WSR September 2016

September 2016

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

IHRIM.ORG

The Future of Human Capital Management Technology

See the HR Outsourcing Buyer’s Guide on Page 24

Contents

Volume 7, Number 5 • September 2016

features HR Outsourcing Buyer’s Guide

Page 24

columns From the Editors

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By Scott Bolman, Roy Altman and Michael Rudnick

Executive Interview

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Tina Marron-Partridge, the worldwide leader for IBM’s extensivepeople solutions and services practice — Talent and Engagement

From Our Advisors

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By John Sumser, HR Examiner

What is next after Cloud Delivery?

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There is new technology emerging that will take cloud delivery in a broader direction than just delivering HR business applications. The new technology environment will co-exist with the current legacy products, and we can expect to see HR take advantage of this relatively new and innovative mode.

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Product Focus: pymetrics

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By Darshana Narayanan, Ph.D., Avital Gertner-Samet, LL.B., Dr. Matthew Malter Cohen, and Dr. Friday Polli

Decision Support comes to HR: How Technology is enabling the Right Decisions about Your Workforce

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By Michael Housman, hiQ Labs HR leaders are realizing that the same technologies and tools that have been embraced in other parts of the organization are now being applied to make data-driven decisions about who to hire, how to onboard them, how to manage them, who will manage them, and how to retain them.

What is the Future of HCM Technology?

Product Focus: React Mobile

By Robb Monkman

By John Macy, HR Cloud Solutions

The Back Story

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By Dr. Katherine Jones, Mercer

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By Jeff Higgins, Human Capital Management Institute If the definition of HCM is the technology, infrastructure, and processes to enable organizations, via HR, to successfully manage people and talent, then how much is the changing nature of work impacting HCM technology development – or is it the other way around; technology is driving the changes in work?

Digital HR: The Business of People is fast-becoming the Business of Bytes 16

By Wes Wu, Ernst & Young, LLP We must recognize that the pace of technological innovation is so profound that those who have yet to embrace the advances of the past few years are now in a position to absolutely leapfrog what may have been leading edge just 18 months ago. How far and fast will HR move into the realm of the possible?

Armed with the facts and the possibilities, that’s a decision each company will need to make for itself.

Putting HR Technology into Perspective: The best thing to happen to HR Technology in the Future won’t be Technology

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By Susan Sanders, Spinderok Thousands of SaaS HR software solutions across many different categories have been launched like ships into the night, all promising to unlock the myriad business benefits that a fully engaged workforce offers.

However, reality is quite the contrary – simply implementing a new piece of software will not magically engage your employees.

Workforce Solutions Review (ISSN 2154-6975) is published bi-monthly for the International Association for Human Resource Information Management by Futura Publishing LLC, 12809 Shady Mountain Road, Leander, TX 78641.

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 • September 2016

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Volume 7, Number 5 • September 2016

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.

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

LISA ROWAN, Program Director, HR, Learning & Talent Strategies, IDC, Framingham, MA USA lrowan@idc.com

© 2016 All rights reserved

NAOMI LEE BLOOM, Managing Partner, Bloom & Wallace, Fort Myers, FL USA naomibloom@mindspring.com

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE

YVETTE CAMERON, Global Vice President Strategy, SuccessFactors, Littleton, CO Yvette.cameron@successfactors.com

Managing Editor SCOTT BOLMAN, Strategy and Analytics Practice, Sierra-Cedar bolmanscott@yahoo.com

Co-Managing Editor SHAWN FITZGERALD, Managing Director, Total Rewards and HR Technology, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Chicago, IL, USA shawn.fitzgerald@bcbsa.com

Associate Editors ROY ALTMAN, HRIS Manager - HR Analytics & Application Architecture at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY roy@peopleserv.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 ERIC LESSER, Research Director, IBM Institute for Business Value, Boston, MA USA elesser@us.ibm.com MICHAEL H. MARTIN, Partner, Aon Hewitt Consulting, Organization & HR Effectiveness, New York, NY michael.martin.6@aonhewitt.com BRUNO QUERENET, Head of HR Technology/HR Operations, Genentech Bruno.querenet@gmail.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 GARY DURBIN, Chief Technology Officer, SynchSource, Oakland, CA USA hacker@synchsource.com Dr. CHARLES H. FAY, Professor, School of Management & Labor Relations, Rutgers University, Highland Park, NJ USA cfay@smlr.rutgers.edu DR. URSULA CHRISTINA FELLBERG, Owner & Managing Director, UCF-StrategieBeraterin, Munich, Germany ucfell@mac.com ALSEN HSEIN, President,Take5 People Limited, Shanghai, PRC Alsen@take5people.com CARL C. HOFFMANN, Director, Human Capital Management & Performance LLC, Chapel Hill, NC USA cc_hoffmann@yahoo.com

LISA STERLING, Executive Vice President, Chief People Officer, Ceridian, Lincoln, NE USA, lisa.sterling@ceridian.com DR. DANIEL SULLIVAN, Professor of International Business, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware USA sullivad@lerner.udel.edu MARK SMITH, CEO, Chief Research Officer, and Founder of Ventana Research, San Ramon, CA USA mark.smith@ventanaresearch.com DAVE ULRICH, Professor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI USA dou@umich.edu DR. MARY YOUNG, Principal Researcher, Human Capital, The Conference Board, New York, NY USA mary.young@conference-board.org

IHRIM BOARD OF DIRECTORS Officers and Executive Committee JAMES PETTIT, HRIP, Chair SHAFIQ LOKHANDWALA, Vice Chair, Program Committee Chair, Strategic Alliances Lead GARY MORLOCK, CFO, Finance Committee Chair, Operations Committee

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

JOYCE BROWN, Board Secretary, Finance Committee, Program Committee, Education Committee Board Sponsor

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

KEVIN CARLSON, Past Chair, IHRIM Foundation Board, Membership Committee Board Sponsor, Executive Leadership Council Chair

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

Board Members

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

DAVE BINDA, Operations Committee, Toronto 2017 Conference Co-Chair

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

MICK COLLINS, Finance Committee, Program Committee, Vendor/Alliances Committee Board Sponsor, Marketing Board Sponsor

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

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

MARY ANN MCILRAITH, Program Committee, Marketing Advisor

BILL KUTIK, Technology Columnist, Human Resource Executive, Westport, CT USA bkutik@earthlink.net DAVID LUDLOW, Global VP, HCM Solutions, SAP, Palo Alto, CA David.ludlow@sap.com

PUBLISHING INFORMATION

MARK BENNETT, Oracle Corp., Redwood Shores, CA USA mark.bennett@oracle.com

MICHAEL RUDNICK, Managing Partner, Prescient Digital Media Michael.rudnick@gmail.com

