WSR May 2015

May 2015

The Official Journal of the International Association for Human Resource Information Management

IHRIM.ORG

THE FUTURE OF HR TECHNOLOGY:

To compete and retain the best employees, will companies need to provide an HR experience that includes digital touch points at desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone, wearables, etc., etc.?

See 2015 Talent Management/ Workforce Planning Buyers Guide on Page 24

Contents

Volume 6, Number 3 • May 2015

features

Page 2015 Talent Management/ 24 Workforce Planning Buyers Guide

columns From the Editors

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Scott Bolman, lead editor Michael Rudnick, editor Eric Lesser, editor

Wearable Technology

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Hey Boss, What’s that Glow on Your Wrist?

Michael Rudnick, Logical Design Solutions

Tech Notes

Enhancing Employee Engagement with Mobile

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Is it time for SaaS 2.0? Yes – exclamation mark, exclamation mark…

Joe Almodovar, AT Kearney

By Glen Chambers, BrightStarr By the end of 2015, over 60 percent of information workers will be accessing some business applications via their mobile device. This is a trend that is gaining momentum and represents a great opportunity for HR leaders to capitalize on new technology.

Executive Interview

Product Focus

Will Gen Z Even Care about HR Technology?

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By Diane Gayeski, Ph.D., Ithaca College In the near future, HR will need to behave more like a Digital Marketing department in terms of analyzing data and creating customized talent offerings, jobs, and ways of recruiting and incentivizing.

Slogging Toward the Social Organization

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Featuring Jonathan Ferrar, IBM

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Leveraging Big Data to Make Smarter Personnel Decisions Genevieve Graves and Sally Vosicher, hiQ Labs

The Back Story

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A Day in the Life at Work: 2020 Katherine Jones, Bersin by Deloitte

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By John Gerstner, Communitellegence Too much hype, lack of convincing ROI metrics, weak buy-in from senior executives, fear of data insecurity and lack of integration with other enterprise tools are all reasons why deploying social media inside organizations is more like a slog than a sprint.

Creating a Consumer-Oriented HR Platform for Global Communication

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By Chris Keys, Towers Watson By selecting a portal technology that delivers a superior consumer experience and equipping support personnel with the right tools, HR can create a sustainable communication platform that presents an integrated and personalized view of “all things HR.”

HR Technologies for the Multi-Generational Workforce

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By Christine König, Ingentis Tech-savvy employees, like Gen Y and Z, prefer flexible and responsive HR solutions – solutions that provide “information everywhere, at any time and at any digital touch point,” making HR information available to them on-demand.

Workforce Solutions Review (ISSN 2154-6975) is published bi-monthly for the International Association for Human Resource Information Management by Futura Publishing LLC, 20505 Live Oak St., Leander, TX 78641-9273. 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 • May 2015

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Volume 6, Number 3 • May 2015

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

LEXY MARTIN, Independent Consultant/Researcher, Meadow Vista, CA Lexy.martin1@gmail.com

ERIK BERGGREN, VP, Customer Results & Global Research, Success Factors, San Mateo, CA USA eberggren@successfactors.com

BRIAN RETZLAFF, Head of IT for HR, Legal & Communications, ING US Insurance Americas, Atlanta, GA USA brian.retzlaff@us.ing.com

JOSH BERSIN, Principal and Founder, Bersin by Deloitte, Oakland, CA USA jbersin@bersin.com

© 2015 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

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Managing Editor SCOTT BOLMAN, HR Service Delivery Market Leader, Towers Watson, Chicago, IL USA, Scott.Bolman@towerswatson.com

Co-Managing Editor SHAWN FITZGERALD, PMP, SPHR, Director, Talent Aquisition, DeVry Education Group, Downers Grove, IL USA sfitzgerald@devrygroup.com

Past Managing Editor ED COLBY, Managing Principal and Technology Evangelist, PRO HCM Solutions, Chapel Hill, NC USA edcolby@gmail.com

Academic Editor KAREN BEAMAN, Managing Director, Teilasa Global, former CEO/Founder, Jeitosa Group International, San Francisco, CA USA karen.beaman@teilasa.com

Associate Editors ERIK ALVARADO, Senior Manager, Deloitte Consulting LLP eralvarado@deloitte.com

YVETTE CAMERON, Research Director, HCM Technologies, Gartner, Littleton, CO Yvette.Cameron@garter.com LEW CONNER, Executive Director, Higher Education User Group, Gilbert, AZ USA lconner@heug.org 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

CARL C. HOFFMANN, Director, Human Capital Management & Performance LLC, Chapel Hill, NC USA cc_hoffmann@yahoo.com

DR. KATHERINE JONES, HCM Research, Bersin by Deloitte, San Mateo, CA USA kathjones@deloitte.com

ERIC LESSER, Research Director, IBM Institute for Business Value, Boston, MA USA elesser@us.ibm.com

SYNCO JONKEREN, VP, HCM Applications Product Development & Management, EMEA, The Netherlands synco.jonkeren@oracle.com

BRUNO QUERENET, HR Technology Executive, High-Tech and Medical Industries, Sunnyvale, CA USA bruno.querenet@gmail.com

MICHAEL J. KAVANAGH, Professor Emeritus of Management, State University of Albany (SUNY), Albany, NY USA mickey.kavanagh@gmail.com

MICHAEL RUDNICK, Vice President, Principal Consultant, Logical Design Solutions, New York, NY USA michael.rudnick@gmail.com

BOB KAUNERT, Principal, Towers Watson, Philadelphia, PA USA robert.kaunert@towerswatson.com

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IHRIM BOARD OF DIRECTORS Officers Chair SHERRY TIMMERMAN, Partner/Senior Consultant, Apex Performance Consultants Ltd

Chief Financial Officer GARY MORLOCK, HRIP, Senior TRM Project Manager, Qualcomm Inc.

CATHERINE ANN HONEY, VP, Customer Services, Radius Worldwide catherine.honey@comcast.net

CECILE ALPER-LEROUX, VP Product Strategy and Development, Ultimate Software, Weston, FL cecile_leroux@ultimatesoftware.com

DR. MARY YOUNG, Principal Researcher, Human Capital, The Conference Board, New York, NY USA mary.young@conference-board.org

ALSEN HSEIN, President,Take5 People Limited, Shanghai, PRC Alsen@take5people.com

ROBERT C. GREENE, Channels Account Executive and Sales Training Manager, Ascentis, San Mateo, CA USA rcgreene@mindspring.com

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

DAVE ULRICH, Professor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI USA dou@umich.edu

Vice Chair JAMES PETTIT, HRIP, HRIS Manager, Project Byrd Kimberly-Clark Corporation

JIM HOLINCHECK, Vice President, Services Strategy & Marketing, Workday, Inc. james.holincheck@workday.com

FREDDYE SILVERMAN, CEO, Silver Bullet Solutions, Baltimore, MD USA, freddye.silverman@mysilverbulletsolutions.com

MARK SMITH, CEO, Chief Research Officer, and Founder of Ventana Research, San Ramon, CA USA mark.smith@ventanaresearch.com

DR. URSULA CHRISTINA FELLBERG, Owner & Managing Director, UCF-StrategieBeraterin, Munich, Germany ucfell@mac.com

DAVID GABRIEL, Ed.D., Global Reach Leadership, Berkleley, CA davidcgabriel@gmail.com

JEFF HIGGINS, CEO, Human Capital Management Institute, Marina Del Rey, CA USA jeff.higgins@hcminst.com

Dr. DANIEL SULLIVAN, Professor of International Business, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware USA sullivad@lerner.udel.edu

Secretary DAVE BINDA, HRIP, CHRP, CCP, President , HR Results, Ltd. Past Chair KEVIN CARLSON, Ph.D., Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech

Directors JOYCE BROWN, HRIP, Brink’s Inc. MIKE HARMER, Intermountain Healthcare JAMES LEHMAN, Results Driven Consulting, LLC KEVIN MURPHY, HRIP, Murphy Management Consultants STUART RUDNER, Rudner MacDonald LLP

IHRIM Executive Director TODD S. MANN

BILL KUTIK, Technology Columnist, Human Resource Executive, Westport, CT USA bkutik@earthlink.net

PUBLISHING INFORMATION

DAVID LUDLOW, Global VP, HCM Solutions, SAP, Palo Alto, CA David.ludlow@sap.com

TOM FAULKNER, Publisher, Futura Publishing LLC, Austin, TX USA, tomf@futurapublishing.com

RHONDA P. MARCUCCI, CPA, Consultant for GruppoMarcucci, Chicago, IL USA rhonda@gruppomarcucci-usa.com

PATTY HUBER, Advertising Manager, Austin, TX USA phuber2@austin.rr.com

Scott Bolman, Lead Editor Scott Bolman is a market leader within Towers Watson’s Human Resource Service Delivery practice. Scott has been helping Human Resources (HR) organizations become more efficient and effective for over 20 years. He has led numerous strategy, service delivery, and technology projects and has expertise across a broad array of HR functions. He is currently based in Chicago. Prior to joining Towers Watson, he served in a variety of roles including as a senior executive in Accenture’s HR Outsourcing business, as a director in CedarCrestone’s Strategy and Analytics Practice and as a corporate manager at Walgreens. Scott can be reached at scott.bolman@towerswatson.com.

Michael Rudnick, Editor Michael is a vice president and principal consultant at Logical Design Solutions, Inc. He is a results-oriented, global executive with more than 25 years of experience and a proven track record creating, growing and leading large global professional service practices, enterprise software and product strategy, and startups. Prior to joining the executive team at LDS, he was the global practice leader for Portals and Collaboration Solutions at Towers Watson, managing director at Groundswell; senior vice president of Global B2E/B2B Solutions at Xceed, and the founder/managing director of Cognitive Communications, an intranet firm that provided consulting and implementation services since the birth of the browser.

Rudnick is an internationally recognized author and speaker, often quoted in industry trade publications. He can be reached at michael.rudnick@gmail.com.

Eric Lesser, Editor Eric Lesser is the research director and North American leader for the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV). He leads a global team of over 30 professionals responsible for driving IBM’s research and thought leadership across a range of industry and cross-industry topics. In addition to setting direction and providing oversight across the IBV research portfolio, his most recent publications have focused on the impact of analytics, social business and enterprise mobility.

Previously, he led IBM’s Global Business Services research and thought leadership in the area of human capital management.

His research and consulting have focused on a variety of issues, including workforce and talent management, collaboration and social networking, workforce analytics and the changing role of the HR organization. As a consultant, he has worked with clients across a range of industries, including the financial services, legal, technology, and government sectors. He can be reached at elesser@us.ibm.com.

from the editors Welcome to the Future of HR Technology issue of Workforce Solutions Review. This particular issue is a great way to launch into the summer season (for those of us north of the equator)! Looking into the future is always a speculative adventure, full of logical extensions of current practice and bold predictions of what life might be like. With this issue, we have put together a series of articles that I hope will tantalize you and give you some “food for thought” as you develop your own plans for the future.

First up we have an article from Glenn Chambers at Brightstarr entitled “Enhancing Employee Engagement with Mobile.” In this article, Glenn shares his perspective on what the future holds for “apps,” mobile devices and how they will be used to enhance employee engagement.

Next is an article about the changing nature of the workforce by Diane Gayeski of Ithaca College, an internationally-recognized futurist. Diane presents a provocative look at the implications for HR technology with the influx of Gen Z into our organizations in her article, “Will Gen Z Even Care about HR technology?” And as dean at an institution of higher learning, Diane arguably sees the impact of Gen Z before most of us ever will.

John Gerstner, CEO of Communitelligence, is next with an article entitled “Slogging toward the Social Organization.” In this article, John takes a look at Enterprise Social Networks (ESN) and their benefits for the organization of the future. If “email is where knowledge goes to die” then ESNs are where knowledge will thrive.

Our next article is “Creating a Consumer-Oriented HR Platform for Global Communication” in which Chris Keys addresses the impact of communications on employee engagement and what the future holds in an era of consumergrade HR technologies. In addition, Chris addresses the delicate balance of how and where content should be created; think centralized control vs. decentralized chaos. How will large, globally complex organizations establish the right balance between these two extremes?

Christine König of Ingentis, a German company, authors our next article titled “HR Technologies for the New Multi-Generational Workforce.” With her focus on org charting, Christine emphasizes the importance of creating HR workplace solutions that meet the needs of a diverse workforce – solutions that boomers, Xers, millennials and Gen Z alike will utilize effectively.

In addition to our features, we have several shorter articles for your reading pleasure. “Hey Boss, what’s that glow on your wrist?” by Michael Rudnick digs into the world of “wearables,” including the ubiquitous iWatch. In “Is it Time for SaaS 2.0,” Joe Almodovar opines on the requirements for the next generation of SaaS applications. Our Executive Interview for this issue features Jonathan Ferrar, Analytics Practice lead from IBM. Our Product Focus column for this issue is from hiQ Labs, which is tackling the world of big data and analytics. And, as always, The Back Story by Katherine Jones provides a provocative look at HR technology in 2020.

Thanks go to my co-editors for this issue, Michael Rudnick and Eric Lesser, as well as our publisher Tom Faulkner. Getting each issue to print takes a team working together and this one was no exception. We hope you enjoy this issue.

To the future and beyond!

