No innovation from asking customers

 

   I guess I should really be posting on the rest of the CIPD conference, not just my own interactive sessions (1,2).  There are a couple of reasons that I’ve not been doing so – firstly I was really struggling to find anything to blog on during the first day of the conference (I think I would have liked Robert Potter’s stuff on Individual Career Equations if I hadn’t tuned up late), and then secondly, I heard so much I could blog on during the second day that I didn’t get any time to post (ie this was a much better day).  And today…. well that will probably be the hangover.

Once of the best sessions yesterday, or one of those that sparked the most controversy was the keynote panel with Vance Kearney from Oracle (and Heather Corby from BT, Jane Marsh from IBM and Samantha Austin-May from ESO – but we’re going to focus on Vance).

And the piece that I want to pick up on from a fairly wide-ranging discussion on innovation was Vance’s comments that you can’t (radically) innovate by asking customers, but instead need to step back and think things through yourself (not through individual brainstorming, but by connection people with different perspectives together – so there was a social media aspect to this conversation too).

This comment seemed to produce a fairly shocked reaction, which I must say surprised me, as I’ve always worked on this basis, and it’s not as if it’s not come up at conferences before.  Anyone most people did seem to accept the point, being unable to think of any innovations which had resulted from talking to customers.  Vance did get challenged by one man, resulting in what some people thought was the first CIPD conference on-stage use of the word ********  - sorry for the deletion, but it would have been the first time I’d have used the word on my blog too (anyway, Vance says he didn’t say it).

Why I thought this was interesting was that it connected, for me, with the point made by Natalie Woodford at GSK on the previous day: that HR’s got too close to its customers and needs to step back in order to be more strategic.

Because maybe this is one big reason that HR’s not having the impact it would like - we’re too busy understanding the business, talking the language of the business, etc, etc, that we’ve lost the ability to innovate.  And hence why all organisations end up following the same ‘best’ practices, and then have to deal with the consequent low levels of engagement.

And actually this was the main thing that was missing from the whole session for me – there was a lot of sound advice on developing a culture of innovation across the business, but hardly anything on innovation within HR.  Yet if you believe the stuff coming out of the MIX, one of the main opportunities for innovation lies in HR.

To capture this opportunity we need to step back, reflect, connect, discuss and create some new approaches.  I’m not suggesting not asking your customers what they want – of course you’ve got to do this.  But that’s not where radically better processes and engagement (which I what I think we need) are going to come from.

No innovation ever came from that.

 

Henry Ford quote picture credit: Vovici

Technorati Tags: Vance Kearney,Oracle,CIPD,conference,CIPD11,innovation,panel,keynote,swearing on stage

 

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#CIPD11 Bloggerversity

 

   There was much more on social media at the CIPD conference yesterday.

Eg Matthew Hanwell and Neil Morrison did a session on social media and Sarah Beauerle from KFC an interesting one on social recruiting at the same time.

I also did another twitterversity, and by chance, a ‘bloggerversity’ as well… Neil had been a superstar in supporting both of the twitterversities, helping to coach people on their tweeting, so I thought I should support his ‘how to blog’ session.  I turned up 5 minutes late and although there were about 20 people waiting for some inputs, there was no Neil – it turns out that the CIPD hadn’t told him he was supposed to be leading the session!  So Gareth Jones and I ended up taking this one too.

Particularly since we hadn’t prepared anything I thought this worked well.  We answered some of the attendees’ questions then set up a blog – you can see this here.

The key principle for me behind both the twitter and bloggerversities is to get people over that first hurdle of updating.  That once people have done this a few times – tweeted some tweets, posted some blogs, it won’t feel so scary anymore.  Actually, I think it’s a broader habit that social media teaches as well.

I was talking to someone about this last night (drinks, tweet-up, drinks, curry… I can’t quite remember where or who - sorry) and they suggested that tweeting was like putting your hand up to ask a question – that you’ve got to be prepared to do this.  And it’s true – it’s like when I asked for volunteers to do a short video for the blog we were setting up, only one person volunteered.

I think  social media teaches you that it’s OK to put up your hand, and to say what you think  - whether this is in a conference room, on twitter, a blog, a video, or whatever it may be – even stepping in to present a session when someone else hasn’t turned up.