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

RHONDA P. MARCUCCI, CPA, Consultant for GruppoMarcucci, Chicago, IL USA rhonda@gruppomarcucci-usa.com LEXY MARTIN, Independent Consultant/Researcher, Meadow Vista, CA Lexy.martin1@gmail.com

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STUART RUDNER, Toronto 2017 Co-Chair

TOM FAULKNER, Publisher, Futura Publishing LLC, Austin, TX USA, tomf@futurapublishing.com PATTY HUBER, Advertising Manager, Austin, TX USA phuber2@austin.rr.com

from the editors Scott Bolman, Lead Editor Scott Bolman is a currently with the Strategy and Analytics practice at Sierra-Cedar. He has been partnering with Human Resources (HR) and Information Technology (IT) leaders for over 25 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 Sierra-Cedar, Bolman served with several organizations including Walgreens, Mercer, Towers Watson, and Accenture’s HR Outsourcing business. For the past 2 years, he has been the managing editor of IHRIM’s Workforce Solutions Review magazine. He can be reached at scott.bolman@sierra-cedar.com and at https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottabolman.

Roy Altman, Contributing Editor Roy Altman is manager of HRIS Analytics and Architecture at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He is responsible for putting actionable data in the hands of workers to assist in decision-making, manages a work stream of their Workday implementation, and determines short and long-term application architecture strategy.

Previously, he was founder/CEO of Peopleserv, a software/services company. Over a multifaceted career, he has a history of delivering ROI to wellknown companies in several industry sectors. He has published extensively and co-authored five books on Business Process Management (BPM), and published articles for IHRIM Workforce Solutions Review and The Saturday Evening Post. Altman has presented at conferences such as HR Tech, IHRIM, Workday Rising, Garden State SHRM, BPM and Case Management Global Summit, BPMNext, eHRM and Academy of Management. He serves on IHRIM Workforce Solutions Review editorial committee and can be reached at altmanr@mskcc.org.

Michael Rudnick, Contributing Editor Michael Rudnick is managing partner at Prescient Digital, a leading digital consultancy that plans, designs, and implements world-class enterprise digital experiences for employees. He has spent more than 25 years helping HR create and deliver consumergrade digital experiences that are aligned to business and HR strategy. He’s results-oriented with a proven track record of creating, growing and leading large professional services practices, enterprise software, and product strategy. Before Prescient, Rudnick was VP at Logical Design Solutions, global portal practice leader at Willis Towers Watson, and was the founder of Cognitive Communications, the first intranet consulting firm created at the time the browser was first invented. He is an internationally recognized author and speaker, often quoted in industry publications. He can be reached at michael.rudnick@prescientdigital.com.

WELCOME to this issue of Workforce Solutions Review. Our theme for this issue is “The Future of HCM Technology,” and while prognostications can be unreliable at times, our hope is that there will be some tantalizing bits of knowledge here that will help you prepare for what’s coming next.

We kick off with a feature article by John Macy, CEO of HRCloud, who identifies “What’s Next after Cloud Delivery.” This is not John’s first rodeo and his perspective on technology delivery is a must read. Starting with Gartner’s BiModal IT Model, he helps us understand where we are and where we’re headed using this highly useful model as it relates to HR technology.

Next we have Michael Housman from HiQ, who illustrates how technology can help HR and employees manage ambiguity through the use of Decision Support Systems. His take on hiring, retention, and career pathing provides readers with an excellent view into how scientific analysis of data can play a major role in talent management.

Jeff Higgins has polled some our industry veterans and analysts to get their take on the Future of HR Technology. In this article, Jeff posits “if the definition of HCM is the technology, infrastructure, and processes to enable organizations, via HR, to successfully manage people and talent, then how much is the changing nature of work impacting HCM technology development – or is it the other way around – is technology driving the changes in work?

Wes Wu, from E&Y, contributes an article on Digital HR and explores the question, “is HR the business of managing people or the business of managing bytes?” His insights into Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its application to HR will definitely inspire you to consider your role in the digital revolution.

Our next feature by Susan Sanders predicts that “The best thing to happen to HR Technology in the Future won’t be Technology.” She advises that HR needs to adopt new approaches and strategies that focus first on the employee experience – the right combination of HR technology solutions, programs, and services, woven together in a meaningful way.

We also are very fortunate to have Tina Marron-Partridge from IBM as a part of our Executive Interview series. Tina has a wide purview in her role at IBM and identifies a number of exciting trends for HR technology, including the Cloud, Cognitive HR, and the Internet of Things.

In our From the Advisors column, John Sumser of the HRExaminer, weighs in on several developments that are already a reality – that you may have missed in your diligent focus on current emails and to-do’s. You might be surprised by what you have missed.

We also have two Product Focus columns in this issue. First up is Robb Monkman from React Mobile who describes how a life-threatening incident was a catalyst for an entirely new personal safety application. Secondly, we have the Science Team from pymetrics who help us understand the Gamification of the hiring process, including how creating game versions of science-based behavioral assessments and data science techniques help companies effectively analyze their human capital and help jobs seekers find career paths that capitalize on their strengths.

And once again, Dr. Katherine Jones provides us with an interesting look at the future in The Back Story. While most of us are thinking about external cybersecurity, Dr. Jones has her finger on the pulse of HR’s Responsibility in Preventing Cybersecurity Issues.

I want to thank all of the authors for this issue, as well as my co-editors, Roy Altman and Michael Rudnick. As most of you know, IHRIM runs primarily through the efforts of volunteers and Workforce Solutions Review is no different. Without the work of volunteers like our authors and committee members, we would not be able to publish the content that we know our readers consistently evaluate as so valuable. www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • September 2016

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John Macy, HR Cloud Solutions

What is next after Cloud Delivery?

Whatever comes after cloud delivery must satisfy two HR goals: (1) to reduce the administrative burden; and (2) to improve strategic capability. At the same time, HR must prepare for the changing workforce composition and be “innovative ready.” The emerging “gig economy” with freelance and statement-of-work (SOW) ways of replacing traditional employee roles and the growing contingent workforce makes the ability to respond to change critical – and makes technology-innovative capability a high priority for any HR technology solution.

The current generation of HR technology cannot cope with the pace of change required or provide the tools and supporting infrastructure required to satisfy companies’ expectations.

There is new technology emerging that will take cloud delivery in a broader direction than just delivering HR business applications. The new technology environment will co-exist with the current legacy products. The Gartner Group has described the current technology environment as “bimodal,” and if we accept that definition, then we can expect to see HR take advantage of a relatively new and innovative mode.