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feature Enhancing Employee Engagement with Mobile

By Glen Chambers, BrightStarr

M

obile technology has come an extraordinarily long way since its inception, and today we have devices of all shapes and sizes allowing people to access an unprecedented amount of information anytime, anywhere.

A lifestyle report in the U.S. stated that by 2013 an enormous 56% of the U.S. population already owned a smartphone, with that figure growing to more than 65% in 2014. On top of this, a further 35% owned a similar phone with full Internet capabilities and 35% of the U.S. population owned a tablet. Outside of the office, employees are already using their mobile devices for almost everything. Basic everyday tasks like banking, shopping, and even the consumption of media like TV and music, are all capable through mobile devices. It is obvious that as this technology has evolved; it has gone through a process of intense consumerizing, whereby the technology has become viable for the mass markets and ubiquitous in all aspects of people’s lives.

What once might have been considered an exclusive experience is now in the hands of almost every person on the planet. Laptops, phones, and tablets are keeping people connected 100% of the time, with access to all kinds of services and content no more than a few clicks away. This rapid uptake of mobile technology has led to huge advances in the hardware; and this, in turn, has only furthered a growing trend of mobile technology adoption.

In fact, IBM estimates that in less than four years there will be one trillion cloud-ready mobile devices including phones and tablets worldwide.

This technology has already had a huge impact on consumer digital experiences and now it is time for businesses to play catch-up and recognise the incredible potential of this technology in the hands of employees. The real question is: “How do we utilise

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mobile technology within the organisation to keep up with the global cultural shift in the way both people and businesses are operating?”

In a recent survey by BrightStarr, 79% of IT managers surveyed recognised and understood this need to assess digital mobile strategy within the organisation. This is an astoundingly strong result from organisations operating within a variety of different industries, pointing to the fact that mobile devices will play a significant role within enterprise IT solutions in the future. However, while IT has previously been seen as the department to own enterprise digital solutions, a modern shift in working practices has seen ownership of certain platforms (such as the corporate intranet, for example) move toward roles such as HR, which actually drive and support solution adoption post deployment for organisational benefit.

Therefore, while IT is seeing the need for mobile accessibility in digital solutions, there is a need to develop a wider business awareness of its potential impact, especially in business functions like HR that are beginning to become more frequently involved in both digital platform ownership and development.

This shift towards HR owning digital platforms is being driven, in large part, by the increased value being placed on employees by modern businesses, and thus a necessary increase in responsibilities relating to human resource management. Two major influencing factors driving the rise of employee value are the rise of digital technology and the force of globalisation.

Digital Technology and Globalisation Digital technology and the force of globalisation are relentlessly changing the way that businesses operate, as international barriers continue to be broken down, resulting in everything in the world becoming just a click away.

When we look at the impact on consumers, we see that the Internet has brought every single supplier to their doorstep, which has made for more competitive markets. We see that with

choices come consumer empowerment and, therefore, a greater expectation on businesses to deliver exceptional results and services.

This same force of globalisation powered by digital technology that has empowered the buyer through choice, has also now empowered staff to be more selective in the way they choose their employer and the organisational cultures they want to belong to. They have ready access to competitive organisations, all of which are looking for the best people and an advantage in challenging markets. This has raised the strain on businesses to engage their workforce with a definitive and positive corporate culture, which drives the notion of employee value and delivers employee fulfilment. And, this is where we are seeing the addition of new essential roles for HR leaders. Employee engagement today is just another essential aspect of managing human resources, in an effort to retain great people and keep them both happy and productive. Thus, HR is no longer just responsible for filling roles, but for delivering fulfilling roles that meet ever-increasing employee expectations.

This rise in employee value has led to the notion of 2015 being referred to as the “year of the employee,” and, if this is truly the case, then we can expect to see the demands on HR increase exponentially. Until recently, there has been a strong business focus on delivering exceptional service for customers, but we are seeing a shift as businesses recognise that engaged employees will work harder to deliver those exceptional services. However, achieving the goal of an engaged and productive workforce requires an integrated strategy around employee working experiences, and this puts an extra requirement on HR to integrate their activities with other parts of the business.

This integration is especially important when it comes to IT, and importantly, the digital solutions that employees use on a day-to-day basis to get their jobs done.

In recent years, there has been enormous growth in the number of global information workers, to the point that it is estimated that knowledge workers in the U.S. outnumber other professions four to one. Modern information worker rely on a host of digital tools to complete their job, and, thus, the digital tools they work with can comprise the majority of their working experience. If organisations are to get the most out of employees and engage them with corporate culture, then they must be optimising these digital experiences. Businesses are now measuring the need to provide tools that work, against the need for employees to feel engaged while using them, and this is ex-

actly why HR is more frequently being brought into the mix when designing and implementing internal digital tools. The new responsibility of HR in owning employee engagement through a positive work environment, and, by extension, through exciting digital experiences, is resulting in an increased need for HR ownership of digital work platforms. This ensures that tools such as corporate intranets are adopted and add value by maintaining a focus on the human element of such solutions, and the end users that will actually be using them.

Mobile: The Next Employee Engagement Channel So, how does mobile technology help HR rise to meet the expectations of the digitally empowered and mobile-ready employee?

The bottom line is that mobile capabilities are making our lives easier outside of work and could be having the same huge impact for improving our experience at work. A PGi workplace resolution survey of employees found that 16.9% are looking for their organisation to begin implementing better technology. This is what employees are looking for: an organisation that is empowering them with the best digital tools to get the job done.

In light of the understanding that happy and empowered workers are more productive and efficient, this is an expectation that cannot be ignored by HR. But, it’s not just device ownership figures or the new applications available to us on mobile devices that are pointing towards the need for incorporating mobile technology. It also relates directly to how people today are living their lives and their approach to work.

In today’s busy world, we have a fundamental understanding that people are busy and time spent doing nothing is quite often time we consider wasted. This has led to a shift in working practices, from one of separating our working lives from our personal lives, to one of working in a more flexible manner. Today, businesses are moving towards a new focus on output and goals achieved, with far less of a focus on where, when and how. This has led to the invention of the mobile office environment; the first step towards an effectively digitised workforce that can operate as they need to, to not only get the job done, but also strike a greater balance between working necessities and personal responsibilities. And, this is a corporate culture that many modern information workers want to readily identify with. The same PGi survey found that 18.2% of employees are looking to strike a better work/ www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • May 2015

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life balance in 2015, and better technology is one way of achieving this.

In addition to the rise of modern flexible work styles is the need for organisations to be supporting employees to work however they work best. This is directly related to the notion of employee engagement and maintaining a productive and effective workforce. A recent survey by IBM found that 82% of workers believed that their smartphone was integral to their work. If this is the case, then integrating mobile capabilities into digital tools can only support greater productivity by allowing workers to use the tools they are most comfortable working with. In addition, if staff feel that their needs are actually being considered and accommodated by an organisation, they are more likely to develop organisational affinity and brand loyalty. In Nasstar’s survey of 300 small and medium business bosses, 75% said that by allowing their staff to use their own smartphones and tablets in the workplace, they felt they positioned their firms as “flexible and attractive employers.”

This suggests that already organisations are recognising the need to support employees in their use of mobile technology for work.

However, aside from the fact that mobile accessibility is meeting employee expectations for the digital workplace, there is another major consideration for introducing mobile to support organisational effectiveness.

The Modern Trans-Locational Workforce This is the notion of the workforce on the go; where the office is no longer the office and the walls are quite literally torn down. This work style applies in two distinct ways, but both rely on mobile accessibility to be effective, and this does not preclude companies from belonging to both simultaneously.

The first form of the office outside the office lies in those organisations that significantly operate “in the field.” In the field can refer to everything from sporting foundations, to charities, all the way to economic reform agencies. These organisations have disparate operational sites which must be manned in order to complete tasks, but their staff must still remain connected to the core of the business.

The other type of organisation that utilises the notion of the office everywhere and anywhere is the company which empowers its staff to work from varying locations, in order to support flexibility and diversity for increased productivity. Sometimes it just isn’t

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contributive to an extraordinarily busy day to travel to the office, especially when everything you need to get things done can be accessed from your home, a client’s offices or specific project location.

The final aspect of the office away from the office, which mobile technology can affect and which both situations above must take into consideration, is travel time. In the past, we might have been restricted to a pen and pad on planes, trains and in automobiles. But today, with mobile technology, that travel time does not have to be wasted. Staff can be productive in transit, preparing notes on that talk in another country or drawing up value offers for potential partners while en route. Whatever the reason for travel, staff can be using that time both proactively and productively.

With this rise in the power and effectiveness of mobile technology, combined with the increasing value of employees and the need to keep them engaged with corporate culture, we can see how incorporating mobile solutions into internal digital tools is becoming more and more essential to business success. Even when out of the office, mobile access to digital tools can help keep access to essential business information and corporate messages just a click away. It does, however, represent a new digital frontier for HR, and is another elevation in the effort to keep employees engaged with a cutting edge and highly supportive working environment.

Escalating Mobile Experiences with Apps With all this talk of introducing mobile to the workforce and how it can support employee engagement, it is now less a question of whether to implement mobile into internal digital solutions, but how to go about it.

Mobile-ready solutions are a start, but the app model is starting to dominate the technological interface. Almost all mobile devices today use some form of apps, and app stores are never short of new and ingenious technologies for you to download and put to good use. Based on the increasing trend of mobile app downloads, Portio Research predicts that by 2017 there will be more than 200 billion downloads per year. The trend is already here, and again it is time for business to play catch up with personal technology developments.

Apps are no longer an ingenious solution to ease-of-functionality and access; they are commonplace business tools, and for those organisations that really support flexible work styles and want to drive employee engagement,

via the browser, but they have differences.

For a mobile website, each time a new page is accessed, the device will download all the page contents (HTML, CSS, JavaScript and data).

And, in the case of Web app, download occurs on the initial visit and stored locally. Therefore, while the Web app will have a longer initial download, it will be quicker to access on all subsequent visits, whilst a mobile website will have to load content for each new page visited, which means more frequent, smaller downloads.

Hybrid Apps an app can deliver the very best mobile working experience. This is the next level of mobile integration and shows organisational commitment to supporting flexibility in the workplace, empowering employees with the very best mobile tools.

Apps can take three unique forms, each with its own set of benefits and build approach. They are: • Native apps, • Web apps, and • Hybrid apps.

Native Apps A native app is software written for mobile devices that is developed to use on a specific platform, e.g., Windows, iOS, Android, etc.

It is downloaded directly to the device and stored locally. The majority of the code and assets reside on the phone. Native apps can be downloaded by visiting the appropriate app store for the device (Windows Phone Store, Apple app store, Android marketplace).

Web Apps A Web app can be accessed by any modern mobile device that has a browser. Web apps exist in the browser with the support of HTML5, CSS3 and advance JavaScript. Web apps run within the browser and the browser is, itself, a native app that has direct access to the device operating system.

There are two subdivisions within Web apps that are worth being aware of: mobile Web apps and mobile websites, both of which are accessed on handheld devices.

The key difference between mobile website and mobile Web apps is that mobile websites are designed not only for smaller devices, but also for larger devices such as laptops using the aforementioned responsive design approach.

Mobile Web apps are designed and developed specifically for mobile devices; both are accessed

A hybrid app, as the name implies, combines elements of both native apps and Web apps.

Hybrid apps are essentially built using Web technology and then wrapped in a platformspecific shell. This means that they are downloaded from app stores, yet while built with Web technology, are not limited like Web apps to certain mobile functionality.

Empowering the Enterprise with Mobile Businesses are becoming aware of the need for mobile working to support the busy modern lifestyle, but still aren’t paying enough attention to internal user experience. An app can provide the deep and feature-rich functionality that gives staff the wow factor.

In fact, rather than just having the capability to do work on the go, they will enjoy it when they do.

With slick user interface, intuitive controls and real on-the-go connectivity, apps can take the use of mobile technology to the next level of productivity.

In fact, whether through responsive design or through one of the many forms of mobile apps, we are seeing more and more frequently that mobile functionality is being delivered inclusively with modern digital solutions. Cloud-based expense programs with native apps that allow you to access your phone’s camera to take pictures of receipts are removing the need for scanning receipts and making the lives of frequently travelling employees easier. Customer relationship management platforms with apps are giving sales people who go from client meeting to client meeting the kind of quick and efficient access to client details in just a few clicks. Even digital marketing platforms today incorporate apps for monitoring the response to marketing emails, and this can be happening while they meet with designers or attend/run events.

If we look to one of the most common internal www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • May 2015

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digital platforms, the modern intranet, what can the inclusion of mobile really provide access to? Intranets that form document management platforms can combine mobile access with cloud-based document readers and editing services to allow employees to not only view, but actually work on documents on the go.

Submitting a request for proposal for sales is achievable on the go, as is proofing the latest marketing collateral and filling in time sheets or holiday request forms. Employees are able to maximise their time outside the office and away from their desk.

The intranet for corporate messaging and global vision is a real hot topic for HR as this plays directly into employee engagement strategies. A corporate news feed with rich media in an intranet is a great way of keeping staff connected to organisational goals and is a great platform for getting important information across the business fast. With the addition of mobile access, staff operating outside the office remain connected to the wider business and are not disconnected from the vital information that they need to make fast and well-informed decisions.

