the potential to be more significant, enduring, and even influential in the design of workplaces and the nature in which work is performed. And we even had some fun talking about some of these items, 'Adult Playgrounds' in particular, on the HR Happy Hour Show last week.

The entire JWT slide presentation is embedded below, (email and RSS subscribers may need to click through), and after the deck I'll pull a few of the 'things to watch' that are likely to be more relevant and meaningful to work and workplaces.

JWT: 100 Things to Watch in 2013 from JWTIntelligence

So which of the 100 things should you as an HR and Talent pro be on the watch for?

 Here are just a few I think you should keep an eye on.

11. Biometric Authentication - As a means to combat fraud and improve information security, systems of all kinds (building access, financial, smartphones), are moving toward biometric means (iris scans, fingerprints) of authentication. For organizations with particular security concerns, we may see a shift towards making employees access data and facilities with their bodies, rather than some complex passwords they have to leave posted on sticky notes on their desks.

22. Data Scientists - The New Hotshots - So maybe you've heard of this little mega-trend known as 'Big Data' - well everyone else has too, and just about every organization is soon going to be wrestling with not just the technologies required to collect data, but with finding people with the right skill sets that can help them assess, analyze, interpret, and make 'Big Data' actionable. Have fun finding, (and affording) these geeky geniuses in 2013.

39. Geofencing - This idea, the ability to target and message consumers who are in or near a particular location using smartphone GPS information has been around for some time. But in 2013, JWT sees it growing in use and importance, particularly in retail locations. But how about for recruiting? Could a technology that dynamically messages potential candidates at a conference or career fair be all that far off? 

43. Human Centered Tech - This one is a bit related to the Biometric Authentication trend, if just a little more vague and esoteric. The basic idea is that technologies will increasingly adapt to their users, more fully, more flexibly, and by 'learning' about their users. Think about this trend in terms of HR systems you may have deployed today that have versions or interfaces for wide swaths of users, (managers, staff, executives). Going forward this trend

80. Self-service -  Wow, self-service? Really? Haven't we had self-service all over the place for ages? Well, yes - but in 2013 JWT suggesting that we will see self-service in even more applications - tagging your own bags at the airport, monitoring your own vital signs, and handling even more support and service requests on our own. And even though we've had 'self-service' applications in HR forever, in 2013 and beyond whether it is due to advances in the technology, the prevalence of mobile devices, or the increased acceptance by all employees to 'do their own HR', we should expect to plan for even more self-service applications.

What do you think? On the mark? Crazy?

Time will tell.

If you take a few minutes to have a look through the entire list, let me know what other 'Things to Watch in 2013' you think will impact the world of work.

Badges for failure

Two themes that we saw, heard, and read lots about in 2012 were the value of 'failure' and the seemingly inexorable march toward 'gamification'. The failure theme is mostly about how you need to fail faster and more often, how you really only know you are pushing the envelope when you fail, and how lots of incredibly successful people have some pretty significant failures in their past. It is meant to make us feel better I guess, because if there is any one thing most folks can relate to it is failure.

But we can take comfort in failure I suppose. At least that seems better than the alternative, drawing the blinds, getting under the covers, and watching a 'Real Housewives' marathon.

The 'gamification' angle? Well that is mainly the idea that introducing mechanics and aspects of games, (points, leaderboards, badges, levelling up, etc.), to work and work processes will make them fun, (Yay for fun!), and make folks happier, more productive, and more engaged, (ACK, another 2012 buzzword), with their work.  

Whether or not you buy-in totally to either or both of these ideas, the value of failure, and the gamification trend; I bet I can convince you that just like other epic combinations, (chocolate and peanut butter, Sonny and Cher, Deron Williams and Jerry Sloan), combining these trends will result in an incredible result.

Just how does one combine failure and gamification?

With Demerit Badges of course.  Check out some of these 'awards' for failure, courtesy of Demeritwear.com:

Smartphone swimmingUtility Shutoff

Out of gas

Awesome right?

With the Demerit badges you get the best of both worlds - utter and total failure, (which we keep getting told is great for us), as well as one of the fun elements of gamification, i.e. some tasty and colorful badges. Think about all the career development and fun you can have handing out a few of these Demerit Badges at your next team meeting, or giving a 'hard truth' performance review to someone on your staff!

That is, in my best former consultant-speak, a Win-Win!

Have a great weekend!

What do these 'Big Trends' mean for HR?

I admit it, I am a total mark for Business Insider. 

A superb mix of business, tech, culture, politics, economics, sports, celebrity gossip - all delivered with bludgeon-like ridiculous volume probably running upwards of 100 posts each day.

Recently BI ran one of their guaranteed to generate a ton of page views slideshows that actually drove me to click through all (70!) distinct pages. Titled 'The US 20: Twenty Big Trends That Will Dominate America's Future', it was just the right blend of data, speculation, hype, and occasional insight that makes BI a go-to site. 

The entire slideshow is worth a read click-through, but in case you are one of the 'I hate internet slideshow' types, I will spare you all the clicks and page loads and give you just 5 of the 20 Big Trends from the BI piece, the ones that might have the most direct impact to you as a HR, Talent, of HR Technology pro.

Trend #2 - America is Aging - Key Statistic: The median working age in America is 42.1, up from 35.4 in 1986.

This one is sort of a easy selection, I've blogged about it before here, but is bears repeating as the population ages the impacts on hiring, retention, work practices, learning, training, and just about everything else that happens at work will be impacted.

Trend #5 - The Epic Rise of Student Loan Debt - Key Statistic: Student loan debt recently topped $1 Trillion, making it the largest category of consumer debt other than mortgages in the United States.

Impact on the workplace? More younger workers stressed over their personal finances, more willingness to jump ship for a few more $$ somewhere else, and more likelihood of younger workers taking second jobs and taking work on the side.  

Trend #13 - The U.S. Manufacturer Roars Back - Key Statistic, (really more of an observation), increased productivity combined with cheaper sources of domestic energy could continue to spur sustained growth in U.S. manufacturing.

The State of manufacturing in America is constantly in flux, but we are starting to see more and more pieces about the return or renaissance of American manufacturing. A recent piece in Foreign Policy offers additional compelling reasons for the renewed strength in domestic manufacturing like robotics, artificial intelligence, and 3-D printing. No matter the root causes, if more organizations see benefits in re-shoring manufacturing, talent professionals will be under considerable pressure to find, attract, recruit, develop, and retain the kind of employees and leaders needed to make it happen.

Trend #17 - American Cities as Economic Juggernauts - Key Statistic - Urban areas account for 84% of US GDP

National growth will continue to be driven by cities, both large and medium-size. It makes sense that talent will chase after said growth and opportunity. If you are a talent pro in an organization not in or near one of these urban centers it could get even harder to lure the people you need from the areas or higher growth to your sleepy little town.

Trend #18 - Immigrants Driving Product Innovation - Key Statistic - News Corp, (and others), investing heavily in new properties aimed at the growing Hispanic market

If your organization is among the many that will seek growth and market share from an increasingly diverse set of customers then does your staffing, development, and leadership models adequately reflect the markets you are competing in? Do you have the right people that can understand and effectively service these markets?

Ok, enough of these 'Big Trends', I think you get the idea. Organizations, and certainly the people inside organizations directly responsible for shaping their workforces, (that's you), have to be aware of the environment in which they operate. Economics, demographics, heck even politics - these things do matter, even if they seem kind of far off, or only the concerns of global mega-companies.

What do you think, what are some of the big-picture trends impacting the work you do as an HR and Talent pro?