The Gartner Group Bimodal IT Model

Figure 1. The Gartner Group Bimodal IT Model.

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The Gartner Group’s Bimodal IT model (Figure 1), first published in 2014, illustrates the current HR technology environment perfectly.

There are two distinct modes: Mode 1, where the focus is on stability and reliability (including Payroll and Core HR), and Mode 2 that allows innovation to be implemented quickly in response to business change and includes

September 2016 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

the new suite of custom development platform products. As expected, Mode 1, in Gartner’s Bimodal Model, could be defined as narrow on change, but big on governance needed to manage and control “Systems of Record.” On the other hand, Mode 2 offers freedom to innovate, customise (Systems of Differentiation) and places a higher level of importance on change capability and less on governance.

The IT community has always built their projects around strict governance with methodologies that record every step of product development, and with an acute awareness of what can go wrong if proper records are not kept about the design, programming logic, and maintenance needs. Information Technology has accepted the slow delivery penalty to ensure that the structure and workings of business applications are understood and documented. The levels of control have seriously inhibited rapid development and there has always been IT reluctance to trade-off governance for change and speedy delivery. Any development that steps outside the IT governance requirement is not treated kindly, unless IT can be assured that sufficient checks are in place.

This is where HR must adopt new disciplines associated with custom development, and why data management and the recording of metadata are so important.

Translating the Bimodal IT Model into HR Technology Components

From a technology perspective, the future solution will apply new methodologies to improve speed of application delivery, create a new type of skilled developer drawn from the business community known as a “citizen developer,” and introduce new platform development environments and development techniques, such as “low-code” development where little or no programming knowledge is required, along with supporting data management tools.

This article will focus on the model shown in Figure 2 to help explain the changes that have occurred and identify where HR can expect to find a solution for their technology needs in the future.

From System of Record to System of Engagement and Innovation

At the broadest level, HR technology is moving from “systems of record” to “systems of engagement.” That is in line with general enterprise technology trends, where the enterprise operational systems fall into the system of record category, and the new and innovative features fall into the system of engagement category. From an HR perspective, payroll, core HR, and some early talent management systems are system of record; and the systems of engagement are the social media type applications such as LinkedIn for recruitment, Facebook, online course delivery, internet of things (IoT), etc. The more glamorous systems of engagement features will not replace the hardworking back-end systems of record completely and there is an important layer in between that Gartner calls the “systems of differentiation.”

That is where an HR digital platform comes into play and creates the development environment suitable for citizen development.

Merging of the Modes

There is a strategy now for Mode 1 products to build extensible platforms to their products to compensate for the lack of functionality.

Products with an extensible platform do not by themselves qualify as Mode 2 products.

However, some Mode 1 products are built on the Mode 2 Force.com platform, such as Fairsail, FinancialForce (includes the old Vana Workforce product), XCD HR, m|ployee, and Jobscience. The Force.com platform is one of the Mode 2 products that make integration and custom development easy, links directly to the Mode 1 environment, and can incorporate innovative features into their product.

The convergence of the two modes will take time as the Mode 1 evolution path moves through the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) era and Mode 2 moves through the Platform-asa-Service (PaaS) era and picks up Data-as-aService (DaaS) features as it goes. There will be no urgency to change as both technologies have been responsible for massive investment and investment in one mode cannot be transferred to the other. There are two different sets of skills needed to operate in each environment.

The Mode 2 environment calls for a new set of skills, which is a problem. The skills needed are in short supply and that is why new initiatives like low-code platforms are so important.

Low-Code Tools and Citizen Developers In response to the skills shortage, the Mode 2 product suppliers decided the best way to

Figure 2. HR Technology Trends get their products out in the market was to Combined into One Diagram. create a new breed of developer called “citizen developer.” That group is drawn from the business community and possess high business knowledge but limited technological expertise.

Hence, new tools were needed. Low-code products designed to eliminate much of the programming skill requirements were introduced for developers by many platform providers.

Although it is a very pragmatic way of achieving transformation, the approach is low on governance (as Gartner acknowledged in their model) and still carries a “shadow IT” tag.

The uptake of low-code platforms has been slower than expected for several reasons. Some low-code products are just code generators and do not expose the database and what is happening “underneath” to the developer. There is a need for more support to ensure the citizen developer tasks are made as easy as possible.

They need open-source platform products, pre-built application frameworks, collaborative environments for the exchange of ideas, code stores containing catalogued libraries of reusable code, and data-management platforms to record metadata and project documentation.

But, above all, they need a standardised database structure to ensure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to building Mode 2 components and mapping Mode 1 data.

About Standardisation

As we move forward and incorporate the two modes into a common architecture, we need to acknowledge the need for a data platform that sits between the old and new environments.

But, more than that, we need to recognise the need for the platform to be standardised and manage the flow of data from one environment to another. The standard mentioned in Figure 3 is the de facto Human Resource Component Software Application Standard (HR-CSAS) that contains a database schema for data mapping.

The standard provides a structure for integration mapping, code discovery and product selection. Business community collaboration www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • September 2016

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Figure 3. Human Resource Component Software Application Standard (HR-CSAS).

is essential to ensure that the standard reflects the latest application features. The standard is “open,” dynamic, and invites input that can be quickly incorporated in the document, unlike global standard bodies that require committee involvement, and a public comment process that could takes months to complete and years to be published.

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Human Resources technology specifications: Detailed data requirements can be recorded and shared on the new platform during system specification and revisited at any time. Request for proposal (RFP) methodology is a thing of the past.

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Human Resources application metadata: Once selected and implementation begins, metadata information about every object and field must be maintained and include the type, size, and details of data elements. It is the blueprint of a company’s HR platform development.

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Component assembly map: Every company organises their HR function differently and the menu layout of screens helps define the business function. Functional solutions can be determined during the component selection phase, based on a standardised structure, but the translation of the components into a different menu structure will need to be recorded.

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Data integration map: Data flowing from the smallest legacy database to the platform needs to be tracked and recorded for continuity purposes.

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Human Resources application framework: This is the most valuable metadata for citizen developers. It is the physical implementation of the platform standard (HR-CSAS) and the starting point for major customisation work.

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Human Resources metrics metadata: Producing metrics for management consumption on a regular basis requires metadata to know where the data came from, how frequently it has been updated, and if any manipulation has taken place on the raw data.

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Big data metadata: This space contains algorithm metadata. Actionable insights drawn from unstructured “data lakes” requires complex algorithms to interpret data and suggest courses of action. Decisions made may need to be justified and even revisited later. Metadata needs to be kept to trace data and understand algorithm logic and the basis for conclusions made after analysis.

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Compliance reporting metadata: This space is to provide metadata about where data came from for compliance reporting, and explain the values for the current reporting year.