Highly relevant to HR professionals is the use of an intranet as a way of managing and supporting human resource planning and organisational effectiveness. The intranet as a people directory and hub for contacting and connecting the right people with the right skills is what can optimise the application of human resources, ensuring that all projects have the required skills and team members to achieve maximum productivity and exceptional About the Author results. Mobile elevates these Glen Chambers is a big picture team connections by forming strategist who can still see the a directory for quick and easy details, is a hands-on style leader, access to staff, and, if combined and enjoys guiding his team through the fast-paced world of with a native mobile applicatechnology consulting. As senior vice president, he tion, can also link directly into plays a pivotal role in steering the North American the call capabilities of your division of BrightStarr. He combines extensive phone for instant connection management experience with broad technical and to any global team member for business consulting skills. This unique mix of talents greater efficiency. gives him a deep understanding of client needs and These few mobile intranet the means to communicate with the development team. To find out more about BrightStarr, visit use cases are really just the http://www.brightstarr.com/. tip of the iceberg for what can be achieved through mobile

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technology in the enterprise. By combining the power of the cloud with mobile devices, out-ofthe-box and completely mobile-ready intranets are becoming readily available. Unily, for example, is a cloud-based Intranet-as-a-Service that features both responsive design and native mobile applications across iOS, Android and Windows Phone, all built on Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint. It delivers all of the common intranet functionality discussed here and more, while ensuring that the entire solution is focused on organisational unification and engagement, by making it accessible on any device, anywhere, anytime. This kind of out-ofthe-box cloud service, inclusive of mobile access to such a wide variety of digital productivity and collaboration functionality, is reducing the cost of providing mobile capabilities to employees, as the apps themselves are all maintained on the supplier end, meaning they remain updated and effective with minimal effort and cost.

Successfully harnessing mobile technology has already delivered increased customer engagement and better customer experience.

But it can also increase workforce efficacy, productivity and happiness. It can streamline business processes by making them easy to complete regardless of location and it can make it possible to work on the go in a busy world. In a Gartner report, it was predicted that, by the end of 2015, over 60% of information workers will be accessing some business applications via their mobile device. Therefore, this is a trend that is gaining momentum and represents a great opportunity for HR leaders to capitalise on new technology in driving organisational effectiveness. Whether by making internal digital solutions mobile friendly for use on the go or out of the office, or developing mobilespecific applications to simplify the process of completing administrative tasks, mobile technology has a wealth of potential that is valuable in the enterprise.

feature Will Gen Z Even Care about HR Technology?

By Diane Gayeski, Ph.D., Ithaca College

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s the economy recovers a bit and older workers finally decide that they can or must retire, HR departments are going to need to ramp up their recruiting efforts.

What will it take to attract the best young talent? While it’s probably best not to lump all teens and 20-somethings together, there are some important trends in attitudes towards employment that need the attention of HRIS professionals. Bottom line: the most talented young people in high school and college today may not be interested in traditional jobs – and it’s going to take innovative communication and collaboration strategies to recruit and retain them. I‘d like to share some perspectives, both as a consultant in workplace communications and learning, and as a dean where I also need to recruit and engage young professionals.

along with their intact cohort groups/ colleagues/friends, and recruit them as a team?

•

•

New HRIS Strategies to Tap Top Young Talent Generation Y, often called millennials, are currently in their 20s to early 30s; Gen Z are today’s teenagers. They are obviously “digital natives,” but their demands on HRIS go beyond mere Web and mobile access. They will be much pickier about where and how they work, and how they are managed, incented, trained and informed. A recent report from Accenture situates this emerging crisis in terms of digital technologies and information technology resources. It predicts that HR information and processes will be more fully integrated and accessible to every employee. They argue that HR will need to behave more like a Digital Marketing department in terms of analyzing data and creating customized talent offerings, jobs, and ways of recruiting and incentivizing.

What might this look like?

• Gen Y and Z are very close to their “tribe” of friends and followers, and have spent a lot of time in classes doing team projects. Could HR identify top talent

•

Young people are used to mass customization and want to be recognized for their unique traits and interests.

Might jobs be designed around people rather than trying to fit people into jobs? Could we use more data about the “whole person” and offer them a customized set of responsibilities, schedules, compensation packages, and growth opportunities? Instead of listing jobs, could we list necessary outputs and outcomes and let prospective employees bundle these according to their own profiles?

Bottom line: the most Today’s youth are tapped talented young people in into their own stats, whether it be from a high school and college fitness band, their number today may not be interested of followers or friends on in traditional jobs – and social media, or instant it’s going to take innovative feedback from online tests. We could do a better communication and job at enabling employees collaboration strategies to to be self-managed and recruit and retain them. directed. Instead of giving performance data to their supervisors, let them manage it themselves, just like they are tracking their own fitness and diet goals.

Many young people have spent extensive time playing sophisticated interactive games and are accustomed to keeping their families and groups intact remotely through social media, texting and video chats. Digital technologies can form cohort groups who can collaborate in the ways they find most productive – give them a goal and let them decide how they want to divide it up. Provide advanced project management tools to every level and let them run with it. Make work

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a big digitized “game” with immediate feedback on goals and performance.

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Even the best-educated young employees recognize that their skills have a short half-life. Can HRIS do a better job of predicting and assessing current and future levels of skills and knowledge that are needed for certain roles – and providing that to individuals so that they can manage their own learning?

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If more young people want to work for themselves (and it’s the smartest and most hard-working who will choose this route), we’ll need to play to that and develop systems that are adept at managing and sourcing contractors, consultants, freelancers and “taskers.”

Human resources information technology experts are in a great position to use their own strengths and interests to experiment, prototype and network. I’ve always found that it’s useful to benchmark what is happening in marketing, because that function has the most immediate pressure to adapt to consumer needs and behaviors. We need to begin thinking of employees as consumers who will have a choice whether or not they want our jobs – or any job for that matter. Take a leaf from the books of Task Rabbit, Yelp, crowdsourcing and crowdfunding sites, online dating, fitness trackers, Uber and AirBnb. That’s what people use to make important decisions in their lives – and we need to meet them where they live now.

What Drives Gen Z? Because of the very public discussions about the lack of employer loyalty and economic Many young employees uncertainty, they tend to be skeptical about employment as a who have entered the concept in general. A new study workforce in the past about innovation by Northeastern eight years are under- University found that a whopping employed, especially 42 percent of teenagers expected to work for themselves – and African in light of the time and American and Hispanic teenagers money they’ve invested in actually trended higher in that their college educations. attitude (60 percent and 59 percent respectively) than Caucasians (31 percent). While they still saw the value in higher education, about 70 percent felt that they should have the ability to design their own majors.

I’ve found that the most ambitious and intellectually talented college students want a lot out of life – they are active in balancing schoolwork with clubs, a focus on health and

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recreation, a commitment to bettering society, and time for family and friends. They are experts in multi-tasking and don’t experience hard lines between work, play, and time for personal fulfillment such as volunteer and charity work. They will likely bring this same perspective to the workplace: they prefer – or even expect – that employers will measure them on performance, not on hours spent on the job. They crave personal and professional development even more than salary because they recognize how quickly knowledge and skills become outdated. And, they’re prepared to jobhop; in college we tell them they’ll likely have dozens of jobs in their lifetimes and probably change their entire career once or twice.

Many young employees who have entered the workforce in the past eight years are under-employed, especially in light of the time and money they’ve invested in their college educations. This is why they seem demanding and impatient for raises, promotions, and other types of recognition. Not only does life happen more quickly for them, they’re under greater pressure. Many of them face US$1,000 to $2,000 college loan payments each month and their parents have made huge sacrifices and put great pressures on them to succeed.

It’s also not uncommon for them to want multiple income streams to supplement their salaries and to provide a hedge against layoffs and obsolescence. Employers can no longer punish employees for “moonlighting;” instead they might think of giving them time off to pursue their own innovative or charitable ventures instead of traditional vacations or even raises. Most young alumni I know have a “day job,” are trying to develop their own company, app, professional practice, or online store, might be licensing stories or images they create, doing freelancing or e-lancing, and also have some other gig like playing in a band or doing parttime work for a friend or relative.

If Gen Z expects to design their own college majors, they’ll also expect to design their own jobs. They recognize the need to contribute to an organization’s success and they know that people don’t necessarily fall into cookie-cutter job descriptions. I’ve heard from several of our most talented students that when they interview for jobs, they not only address the job requirements but also talk about what the company may have overlooked in terms of opportunities or responsibilities, and they often wind up rewriting the job description during the interview.

Young people are team-oriented. They are

adept at organizing and using digital tools to collaborate. Interestingly, new research shows that young people who have spent a lot of time doing online gaming are extremely adept at making connections with other people, trading knowledge and skills, and developing their own leadership profiles and reputations.

In college, there’s a big emphasis on team projects. To decrease the uncertainty in the world, they often prefer to seek jobs together, seeking to share housing, errands and social activities. Smart companies are beginning to recruit intact teams – these students will have already figured out each other’s styles and know how to complement each other’s skills and personalities. Plus, they are much less likely to leave for other opportunities if they have friendships at work and affordable and pleasant housing situations.

Back to the Future While these attitudes and behaviors may seem strange and frustrating to those of us who have struck out on our own and wrapped our personal lives around our work, I’d ask you to step back and put this into a historical perspective. My grandmother was a peasant girl in agrarian Northern Italy. There was no separation between “work” and “personal life” – they all worked in the family/community business of farming. They were in constant contact with “their people” – family and close friends. They didn’t have to text each other and post pictures of their meals on Instagram, they just had to look over on the hillside to see that everybody was okay and to the communal courtyard oven to see what’s for dinner.

Everybody recognized each other’s unique contributions, talents, and limitations and they wove in fun with labor whenever they could. Of course, there was no such thing as a “job.”

That’s the way humans have been wired for centuries, so why should we think young people are strange because technology and other societal changes enable them to satisfy their basic instincts? While employers try to create environments with a work/life balance, it’s often done in a very artificial way.

Successful supervisors and HR leaders will try to understand what motivates people at their core – not just economic necessities – and will seek to reduce conflicts between family, hobbies, social/religious commitments, and work.

Appendix: Generations Defined A lot has been written about generational differences in the workplace; the typical narrative is that: References • Baby Boomers (in their 40s Accenture Report by Tim Good, Catherine Farley, to 60s) are workaholic, ambiHimanshu Tambe, and Susan Cantrell, “Trends retious employees who fought shaping the future of HR,” 2015. Retrieved from through civil rights issues, the http://www.accenture.com/us-en/Pages/insightwomen’s movement, and antifuture-of-hr-trends-digital-radically-disrupts-hr. war demonstrations to create aspx?c=str_ustandowotfpsgs&n=HR_-_US&KW_ their own visions of the life of ID=szuHOpmO6_dc|pcrid|63120442758 success.

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Gen-Xers (30s to mid-40s) have been raised by workcentered parents and so are independent, seek more worklife balance, and question authority.

Ethics Resource Center, National Business Ethics Survey, 2009. Retrieved from http://www.ethics. org/files/u5/Gen-Diff.pdf Northeastern University fourth innovation imperative poll, Meet Generation Z, 2014.

Retrieved from http://www.northeastern.edu/ innovationsurvey/pdfs/Innovation_Imperative_ GenZ_PollPres.pdf

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Millennials (late teens to early 30s) are digital natives, over-programmed by ambitious parents, and have short attention spans and patience for paying their dues to work up the career ladder.

•

Gen Z (current teenagers) – It’s a bit too early to know how they’ll relate to the workplace, but they seem to crave personal interaction, rather than merely digital, and want the ability to carve out their own futures.

I take these stereotypes with a big grain of salt, since the more valid research studies tend to point out that generations are more alike than different – and that people of all ages change with the times and are more defined by socioeconomic factors than birthdate. For example, I hear supervisors criticize their kids or young employees for being technology-obAbout the Author sessed, but those same complainers Dr. Diane Gayeski is dean of the can’t stop checking their cellphones Roy H. Park School of for emails and are actually bigger Communications at Ithaca users of Facebook. A recent study by College, Ithaca, NY, and an the Ethics Resource Center found internationally recognized that trends in workplace ethics and futurist on media and education. The author of 14 compliance transcend generational books, she’s a frequent speaker on Gen-Y issues, e-learning, and organizational transformation. For differences – for example, younger more than 30 years, she’s taught and run a workers have always been more consulting firm centering on the assessment and likely to observe and be concerned application of new technologies and strategies about workplace misconduct. for organizational learning and communications.

She can be reached at Gayeski@ithaca.edu.

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feature

Slogging Toward the Social Organization

By John Gerstner, Communitellegence

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he list of industries that have been radically disrupted by the Web is long and growing. Think music, travel, newspapers, taxis, books, maps and encyclopedias.

Interestingly, if you could rewind back to the genesis of each of these disruptions, you would likely find a handful of inspired and impassioned people working together in a room (or garage), in constant communication with one another and customers, vendors and anyone else who might contribute to their grand quest to change the world. Think Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, AirBnB and Uber.

Of course, once startups grow up, they add employees and start to take on some of the bureaucratic baggage of old guard companies.

Enter managers, specialists, departments, processes, policies and performance reviews.

