July 2014
The Official Journal of the International Association for Human Resource Information Management
IHRIM.ORG
The Business of HRIS:
Success requires people, process and technology – in that order.
See the 2014 Mid-Year Buyer’s Guide on Page 28
Contents
Volume 5, Number 3 • July 2014
features 2014 Mid-Year Buyer’s Guide
Page 28
columns From the Editors
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Freddye Silverman, lead editor Bob Greene, editor Michael Rudnick, editor
Social Recruiting
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Big Data Transforms Recruiting Practices By Will Staney, Glassdoor
Social Enterprise The Business Challenge: Globalizing Your HR System and Services
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By Susan Story, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals This article discusses the value, approach, and challenges of globalizing HR Information Systems (HRIS), in order to support a global business strategy and proactively address the needs of an organization operating beyond a single country’s borders.
HR Technology: From Back Office Function to Full Business Partner
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By Todd Hicks, BASF Corporation The future for the HR technology professional will continue to evolve and the focus will shift from onpremise, customization and deep technical knowledge to cloud technologies, functional and business process expertise, and third-party vendor management.
HRIS: The Invisible Linchpin
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By Rich Berger, HRIP, SPHR, Citrix Systems Human Resources Information Systems is the foundation that underpins the pillars of today’s HR organization. The profession is relatively new and HR and IT people are still learning its capabilities. It should be a visible, positive force for change that ties together extremely complex structures both organizationally and technically.
The New and Improved HRIS 101: What it takes to be a Successful HRIS Professional in 2014
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By Jacqueline Kuhn, HRchitect
Clout – Getting It and Keeping It with Human Resources Technology
Functional Focus
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Leading Practices for Engaging Sponsors in HR Delivery Programs By Annette Leazer, Independent Consultant
Multidimensional Workforce
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Four Critical Business Skills required to lead the Business of HRIS By Carl Nielson, The Nielson Group
Global Challenges
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Experiences on the “Other Side” of the Cloud By Mimi Brooks and Brad Ivie, Logical Design Solutions
The Back Story
What it takes to be a successful HRIS professional in 2014 is a cumulative skillset; it is a combination of high-tech and high-touch, with the added ingredients of flexibility and a willingness to accept and welcome whatever changes the future has in store.
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Fish Where the Fish Are: How Smart Companies Use Managers to Communicate Change By Jack Goodman, Thomson Reuters
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Conquering HR Analytics: Do You Need a Rocket Scientist or a Crystal Ball? By Katherine Jones, Ph.D. Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP
By Marc S. Miller, Marc S. Miller Associates Specific to my fellow HR technologists, “clout” involves two key components: identifying whether or not you have what is called clout and your ability to understand HR technology; and use available HR technology components to your personal and professional advantage while providing actionable deliverables to create or build your level of personal influence within your organization.
Ten Secrets of Successful Software Implementations
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By Mike Harmer, Intermountain Healthcare, Inc. When starting an implementation, take time to clarify the project’s goals, share them with the project team and stakeholders. Clearly stated outcomes will focus the team and be a critical measure of success after the system goes live. There are two components of a successfully stated outcome: Return on Investment (ROI) and Audience.
Serious Fun – How HR Can Up the Game
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By Larry Mohl, Jubi, Inc. Gamification – it seems like all of a sudden this word is being used everywhere. But what is it and why has it hit the radar now? Is it about playing games or is there something more substantial going on? Is it here to stay, or just another “buzz” soon to disappear? Can I afford it? Is it serious enough for serious people and serious problems? This article helps demystify the topic and develop your gamification acumen.
Workforce Solutions Review (ISSN 2154-6975) is published bi-monthly for the International Association for Human Resource Information Management by Futura Publishing LLC, 6205 Bull Creek Road, Austin, TX 78757-2701. Subscription rates can be found at www.ihrimpublications.com. Please send address corrections to Workforce Solutions Review at the address above. www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • July 2014
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Volume 5, Number 3 • July 2014
Workforce Solutions Review is a publication of the International Association for Human Resource Information Management, whose mission is to be the leading professional association for knowledge, education and solutions supporting human capital management. Opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the editors, the IHRIM board of directors or the membership.
MARK BENNETT, Oracle Corp., Redwood Shores, CA USA mark.bennett@oracle.com
JOSH BERSIN, Principal and Founder, Bersin by Deloitte, Oakland, CA USA jbersin@bersin.com
BRIAN RETZLAFF, Head of IT for HR, Legal & Communications, ING US Insurance Americas, Atlanta, GA USA brian.retzlaff@us.ing.com
© 2014 All rights reserved
NAOMI LEE BLOOM, Managing Partner, Bloom & Wallace, Fort Myers, FL USA naomibloom@mindspring.com
LISA ROWAN, Program Director, HR, Learning & Talent Strategies, IDC, Framingham, MA USA lrowan@idc.com
YVETTE CAMERON, Research Director, HCM Technologies, Gartner, Littleton, CO Yvette.Cameron@gartner.com
Dr. DANIEL SULLIVAN, Professor of International Business, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware USA sullivad@lerner.udel.edu
LEW CONNER, Executive Director, Higher Education User Group, Gilbert, AZ USA lconner@heug.org
MARK SMITH, CEO, Chief Research Officer, and Founder of Ventana Research, San Ramon, CA USA mark.smith@ventanaresearch.com
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Managing Editor SCOTT BOLMAN, Principal, HR Effectiveness Consulting, Mercer, Chicago, IL USA Scott.bolman@mercer.com
Co-Managing Editor SHAWN FITZGERALD, PMP, SPHR, HRIP, Chicago, IL USA fitzsa@yahoo.com
Past Managing Editor ED COLBY, Managing Principal and Technology Evangelist, PRO HCM Solutions, Chapel Hill, NC USA, edcolbync@gmail.com
Academic Editor KAREN BEAMAN, Founder/CEO, Jeitosa Group International, San Francisco, CA USA karen.beaman@jeitosa.com
Associate Editors ERIK ALVARADO, Associate Director, Global HRIS SD&D, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals erik.alvarado@boehringer-ingelheim.com DAVID GABRIEL, Ed.D., Global Reach Leadership, Berkeley, CA davidcgabriel@gmail.com ROBERT C. GREENE, Channels Account Executive and Sales Training Manager, Ascentis, San Mateo, CA USA rcgreene@mindspring.com JEFF HIGGINS, CEO, Human Capital Management Institute, Marina Del Rey, CA USA jeff.higgins@hcminst.com
ERIK BERGGREN, VP, Customer Results & Global Research, Success Factors, San Mateo, CA USA eberggren@successfactors.com
ELENA M. ORDÓÑEZ DEL CAMPO, Senior VP Globalization Services, SAP AG, Frankfurt, Germany elena.ordonez@sap.com LARRY DUNIVAN, SVP Products and Technology, Ceridian larry.dunivan@ceridian.com GARY DURBIN, Chief Technology Officer, SynchSource, Oakland, CA USA hacker@synchsource.com Dr. CHARLES H. FAY, Professor, School of Management & Labor Relations, Rutgers University, Highland Park, NJ USA cfay@smlr.rutgers.edu DR. URSULA CHRISTINA FELLBERG, Owner & Managing Director, UCF-StrategieBeraterin, Munich, Germany ucfell@mac.com ALSEN HSEIN, President,Take5 People Limited, Shanghai, PRC Alsen@take5people.com CARL C. HOFFMANN, Director, Human Capital Management & Performance LLC, Chapel Hill, NC USA cc_hoffmann@yahoo.com JIM HOLINCHECK, Vice President, Services Strategy & Marketing, Workday, Inc. james.holincheck@workday.com CATHERINE ANN HONEY, VP, Customer Services, Radius Worldwide catherine.honey@comcast.net
ERIC LESSER, Research Director, IBM Institute for Business Value, Boston, MA USA elesser@us.ibm.com
DR. KATHERINE JONES, HCM Research, Bersin by Deloitte, San Mateo, CA USA kathjones@deloitte.com
BRUNO QUERENET, Senior Manager, HR Systems and Operations, Intuitive Surgical, Sunnyvale, CA USA Bruno.querenet@intusurg.com
SYNCO JONKEREN, VP, HCM Applications Product Development & Management, EMEA, The Netherlands synco.jonkeren@oracle.com
MICHAEL RUDNICK, Principal Consultant, KnowledgeSource Consulting, New York, New York USA Michael.rudnick@gmail.com
MICHAEL J. KAVANAGH, Professor Emeritus of Management, State University of Albany (SUNY), Albany, NY USA mickey.kavanagh@gmail.com
FREDDYE SILVERMAN, VP Eastern Region, Jeitosa Group International, Baltimore, MD USA freddye.silverman@jeitosa.com
BOB KAUNERT, Principal, Towers Watson, Philadelphia, PA USA robert.kaunert@towerswatson.com
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
DAVID LUDLOW, Global VP, HCM Solutions, SAP, Palo Alto, CA David.ludlow@sap.com
CECILE ALPER-LEROUX, VP Product Strategy and Development, Ultimate Software, Weston, FL cecile_leroux@ultimatesoftware.com
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BILL KUTIK, Technology Columnist, Human Resource Executive, Westport, CT USA bkutik@earthlink.net
RHONDA P. MARCUCCI, CPA, Consultant for GruppoMarcucci, Chicago, IL USA
rhonda@gruppomarcucci-usa.com LEXY MARTIN, Vice President, Research & Analytics, CedarCrestone, Alpharetta, GA USA alexia.martin@cedarcrestone.com
DAVE ULRICH, Professor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI USA dou@umich.edu DR. MARY YOUNG, Principal Researcher, Human Capital, The Conference Board, New York, NY USA mary.young@conference-board.org
IHRIM BOARD OF DIRECTORS Officers Chairman of the Board KEVIN CARLSON, Ph.D., Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business Vice Chair DAMON LOVETT, HRIP, KnowledgeSource HR Chief Financial Officer JEREMY AMES, HRIP, Gaucho Group Secretary BOB LUPP, HRIP, Penn State University IHRIM Past Chair NOV OMANA, HRIP, Collective HR Solutions, LLC IHRIM President & CEO LYNNE E. MEALY, HRIP
Directors DAVID BROOK, HRIP, Southern California Permanente JOYCE BROWN, HRIP, Brink’s Inc. MARIO ELLIS, HRIP, St. Luke’s Health System GARY MORLOCK, HRIP, Qualcomm, Inc. JIM PETTIT, HRIP, CareFusion SHERRY TIMMERMAN, Apex Performance Consultants Ltd
PUBLISHING INFORMATION TOM FAULKNER, Publisher, Futura Publishing LLC, Austin, TX USA, tomf@futurapublishing.com PATTY HUBER, Advertising Manager, Austin, TX USA phuber2@austin.rr.com
From the Editors Freddye Silverman, Lead Editor Freddye Silverman is vice president of the Eastern region for Jeitosa Group International, an HR consulting firm specializing in midmarket global strategy and systems deployment. She has more than 25 years of experience, both as a consultant and as VP of HR Technology Solutions at Cendant Corporation, responsible for technology strategic planning and oversight of global HR systems and the U.S. payroll system, serving 90,000 employees of multiple businesses in more than 50 countries. She can be reached at Freddye.silverman@jeitosa.com. Bob Greene, Editor Robert C. Greene (Bob) is channels manager and sales trainer at Ascentis, a leading provider of SaaS HCM applications to the small and medium business marketplace and has 35-years of experience in the Human Capital Management industry as practitioner, consultant, and vendor/partner. He can be reached at bob.greene@ascentis.com. Michael Rudnick, Editor Michael Rudnick is a global executive with more than 25 years of experience creating, growing and leading large global professional service practices, HR software and product strategy and startups. He has held leadership roles in consulting, sales and product strategy for intranets, enterprise and HR portals, HR technology, social and collaboration solutions for complex global corporations. An industry pioneer and innovator, he created a number of “firsts,” including the first intranet for Xerox, in early 1996 before the term was even coined; cloud-based SharePoint HR portal product; Windows 8 HR app; and a consulting and development firm specializing in intranets. He is an internationally recognized author and is regularly invited to chair industry conferences and workshops. He can be reached at michael.rudnick@gmail.com. How many times have your heard that “HR (or HRIS) needs a seat at the table”? Whether you have accomplished that in your company or still aspire to that goal, running HRIS like a business is the best approach to being an effective partner in your organization and a valued cog in the corporate machine. In this issue we are taking a look at the “Business” of HRIS and what it takes to be successful. In the people-process-technology trifecta, both people and process trump technology when it comes to critical success factors. As we’ve all learned many times, even if the technology is a “wow,” it will die on the vine without the right people and process elements in place. Our contributing authors have focused on what it takes to run the business of HRIS successfully when faced with different sets of circumstances. We lead off with a piece by Susan Story of Boehringer-Ingelheim, which gives us a view into the challenge of running a global HR(IS) when the business – and HR – are not yet operating globally. How does the organization catch up and align with the system configuration and capabilities – or do you ultimately not use the system in a global manner? Todd Hicks tells us about his professional journey and how HRIS has transformed from the back office into a true business partner at BASF. Rich Berger of Citrix provides his insight into HRIS as the linchpin of the business – the glue that holds everything together – and how HRIS can and must move from invisibility to the light of day. Focusing on professional
development, HRchitect’s Jacqueline Kuhn offers her assessment of the new and improved HRIS 101 and what it really takes to be a successful HRIS professional in 2014 and beyond, while consultant Marc Miller tells us that regardless of the organizational position of HRIS, its effectiveness comes down to the clout of those who lead and operate the department. Miller provides his prescription for getting and keeping that clout along with an assessment tool so you can figure out what your own “clout level” is and where and how you can improve that result. Not surprisingly, when author Mike Harmer of Iron Mountain provides his 10 secrets for a successful implementation, almost all of them are pure people and process recommendations; the technology can be plug and play – fill in the blank with whatever systems you are deploying. From a significantly different perspective, Larry Mohl of Jubi takes a look at why gamification is now prominent on the HR radar screen and how HR can up their game through its use in employee-facing applications. There’s no time like the present to put some “serious fun” into the business of HRIS! Our columnists have contributed some thought-provoking ideas as well. While most companies are still stumped as to how to use big data to their competitive advantage, Will Staney, the head talent warrior at Glassdoor, tells us what recruiters need to know about big data and how it can make a difference in their sourcing and hiring processes – certainly a very practical application and valueadd for any business in today’s talent wars. While we all know that inadequate change management can kill a system rollout in a flash and communication is one of the keys to effective change management, Jack Goodman of Thomson Reuters believes that managers are the linchpin in that communication chain and smart companies use that knowledge to their advantage. He provides a framework for understanding why and how managers can help your employees navigate through change. Equally important to the success of a project or program is having the right sponsor. You can find out how to identify, engage and persuade a sponsor to be your internal “white knight” by reading Annette Leazer’s column on that topic. It is your obligation to equip that person with the right knowledge (and ammunition) they will need to support your cause and work with you to prevail in the face of adversity. About 18 months ago, Carl Nielson of The Nielson Group contributed an article that identified the six key accountabilities required for effective HRIS leadership resulting from a study he conducted of experienced HRIS professionals. In this issue, he follows that up with an overview of the critical business skills underlying those accountabilities and a development strategy or roadmap to help master each one. In their column about the employee experience with cloud ERPs, Mimi Brooks and Brad Ivie of Logical Design Solutions look at the “Other Side” of the cloud and discuss how to create an effective user experience for complex, global organizations with increasingly sophisticated constituencies. Bold agendas should be based on HR “next practices,” not “best practices.” We close with a Back Story column from Bersin by Deloitte’s Katherine Jones, who summarizes a recent panel discussion with talent analytics leaders on how to build that elusive analytics team. Do you need rocket scientists to produce meaningful analytics? What are the skillsets required and how do you either hire or develop existing staff to meet those requirements? Clearly there are many factors to running the business of HRIS successfully. Hopefully we’ve provided some insight into that challenge and food for thought as each of you charts your personal course and your work group’s path so that HRIS plays an integral role in corporate operations and is one of the keys to your company’s continued success. www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • July 2014
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Feature HRIS-as-a-Service
The Business Challenge: Globalizing Your HR System and Services By Susan Story, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals
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his article discusses the value, approach, and challenges of globalizing HR Information Systems (HRIS), in order to support a global business strategy and proactively address the needs of an organization operating beyond a single country’s borders. A few key questions before we discuss essential steps in the “Globalization of Human Resources.” 1. Does your company do business in more than one country? 2. If operating in more than one country, does HR currently manage its processes locally? 3. Is there a business need and business case to identify and harmonize global processes and reporting? If your responses to these questions are “Yes,” read on!
We can borrow an approach from the IT Infrastructure Library® (ITIL®), the premise of which is to view information systems from the viewpoint of the client, in this case, Human Resources. The ultimate goal is to implement and maintain service management for Human Resources as both an organizational capability and a strategic asset.1 When viewing HRIS-as-a-Service, it’s essential to view processes and systems from the user and stakeholder perspective associated with the business functions, thereby creating value for the HR client. By documenting HR services and processes in a logical approach, stakeholders can understand what HRIS does and, just an importantly, what it does not do. This methodology creates the boundaries that all parties can understand, appreciate and live within for day-to-day operations, for project planning, for budgeting and for ownership. The value of this approach is to provide clarity and alignment for the providers and consumers of each service.
• Benefits • Compensation planning • Learning management • Organization management • Payroll • Performance management • Personnel administration • Talent acquisition • Talent management • Time and attendance
Business Perspective Document and Align From strategic and tactical perspectives, let’s assume that Human Resources and HRIS are service organizations, delivering key value to your company. In most cases, Human Resources is a process-driven organization. Human Resources Information Systems enables and supports most HR processes. Although initially viewed as a technical component of HR, experienced HRIS representatives and teams will also offer guidance for process design, project management, solution design and internal consulting.
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Using a service-based approach to Human Resource processes, let’s organize HRIS functions into 10 service categories (listed above). We can define these “services,” with sub-services as required. For example, in addition to general Compensation Planning, at a global level, compensation may include process and system support for bonus calculations, stock options, executive compensation and long-term incentive compensation. Alternatively, although the Human Resources and the Sales organization may agree that the Sales organization “owns” the calculation
of scheduled sales incentive payments, sales incentive calculations are not included in the service description and can be documented under the “what is not included” category and, thus, aligns all stakeholders’ understanding of the compensation planning service. As a more localized service, time and attendance may be identified as a primary service, but may have three “sub-services,” such as time for payroll, absence management and labor activity tracking. Business groups, locally or globally, may need one or all of these subservices. In a matrix approach to utilizing this service, a sales organization in Japan may require only absence management tracking, while a global research and development group may be interested only in tracking their activities against research projects. However, a U.S. manufacturing unit may require all three functions to meet legal and policy requirements. As part of this service methodology, we identify service leads who serve as a “product managers” for the service, ensuring quality, managing service life cycle, and offering preferred options to interested clients. This approach also enables current state process design, and addresses the hardware and software needs, including service and application life-cycle management and direct and indirect costing models.
