Monday, 5 May 2014

Fleming Europe - Gamification in HR












 
On most topics in HR I'm pretty sure what I believe, and although I do sometimes shift on this slightly, my learning tends to be more about how I argue my position, and case studies, pro and con, etc. 

However there are a few other topics I find I touch a lot but don't feel as confident in my perspectives.  One of these areas is gamification.

I know that some companies do find benefits from these approaches but I know there are a lot of nonsense being promoted too.  Eg "most of us want to earn points, gain badges and move up levels" is firstly just rather bizarre, and secondly, complete tosh.

Gamification is more than pointsification for a start.  But as to exactly what it is, I want to be more sure than I currently am.  So next week I'm off to Paris for Fleming Europe's Gamification in HR 2014 Summit.

I'm looking forward to some good debates as there's a pretty amazing list of speakers presenting, representing a broad diversity of roles:

  • Mario Herger, Founder and Partner, Enterprise Gamification Austria
  • Willy Christian Kriz, Chairman, SAGSAGA, Austria
  • Tom Chatfield, Author of ’How to Thrive in the Digital Age', United Kingdom
  • Phaedra Boinodiris, Global Serious Games and Gamification Program Manager, IBM; Founder of WomenGamers.com
  • Roman Rackwitz, Deputy Chair, International Gamification, Germany
  • Tim Ackermann, Senior Director, Talent Acquisition, PAREXEL International, Germany
  • DĂ©borah Lasry, COO - Services, Brand Communications and Quality, BNP Paribas, France
  • Anja Andersen, Employer Branding Leader, Maersk, Denmark
  • Laura Hugonnet, Competencies and Training Project Leader, Suez Environnement, France
  • Fredrik Tukk, Head of Communication, Marketing and Branding, Maersk Drilling, Denmark
  • Noemi Biro, Talent Attraction, Recruitment and Employer Branding Leader, PWC, Hungary
  • Eric Gueronniere, Head of Competencies Development and Training, Suez Environnement, France
  • Magnus Kobke, Head of the Cargo Dynasty Project, Transport Sector Educucation Trust, Denmark
  • Martina Mangelsdorf, Founder and Chief Engagement Officer (formerly Head of Talent Management and Staffing at Novartis), GAIA Insights, Switzerland
  • Pascal Picault, Director of Formaposte, La Poste Group, France
  • John Pugh, Director for Innovation, Boehringer Ingelheim, Germany
  • Tuba Surucu, Vice President, Training and Development Support Services, Yapi Kredi Bank, Turkey
  • Helene Michel, Senior Professor, Grenoble Ecole de Management, France
  • Christian Harpelund, Learning Architect, Grundfos, Denmark
  • An Coppens, Chief Game Changer and Gamification Design Expert, Gamification Nation, United Kingdom


It's a three day long event (based on three levels!) so by the end of the event I should have a clearer focus on what I think.  I'll be blogging from the event too, so please join me to comment on my posts and we can learn about this still fairly new, and potentially important, aspect of HR together.


Or if you want to join me in Paris, you can book for the event here.  I'll even throw in a couple of points for you!


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Most of us want to earn points, gain badges and move up levels. - See more at: http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hro/features/1143732/game-afoot#sthash.pj2hUdc9.dpuf
Most of us want to earn points, gain badges and move up levels. - See more at: http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hro/features/1143732/game-afoot#sthash.pj2hUdc9.dpuf

Friday, 2 May 2014

Economist Talent Management Summit 2014















 
Recognising its roles as one of the leading strategic HR blogs in the UK, and beyond, Strategic HCM blog has been a - in fact the sole supporting social media site (blogger / tweeter) for the Economist's Talent Management Summit for each of the last three years.