Suddenly, employees feel distanced from leadership, less in touch and less able to have their ideas heard and acted upon. This can easily lead to disengagement and, for the employees who were there in the beginning, a longing for the good old caffeine-wired, changethe-world, collaborative days.

That vision of a workplace that is much more connected, human, collaborative, agile and downright fun is enticing companies of all sizes to inject a new word into their workplace vocabulary: social. It’s not a perfect word to use inside organizations as it carries a lot of baggage and misconceptions, but so-called enterprise social networks (ESNs) are starting to enter the workplace at a quickening pace.

Market research firm IDC forecasts that the compound annual growth rate in the enterprise social software category will be 42 percent through 2015, with worldwide spending climbing to nearly US$4.5 billion in 2016.

Certainly, the current workplace we all know and love to complain about is ripe for some “start-up-ization.” There is an excess of meetings, emails, interruptions, silos, duplication of effort and delayed decisions and a shortage of open communication, trust, collaboration, innovation and excitement.

The truth, some experts say, is in the employee engagement numbers that are at or near all-time lows. Only about a third of

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employees are engaged, half aren’t, and 16 percent are creating trouble by being actively disengaged, according to Gallup’s February 2015 survey.

Added to that, every week businesses waste 5.3 hours per person due to inefficient processes, and knowledge employees spend 25 percent of their time just looking for information, according to a 2010 IBM study.

Into this sea of opportunity, ESNs are being trumpeted as white knights ready to rescue damsel organizations from their distress. If you drink the Kool-Aid of the leading ESN vendors, you’ll hear some sweet return-on-investment (ROI) claims for successful deployment. These include a 15 percent spike in employee productivity, a 2-4 percent increase in top-line revenue and a 34 percent reduction in email load.

These results are not out of line with studies conducted by both McKinsey and Gartner on the benefits of digital social collaboration in large corporations: •

Increased speed to access internal experts – 52%

•

Increased access to knowledge – 77%

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Increase in number of successful product innovations – 28%

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Increase in employee satisfaction – 41%

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Reduced time to market – 29%

•

Email reduction – 25 percent.

Last year, I gathered estimates of ROI and days to payback the ESN investment from four of the top vendors (IBM Connections , Jive, Yammer and tibbr) for a mid-sized company.

Their estimates were strikingly similar, with a

three-year ROI ranging from 365 to 624 percent, and days to payback from 120 to 231. (See chart).

Companies with the highest number of “interaction workers” – high-skill knowledge workers, including managers and professionals – can expect the highest productivity improvements through faster internal communication and smoother collaboration, according to a McKinsey Global Institute report.

Most of the gains will come by reducing the time employees spend reading and answering email, searching and gathering information, and communicating and collaborating internally. According to the study, the average interaction worker spends an estimated 28 percent of their workweek managing email and nearly 20 percent looking for internal information or tracking down colleagues who can help with specific tasks.

As an internal communications manager and consultant throughout my career, I am not surprised by these numbers and the benefits of making the workplace more social. I could see the value the first week we started publishing our intranet daily newsletter on a SharePoint blog.

Immediately, employees posted feedback to articles, and often shared nuggets of information and insight that went well beyond what we included in the story. I could see there was gold to be mined by giving pick axes to everyone in the company, not just leadership.

To better understand how ESNs deliver business value, let’s do a head-to-head test drive of the old and steady tool that most of us still use today, email, against the new and sleeker ESN. Let’s pretend I need to find out the potential security risks of an ESN and what firewalls we are using in the company today.

I compose my question and send it to the few people I know who might be able to help. Then, I wait patiently to see if someone responds.

If they do, great…I have my answer and I can include it in my research report. If not, I’m stuck and have to go back to sending more emails and waiting.

Contrast that to putting the same request on our company’s ESN. Now, my query becomes part of the activity stream that is a freeflowing channel of questions, announcements, questions and ideas submitted by employees.

The software surfaces people, data and applications in a central, accessible, real-time virtual interface. Employees can subscribe to and follow communities, individuals, projects and even documents so that they can be in the know in a way not possible before.

So, my ESN question is potentially seen by all the employees who follow network security, enterprise social networking, or IT and related topics. The chances of me getting an answer are

now much higher, and it will likely be a better answer because it will be crowdsourced by employees. The thread of answers from multiple experts I never knew existed will shed new light, ask other pertinent questions and even correct earlier answers. I’ve been able to tap the wisdom of the crowd.

Plus – and this is big – now the knowledge that surfaced in the thread I started is archived and easily found by other employees who might need similar information later. Because the replies to my email are stored only temporarily (without a special request), no one else can benefit from the same information later, and that knowledge walks out of the company when I leave.

“Email is where knowledge goes to die,” is the way Bill French, founder of iPadCTO, sums up this email versus ESN deficiency.

“Activity streams fundamentally change how companies do business, unlocking the vast amount of information generated by everyday operations and making it instantly available across previously defined boundaries,” according to a Socialtext document. “Activity streams humanize every business process inside a company, adding a social layer to data and opening up real-time collaboration.

Activity streams are the future of enterprise collaboration.”

“I answer one question for 18,000 people,” Bryce Williams, social collaboration at Eli Lilly told CIO magazine. “I never have to ask the same question twice. If someone asks the same question, I just link to the answer.”

There’s another subtle but critical difference between email and posts to an ESN. When I answer a question or post an idea on an ESN, I’m writing it for everyone in the organization.

“It’s a totally different mindset,” says Michael Idinopulos, writing on the Socialtext blog.

“When I go through my emails, it’s a series of updates – usually reactive – to individuals: Don’t do this, that is approved, can’t make this meeting, missed you at that conference.

“When I go through Signals (a post in a Socialltext activity stream), it’s an opportunity to model, to muse, to question, to inspire in a uniquely public and transparent way: This is how we should think about this, help me understand that, I’m making this a personal priority, let’s celebrate the awesome job she did on that. This is work that adds to my energy, rather than taking it away.”

Value flows in multiple directions on an activity stream. For individual employees, this stream of information, concise in text and metadata, allows staying abreast of recent updates and discovering new developments related to their job, projects and areas of interest.

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pulse of the organization. It can greatly increase executive awareness of projects, issues, trends and employee ideas and opinions. I know of many cases where an ESN thread has caused a company policy to be changed or rescinded.

It would be nice to say that ESNs are a slam dunk. Unfortunately, the full power of social technologies hinges on the full and enthusiastic participation of employees who are not afraid to share their thoughts and trust that their contributions will be respected. Companies that are deploying ESNs the most successfully are focused on their culture. They understand their shortcomings and are using social tools to solve them.

Creating a collaborative culture is far more challenging than installing the collaborative software. In fact, the technology research company, Gartner, says 80 percent of social business efforts through 2015 will not achieve the intended benefits due to inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on technology.

Trust and recognition are the twin currencies of enterprise social networks. Employees need to be comfortable “working out loud” and sharing rather than hoarding knowledge. “We versus Me” may be natural for millennials, but may be more problematic for other generations.

Although a 2011 APCO Worldwide and Gagen MacDonald study found 58 percent of employees would rather work at a company that utilizes social media tools, and 60 percent say that use of internal social media demonstrates innovation, there are pockets of social resistance from employees at all levels. To get a flavor of that sentiment, here are some verbatim comments from employees at one company that did a pre-ESN project survey: •

“Social is a time suck and really has no value here.”

•

“If you have time to be on Yammer, you don’t have enough to do.”

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“Social has no place in our corporate environment.”

•

“We don’t need Facebook at work.”

Of course, some employees express the opposite opinion as evangelistically as some of the ESN vendors. When I raised the topic in an employee focus group at a mid-sized company last year, one employee said, “We have a lot of wonderful, even brilliant, people working here.

When they start to share their views and discuss topics, you start to see the human side of the organization. The more we discuss and share knowledge, it makes us a better company and better individuals all around.”

Which brings up the first of several hulking

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elephants in ESN meeting rooms today.

Invariably, the question comes up: how do we get our employees to embrace and use our ESN and not simply ignore or shun it?

Failure to clearly communicate the ESN’s purpose and business case, and get employees on board, can cause a new enterprise social network to drift and die, or simply be seen as a solution in search of a problem.

Even when the technology is intuitive to use and integrated into current enterprise applications, as the best platforms are, if

employees don’t see value for themselves and their organization, no amount of marketing and cajoling will get an ESN to thrive.

Over time, employees should rise in visibility in the company by participating in their internal social network. In other words, if I am constantly answering questions and posting ideas, opinions, and links to articles and videos on a certain subject, my recognition as an influencer and thought leader should increase. How this will be formally recognized and rewarded are key questions for every organization.

Some companies are incenting employees to use their networks with gamification techniques, both fun and serious. This allows employees to earn badges and overall scores for their posts, documents uploaded and questions answered.

And some companies are now beginning to figure out ways to tie this participation to their annual performance review so there is a financial incentive for being active on the ESN. Another scary elephant in the ESN meeting room, which is hardly ever brought up, is the question: What happens to the traditional command-and-control hierarchy when internal social networking takes hold?

Company executives and middle managers may be among the most skeptical, perhaps because the hierarchy that served them well throughout their careers is part of what has to change to achieve maximum social business success.

“Hierarchies are obsolete,” contends Harold Jarche, international consultant and speaker.

“Hierarchies were essentially a solution to a communications problem. They are artifacts of a time when information was scarce and hard to share, and when connections with others were difficult to make. That time is over.”

“Hierarchies prescribe and dictate; networks enable, sense and generate,” writes Jon Husband on his Wirearchy blog. Transforming an organization’s structure, culture and management style is hard. It is also more and more essential in the networked era.”

Ironically, leaders and middle managers who may feel the most threatened by the move toward social are the very ones whose support and participation is critical to an ESN’s success.

“Having strong leaders on board is pivotal to the success of any new way of working,” John Zetterström, CEO at Projectplace, told IT Pro. “Leaders need to become open, social, and transparent to promote a new company culture, which will benefit everyone involved. If they don’t adapt, the successful integration of social collaboration strategies will be difficult to accomplish.”

Stowe Boyd, lead analyst at Gigaom Research, believes it’s time that companies appoint a chief social officer. “This should be the executive charged with the well-being, training, recruitment, and connectedness of the company’s workforce,” he writes on his blog.

“This role should be made more central to the business, on a par with Sales, Marketing, and customer service areas.”

“It scares leaders,” says David Larcker at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, who asked several hundred executives and board members whether they used social media personally and in their businesses. “It’s hard for them to think through the ramifications and they’ve seen things go viral in a bad way. It’s also hard for them to say for sure that social media adds value or whether this is just another flash in the pan.”

I blame some of the anxiety around enterprise social networks on what I call the Facebook complex. Simply bringing up Facebook in a business meeting can incite sarcastic comments about employees wasting time on cat photos, or using the channel to vent frivolous complaints, or perhaps worse, inadvertently spilling company secrets to outsiders.

For that reason, I used to preface my ESN presentations to senior leaders with the admonition to not think of social media in business as simply Facebook behind the firewall.

Both instances use social media technology, but there are stark distinctions between the purposes of the two.

My little advance warning has now become

fuzzier, however. Earlier this year, Facebook launched Facebook At Work, a workplace clone of its consumer social network. Though currently missing some key features that the more established ESN players include in their platforms, it can’t hurt to have almost 1.23 billion monthly users, giving Facebook a clear advantage in employee familiarity with its enterprise tool.

Too much hype, lack of convincing ROI metrics, weak buy-in from senior executives, fear of data insecurity and lack of integration with other enterprise tools are all reasons why deploying social media inside organizations is more like a slog than a sprint. But, the mobile, social work place isn’t going away, simply because it offers the best guarantee of organizational survival in the midst of radical business disruption triggered by new technology and innovation.

In that spirit, I invite you to ponder the lowly spider web. Every web begins with a single thread attached to something solid. Then the spider painstakingly weaves a complex structure of spiraling web patterns atop a scaffolding of radiating filaments. Scientists have found cob webs to be so ingeniously designed, resilient and strong that they can survive multiple tears and winds exceeding hurricane strength.

Spider webs actually strengthen after they are damaged.

Once its web is weaved, the spider waits.

When something strikes any part of a web, the disturbance is instantly felt across every node of the web, and the spider goes into action instantaneously. The web is the spider’s extended central nervous system.

That, metaphorically, is the social business vision that enterprise social networks are weaving. Thread-by-thread, we’re painstakingly building strong and resilient internal webs that will allow organizations to instantaneously sense and empower employees to act on opportunities, problems and crises.

If the lowly spider web can withstand a hurricane, the future social organization should be able to withstand the radical industry disruptions that are almost certainly About the Author already being incubated by some John Gerstner, CEO of small group of inspired, passionate Communitelligence, (whose entrepreneurs out to change the slogan is “All of us are smarter world. than one of us.”) is a nationally The future digital workplace is recognized strategic coming, and in the wry words of communications expert and thought leader Olivia Pope’s mother on the TV hit whose work has spanned 30 years and 30 countries on five continents. He is a frequent Scandal likes to say: “This is going speaker and workshop leader on internal to be fun.” communications, intranets, enterprise social networks and business innovation. He can be reached at jjg@communitelligence.com.