Current State Policies and Processes Each HR function should have documented current state processes. This allows divergent stakeholders to review, discuss and ensure alignment across different functional areas, providing a baseline for future-state planning. For example, HR representing Sales and Marketing may have a very different interpretation of a paid time off policy administration from HR representing Manufacturing. Hiring practices may also vary greatly across operating units, sites or countries. Aligning the hiring process in an end-to-end, supplier-to-consumer approach – such as candidate application through onboarding the new hire – is the first step prior to identifying the process requirements and the supporting “tool set” or system(s). Documenting the policy with current-state processes ensures this alignment. Current-state process design can be documented in a simple Word document, or be developed in a flow-charting model. This documentation can be as informal as “brown paper” taped around a conference room, or workflows using Visio swim lanes or more sophisticated architectural software. The goal should be to ensure that all stakeholders understand and reach agreement on the processes. Documenting this current state offers the additional benefit of closing the gaps between the differences, and identifying opportunities to build standards whenever possible. It’s recommended that process design be completed as “system-agnostic” as much as possible. Consider any system or application a supporting tool set, to be addressed following the process design.
The service life cycle includes three major stages – service design and introduction (Growth), active and operational (Mature) and decommissioning or retired stages (Decline). Since the service life cycle is dynamic, each stage of the life cycle supports the other stages. Understanding where a service, including processes and applications, reside within the service life cycles provides insight into the application or systems maturity and stabilization, critical to planning future-state requirements needs. As the service lead can also be viewed as a product manager, this approach supports “marketing” of a preferred system. For example, an operational unit in Spain employs 2,000 employees across Manufacturing, Sales, General Administration and enabling functions, and has a legal and business need to implement a new payroll solution. Human Resources Information Systems has documented all active payroll solutions globally, with application life cycles and related costs. The stakeholder can view these solutions as options, yet the service lead promotes a single or set of “preferred” option(s). This approach gives the service lead the ability to drive the future-state landscape; to encourage the stakeholder community to continually build business process improvements, while simultaneously limiting solutions to a finite number of applications. Let’s also remember that an application is a “tool set” which can support and enable organizational policy and process changes. As Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or cloud systems have entered the market in recent years, there is an evolving trend to create “hybrid” solutions. Companies are often testing the cloud concept in a few services, such as talent acquisition, while retaining licensed on-premise applications for legacy, often fully depreciated applications. Additionally, a service can be identified with potential to be global, regional, local or perhaps “glocal,” with global capabilities, yet a local focus. This service approach to HR processes escalates in value for a company striving to create global standards to manage and measure HR data and processes as consistently as possible.
Why Globalize? Historically, ERP solutions tended to focus on a company’s primary ownership country, and made some accommodation to expand limited functionality for a finite set of additional countries’ legal requirements. For many companies, allowing HR to run on silo’ed local systems, and feeding head-count data monthly to a limited data warehouse was sufficient. In today’s global marketplace, however, where competition continues to escalate, especially in the emerging markets, such as Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC), HR must take the best possible global view in order to support the organization and align policies, processes and talent. This alignment not only supports common values and www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • July 2014
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corporate mission, but simplifies architectural landscapes and often consolidates vendors, thus reducing direct and indirect costs.
Strategic Choices Following the identification, definition and documentation of HR Services, HR and HRIS should evaluate each service for feasibility from a global perspective. Using this approach to HR processes and applications, focus on those services that would provide the most benefit if globalized, in order to prioritize time, talent, and scope in a project approach. Governance and sponsorship between the business of HR and HRIS is critical to success. The service approach to globalization requires sponsorship and significant change management strategy, driven by a senior HR leader. Consider the company’s mission and HR strategic direction. If acquiring, developing and retaining talent is a priority, consider initial focus on talent acquisition, with performance and leadership training. If priorities include managing total compensation, consider focusing on global compensation planning. For all needs, however, it’s recommended to begin with a common and global organization management (OM) hierarchy, which will meet most needs of the corporation, including crossborders matrix management, and support reporting and transactions. This design may truly require the most time for renegotiation and agreement but will generate the most long-term value, as changing OM also has tremendous long-range impacts to all modules, operations and reporting. Some considerations when evaluating potential global services and processes include the following:
1. Globalizing • Organization management provides a shared global foundation for all other HR modules and services, while enabling future global dashboard and analytical reporting. • Personnel administration creates common transaction values while aligning HR processes and employee professional “events,” such as hiring, terminating, change in position, promotions and so on. • Performance management ensures consistent performance and development values, regardless of function or location, and supports common review timelines. • Compensation management drives total rewards globally, as well as global compensation programs, such as executive compensation, international relocation and long-term incentive compensation. • Talent management enables using competencies by role or function, not by country, to determine career paths and succession planning.
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• Talent acquisition leverages a common front-end approach to brand the organization and create crossborder recruiting programs. • Learning management supports standard curriculums and course content where feasible, and at a minimum, creates boundaries for learning strategy, with potential to tie learning programs back to performance and development opportunities. • Time and attendance, often considered a more local service, can align feeds to and from HR and payroll systems, while leveraging continuing compliant approaches to labor management, with workforce planning opportunities. • Payroll, another global challenge due to local laws, offers the potential to simplify vertical country costs, while common payroll schedules can support true global total compensation analysis. • Benefits, truly the most distinct service by legal entity or country, offer the greatest potential when smart sourcing benefits administration to a common vendor, with simplified integration landscapes. Identify the global core HR Services, then circle back to address local requirements as exceptions. Expect to deal with your legal representatives locally and globally, especially as this is your first effort to manage HR data globally. With your user community, document and be firm regarding “global standards” and consider all other requirements as change requests, to be evaluated and confirmed with the business owner(s). Consider categorizing these exceptions to the global standards in the following prioritization: 1. Legal and compliance, 2. Business needs and policies, and 3. “Nice to Have” (otherwise known as the “we’ve always done it that way” syndrome). With the advancement of cloud-based HR systems, the globalization of HR becomes theoretically simpler from the user access and system management perspective. A system is managed by, or in partnership with, a vendor, outside the traditional, on-premise application model. Repeatable process, upgrades, and integration evolve into vendor standards and internal technical resources can manage the vendor or re-focus on more strategic initiatives. Globalization of HRIS implies simplifying integration points between fewer systems. Let’s remember, though, that globalization is an evolving process and a best-of-breed approach often means that multiple systems may support common global processes. A company may establish a single global HRIS for OM and personnel administration, along with performance management, compensation planning and talent management. However,
the company may identify a different vendor to support cloud-based talent acquisition or learning management. The longer-term value of globalizing payroll, time and attendance, or benefits may mean local applications continue to run for these services. This means that a strong data integration model must be considered from the outset of all decision-making, with the primary goal to reduce redundant data. Therefore, identify and map master data at service and field levels. Include data mapping to multiple local HR systems and non-HR systems, such as finance or customer relationship management.
How Do You Define Success? Fast forward to post-implementation. What does success look like, as defined by the global sponsor and leaders? Tracking backward, each organizational change should map to a targeted business process improvement. These may include the following direct and indirect results: • Alignment of HR processes; • Common HR terms globally; • An understanding of similar and divergent policies by HR process; • Documentation of local compliance requirements; • Streamlining landscape architecture, thus reducing the number of applications and interfaces; • Consistent field values and processes for transactional processes, such as hiring, termination, change in position, which results in: • “One version of the Truth,” resulting in consistent global reporting for standard HR data such as head count and turnover; • Establishment or acceleration of employee and/ or manager self-service for identified processes; and, • Managing employee and manager talent performance, competencies and succession consistently, while leveraging the diversity of a global workforce. As a final caveat, what should we not expect from globalization of HR and HRIS? Sponsors should not expect: • To shut down all local systems as part of Globalization (Phase 1) – Remember that globalization is usually an evolving approach, requiring a multi-phased project or program based on HR and business priorities. • Extensive, quantifiable reductions in costs and head count – Many legacy systems are fully depreciated or built internally so direct costs are often minimal or difficult to measure. Head counts are often shared across functional areas for smaller countries, so the
best savings may be through labor arbitrage. • To reduce integration points initially – The hybrid approach to best-of-breed or a multi-year project plan to align systems means that more interfaces may be required to support master data management during the interim phases. So, the next time you find yourself in an elevator with your CEO or your CHRO, what will be your “one minute marketing speech” for proposing globalization of your HR services and, ultimately, your processes and systems? Some suggestions include: • “What if we could…create one global system of record for Human Resources, across all geographies, legal entities and employee types, even mapping to cost centers and head count budgeting? • What if we could…combine core HR data with total compensation data and talent data to deliver the best leaders, while managing one of our most important business costs – our employees? • What if we could…harness our people data so comprehensively that we could not only report on the core data but also deliver trending dashboards and predictive analysis to support business needs? • What if we could…align our HR taxonomy and processes globally to create power teams and programs regardless of geographic boundaries?” With a global HR system and harmonized processes around the world, the what-if can become a reality and deliver significant competitive advantage. Taking a business-like approach to that globalization is one of the keys to ensuring a smoother and sustainable path to the goal.
Endnotes 1B MC Software White Paper, Best Practice Insights, Focus on ITIL Service Strategy, 2011.
About the Author Susan Story is director of HR Technology and Learning Management Systems for Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals in Ridgefield, Connecticut. She has more than 25 years of experience in Human Resources, including 17 years working in HR technology as an in-house practitioner and as a consultant. She has worked for Allied Signal, Cendant Corporation, Fidelity Investments, as well as consulted for several Fortune 500 companies. She is a Six Sigma Green Belt and has an MBA. She can be reached at susan.story@boehringer-ingelheim.com.
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Feature
HR Technology: From Back Office Function to Full Business Partner By Todd Hicks, BASF Corporation Human Resources technology, from a macro view, describes the systems and processes that come together in an organization to support human capital and the management of HR data. The HR technology landscape developed in the early 1990s was dominated by mainframe enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Enterprise resource planning systems have come a long way since then, as have the programming languages on which they are built, but the real shift is not in the technology itself, but in what it can do. Today, HR technology is about providing a more user friendly, robust experience that supports business growth in proactive way. Human Resources technology today can best be summed up as Software-as-a-Service (SAAS) / cloud applications. This has shifted the fundamental set of core skills and experiences needed among HR professionals who support third-party applications. This momentum shift has been characterized by standardization and configuration versus customization. This article will explore several examples of this shift at a leading global chemical company.
My Journey My journey into the HR technology field started in 1998 when I worked at the world’s largest privately-held consumer packaged goods (CPG) company as an IT manager in their corporate headquarters in McLean, Virginia. I supported the Corporate Management Development Review (MDR)
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sessions from an HR systems perspective. These were the annual talent reviews for the top 100-plus executives in the company. The annual talent review process was comprised of identifying key HR elements such as developmental actions, performance over time, learning agility, readiness to advance, and mobility. In that role, I learned that HR data was at the center of the most critical decisions being made by business leaders. Human Resources information, financial KPIs, and other data elements determined job moves, succession planning, and the identification of key positions within the business. I was intrigued by how key business decisions relied on HR and financial data. So, I joined the IT team that supported corporate HR and financial systems. In my first two years on that team, I focused on development and support of SAP R/3 for the corporate financial system that produced the monthly corporate financial results. In my third year, I led a project to replace the legacy corporate mainframe system with the SAP HR system that was being rolled out in North America. My role consisted of project management, as well as documenting the “as-is” and “tobe” HR processes. Documenting the HR processes from “hire to retire” provided me with a wealth of knowledge about the HR function. I worked on the project for one and a half years through the implementation, rollout and decommissioning of the legacy mainframe system. At the completion of the project, I took a position as the Global Training and Reporting Strategy manager in the HR function. I was responsible for developing the global HR reporting and training center of excellence (COE). The COE provided expert level reporting and training programs. I also established the global HR business scorecard as the quantitative dashboard for measuring progress and performance against the goals of the global HR strategy. I managed and led the Global Training and Reporting team for several years before taking a position with BASF Corporation, leading the HR Information Management and Technology function for North America. In my current position, I am responsible for the development and implementation of the North America HR Systems strategy transfor-
Today, HR technology is about providing a more user friendly, robust experience that supports business growth in proactive way.
mation. I also lead the HR Process and Data Governance function. In addition, I am the HR Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) leader for North America and have HR responsibility for acquisitions and divestitures. As I look back, my career journey through IT to HR/ HRIS as a senior leader was not intentional. A project assignment and opportunity to learn about key HR processes and systems was what positioned me in the HR/ HRIS function. The skills that made me successful in IT such as project management, technical learning, problem solving, functional/technical skills, drive for results, leadership capability, and managing/leading team and customer focus are the same skills that I utilize today.
Continuing to Change and Evolve Human Resources technology continues to change and evolve; the core HRIT skills necessary today to support HR systems and HR technologies are different than what was needed 20 years ago. Cloud applications continue to dominate the HR systems landscape and programming experience once needed in languages, such as Cobol, C++, and developing JCL code to run mainframe transactions is becoming obsolete. The core HRIT skills needed today include understanding the value drivers of, and the differences between, configuration versus customization, vendor management, process and data governance, human capital management (HCM) strategic planning, functional/ technical system knowledge and project management. Technology continues to drive innovation in the HR function and, more specifically, in the talent management, reporting and payroll areas. Every day, I read about a new vendor that has entered this market space and is able to provide a cloud solution to eliminate on-premise and systems support. Let’s take a look at how technology is providing BASF Corporation with a competitive advantage in the HR function. In 2000, BASF made a strategic decision to outsource its HR systems to ACS/Mellon for services such as personnel administration for employee master data, payroll, payroll timekeeping and attendance, compensation planning, performance management and talent management. At the time, several companies were using human resources outsourcing (HRO) providers as a way to leverage a full range of services and capabilities with one provider, thereby streamlining operations and realizing cost efficiencies. In 2005, BASF made a strategic decision to employ Fidelity for HRO services. Fidelity had invested a significant amount of money and resources in its HRO business, and BASF wanted to capitalize on the integrated services. BASF Corporation continued to utilize the HRO model until 2010, when Fidelity decided to exit the HRO business. BASF had already been discussing the possibility of implementing SAP HR in the North America region, so the announcement by Fidelity actually accelerated the timeline for implementation. When we built the business case for
Technology continues to drive innovation in the HR function and, more specifically, in the talent management, reporting and payroll areas. insourcing to the SAP HR platform versus continuing to outsource, several key business drivers guided our decision: • Finding a replacement for the payroll business, since Fidelity decided to exit the business; • Eliminating high ongoing integration and enhancement costs incurred by outsourcing; • Leveraging existing global SAP HRIS/Payroll infrastructure and to harmonize processes and systems; • Providing increased service levels to our customers; • Improving data quality and analytics; • Changing HR effectiveness by decreasing time spent on administration by managers and employees; and, • Enhancing control of employee master data management, payroll and enhancements by insourcing. In 2009, BASF Corporation implemented a new talent management system: SuccessFactors. When we launched the tool, we built four separate interfaces due to the complexity of having one core HRIS system and three legacy HRIS systems. This proved to be a significant challenge. Building four interfaces required the core master data in all of the systems to be clean in order to interface with common data elements. We spent a significant amount of time cleansing data and creating common data elements in order to ensure the accuracy of the data that resided in the talent management and HRIS systems.
The Landscape Today Today, BASF is implementing a global talent management system. This will harmonize the processes for employee development, talent management, performance management and learning management into a single global system. One of the key challenges with any global implementation is gaining globally aligned and harmonized processes. The project has given the regions an opportunity to revisit the core talent management processes globally, reduce complexity, and focus on functional aspects such as development goals, developmental competencies and development www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • July 2014
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actions to ensure the system functionality supports the business processes. There have been trade-offs and compromises from each region to implement the globally standard harmonized system. We’ve established a global approach to have three global iterations and one user acceptance testing to ensure that the functional requirements and global processes are incorporated within the global core system solution. Talent management systems and cloud solutions have challenged us to review the processes in detail to ensure that we can configure the functionality within the system. Talent management systems, like many other cloud solutions, do not provide the functionality for customization. The business processes must fit within the system in order to configure the business functional requirements. We are currently entering iteration three, which will focus on reviewing and addressing the global issues and actions log and extensive testing to ensure that the functional requirements are accurately captured in the system. The North America regional implementation is slated to start in July 2014 with a targeted go-live date of January 1, 2015.
Forming the Best Team Another example of how BASF utilizes HR technology as a competitive advantage is with the implementation of the applicant tracking system (ATS). Forming the best team is a top priority for BASF, and in order to provide our Talent Acquisition team and hiring managers with the HR tools they need in order to source and recruit the best talent, BASF made the strategic decision in North America to implement a leading ATS. The ATS provides managers, recruiters, and HR the ability to upload requisitions and initiate the workflow for posting positions internally and externally. We’ve also recently rolled out an on-demand video interviewing platform to source talent more effectively through broader channels. This technology has streamlined the process for initial phone screens by providing an interactive forum for candidates to answer prescreened questions to determine which candidates will continue in the interview process. BASF Corporation has also invested heavily in HR metrics, workforce planning and analytics. It’s been a focused journey over the last five years. In 2009/2010, we conducted leadership team interviews on strategy and the workforce, supported by data and analysis to highlight the trends. As a result, it delivered insight into unit-specific talent gaps. In 2011, we created new diversity plus inclusion and talent dashboards, conducted ad hoc analysis to inform BASF’s regional talent strategy, and developed analyticdriven reporting. We also expanded workforce planning to include talent strategies. In 2012, emphasis was placed on providing analytics to
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support talent strategy, development of a workforce planning tool kit, human capital report, unit dashboards, and building an SAP HR Business Warehouse (BW) in order to support data and dashboards. Last year, we developed and delivered self-service reporting in the SAP HR BW on metrics/ analytics that roll up to provide a regional view. In 2014, the focus is on developing a regional workforce plan derived from unit dashboards connected to the personnel planning process.
The Future of HR Technology The future for the HR technology professional will continue to evolve and the focus will shift from on-premise, customization and deep technical knowledge to cloud technologies, functional and business process expertise, and third-party vendor management. More and more emphasis is being placed on HR technology, process and data governance, project management, and integrated talent management processes and systems to drive the talent and people agendas in businesses. At the same time, the core skills to be successful in HRIS and IT will continue to overlap and play an integral part for HR and IT departments. More HRIS professionals will be sought after for their deep project and process management skills by other HR departments due to their experiences working on various projects across the HR function and COEs. Cloud technology will continue to drive the focus on supporting integrated talent management processes, and complete HCM and talent management suites will likely be the norm in the not-too-distant future. Opportunities for HRIS professionals will continue to grow, yet the supply will likely fall short of this robust demand.
About the Author Todd Hicks is head of HR Information Management and Technology, North America, BASF Corporation, and is a senior HR leader with more than 19 years of comprehensive experience in the areas of HR technology, IT, M&A, process and data governance, global reporting and training, finance, talent acquisition and university relations. BASF is the world’s largest and leading chemical company. He joined BASF in 2008 and is currently responsible for leading the development and implementation of the HR systems strategy transformation for North America. In addition, he is responsible for HR data, systems and processes as they impact acquisitions and divestitures, and for managing the Process & Data Governance function. He has a B.B.A. in Information Systems with a minor in Economics from Howard University. He can be reached at todd.hicks@basf.com.