Data Management and Collaborative Tools

The new breed of citizen developers will require access to supporting collaborative and development environments that provide data management tools (including metadata) and an HR digital platform (includes a pre-built application framework) along with access to commercial component registries that provides reusable code and prebuilt plug in components and applications. The features of both platforms are shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Data Management Platform and Essential Metadata and the HR Digital Platform.

The Data Management Platform and Essential Metadata The “data management platform” is all about shared metadata; i.e., any information about the composition and structure of HR business applications, how the data is to be used, details of programming logic relating to the business rules to validate data, and the location and naming conventions applied to data can all be described as metadata. The eight most important data management platform features are:

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The HR Digital Platform

The Development Environment could contain a platform product from one of the suppliers mentioned below. The product serves as an HR digital platform for custom development and should have a pre-built application framework, along with low-code development tools to both professional and citizen developers, and access to a component marketplace similar to the Commercial Component Registry shown in Figure 4. Platform features and supporting ecosystems include: • Platform products: There are a growing number of platform products on the market today such as AgilePoint, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Appian, AppPoint, Cornerstone Edge, Engine Yard, IBM, Matasoft, Mendix, Microsoft, MIOsoft, Oracle Java Cloud Service, OrangeScape, OutSystems, Progress, Red Hat, Salesforce (Force.com), SAP, Software AG, and Zoho. But not all provide a suitable development environment for citizen developers. Some products are Java or .Net-based and are designed for professional developers.

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Low code: Many of the platform products mentioned above offer low-code development opportunities, whereby the amount of code to be written by the developer is minimised and drag and drop features are offered where possible.

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Application framework: Every platform to be used in the HR application architecture should contain pre-built components delivered as templates to accelerate the development process.

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Commercial component registries: Developers should be supported by a central source for copy and paste code (similar to GitHub) and pre-built apps with downloadable templates to accelerate the development process and aid citizen developers.

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Component assembly: The business community should have the ability to assemble pre-built component applications into a common platform and standardised architecture, and swap components as the business changes.

The new HR technology environment will introduce change to the way things are presently done by the HR business community. For example, the role of the HR systems administrator will change dramatically: What was once a role dedicated to creating security profiles, monitoring transactions, writing reports to extract

data, and controlling positions set up, etc., will be vastly different in the future and will require new skills. The role will now be administering a collaborative and developmental environment with all the associated metadata, and will provide front-line support for citizen developers.

The Integrated Unified Database

An important feature of a Mode 2 environment is to get data onto one unified platform and to make it available to HR’s “data customers.” Figure 5 illustrates how data moves from one mode to another to create a unified database for reliable reporting. The integration process can be as simple as: (a) moving data on a comma separated value (CSV) file, to (b) real-time connection via application programming interfaces (APIs) with bidirectional feed and simultaneous update.

The advantage of having data stored in an independent and secure environment is that it is possible to allow access, via an authenticated gateway (shown in Figure 5), to certain parts of the Mode 2 database. Access is controlled by a security profile. By limiting the range of data a user may see, it is possible to protect employee privacy and still make data available for important strategic processes, including predictive modelling and big data actionable insights, as well as compliance reporting.

Figure 5. Creating a Unified Database.

The Measurable Benefits of Mode 2

HR can look forward to reduced time spent on administrative processes and improved strategic capability following a Mode 2 platform implementation. For example:

Administrative Saving – Compliance Reporting The reduction in administrative time spent responding to a government for compliance reporting could justify the investment in Mode 2 platform technology alone. Take, for example, a government agency that collects gender equality or equal employment opportunity (EEO) information: Companies often spend weeks each year responding to government questionnaires. The problem is that data may be coming from multiple sources and there is no simple method of automating a report to produce the data needed.

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About the Author John Macy is a thought leader in the HR technology world and an experienced HR practitioner. He has held senior HR management positions in the airline industry and has led a global HR technology consultancy for the last 22 years. In 2013, he was awarded the Australian Human Resource Institute’s highest honour and made a Life Fellow as recognition for his services to the HR industry. He has been a long-time advocate for component-based technology for HR and has published books and presented at conferences around the world on the subject.

If information about “promotions for female versus male” is required, the data will probably not come out of a payroll system where most of the salary information needed for the report resides. Most payroll systems are not interested in why a person’s rate of pay changed, and only the date and amount is relevant for pay preparation. Immediately, there is a data availability and integration problem. The options are either to modify the payroll system (low probability and high cost), try to manually manipulate data on spreadsheets, or implement a Mode 2 data platform solution.

The data platform solution is the cost-justified way to go: Data can be integrated on a unified platform and reported from that source. Better still, the manual data reporting process can be largely eliminated and the agency can harvest the data themselves. Innovative Mode 2 products can allow authenticated gateway access to the database. If the application framework on the platform is built to a standardised database schema, the applications can go straight to the data and bypass the need for companies to manually collate and submit returns. The savings can be measured in terms of weeks of work and millions of dollars to the HR industry.

Administrative Saving – Global Reporting

A lot of time is spent in regions around the world providing data to a head office that may be in the U.S., Europe, or Singapore. The main reason is probably head count, but there may also be some performance or career planning data that the head office requires. In some cases, it may mean granting access to a local system to a person in the head office, teaching them how to use the system, and taking on additional license costs when all that is needed is usually a very small sub-set of data. Some local data may be of no benefit to the head office staff and, in some cases, may be sensitive, and the person accessing the data may not have a legitimate business need-to-know, e.g., disciplinary action of senior local staff, performance management results, etc. The most cost-efficient and secure way of granting access to data and maintaining privacy is to set up a special profile on the local Mode 2 platform and allow access through the authenticated gateway.

Additionally, local functional requirements are seldom addressed in the corporate HR system. By allowing custom development to take place on a local Mode 2 platform, benefits can flow to the region.

Administrative Savings – Systems of Differentiation Applications

Examples include applications built for:

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parking administration, uniform issue, locker allocation, transport coordination, company housing allocation, temporary incentive payment schemes, company motor vehicle usage, after-hours access to buildings, company medical programs, etc.

Applications of this nature are usually not part of a Mode 1 legacy system, may be temporary in nature, yet represent an administrative burden if managed through a manual or spreadsheet process. Mode 2 platforms represent a robust solution.

Improved Strategic Capability – Analytical Tools

Human Resources has never been acknowledged as a strategic unit that CEOs could confidently go to for strategic advice. One major reason has been the quality of data. It is well known that data coming from multiple sources is hard to trace and recreate if necessary for detailed drill-down analysis. New platform technology with a standardised unified database, coupled with new analytic tools designed to access large pools of data and present data in an easy-to-read format, gives HR the much-soughtafter goal of offering reliable evidence-based strategic advice.