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feature Creating a Consumer-Oriented HR Platform for Global Communication

By Chris Keys, Towers Watson

F

or many years in HR we have focused on standardizing processes, and then standardizing global processes. Of course, we take a strategic and thoughtful approach – determining which processes are businessspecific and should remain so, which can be centralized versus executed locally, how mechanisms can be introduced to identify bottlenecks and improve services, and so on.

However, when it comes to communication, we often default to established practices of drafting, version control, publication and distribution. We may begin to address global issues to an extent by having some content translated into local languages, which may make the finalizing of content – usually at the last minute – even more frenzied than usual. But, everyone understands that “we just have to get it done.”

Why is it that we undertake all sorts of planning efforts when it comes to processes, but fail to take a similarly thoughtful approach when it comes to communication, a fundamental . . . the modern pillar of HR? Despite the fact that consumer has we spend an inordinate amount redefined the notion of time drafting and socializing, translating, and of what is sticky. finalizing, distributing messages around the We have a new world, why do we often overlook word for it now – this first step, which is so critical to engagement. the development of effective, global HR communication?

The Content/Engagement Conundrum For many years, we have bought into the idea of sticky content – we create Web

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content that draws people back to our “site” to ensure a sustained viewing rate, and in so doing, users will see what we feel is important. In some instances, perhaps the user is permitted to decide what content takes precedence, or how to organize their digital world to some degree based on the content flavor of the month. While the principle of sticky content still holds to a certain degree today, the modern consumer has redefined the notion of what is sticky. We have a new word for it now – engagement.

Consumers engage with content in different ways. At one end of the spectrum is the consumer who wants to be interactive, learning through almost tactile interaction, yet with embedded subliminal messages. At the other is the chapter and verse policy guru who can parse out the inner depths of crossdocument dependencies and workflows. Do we then also have to cater to the masses in the middle, or is there a medium that cuts through the clutter?

There are many types of media at our disposal today, even in HR! We have the trusty magazine and the printed page, along with its digital partner the eMag. There is the lights/camera/action C-suite headliner video, as well as the almost-now-acceptable webcam stream. We have a preponderance of white board videos with targeted educational and awareness material, alongside games and puzzles to engage the cortex and make learning fun. However, the key to success is to choose the appropriate media and messaging for the right population and, at the same time, ensure that employees are not being distracted by HR issues.

There are some indicators that can help us better understand employee information needs based on their level of technical sophistication and behavior. How many of your workforce are in line when a certain new device hits the shelves? How many calls to the service desk are about passwords, where the post-it note has blown off the desk and vanished into thin air?

Getting the right message to the right population, however, runs the risk of requiring a small army. We face the challenge of knowing that we need to think globally while connecting locally, yet drafting and approving, and hoping the onward translations and distribution of content are both effective and accurate, and something that raises the pulse just a little more each time. Enter the infamous “portal.”

In a nut shell, even if a user is on the Internet, it is now feasible, acceptable, and becoming preferred to have your own IT organization be the one to prompt for network credentials and then grant access to HR solutions. And yes, in cases where those solutions are hosted by partners and providers, you should ask these third parties when they will support service-providerinitiated single sign-on.

•

Personalized experience – For a moment, let us define a portal as a combination of both content and data. With this definition, a consumeroriented portal serves up the contextually correct information to the user based on available data. A global HR portal, therefore, is most effective when information presented is relevant to the individual based on employment status, region and country, tenure (hire date, retirement eligibility date), program eligibility, plan participation, role (employee, manager, executive, people leader), and more. By way of an example: an end user accessing an HR portal could be greeted with manager news and calls to action based on having a new hire coming on board, be educated about a change in policy by virtue of being a participant in a certain program, and see that the regional HR offsite is on the calendar for next quarter based on being a member of the HR community.

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Data component – There is always a temptation to find every data element for every HR discipline in every system around the globe, but oftentimes this boil-the-ocean approach will stall and stagnate rather quickly. Rather, it is best to identify what data should be emphasized and ensure it is readily available. For instance, a benefiteligible employee in the U.S. may be continually focused on the balance of a health savings account, while a line coordinator may be focused on a time-off balance. Neither really needs a

Portals, Intranets and Policies – Oh My! Ten people will define a portal in 10 different ways. Everyone has a portal these days – an HR portal, wellness portal, rewards portal, benefits portal, retirement portal, new hire portal, recruiting portal, and so on. These portals all share some common features and functionality, but to truly support global HR, a portal must provide a few essential elements.

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Easy access – Embarking on an endeavor to establish a single starting point for all things HR first involves making the site easy to access. After years of challenges in this regard, some organizations have opted to make a surprisingly large amount of HR content available on their public website, thus avoiding password problems. In these situations, organizations should certainly discuss how to best balance the ease of access with the potential disclosure of competitive information.

However, there is good news on the ease-of-access front. Now, more than ever, we are seeing the emergence of mature identity-management solutions and federated authentication services.

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virtual HR data warehouse in the sky if, indeed, seamless access to authoritative systems is also readily available.

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One-stop-shopping – Is this phrase over-used yet? Perhaps, but similar to sticky content, the definition may well be changing. We have all lived through – or continue to experience – the proverbial link farm, where one-stopshopping means a page of somewhat organized links to other online resources. However, a modern era HR portal includes a wealth of content within the portal, whereby searching for information quickly returns a set of results and follow-up filter capabilities akin to the Internet search experience. Search results should not be exclusively based on the author’s ability to maintain “tags” (and then re-tag, and then re-tag…), but should be based on actual text contained in .pdf files, office documents, Web pages, brochures, policies, and more. Extending search across multiple online resources has been hailed as providing the ultimate consumer experience, and is now becoming more feasible and more reliable across both internal and external service providers.

How to Balance the Balancing Act As we look around the globe, and as the notion of global HR content evolves, there is a fine balance between centralized command and control and what we endearingly call content anarchy. If we are fortunate enough to have an army of authors, then we need to focus on process and . . . if a few training to ensure consistency of format, structure, and overall individuals are usability. On the other hand, if a expected to maintain few individuals are expected to content globally, this maintain content globally, this oftentimes results in a failure to oftentimes results in sustain. Then, additional online a failure to sustain. sources and, especially, in-country supplements begin to pop up

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to plug the gaps. A multi-layered governance model and content partnership across centers of excellence, supported by the right portal technology mitigates this challenge.

In the HR domain, some content is indeed truly global. Consider compensation philosophy, high-level total rewards messaging, global mobility programs, leadership communication, recruitment, and more. This list expands as we circumnavigate the globe and work on standardization and alignment. Having a limited group of employees assigned to maintain such content centrally and to make it available in multiple languages helps mitigate the risk of having error-prone variations slip in during translation and dissemination.

Moving on from global content, regional or local country content should be managed by in-region resources or designated regional owners. This regional content might be maintained in a few languages based on consumer needs, with regional versus global approvals for publishing content. In turn, the online experience should offer an integrated view of some globally-managed and some regionally-managed information, presented in a consumer-oriented fashion independent of our classic HR organizational silos and in the preferred language.

There is another level of governance that is equally important for sustaining engagement and use of the portal. In addition to content governance, there is also the need for governance of the portal itself. A partnership of senior HR leaders charged with keeping true to the original vision of the portal is critical to success over time. This body, which should meet regularly, serves to both react to big picture ideas and proactively ensure communications around the world are in alignment with the portal vision. For example, when the ideas of using the portal as a means for employees to compare notes on their selfdiagnosed medication conditions bubbles up to the content governance team, the team will validate that suggestion against the charter for the HR portal as a whole. Conversely, should the team learn of an expensive program promotion at the country level that has circumvented the portal governance pro-

cess, this group will review the situation and course-correct as necessary.

This idea of both portal governance, as well as content governance, enables an organization to fully leverage the HR portal not only as an on-demand information resource but also as a true ongoing communication and change channel. The aforementioned churn of drafting and socializing, finalizing, translating, and distributing is very much streamlined with shared authoring and publishing, positioning the portal as a tool that helps organizations prepare for change, communicate during the change, and press those other levers of transformation. Being able to prepare content for online dissemination, but which goes live only when you are ready, further supports content governance and timely publishing.

Effective portal technology enables organizations to manage many types of HR content without the need to turn to expert IT resources. Such technology offers more than page layout support, and allows for the creation of Web pages, articles, plan documents, policies, brochures, and guides with different functionality and features including videos and graphics.

Holding Hands Consumers of HR information often need an outlet that provides further clarification or interpretation of content. Ideally, of course, a quick search should lead to the sought-after information, thus avoiding the need for further in-person follow-up and curtailing service costs. But, as we know, not all consumers are good at fishing for themselves. An effective portal makes it easy to identify how to get help. This might involve making use of an online case management solution depending

on the region of the world with which the user is associated, or directing the user to the local HR business partner. In either case, the servicing entity also needs ready access to tools to complement those provided by the portal.

Whereas the consumer is served up personalized content and information, the support personnel needs access to more broad-based information to support a range of different consumers. One emerging approach is to allow the support agents (for want of a better description) to see exactly what the consumer is seeing while giving them access to a supplemental information store containing exception processes, instructions, etc. In this way, the consumer-facing portal can contain all content structured for readAbout the Author ability, findability, personalization, Chris Keys has 20 years of and ease of consumption, while experience as an HR the information store for agents is technology consultant. His streamlined for efficiency, crossexperience in global shared services, cross-discipline organization navigation and rapid process design, and complex system updating.

Bringing It All Together

deployments allows him to bring creative but practical solutions to clients around world. He can be reached at Chris.keys@ towerswatson.com.

Technology platforms, specifically HR portals designed to provide a rich online experience, now support sought-after content creation processes that enable both global governance and local ownership. By selecting a portal technology that delivers a superior consumer experience and equipping support personnel with the right tools, HR can create a sustainable communication platform that presents an integrated and personalized view of “all things HR.”

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feature HR Technologies for the Multi-Generational Workforce

By Christine König, Ingentis

H

R technologies of today and tomorrow must be flexible and responsive to the largest demographic groups, Generation Y (millenials) and Generation Z. Gen Y, aged from early 20s to early 30s, grew up with many new technologies and they can be characterized by their need for flexible working arrangements. An intensification of these characteristics is represented in their successors, Gen Z. Born in the mid-1990s and later, most of Gen Z will be entering the workplace within the next few years and have an even closer bond to technologies and social networking than Gen Y. They have high expectations from all technology since they have grown up with mobile phones, smartphones, and tablets.

Organization Charts and HR Reports as a Basis for HR strategy The basis for every HR strategy is verified HR data. Therefore, the most important key figures and the organizational structure have to be clearly analyzed and visualized. In this case, leading-edge software applications will be a big help to tech-savvy HR managers and consultants. With your organizational software, you should be able to map any hierarchical structure. The software should create organizational charts, position plans and HR reports automatically and enable browsing the organization structure while simultaneously accessing relevant key data. The organization charts should contain information on organizational units, positions, and employees (see Figure 1).

The Intersection of Different Generations in the HR Sector Over the next several years, these young generations will increasingly interact with older, perhaps more conservative generations within the company. In some workplaces, HR technology will be challenged to meet the demands of boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Z. The generations before Y were primarily educated in how to handle a PC at work. Boomers and Gen X don’t expect as much from technologies as Gen Y and Z. It’s a fact that these target groups will also meet each other in the HR sector in the coming years.

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Figure 1. Organizational Chart in Ingentis org.manager.

In employee lists, which can be displayed below the organization chart, users are of-

fered further detailed information; including employee location, email address, and job ID. Photos of the individual managers can also be added to the organization chart through an automated process. Several structures, e.g., org chart and position plan, can be mapped simultaneously. Moreover, employees are located in the organization chart quickly using the search function, via their name or job ID, for example. There is also a “function” designation, which can be used to search for a group of employees. The resulting hit list can be exported and processed as an Excel document.

Ingentis org.manager is linked to personnel management systems, such as SAP®, PeopleSoft®, Oracle®, to databases such as Oracle®, Microsoft SQL Server®, IBM DB/2®, to directory services such as LDAP/Active Directory or to flat files such as Excel or CSV. This means the software can analyze and display all data coming from this data base.

Reporting of HR Data To highlight the generational and cultural diversity within a company, different reporting functions are available. For example, the average age in individual divisions (see Figure 2) or the age of each employee can be shown in the org chart. The nationality of an employee can be displayed via a flag icon.

The personnel reports are automatically generated via calculations, rules, filters, and merging. Rules can be applied to highlight certain fields in the organization chart in color. For example, all departments with vacant positions can be highlighted in red.

These values stand out in the general overview because the zoom function condenses all report levels onto one page. Filters in the administration program can be used to hide certain master records, such as all employees who are on special leave. The merging function allows even data from different sources such as Excel, which are not recorded in the linked personnel system, to be included in the graphic display.

Using Flexible Display Options Ingentis org.manager offers many display options to fulfill the needs of different generations. Older PC-oriented generations should not be lost. All information can be displayed on the PC – therefore the software is compatible with all Microsoft Windows versions. To fit the needs of Gen Y and Gen Z, the information can be published as an HTML version in any Java Script-capable Web browser. Users do not need to install any software on their PC, since the data is provisioned via the network and so a Web link is all that’s required to access the charts.