It’s an important requirement that we were talking about at the press dinner on Tuesday night – that HR needs to be prepared to loose their job by standing up for what we believe in.  And Arviunder Dhesi, now with RBS, said something similar on Thursday – suggesting that the original cause of the recession was that we have all been too willing to follow – and that HR needs to be willing to be the lone voice.

 

And this is why I’m so pleased to see more on social media on the CIPD agenda.  It’s not just that it’s such a big enabler for social recruiting (and social communication, learning, recognition etc etc) or the social business, it’s that it teaches more social behaviour too.

(Not necessarily like this photo from the tweet-up!:

)

 

Social media is about social behaviour (a focus on participation and relationships), it’s not about social technology.  And it’s generally HR which is most knowledgeable about changing behaviour – so this is an agenda which HR has got to take on.

Signs are, it’s starting to understand that’s the case as well.

 

Technorati Tags: CIPD,conference,exhibition,twitterversity,twitter,blog,social media,how to,CIPD11

 

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#CIPD11 / #CIPD11Tw Twitterversity / 2

 

   The most interesting thing at the conference yesterday (of course) was obviously the twitterversity session that Gareth Jones (@garelaos) and I (with help from Rob Jones, Neil Morrison, Natalia Thomson, Laurie Reutimann and others) ran.

We were a bit challenged by the technology (the fail whale made a couple of appearances), but this was probably the best large group twitter training I’ve run (eg vs this) – largely I think because of having pre-prepared some twitter usernames to hand out to people (though twitter had decided to suspend a number of these in advance of the training – grrr!).

Anyway, here’s an overview of the session:

 

 

We’re running a Twitterversity again today (1.00pm GMT) and tomorrow (10.15am GMT) so do join us then (at the CIPD exhibition or on the twitter stream - #CIPD11Tw11) if you can.

And I may add some updates from these additional sessions later on too.

 

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#CIPD11 / #CIPD11Tw Twitterversity

 

   I’m up at the CIPD conference for the next three days and will be blogging from a few of the conference sessions.  But I’ll also be delivering a Twitterversity session together with Gareth Jones, my co-founder at ConnectingHR.

The Twitterversity sessions are really for HR practitioners who are not yet using Twitter, but we’re also hoping that we’ll be joined by a few Twitter pros – maybe even Laurie Ruettimann who’ll be over from the States, and of course has delivered her own twitterversity sessions in the past (and the slide above is one of hers).  Our twitterversity will be rather different, for example, we won’t be using any slides (it’ll all be on Twitter instead).

So if you’re at the conference, please do pop down to join us at one of these sessions in the Interactive Zone, and help us provide some smaller group coaching to Twitterversity attendees.  Or at least drop into our stream - #CIPD11Tw (we’ll be dropping into yours, ie #CIPD11).

And if you’re not at the conference at all, please try to join us on the #CIPD11Tw stream at one of the following times:

• 1.00pm Tuesday 8th November
• 1.00pm Wednesday 9th
• 10.15 Thursday 10th

(all times GMT)

 

Technorati Tags: CIPD,ACE,annual,conference,twitter,social media,interactive,twitterversity

 

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Julian Birkinshaw on Human Centric Management

 

   And while I’m on the subject of human centricity, let me point out that I, and ConnectingHR, are not alone in prioritising this.  For example, it’s interesting to see that Julian Birkinshaw’s latest research is on “Employee Centred Management”.  And in a session at MLab recently, Birkinshaw encouraged everyone to see management through the eyes of their employees.

Basically there are two ways of managing people – as a resource to support the business (HR), or as the driver for business success.  This is what I’ve been calling strategic HCM (human capital being based on employees’ latent skills and enthusiasm):

 

Birkinshaw concludes that to become a better human manager by seeing the world through your employees’ eyes you should

• Spend time in their shoes, in their space
• Package work - even routine work - into projects
• Work yourself out of a job.

 

You can find further advice on this blog, or my book.

 

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#HRTechEurope Human-Centric HR Technology

 

   My other current interest, other than integrated talent management, is human centricity (see this post on the recent ConnectingHR unconference).