This year, it, and I, will be back once again.  And once again, the line-up of presenters suggests a stellar event.  These presenters include:
  • Adrian Wooldridge, Management Editor and Schumpeter Columnist, The Economist
  • Roland Decorvet, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, NestlĂ© Greater China
  • Gary Elliott, Global Talent and Organisation Effectiveness Director, Diageo
  • Tracy Robbins, Executive Vice-president Human Resources and Group Operations Support, InterContinental Hotels Group 
  • Helmut Schuster, Executive Vice-president, Group Human Resources Director, BP
  • Jean Martin, Executive Director, Human Resources Practice, CEB
  • Leveraging Diversity
  • Baroness Mary Goudie, Member, House of Lords
  • Helena Morrissey, Chief Executive Officer, Newton Investment Management
  • Hayley Tatum, Executive People Director, Asda
  • Darren Childs, Chief Executive Officer, UKTV
  • Immanuel Hermreck , Executive Vice-president, Human Resources, Bertelsmann
  • Donna Humphreys, Vice-president, Human Resources, FedEx Corporation
  • Simon Lloyd, Human Resources Director, Santander UK
  • Cliff Oswick, Professor of Organisation Theory and Deputy Dean, Cass Business School, City University London 
  • Maxine Williams, Global Head of Diversity, Facebook
  • Kingsley Macey, Vice-president Human Resources - Business Partnerships, Leadership and Capabilities and Culture, King.com
  • Ann Pickering, Human Resources Director, Telefonica UK
  • Andrew Sumner, Managing Director, UK and Ireland, Monster
  • Javier Zamora, Lecturer of Information Systems, IESE Business School
  • Raghu Krishnamoorthy, Vice-president, Executive Development and Chief Learning Officer, GE 

If you're able to attend, you can gain a 15% discount by quoting HCM/DC.

And if not, then as I'll once again be blogging from the event, you can follow the proceedings here.

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Thursday, 1 May 2014

#CipdLDshow Focus on the Learner and Learning
















The CIPD's new Learning and Development survey has been launched at its new L&D Show.  There are some interesting findings, including a substantial, and rather surprising, increase in the amount of evaluation going on (particularly when you have a look at the almost complete apathy about the CIPD's Valuing Your Talent initiative  - see my post as to why).

There's also a de rigeur nod to an increase in business knowledge and commercial acumen which personally I think is the wrong focus - particularly when you compare it with having curiosity for how people learn and develop.  And it's particularly worrying when combined with the other results just below this - low knowledge of emerging L&D trends and low understanding of new learning technologies.

The good news is that there is a considerable increase in the awareness and use of various new insights on L&D from other disciplines from the 2012 survey when the CIPD basically lost its rag with the profession:

"A lot of this activity is going to require a step-up in our awareness of a new and emerging evidence base from the sciences about how people think, act and behave. L&D people use familiar models such as Myers Briggs, Kolb, and Honey and Mumford to generate insight on how people learn and develop. Perhaps these are too familiar, for the challenges we face now require different insights and a refreshed evidence base. Our survey also shows there is a low awareness of the emerging evidence base from neuroscience, cognitive research and areas like economics which could transform the way we think and plan L&TD."


The most common developments being applied in 2014 (by a quarter of respondents) include:
"Awareness of how ‘mirror neurons’ help embed learning; the correlation between physical exercise and increased learning performance; how human reasoning and logic affect how we learn; and learning states during game-based learning."

"Overall, more than half of respondents (55%) had integrated one or more of the new insights listed into practice compared with 36% in 2012. The proportion incorporating the concept of learning through deep practice, the implications of generational changes in brain function, cognitive issues around decision-making and how human reasoning and logic affect how we learn has doubled since 2012. Similarly, while small proportions incorporate concepts related to neurochemistry of learning or brain plasticity, the figures have improved since 2012. In addition, more have heard of the methods even if they don’t currently use them in their practice or don’t fully understand them. As we found in 2012, very few report they don’t see the relevance of the developments."


I'm really pleased that more L&D practitioners are developing their interest in these areas although I'm still a bit suspect how far this interest and new learning goes.  For example it's interesting to note the high proportion of evaluation approaches which still depend on the 60 year old Kirkpatrick model.  So it sounds to me as if the need for unlearning which the CIPD referred to in 2012 is still alive and well, in this area at least.
"Organisations are using more methods to assess the impact of L&D activity compared with last year – the most popular methods last year, general HR metrics and business metrics, remain the most commonly used methods of assessing L&D, but the proportion always or frequently using them has increased. The use of other methods, including return on investment and the Kirkpatrick model, has also increased.
"A quarter report they rarely use the evaluation data they collect – in contrast, nearly half use it to forecast future training needs and plan accordingly and a similar proportion to review the L&D evaluation at the end of each training cycle and update it according to the research findings."


I'm also really pleased that the CIPD seems to be recognising that its focus on business acumen can be taken too far:
"Without a good understanding of the business and the environment in which it operates and the ability to work collaboratively and influence others in the organisation, the application of more functional skills, knowledge and expertise may be misdirected or the organisational support required for implementation of new ideas or processes may be lacking. At the same time, L&D professionals must ensure that a focus on integrating with the business does not preclude up-to-date knowledge of new insights, theories and technologies, which can help advance L&D capability and credibility."