An HTML-5 based technology, e.g., with a responsive design, can also be used to visualize the org charts and HR reports. In this case, the information can be provided from real-time data. Each type of device is recognized by the system, so that a smartphone or tablet-adapted resolution is made available automatically. “Gen Z is used to accessing information everywhere and at any time. Of course, the information has to be presented in an attractive, well-designed way,” said Marc Rudolph, software development consultant at Ingentis.

“Gen Z is used to accessing information everywhere and at any time. Of course, the information has to be presented in an attractive, well-designed way,” said Marc Rudolph at Ingentis

Figure 2. View of the average age.

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Showing Org Charts on the App For showing org charts on the Apple iPad, Ingentis org.manager [mobile] is provided (see Figure 3).

of the personnel and organization structure needs to be retained. Frequently, the data is available to achieve this, but there is no way to display the data in a structured manner since the data may be captured by different systems. One way of combining this information is a “potential performance grid.” This grid can be directly visualized in the organization chart. The matrix displays performance, as well as the development potential of individual employees. Furthermore, additional employee and performance details, such as absences, utilized vacation time, or overtime can be shown.

Visualizing Talents and Skills Figure 3. View of HR reports on the tablet.

In addition to organizational units, employees and positions, details on individual employees, such as their telephone number, email address, and department are displayed. Information can be quickly and easily retrieved using the search function. This means that users always have a complete telephone book and employee directory at their fingertips. The user simply touches an item in the search hit list to display the individual in the organizational chart. In personnel reports it is also possible to graphically portray data in diagrams, such as gender distribution or vacant positions. The user touches the position box to get an employee’s average absences or vacation time taken.

Identifying Employees with the Greatest Potential For an active and formative HR function with the goal of adding value to the company, the following questions should be answered: Which employees have the greatest development potential? Which employees possess particular expertise and contribute significantly to the success of the company?

High-performers who have development needs should be identified, and an overview

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Another interesting area of concern for HR professionals is managing talents and skills.

Human resources data has to be provided efficiently and accurately to give value to the customer and the company. Of course, the need for talent also depends on HR strategy.

If a company plans, for example, to expand or enter new markets, its demand for talented employees might rise. In this case, the visualization of talents and skills within the org chart could be a good basis for planning.

The generations mentioned above differentiate in talents and skills. For example, Gen Z employees are the largest demographic group using social networking. Companies can profit from these generation-based characteristics. With Ingentis org.manager, employees with special skills can be identified and highlighted in the org chart. All employees with the skill “social networking” are shown in the org chart by displaying the skill below their name. Using the search function all employees with this skill can be found. To recognize the talents of employees belonging to a particular age decade, e.g., Gen Z, defined as all employees born in 1995 and later, can be marked blue in the org chart (see Figure 4). Similarly, but using the opposite logic, talent gaps can be identified. The only requirement is that all the information has to be stored in the linked data system.

Figure 4. Gen Z with Skill “Social Networking” Marked Blue in the Org Chart.

Displaying Successors of Exiting Employees The eventual departure of employees is a fact that has to be considered in every HR strategy, especially when a company employs older generations who may be retiring in the near term. Additionally, the risk of losing key employees of younger generations needs to be analyzed. Is there a danger of them leaving the company? One option is to depict the fluctuation risk in the organization chart by using color to highlight employees or positions with a high “risk of flight” potential. At the same time, successor planning should be initiated to find a timely replacement for employees who are likely to leave. Appropriate successors can be directly displayed in the organization chart to help with succession planning. The system can also display the availability of appropriate successors.

Summary

About the Author

To review, globalization and workforce diversity will play a key role in the development of future technologies. Tech-savvy employees, like Gen Y and Z, prefer flexible and responsive HR solutions – solutions that provide “information everywhere, at any time and at any digital touch point,” making HR information available to them on-demand.

Christine König was born in 1987 (Generation Y). She is responsible for Public Relations and Online Marketing at the German house of HR-add-ons, Ingentis, since 2013. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Business Economics and a master’s degree in Marketing at the German university “Friedrich-Alexander-Universität”. In her bachelor thesis she delved into customer retention in the sector of motor vehicle insurance.

The thesis was awarded by the North-Bavarian insurance institute with the “Forum V-Preis 2010”. Finally, in her master thesis she dealt with the influence of emotions on consumer behavior.

She can be reached at christine.koenig@ingentis.com.

For more information about Ingentis visit www. ingentis.com.

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2015 Talent Management/Workforce Planning Buyers Guide The 2015 Talent Management/Workforce Planning 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 2015 purchasing decisions.

Product Categories

Applicant Tracking

Paid Advertising

Job Posting

Ceridian

Ceridian

Career Site Hosting

Ceridian

Compensation

Resume Parsing & Processing

Ceridian

Onboarding

Ceridian

Ceridian

Performance Management

DECUSOFT

Ceridian

Ceridian

Consulting/Analytics

WorkForce Software

Integration

Ceridian

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Requisition Management

Ceridian

Sourcing

Talent Acquisition

Workforce Management & Planning

Ceridian Ingentis WorkForce Software

2015 Talent Management/Workforce Planning 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.

Ceridian 3311 E. Old Shakopee Road Minneapolis, MN 55425 Resource Center 800-729-7655 onesource@ceridian.com www.ceridian.com/IHRIM Ceridian is a global human capital management technology company serving over 25 million users in more than 50 countries. Our offering includes the award winning, cloud-based Dayforce HCM, Global Solutions, Small Business Payroll, and LifeWorks Employee Assistance and Wellness programs. Ceridian. Makes Work Life Better

Ingentis Raudtener Str.7 90475 Nuremberg Michael Grimm 800.477.1408 Michael.grimm@ingentis.com www.ingentis.com Ingentis org.manager is a software for organizational charting and visual HR controlling.

The tool is linked to leading HR systems and enables you to create and publish organizational charts within minutes. Furthermore, Ingentis org. manager empowers you to calculate personnel or corporate statistics and to deliver visual reporting through organizational charts. See ad on Back Cover

WorkForce Software

38705 Seven Mile Road Livonia, MI 48152 Sales Department 877-493-6723 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.

Decusoft 70 Hilltop Rd. Ste. 1003 Ramsey, NJ 07446 Karie Johnson 201-258-1414 201-785-0774 Karie.Johnson@Decusoft.com www.Decusoft.com You have an HCM software suite but you are managing compensation outside the system.

Now what? You need COMPOSE, 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. Not so suite but oh so right. See ad on Inside Front Cover.

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Wearable Tech

Hey Boss, What’s That Glow on Your Wrist?

By Michael Rudnick, Logical Design Solutions

This provides an at-aglance view of important information you want to be notified about. The author acknowledges that this is not about detailed analysis, but getting key data when it matters. If you want more, you are going to go to your phone or tablet on the road (or your computer in the office).That also means, IT needs to start thinking about a new screen size and a new paradigm on top of mobile, social and cloud

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Finally! With more hype than any product launch before it, iWatch has splashed down right into the deep end of the wearables pool, selling out in 30 minutes. And Apple is pushing hard with a massive marketing campaign targeting the technology as anything but … focusing on fashion and lifestyle rather than technology or feature/functionality.

Despite this, and visibility on the covers of the likes of Vogue and Cosmo, iWatch is an important interaction point with the Internet of Things (IoT), creating new, highly contextualized user experiences for users and disrupting many functions and industries. As Apple CEO Tim Cook said at launch, the device is “the most personal device we’ve ever made, allowing users to do things they never imagined.”

Consumers, particularly millennials, want it. Demand is projected to be strong – 33 million units worldwide in 2015, growing 35% annually.1 With 1 in 5 American adults already owning some type of wearable, overall adoption rates are running parallel to, and could even surpass, tablets.2 But wearables face many challenges when translating consumer value into useful contexts for employees within the enterprise – just as the deployment and use of smartphones (more specifically, mobile enterprise apps) have struggled inside the enterprise despite their ubiquity in the consumer space (e.g., 98% of Facebook’s revenue growth comes from mobile).

Think about it: large, global organizations are still hard pressed to deliver mobile experiences.

And those that do are often a year or more behind consumer apps – much less up to today’s consumergrade standards – not to mention solving significant challenges of enterprise security and confidentiality.

The iWatch is but one of many types and brands of smartwatches, and the smartwatch is but one of

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“Customer expectations have changed.

They used to be more understanding if certain features weren’t part of your mobile app, but now they expect to do whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want to” Andres Wolberg-Stok Global Head of Emerging Platforms & Services, Citigroup many types of wearables. Samsung, Motorola, Intel and even TAG Heuer have launched smartwatches, and exercise trackers from FitBit, Jawbone and Garmin have been around for quite a while (smartwatches lead the wearables product category with 59% of device shipments this year, projected to reach 70% by 2019).

Beyond the smartwatch, the wearable device market is currently much more diverse than most imagine – sensors and powerful processing power are being embedded in many wearable devices from clothing to jewelry to eyeglasses to sneakers. And the competitive landscape for smartwatches is going to be fierce.

The race to win smartwatch market share is the top priority – which is why Apple has made the iWatch tightly integrated (some say, co-dependent) with the iPhone, building on and defending a massive Apple ecosystem. And since Apple sold more iWatches in an hour than Android smartwatches were sold in the past year, Apple’s brand will lead the way as it had done in other categories such as smartphones and tablets.

To get wearables right for employees, and particularly for the HR function, enterprises need to undertake a deep and thoughtful level of planning and coordination between HR, business leaders and IT. This proliferation of iWatch will change user expectations around immediacy of informa-

Source: PwC The Wearable Future, Oct 2014

tion and the nature of that information, and be a catalyst for innovation. There’s no question that the employee digital experience will need to provide an optimized “journey” across multiple platforms and devices, creating a single fluid user experience – many of which will be “mobilefirst” such as Uber. Employees will want to start a micro-performance review on their laptop, continue working on a tablet while traveling, and then review and submit from their iWatch. Or vice versa! “The (user) experience needs to be seamless regardless of point of entry,” says Kedar Deshpande, head of Mobile, at Zappos. “We approach mobile customer experience as just customer experience, not differentiating it, because mobile is simply who we are.”

All too often enterprises end up playing catchup simply because of how employees use mobile and wearables in their non-work related life. For example, one-third of shoppers use mobile exclusively, and more than half consider mobile the most important resource in the purchase decision process.3 Yet enterprise strategies still relegate mobile to second-class citizen status.

To move mobile and wearables up the prioritization ladder, with serious consideration for mobile-first or wearable first solutions – organizations will need to get their strategic house in order and focus carefully on aligning business needs with the new experiences. Accomplishing this will require much clearer governance that encourages and enables collaborative relationships of how enterprise channels and solutions are managed in order to adapt to changes in user needs and behavior. It’s not just a matter of understanding the user needs and preferences, but the ability for an organization to plan and manage that experience

across the multiple devices and channels.

Apple’s recent partnership with IBM lays the groundwork for a substantial influx of use cases that offer new ways of working, collaborating and executing common workbased tasks. Wearables for business will also need to deliver more robust functionality to become mainstream. And wearables also have the distinction of being ever more sensitive to privacy-oriented concerns than other devices.

Treating mobile and wearable as variations of the desktop results in a fragmented user experience.

The employee experience, especially within HR, has long been a fragmented set of traditional and digital touch points, most not involving mobile – or, at best, sub-optimized PwC Survey of 1,000 Consumers for mobile. When employees jump between applications, channels, and devices – especially mobile devices – it almost always leads to an inconsistent experience, resulting in a call to the HR service center, higher support costs, lower productivity, and reduced user satisfaction.

Mobile and wearables play two Endnotes roles. While they currently represent 1 Forrester Enterprise Wearables, 12/11/14. a small part of the user experience, 2 Laura Schooler, “Wearable Technology Future which remains heavily dependent upon is Ripe for Growth – Most Notably among the desktop, they are quickly emergMillennials,” PwC US, PwC. ing as the “platform” of choice as users 3 move seamlessly between the phone, Greg Sterling, “Study: More Than 30 Percent of Consumers ‘Mobile Only.’” MarketingLand, 3 tablet and watch. Yet many companies June 2014. continue to treat anything other than the desktop browser as just another channel, a technology platform, or a portable version of the Web. Meanwhile, consumer expectations are evolving to demand dedicated mobile experiences that go beyond mobile-optimized, “responsive-designed” websites, to content written for the smaller screen, and basic mobile apps.

Such incomplete or subpar mobile experiences negatively impact the mobile user journey or, at the very least, frustrate users.

So while companies are struggling to keep up, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What lies below the water isn’t just the need for a mobile-ready and wearable-ready employee experience – which is just the ticket for entry in the lifeAbout the Author boat.

Michael Rudnick is an editor of Enterprises will need to think, WSR and vice president at strategize and invest in mobile-first Logical Design Solutions. He is and mobile-only experiences. The idea an industry pioneer and of mobile-only design – playing out innovator with more than 20 across multiple mobile devices (phone, years of experience creating, growing and watch, tablet) is a real game-changer, leading large global professional service but an approach that most organipractices, enterprise and HR software product strategy, and startups. When he’s not online or on zations have not yet even begun to a plane, he’s on the water – managing “LISOT,” address. the largest private youth sailing team in the U.S., or racing his own boat. He can be reached at: michael.rudnick@gmail.com.