Feature able to develop a credible plan and obtain sponsorship and support.
Does HRIS have a “seat at the table?” Human Resources Information Systems is the glue embedded in a process as it moves from concept to execution and ongoing use. Without proper HRIS presence, even the best-designed solutions may not be executed in a way that is successful. As you build visibility, your work is outside HR, as well as inside. Some examples of how HRIS can bring together disparate groups are:
HRIS: The Invisible Linchpin By Rich Berger, HRIP, SPHR, Citrix Systems What makes HRIS an “invisible linchpin?” Let’s start off with some quick Wikipedia definitions: 1. Linchpin – Fastener used to prevent a wheel or other part from sliding off the axle upon which it is riding. The word “linchpin” is also used figuratively to mean “something [or someone] that holds the various elements of a complicated structure together.” 2. Invisibility – The state of an object that cannot be seen. An object in this state is said to be invisible (literally, “not visible”). The term is often used in fantasy/ science fiction, where objects are literally made unseeable by magical or technological means… While we are not magicians, human resources information systems (HRIS) professionals bring together different skills and competencies in such a way as to achieve magical outcomes. We will look at how we can claim our role as a Human Resources’ linchpin and, at the same time, move ourselves from organizational invisibility into the light of day. Let’s look at visibility. One gains visibility and adds value by actually providing measurable deliverables on schedule. This is a simple statement to make, yet one that is very complex to deliver. To meet the goal, the HRIS professional needs to be able to be a project manager, a metrics professional, a politician, and a technocrat all at once. Almost every activity that HR works on today has a technological component. Think of the parts of an employee life cycle: attract, hire, onboard, retain/manage talent, offboard – even in small organizations, the ability to successfully complete each process requires various levels of technology. Start each activity by developing a plan – even for short projects. Who is the requestor and who is the sponsor? What skills are needed to complete the task? Who are the people that have the subject matter expertise? Do they have the time to participate, and does their manager approve of this? With these questions as your framework, you will be
• Employee recognition – It is important to have a process that matches your company culture and provides an environment for recognition and potential rewards. This means you need employee data and organizational structures right alongside the business goals of “why recognize?” Input from HR and managers will help to build the specifications and the solution. • Facilities management – While not seen as an HR activity, this is very dependent on data that HRIS can provide. Standard definitions, agreed to timing, and flexibility to adapt to changes mean that the HRIS team must understand the needs of the facilities team and be able to influence the use of source systems (not spreadsheets), which are maintained as part of the normal daily business life. The ability to form partnerships helps to develop creative solutions. • Legal compliance – Governments have regulations with which a company must comply. Some, which are focused on the employee (code of conduct, medical certifications, privacy, etc.), need to have a robust set of employee data along with a learning management system to be able to easily assign and track progress. Other compliance activities are cyclical and require time-management skills to deliver (and to avoid costly government penalties). Pay attention to those cycles and team up with your legal experts to be proactive in this area. • Workforce planning – This is one of many areas where HR and Finance intersect. Here, the ability to have solid definitions and business rules is paramount. While Finance may want to have budgeted heads or future targets or even contingent workers in their counts, HR looks at the regular workers and perhaps contractors. Without HRIS pushing for agreement on definitions, rules, timing and naming, we see that meetings where people are discussed devolve into “my number is three different than yours…where did yours come from?” This deflects everyone from the real business issues at hand. Be sure you reach an agreement on what is called “head count” – the skill you need here is the ability to manage executive sponsors from various departments, www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • July 2014
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which have different business drivers. Once you come to an agreement, then you free up time to focus on the problems/opportunities afforded by workforce change. Does your HR, Finance, IT or line organization “forget” to include you until it is the last minute and everything is designed? Do you feel that you have no choice but to say “yes” and figure out how to implement? Then, what you need is the ability to be more vocal and visible. Project management skills come into play: • Create a set of operating principles that have senior executive sponsorship. This represents your governance model to use to escalate and determine a request’s real priority. • Come to an agreement on ownership of data and where is the “single source of the truth.” • Have a defined playbook on how to engage with other departments – use this when others are needed on projects, as well as when HRIS is asked to be on other team projects. • Use planning and organizational skills to help you to take that step back and evaluate the scope of the request and when it will best fit into the calendar to be completed. Just because a team forgot to do something until the last minute does not make it an emergency for HRIS to solve. In actuality, jumping to a quick solution could solve the short-term need, while creating a long-term issue. Let’s look at an example. The Sales team has been developing sales analytics for six months. They are about to go live and want to do productivity measures. When a sales team wants to be able to look at productivity, they need both the sales figures, as well as accurate people data. Unfortunately, Sales didn’t include HRIS in the project at the onset. They made the assumption that people data would be available (even though from a non-authoritative source), and focused inward on their project goals. When HRIS becomes involved it has to ask the questions such as: • What is the accuracy of the source? • Is data accessible? • Is it for the same time period as the sales data? • Do these metrics exist somewhere else – even if they are not 100 percent aligned, can they be used in the interim while full design takes place? • What activities are needed to align, who works on them and when? The better way: Sales would have included HRIS early. Together, they would have identified their people data and process needs, who would be able to complete the work, and when it could be scheduled.
Listen to the voice of the customer. Leveraging project management only gets you so far. Human Resources Information Systems expertise should include design thinking (empathize, define, ideate, prototype,
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test, iterate) in order to influence products that will be used by your workforce. It is important to show the value that comes from involving the customer/end user early and often in the process. Users, in fact, our most vocal and/or radical users, are the best source of redesign ideas. Through design thinking (see https://dschool.stanford.edu/dgift/ for more information), we can demonstrate leadership and align our solutions to the needs of the customers. If we are looking at a major project, such as replacing all of your HR technology, the key to success is “casting a wide net” to include non-HR teams along with a full representation of your HR structure – local and worldwide. Human Resources transactions impact Finance and financial structures impact HR – therefore, both of these departments need to be considered in the project. Explain the project through “road shows,” which can be live or recorded. Allow for input from people who are not on the project team; in fact, allow as much time for listening to feedback as you spend presenting. Make the vision, plans, status and all questions/comments transparent and visible across the organization – fact is, the larger the project, the greater the need for two-way sharing. Here’s another example: Data mining involves partnerships with Finance, Sales, HR and IT. Human Resources data is at the core of “big data” opportunities. Having each function focus on its own silo misses the common denominator of people information. This leads to solutions that are technologically sound, yet are lacking in the richness, which comes from multiple internal and external sources. To collect the voice of the customer, look at tools such as surveys or social sites to collect feedback. The survey results can be used to justify qualitative return on investment (ROI) for projects. Use techniques such as face-to-face interviews (in-person or via GoToMeeting®) along with anonymous survey tools to gather your results. Create the strategic statement based on this input. Expand that into simple, one-word principles. And finally, provide measures that can be used to judge your project’s success. With your strategy in hand, you create the story that can show the connections that sometimes only HRIS sees. For example, you could have a set of users who say: “The systems have not changed in 10 years.” Or, some users might say, “Without HRIS, I feel a little ill – and not just because we’d spend all our time filing paperwork.” It is your role to take these potentially opposite views and determine what audiences they represent and how each of these pieces of feedback can make your solution richer. The output could look like this: • Strategy – Update our HR technology to make information available when and where needed; • Principles – Self-service; modern/mobile; automated; • Look/feel – Simple processes that are aligned; single data entry closest to the source/owner; and, • Measures – 90 percent of all transactions will be completed via self-service; 98 percent of all new hires will use a mobile device/smartphone to apply for open positions.
It’s all about behaviors. We’ve seen the impact of process and design, yet that’s still not enough. People on your team bring the final piece of the puzzle. Knowing your strengths, those of your HRIS team, and those of the people you work with enables you to better plan and influence the outcomes. Selecting the right people to form a cohesive team comes down to knowledge and behaviors. It is straightforward to determine the technical skills you need for your project team, and to source people with those skills. The difficulty comes in determining the types of people, based on behaviors, that can work together to accomplish the goals. Here’s an example: Your project core team is made up of six people – two are HRIS and one is IT; these three know the technology. Two are from HR and know the current processes, and one is a subject matter expert from an affected department. • The technology people are “rapid responders” – their natural behavior is to react quickly, think through the problem and come back with solutions. They then use e-mail to send out their ideas and expect responses back from the rest of the team immediately. • The other team members are more “deliberate” in their behaviors, and they take time to consider not only the solutions presented, but other ideas as well. They want more time to study the process and look at the impact to their constituents. • What happens is that the rapid responders expect their counterparts to immediately react, and they feel that roadblocks are being put in their path. Frustration starts to rise. On the other hand, the deliberate members of the team feel that they are being harassed by the e-mails and pressured to make a decision that might have future implications. Productivity suffers, and team cohesiveness begins to falter. To avoid this conflict, try to understand the natural tendencies and behaviors of your team members. Hold a session with the team and talk about each person’s style and how the team will work together. Share your thoughts, and then build a team internal governance model. Ensure that you create a safe environment so that members can raise concerns based on the project and not based on personalities. This is not an easy task, but one that is vital to the “magic” that can come from a well-oiled team.
Remember these five keys to success. As you look at all that you do on a daily basis, keep in mind that you are in control of your destiny. Here are five ways: 1. Awareness – Know your skills and those of the HR people you work with. Leverage technology and explain it in a way that enables others understand what it can do. 2. Empathy – Just because you can see the bigger picture of technology-enabled processes, your HR and line clients don’t necessarily have that skill. Take the time to listen to what they envision and to incorporate into your design. Help to bring people along at a pace that is
comfortable to them. 3. Creativity – Even when implementing cloud packages, it is the role of the HRIS professional to find new ways to incorporate the requirements into the solution. Follow your instincts, and look at new ways to solve old problems. 4. Partnership – Work not only with your vendor/IT organization, but also with HR and end users. Partner early and often to be a change leader. 5. Small wins – Trying to get everything done at once creates more stress. Working on identified pieces and delivering them leads to credibility.
HRIS is the invisible linchpin. Human Resources Information Systems is the foundation that underpins the pillars of today’s HR organization. The profession is relatively new and HR and IT people are still learning its capabilities. Be a visible, positive force for change that ties together extremely complex structures both organizationally and technically. Know that changing your own behavior is difficult and changing the behavior of others is nearly impossible. With this in mind, be up-front about the project and personal goals and how you will achieve them. Keep lines of communication open even when there is little time. Focus on the outcomes and how these will benefit the most people. Learning from some of these examples will allow you to increase the visibility and importance of HRIS as a key component of HR and will provide your company, your team and you with immense benefits.
About the Author Rich Berger, HRIP, SPHR, has more than 35 years of experience as a practitioner and thought leader in HR and HR technology and currently serves as the group director of Global HRIS & Metrics at Citrix Systems in Fort Lauderdale, Florida where he is responsible for HRIS strategy, metrics and analytics, and HR technology for employees. He previously was employed as the vice president of HR Transition and Transformation at Affiliated Computer Services (a Xerox company), as well as the director of Core Process Redesign at Motorola, Inc. He was awarded the IHRIM Summit award in 2013 and has been an IHRIM member since 1993. He was on the board of the Midwest Chapter, the CFO for Florida Sun, and on the international board for seven years in two terms. He was one of the founding members of Global Special Interest Group and started the successful global forum conferences. In addition, he has worked with the committee that became the workforce analytics committee. He is a frequent speaker at major conferences and his writing has been published in industry magazines, journals and books. He holds a B.S. from the University of Massachusetts/Amherst, and an MBA with a concentration in HR from Western New England University. He can be reached at richard.berger@citrix.com. www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • July 2014
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The New and Improved HRIS 101: What it takes to be a Successful HRIS Professional in 2014 By Jacqueline Kuhn, HRchitect The role of the HRIS professional today and, thus, the skills required to perform the job is influenced by three factors: the role of the Human Resources function in the organization, the technology that is commercially available and in use, and the globalization of the economy. The HR professional’s job has evolved in the past 40 years and along with it the role of the Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) professional. Technology has advanced at an even faster pace than the HR function and the HRIS professional has had to adopt new competencies to keep up. It is not as if the original competencies are no longer relevant, but rather that new competencies were developed as business needs changed and technology became more sophisticated. Therefore, to understand the full scope of the HRIS professional’s portfolio, we have to look at its historic evolution and the skills required in each era.
The 1980s – The Era of Compliance During this time, when the responsibility of HR (formerly known as Personnel Administration) was to manage the organization’s record keeping and employment compliance, the objective of HRIS was to support administrative systems that would make the record keeping and compliance tasks easier to perform. The IT department played the primary roles in procurement and maintenance of these systems as they were on-premise on mainframe or AS400 hardware. These systems were developed to track information for
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compliance with U.S. labor regulations replacing manual paper based processes. During this era, most if not all systems used in the U.S. were U.S. centric, the idea of having a global HRIS was only discussed at the largest of companies and not yet a reality in the commercial marketplace. When HR was an administrative function, using data about the people in the organization for making business decisions was never an expectation. Reports would be generated in the form of a roster that provided lists of employees for various purposes. However, these reports were used by HR to assist in managing the function and when shared with colleagues outside of HR the information was manually reworked into a presentation. Consequently, the systems of that time focused on performing transactional data entry in the “best” way possible for HR to make the data administration as efficient as possible. The systems that were available during that “administrative era” of HR were supported and maintained by an IT organization, as they required programming language skills and competency in IT tools like “TSO Editor” and creation of job routines via tools like Joint Command Language (JCL). Because of the deep technical expertise required to support and maintain these systems, the HRIS professional rarely, if ever, actually made any changes to the system. The HRIS professional’s role at that time was one of “custodian of the data.” The primary job was to enter information into the system (or manage staff that performed this function), perform audits of the data in the system and be able to write reports to get data out of the system. They worked with the IT department to make sure the requirements were programmed into the systems. Core job competencies for this era of professional were data management, data auditing, report writing, and communication of business requirements to IT.
The 1990s – The Era of Personal Computing During this era, the personal computer became a necessity, not a luxury. With mainstream acceptance, it changed how organizations thought about work and also changed expectations about how quickly work could be performed. It was also in this era that the use of e-mail began to take hold as a standard means of communication. Whether the HR role evolved before the technology, or the evolution of technology enabled the HR role to evolve, is a discussion for a separate time. However, they both did evolve. As HR was being asked to provide meaningful information about employees for decision-making, the personal computer was changing the way people worked in general. The mainframe/AS400 platform-based systems were replaced with “client server,” an architecture that
allowed distribution of application and data across networks and eventually over the Web. This changed the dynamic between IT and HR and the role of the HRIS professional expanded. It was also during this time that organizations were planning for the millennium change. These older systems were built to accommodate a year up to 1999, and thus to rush to upgrade an existing system or purchase a new system to accommodate the year 2000 (Y2K) drove much activity during the latter part of this decade. The HR function expanded as more organizations were building specialties in “learning and organizational” development. The recruiting function began to take advantage of personal computing and the Internet with applicant tracking systems. Benefits departments were talking about automation of the enrollment process with “self-service.” As more information was collected, additional needs for reporting of this information were surfacing. Outsourcing all, or part, of the HR function gained wide acceptance during this time as well. The HRIS professional had to adapt to working with third-party vendors regarding information sharing and coordination of processes, and began to build skills in vendor management through the process. The HRIS professional still needed the skills from the prior era, but also needed to perform business analysis and process design. Data management changed from that of working solely to keep data in the system accurate, to working with Excel and Access as tools to supplement reporting and data analysis that was offered by the HR software applications. This was the beginning of the broadening of process knowledge beyond HR and payroll processes. The HRIS professionals needed to learn about the other functions within HR. With the advent of these new systems and the need to purchase new systems to be compliant with Y2K, the HRIS professional had to add software requirements identification, vendor evaluation, selection, and financial acumen to their skill inventory in order to manage the purchasing process and create business cases for these purchases. As the new systems were being implemented, the nature of these systems placed a larger responsibility on the HRIS professional for business process design, data analysis of converted data, and system testing. Core job competencies for this era were data analysis, business requirements documentation, business process design, business case creation, and a broader knowledge of the HR function. Those that were able to master the technology changes of the 1990s were poised and ready for what the 2000s had to bring.
The 2000s – The Era of Global Information Access and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) The global business economy of the 2000s forever changed the parameters of the HR function and the
requirements for the technology needed to support it. No longer was globalization solely for the large Fortune 500 organization. Business of all sizes were expanding around the globe. The Internet took flight and made communications around the world faster and easier. During this era, business and technology evolved faster than ever before. Human Resources, perhaps for the first time ever, truly shifted from one of administration to strategic management of people. In this era, talent management became a formal discipline in the HR profession and to support that discipline new talent management applications were created. The challenges of knowing what jobs are needed, where they are needed, and who the right resources are had spanned across the globe from both an external and internal talent acquisition perspective. Processes for talent identification, management of performance, and succession planning grew in visibility and importance. Human Resources made it to the “C” suite and with that came an expectation of business acumen and metrics. This era saw a tremendous growth in technology options that support the talent management processes and with it the introduction of systems hosted and delivered by the software vendor and the advent of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). These SaaS systems also fundamentally changed the application maintenance and support model. These systems were configurable and no longer required deep technical expertise; rather, business analysis and process skills were required to support and maintain these systems. This fundamentally shifted the role of HRIS from system users to system owners. These systems were separate from the core HR and payroll applications. At the beginning of this era, it was not uncommon to see one company have three, four or five separate systems to support these processes. The systems, consequently, required frequent data synchronization and a greater support effort. As this era came to a close, the “integrated talent management” suite of applications became more common, and enabled a consolidation of applications and better overall support of the business process. The need of line managers and business leaders of global talent information stressed the traditional reporting tools provided by HR software. This decade saw the creation of analytic software designed specifically for human capital information. The data analysis and business process skills acquired by an HRIS professional were needed in order to be able to present the data that was meaningful to the business in ways that were easily viewable and understandable by business leaders. The vendor evaluation and selection competencies increased in importance as new talent management and other HRMS replacement systems were being deployed. The global nature of business and information also required HRIS professionals to understand the systems’ implications, data privacy requirements, and information requirements www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • July 2014
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for the countries where their companies operated. This is particularly true in the context of a new application purchase where the ability to go beyond just language translation and currency requirements, when identifying how the systems needed to support a global process and workforce, is critical to making a well-informed software selection. The HRIS professional has always needed business process design skills, and with the advent of global processes and the intersection of talent processes with core HR processes, this skill increased in importance. The data management skills developed earlier had to be adapted to master the data integrations needed to keep all of these systems data “in-sync.” The greatest change for the HRIS professional, however, was the role of systems administrator. As personal computing became the norm, SaaS grew in adoption and Web-based applications became commonplace, the role of IT versus HRIS in supporting applications blurred. The HRIS professional had to acquire additional technical competencies in system configuration, and an understanding of how PC operating systems and Internet browser compatibility affected the performance of the business applications. Core job competencies in this era for the HRIS professional were global data management and processes, vendor management, systems administration, business requirements documentation, business process design, business information creation, vendor evaluation and selection, and a deeper knowledge of the HR function.