So I had this article published in the HR Technology Europe conference guide:

 

“One hypothesis that I will be testing out is whether Europe’s generally more progressive approaches to HR (versus the hire and fire culture in the US) results in a different focus for HR technology use.

I believe there are three different ways that organisations can gain value from HR technology. The first, and I think least significant, of these is through the provision of a single (or at least a clearly defined) system of record. This type of technology gives HR robust and accurate data about the people the organisation employees and means that HR can start to take more sensible decisions about the workforce.

The second way that HR technology provides value is by informing the decisions of line managers and business leaders. This value is provided by talent or human capital systems, particularly the new integrated platforms, that allow managers to interrogate data for themselves, to gain better understanding, and as a result of this, better leverage, of the people they employ. I think this is where most HR technology professionals, at least in the US, have been most focused over the last five years.

But the third way that HR technology provides value, which I think often provides the greatest benefit, is by enhancing the productivity and performance of individual employees. This is where office systems have long been focused but it is where some HR systems have acted too. For example, well over a decade ago I was involved in setting up a self-scheduling system for a train operating company. Because this allowed individual employees to enhance their own productivity, it had a much more significant impact on the performance of this business than anything we could have done to give managers more oversight of the way that shifts were being set.

The opportunity to provide HR technology for the workforce is currently being enhanced in two main ways:

1. Firstly, there is the very rapidly increasing ubiquitousness of mobile devices which are starting to be used by HR system vendors for their applications, and provide a very real opportunity to give employees much more input and control over the way that they work.
2. Then there is the similarly exponential increase in the use of social media tools, often used by people on their mobile devices, to connect people together and offering a new opportunity to significantly impact the performance of organisational networks, communities and teams.

 

Why I think this is interesting is that the key to these latter opportunities is an understanding of the people in a particular organisation, and the way they work. This is about HR technology becoming more people-centric in order to find those key needs that technology can support. It is also an almost direct contradiction to much of what is said about HR technology and the need for this to be more business-centric (see for example, this recent article at TLNT, ‘Why HR Technology needs to focus on being more business-centric’).

It will be interesting to see whether this different, people-centric technology approach comes out through the HR Tech Europe conference at all.”

 

Well, I can’t say it was a huge theme, but again, maybe that’s due to the general lower stage of maturity.  My hope is that the new HR technology conference will help Europe catch up a bit more quickly, and maybe evolve to a different, more human-centric, approach as well.

 

Also see:

• #HRTechEurope Integrated Talent Management Technology
• #HRTechEurope – iTalent competition
• #HRTechEurope – emcee summary
• #HRTechEurope – CedarCrestone survey

 

Technorati Tags: HRTechEurope,human,business,centric,HR,technology,conference

 

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#HRTechEurope Integrated Talent Management Technology

 

   There were a couple of differences between HR Technology Europe and an unconnected US based conference of the same name that I attended recently.  One of these differences was that there was more focus on core HR management systems and less on talent / human capital management and particularly integration between these systems.

I suspect that this was simply due to the lower state of maturity in Europe, shown in the CedarCornerstone research, and not much of a surprise to anyone (I will admit through that one surprise for me was the number of HR technology people who attended this conference – HR Tech is clearly a much more advanced profession in Europe than I had thought).  Eg there was some suggestion that the key need is data integration, not technology integration, which I think reflects this more transactional focus.

I did however want to address integration in talent management technology, simply because I’ve been looking at integration in talent management recently, and technology is obviously yet another aspect within this.

And it was addressed at the conference, eg Katherine Jones from Bersin noted their research which found that 33% of organisations would trade functionality for higher integration (but this was 2009, and US data, and will have changed a lot since then, and in Europe).  Katherine also noted the importance of an integrated employee profile as the new employee system of record (ESR) – something that had also come out at the Social Workplace conference – the other conference that I was chairing this week.

Lexy Martin wasn’t able to attend the conference but the CedarCrestone provides good up-to-date and localised findings with sound recommendations:

• ”In order to use technology to truly optimse  the workforce contribution to the organisation, it is imperative that all functionality needs to be unified end-to-end and integrated within an ecosytem.
• For the integrated talent management arena, we see two predominant approaches:
1. European organisataions are utilising the talent management capability provided by their core syste, of record vendor, with PeopleSoft the dominant choice.
2. The other approach is the use of a best-of-breed integrated talent management solution of multiple talent management components provided by vendors such as Cornerstone On-Demand, Lumesse, and SuccessFactors.