Overall, the introduction of a Mode 2 platform is a very low-cost solution. Because Mode 2 supports a centralised administrative role to manage data, multiple expensive licenses are not required. The day-to-day maintenance of HR data would continue using existing licenses via Mode 1 and integrated, select Mode 2 data on the HR digital platform.

The Future Beyond Current Cloud Delivery Methods

Recognizing the shortcomings of a Mode 1 operation and implementing a strategy to incorporate a Mode 2 platform is a good starting point.

The longer-term strategy should be to focus on the convergence of Mode 1 and 2 into a common environment. Application development tools will mature and make future Mode 2 applications “industrial strength” and suitable for the conversion of today’s Mode 1 applications to a new and more flexible platform.

Future technology environments will allow the HR professional community to focus on data and how the strategic use of HR data can improve company performance. Change will happen to roles in HR as they engage with new citizen developer opportunities, manage new data platforms containing critical metadata, and introduce new methodology to specify, select, and implement new types of HR software solutions.

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Michael Housman, hiQ Labs

Decision Support comes to HR:

How Technology is enabling the Right Decisions about Your Workforce Everywhere we look these days, we’re seeing how data is helping companies to make better decisions. From Finance to Marketing to Operations, a slate of business intelligence (BI) software and analytics technologies have emerged to help you better understand your organization, identify trends, generate insights, and make better decisions. If you struggle to get actionable insights out of your databases, there are BI platforms like Domo, Birst, and Good Data. If you’re looking to enhance your sales and marketing efforts, there are companies that can provide predictive analytics like Radius, Infer, and Gain Sight. And if you’re looking to provide better customer service, you can turn to companies like Wise.io, Preact, and Clarabridge.

We’re in the middle of a data revolution where every part of the organization is being transformed by big data and predictive analytics.

Until recently, HR was the one area where data hadn’t made much of a tangible impact; most HR leaders weren’t armed with the data they needed to make data-driven decisions and so most human capital decisions were being made based on gut instinct. This stems, in no small part, from the fact that human capital data is often housed in dozens of different silos and these systems rarely speak to one another. They were built to accomplish basic operational tasks, but not to provide deeper insight into the organization.

The problem this poses is that people bring their own biases – conscious and unconscious – into their decisions. In fact, behavioral economists have spent decades establishing that human beings are actually pretty bad at making decisions. For example, researchers have established a “like me” bias demonstrated consistently by recruiters; all things equal, hiring managers will tend to interview and hire someone like them as opposed to someone who is dissimilar.1 People might not be consciously aware of this bias and it isn’t necessarily a racial or gender

bias; you might just get along better with someone else who hails from the Northeast and likes to play squash, but that still means that you’re likely to favor them during a job interview, even if those traits have nothing to do with their suitability for a given role.

The good news, however, is that this is rapidly changing as HR leaders are realizing that the same technologies and tools that have been embraced in other parts of the organization are now being applied to make data-driven decisions about who to hire, how to onboard them, how to manage them, who will manage them, and how to retain them. Of course, this change in mindset has been accompanied by two other changes: (1) those data silos and the various HR systems of record are now beginning to talk to each other in a much more inter-operable way, and (2) a variety of new HR technologies have emerged to help cleanse, aggregate, and draw insight from the data.

This transformation could not be timelier. In a service-based economy where the workforce is any company’s most critical asset, using the decision support to make the right people decisions can be a source of sustainable competitive advantage. To cite a fairly common example, the book Moneyball (and the subsequent movie it was based on) tells the story of the Oakland Athletics and the way they embraced a data-driven approach to evaluating baseball talent. Early on in their journey, they were considered heretics, scouts thought they were crazy, and Billy Beane nearly lost his job. Many years later, there is not a single Major League Baseball team that does not have a statistician, economist, or data scientist on its payroll. It’s an absolute necessity in order to compete.

Likewise, we’re at the very early stages of this same revolution outside of baseball. Josh Bersin reported in 2013 that four percent of companies were at an advanced stage in terms of their ability to use data to drive decision-making and www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • September 2016

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that number grew to eight percent by 2015.2 These transformations don’t typically occur very quickly, but as analytics and decision-support continues to make inroads within the HR function, companies that do not embrace this new approach will find it increasingly difficult to compete with their more data-driven counterparts in the same way that baseball teams relying solely on their scouting teams found themselves struggling to keep up with teams that used a combination of data and human intuition.

Of course, all of the data science and statistical horsepower in the world won’t have an impact on the business unless it’s able to make a tangible impact on day-to-day decision-making within the business. Like the proverbial tree falling in the forest, if some dataset was analyzed and some resulting insight was delivered to the organization, but it didn’t drive any action, did the analysis even occur in the first place? Not really. But the good news is that new technologies and companies have emerged around very specific-use cases in order to influence decision-making, not just among HR leadership, but also in frontline decision-makers like HR business partners, frontline managers, and hiring managers. Here are three examples of how decision support is being delivered to frontline employees.

What’s most exciting about these new technologies is that they help front-line recruiters make better decisions as they perform the challenging task 1.Hiring Job assessments have existed for over a of interviewing century. Much of the modern practice emerged and selecting job from the military in which new recruits were asked a battery of questions in order to deapplicants.

termine their suitability for combat and what division was the best fit. Over time, the space crystallized with the emergence of the industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologist as the academic standard-bearer, as well as a variety of different types of assessments (Wunderlic, Myers-Briggs, Big 5, etc.) that are designed to measure different psychometric traits of the subject.

But the space has evolved considerably as a result of the growing availability of human capital data, the emergence of web-based technologies that allow the assessments to be administered electronically, and popularity of machine-learning techniques that make it possible to add a level of empirical rigor to the testing process. As a result, there is a wide array of companies – for example, companies like Interviewed, Previsor SHL (now a part of CEB), and pymetrics – that now offer online job assessments with scores that have been calibrated through the use of machine learning.

What’s most exciting about these new

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technologies is that they help front-line recruiters make better decisions as they perform the challenging task of interviewing and selecting job applicants. Most platforms offer a relatively simple color-coded scoring system, e.g., red, yellow, green, and recruiters can hire the best applicants by simply selecting green applicants over yellow and red applicants. These systems aren’t meant to be a replacement for the human part of the interviewing process, but rather a tool that can help facilitate better decisions and help the hiring manager to select better employees.

2. Retention

Although human resources departments have traditionally focused 80 to 90 percent of their resource spend on recruiting, that is rapidly changing with the emergence of people analytics as a field. Increasingly sophisticated techniques in predictive analytics allow data scientists to train a model based on past data, generate predictions from those models, and then test the validity of their predictions on an excluded sample, often with uncanny accuracy.