The 2010s – A Social and Mobile Revolution As the global economy changed the face of business in the 2000s, the mainstream acceptance of social technology and the proliferation of mobile technology are changing business and the workplace in ways that we are just beginning to understand. The expectation of employees that they will have access to any and all information to perform their job instantly and on their mobile device is challenging the traditional model of information control. For the HR function, this means an adaptation to more visibility into the worker, inside and outside of work. For IT, this means accepting the electronic device of one’s choosing and allowing access to traditionally “inside the firewall” applications and information from anywhere. Some of the challenges for HR are the availability of commercial human capital management software via a mobile device as vendors continue to update their applications and some lag behind. Other challenges include the complexity of a process, as it exists today, and then redesigning it to work on a mobile application. In addition to the job competencies acquired in the past 30 years, and those technical competencies that will be needed as technology evolves, the HRIS professional will also need these key behavioral competencies in order to be
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successful: • Adaptability – the ability to change and accept change. Having the capacity to readily change actions, and behavior; • Analysis – analyzes problems, situations, and circumstances and their impact. Integrates information and requirements from a variety of sources to evaluate alternatives and make decisions; • Business Acumen – demonstrates knowledge policies, practices, trends, and information affecting the business and organization. Understands the drivers for company profits and is aware of how strategies and tactics work in the marketplace; • Communication – conveys information and ideas through various media in a manner that engages the user and helps them to understand and retain the information; • Self-Motivation – accomplishes personal achievement and excellence for one’s own purpose and acquires the knowledge and skills needed for success independently; and, • Relationship Building – establishes relationships and works effectively in collaboration with others across and outside the organization to achieve goals. What it takes to be a successful HRIS professional in 2014 is a cumulative skillset that has evolved over the past four decades as organizational structure and internal/external requirements have changed, business competitiveness has increasingly focused on the true differentiator of talent and associated metrics, and technology has continued to develop at warp speed. It is a combination of high-tech and high-touch, with the added ingredients of flexibility and a willingness to accept and welcome whatever changes the future has in store.
About the Author Jacqueline Kuhn, Certified Professional of Human Resource Information (HRIP), is executive vice president of HCM Consulting Services at HRchitect. She is an HR professional with more 25 years of experience in strategic planning, systems management, project management, services delivery and general human resources. She is a frequent speaker at industry events, author and interviewee in many articles in major industry publications, long-time member of IHRIM and has served on the board of directors and as chairman of the board from 2006 to 2008. She has hands-on expertise with SAP HCM ECC 6 and prior versions, PeopleSoft HR V 8.8 and prior, and Taleo Enterprise Edition V 12 and earlier to name a few. She can be reached at jkuhn@hrchitect.com.
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Clout – Getting It and Keeping It with Human Resources Technology By Marc S. Miller, Marc S. Miller Associates Specific to my fellow HR technologists, “clout” involves two key components: identifying whether or not you have what is called clout and your ability to understand HR technology; and use available HR technology components to your personal and professional advantage while providing actionable deliverables to create or build your level of personal influence within your organization. Webster’s Dictionary defines clout as “a blow, especially with a fist,” “a long powerful hit in baseball.” Additionally and alternatively it is defined as one’s ability or capacity to exercise control and authority in order to wield influence and get others to perform effectively. Informal synonyms of clout are power, influence, pull, and muscle. Clout manifests itself as power, which is a person’s right or prerogative of determining, ruling, governing or the exercise of that right or governance over others. The most common types of power are: coercive power, legitimate power, expert power, and referent power (given by law, title, or any other authority). Power is gained by those people who are perceived as controlling scarce resources, decision processes, knowledge and its dissemination, technology, boundaries, access to others, and control of the informal organization (groups) within any organization. Below are people in various positions and industries who undoubtedly would be described as having power, either by people who recognize their name, or by people directly influenced by their opinions and actions. Overall Clout
Media/Entertainment Clout
Business Clout
The President of the United States certainly has clout; one cannot argue that. He has at his disposal all the powers of his office. Plus, his power is considered “given” as a result of his original mandate and election. Others shown are in the media/ entertainment industry – Ryan Seacrest, Oprah, Roger Ailes, and Brad Pitt. The last group are “captains of industry” – Zuckerberg, Trump and Gates. You most likely recognized these faces because of their influence and ability to market their personal brand over the years. A high level of clout implies a high level of experience-based confidence and self-awareness. These people are insightful. They have the ability to read and understand others – some may refer to this as being instinctive and savvy. As a group, individuals who are considered influencers, authorities, or people of power (and thus having clout) are intelligent, determined, strategic and energetic. They know how to handle upheavals, and have the ability to survive corporate disruptions. One less appealing quality they all share is “benign deviousness.” Benign deviousness, or passive aggression, is the ability to get what you want without other people realizing that you are manipulating them. It’s a tactical approach with a ruthless single-mindedness and is essential in negotiating and wielding influence. It is also important to note that clout is a changeable characteristic. Politicians rise or fall in influence based on personal scandals or successes. Media stars do the same, sometimes dependent on the roles and pictures they undertake, and whether or not the film is a box office hit or flop. Here is a list of common personal traits of people with clout: Clout Characteristics People Insight
Intelligence
Corporate Resilience
Time Management
Delegation Skills
Ruthless SingleMindedness
Motivation Skills
Determination
Benign Deviousness
Directed Energy
Health Awareness
Strive for Effectiveness
As HR technologists, we have a narrow, yet important focus. Our daily professional activities are greatly influenced by the technology tools or enablers we have at our disposal. The ability to acquire HR technology and to be able to deploy it strategically to your company’s benefit is the primary driver of your personal and professional level of clout. So, the question becomes, Do you need clout to get a new HR technology solution? Or does a new HR technology solution give you clout? The answer is “Yes” to both. Human Resources technology helps to ensure a direct link towards bringing the overall strategies and resultant executable plans to the workforce. The ability, for example, to track employee performance, individual goals, and objectives www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • July 2014
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will help position the HR function as a vital strategic business partner in your organization. An effective HR technology strategy identifies the core competencies and internal value processes essential to maximize job performance and strategic support while simultaneously increasing shareholder profit. Business intelligence metrics can be implemented for forecasting staffing levels and identifying projective costs and values. Built-in workflow templates trigger events, proxy approvals, multifunctional modules; and real-time, payroll calculations empower employees to utilize their time more effectively. Having clout (or influence, or power), is critical to the success of any HR technology solution. Individuals with clout have the ability to affect or control decision-making – from the selection of a HR technology solution to activities to keep HR in alignment with corporate strategy. Additionally, individuals with clout possess the essential communication skills, conflict resolution styles, and insight into the behavior and motivations of others that are needed to guide HR technology projects.
• Leadership and support in implementing business strategies; • High service quality to all customers (stakeholders); • Responsiveness; • Risk management; • Talent acquisition and pipeline; and, • Effective leveraging of technology to all appropriate functions within the realm of HR, Payroll and Benefits. They are concerned about: • Organizational financials
•P roducts and cost of production
• The marketplace
• Overhead
• Competitors
• Economic indicators
• Acquisitions and mergers
• Organizational structure
• Research and development • T he workforce and its utilization • Technology development
Linking HRT to Your Business Linking HR technology to your business is critical to the success of maximizing HR technology effectiveness. The underpinning of this is the need for HR technologists to understand what the stakeholders of HR are seeking and what the board of directors expects in terms of value-added information to run the business and implement strategic initiatives. For example, CEOs or CHROs might want such questions as these addressed by the HR function: 1. Who are the key players in our organization? Are our highest-level performers adequately compensated? 2. How much would it cost in severance pay and other expenses to reduce head count by 10 percent while retaining our highest-level performers? 3. How many of our most effective managers will leave voluntarily or retire in each of the next five years? What will be the cost to recruit, train and retain replacements? 4. How is the business of HR performing in terms of cost effectiveness, program effectiveness, workforce utilization, and growth/new program potential. Thus, understanding the needs of your senior management (as high up in the organization as feasible) and effectively communicating strategic information to them will raise the value of the HR function – thus potentially increasing your personal and professional clout. When senior management at the highest level sees that the HR function provides information for strategic direction, facilitates change as a result of strategic decisions, and provides policies/programs that empirically benefit the corporation’s overall performance, then recognition and influence will continue to increase for HR in the minds of the executives. Below is a list of the expectations and common concerns of C-level executives: • Administrative efficiencies resulting in cost reduction;
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•H uman resources programs and measurement.
HCM: Effectiveness versus Efficiency People with clout understand the difference between effectiveness and efficiency. Efficiency is often interchangeably used with effectiveness; however, you can be 100 percent efficient but completely ineffective. Efficiency is about doing things right. It involves solving problems, safeguarding resources, following standardizes duties, lowering costs, implementing human resources technology (HRT) on time and producing standard reports. On the contrary, effectiveness produces alternatives, optimizes resources, obtains results, increases profits, implements the right HR technology, satisfies users, and provides strategic value reports. Producing timely standard reports, rather than strategic value reports may be efficient, but may not prove to be valuable, and certainly will not increase HR’s level of influence or clout. In effect, I am suggesting an active move from data management to information craftsmanship. This would be a key component in gaining increased levels of clout. Eliminating the generation of “static reports” of old data, and instead generating forward-oriented projections and metrics using modeling and other tools such as regression analysis will prove invaluable to your personal and professional clout.
The ability of the HR technology solutions to forecast, model, and present results as a graphical format or dashboard and then presenting such information to senior management is an impressive and clout-laden activity. The need for a HR technology solution with clout is evident. Human Resources technology strategic reporting should support the strategic plans of your organization while accommodating changing organizational structures, and also assist in the identification of key employees and the overall talent management initiatives. The logic is obvious. The potential for HRT success and clout is evident. Raw data should lead to information. Information should lead to influence. Influence should lead to power. Power and influence means clout. Clout should lead to new, visible initiatives and programs. All this will lead to increased personal and professional success, including enhanced influence and power. Here are my suggestions for 10 characteristics of an influential HR technology environment: (This list will be referred to in Miller’s Clout-Level Determination Questionnaire as Factor 2 that can be found on the IHRIM publications website.) 1. Web-delivered SaaS – by a third-party, established HRT provider; 2. Employee self-service and manager self-service integrated – manager “inbox;” 3. Mobile applications available and enabled; 4. Metrics – business intelligence (not simple data reports); 5. Metrics presented as a graphical dashboard; 6. Workflow built-in, e-mails, templates, trigger events, default approvals – life cycle changes pushed directly to employee and manager; 7. Single sign-on within multiple functional modules – onboarding, payroll, benefits administration, etc.; 8. Modeling and forecast projections of some key metrics such as “future turnover;” 9. Onboarding component integrated with recruiting and applicant processing; and, 10. Real-time, payroll calculations, ability for “on-thego” adjustments and rerun of payroll calculations – including time entry, integrated with all necessary HR components. And yet, HR technology projects (just like many others) can and do fail. Human Resources projects involve all levels of end users from line employees to department and division executives, as well as systems staff and third-party representatives (usually from a vendor of some sort). There is a team selected to oversee and implement whatever HR technology is wanted. An effective team effort in implementing a new HR technology component that is in alignment with corporate strategies, has increased functionality, and is effective and efficient, will
induce and enhance the clout level of the people involved and will likely lead to a successful results. However, this is not always the case. These projects often fail. If they do, the team members, individuals, and “owners” of the effort will potentially have their influence and, thus, clout negatively impacted. Without going into too much detail, as that is the subject of many texts and other articles, here are some issues to keep in mind to help avoid a HR technology project that is not a success. • On a specific team, each member has his or her own wants, desires, beliefs, and agendas – hidden or open. Some individuals are seeking recognition and their own higher level of power. Everyone wants some power. However, if an individual’s “thirst” for power is not aligned with others on the team/project, then interactions will create conflict, and conflict can easily create a path towards project failure. • Team members react to each other based on their own individual set of experiences and learnings. As humans we react to each other based on fears, information, goals, perceptions, agendas, feelings, personality, experience and beliefs. These have been formed since infancy. They will not change easily. An effective team will learn to recognize individual differences and strengths and weaknesses, and adjust for the common team good. • As a team leader, that person must recognize the “personalities among the team members,” and set an example at all times in terms of acting in an empathetic manner, with appropriate ethics on display, and, of course, with a constant “can do” supportive and visible attitude. The team leader must simultaneously be supervisor, boss, coach and supportive mentor. If he or she does not exhibit these characteristics (among others), the team can degenerate into conflict mode. When these characteristics create actions that adversely affect the team’s goals and objectives, then conflict will arise and the project will eventually fail. Teams fail when people are in conflict, and also when they resist change. Power and clout is the medium through which conflicts of interest are ultimately resolved. A leader with clout has to first recognize conflict, prepare for it, and eventually make decisions that remove it – at any level. And, those decisions, tough as they may be, must be made with empathy and within ethical practices, being visible to all members. In addition to the interactions and interests among and between team members, conflict is also often influenced by the organization itself and organizational politics. People with clout understand the nature of “politicking” in their workplace. In some organizations, power is discouraged and not rewarded (or limited to a very few people who are considered highpotentials or climbers.) In other organizations, it is a major means for getting ahead or being accepted according to standardized rules. Some organizations view the lust for power as good, while others think those actions (such as character assassination, rumor mongering, back-stabbing, etc.) border www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • July 2014
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on the unethical. A person with clout, aware of the political climate in his or her organization, will recognize what is acceptable and may use it to his or her advantage. Even better, he or she may use it to the advantage of any HR technology solution project. Gaining executive approvals, sponsorship, funding, and staffing are all action items that will end up helping any HR technology project effort. Human Resources technology projects have a greater chance of success when there is an understanding of individual behaviors and motivations (this includes their thirst for power and desire for clout), communication styles, conflict resolution styles and team participation styles.
Determining Your Own Clout Level Please go to Cloud Calculator (www.ihrimpublications. com/Clout_Calculator-final-self_adding.xls) to download and complete the Miller Clout Questionnaire. Answer each question within each Factor as your best “guesstimate.” If a particular question seems to not apply to you or your situation, give yourself the maximum score anyway (we will need all the help we can get). As stated, this is completely unscientific and based on anecdotal concepts, with a touch of “tongue-in-cheek” – however, it is based on perceptions and real career experiences of this author. Total Clout Score – Your total raw clout score should range from 665 to 3110. Round your score up to the next hundredth, and your final clout score results should range from a minimum of 700 to a maximum of 3200. Now see the concentric circle target chart below to position your personal clout level.
this level, you will be lucky if your boss recognizes you passing in the hallway. The good news is that clout is changeable and dynamic. You can be full of clout in one specific area of expertise and full of something else (omg) in another. Recognize your strengths and weaknesses. Be self-aware. The following “todo” list may prove helpful as you navigate the ever-changing environment of HR technology and deal with the concerns of your stakeholders. Consider these action items. Doing so could create a path to greater personal and professional success and clout.
A Potential “To-Do List” to Increase Your Personal Clout Level • Learn your company and learn your industry (competitors/trends). • Understand your clients/stakeholders needs. • Market and publicize the capabilities of your existing or new HR technology solutions – be proactive. • Participate in industry benchmark surveys. • Nurture informal relationships – politics. • Review and upgrade your job description. • Remain current in legislative trends. • Understand statistics and modeling. • Know about the other systems in your company. • Know what your industry cohorts have and how they are using their HR technology – collaborate and share. • Be visible, speak and write, blog, use internal company social media. Good luck on your journey to achieve clout!
About the Author
Determining and Understanding Your Clout/Power Position and What You Can Do About it If your final score results falls in the “inner circle” (28003200 range), you have gained HR technology clout at the highest level. You potentially have a high degree of power, influence, and HRT clout. The concentric circle (25002799 range) also reflects a great amount of influence and power. The green circle (1700-2499 range) means you are approaching influence. The yellow circle (1000-1699 range) suggests you need more self-awareness and marketing of your responsibilities and achievements. The recognition of your activities and its benefits is low. The gray circle (700-999 range) indicates a very low level of influence and power. At
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Marc S. Miller, president of Marc S. Miller Associates is a nationally known independent Human Resources technology consultant and thought leader. His firm guides his clients and HRT/HCM providers in HR technology solution evaluations and business development. Miller is a frequent speaker at national HRT industry events, conferences, vendor events, and delivers many webinars. He is an adjunct professor in HR at the MBA programs at NYU and LIU. He is known for his lively and incisive talks on topics related to the role of HR and its use of technology to strategic advantage. His book Heroic HR is available on Amazon, at www.ihrimpublications.com, and on his website at www.marcsmillerassociates.com.
Feature be able to do that they cannot do now? Specifically, how will managers’ jobs be easier? A compelling vision will give affected audiences their own personal reasons to push through the roadblocks and change required to be successful.
2. Secure a Committed Executive Sponsor
Ten Secrets of Successful Software Implementations By Mike Harmer, Intermountain Healthcare, Inc. I’m embarrassed to say I’ve been selecting and implementing enterprise software for almost 20 years. It’s not that it’s a bad job; it’s just not the sort of thing I aspired to back in elementary school. But, the eight-year-old me had no way of knowing that the rate of change in the technology world would never disappoint, that it would constantly challenge me, and draw me deep into the evolving world of efficiency, automation and analytics. I’ve learned many tricks to make implementations successful – some the easy way, some the other way – and I want to share 10 that I hope will be helpful to others engaged in enterprise software implementations.
1. Be Clear About the Outcome When starting an implementation, take time to clarify the project’s goals, share them with the project team and stakeholders. Clearly stated outcomes will focus the team and be a critical measure of success after the system goes live. There are two components of a successfully stated outcome: Returnon-Investment (ROI) and Audience. First, document your targeted ROI. Meet with Finance and determine together how ROI will be measured before you begin. This shared approach will be valuable in guiding your work and in avoiding disagreements on ROI calculations later. Revisit the ROI criteria regularly throughout the implementation to be certain the objectives are reached. When the implementation is over, at the end of the time period for the projected ROI, report back to the company on the results. When decision-makers see accountability for investments, they will be much more likely to invest again. If the project falls short of the projected returns in some area, honest communication with decision-makers will help clear project obstacles and earn respect for plans to reach a delayed ROI. Second, engage your non-finance audiences with a clear understanding of the returns they’ll see by creating a compelling vision of what life will be like after the system is in place. For example, if implementing an integrated talent management suite, what three to five things will employees
Find a committed executive sponsor for the project, and work hard to make them a successful owner of the implementation. There are a handful of concepts that will help make the project and your sponsor succeed. First, define the “ARCIE” decision rights model: who will (A)pprove decisions, make (R)ecommendations, be (C) onsulted, (I)mplement the decisions, (Execute) the tasks. Share this with all involved parties when the project starts. Refer to it when differences of opinion arise during the project to quickly get the teams unstuck and moving forward again. Second, hold regular meetings with the executive sponsor and keep her informed on progress, but more importantly, risks. Executive sponsors don’t like to be surprised. (If you question this, try it, and then study the reaction carefully.) If a potential issue is brewing, arm her with the information she’ll need to respond to it when she’s confronted in a meeting or stopped in the hallway. Third, document key business decisions. One of the greatest project derailers is a business decision changed late in a project. When key business decisions are made, significant work and resources are invested to carry out the decision. If this work must be undone later, the business loses a significant investment, costs exceed budgets, and project deadlines are jeopardized or delayed. Create a single document to identify and record all key business decisions. This document should be made visible to the project team and business owners, so it can serve as a handy reminder of past decisions, as well as a timetable for decision-makers in planning their work.