But to me, this interest in new L&D insights still isn't quite the right thing.  It's a bit like understanding a whole set of business trends from globalisation and customer focus to lean manufacturing and virtualisation.  But if a practitioner isn't interested in, doesn't understand, their business, these separate bits of knowledge don't add much value at all.

It's the same with people acumen too.  We need to understand the nuggets of insight provided by neuroscience etc but they don't mean much unless we connect them in terms of our focus on the learner.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't pay attention to our businesses, but if we engage people deeply in their learning, then they're going to learn about areas connected with their business objectives as a matter of course.  It's the learning not the business that are the challenges we should be focusing on.  The people are at least as important as the commercial context of the organisation.

So to me the survey suggests that we've still got a long way to go before we get to develop anything like  the potential of learning in our businesses.


Take the other result right at the bottom of the graph of survey findings as an example - the low level of understanding of new learning technologies eg MOOCs.  The tweets from the L&D Show seemed to suggest that MOOCs could work but are only being taken up by people who are already active learners.  To me this suggests that the challenge, once again, isn't alignment with the business, or even a deep understanding of MOOCs.  It's understanding how people learn and getting them interested in learning.  Do that and the rest follows.


It was interesting to see some frustration on the conference Twitter stream that there wasn't more new insight communicated during the conference.  Well the need to focus on the learner isn't new, but I think it's still the priority which needs to come out more strongly from the L&D community.


Also see:

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Wednesday, 30 April 2014

Socially Shared L&D Blogs


Strategic HCM is included on this list of socially shared learning and development blogs.  It's a clear attempt to gain a bit of social street cred for an unheard of management development consultancy, CMOE, but it's still quite a good list of blogs.  So do take a look:



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Thursday, 10 April 2014

Art of HR global conference











You've not heard much from me recently and one of the reasons for this is that I've been working hard designing a new global HR conference, Art of HR, taking place in Dubrovnik, Croatia in November.

We've got a great focus (there are no other proper conference which focus on global HR), a provoking theme (the importance of art as a supplement to the more popular developments around science),  a brilliant venue and some great speakers:

  • Dave Ulrich, Professor at the Ross School of Business
  • Partha Ghosh, Senior Advisor at Schlumberger Business Consulting
  • Huda Al Ghoson, Executive Director, Employee Relations & Training at Saudi Aramco
  • Bjarthe Bogsnes, Vice President Performance Management Development at Statoil
  • Mr. Pierre Bismuth, Former Vice President HR at Schlumberger
  • Mirko Ilic, World known artist and humanist
  • Zdravka Demeter Bubalo, HR Vice President at MOL Group
  • Stevens Sainte-Rose, Senior Vice President HR at Coca-Cola International
  • Christian Schutz, Head of Global University Relations at Siemens AG
  • Dawid Louw, Region Europe Vice President for HR at AstraZeneca
  • Dirk Stoltenberg, Group Vice President & Head HR-Excellence at ABB Asea Brown Boveri
  • Sunil Hja, President – Group HR of ACG Worldwide
  • Jelena Ĺ utić, Senior Vice President Strategic HR Development and Executive Search at Telenor Group
  • Yashwant Mahadik, Senior Vice President – Head of HR Transformation & Global Head of Learning at Philips
  • Doris Tomanek, Executive Vice President and Head of HR CEE at UniCredit S.p.A.
  • Kara Walsh, Senior Vice President, Head of HR  Middle Central and Eastern Europe at SAP
  • Gideon Schulman, HR Leader at Rational Group
  • Wendy Murphy, HR Director EMEA at LinkedIn
  • Edgar Meyer, HR Lecturer at COTRUGLI Business School
  • JesĂşs Vega, Former Managing Director at Zara-Inditex
  • Edward Stanoch, European Talent Leader at Aon Hewitt
  • Stephen Benko, Managing Partner at Egon Zhender
  • Zsuzsanne Friedl, HR Director  at Microsoft Hungary
  • Sharon Moshayof, Former Talent Development Leader of Global Markets at Merck (MSD)
  • Arvind Hickman, Editor HR at HR Magazine


Now we just need you - and bookings are open - here.


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Monday, 31 March 2014

HR Days - Adageology and why People Leave People
















I've been out in Croatia at a conference called HR Days organised by Moj Posao.

My presentation was on a topic which had been occupying me since TENEO's conference earlier this month, where I'd seen a couple of inputs challenging the common adage that people join organisations but leave managers.















It's also a perception that I've long argued against (see 1 and 2).