So where have people analytics teams pointed this newfound ability? At an organizational key performance indicator that the Human Resources department owned for decades: turnover. Although a recent Deloitte survey suggested that only eight percent of organizations are engaging in predictive analytics, the evidence suggests that the majority of those organizations have started down this path by predicting employee attrition. And, this is not at all surprising because research has shown that it costs up to 150 percent of an employee’s salary to replace him or her. Avoiding even a single employee departure can have a big impact on the company’s bottom line.

The data being used to generate flight-risk predictions comes from both internal (HRIS, engagement), and external (LinkedIn, Glassdoor) sources. When combined, the predictions offer a clear picture of who in the organization is most at-risk of leaving. In fact, a company I work with, hiQ Labs, generates these predictions on behalf of their customers based purely on public data feeds and finds that those employees labeled as high-risk (red) have a three to five times higher risk of leaving than those labeled as low-risk (green).

Armed with this information about who is most likely to leave the organization, frontline managers can make more effective decisions about how to allocate resources and who to target for intervention. Organizations and technologies are also beginning to track these interventions in order to identify best practices

and disseminate them throughout the organization in order to help managers make more effective decisions about how to re-engage at-risk employees in order to prevent these predictions from becoming a reality.

3. Career Pathing

One of the most exciting developments in the world of big data is the democratization of that data. Although much of that data is stored within the data warehouses of large employers, more and more of those technologies are beginning to emerge that put the power of that data in the hands of the employees themselves.

For example, Josh Bersin has written pieces reviewing the new people analytics offerings from a variety of HR technology vendors.3 One of the more exciting products was announced by Workday, which has built a Career Path Prediction tool that not only can predict someone’s likely career path within a company, but is also capable of offering up prescriptive insight. Want to be a product manager within five years? The product can tell you the roles, skills, and experiences that you need under your belt in order to get there.

Likewise, SAP has headed in a similar direction by introducing predictive analytics for learning, which “recommends learning activities” to each employee based on what other successful employees in a role have done, similar to Netflix or Amazon.com. Again, the idea being that employees will make better decisions about what online courses and trainings to take if they have an analytics platform at their side making data-driven recommendations.

In both the Workday and SAP examples, and in countless others currently under development by innovative HR technology companies, the core principle is that both companies and

employees benefit when employees make the right decisions for themselves. As a result, these decision-support systems are not only being aimed at company leadership or managers, but front-line employees can benefit too as they begin to chart a path for their own personal development.

In each of these three examples (Hiring, Retention, and Career Pathing), we see how providing data-driven recommendations at the point in time when a decision is being made can have a huge impact on the outcome. But, in each of these cases, it should be clear that these technologies are not meant to be a replacement for human intuition; they are only meant to be a tool that enhances human decision-making.

In 1997, the computer program Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov in a match that signaled the point when computers had surpassed humans at chess. But what beats the computer outright is a human using a computer. The two together make better decisions than either one alone.

Human Resources is only now beginning to scratch the surface of analytics technologies that have completely transformed other elements of the organization like customer service, operations, sales, and marketing. Likewise, they hold the potential to redefine the role of HR across a variety of industries and unlock untold millions in savings by enabling employees to remain longer, stay more engaged, and perform better. But the benefits don’t just accrue to large employers: employees should be equally excited about these technologies because they have the potential to remove a lot of biases from workforce decisions to ensure that the right people get hired, promoted, and retained. At the end of the day, people decisions made with the help of analytics and algorithms end up being better for both the employer and employee alike.

Endnotes

Bouree Lam, “Recruitment, Resumes, Interviews: How the Hiring Process Favors Elites,” The Atlantic, May 27, 2015.

2 Josh Bersin, “Big Data in Human Resources: A World of Haves and Have-Nots,” Forbes, October 7, 2013.

3 Josh Bersin, “Big Data in Human Resources: A World of Haves and Have-Nots,” Forbes, October 7, 2013.

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About the Author

Michael Housman is the workforce scientist in residence at HiQ Labs where he mines publicly available data for insights that allows large employers to identify employees that are potential flight risks and take actions that will help retain them. He has published his work in a variety of peer-reviewed journals, presented his work at dozens of academic and practitioner-oriented conferences, and has had his research profiled by such media outlets as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist and The Atlantic. In fact, he was named a 2014 game changer by Workforce magazine for his groundbreaking research and contributions to the field of workforce science. Dr. Housman received his A.M. and Ph.D. in Applied Economics and Managerial Science from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and his A.B. from Harvard University. He can be reached at michael.housman@hiqlabs.com.

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Jeff Higgins, Human Capital Management Institute

What is the Future of HCM Technology?

What is the future of Human Capital Management (HCM) technology? To begin to answer that question perhaps an even more difficult question must also be addressed: What is the future of work due to changes in Human Capital Management technology?

In this article we will hear from vendors, market analysts, industry experts including several members of IHRIM’s Workforce Solutions Review editorial committee, who have graciously shared their forecast predictions for HCM.

The Future of HCM and Technology from a Vendor Perspective

From a technology perspective, Steven Hunt., Ph.D., of SuccessFactors echoes the 2,500-year old Greek philosopher Heraclitus by saying “the only thing that is constant is change.”

Certainly HCM technology has been changing rapidly with dozens, perhaps hundreds of emerging companies and startups with exciting new technology showcasing innovative changes to traditional HR and talent management processes. And yet, what has really changed when it comes to HR transactions and talent management processes via technology? Recruiting, hiring, and onboarding are still done in much the same way as it has been for decades. Interviews are still conducted, whether in-person or via video conferencing.

So too is learning and training performed as before, but for even longer. The way training and learning content is delivered has changed with more training now delivered online in a variety of ways.

The point is that technologies are finding more innovative and powerful ways to deliver HR processes than ever before, video interviewing versus traditional in-person interviewing, and online learning versus classroom

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learning, yet the underlying transactions in recruiting and receiving learning remain.

However, while core HR transactions may appear to be the same, some leading edge organizations and vendors are beginning the process to change even the most core HR transactions such as recruiting/hiring, learning, and more through employee-centric processes that deliver a superior experience to workers while at the same time leveraging analytics to enable superior data-driven decision-making for the enterprise.

Most HCM technology would seem to enable newer and better ways to support core HR transactions, while at the same time offering some limited improvements to employee/user experience. However, while many vendors may disagree, the fact that so many HCM companies actively market their technology as an enabler tool that automates and improves existing HR and talent transactions suggests that they do not know where to take their technology tools and may be relying on customers to tell them.