3. Don’t Go It Alone An HR department alone does not contain all the resources needed to successfully execute a project. Pockets of deep expertise are at HR’s fingertips in many other company departments. Approach these teams and ask for their assistance. These requests will not only help secure the resources needed for success, they will also help overcome any internal political reservations as the implementation progresses. Consider the following eight resource pools. • Communications teams can help design and execute a project communications plan. The communication plan will identify key audiences and can manage communication with those audiences throughout the project, allowing HR resources to focus primarily on the implementation plan. An effective communication plan lets everyone know what to expect, when to expect it, and why it’s being done. • Information Technology (IT) teams are responsible for many components of technology including strategy, standards, and making everything work. Approach IT www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • July 2014
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early in the selection process and ask them to assist in a technical review of potential vendors, and to identify the timeline for tasks that will require their resources. The expertise in a company’s IT department can help identify and quickly resolve the inevitable technical hurdles that arise during an implementation. • Secure the help of a finance analyst and a partner in Finance who can assist with budgeting and resource management during the course of the project. If any obstacles are encountered, having Finance involved and aware of the project will help you quickly secure the support needed. • Project management resources can help set up a governance structure for the project, track project tasks, help coordinate with other departments, and otherwise free up human resources information systems (HRIS) resources to focus on the implementation. • A Supply Chain department can help you find vendors, manage requests for proposal (RFPs), coordinate vendor demonstrations or site visits with a prospective vendor’s customers. As a neutral party, Supply Chain can help HRIS teams and business owners get past any biases in the selection process. And, Supply Chain’s familiarity with many different company contracts will strengthen your company’s presence during contract negotiations.
4. Consider the Aftermath The selection and implementation of a major software solution is so time-consuming that we sometimes do not take time to consider what will happen after the new system is live. (A part of us may secretly hope we can suddenly retire before that day comes.) But, thinking through this question will help your post-implementation success. If you plan to manage the system with in-house resources, you’ll want to budget a little extra time for implementation so that staff members have time to learn the skills they’ll need to configure and maintain the system post-implementation. This small amount of extra time will potentially pay you big dividends in reduced professional service fees down the road. If you plan to budget for more professional services to be provided by the vendor, ask the vendor’s other customers how much they typically incur in professional service fees. Although many software providers are evolving their systems to enable business users to configure them, there are still some holdouts that rely on high professional service fees and income. Know what your plan is as you begin your implementation.
5. Build a Strong Partnership with the Supplier The “honeymoon period” of a vendor relationship is a blissful time when you have access to many resources in seemingly every department of the vendor’s company. Product managers seek your opinion, executives join you on calls, and perhaps even the CEO or owner will pay you a visit, assuming your company is larger than theirs. But then you sign the contract, the honeymoon is over, and it’s down to business. So start thinking of your value to the vendor beyond the licensing fee you pay. Look for opportunities to become visible in your industry. Speak at conferences, write articles, volunteer in professional associations. As you do, peers can
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tap you for advice, and your vendors will see the value you bring as a potential reference – both informally and formally. Look for opportunities to assist the vendor in designing new product features. Best-practice vendors will have established product design opportunities for their customers. Participate and bring your best ideas. Let the vendor know what is going on, not just in your company, but in your industry. Consider the vendor’s point of view: They are trying to build software in a very competitive market and want to see solid business cases behind your enhancement requests.
6. Challenge Conversions One of the most difficult questions early in an implementation is whether you should convert the old data from your former system into the new software. This can become very expensive, so before you let the past dictate the future, articulate the primary business reasons for accessing old data, then decide whether to take on the additional cost of converting old data. The reasons are usually three. The first is historical data for trending analytics. If this is the case, consider placing the historical data into a data warehouse or other database where it can be easily accessed for reporting. Because this historical database will not have to meet all the demands of the new production system, you can design it any way you like, with only one set of reporting or analytical requirements in mind. Second, you may need to access the old data for audit purposes. If this is the case, consider how and how often auditors will access this data. If infrequent, export the data into a simple standalone database where analysts can access it if requested. If the need is more frequent, build some selfservice reports over this simple database and give auditors access to run the reports themselves. Third, you may need to make historical data visible to end users. (You’ll begin to see a pattern in the least-cost alternatives being mentioned here.) Place the historical data in a simple database and build reports over it. Consider that the historical data will be accessed less and less each year as time goes on. Is the inconvenience of pulling up a report in a separate system less than the inconvenience of trying to drag a mountain of historical data into a foreign system, and then maintain it for years as the new system evolves and changes? Fourth, you may only need to access some of the historical data within the new system. Carefully examine the use cases where customers will be accessing historical information. Could the need be solved by only bringing a small amount of the historical data into the new system (and sending the bulk of it to another database?) The small historical data set may only be a year’s worth of data, or it may be just a few select fields.
7. Challenge Business Processes Your current business practices are a lot like bad habits – they’re really, really hard to give up. Invariably you will find that the new system does not do things the same way your old one did. At this point, your customers will often want to build a customization in the new system to make it like the old one. (This madness really does happen.) Customizations are an attractive short-term solution because they minimize the organization’s change management
challenge. However, in the long-term, customizations will become increasingly expensive to maintain and will often prevent you from upgrading. What to do? Challenge business practices. Ask the project’s executive sponsor to invite the teams to challenge the old ways of thinking. This will help break down barriers to change. Then, try some of the following methods: • Instead of starting with the old workflow, try describing the actual outcome needed, and then list only the critical requirements to make that happen. Next, design the simplest workflow possible to reach that outcome. • Call some of the vendor’s other customers and ask how they perform the same function. This often results in the discovery of some very simple solutions. • Contact the product manager and ask them why they designed the product the way they did. Explain your business challenge and they may even be able to tell you about some lesser known features that will solve the problem.
8. Big Bang versus Phased As software matures, it becomes more integrated with other systems, and as users grow more computer-literate over time, more and more of software implementations are rolled out in “big bang” releases. Big bang refers to a release where an entire company begins using the software all at once. The opposite of big bang is a phased release, where new software is made available to the company a group at a time over an extended period of time. Phased releases are typically favored when there is significant risk of failure in some portion of the technology, or when the implementation team expects to pilot or test the software and make corrections before releasing it to further audiences. The disadvantages of phased releases are a delay in realizing the project’s return-on-investment, the additional expense of maintaining the legacy system during implementation of the new one, and potential change management resistance as users on the new system share any initial frustrations with future users. Big bang releases allow companies to reach ROI more quickly. Such releases also benefit from economies of scale as communication and change management efforts are leveraged enterprise-wide.
9. Reduce the Cost of Ownership In choosing an implementation strategy, we have many more choices than we did just a few years ago, such as the following: • Integrated versus point solutions. There has been considerable consolidation in the enterprise software industry over the past few years, and as a result, HR is having to spend less time and money managing point solutions (a separate best solution for each disparate HR business function). Although point solutions can match business requirements closely, your staff will spend significant resources managing each vendor’s product release schedule, troubleshooting data feeds between each of the systems, and employees will have to learn to navigate several different systems – and they don’t like that. Integrated solutions are maturing and relieve the HR
teams of all the inter-system management overhead. Human Resources staff can now focus on higher value activities. The downside to an integrated system is that you may miss a few “bells and whistles” offered by various vendors. However, the rate of evolution in product feature sets has slowed noticeably. Human Resources software has matured and become more commoditized. The strategic differentiators moving forward are less about unique features, and more about deeper integration and embedding prescriptive analytics. • Cloud services are also a compelling option to reduce long-term costs. (Speaking of cloud services and Softwareas-a-Service combined). The full benefits of cloud hosting go beyond a simple cost comparison. In a cloud, when something goes wrong, you call the vendor and leverage their 24/7 resources. You also benefit from a large customer base that is testing the same releases as you. This leads to less buggy software and less time-consuming upgrades.
10. The Phase 2 Enhancement List This last tip is a great way to balance your internal customers’ feedback, expectations, frustrations, and balance them with the limited pool of resources at your disposal. There is no shortage of good ideas, and nothing brings them out of the woodwork more than a new software system. When customers call in with a complaint, suggestion or problem, log it in an “enhancement list.” This is a simple spreadsheet that records the request, the requestor, when it was requested, and the type of request (bug or enhancement). Recording the request will let the customer know that the request has been received and will not be lost. Let them know that it will be brought as a recommendation for a decisionmaking group’s prioritization. The decision-making group usually consists of business leaders and key customers. Before you present the enhancement list to them for prioritization, go through each item and estimate the amount of time it will take to complete. Then, explain to the group that you have X number of hours available to address items on the list, and ask them to choose the items that they want done first, adding up the time required for each so that it does not exceed available resources. This is a great way to involve your stakeholders and keep them informed. There they are – 10 tips for successful software implementations. I hope some of these will help you avoid the lessons I learned the hard way. And, if you happen to run into eight-year-old me, give him a copy of this list and tell him it will save him a lot of trouble one day.
About the Author Mike Harmer is the director of HR Analytics & Technology for Intermountain Healthcare. He is responsible for HR’s technology strategy and analytics work. Harmer is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and has been with Intermountain Healthcare for 14-plus years. He holds a master’s degree and consults with ThinkTroop, a research consulting firm. He can be reached at mike.harmer@imail.org.
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Serious Fun – How HR Can Up the Game By Larry Mohl, Jubi, Inc. Gamification – it seems like all of a sudden this word is being used everywhere. Are you one of the people that has jumped into the journey of gamification, or are you one of equally numerous people taking a more cautious view? What is gamification and why has it hit the radar now? Is it all about playing games or is there something more substantial going on? Is gamification here to stay, or is it another “buzz” soon to meet its end? Can I afford gamification? Is it serious enough for serious people and serious problems? If you have been working on a gamification project, thinking about getting started, or just hearing the term for the first time, my hope is that this article will help demystify the topic and develop your gamification acumen.
What’s the Game? Think for a moment about a game you love to play. For example, I am a huge tennis fan. I love to play league tennis, watch professional tournaments, review instructional videos, and check out all the gear I could spend my money on. The question I’ve often asked myself is, “What is it about the game of tennis that keeps me so engaged?” Tennis has all the basic characteristics, or “game mechanics,” that make the activity of whacking that little yellow ball so engaging. There is a point and scoring system with a set of rules. There are leagues with competition at different levels of skill. Each league has team and individual leaderboards that drive a great deal of healthy competition. There is team camaraderie, social connection, and admiration for the winning team and, each time I play, I receive immediate feedback that I can use to adjust and develop my game.
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Finally, it’s just plain fun! Now, just imagine that the game of tennis consisted of nothing more than the activity of hitting the ball against a wall. If all the game mechanics were stripped away, would it still be a game? The answer is no. It would be an activity for sure, but probably not an activity that most people would devote time and energy to. A more technical definition of gamification is as follows: “Gamification is the use of game mechanics and design elements in a non-game application to drive high levels of engagement and achieve a targeted business outcome.” Gamification challenges us to answer the question of how we can use the characteristics of games (points, rewards, fun, surprise, etc.) to increase engagement in activities or behaviors that we want people to perform for the purpose of achieving a specific result. Gamification is really not about playing games. Rather, first and foremost, gamification is about engagement. Marketers, sales leaders, learning leaders, and human resources professionals, are all starting to look towards gamification to solve one of the most annoying and pervasive problems they face: “I built it and they did not stay.” Whether it’s a customer facing website, CRM tool, or learning course, the ability to motivate people to engage and act remains a thorny and expensive problem. The other significant opportunity in the use of gamification remains largely invisible to the user, but is of primary importance to gamification application providers – data – lots and lots of data. Data captured in real-time from gamification users is a powerful tool that can be analyzed and put to work to significantly improve user engagement and shape behavior.
Why Play Now? The first trend is the largest demographic shift in the history of the U.S. workforce involving incoming millennial workers and outgoing baby boomers. Currently, over 10,000 baby boomers are retiring every single day and the millennial population has grown rapidly to over 37 percent of the workforce. According to studies by Gallup,1 over 47 percent of millennial workers report that they are disengaged at work. According to generational researchers such as Tamara Erickson,2 millennial workers define “engagement” as an environment that provides challenge, continuous development, embedded technology, frequent rewards, social connection, and a sense of purpose beyond a paycheck. Well-designed gamification solutions have the
promise to address many of these demands and can be used to declare war on disengagement. The second trend is the growth of mobile gaming and social technologies. Over one billion people play electronic games, and the fastest growing segment is the tablet and hand-held markets. By most accounts, over half of the world’s population is using some form of social technology. This growth is clearly driving gamification into commonplace, everyday use. In addition, companies are making it more and more possible for employees to bring your own device (BYOD) to work. The line between the experience that people have as consumers on their personal smartphones and what they expect from their employer is quickly blurring. This blurring is driving a demand for consumer-centric applications in the corporate context, and gamification easily fits the bill. As an industry, M2 Research3 estimates that gamification will soon go north of US$2.8 billion in market spending. Gartner Inc.4 predicts that by 2015, 40 percent of Forbes Global 1000 organizations will use gamification as the primary mechanism to transform business operations. It would seem that gamification, while in its early days, is here to stay.
Play at Work? If you look at your current workplace through the lens of gamification, you will see aspects of it everywhere. There are scoreboards and scorecards, salesperson and employee-ofthe-month contests, and employee-health-team challenges, to name a few. Labeling these as examples of gamification allows us to build gamification applications as a discipline, study how they are working, and improve their impact. For HR professionals, gamification provides a new arsenal of engagement tools and techniques that are built on past and present discoveries in areas such as neuroscience, cognitive science, behavioral economics and motivation theory. When you ask people what gamification means to them, the answers you receive span a wide range of applications. In order to provide some framing, I have developed the Gamification Continuum Model depicted in Figure 1. When we apply this model to core HR practices, an interesting picture begins to emerge.
which means that simple game mechanics can be used in many ways. The cost to gain the benefit can be relatively low. Examples of applications at this end of the continuum include the use of points, badges, and leaderboards to engage users in tasks such as company health challenges, e.g., walking, losing weight, and compliance, e.g., sales CRM data entry, completing required training. The technology used to deploy these applications can be as simple as pen and paper, or involve more complex technology including gamification engines that present simple mechanics in response to clicks on a website. If your goal is to turn tasks into a “game” without spending a lot of money, there are many options at this end of the spectrum. In the middle of the continuum is gamification that drives process engagement in a more specific context. These applications build on task-based applications by adding some form of game type metaphor, e.g., board game, card game, along with missions and levels delivered through a website. Graphical treatments can greatly vary, leading to a wide variation in cost to develop and deploy. Gamification at this point of the continuum is being utilized for recruiting, onboarding, innovation and learning processes. At the far right of the continuum, we find expensive applications built for a very specific context and used to drive the acquisition of mission-critical skills in highreliability industries. Examples of this form of gamification include high-fidelity patient simulators in health care, flight simulators for pilot training, and well-drilling practice environments in off-shore oil exploration, to name a few. A lower cost variation of this type of gamification includes business computer and board simulation games aimed at teaching specific concepts and decision factors. Now that we have a frame of reference, let’s take a look at some of the most popular ways HR professionals are using gamification to drive engagement and shape behavior in the work place.
Recruiting Marriott Hotels developed a hotel-themed, online experience similar to Farmville, in which players must juggle all the responsibilities of a hotel kitchen manager. Users learn about the industry and earn virtual rewards that enhance the image of the hotel industry in their eyes. Marriott targets this application primarily to attract talent in emerging markets outside the U.S. where the hospitality industry is less established.
Onboarding
Figure 1. Gamification Continuum Model.
At the far left of the continuum, we see gamification that primarily drives task engagement in a broad context,
Gamifying the onboarding process is one of the most popular applications of gamification that exists in the workplace today. In many companies, onboarding is a well-defined process with a beginning, middle and end. To be successfully onboarded, employees need to digest a significant amount of information, build relationships, and begin to navigate the organization. To gamify this process, the information and activities can be “chunked and sequenced” so that employees earn points and badges www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • July 2014
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as they work their way through the process. Other game mechanics, such as missions and levels, can be used to further organize the process and add a sense of progressive achievement.
Social Rewards In many companies, it is commonplace to have a system by which managers can recognize their associates, and associates can recognize each other. In some organizations, software platforms have been used to make it easier for managers to send a recognition item to an employee that has an associated point value. The recognition recipient can then redeem their accumulated points for merchandise from an online store. More recently, this basic idea has been combined and expanded using social technologies and simple game mechanics to increase the quality and flow of recognition across organizations.
Learning and Performance Improvement Learning and performance improvement professionals have been using aspects of games and game mechanics as a staple of their instructional design and delivery practice for generations. Recently, the opportunity has become possible to use game mechanics in new and innovative ways to drive learning. One goal of learning gamification is to improve engagement and the completion of online learning. Currently, learning leaders use online learning to reach large populations. However, the drop-out rate is alarmingly high, resulting in wasted money and time. Another goal is to help close the “learning-doing gap.” Unfortunately, much of the learning that is delivered online and in the classroom is not transferred to the workplace. Gamification can play a key role in closing this gap.
Like most things that may seem simple at first glance, there is significantly more going on behind the scenes in effective, well-designed gamification than first meets the eye. Figure 2 depicts a high-level process I have developed to help you think through your gamification project and improve your outcomes.
Figure 2. Gamification Design Process.
The issue with many gamification attempts is that designers tend to jump straight from their desired business goals to the selection of game mechanics without going through the intermediate steps required to more specifically define outcomes and understand their audience. Let’s take a quick walk through the process.
Business Goals Business goals should clearly define the operational success measures you aspire to. People-centric examples include higher employee retention and engagement, higher quality of hire, improved customer satisfaction, and increased net promoter scores.
Employee Health and Wellness
Behavior Outcomes
As we have become more aware of the negative impact bad health has on our society, health care system and company benefits cost, it is no surprise that the gamification of health and wellness has become one of the fastest areas of growth in the overall gamification market. Corporate walking, weight loss, BMI reduction, and healthy eating competitions are taking companies by storm. This general trend among companies and consumers has resulted in a hyper-competitive, wearable device market with suppliers competing for your “share of wrist.” Free smart-phone apps with embedded gamification mechanics are making it much easier for you and your company to get on the healthy living bandwagon.
In this step, the objective is to define the primary target group(s) you are attempting to influence and what it is you need them to know and do as a result of being “gamified.” Examples might include such behaviors as completing registration for employee benefits on time, contributing ideas to the suggestion box, performing work to a specific standard, and completing and applying lessons from e-learning courses.
