2015 - tumultuous times for HR
- Summary:
- In the second part of a consideration of the views of HR guru Josh Bersin, Janine Milne considers his opinions on a year of HR transformation to come.
Last week I looked at the predictions of leadership analyst Josh Bersin, principal and founder of Bersin at Deloitte on the changing nature of talent management. This week, by way of follow-on, I take a look at Bersin's wider HR expectations for 2015, a year he pitches as:
tumultuous and transformational.
Of course, we’re all so used to reading these bold headline-grabbing statements - especially around this time of year - that there’s a danger they begin to lose their power. All too often, the reality is a more storm in a teapot than raging tumult.
But HR does appear to be genuinely going through a period of immense change that has the power to transform it from a back-room support function into a strategic player.
That is thanks in no small part to technology. We’re in the eye of a perfect storm as tentative economic growth, demographic shifts come together with technology to fundamentally change the way we work.
Provided, of course, organizations are prepared to step into the storm. For every HR department pushing the boundaries with predictive analytics and social media, there are countless others still grappling with upgrading from Excel to their first truly automated HR system.
But while there’s plenty of money being splashed about in HR technology – Bersin's report, Predictions for 2015: Redesigning the organization for a rapidly changing world, suggests the HR software market is pushing $15 billion– the benefits are not yet fully being felt by the companies that buy it.
As Bersin puts it:
No vendor seems to have everything we need – forcing us to stitch together multiple systems to create a compelling employee experience.
The major vendors – Oracle, SAP, ADP, IBM and Workday – together with many smaller providers offer end-to-end, integrated HR software suites as standard. Standard, yes; equal, no. Some will have achieved that integrated offering through acquisition, for example, and have different strengths.
In other words, each vendor will have stitched together their suites in different ways, and each will have different areas where their needlepoint needs some work.
Bersin is not expecting vendors to provide all the answers this year, but the research outlines some of the areas we should expect vendors to be active and investing.
Mobile is an obvious area which could influence future purchasing decisions. Bersin’s report suggests that at least half of employee transactions take place on the road rather than in the office. In a few years, mobile apps will become more popular than web apps, so vendors need to have a creditable mobile roadmap and investment to match.
Mobile, analytics
There aren’t many HR technology conversations these days that don’t include the word ‘analytics’ and they play a key role in Bersin’s predictions for 2015 and beyond.
Bersin believes:
Today’s software vendors are as much ‘data providers’ and ‘software providers’.
It’s essential therefore to see just how deeply vendors are investing in analytics.
While there’s been plenty of column inches written about talent analytics, meaningful insight from analytics is still a rare commodity for most firms. Bersin’s view is that although there’s plenty of analytics software out there, it’s not going to provide insight unless organizations put the right teams and processes in place.
True value from analytics will only happen by pulling together all the different analytic teams organizations may have in recruitment, learning or leadership to create a more holistic analytics team (a task that can take three years, warns Bersin).
He admits that this is a long time – which is why companies should get started as soon as possible.
Only then will companies be able to move beyond typical HR reporting to really answering the business issues that matter – how do we improve the quality of our recruits, improve sales performance, why are certain groups of employees jumping ship…Some 56% of firms are still what Bersin terms level 1 analytics, compiling basic operational reporting. Only 4% have reached level 4, and are effectively using predictive analytics.
It’s strategy and building the right teams that are important, stresses Bersin in the report:
HR software, while important, is a tool to facilitate change – not a solution in itself. Make sure that your HR philosophy, business alignment, and program strategies are clear and focused first – then use technology to achieve those goals.
Aside from analytics, Bersin points out that innovation is often found outside the main vendor camp. He mentions a whole list of new tools such as social and informal learning, social recognition, integrated network recruiting and candidate relationship management, real-time employee feedback and engagement sensing, culture assessment and fit analysis.
So while companies have an integrated core HR system, they should still look around for interesting cloud-based add-ons.
As well as the key areas of talent management and analytics, technology plays a role in many of Bersin’s other key predictions, including:
Engagement
The problem with the annual engagement survey is that it’s out-of-date by the time the data is analysed.
Bersin anticipates HR professionals will turn to tools such as pulse surveys to help provide more real-time feedback on employee attitudes.
Bersin is not necessarily advocating abandoning the traditional engagement survey. It’s just that on its own it’s not enough. HR professionals, he suggests, need to concentrate on collecting as much information as possible, from as many sources as possible, about how employees feel about the work environment, the management and the mission.
Learning management
The learning technology market grew 24% last year and Bersin anticipates the same growth for this year. With that growth comes evolution in the kinds of products the 600-plus LMS (learning management system) providers are offering. They will dig further into big data to help improve the learning experience, creating Netflix-style recommendations for learning that are designed to make it easier for users.
SAP, Saba, Skillsoft, Cornerstone OnDemand, Wiley CrossKnowledge, ADP and IBM have all made strides in this area, points out Bersin.
Learning will become more embedded into the everyday work environment, which means employees will be offered support as and when they need it during a particular work activity.
On top of that, MOOCs (massive open online courses) and content marketplaces, such as Open Sesame and Udacity and many others are creating bucket loads of low cost and high quality online content that learning professionals should tap into.
Talent acquisition
The way we recruit has already dramatically shifted to what Bersin terms “network recruiting”. In this model, it’s word-of-mouth connections and networking that are the best pipeline for recruiting talent, not recruitment advertising or job boards.
Technology that taps into social sourcing networks, mobile recruitment tools or referral network tools are already swilling round the recruitment market, but things are changing fast. Bersin calls upon HR teams to have someone responsible for keeping on top of these new developments.
Job transfers between departments are also becoming more common and to be encouraged. Bersin likens this to more of a pattern of military duty, where officers are transferred out of their department and then return later at a higher level.
This movement keeps staff motivated and staying with the company and gives that employee with some breadth to their experience as well as depth. All good things for improving performance and loyalty.
Finding a way to manage this process and ensuring that there’s some logic to these move is a challenge, but technology is beginning to help. Workday, for example, has an application that analyzes career moves and predicts the likely success (or not) of particular types of move, points out Bersin.
My take
Overall, Bersin characterizes 2015 as the year when the HR software shifts from being “systems of record” which simply automate HR practices to “systems of engagement”, which actually help improve people’s productivity.
Across the board, be it in recruitment, performance management, learning, traditional ways of doing things are being questioned or abandoned. Those changes are either being enabled or supported by advancements in technology.
And that’s exciting.
The complete Bersin report outlines many different changes in the HR market, but what stands out is that there is a major shift from HR systems merely automating HR processes to technology that is changing the way people work. That in turn is changing the standing of HR departments in their organizations.