Certainly there is much improvement that new technologies can deliver to organizations via software leveraging the power and speed of the internet connected to advanced database technology via APIs with various process innovations built-in to drive faster and easier ways for traditional HR transactions to happen.

This leads to another rather open-ended, interesting statement from Stephen Hunt, “The future of HCM Technology will be influenced by the fundaments of employee psychology.”

If the definition of HCM is the technology, infrastructure, and processes to enable organizations, via HR, to successfully manage people and talent, then how much is the changing nature of work impacting HCM technology development – or is it the other way around;

technology is driving the changes in work?

If HCM technology is changing so fast, is it driving or being driven by emerging changes to “the organization” and “the workforce” as elemental change in how work is done and how people think about work?

According to Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends 2016 report, it is the nature of changing work, enabled by global technology changes, that is forever changing the face of work. These large scale changes are forcing organizations to react and change at speeds that many large organizations are not accustomed to. At the same time, HCM technology providers, both established players and startups, are using some of those same global technology changes to innovate and create services/solutions for many aspects of work.

Deloitte’s Human Capital Trends report identified 10 key sweeping global change forces reshaping the workplace, the workforce, and work itself: 1. Changing Organizational design – The rise of agile, customer focused teams 2. Leadership Awakened – Generations, teams, science 3. Changing Culture – Using culture to shape and drive strategy 4. Emerging Importance of Engagement – Always on for talent, skills and brand 5. Changing Learning – Employees take charge via self-directed learning 6. Changing Employee Experience – Using design thinking to craft employee experience 7. Changing HR – Growing momentum toward a new mandate 8. Emerging People analytics – Gaining speed 9. Digitizing HR – HCM Revolution, not evolution 10. Changing Workforce – The Gig Economy, the rise of contingent, ondemand workforce What is important to note in Deloitte’s Human Capital Trends top 10 list is that the digitization of HR, or by extension the HCM

marketplace, is just one of Deloitte’s 10 global trends. This suggests that while technology globally is driving massive change, within HCM it is the changing nature of work, organizations, and the relationship of workers to the organization which may in fact be driving much of the change.

Shawn Price, president of SuccessFactors, says that “Companies must change because the way people work has changed.” In essence, Mr. Price seems to be supporting Deloitte’s conclusions and also suggesting that while vendors may believe they have met customers’ market needs, that in fact, as the workforce and organizations themselves change, vendor solutions may need to continue to rapidly adapt.

The Future of HCM and Technology from a Market Analyst Perspective

The Starr Conspiracy’s 2015 report “Where is the Market (HCM) Headed,” has identified three major trends which are derived from the rapid changes and advancement in HCM technology yet are interestingly not technology changes themselves.

1. The Rise of Strategic Workforce Optimization – or the concept of integrated systems and data with realtime or near real-time visibility into the workforce to drive not just more efficient, but more effective talent management for enterprises. A supply chain example might be Walmart knowing where all of its inventory is at all times around the world and knowing to automatically re-order products when an item is pulled off the shelves and sold.

This key trend seems to imply more fully integrated use of predictive analytics and workforce planning inside HCM technology, as also mentioned by HCM vendors. This is a powerful concept, but one might think that we have a long way to go since most HCM technologies appear to be much better at automating and improving well-documented existing core HR transactions rather than identifying predictive relationships/ metrics, let alone integration of advanced artificial intelligence. Predictive analytics and workforce planning are not new concepts, but most technology vendor’s idea of analytics and workforce planning seems to be a list of reports one can download or a dashboard of metrics that focus only on historical data without real insights or predictions.

Shawn Price, president of SuccessFactors, says that “Companies must change because the way people work has changed.”

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The Starr Conspiracy is projecting “by 2020 only half of Fortune 500 workforces will be FTEs.”

2. The Rise of the Total Workforce (think contingent workforce) – or the total workforce including full time equivalent employees (FTEs) and contingent workers such as temporary workers, short term contract workers.

The Starr Conspiracy is projecting “by 2020 only half of Fortune 500 workforces will be FTEs.” Today’s HCM technology providers have focused their offerings primarily on employees, and therefore according to The Starr Conspiracy, risk missing a critical change or turn of the HCMI roadmap away from full time employment to “the Gig Economy.” As a macro change for organizations and how they work, this could fundamentally change the way much of talent management inside organizations operates today since in the future, potentially the majority of work may be done by temporary or contracted workers.

3. The Rise of HCM for Small to Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) – or the rapid market growth of organizations with between 100 and 1,000 employees. HCM technology providers today, particularly the large, well-established players have been focused on larger enterprises, and therefore risk missing this emerging market trend as well. Larger payroll providers could be poised to win here as they represent an exception to other HCM vendors that have long been more successful with smaller organizations than with larger ones. However, the trend the Starr Conspiracy is referring to is not about basic payroll or benefits administration, but rather innovative new HCM technology solutions coming down market to SMBs.

The Future of HCM & Technology from WSR editorial committee members:

Eric Lesser, Research Director & NA Leader, IBM Institute for Business Value “There are currently Three emerging trends in the world of HRIT:

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1. Mobility, delivery of information and expertise when and where people want it.

2. The internet of things (IoT) with sensors that can identify everything from environmental factors to location.

3. Rise of cognitive computing, the ability for systems to interact naturally with human beings and continually learn from their internal and external environments.”

Scott A. Bolman, HR Transformation/Technology Leader, Managing Editor, WSR “HCM Technology will be embedded within the fabric of the organization. Data collection will happen real-time by systems able to observe and track our work, as well as the data we input on our devices. This data will then be fed to systems that automatically (using artificial intelligence) create downstream outputs (e.g. benefit enrollments, pay advices and direct deposits, performance reviews, succession plans, and future work schedules).

Employees, managers, and executives will receive proactive alerts from these systems allowing them to manage their work and personal lives with a degree of automation that is hard to comprehend given our current levels of manual effort.”

Bruno Querenet, Head of HR Technology/HR Operations, Genentech “I see solutions addressing levels of engagement, individually for employees, collectively for teams, and organizationally for business units and organizations. Business leaders will have insight on how to better run the organization, maturing their ability to plan and execute talent against a business agenda. HR systems will become a true social tool, a place where connections are established to achieve challenging business objectives while maximizing the use of talent.

Rewards and career progression will reflect the intricacies of multi-stakeholder engage-

ment, and reflect the collective nature of work and goal achievement.

I see also a very fluid plug-and-play environment where people download specific ‘People’ apps based on their needs. For example, as a team lead, you want the team to use a mural to brainstorm. You download the corresponding app, use it, and the app shares back what it has learned from each team member as they interacted to build the mural.

