Technology

Changes Are Coming: How to Stay Ahead of Workplace Disruptions
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Mar 19, 2019 - 4:00pm
Changes Are Coming: How to Stay Ahead of Workplace Disruptions
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When we think about the future of work, we often picture robots taking our jobs and a permanent end to the decreasingly popular 9-to-5. While changes as extreme as these may be coming at some point in the future, ongoing technological innovations are changing the future of work today, while subsequent disruptions will continue to shape our working lives tomorrow. Artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, machine learning, and other emerging technologies are already promising to fundamentally change how we work and what we need from our HR functions. The ongoing and upcoming waves of technological change will fundamentally disrupt the way work is done and who does it.

HR functions are starting to engage with these changes: Gartner research shows that one in four HR teams are already using or piloting AI in some form. However, only 10% of Chief HR Officers feel that they have an operational strategy to address the risks of automation. In order for HR to evolve, its leaders need to better understand the technology trends that affect the future of work. HR executives are now expected to evaluate the impact of these trends on their organization, both to leverage them in growing the business and to prepare the organization for the risks they pose.

So how do you proactively prepare for workplace disruptions instead of reactively lagging behind them? We reviewed how some of the most progressive organizations and HR leaders are tracking, assessing, and managing the implications of upcoming technology trends on their employees and the work they do. From our research, we determined that HR leaders must focus on two key areas: identifying and anticipating business disruptions, and preparing for workforce transformation.

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Management • Technology //  • • • •

Online Recruiting Market Set to Heat Up in 2019 as Key Players Expand
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Feb 14, 2019 - 2:43pm
Online Recruiting Market Set to Heat Up in 2019 as Key Players Expand
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The marketplace of online recruiting platforms has become increasingly competitive over the past few years, as both big tech companies and startups alike have sought to establish themselves as the platform of choice for both candidates and employers. This week brought news that three of the most-watched competitors in this field are growing, adding new features, or expanding their geographical reach.

LinkedIn announced on Tuesday that it was moving all of its core talent solutions — Jobs, Recruiter, and Pipeline Builder — onto one platform, which it calls the intelligent hiring experience. This consolidation will enable recruiters to “to see all their candidates … in one unified pipeline,” no matter which of these three tools they came from, John Jersin, VP of Product Management at LinkedIn Talent Solutions, explained in a blog post on Tuesday. The company is also “releasing more than 15 new product enhancements for LinkedIn Recruiter and Jobs over the next few quarters,” Jersin added.

In addition to the single pipeline, LinkedIn’s new features include new AI capabilities, which will enable its tools “to talk to one another and leverage machine learning to simplify the hiring process”:

The more you interact with candidates within a project, the more our tools learn about what you like — and don’t like — and then we can surface better candidates for your open role. Based on the applicants, leads, and search results you interact with, the intelligent hiring experience automatically builds a list of recommended candidates for you to consider reaching out to.

The platform is also adding a shared messaging system that will show all candidate communications in one place, a slide-in profile view to more easily look at candidate profiles in the middle of a search, and a feature called “Closing the Loop,” which makes it easier for employers to send rejection messages to applicants, either individually or in bulk. This functionality is meant to address the lack of communication that adversely affects candidate experience and can discourage rejected candidates from applying to other jobs at the same organization for which they might be more qualified. LinkedIn’s mobile app is also getting a call-to-action feature that will enable anyone at an organization to quickly let their LinkedIn network know about a job opening there.

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News • Recruiting • Technology //  • • • • • • • •

Microsoft Teams Makes a Play for Retail and Service Sectors
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Jan 15, 2019 - 2:53pm
Microsoft Teams Makes a Play for Retail and Service Sectors
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Workplace collaboration platforms are already an office staple for professionals working “desk jobs” in fields like technology and media, but these tools are less common among frontline employees in hands-on roles. Nearly two years after its global launch, Microsoft’s workplace collaboration platform Teams has added a series of new features to improve its functionality for workers in fields like retail, hospitality, healthcare, and manufacturing. The latest upgrade was rolled out last week, GeekWire’s Nat Levy reported, including:

  • [A] new customizable mobile experience comes with a series of features specifically for workers on the go, such as location sharing, smart camera and the ability to record and share audio messages.
  • Teams will now include a template to help IT managers grant individual employees access to the features they need.
  • Microsoft is working on a set of APIs, which will debut in public preview later this quarter, that will allow companies to integrate workforce management tools that handle things like scheduling and payroll directly into Teams.
  • Coming later this quarter, Microsoft is enabling a Praise feature, which allows employers to call out important contributions from workers.