Game On? In addition to predicting a high rate of growth in gamification, Gartner also predicts that at least 70 percent of gamified applications will fail to produce the intended outcomes due to “poor design.” What Gartner is talking about is one of the great myths of gamification, which says that all you need to do is add points and badges to the tasks you want users to perform and presto...the tasks get done!
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Engagement and Motivation Drivers To help surface the drivers of engagement and motivation in the behaviors you desire, ask the question, “What do our people care about?” By finding out what is important to those in your target audience, you will surface important factors that may warrant consideration as you design and deploy your application. Target Corporation recently developed an interesting gamification application aimed at improving customer satisfaction at the check-out line. The application displayed a green or red indicator to the cashier on their screen based on whether or not they had met or missed a pre-defined speed standard. When the application was initially deployed, many employees were unhappy,
citing that it felt like they were receiving a customer-bycustomer performance review. Further investigation by the application developers revealed that the cashiers favored getting customers checked out quickly, but the feeling of being scored in this way was demotivating. The application was adjusted by adding the ability for cashiers to compete against themselves, to beat their personal best and “level up” based on their performance over time. This approach garnered more cashier engagement and, therefore, better results. The heart of gamification lies in truly understanding the motivations of your target population and then using the appropriate game mechanics to trigger those motivations. Motivation comes in two forms – intrinsic and extrinsic – and the most successful applications trigger both. Figure 3 shows some of the common motivators that gamification applications seek to leverage. Intrinsic
Extrinsic
Autonomy
Social Connections
Mastery
Status
Fun
Fame
Meaning
Tangible Awards
Altruism
Money
Figure 3. Motivation Types.
Game Model and Mechanics Once the engagement and motivation drivers of the target audience are better understood, you can select an appropriate game model and the game mechanics needed for your application. As I have discussed, gamification is really not about playing games. However, in order to build in the “fun factor,” our brains need a frame of reference from games we are familiar with. Looking at popular board games, video games, and TV game shows provides inspiration for the selection of a game model you can build upon. The most basic forms of game mechanics are points, badges, levels and leaderboards. With these simple mechanics in place, you can turn just about any activity into a game. But, don’t just stop there! Think about how else you can crank up the engagement factor. There are many more game mechanics available to you. While a full discussion of these mechanics is beyond the scope of this article, a good list can be found at http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/25/ scvngr-game-mechanics/.
You Got Game? The next move in the game is yours. Take a closer look at whether gamification can add engagement value to one of your initiatives. If you feel it can, continue to learn more. Go for it! I promise you that it will be serious fun!
Endnotes 1 Gallup Engagement Study, 2012. 2 Tamara Erickson, Article for RSA Fellowship, Summer 2012. 3 M2 Research, Gamification in 2012 Market Update. 4 Brian Burke, “The Gamification of Business,” Forbes Magazine, 2013.
About the Author Larry Mohl is a founder and the CEO of Jubi, Inc., which combines the fun of gamification, the power of social networks, and The Science of Inspiration,™ to ignite and sustain meaningful employee engagement in learning and performance improvement. After starting his career as an engineer at Motorola, Inc., he became an early leader in corporate social networking by pioneering “communities of practice” as the head of Knowledge Management at Motorola University. He has pioneered innovative approaches to leadership development, knowledge communities, and integrated talent management. Mohl is the co-author of the The Wall Street Journal best-selling book Networking is Dead: Making Connections that Matter, and has contributed to leading magazines. He holds a faculty appointment at the Georgia State University J. Mack Robinson College of Business, three international patents, and is an award-winning professional musician and composer. His innovative work to use music as a tool in business helps corporations inspire higher levels of engagement, commitment and brand advocacy. He can be reached at larry@getjubi.com.
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2014 Mid-Year Source Buyers Guide The 2014 Mid-Year Source Buyers Guide will serve as a valuable reference tool. For your convenience, the guide has two sections: a Categorical Listing and an Alphabetical listing. In the Categorical Listing, companies are listed under the product and service categories of their choice. For information on a specific company and its products and/or service, please refer to the Alphabetical Company Listing. While a listing in this guide does not constitute an endorsement by IHRIM, it does indicate that these companies are interested in serving the needs of HRIS professionals. We hope this Buyer’s Guide will assist you in your 2013 purchasing decisions.
Product Categories
Core HRMS
Epicor Software Corporation Optimum Solutions, Inc. PDS StarGarden Corporation Ultimate Software
Benefits Management
Benefits Outsourcing/ASP-Flexible Benefits bswift
Business Intelligence
Analytics Ultimate Software WorkForce Software
Career/professional Development/ e-Learning Compensation Management
Deferred Compensation Decusoft Executive Compensation Decusoft Incentive Compensation Decusoft Ultimate Software
Employment Systems & Services
e-Recruiting/Application Tracking Epicor Software Corporation Ultimate Software
HR Service Delivery
Cloud Computing Ultimate Software On-Premise Epicor Software Corporation Optimum Solutions, Inc. PDS Outsourcing PDS
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Paid Advertising SaaS Epicor Software Corporation PDS Ultimate Software WorkForce Software Self Service WorkForce Software
Onboarding
bswift 10 S. Riverside Plaza, Suite 1100 Chicago, IL 60606 Jillian Daub 312-261-5750 312-928-0640 sales@bswift.com www.bswift.com Based in Chicago, bswift offers software and services that streamline benefits, HR and payroll administration for employers and public and private exchanges nationwide. bswift’s stateof-the-art cloud-based technology, outsourcing solutions and Springboard Marketplace exchange solution significantly reduce administrative costs and time-consuming paperwork, making life easier for administrators and millions of consumers who enroll in benefits with bswift.
Epicor Software Corporation Ultimate Software
Payroll Software
Optimum Solutions, Inc. PDS Ultimate Software
Performance Management
Ultimate Software
Self Service
Employee Self-Service (ESS)/Manager SelfService(MSS) Epicor Software Corporation PDS Ultimate Software WorkForce Software
Decusoft 70 Hilltop Rd. Ste 1003 Ramsey, NJ 07446 Karie Johnson (201) 258-1414 (201) 785-0774 Karie.Johnson@Decusoft.com www.Decusoft.com Is administering compensation with a talent management suite leaving a bad taste in your mouth? COMPOSE by Decusoft is a specialized compensation management software solution that handles any level of variable compensation complexity, reduces your total cost of compensation administration and integrates with existing HR solutions. A solution worth savoring. See ad on Inside Front Cover!
Succession Planning
Ultimate Software
Time & Attendance Systems
Optimum Solutions, Inc. Ultimate Software WorkForce Software
Workforce Management
Contingent Workforce Management WorkForce Software Forecasting & Scheduling Ultimate Software WorkForce Software
Epicor Software Corporation 804 Las Cimas Parkway Austin, TX 78746 Lee Hagen 972-304-3060 LHagen@epicor.com www.epicor.com/HCM Epicor Software is a global leader delivering inspired business software solutions, including its award-winning Human Capital Management (HCM) software. Epicor HCM provides comprehensive HR solutions to help manage a globally disperse workforce, improve human resource processes and enhance employee satisfaction for greater efficiency and cost savings across the enterprise. Visit www.epicor.com/hcm.
2014 Mid-Year Source Buyers Guide
Alphabetical Company Listing* *Systems and applications referred to in this section are trademarked, registered, or in progress. These names should not be used generically.
StarGarden Corporation Optimum Solutions, Inc. 210 25th Ave. N. Ste. 700 Nashville, TN 37203 Scott Henderson 615-329-2313 615-329-4448 shenderson@optimum-solutions.com www.optimum-solutions.com Optimum Solutions provides payroll, HR, and Time and Attendance software for Windows and iSeries platforms. All applications share one master file employee database eliminating double entries. All of our applications are developed and supported internally, giving your company the individual attention it deserves while providing you with a complete HRIS system.
300-3665 Kingsway Vancouver, BC, Canada V5R 5W2 Marnie Larson 800-809-2880 604-451-0578 fax info@stargarden.com www.stargarden.com StarGarden is a fully integrated web-based Human Resources, Payroll and Work Planning solution designed to meet the needs of structured, position-based organizations with complex pay and benefit issues. StarGarden maintains substantial detailed information about your organization, its structure, compensation and benefits plans, accruals/ balances, employees, and payroll. www.stargarden.com or call 800-809-2880.
PDS 470 Norristown Road, Suite 202 Blue Bell, PA 19422 George Brady 610-238-4617 610-238-4574 gbrady@pdssoftware.com www.pdssoftware.com Vista HRMS is a core suite of HR, Payroll, Benefits, Self- Service, Mobile, Workflow, Analytics, Time Management and Recruiting components. Vista combines Position and Employee management. Vista’s intelligent crossborder capabilities manage U.S. and Canadian employees in a single database. It is available On-Premise, Hosted or SaaS, utilizing the .NET framework.
Telliris 4 Armstrong Rd. Shelton, CT 06484 Sales Department 203-924-7000 203-944-1618 sales@telliris.com www.telliris.com Mobile Enable your Time & Attendance with Telliris. It’s integrated and ready to use with many packages (Ceridian, Focus, HBS, Identatronics, Infotronics, Insperity, Kaba Workforce Solutions, Qqest, ScheduleSoft, Sense Software, SumTotal Systems, Time Link, UniFocus, and Workforce Software). Apps include Absence, Accruals, Crew Clock, Employee Messaging, ESS, Scheduling, Time Clock, Time Sheet, and Time-off Request. It’s ideal for organizations with dispersed, remote or mobile employees. Please contact Telliris or your Time & Attendance vendor for details.
Ultimate Software 2000 Ultimate Way Weston, FL 33326 Sales 800-432-1729 954-331-7300 ultiproinfo@ultimatesoftware.com www.ultimatesoftware.com Ultimate Software’s UltiPro delivers comprehensive talent management solutions that help engage and develop your people with continuous performance management, support for career development, and the right technology to build your talent pipeline. Leverage easy-to-use tools with detailed talent data and metrics to support smarter decisions regarding your organization’s talent objectives. See ad on Back Cover
WorkForce Software 38705 Seven Mile Road, Suite 300 Livonia, MI 48152 Sales Department 877-4-WFORCE 734-542-0635 info@workforcesoftware.com www.workforcesoftware.com WorkForce Software is the leader of complete, easy-to-use workforce management solutions. Its EmpCenter suite enables strategic HR by automating and streamlining interactions between the employer and its workforce, enabling organizations to better manage payroll and processing costs, help ensure compliance with labor regulations, and increase productivity and satisfaction of employees.
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Social Recruiting Big Data Transforms Recruiting Practices By Will Staney, Glassdoor The automated processes of the Information Age have resulted in reams and reams of data, which is both structured and unstructured, and continues to grow exponentially. This collection of ever-expanding data sets, which are too large and complex to manipulate or integrate with standard methods or tools, is popularly known as “big data.” And, while big data must be properly accessed, managed and analyzed, it can be used to positively transform the decisions made in almost every business, not the least of which is the recruiting business. In fact, the hiring decisions made by recruiters arguably have the power to transform every industry, because the people who are hired will build the businesses and industries of the future. By harnessing the power of big data available at their fingertips, today’s recruiters can ensure that they are making the right decisions with every hire. Here’s what recruiters need to know about big data and how it can make a difference in their sourcing and hiring processes.
By harnessing the power of big data available at their fingertips, today’s recruiters can ensure that they are making the right decisions with every hire.
Big Data at Our Fingertips These days, everybody has big data at their fingertips with sites like Glassdoor, LinkedIn and Google+, which are full of online profile information. Using advanced search capabilities on these sites or talent management systems can help recruiters get a clear sense of their candidate pools and use more sophisticated processes to bring in top talent. Human Resources’ teams need to tap in to engineering resources in order to get the right processes in place to take advantage of the big data tools on the market today. The sheer volume of data (hence the name “big”
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While there’s no shortage of information available about potential candidates, the effective use of big data goes beyond simply collecting information. data) available can make managing it almost impossible without some helpful tools. One example is Hadoop, a platform that uses simple programming models to allow for the distributed processing of large data sets; it can allow organizations to run queries on that data quickly. For instance, with Hadoop’s MapReduce quality, a recruiter could search a database of 100,000 résumés for a certain term (such as “software engineer”) in milliseconds, rather than the hours required by a conventional database search. Human Resources’ teams can also take advantage of Glassdoor’s Employer Center, which offers access to information about job seeker engagement and demographics, helping companies understand what jobs attract the most candidates and when, track employee satisfaction ratings trends, and benchmark their brand’s reputation against competitors. It’s an easy-to-use, selfservice tool that can help recruiters make social recruiting decisions based on job seeker activity and authentic workplace insights.
Focusing on Interpretation While there’s no shortage of information available about potential candidates, the effective use of big data goes beyond simply collecting information. Most importantly, recruiters must be able to interpret the data and understand how important, or unimportant, each data point is. Workforce analytics programs and applicant tracking systems can help recruiters by gathering and aggregating information that is publicly available. However, Michael Morell, founder of technology search and recruiting services firm Riviera Partners, in a Wired magazine article says that, “Recruiters need to be able to understand big data, which boils down to discovery, visualization and insight. The best recruiting teams will use technology that bubbles up the right candidates, and know how to weigh the data points to provide the best possible fits for a position.” If you’re looking for a solution that can organize and interpret all of the data you have in-house, allowing you
to query all available data at once, there are a number of vendors now offering options. Look for solutions that offer open application programming interfaces (APIs), which are used to interconnect websites in a more fluid, user-friendly manner. It may also be helpful to look for cloud-based systems that can be accessed anywhere, and for platforms that can accept data in a number of forms, including PDFs, profiles and other formats. For instance, Gild is a startup geared toward recruiters who hire software developers. It combines data aggregation technology and a proprietary algorithm to analyze developers’ code and professional contributions. The system gives a score to each developer to help recruiters gauge his or her true skills. Using this data analytics tool eliminates some of the guesswork required by non-developer recruiters charged with hiring talented developers. The tool also assembles social media activity for each potential candidate to help recruiters determine which ones fit well with their company’s culture. While Gild is focused on software developers, it’s an example of the in-depth and rewarding ways that data can be used to improve the recruiting process.
Just as doctors and nurses provide better care with “evidence-based” health care, recruiters who use the data available at their fingertips can make human resources decisions that are evidence-based. Not only can big data help recruiters find the right hires when a position needs to be filled, but it can also be used to make predictions about future workforce needs. An ongoing analysis of organizations’ mountains of internal data can be used to help determine how many employees are needed now and forecast how many will be needed in the future. Using the insights available through
predictive analysis, recruiters can become expert forecasters of upcoming hiring trends and how and when to locate the best hires. Just as doctors and nurses provide better care with “evidence-based” health care, recruiters who use the data available at their fingertips can make human resources decisions that are evidence-based.
More than Data Big data may go a long way toward helping recruiters source and select the right hires, but there will never be a substitute for human interaction. Only through personal interactions and one-on-one communications with a candidate can you determine important information such as his or her attitude, demeanor, work ethic and style. For instance, the perfect candidate on paper (or on computer screen) isn’t so perfect anymore if he or she doesn’t respond to an e-mail (or doesn’t do so politely) or doesn’t show up on time for an interview. If your office has reams of data available, leverage it to make the job of recruiting easier, more precise and more proficient. But, don’t let it replace the human touch, which adds a necessary element of judgment and intuition that is required to consistently make strong hires.
About the Author Will Staney is the head of Global Recruiting (Head Talent Warrior) at Glassdoor, the world’s most transparent career community that is changing the way people find jobs and companies recruit top talent. Prior to Glassdoor, he held recruiting leadership roles at SuccessFactors, SAP and VMware, where he established himself as a thought leader in utilizing next-generation online recruiting strategies – search engine optimization (SEO), mobile, employment brand, social media and data analytics. He’s an influential voice in the HR and recruiting space and regularly speaks on new media marketing, sourcing and recruiting strategies, and employer branding in the HR and recruiting conference circuits. He can be reached at will.staney@glassdoor.com.
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Social Enterprise Fish Where the Fish Are:
How Smart Companies Use Managers to Communicate Change By Jack Goodman, Thomson Reuters A major logistics software project for the U.S. government crashed and burned. The enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation for a global consumer company dies on the vine. While the failure of any complex IT initiative is the result of many factors, a critical common denominator is that these organizations were not sufficiently prepared for change. Good communication is the key to any organization’s ability to change – and managers are the linchpin of good communication. Here’s a framework for understanding why, and how, your managers can help employees navigate through change. Peek under the hood of any organization that’s having difficulty adapting to change and – regardless of whether it involves a new technology, organizational restructuring, merger or acquisition, leadership transition or some other unsettling transformation – chances are you’ll see some common elements: • The executive team is not communicating its strategy for success; in other words, why is this change happening, how will we deal with it, and what will we look like on the other side? • Middle managers have few, if any, guidelines for what they’re expected to communicate, or how. • Employees are receiving messages from multiple sources that are uncoordinated and inconsistent – a recipe for confusion. In an environment like this, there’s no shared vision for the organization and, as a result, people can’t connect the dots to see how their jobs link up with the larger changes taking place, what role they’re expected to play and what happens next. And, that’s an impediment to peak performance. So what are shell-shocked employees supposed to do?
“The art of communication is the language of leadership.” This quote by James Humes, a former presidential speechwriter, speaks to how “managing” and “communicating” are not two separate things; rather, communication is an intrinsic part of the manager’s role. In fact, you could argue that communication is the single most important thing that managers do. In their classic Harvard Business Review article, “Reaching and Changing Frontline Employees,” TJ and Sandar Larkin focus on the critical role of managers in the change communication process and the importance of good old fashioned face-to-face communication in driving change. In the past few years, social media has become an important tool for professional communicators. But, when it comes to helping
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employees understand and work through the complexities of change, there’s no substitute for face-to-face engagement. Every two years, HR consulting firm Towers Watson does a survey of global companies on communication return-on-investment (ROI). What they’ve consistently found is that good communication is a leading indicator of superior financial performance across organizations in a wide range of industries and countries. Not only that, a key part of these organizations’ success is that they train their managers to communicate effectively and help manage change.
Fish where the fish are. Let’s step back for a second. There are a number of ways that communication flows through an organization: At one end of the continuum is a traditional top-down, highly centralized communications environment, where messages from senior leadership are tightly controlled and disseminated broadly. While there’s still an important role for this approach in communicating change, in that it’s necessary for leadership to set the stage and provide employees with the “official” story, it’s not sufficient. On the other end, there’s the decentralized, horizontal world of internal social media, where employees connect directly inside a company much the same way they do outside – they blog, they share pictures and video, they collaborate. These channels are great for creating conversations, but the problem with relying too much on social media to drive change (at least initially) is that there’s often a level of complexity around a major change that requires a regular stream of up-to-date, relevant information, which senior executives are more likely to have. The challenge is that this information doesn’t always penetrate deeply enough into the organization. Enter another approach – “middle-down” – which puts managers in the driver’s seat and enables them to play a more significant role in helping their teams understand and support change. There’s a significant amount of research showing that managers are consistently, in most organizations, the most trusted source of information for employees when it comes to change. Since managers have this credibility with their employees, it makes sense to “fish where the fish are” and provide them with the tools and resources to advocate on behalf of whatever change is being implemented.