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Tech Notes

Is it time for SaaS 2.0?

Yes – exclamation mark, exclamation mark…

By Joe Almodovar, AT Kearney

In the fall of 2014, I attended the HR Tech Conference in Las Vegas, where I had the opportunity to view the latest offerings in the world of HR technology. Once again I walked away with disappointment that SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) has not taken the next step in its life cycle, which is to provide all the current (and future!) functionality along with the ability to support some level of customization. The inability to support unique and sometimes critical business processes and/or other customer internal systems via customization is, in my opinion, a major gap in today’s SaaS, which I will refer to as S1.0.

This major gap prevents SaaS, as an offering, from evolving to what I will refer to as SaaS 2.0 or S2.0; an off-premise SaaS solution maintained by the vendor on a common code line, who is responsible for future upgrades and feature releases, provides user The inability to support configuration capabilities, and some unique and sometimes level of customization.

Today’s SaaS boasts of its ability critical business processes and/or other customer to support many different companies and industries on one common internal systems via code line via robust configuration customization is, in my capabilities. It’s clear that S1.0 has opinion, a major gap in made great strides in providing the today’s SaaS . . . customer with fairly easy graphical user interfaces (GUI) designed to configure their SaaS system with little to no support from their IT group. I have implemented three SaaS solutions over the past eight years, the most recent about two years ago. The configuration features and capabilities have vastly improved over that period of time, and have placed a great deal of power in the hands of the functional user. I suggest

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that it also has placed a great deal of responsibility on the shoulders of the functional user and can be quite daunting at times, but that is a discussion for another day. While configuration capabilities in S1.0 are strong they do not address the need for many firms to support unique and/or critical business processes, which can only be solved by customization.

From my experience as a practitioner and former consultant, I have found that firms, especially those that are global, have unique and/or critical business processes that cannot be addressed via configuration alone. Many times these firms are unwilling culturally and/or unable financially to change their unique processes. In addition, the business usually mandates that its systems support these important business processes frequently in real-time, 24 x 7.

Not having conducted any research on the matter, I suspect that many firms that fully migrate to S1.0 solutions are either migrating from a non-core ERP system, may operate in a domestic or limited global market, can culturally execute the required change management, are recently founded and do not have deeply entrenched processes that are difficult to change, and/ or are maintaining these unique processes outside of their S1.0 solution. In the past as I have considered implementing various S1.0 offerings, I contemplated supporting our unique processes and custom systems outside the SaaS system via an on-premise solution(s), however that would negate some of the cost savings promised by S1.0. In our conversations over the past several years

with vendors such as Oracle, Workday, and SuccessFactors (now SAP) it was clear to them and us that configuration alone could not meet our most critical needs, and only some level of customization would provide the final bridge needed to move to a total SaaS solution. S2.0 can be that bridge required by many firms to make the final and complete transition to SaaS. S2.0 must provide more than the custom user fields offered today by the majority of SaaS vendors, it must also offer the customer the ability to add and maintain some level of logic/code that will support unique processes, while continuing to offer the current benefits of S1.0. While custom fields are beneficial, they alone cannot support critical processes. For example, in our current PeopleSoft environment we have added an important field to a major HR transaction screen that behaves differently for the end user based on the entered transaction code.

Carrying this same requirement to a S1.0 environment would result in being able to add the custom field to a screen, but the logic required to have it behave differently could not be added, rendering the critical field unusable for the business. I envision S2.0 being able to accommodate the custom field and the logic mentioned above. I don’t believe S2.0 requires extensive customization capabilities, but enough to provide some

basic level of support for key critical processes. I offer that some firms may be willing to pay a small added annual premium to have a customization feature available.

What technical solution can make that happen? I will leave that question to more informed technical people. Fundamentally, however, the S2.0 must offer to the end user the ability to run some limited form of executable code; at the vendor database level or dare I say it… at the customer’s local server level. I firmly believe SaaS 2.0 can become a reality and the first SaaS vendor that provides SaaS 2.0 to the market will have a substantial competitive advantage that other vendors will need to mimic, or quickly find themselves in the vendor graveyard.

Making customization available in the SaaS construct will significantly close a gap that prevents many firms from About the Author taking that last giant leap into the Joe Almodovar is senior director SaaS arena. Until S 2.0 is availof Global HRIS, Payroll, and able, we will be constrained by the Knowledge systems for AT limitations of S1.0 and its inability Kearney, a global management consulting firm. He has been to support key customer business both a practitioner and a consultant, and has processes. Let’s hope that I have 25-plus years of experience in the field. A few of better news next year after the HR his past employers are Sears, Unisys, Kraft Foods, Tech conference. and the Hunter Group (now Sierra Cedar). He has implemented ERP, SaaS, and payroll systems on both a domestic and global scale. He has also presented at various IHRIM conferences, where recently he co-presented “SaaS in the Trenches, Real World Experiences.” He can be reached at Joe.Almodovar@atkearney.com.

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Executive Interview WSR: Welcome to this interview for Workforce Solutions Review featuring Jonathan Ferrar from IBM to speak about the future he’s expecting to see in the HR technology world. Thanks for joining us, Jonathan.

Jonathan Ferrar Interview conducted by Shawn Fitzgerald, WSR co-managing editor.

Jonathan: Thank you. Good to be here.

WSR: As we get started, why don’t you share your background with our readers?

Jonathan: Sure. I have been an HR professional for about 20 years working for multinationals in a variety of HR executive management roles in the areas of recruitment, learning, generalist, and M&A. In 2010, I took a global leadership role at IBM, focused on workforce analytics and HR strategy. In the last two years, I’ve taken an external client-facing role in IBM, focused on workforce solutions, human capital solutions using cloud technology, and behavioral science to help clients deliver value through technology and analytic solutions.

WSR: As you reflect on the progress of HR technology over the past 10 years, what trends have you seen, and which ones are still around?

Jonathan: Ten years is a long time in technology, and if you look back we find that many things that exist in today’s life weren’t around 10 years ago, such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, email, Instagram, the iPod, the iPhone. That is the consumer angle, but since all employees are consumers as well, it gives us an indication of some of the HR technology trends. In the HR world, there has been a trend towards centralization of technology in HR processes. That followed with outsourcing of some of those functions.

Then we entered into an era where social technology was prevalent in the workplace, called enterprise social networks, and we saw

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sharing for collaboration, for networking, and for understanding profiles, expertise, and skills. Organizations began to shift away from big, on-premise, process-driven technologies into things that would be more collaborative and socially-led, but still typically still onpremise.

Then the trend over the last three or four years has been movement to cloud technology, lowering the price point, increasing the user interface, and changing from customization of everything in HR. Cloud technology helps HR enable those trends through the subscription model and has driven employees to act like consumers. Employees are now demanding things like mobile technologies and improved user interfaces, on any device, so that now HR processes are fundamentally using technology to engage the employee in the same ways that consumer technologies are getting consumers to interact with products and services in the external world.

HR technology has really gone from, shall we say, massive centralization of companyled technologies to a high-end user interface, with mobile technologies that are delivered by the cloud now to allow the employees a much more user-centric style of interaction. That is driving HR processes to look much more at the employee interaction with the task, whether that’s learning in a training course, reviewing some new policy or process, recruiting new talent, etc., but whatever it is, it’s a very different experience today than 10 years ago.

WSR: As you think about the next 5 or 10 years, how do you think HR technology will evolve?

Jonathan: I believe we will continue to see expansion of the consumer technology trends influence on employee technology with big impacts on how HR looks in the future.

Let’s take wearables like the Fitbit. Today in the consumer world they are used by health conscious people, health advisors, gyms, etc.

In the HR space, that consumer trend could lead to a wearable in the workplace that moni-

tors our health and might help prevent health issues or recommend health benefits. And now we have smart watches with access to the Internet. So, could social collaboration in the workplace actually lead us to wearing devices that allow us to be connected to the Internet at all times?

Another future trend is sensors. Sensors have been used to monitor a variety of things.

In the workplace, they have been used to monitor foot traffic in buildings that allow for real estate management. In terms of the workplace, what if a sensor could tell who of your top 50 employees are in the office, and therefore you can identify where the free seats are and which of those top employees are available for you to interact with in person. You can get connected immediately.

Perhaps the experience of the virtual meeting will evolve with sensors and hologram technology can create a more straightforward virtual team room, virtual meeting room, or virtual interview. This could provide a much more realistic, almost a holographic interaction, and therefore it could take interviews away from the real-time to a virtual, holographic type of interview experience. That could change the way in which recruitment happens.

Next, let’s talk about neuroscience.

Imagine the way in which you could use brain monitoring and neuroscience to look at assessment of leaders. That could change leadership development or succession planning. You could also use neuroscience to look at real-time assessment of anxiety in decision-making, anxiety in judgment, or before performance conversations.

Then there is the trend of biodata. We can use a fingerprint now to access the Internet on a computer or on a tablet. A sensor in the fingerprint scanner could also read your pulse rate that could give an indication of an employee’s engagement in the workplace.

Imagine though if you combined a biodata sensor of your fingerprint and a pulse rate to provide your employee with your happiness quotient in real-time or the actual level of anxiety, engagement, or some other biological signal that could indicate something of use in an HR product.

There are just a number of things that I think will come in the next 10 years. I

certainly think they’ll be probably mainstream in a few years’ time.

WSR: Jonathan, can you give us your thinking on gamification and where it’s going in the workplace?

Jonathan: Gamification has probably been around for 30 years or so in the actual gaming industry. As games have become much more sophisticated and are now used in social networks, people are now making friends in the virtual world and using games to interact with those people. Put that interaction into the workplace, and we could use gamification to bring people into a virtual world for the purpose of collaboration and meetings or for learning and development. The employee could physically go into a virtual world and “play games,” but the games aren’t on a video console, they’re games that allow people to interact in a virtual world around real scenarios for learning and development.

If we apply gamification to recruitment, we’re already doing some of that with interviewing, but in the future, you could also present an interview scenario in a created virtual workplace. Rather than giving a candidate a hypothetical scenario, you could actually present questions or exercises in your virtual, potential workplace. So, you’re effectively playing out a scenario that you will play out if you got offered the job in the real world.

WSR: What do you think are some of the technologies that organizations aren’t using that they should be using?

Jonathan: The big issue in the last four years or so has been the shift to cloud technology, but still, there are many companies that are using hybrid solutions; some of its applications are in cloud technology, and some of its applications are still on-premise, inhouse built systems.

Resource or money has caused the move to less expensive versions of technology in the cloud, but I don’t think that’s really what’s shifting people to cloud. It is the user experience that’s really shifting people to cloud, and www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • May 2015

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that user experience cannot be replicated in onpremise systems, frankly just because of money and sheer development time scale.

The shift to cloud is going to accelerate, and I think the shift to cloud for analytics is going to accelerate even quicker, which means that your data is going to be hosted by other companies, not yourself. As companies get more comfortable with that idea, the privacy and the security aspects are going to be much tighter. The way in which HR departments then utilize analytics to make decisions, and that’s not just sheer demographic analytics, but could be social analytics around the use of collaboration systems. All of these things are going to be much more readily available as soon as more applications in a workplace move to the cloud and more data is therefore in the cloud. This allows managers the ability to make decisions quickly because of the analytic platforms that allow for analysis of the entire human and personnel data stored in these cloud platforms.

WSR: Any other new technologies that organizations should be adopting?

Jonathan: Cognitive technologies are coming along and machine learning and robots have started coming into discussions, as well. Again led by the consumer market there are drones, but I wonder if there will be a About Jonathan Ferrar time in the next 10 to 15 years Jonathan Ferrar leads the Analytics practice for IBM when robots in the workplace Smarter Workforce. He focuses his time helping HR may actually be prevalent to do clients improve business performance through the fairly rudimentary administraapplication of people related analytics solutions. In this role, he leads a team of over 100 consultants, tive tasks. behavioural psychologists and product managers There will be a blur between to deliver the full range of IBM’s analytics, data, what humans do in the workconsulting and workforce science solutions. These place and what technology does include employee engagement surveys, behavioural and skills assessments, predictive and cognitive in the workplace. Will we see a analytics solutions and consulting services. time where people and robots Ferrar has been with IBM since 2000. He holds a work side by side doing different Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts degree from style of tasks? Might we be in an the University of Cambridge, UK. In addition to his office environment where each IBM responsibilities, he is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in the of us has a robot on our desk UK and regularly speaks at external events. He is and we will ask it questions? Or based in New York but splits his time between the the robot listens to what we’re UK and U.S. He can be found on Twitter @jaferrar and LinkedIn.

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saying or typing and it suggests the next most important task that we should accomplish? Or the robot suggests leadership development or management development as we’re on the job?

We could have a personal robot assistant sitting next to us saying, “You did that well,” “You didn’t do that well”? I can see that in the next 15 or 20 years and that really shifts the boundaries of what humans and what technology does in HR. I just hope that I get a nice robot that’s very supportive.

WSR: Jonathan, any final thoughts you’d like to share with our readers?