 

CedarCrestone’s main conclusions are drawn from their worldwide survey report.  These include:

• Standardise processes where it makes sense
• Standardise data handling (minimise number of HRMS instances)
• Adopt an integrated talent management approach
• In 2011, that need not be an integrated talent management solution built on the same platform as your underlying ERP-based HRMS.  It can be an integrated talent management suite.  But one hallmark of the most successful organisations continues to be pervasive integration among processes, solutions and systems.  So if you choose an integrated talent management suite that is from a vendor other than your HRMS vendor, be prepared for integration activities.

 

Also see:

• The role of Recruitment in Integrated Talent Management
• HR, learning and integration
• #HRTechconf – meeting Kevin Oakes – and the need for integrated talent management

 

And

• The book: ‘The Executive Guide to Integrated Talent Management’ (Dave Ulrich, Ed Lawler, Peter Cappelli, a few others, and me)

 

Technorati Tags: HRTechEurope,integrated,HR,talent management,technology,conference,Katherine Jones,Bersin

 

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#HRTechEurope – iTalent competition (and congratulations to MIIAtech)

 

   I think most peoples’ favourite session on the first day of HR Technology Europe, perhaps tied with Thomas Otter’s opening keynote, was the first ever European italent competition run by Jerome Ternynck, CEO or SmartRecruiters (who won the US italent competition at the HRDemo show in the US last year).

This competition is HR’s (or at least emerging recruiting technology’s) version of the X Factor.  Basically, the format of this was that six shortlisted technology start-ups each had five minutes to present their technologies.  We, the judges then voted on these, and the conference participants added their voice, and level of applause, quite literally through a noise meter on Jerome’s phone.

You can watch the process here.

The winner of the competition was MIIAtech with their natural language CV search technology, Goldfish, which closes the gap between structured and unstructured data.  This is something to do with the system’s semantic layer, but I got a bit lost by this (why is why I only gave MIIAtech a 7 out of 10 for my vote).  So here’s the official spiel:

“With MIIAtech’s GoldFish technology, users can phrase their search questions in natural language.  Both the CVs and the job profiles within the database will be analysed and matched.  The result is that the user receives only the best and most relevant matches between candidates and job profiles.  No more mismatches like ‘speaks French’ with ‘worked in France’ and similar classic errors.  With GoldFish, you’re able the find the ideal candidate, much faster and significantly more accurately that with any traditional keyword search.”

 

 

Well done, Stephane Lernout.

And well done Jerome – it was a great, fun session with an amazing line-up of judges, which I was honoured to be part of alongside Craig Fisher, William Tincup, Geoff Web, Thomas Otter, Gordon Lokenberg (‘the new Bill Boorman’), Peter Gold, Katherine Jones and Jonathan Campbell:

 

I voted largely (though not totally) along social lines – though not so much who I know best, but how much effort the founder and their company has been putting into getting to know me.  You’ll probably think that’s a a poor basis for judging, but you’re not going to get me apologising for it.  I think increasingly technology companies are going to succeed or fail based upon their social klout (small k), not just by the ‘quality’ of the functionality itself (eg BeKnown vs BranchOut).

(I also think it’s the way that most people vote – at least I know it!)

These were my top three pitches – with social justifications:

 

#3.   Stephane Le Viet, Work4Labs: 8

This one is a bit of a cheat as I don’t think Work4Labs have made any efforts to get to know me or win me over, though I did see Stephane present a rather longer overview at Onrec recently, and was suitably impressed.  What I do see though, is a number of Work4Us customers singing the product’s praises, which of course works even better than doing it themselves (which is why customer case studies work better than product demos at conferences!).

 

#2.   Lisa Scales, Tribepad: 8

I see Lisa around a fair bit (at conferences, and on the twitter stream etc), and like the way she supports their product in the background, eg when Colin Minto presents what G4S have been doing with Tribepad, she’s there, but in the background, looking proud, and maybe doing a bit of tweeting, but that’s about it.

 

#1.  