Timing is critical when communicating change. The single most important thing that managers can do during change is to communicate what they know – and what they don’t – clearly and repeatedly. Managers often assume that they’ve communicated once they’ve delivered a message, but employees need to hear that message over and over again, especially during a period of change, when their natural inclination is to hold on to the familiar and resist whatever is new and different. Often, there’s a disconnect between the time when managers, especially senior managers, first learn about a change that will impact their teams and when their employees
are most receptive to hearing about it as well. Managers may want their employees to quickly focus on the change; however, in the early stages, their employees may be less interested because they don’t yet know how the change affects them. But, over time, as the direct impact becomes clearer to individual employees, their interest increases. By this time, however, managers’ interest frequently drops off, as they move on to new projects and priorities. Here’s the conundrum: managers often don’t spend sufficient time and energy to communicate about change when their teams are most willing and able to accept and process the information. Managers need to reinforce change over and over again – not only when they first become aware of it – because they have the critical role of helping employees translate the broad communication into answering the question,“What’s in it for me?” Managers provide context and clarity for employees as they make sense of the change and how it impacts them personally. Here are three guidelines for how managers can communicate change successfully: • Candor – Even if they don’t know “what’s in it for them,” managers should be as open and honest as possible. This means that if they don’t have all the information, they should say so – and be clear about their intent to provide more detail and clarity as soon as possible. • Repetition – Managers should provide frequent updates and, when leadership sends a message, look for the relevance and linkage to their team – and then speak with team members about it. And, if they need more information from their own managers, ask. • Visibility – When managing through change, it’s especially critical that managers get out of their offices and into the hallways (or on the phone, for those with teams in remote locations). Being visible and accessible is key to making sure that messages are being heard and understood.
Elements of success: Putting it into practice. Given the pivotal role that managers play, there are a number of systematic actions that organizations can take to equip their managers to drive communication and change: Accountability – The first step is to articulate what and how managers are expected to communicate so that they understand that it’s intrinsic to what they do. Draft a “communication charter” that lays out a minimum set of activities that managers should be doing with their teams – holding regular meetings, following up with actions, building in opportunities to listen, etc. This may seem basic, but it’s important for managers to have a communication operating rhythm already in place that they can tap into during a period of change. Training – Like any new muscles, communication skills need to be exercised and used. Work with your communications function (or an outside consultancy) to develop a training module that takes managers through the basics of message development and communication planning. Focus on helping them: 1) identify their audiences, both primary and secondary; 2) determine their goals for communication, i.e., what they want each audience to know,
do and feel; 3) create relevant messages that can achieve these objectives; 4) deliver the messages using the most credible messengers and effective channels; and 5) measure whether they have met their communication goals. Build in practical exercises related to the changes taking place so that managers leave these workshops with actionable plans that they can use immediately. Reinforcement – As we all remember from Psych 101, if you want a behavior to continue, you need to reinforce it. Develop channels designed just for managers that remind them how they’re expected to use their newly developed communication skills. For example, prepare a weekly e-mail (or more frequently, depending on the pace and scale of change taking place) that gives managers a core set of consistent messages to use when communicating with their teams. Create an intranet site with links to other resources that can support managers with their communication responsibilities. The goal is to keep wiring communication into the DNA of managers, as part and parcel of their role. At my old company, Thomson Financial (before our parent company, The Thomson Corporation, acquired Reuters), we put this program in place during a period of major change in the company and saw striking results: In three years, the percentage of employees who could “connect the dots” between their own roles and our leadership’s strategy and vision went from 61 percent to 84 percent. Similarly, the percentage of employees who believed management was communicating a clear plan for success grew from 47 percent to 68 percent. It’s not rocket science as to why this worked. For one thing, we started with solid research that set a baseline for how our employees viewed the company. We had strong – and vocal – support from senior management. In fact, our CEO publicly championed the communications charter for managers that we drafted. And, the steps we took didn’t break the bank; they were effective, not expensive.
Why focus on managers? If there’s one constant element in today’s business environment, it’s change. So, we’re not “done” – and never will be. Since managers arguably have the broadest reach and deepest influence across organizations, with the potential to make or break any change efforts, it makes sense to fish where the fish are by providing the resources and support they need to help our organizations succeed.
About the Author Jack Goodman has worked for Thomson Reuters since 2003 in a number of senior communications roles, with responsibility for executive communications; tools, training, and other communications support for managers; online and social media channels; and acquisitions and other change communications. Before Thomson Reuters, he co-directed IBM’s corporate intranet; headed employee communications at McGraw-Hill; co-led the intranet practice at Xceed, a Web consultancy; and worked in public relations for Golin-Harris and Makovsky & Company. He can be reached at jack. goodman@thomsonreuters.com. www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • July 2014
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Functional Focus Leading Practices for Engaging Sponsors in HR Delivery Programs By Annette Leazer, Independent Consultant In today’s business environment, program leaders face increased challenges in gaining and sustaining effective sponsorship for their programs. You may have experienced the challenge of convincing a sponsor to take up your cause, especially if they don’t understand your program or are unsure of the business case. In the world of HRIS, that is often the case for funding a new human capital management (HCM) system or other piece of technology that will result in true organizational transformation. Perhaps your program launched effectively, but, as it progresses, the sponsor becomes disengaged. They are too busy to meet regularly, they don’t engage the right people to solve problems, or they are uncomfortable with the change management that is required. The key to successful program leadership is building an effective relationship with your sponsor and practicing these five strategies to equip your sponsor to fight for your cause every day.
Create a compelling program vision. Why does your sponsor want to engage in your program? Are the benefits clear? Is it a program that your sponsor would be willing to stake their reputation on? It’s important that your project has a story that is compelling and simple. You need to be able to describe the vision and goals of your program in terms that your sponsors and stakeholders can understand and can connect with. One effective approach to building a vision is to interview four to six key people or organization leaders that have a stake in your program and ask questions that will help you build a compelling story.
It’s important that your project has a story that is compelling and simple. 34
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• What should the vision be? • What would success look and feel like? • What are the enablers and challenges of this program? • What bold steps are required to be successful? • What would be a quick win? By understanding the organization’s expectations at a deeper level, finding potential advocates and learning more about the challenges you need to overcome, you will be better equipped to tell your story. Build your story by painting a picture of the future state you want to achieve and describing what that future state will look and feel like. Demonstrate a clear understanding of the current situation and challenges and put forward the specific bold steps or initiatives required to close the gaps and achieve the future state. Keep the story simple and, where possible, use words that the stakeholders shared in their interviews. Finally, play the story back to your sponsor and stakeholders. This type of stakeholder engagement process, along with building a story, goes a long way in getting your sponsor onboard because they can feel the vision, they understand the important challenges, they see the specific work required, and they know key people have already provided insight.
Establish your credibility as a program leader. Does your sponsor trust you? Do they think you are capable of leading this program? Does your team have the required skills and motivation to successfully complete the work? Make sure you that your plan is detailed enough so that it is easy to recognize what needs to be done, by whom and when. This sounds basic, but we often rush past the details in our zeal to launch a program. Later, we find that we underestimated the time required for the work, or the resources and skills required, or we missed critical organizational requirements and it becomes difficult to keep the program on track. When this happens, your credibility suffers. Assess your personal skills and experience. Assess your team’s skills and experience. Find people to validate your assumptions about the work and skills required to be successful. Make plans to mitigate weaknesses through research, training, additional staffing or external consultants. Explain remaining risks or shortcomings to your sponsor. You want their insight in closing gaps and their support if something has been missed. Finally, understand how various people in the organization perceive you, your sponsor and your program. It is important to know who agrees with your
Change management should always be considered in risk mitigation. program goals and trusts you to execute effectively. It is even more important to know who does not agree with your program goals and who does not trust you. • People that agree with you and trust you will be your champions – use them effectively to promote your program. • People that don’t agree with you and don’t trust you will not support you. Your challenge is to prevent this group of people from derailing your program. The next group of people is crucial in this effort. • People that don’t agree with you, but do trust you are your best partners. Learn from them! Understand the underlying reasons for disagreement and work on solutions to those issues. This should increase acceptance with others in the organization. This area of organization dynamics is closely related to organization change management covered in the next section of risk management. Incorporating your findings into your change management plan will help you more effectively mitigate risks from low trust and leverage the champions identified. Developing a good program plan, assembling an effective team and understanding the organizational dynamics around your program is a great way to increase your sponsor’s confidence and build your credibility as a program leader.
Protect your sponsor from risk. Do you understand the risks of your program? Does your sponsor have confidence that you can work effectively together to mitigate program risks? Managing risk is critical and every program has unique challenges. As a program leader, you need to proactively prepare for known risks and effectively react to unknown risks. Keeping your sponsor informed about program risk reduces negative surprises and allows them to help you address risks you are unable to manage on your own. Mitigating risk is a great way for your sponsor to be engaged in your program. Risks can arise in many areas including business risks, program risks and change management. It is important to create a risk checklist considering all the areas where something could go wrong and proactively develop mitigation plans for significant risks that are likely to occur.
Change management should always be considered in risk mitigation. Often, a program manager knows that people or organizations will be impacted by their program, but they fail to develop the specific and actionable plans to address the change. Document the before and after environment for each impacted organization. Understand the major areas of change; who will be impacted, specifically, what changes will occur and the actions needed to help the organization prepare for the change, e.g., communication, training, process, or system changes. Another aspect of change management is understanding the previous experience of the organization in implementing HCM or other transformational HR programs and technologies. Before you launch your program, identify executive champions or detractors that have a strong opinion. Your sponsor will appreciate knowing where they can leverage a relationship or where they need to defuse a situation with some effective preselling. This helps mitigate the risk of your program getting well into implementation only to hit a wall of resistance that you had not anticipated. Building effective risk mitigation and change management plans protects your sponsor from unnecessary risk and reduces sponsor anxiety about your program. It is important to also track emerging risks and make those visible. Keeping your sponsor updated and engaged in addressing risk will build trust and confidence in your program leadership.
Communicate clear, specific actions. Your sponsor is likely a busy person. Are you clear and specific about what actions you need from your sponsor? Are you focusing them only on important work that you can’t accomplish on your own? A frequent experience in program meetings is discussions focused on what isn’t working, the deadlines that are being missed, and the people that aren’t getting their work done. When the meeting ends, the program manager has not determined the root cause of the problems and the specific actions needed to solve them. Unfortunately, these program leaders don’t understand their job. Knowing what problems need to be solved and what is required to solve them is the job of the program manager! A one-page report for your sponsor is all you need to be clear and specific. The overall status of your program should be obvious. Are you on track, off track, or are you completely stalled? Describe briefly why your program is in its current state. Break your program down into relevant work areas of different organizations or people that are responsible for delivering and communicating the status of their work. This helps focus the discussion on problem areas. Finally, share the top-two to four issues, risks or dependencies that must be addressed. Make sure you know what needs to be done to solve the issue, who needs to solve it, when it needs to be solved, and the consequences if it is not solved by the due date. www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • July 2014
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The key to successful program leadership is building an effective relationship with your sponsor and focusing them on your program’s success. This type of report requires you to be very specific and gives your sponsor the information they need to help you solve real problems. Don’t ask your sponsor to solve problems that you or someone else is capable of solving on your own. Focus them on the actions that require their immediate attention. By staying focused in your status updates, you reduce the risk that your sponsor will become disengaged. They have a clear picture of where you need them to be engaged and the urgency of your requests.
Lead with persistence. Your sponsor is becoming disengaged. Do you know what other programs are taking your sponsor’s time and attention? Is your program being impacted by shifting priorities in the organization? Build a relationship with your sponsor and meet regularly to understand what other work your sponsor is focused on. Find ways to help them so they have time to help you on critical work. Be persistent and don’t take a few cancelled meetings personally. Find ways to get your requests in front of your sponsor in a simple, targeted way that will reduce their effort to take effective action. Understand the organization’s priorities and if circumstances change, be prepared to act within your program plan. Make sure your program stays meaningful and valuable for the organization by adjusting the scope, the schedule or the resources, if needed, to align with the organization’s immediate needs. Find ways to accomplish work with other stakeholders and organizations without your sponsor’s direct involvement. Create periodic meetings with key stakeholder
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groups and make direct, specific requests for action. Make it easy for people to help you, thank people for their support, and share credit for a job well done. Being persistent and constantly looking for opportunities to create forward momentum will create a positive impression of your program and your leadership. People are motivated by progress and your sponsor is no different. Keep your program’s progress visible and your sponsor will gladly re-engage when their current crises abate.
Conclusion The key to successful program leadership is building an effective relationship with your sponsor and focusing them on your program’s success. Having a compelling vision helps to persuade sponsors to take up your cause. You will increase sponsor confidence through strong program planning, assembling an effective team and building trust. Your sponsor will remain effective if you protect them from unnecessary risk, you are clear and specific in the actions you ask them to take, and you remain persistent in leading your program. Your ability to use these strategies and equip your sponsor to fight for your cause every day is directly related to the success of your sponsor and your program.
About the Author Annette Leazer, CMA, PMP, is an independent business consultant serving medium and large companies in transforming HR and Finance systems, services and information delivery. She has led global programs for acquisitions, shared-service transitions, systems implementations and process improvements for various companies. Prior to starting her own consultancy, she gained extensive crossfunctional experience, holding director-level roles in HR Information Systems, Corporate Program Management and Finance at Hewlett Packard. She is actively engaged in several associations including IHRIM, Project Management Institute (PMI) and the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA). She can be reached at annette@ leazerconsulting.com.
Multidimensional Workforce Four Critical Business Skills Required to Lead the Business of HRIS By Carl Nielson, The Nielson Group The business of Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS), managing people and systems, seems to defy distillation into any sort of formula that can be applied across industries, companies and departments. By their very nature, people and systems, in combination, appear infinitely variable and difficult to manage with any reliability or consistency. As a result, effective HRIS leadership is often challenging to achieve and maintain. How valuable would it be for HRIS leaders to have a “roadmap” of critical business skills to guide them in leading the HRIS function? If it were possible to identify, understand, and master a set of critical business skills for leading HRIS, would doing so increase leadership effectiveness? If it were possible also to manage and evaluate mastery of those skills, would that be critical to leadership success? The answer to questions two and three is yes…and this roadmap does exist. The critical business skills required of an effective HRIS leader were gleaned from the results of a study aimed at identifying the key accountabilities of an HRIS leader and the ideal talent requirements for creating success. This study was discussed in the December 2012/ January 2013 issue of Workforce Solutions Review in an article entitled “Managing HRIM: Looking for the Talent Holy Grail.” The study identified six key accountabilities: 1. Manage projects effectively. 2. Effect change. 3. Guide strategically.
1. Being accountable for results; 2. Executing authority effectively; 3. Getting results through people; and, 4. Managing strategy and risks. This article offers an overview of each critical business skill and a development strategy to help master each one. Two links are provided at the end of the article: one to a scorecard that can be downloaded to manage and evaluate HRIS leadership performance and one to a skill development library for HRIS leaders.
Being Accountable for Results An HRIS leader who is accountable for bottomline results starts with “ends” and works backward to “means.” The HRIS leader asks key questions of stakeholders and their team such as, “What do we want? How will we recognize it? What will it take to get there?” Those who excel in this area are found consistently to be clear and disciplined about the language they use. Human Resources Information Systems leaders who use plain language instead of exclusionary jargon when communicating with their peers in other functions and up the chain of command are highly valued and generally more successful. The HRIS leader also maintains separate but equal focus on accountability of talent (direct reports, cross-functional team members, vendors/consultants) and accountability for programs and the HRIS organization as a whole. In the HRIS world, results are the end conditions for effective human capital management within the organization, which benefit both management and employees. Successful HRIS leaders use data (indicators and performance measures) to gauge role and organizational success or failure against a baseline (see HRIS Leader Performance Scorecard at the end of this article). The use of data also drives a disciplined, business-like decisionmaking process for continuous improvement.
4. Enable data analytics to support business decisionmaking. 5. Manage and coach staff. 6. Maintain competency in the business of HR and technology solutions. Leading the business of HRIS requires success in all six of these, and a closer look at the six key accountabilities revealed the following four business skills critical to successful and effective HRIS leadership:
The use of data also drives a disciplined, business-like decision-making process for continuous improvement.
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An effective HRIS leader has the responsibility and the authority to do much better. Being accountable for results does not imply a solitary condition. Successful HRIS leaders involve a broad set of partners or key stakeholders in being accountable and generate alignment that enables talk to turn to action as quickly as possible.
Executing Authority Effectively The HRIS leader’s level of authority can be explained based on three categories: 1) managing self, 2) managing others, and 3) managing projects. Recognizing the level of authority a leader has in these three areas is critical to using authority effectively. In the first category, managing self, a leader has the authority to budget for and attend programs that enhance personal skills and abilities to deliver on all of the leadership role’s key accountabilities. This includes technical and leadership development. Too often, HR managers do not believe they have either the authority or the moral responsibility to develop themselves, i.e., receive leadership development coaching or attend any kind of training. Some in HR believe that it is a moral responsibility to reserve the company’s talent development dollars for the operational side of the business, i.e., those directly responsible for production, delivery and sale of products/services. While this sacrificial attitude may feel heroic, it will likely limit a leader’s success and value to the organization. It is critical to know the opinions of superiors concerning continuous improvement and development. In the second category, managing others, a leader has the authority to ensure that staff competency is of highest priority. This includes evaluating and hiring using best practices, firing those who are not a good fit for the role and/or the team and creating a collaborative culture. This authority expands beyond a leader’s own team. A leader has the authority to participate in and initiate discussions with peer managers about the performance of cross-functional team members. Leaders also have the authority to provide feedback to third-party vendor/ consulting organizations about the performance of those providing services to the organization. In the third category, managing projects, a leader requires futuristic thinking and planning skills combined with an ability to lead at every stage to effectively manage projects. Building cooperation across key stakeholder
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functions and working with and leading others to promote a collaborative culture with high levels of individual contribution will lead to project success. The HRIS leader must have the authority to address this critical area. For example, an HRIS leader has just received approval to move forward with a multimillion dollar software implementation project. The leader has worked collaboratively with other key stakeholders and received sign off on the consulting team and internal resources who will be assigned to the project. Phase one of the project is expected to take 12 months of full-time support from each of the project team members. The project manager will be assigned from the outside consulting firm. The leader’s initial impulse is simply to assign roles, inform individuals of new assignments and schedule the kickoff planning meeting so that all concerned can dive head-on into the project. That seems straightforward enough, right? An effective HRIS leader has the responsibility and the authority to do much better. The employees assigned to implement this project are not simply a group of workers – they form a new team. Is the leader considering the necessary development process of the team? If not, the team is being set up for failure. In 1965, Dr. Bruce Tuckman published his team development model, referred to as the Forming-Storming-NormingPerforming model of group development. Since then, the ability to address team development proactively as an integral part of a project’s kickoff has proven its worth. An investment up-front in work group development can save millions of dollars, increase team member engagement and performance and may well be the difference between success and failure. If the HRIS leader is not concerned with this, who will be?