Jonathan: Whilst some of the futuristic ideas are very new and can be scary, let’s bring it back to today. In today’s world, we are consumers. We do like our smartphones. We do like the ease of access in applications. In the near future, the next two to three years, we are going to see the continued proliferation of HR cloud and HR processes being underpinned by HR cloud technologies. That is going to change the employee user experience and it changes the way in which we might undertake some fairly routine things, like connecting to colleagues, selecting our benefits at work, recruiting staff, and finding top talent in the organization. This is going to make our work experience so much more pleasant and interesting and it means that HR professionals become much more business advisors because they’re not focused on managing these processes. The technology will literally replace the process and allow the HR organization to actually focus on the risk management, the value, the benefit, the employee collaboration, etc., and the things that are important in the workplace.

As a final comment, think about how you interact with your smartphone and how pleasurable that is and how different that was seven or eight years ago, and that’s where we’re going to get to from an HR point of view in the next three to five-years’ time.

Product Review

Leveraging Big Data to Make Smarter Personnel Decisions

By Genevieve Graves and Sally Vosicher, hiQ Labs “Big Data” is a hot topic these days, but what does it really mean for business?

As computer technology reaches into every corner of our 21st century society and workplace, it generates – almost as a by-product – vast swathes of digital information. This includes both the content that is intentionally stored or transmitted and the meta-data that log all digital traffic and transactions. In the time it takes to read this paragraph, the Internet will have seen 2.5 million Google searches, 17 million emails sent, and 605,122 YouTube videos posted.

Ingesting this fire hose of information is a daunting task, but it provides an enormous opportunity for insight. As more data becomes available, forward-thinking human resources professionals are recognizing the value and applying this to the field of HR in the form of people analytics.

In contrast to traditional HR business intelligence, people analytics focuses on gaining insight from much larger sets of data. The richness and depth of the data now available make it possible to uncover patterns that would not otherwise be visible. Furthermore, these patterns can be used to project forward into the future and make robust predictions, rather than just exploring correlations in the past. These predictive insights can be very powerful drivers of growth, allowing companies to make strategic decisions that are proactive, not reactive. Now more than ever, companies are beginning to realize how valuable people analytics can be to their bottom line. hiQ Labs, based out of San Francisco, has developed a solution to address workplace attrition. The hiQ technology platform can successfully predict which employees are

most likely to leave their jobs, months ahead of the traditional two weeks’ notice. This gives employers a critical time window in which to make strategic decisions that can save valuable employees before they walk out the door. In addition, hiQ Labs recently announced a smart recruiting product that automatically sifts through résumés to find the most ideal candidates for a particular role.

A small number of forward-thinking companies have begun to build people analytics teams in order to make the most of their internal HR data. However, the vast majority are not yet off the starting blocks. hiQ Labs saw an opportunity to bring powerful and sophisticated predictive modeling to the entire business world by creating Software-as-a-Service products to fulfill this need in companies that are not yet ready or do not have the A small number of forwardresources to build such teams internally. thinking companies have Moreover, even begun to build people sophisticated in-house teams analytics teams in order are typically focused on internal HR data. The problem to make the most of their is that, in the modern world, internal HR data. a huge fraction of the relevant data – in fact, most of the information that recruiters use to recruit people out of competitor organizations – is not sitting inside an HR information system; it is out there on the Web. “When people think about the drivers of employee turnover, they typically consider things that make people unhappy with their jobs: a bad manager, low company morale, or a long commute,” according to Genevieve Graves, chief data scientist, hiQ Labs. “At hiQ, we think of these things as push factors that help drive turnover. But

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now, particularly in competitive labor pools, recruiters are reaching into organizations to recruit passive candidates, who may not even be looking. An employee with soughtafter skills or a high-profile position may get multiple messages a week with offers of new opportunities. We call these pull factors, and they are critical drivers of turnover in modern workplace. Internal The U.S. Bureau of Labor the company data may tell you a lot Statistics has found about push factors, but the best that the U.S. voluntary pull factors come from public turnover rate is 23.4 data on the Web – in part because that’s exactly what recruiters are percent annually. using to target candidates.” hiQ Labs uses data from the Web, in combination with internal HR data, to understand the full landscape of factors affecting employee attrition. This enables them to build predictive models that can accurately identify the employees with the highest turnover risk.

Customers use this information in a variety of ways. At the individual level, predictions can be used to drive meaningful, timely conversations with valued at-risk employees, in order to make the necessary adjustments to keep them. They can also be used at the aggregate level to identify at-risk departments or skillsets, drive long-term workforce planning, or motivate compensation decisions and engagement programs.

About the Authors Genevieve Graves received her Ph.D. in Astrophysics from UC Santa Cruz, after which she spent a number of years as a post-doctoral research fellow, first at UC Berkeley’s Miller Institute and later at Princeton. In early 2014, she left academia to join an early-phase start-up, hiQ Labs, as their chief data scientist. Starting from nothing but a good idea, Graves built a data science program at hiQ that has successfully launched its first product, a tool for predicting employee turnover, and delivered it to customers that include multiple Fortune 500 companies. hiQ Labs has recently announced its second product, a predictive employee selection tool.

Sally Vosicher is a seasoned public relations and marketing specialist with a background in human resources. She began her career in HR at Evolve Software in San Francisco. She transitioned to Marketing and Public Relations when joining Aon Consulting, where she spent a number of years managing the Marketing/ Communications efforts for the western region. After receiving her MBA from Pepperdine University, she worked on several independent startup projects before joining hiQ Labs. She can be reached at sally.vosicher@hiqlabs.com.

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Retaining talent is a critical concern for companies today. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has found that the U.S. voluntary turnover rate is 23.4 percent annually. It is estimated that replacing an employee costs a business one-half to five times the employee’s annual salary.

For example, if 25 percent of a business’ workforce leaves, and the average yearly pay is $35,000, it could cost a 100-person firm between $438,000 and 4 million annually to replace the employees. According to a Harris Interactive Poll, 74 percent of people would consider finding a new job today, and 35 percent of employees quit their jobs within the first six months. Additionally, the residual effects from losing a senior member of the organization can be immense, because leaders often take their best people with them. In many knowledge-worker roles, the project-specific knowledge and institutional memory that walk out the door with that employee cannot be replaced, even if the basic skillset can.

There is no question that HR is moving in a data-driven direction, and harnessing the power of people analytics can empower your company to make fact-based workforce decisions. One major concern facing many companies today is the challenge of containing costs while developing a highperforming workforce. Companies that can sift through and expertly analyze big data to gather information about their workforce will, ultimately, gain a competitive advantage over others. By implementing hiQ Labs Control Center, your company can retain its greatest asset – high performing employees – while minimizing the expense of finding replacements.

Big data means thinking big, and capitalizing on the insights available within the data. Applying the power and tools of hiQ Labs’ Control Center to your company’s workforce can lead to a real business impact in your organization. You can use it to achieve higher rates of talent retention and to better prepare for turnover. Bringing together various data sources to understand your people will ultimately help make better workforce decisions.

The Back Story

A Day in the Life at Work: 2020

By Katherine Jones, Bersin by Deloitte You are late for work! Racing out of the house, your wrist device automatically lowers your thermostat, turns off all the lights and activates your security system. Your driverless vehicle is waiting to take you to your office, once archaically dubbed the “office of the future.”

The same wrist device—or perhaps the cuff of your sleeve –admits you to your building, clocks you in if applicable – and will track your whereabouts during the work day – not for stalking purposes, but so your peers know where in the work complex you are ( see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Your Potential Workplace of the FutureSource: Bersin by Deloitte. 2015.

The workplace has become a totally untethered environment as walls and windows become active “screens” and those oldfashioned keyboards, left over from desktop computer days, are replaced by voice activation, all accepting natural language directives and queries. Your personal device tells you your agenda but more importantly, tells you what your business goal is for the day, (whether it involves quality of food prepared in a restaurant, number of spotless rooms in a hotel, or progress in creating a major RFI with your teammates, as examples). Because the computing system in use knows you and your position, knows your teammates and knows what you are working on, the applications you use are intuitive, personalized and, although

very sophisticated, easy to use. You are there to do your job, not fail miserably with complex technology.

By mid-morning, you look at your wrist device – checking on Leo, your Bassett hound at home—a dog selected for you by computer matching for your gait and walking speed (your partner has a Vizsla, reflecting a much faster pace than yours…); the automated feed and water device in your kitchen reflects his normal feeding time and you tell Leo he is in fact a very good boy for not tipping over the garbage, which you ascertain by a quick scan of your kitchen via the connected home monitoring device that displays in your mobile device.

Back to work! Because your goals are presented to you daily, you know not only what is expected of you, but also what level of quality is expected. As you meet with teammates and converse with your global counterparts, biometric readings let you and the others know the tone and tenor of the conversations, scored to demonstrate the level of what used to be called “engagement” in the task at hand.

This application also alerts you if a colleague is troubled or overly stressed – so you can respond more appropriately.

Likewise, in a check-in session with your manager, you find she wants to have a “stay” interview, as she sees in her predictive app on her mobile device that while your engagement level codes remain high, it has been some time since you’ve had a bonus; she sees you as a high performer – confirmed by her performance predictor, and she doesn’t want you to get restless and leave the company. Furthermore, at a manager’s meeting, you have been discussed as a successor in two different roles—she wants to discuss career options with you and allow you to design a path to the career opportunity of your choice. Justin-time, just-enough learning nuggets – often via video – are available so you can review the pre-reqs for either of these next-step positions. You look at one now, again on your www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • May 2015

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mobile device. Hmmm…that position in the other division does look attractive. The application shows the delta between you and those successful in that role – looks doable and interesting – definitely something to consider.

You never would have even thought about it had it not been for your manager, despite a career-related pop-up from your organization that appears on your refrigerator screen when you open it in the morning…easy to ignore before coffee. Meanwhile, your manager reviews your goals and progress, and in a one-touch process approves a spot bonus for you; it goes right into your spending card—talk about immediate gratification!

You meet with your global team on your project—using a face-to-face communications program with shared “virtual whiteboards” where notes and comments written by any team member are visible to all. They are digitally saved, of course, and the synthesized summary is sent to each individual participant. The efficiency and ease of communicating and getting work done makes you feel good—no technology overwhelm here!

Intuitive business software, transparent to your entire team, allows your team to study then make decisions on future supply chain sourcing issues, the topic of your meeting. Because you are empowered to act on decisions without multiple layers of control (that was “so 2015”), you can make decisions and put them into play immediately.

About the Author Dr. Katherine Jones is a vice At the close of the meeting, president, focusing on human capital teammates rate their feelings – of management (HCM) technology accomplishment, satisfaction, research, at Bersin by Deloitte, how the meeting matched their Deloitte Consulting LLP. She analyzes expectations, and the degree of the underlying technologies and services that support the management of a global workforce, including HR, progress made. Awesome —the hiring and performance management and workforce contingent workers, the home planning. Jones is a veteran in enterprise workforce office participants and the wideand talent management applications and a recognized spread group all feel their goals expert in cloud computing. Prior to joining Bersin by Deloitte, she was a research director at the Aberdeen for the time spent were met. A Group for eight years where she established quick “headline” goes to your Aberdeen’s HCM practice, focusing on research and manager with a thumbs-up – she consulting services in HR, talent acquisition, workforce pops a smiley face to the group as management, ERP and mid-market companies. Later, she was the director of Marketing for NetSuite Inc., a a whole; but the positive notificloud-based ERP company. She has written on many cation is automatically noted in areas of talent management, technology and business each member’s folio; the progress practices. With over 300 works published to date, she on the project is also automatiis also a frequent speaker in the U.S. and abroad. Prior to a high-technology career, Jones was a university cally recorded and saved, showdean, involved in academic administration, research ing up on the project tracker. She and teaching. She has a master’s degree and a also sees an assessment of your doctorate from Cornell University. She can be reached collaborative skills in addition at kathjones@deloitte.com.

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to the business accomplishments derived from your meeting. This creates an automatic prompt for her and her manager—(good skills for promotion!), linked to a succession plan for a colleague whose datasets indicate he is likely to leave the company.

Your wrist device prompts you to a “body break” – part of your company’s fitness incentive plan. You decide to run on the course outside the structures you are working in, knowing that your profile will keep track of your record automatically – allowing a long term look at progress toward a healthier you.

Corporate incentives in terms of both spendable points and prizes prove a motivator, as well as the waistline inches lost. Your voice messaging system leaves a text/voice message for your friend who will meet you for your run. Your devices keep a running tally of your profile and your goals, your distances and suggestions for improvement, which are maintained for comparison for next time – all private to you of course.

You feel good – that run allows you to adopt the slower pace Leo will require when you arrive home.

Back From the Future

Some see the world of work in the future as a world of robots; instead we see a world where technology has optimized the abilities of people to do those things that people are uniquely qualified to do. Rather than a technocratic “big brother” environment, technology in the future should allow the mundane, reiterative, and sometimes “mindless” tasks that often frustrate the workers of 2015 to be accomplished automatically – clock-ins and time tracking and reporting; all automatic. Punitive performance management is replaced by ongoing optimization of the individual’s talents. The focus in the future world of work—is work itself: the achievement of organization goals as efficiently and expeditiously as possible, using technology but not driven by technology. Those robots?

Manual manufacturing processes will benefit from the continual advance of automation – that is where the robots likely are. By 2020, however, the bulk of the archaic industrial age processes created and adhered to from factory floor days are replaced by business processes that advance the abilities of people to achieve and thrive in the workplace.

2015 education technology community

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