So I talked in my session about adageology - the tendency to build systems on principles which are completely unsound.  And it's one reason why measurement is important, but I still don't think we need big data (as in the IBM Kenexa report which Clodagh refers to in the tweet above) to tell us the adage is wrong.  It's clear from a strategic perspective and understanding about what's happening in society that people don't look up to authority in the way we used to, ie the death of deference.  So why should we still see managers as so important that retention is all about them?
















It looks to me as if the case is now closed - but I've still come across a couple of people trotting out the same old adage just over the last couple of days, so maybe not after all?


By the way, my next trip to Croatia will be for a new global HR conference, Art of HR taking place in November - I hope you might join me there!



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.


Monday, 24 March 2014

TENEO #HRCoreLab2 Performance Management




















Earlier this month I co-chaired Teneo's 2 day Performance Management conference as part of HR Core Lab 2 in Barcelona.

It was a great event, as always with TENEO, though I felt we'd failed to really get to grips with the big issues on performance management ie there were quite a few sessions from companies which were in the process of transforming performance management, and a couple from some which were thinking of doing so, but no real evidence of a completely successful change.  Indeed, quite a few of the presenters seemed quite happy with their existing, traditional approaches.

And yet, I think that most people agreed, and as Jerome Sulivan from SuccessFactors suggested, everyone hates performance management.  If this is the case, we surely need to start doing something more radicallly different from how performance management exists today.

It was also interesting that during the two days of the conference, Josh Bersin by Deloitte was also commenting on performance, based on the firm's global human capital trends survey:


 













But I thought the best evidence against performance management was provided by Jerome, though I think his view was that it supports rather than opposes the case.  63% of higher performing businesses use performance management, and only 22% of lower performing businesses do the same.  But this doesn't mean using performance management helps.  To me, it suggests that even lower performers, which need to improve their performance most, don't see the value in performance management in helping them achieve the improvements they need.















I suggested that one solution is a focus on social performance management - firstly because the team provides a better level of focus for much of HR, and particularly performance management, than the individual; secondly because it can also be a more meaningful way to develop and reward the individual; and thirdly, and most importantly, because by making it social it becomes part of the culture and this makes it more sustainable (ie people will / have to talk about team performance in a way they won't do when it focuses on the individual.)

So I liked Alberto Platz' description of the way that Swarovski has anchored performance management in the culture of their business:

 













Other good ideas included:
  • Genevieve Guinot from CERN's suggestion that performance management needs to encourage both competition and co-operation or co-opetition, supported by cross fertilisation, excellence as an overarching value, collaborative decision making and a long term focus.
  • Wouter Van Linden from KPMG's description of the value of moving away from forced distribution and a complex 9 box grid to a guided distribution based on a simple 5 point linear rating.
  • Christoph Williams from Sony's use of an internal Net Promoter Score / NPS and Klaus Bodel from BMW's experience of using a balanced scorecard as the basis for training measurement (but note I don't believe Kaplan and Norton's standard perspectives work for HR - see http://www.slideshare.net/joningham/the-hr-scorecard.)
  • Fiona Whitworth from Rio Tinto's encouragement to align the approach to performance management with the context of the business unit and employee population etc.
     
I also liked the discussion from Peter Sale at Nokia Siemens Networks about aligning performance management changes with the context and culture of the organisation.  For example, they are currently considering one of:

  • Continue Current +
    • Build on Experience

    • Further enhancement
  • A Holistic Model
    • Broad labeling on talent/performance scenarios rather than ratings
    • 
Performance discussion occurs in a broader way

    • Calibration discussions still ensure consistency of criteria and feedback
    • Distribution curve for talent only
  • No Rating
    • Focus on continuous dialog and broader discussions on performance 
    • A minimum of two formal dialog sessions a year, 
    • Calibration still occurs but is a basis for broader discussions on performance 
    • Talent management and succession planning follows existing approach

What transformations are you planning in your own business?


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Saturday, 15 February 2014

HR Technology Key Trends 2014














You might be interested in these comments from me and others on the key trends in HR technology currently - published by HRZone.

My remarks are on data analytics - I'm not convinced!



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Thursday, 30 January 2014

People Focused People Management Strategy















I also did this webinar for Halogen Software - on wht we need a people focused, not simply a business focused, people management strategy.

See the slides and this blog post.

 

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Wednesday, 15 January 2014

#20mmc : HR & Technology - A Relationship that Can't be Broken!















I've not got around previously to sharing the archive of a short webinar I did recently with SuccessFactors - 20 Minute Masterclass: HR & Technology - A Relationship That Can't Be Broken!

Enjoy!

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