Hey I said this was HR’s version of the X Factor.  You surely don’t think you’re going to find out about (x the x) my winner without a big dramatic pause do you?  Try coming back tomorrow!

 

Yes, #1 has to be BraveNewTalent (with a vote of 9).  I think the technology is potentially quite neat, though with a couple of 3’s, not all of the judges were convinced.  But from a social influencing perspective, they’re clear winners.  I’d back any team that includes Lucian Tarnowski, Maren Hogan, James Mayes, Jimmy Kyriacou, Charlie Duff and Gautam Ghosh (who am missing?).

 

Well done guys (even if you didn’t win – it’s the opportunity to contribute to gen y-ers, right?).

 

Technorati Tags: HR,talent,management,technology,conference,hrtechconf,italent,Jerome Ternynck,SmartRecruiters,MIIAtech,Wor4Labs,Tribepad,BraveNewTalent

 

 

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#HRTechEurope – emcee summary

 

   I’ve just got back from a great two days at HR Technology Europe in Amsterdam this week.  But since I was busy working as Master of Ceremonies, I’m going to struggle for time to get much out on my blog.

Anyway here’s my summary of the key themes for me:

• HR technology is really important, it’s taking an increasingly central role in HR strategy, and in business strategy too.  So it is a really exciting time to be in HR tech (though I don’t quite agree with Richard Mutter from HSBC that employee and manager self service is the reason why it so exciting!)
• It’s increasingly complex too – with social, mobile, cloud, SAAS, analytics and big data, contingent workers and changing business requirements, all within an increasingly challenging economy (once again)
• It’s still the social aspects of this that I think are the biggest changes, which I think came out strongly during the stream on day 2:
  • Brian Jones from Smiths Group referred to the combustible mixture formed from the mix of anarchic gen y and formal gen x - which we also saw in Mark Turrell’s keynote on toppling dictators – and I thought this was a good metaphor for the use of social technology and more traditional HR systems too
  • Eg we saw the potential disconnect between the sessions on recruitment taking place in the two streams when I received a tweet about Jerome Ternyck from SmartRecruiters’ suggestion that recruitment is a social conversation, not a process which can be automated at exactly the point at which Brian Dean from HSBC showed a slide of their automated process supported by Taleo and SHL.
  • But these things can be complementary – there doesn’t need to be a clash.

 

• So HR technology strategy is difficult to get it right – but it can be done!  And I thought Andy’s presentation of the Aviva / Workday case study was a wonderful example of a company which has achieved this.

 

Picture credit: Recruiting Essentials

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#HRTechEurope – CedarCrestone survey

 

   It’s the HR Technology Europe conference in Amsterdam today where I’ll be acting as emcee.

Just in time, Lexy Martin at CedarCrestone have provided a summary of the European data for their global HR Systems Survey I encouraged you to enter earlier this year.

This is the 14th time the company has run this survey which in the past has been mainly focused on North America.  However nine percent of the 727 respondents are now from Europe which provides sound insights for this side of the pond as well.

Key conclusions include:

• European organisations have lower adoption of almost HR technologies
• Main areas of focus are HR systems strategy (good news, especially if this is supported by talent management strategy too) and talent management processes and automation
• European organisations are more focused than their US counterparts on using competency frameworks (supporting Ahmed Limam’s conclusions)
• There is less focus on the adoption of social media which has yet to enter the CedarCrestone’s list of the top ten activities for Europe (a shame as the company concludes that the outlook for growth of socially enabled HCM processes is ‘stupendous’)
• European companies aren’t seeing the reduction in HR administrative staff which accompanies the use of HR service delivery applications in the US (because of the additional complexity here?).

 

There’s a lot of opportunity here, particularly as CedarCrestone find that higher adoption of HR technology leads to (or supports) HR being seen as strategic and improvements in business performance eg in sales per employee, profit per employee and operating income growth – see picture.  So I’m sure those organisations attending today’s conference will gain a lot of benefit from this.

 

There are some more interesting conclusions in the survey, which I may come back and report on again when I have more time.  But do check out the report yourself at www.cedarcrestone.com/research.

 

Technorati Tags: HR,technology,systems,survey,CedarCrestone,Lexy Martin,Europe,conference,HRTechEurope

 

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