This announcement comes just a few months after Microsoft showcased a series of new features for “first-line” workers at its Ignite developer conference in September. These included scheduling tools that enable users create and share schedules, swap shifts, request time off, and access announcements from their employers. Microsoft also revealed that it had a secure patient care coordination tool in private preview as part of an effort to bring Teams into the health care field.

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News • Technology //  • • • • • • • •

ReimagineHR: Creating a Seamless Digital Employee Experience
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Nov 8, 2018 - 12:50pm
ReimagineHR: Creating a Seamless Digital Employee Experience
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Outside the workplace, your employees are increasingly accustomed to seamless experiences as consumers in a digital environment. In their “five-to-nine,” they are shopping, watching movies, ordering meals, and hailing rideshares, all with a few taps on their smartphones. This rapid evolution in the consumer experience stands in stark contrast to their typical experience at work, where most employees remain mired in tedious digital processes and often find themselves expending a lot of effort on low-value tasks. From their consumer lives, they know there must be an easier way to schedule shifts, fill out expense reports, or enter data into spreadsheets.

Organizations that find ways to replicate the seamless digital consumer experience for their employees at work stand to gain in employee engagement, job satisfaction, and productivity. At Gartner’s ReimagineHR conference in Orlando on Tuesday, Leah Johnson, VP, Advisory at Gartner led a discussion with Alexis Corbett, Managing Director and CHRO at Bank of Canada; Archana Singh, CHRO at Wiley; Stevens Sainte-Rose, Chief HR & Transformation Officer at Dawn Foods; and Melanie Kennedy, SVP Human Resources at American Water, where attendees learned about how these HR leaders have been addressing this challenge at their organizations. The discussion surfaced a number of key themes:

The employee experience is about meeting business needs. A seamless digital experience for employee isn’t just a nice-to-have feature for its own sake; like every other aspect of digitalization, it must be designed to address critical pain points arising from today’s rapidly evolving business environment. At the Bank of Canada, the digital transformation came about as the bank faced an unprecedented capacity challenge, Corbett said, which necessitated an improvement in their people’s digital capabilities as technology took on new roles in their everyday work. Similarly, Kennedy noted, one of her core objectives at American Water has been to get employees excited about technology coming into a very labor-intensive industry and making them more effective.

People-focused digitalization also generates value by enhancing employee engagement; Singh, for instance said her goal was to create a “wow” experience for Wiley employees in every interaction. In an age of transparency, Sainte-Rose added, customer experience needs to match the team member experience. As companies endeavor to improve value for customers, they must apply the same thought process on the inside. Creating a better employee experience in the digital enterprise is ultimately about getting the best out of your people and creating more value for all stakeholders.

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Management • Technology //  • • • •

Reimagine HR: 3 Questions to Ask Before Implementing Learning Analytics
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Nov 2, 2018 - 4:18pm
Reimagine HR: 3 Questions to Ask Before Implementing Learning Analytics
Gartner Reimagine HR 2018, Orlando.

The digital transformation of learning and development offers HR leaders new opportunities to embed learning within their talent strategies and make the business case for L&D investments crystal clear. Part of the promise of digital learning comes with the application of data and analytics, enabling organizations to measure and communicate the impact of these programs more precisely than ever before. Unfortunately, as with all new technologies, the rapid emergence of new options can be overwhelming, not every solution is right for every business, and adopting a technology without a clear understanding of how it will generate value can be a very expensive mistake.

To survey this new landscape of learning analytics, Justin Taylor, Director, Talent Solutions at Gartner, moderated a panel discussion at our ReimagineHR conference in Orlando on Monday, bringing together Patti Phillips, Ph.D, President and CEO of the ROI Institute; Dave Vance, Ph.D, Executive Director of the Center for Talent Reporting; and Kimo Kippen, a former Chief Learning Officer at Hilton. The conversation covered the range of new technologies emerging in this space, the opportunities they provide, and the challenge of figuring out how to take advantage of those opportunities.

When considering an investment in learning analytics, the L&D function should keep a few strategic considerations in mind. Based on Monday’s discussion, here are a few of the key questions leaders should ask themselves:

What is your objective?

There are a number of technologies currently on the market that apply analytics to L&D in different ways and to different ends. There’s adaptive testing, in which training modules and skill assessments automatically adapt to each individual’s level of ability. Learning record stores and xAPI record and track learning experience data, allowing organizations to track the progress of learning employee more closely and draw more insights from that data. Learning experience platforms offer new ways of delivering learning to employees on an individualized, self-directed basis. Natural language processing, machine learning, and augmented and virtual reality are also finding applications in learning.