Getting Results through People Studies have shown that holding people accountable for results using an autocratic management approach is ineffective and can be the cause of failure at both the individual and the organizational level. Today’s HRIS world is extremely cross-functional and requires both a collaborative culture and a “coach approach” to managing people. Bringing people along, allowing them to grow and develop, requires a culture of openness and finely honed management skills. “Telling” and “asking” are two communication tools that must be used appropriately and judiciously to maintain high levels of engagement and forward movement toward goals. Ensuring that each member of the team has the necessary skills and knowledge is critical to getting results through people. Therefore, ongoing technical skill development is key. So, where do soft skills come into the picture? Most have heard the saying, “we hire for skills and fire for attitude.” For example, five team members may all
have the same Workday® certification and equal years of implementation experience, yet each of the five will bring very different value to the team. Why is that? The answer is that each team member has different soft skill competencies, acumen, behavioral match and motivation. That is why it is imperative to go beyond technical knowledge and skills and examine the total talent of team members. Only by understanding individual strengths and talents can a leader then take proactive measures to offset any gaps or weaknesses.
Managing Strategy and Risk What an HRIS leader must understand about managing strategy and risk is that it is not just about HRIS. Managing strategy and risk is about HR’s strategies and risks. If the HR/payroll system implementation fails, the impact extends far beyond HRIS. If the report writer in the HRIS department does not understand organizational and financial metrics, the likelihood of the reports being meaningful to executive management is very low. If the leaders throughout the organization do not understand and use HR data to make decisions, any decisions made at the enterprise-wide level will likely be poor.
succeed and provide support to reduce the risk of failure for HR. The HRIS leader must work to create an open, supportive relationship with all key stakeholders. Delivering superior performance as an HRIS leader requires being accountable for results, executing authority effectively, getting results through people and managing strategy and risks – all in a manner that ensures that the effective execution of all six key accountabilities. Developing specific soft skills that support the four critical business skills and the six key accountabilities is critical. The links to two valuable development tools for HRIS leaders are shown below. The first link is to an HRIS Leader Performance Scorecard, which can be used to evaluate and document current state, as well as a desired future state. The second link is to an online open-access HRIS Leader Skill Development Library. The skill topics offered in the library were selected based on the job benchmark for the HRIS leader. HRIS Leader Performance Scorecard - http://www. nielsongroup.com/articles/HRIS_Leaders_Performance_ Scorecard.xlsx HRIS Leader Skill Development Library - http://www. ttiuonline.com/learner/learnings/17663VWWL
About the Author
Developing specific soft skills that support the four critical business skills and the six key accountabilities is critical. To manage strategy and risk effectively, the successful HRIS leader must have a close relationship with the HR leadership team (CHRO, VPs, Directors) and a keen understanding of the business of human capital management. What are HR’s priorities? Where are the pain points? What easy-to-fix initiatives can make HR more successful? Many times, HR does not have the technological expertise to recognize a problem that is easy to fix versus a problem that requires a major fix. This lack of expertise may prevent HR from requesting HRIS services. An effective HRIS leader will look for ways to help HR
Carl Nielson is founder and principal of The Nielson Group, formed in 1998. The Nielson Group specializes in helping organizations create breakthrough performance. He has been recognized for his work in cross-functional team development, predictive selection and executive and high-potential coaching. Prior to starting his own consulting firm, Nielson served for 18-plus years in HR-related management roles as CEO of IHRIM, Inc.; director of HR at Haynes and Boone law firm; group manager of HR Systems and Reengineering at Pepsico/Frito-Lay; and group manager of HR/HRIS at Honeywell (Allied-Signal/ Union Texas Petroleum). He holds a B.S. in Organizational and Industrial Psychology and is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst, Certified Professional Values Analyst and Certified Professional TriMetrix® Analyst. He is also a Certified Facilitator of The Coaching Clinic™ for managers and supervisors. He can be reached at cnielson@nielsongroup.com.
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Global Challenges Experiences on the “Other Side” of the Cloud By Mimi Brooks and Brad Ivie, Logical Design Solutions Human Resources solutions have been moving to the cloud for a while now. They join a mix of other assets and applications in the digital HR ecosystem, including homegrown apps, several on-premise vendor solutions, and the technology offerings of HR-outsourced partners. Along with the one or more ERPs globally (some also moving to the cloud) and emerging mobile capabilities, the HR technology landscape is a complex set of expensive, mostly transaction and process-centric business solutions that are in constant motion. Cloud-based HR solutions enter this fragmented ecosystem promising lower costs, faster development cycle times with shorter innovation intervals, and an end to the frustrating “hamster wheel” of implementation and upgrade efforts. Most tout simple and intuitive user interfaces as differentiators and, with a well-run partner program, could provide an effective cooperative system of rapid development and support. The emergence of suitable HR cloud solutions encourages HR to finally expect (and get) reasonable user experiences, with adoptable standard global processes, for basic “needed-to-play” HR capabilities. Under this premise, HR and the business could sanction these solutions as “close enough” to work, satisfying basic “Tier zero” self-service capabilities needed for today’s HR service delivery models, and delivering the backlog of requests for standard management reports. As a result, HR can focus its attention on new, higher-value opportunities. At play here is the significant opportunity to move from basic, “keeping-the-lights-on” capabilities that deliver efficiency and usability to delivering high-value, highimpact experiences for an increasingly savvy constituency. This means leveraging the assets across the HR ecosystem (cloud and otherwise) in innovative ways for “needed-towin” gain. With basic technology needs met, HR can start to implement the idea of a business- and people-centric agenda fueled by technology. In this view, technology is the “great enabler” to business models based less on reducing inquiries and more on growing talent and connecting the
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enterprise in relevant know-how. Imagine the benefits to the business when HR delivers that kind of capability – and can “thank its lucky cloud” (real or imagined) for finally getting out from under the weight of basic selfservice to innovate HR solutions that provide profoundly good outcomes.
. . . the HR technology landscape is a complex set of expensive, mostly transaction and process-centric business solutions that are in constant motion. How can we envision experiences in an emerging ecosystem focused on a constituent-centric, people mandate? 1. First and most fundamentally, imagine more Value. We’ll need to shift our experience paradigm beyond long-held models based on efficiency and productivity to emerging and more impactful models based on influence, engagement, and ambassadorship. As smarter and better-designed solutions emerge, business owners can move up the food chain to focus on experiences that deliver higher-level value propositions. The whole HR ecosystem comes “into play” to this end and we can imagine cross-solution experiences that build know-how and knowledge, connect the enterprise in productive participation, and support manager and leader decision-making. We can be less concerned about visual continuity across HR properties (an idea that we need to let go of) and instead think about creating branded, recognizable experiences and capabilities that resonate with people. We can worry less about counting clicks and basic usability metrics, and think more about understanding and quantifying experiences based on outcomes of usefulness, impact and engagement. To find meaningful opportunity here, we can align value relative to our constituents in more focused segments – seasoned candidates, new hires, managers of global teams, and so on. This helps to frame desired outcomes by people’s work practices, related decision scope and knowledge needs, preferences, and online behavior to define useful targeting and variability of capabilities that
tightly align to their needs and interests. To be clear, these are value propositions found in the HR business model. And, these are constituent segments known to HR today as its clients and prospects. They are not technology-driven capabilities or ideas. The opportunity exists to bring this “strategic HR” model forward, along with the people who we’re trying to engage and serve, and to make this focus the basis of our experiential design.
2. To realize value, seek rich Context. Rich context is defined as carefully envisioned and designed elements in the online experience that seek to affect specific behaviors, attitudes, actions, and perspectives and align them to business goals. Context is realized when highly useful capabilities deliver key value and insight while resonating with the individual. These days, rich context is achieved by leveraging assets across the ecosystem in models of knowledge sharing, contextually relevant social interactions, and just-in-time business intelligence – all harmoniously designed to create an elegant, smart experience with clear and compelling business purpose. In this environment, HR can think about what its constituents need to know, factor, prioritize, and understand in order to be aligned with organizational culture, risk tolerances, global business practices, and shared marketplace goals. This is a significant shift in expectation and approach for HR stakeholders who typically own these strategic programs and business goals, and where technology goals have historically been hyper-focused on launching transactional, global systems. Here, less effort is often focused on considering emerging interaction models and knowledge solutions that align to HR’s most strategic and aggressive business goals. Our business technology teams need to ask more often, “How could an innovative technology approach enable that idea?” Equally, a focus on rich context experiences can require a big shift in skills and capabilities needed in human resources information technology (HRIT) to imagine, analyze, design and iterate solutions and these programs. That’s not to say that HR functional analysis is no longer needed – many of those core HRIT skills will be needed to manage the HR ecosystem holistically. But, in this new model, fewer people will be needed to do that work, and more people will be needed to do the new work. Transitional as that may be, the scope of strategic and creative work in the new organization offers compelling opportunities. It’s exciting to think about the work ahead, innovating online programs like integrated talent solutions, designing an effective ambassadorship experience, or thinking through the employee relationship life cycle in new contexts. These are all interesting solutions that will be
envisioned and delivered by broad-thinking business analysts teamed with consumer-trained experience designers, insightful change and organizational management experts, and technology-savvy business leaders.
3. Demand more Integration. Integration is a key approach for realizing ideas of context, and the means for tapping into the value of the digital HR ecosystem as a whole. Assets across the ecosystem (data, business rules and knowledge, status, workflow) provide critical supporting elements for the context that is the basis of these rich experiences. These assets are factored into superior experience designs so that the user makes immediate connections of related ideas that previously were separated by time and space. To enable this critical context, we need integration strategies and approaches. From single sign-on to deep linking, to data integration and Web services – application vendors need to open up their emerging and cloud environments, i.e., our emerging environments, to enable a wide range of secure integrations. Human resources organizations shouldn’t have to “buy up” in a single vendor technology stack in order to realize meaningful, user-centric integration. Rather, HR should expect and require these platforms to support significant integration approaches that make these solutions – along with HR’s business rules and data – transparent and available for user experience purposes. Doing so avoids “one-request-at-a-time” integration negotiations and, instead, enables a connected ecosystem regardless of our outsourcing choices. The objective is not to undermine HR’s investments in these new solutions by integrating with them without clear purpose. Rather, integration enables HR to deliver on profoundly useful business-driven scenarios – such as integrating business data with broad talent goals of the business, and delivering employee data to help managers understand effective recruiting practices. Human Resources does not need to be limited by vendor policy or other unnecessary conflicts in order to provide the flexibility in user experiences that our businesses require. Unfortunately, many HR business owners don’t understand these various models of integration, and most vendors don’t proactively address this important issue or requirement. Human Resources needs to think beyond the “honeymoon” period with emerging vendor products and plan for the long-term interoperability of the digital HR ecosystem. Human Resources needs to create context across multiple online properties to support people’s existing and emerging business knowledge needs. We can apply similar, relevant lessons learned from early HR outsourcing models to our cloud-based solutions to avoid misaligned expectations later.
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Bold HR agendas such as these need a few great leaders willing to chart a new course to “next-generation” ideas and experiences – based more on HR “next practices” than best practices. 4. Expect more Change Management and Planning Emerging innovative HR solutions based on rich context with cross-organizational scope require a heightened focus on organizational change management and planning to orchestrate this strategy, sustain stakeholder alignment, and realize the investment. A comprehensive change management program focuses on early and continual stakeholder management and socialization to build advocacy and gain critical early insight from senior stakeholders within HR and from the business and regions. Similarly, constituents need to be regularly engaged in a structured program, with participation from around the company and across the globe. This is important as the sophistication of these solutions warrant periodic, thoughtfully organized opportunities for constituents to experience, explore, and think about them in the context of regular use. Strategic and operational governance models – tailored to these cross-functional, future-state solutions – need to be carefully socialized and agreed upon among all parties. This is especially true for those who need to participate in ongoing governance work with resource commitments and accountability. Solutions of this magnitude more commonly fail due to poor organization and operational people systems than as a result of poor technology delivery. New interaction models that reflect new work practices deserve special attention by the program. In-context use of social and integrated business intelligence capabilities, for example, should be monitored to ensure that the vision and expected value is being realized. Measurements should focus on levels and value of engagement, patterns of participation, and overall constituent satisfaction with these new capabilities. A staple of good governance and change management is a regularly maintained and published roadmap, which provides a clear line of sight for developing programs and a place to “park” ideas and future state requirements.
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The roadmap provides the business leaders and other important stakeholders the foundation for their support. We need to grasp this opportunity to improve our businesses and move from delivering basic HR capabilities to creating high-value, high-impact experiences for HR’s increasingly sophisticated constituencies. There is no greater single asset in achieving this goal than the passionate, committed, “believing-without-seeing” sponsorship of one or two key executives. There will be, no doubt, times where clout, conviction, and the ability to get beyond typical organizational barriers are critically needed. Bold HR agendas such as these need a few great leaders willing to chart a new course to “next-generation” ideas and experiences – based more on HR “next practices” than best practices.
About the Author Mimi Brooks is CEO of Logical Design Solutions (LDS), a strategy and business solutions consulting firm that envisions and designs emerging online business ecosystems. Since founding the company in 1990, she has led LDS in meeting the evolving online enterprise solution needs of its Fortune 500 and government clients. While leading LDS, Brooks remains actively involved in many of its projects. This level of engagement leaves her intimately familiar with the trends and issues facing today’s C-level executives, and fully capable of crafting the right online solutions to meet those challenges. She is a frequent speaker at seminars and conferences and is an author on topics such as the design and implementation of enterprise portals, creating an effective e-business model, and the importance of usability in interface design. She is also the publisher and a prime contributor to The Enterprise Portal: Our Perspective on Portals and the Online Channel, LDS’ semi-annual anthology on enterprise online solutions. She can be reached at mbrooks@lds.com. Brad Ivie is the managing director of Strategy and Business Analysis at LDS. He works with clients to clarify business strategies, determine functional priorities, and build business cases for LDS client solutions. He has more than 25 years of consulting experience in both business and HR strategy. He has been with LDS for 12 years and can be reached at bivie@lds.com.
The Back Story Conquering HR Analytics: Do You Need a Rocket Scientist or a Crystal Ball? By Katherine Jones, Ph.D., Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP It’s hotter than hot! HR professionals are clamoring for “analytics” – the magic numbers that will help them combat attrition, hire the highest of high performers and predict the future success of the organization. We are seeing the surge of interest in analytics as one of the very top initiatives in HR today. Technology providers are embedding applications with functionality to move beyond reporting and actually providing the groundwork for datadriven decision-making. Let’s look at our brave new world of HR for a minute – what has changed? For one, the questions we are asked by our execs have multiplied (See Figure 1), and become more – well, “analytical.” (This translates as “tougher to answer.”) Human Resources has traditionally been metricheavy – but lightweight on the analytic skills required to answer these tough questions.
Figure 2. Which functions have strong analytics capabilities?
Corporate leaders, understandably, want sound information on which to base decisions. In response, software applications increasingly have the ability to spew out metrics, something HR has been requesting. But, with HR leaders, there is often more talk than action in getting to the hard stuff: advanced or predictive analytics. A recent Bersin by Deloitte study found that 86 percent of organizations are still focused primarily on reporting. Just 10 percent of organizations have taken the next step toward advanced analytics – helping business leaders solve their talent challenges through statistical analyses; and solely four percent are using predictive analytics to forecast future talent outcomes.
Corporate leaders, understandably, want sound information on which to base decisions. Figure 1. Are your business leaders asking for quanitative measures of HR/L&D?
The response to such queries has been varied: 19 percent of companies studied in the Bersin by Deloitte 2013 High-Impact Talent Analytics1 research report purchased data analysts tools in the 12-month period leading up to the report, 31 percent invested in a data warehouse – and 31 percent hired new staff members for their measurement and analytics initiatives. The need to hire new skillsets seemed obvious when we looked at the perception of analytics strength across the organization – solely 15 percent of participants deemed the HR function to have a forte for analytics (See Figure 2).
Why We Care: The Need for Developing Analytic Skills Herein lies the proverbial rub: Do today’s organizations need to replace, retrain, or hire new skillsets? Do we need rocket scientists? Statisticians? Perhaps savvy spreadsheet users? Soothsayers and palm readers? And, where in the organization should these new people be placed? Should corporate metric analysis be housed in one site globally? What is HR’s role in the growing analytics trend? We care because it is people that make decisions. Will HR departments drown under the wealth of information now under their fingertips? What skills are needed in HR
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today to ensure that the right decisions are made from all this new data provided? Do we need an infusion of statistical rocket scientists or should HR concentrate on up-skilling existing staff to create a strong talent analytics team? The dilemma for HR is not collecting data – we know how to do that. Today‘s talent management programs consistently are providing more and more data points for our use. Consolidating the data – is still not an issue. But here is the issue: Do we have the skills to make accurate business decisions based on the data we are now being inundated with?
The ability to analyze the data is indeed important, and it is fair to say all HR professionals today should be able to have command of the rudiments of data creation and use. Just moving from reporting to analytics would represent a big leap forward with respect to staffing and skillsets. And, consider data visualization. It is another requisite skill that enables HR members to analyze and communicate findings from complex data sets. Let’s get colleges and universities to have some skin in this game as well – and make human capital data analysis a part of the overall HR curriculum.
Endnotes
Do we have the skills to make accurate business decisions based on the data we are now being inundated with? Consider the following example: You are looking at data from a manager who apparently hires top candidates, but after two or three years, his employees seem to leave that group, finding other positions in the organization. Does HR need to intervene to improve his management skills or employee relations acumen? Is he driving off people from his group that he should be retaining? The data points may suggest that is so. But let’s look at what was actually happening in this case. This particular manager did indeed hire top talent; his goal was to bring in the best and brightest to the organization. But, then he did something a bit different. In their two years or so with him, he encouraged skill development and career exploration. While his employees were highly productive on his team, he looked for growth opportunities for his team members outside his own group, encouraging active investigation of other departments and divisions throughout the company. A problem manager? Not in this case.
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1 “High-Impact Talent Analytics,” Karen O’Leonard, Bersin by Deloitte, 2013.
About the Author Dr. Katherine Jones is a vice president, focusing on human capital management (HCM) technology research at Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP. She analyzes the underlying technologies and services that support the management of a global workforce, including HR, hiring and performance management and workforce planning. Jones is a veteran in enterprise workforce and talent management applications and a recognized expert in cloud computing. Prior to joining Bersin by Deloitte, she was a research director at the Aberdeen Group for eight years where she established Aberdeen’s Human Capital Management practice, focusing on research and consulting services in HR, talent acquisition, workforce management, ERP, and mid-market companies. Later, she was the director of marketing for NetSuite Inc., a cloud-based ERP company. She has written on many areas of talent management, technology and business practices, with over 300 works published to date. Prior to a high-technology career, Jones was a university dean, involved in academic administration, research and teaching. She is a frequent speaker and is widely published in the U.S. and abroad. She has a master’s and a doctorate degree from Cornell University. She can be reached at kathjones@deloitte.com.
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