With all these options out there, the panelists agreed, it’s important for an organization to identify just what they hope to get out of learning analytics before buying a new piece of enterprise technology. Don’t chase a shiny toy, Kippen advised, but ask what the business objective is and whether the investment is worth it. You might find that the extra dollar is better spent on fundamentals, Vance added, as new technology won’t fix more fundamental problems in your L&D program. “Without algebra,” he analogized, “you’re not ready for the calculus.”

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Learning & Development • Technology //  • • • • •

ReimagineHR: 5 Ways HR Can Take the Lead in Digitalization
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Oct 29, 2018 - 3:30pm
ReimagineHR: 5 Ways HR Can Take the Lead in Digitalization
Gartner

In his keynote address at the opening of Gartner’s ReimagineHR conference in Orlando, Florida on Sunday, Gartner Group Vice President Brian Kropp shared a very salient figure with the hundreds of HR executives gathered in the room: 67 percent of CEOs tell us that if their organization does not make significant upgrades to its digital capabilities by 2020, it will no longer be competitive. “And if you work for one of the 33 percent,” Kropp told the attendees, “start polishing your résumés,” because those two-thirds of CEOs are probably right.

Digitalization is one of the most pressing challenges facing businesses today, and it’s not hard to see why. When CEOs talk about digitalization—in meetings, in employee communications, and increasingly on calls with investors—they frame it as a means of driving increased efficiency, productivity, and growth, the better to compete in a fast-paced and constantly changing business environment. However, Gartner research has shown that over the past five years, employees are exhibiting dwindling rates of discretionary effort: Just at the moment when organizations need to get the best out of their people, fewer of them are going above and beyond the call of duty. Meanwhile, labor markets in the US, Europe, and around the world are historically tight, so organizations have to work harder to find the right people and hold on to the valuable talent they already have.

As a result of these trends, HR leaders today find themselves in a situation where the CEO is demanding improved performance from employees, while employees are demanding an easier and more seamless experience at work that matches the app-driven, on-demand experience they are increasingly used to in their personal lives. Digital solutions are needed to meet these demands, but those solutions involve much more than merely adopting new technology; fundamental aspects of the way the organization works need to be rethought and redesigned for a digital world. HR has an enormously valuable role to play in ensuring a successful transition into the digital enterprise, but it’s not always obvious how to achieve that goal, and many organizations have been going about it the wrong way.

“What does digitalization mean to you?” Prompted with this question in a poll, Sunday’s audience responded with words like “efficiency,” “easy,” “seamless,” “simplicity,” and “experience.” These answers reflect HR’s unique mission today of driving business outcomes while (or better yet, by) improving the employee experience. Here are five of the key challenges posed by this new environment, and what—in brief—HR can do to tackle them:

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Management • News • Recruiting • Technology //  • • • • • •

PwC Is All-in on Developing Its Employees’ Digital Skills
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Oct 22, 2018 - 2:21pm
PwC Is All-in on Developing Its Employees’ Digital Skills
Chrispictures/Shutterstock.com

Building cutting-edge technological capabilities within their existing workforce is among the most pressing business challenges organizations face today. The accountancy firm PwC is taking a notably aggressive approach to this upskilling project, giving employees as much as 18-24 months to devote to immersive learning of new skills, with half their time spent training in these skills and the other half working with clients to put them to use. Ron Miller recently profiled the PwC’s Digital Accelerator program at TechCrunch:

[Sarah McEneaney, digital talent leader at PwC] estimates if a majority of the company’s employees eventually opt in to this retraining regimen, it could cost some serious cash, around $100 million. That’s not an insignificant sum, even for a large company like PwC, but McEneaney believes it should pay for itself fairly quickly. As she put it, customers will respect the fact that the company is modernizing and looking at more efficient ways to do the work they are doing today. …

Members of the program are given a 3-day orientation. After that they follow a self-directed course work. They are encouraged to work together with other people in the program, and this is especially important since people will bring a range of skills to the subject matter from absolute beginners to those with more advanced understanding. People can meet in an office if they are in the same area or a coffee shop or in an online meeting as they prefer. Each member of the program participates in a Udacity nano-degree program, learning a new set of skills related to whatever technology speciality they have chosen.

The program focuses on a critical set of digital skills that are increasingly in-demand and where expertise is in short supply: data and analytics, automation and robotics, and AI and machine learning. McEneany and PwC’s Chief People Officer Mike Fenlon expanded on their philosophy in a recent piece at the Harvard Business Review, detailing the process through which the program was designed and touting its success at fostering innovation and a growth mindset throughout the organization:

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Learning & Development • Technology //  • • • • • • • •