Analytics will be everywhere, mainstream in each talent management system/decision made.

Five to ten years from now, HR will be more pervasive within the life of employees, managers and leaders, but in a subtle and targeted way. The skillset within HR will have changed with a CHRO truly in a business role.”

Roy Altman, Manager Analytics & Architecture, Workday SloanKettering Cancer Center “Big Data, machine learning and AI are just scratching the surface of what’s to come.

Jobs, once the province of knowledge workers, will very soon be automated. Technical skills coveted today will be de-emphasized over the next decade or so, in favor of more ‘human’ skills such as persuasion, intuition, and creativity. There will be more focus on the intangible chemistry that makes people work well together in organizations. The organization will be completely restructured from command-and-control hierarchies to small agile teams that optimize uniquely human strengths.”

Michael Rudnick, Managing Partner, Prescient Digital Media

vendors – just as we’re seeing in all aspects of corporate IT.”

Winners May Emerge

Who will win this war of change, technology, and more change? Where new HCM technology solutions correctly anticipate and meet the changing nature of work, then there is the potential for newly ascendant winners in various product segments within the HCM technology market. An example of this is the dramatic increase of workers working remotely using high-speed internet and mobile technology.

No longer must workers come to a central office in order to get work done. Many HCM providers have already adapted to this trend, creating mobile friendly apps and internetbased business models such as Software-as-aService, (SaaS), for example.

Another challenge noted earlier will be the increasing use of a flexible contingent workforce. HCM technologies that require little or no systems infrastructure and can be delivered seamlessly via internet and mobile apps may be well-positioned to deliver HR services and transactions to this new, here now, gone later, back again next season/project workforce.

Arguments can also be made that HR will develop better standards for its various processes and transactions because, from a public disclosure standpoint, the day may be coming when publicly listed organizations, and perhaps all organizations above a certain size, will be recommended or even required to report and disclose a significant amount of workforce information as part of their annual report or sustainability reporting. In fact, some institutional investors have already started to ask for exactly such information. The implication of this for HCM technology would be an increase in resources and a much closer relationship to financial reporting groups within the organization, a relationship that has been largely absent from HR and HCM in the past. Is the HCM market ready for all of this change?

That is one question that is easy to answer. It simply doesn’t matter, the change is coming whether the market is ready or not.

If after reading this article, you know of some critical factor that will impact HCM technology in the future, we would love to hear from you about that.

About the Author

Jeff Higgins is the CEO of the Human Capital Management Institute, a driving force in workforce analytics helping companies transform data into intelligence via workforce planning and predictive analytics.

With his unique experience as both a senior HR executive and former CFO, he helps organizations rapidly advance their analytics and workforce planning journey to unlock billions of dollars in workforce ROI. Higgins is a founding member of the Workforce Intelligence Consortium, a member of the ISO Technical Advisory Group (TAG) developing human capital standards, board member of the Center for Talent Reporting (CTR) and editorial committee member for IHRIM’s Workforce Solutions Review (WSR) magazine. He can be reached at jeff.higgins@hcminst.com.

“For the users, whether employees or increasingly contract workers, solutions will be seamless, intuitive, mobile, and integrated – truly enabling workers to focus less on HR and more on their work. For the HR function, the focus will shift well away from the technical – which will be handled by the product www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • September 2016

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Wes Wu, Ernst & Young LLP

Digital HR: The Business of People is fast-becoming the Business of Bytes Just by virtue of the function’s name, Human Resources, at its heart, will always be a peoplefocused discipline. Still, the business of managing people is fast-becoming the business of managing bytes.

Before turning to HR, consider first the evolution of “big data” in general. The pace of advancement is so blistering that the earliest creations of data scientists are already showing signs of age.

At the turn of the century, for example, grinding through loyalty card data to better understand how shopping carts can drive improvements in store layout seemed revolutionary. Today, such approaches are commonplace.

Going forward, marvels and milestones are occurring so fast, it’s difficult to keep track. In March 2016, an artificial intelligence–fueled (AI) machine handed humankind’s global Go champion, Lee Se-Dol, a crushing 4-1 defeat. As AI and machine learning evolve, computational, inferential, predictive, and often synthetically intuitive data analysis capabilities grow exponentially.

Technology in Everyday Life

Technological advancement is so profound today that it blends seamlessly within our lives.

The best local restaurants are found with a quick search using mobile phones, transportation can be sourced to your exact location, and arguments settled by asking your phone’s digital assistant.

All we need do is touch the mic button, speak, and within milliseconds, the phone provides the answers.

A lot had to happen in this interaction. Notice that we’re no longer providing search terms via keypad. Instead, a digital assistant, a robot, is “listening” to our natural language to comprehend, refine, and translate our request to servers all over the globe, and subsequently, communicating the result most likely to suit our needs.

Such advances in natural language and intuitive, predictive, learning-capable AI mean I no longer need to master tools such as structured query language (SQL) to pose a question to my

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company’s data lake. In essence, the field of extraordinarily advanced data analytics is becoming voice accessible to the masses. Tools built on such capabilities are not yet in full-scale production across all offerings within IT and business intelligence (BI) – but within 18 months or so, be prepared (they are evolving rapidly).

Technology in HR

So what does this mean for HR? It used to be: develop an idea to be researched, frame that into a specific question, press some tech person into service to develop and program a formal query, and then wait for the report. A week or more can go by from concept to result.

But, in the very near future, such research can be instantaneous. First, all capable HR departments will feature a natural language-based interface. We won’t be writing code; we’ll simply ask our question.

Second, we’ll have deeply intuitive AI in the background. Humans make errors all the time, but AI now has the ability to correct for those errors. If we ask for directions to the airport, the combination of digital assistants and AI will know to which airport we’re going based on emailed flight itineraries we’ve received in the past. If we want to drive to a meeting, AI knows the fastest route, even if it’s not the usually taken route. Increasingly, we don’t need to know the right questions to ask because our AI will actually be able to assist us in asking the right questions. So, the key components of the future of HR include not only traditional query mechanisms, but also a natural language interface coupled with AI, machine learning, and calculation engines.

Third, instead of being static, such interaction will be interactive. We can ask our questions and receive answers within moments instead of hours, days, or weeks. We can adjust our queries based on immediate responses. Our interaction becomes less of a daunting, structured process and more of a creative, iterative, and intuitive opportunity to explore our data.

Now, think about the vastly expanded flows to come into our data lake – our pool of searchable, insight-laden information. As these same technologies extend into our day-to-day operations, we’re now able to collect and access all manner of both structured and unstructured data. So we’re not only looking at entries from our enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems but also the mountains of information residing in emails, message boards, social media, and telephone and office conversations. We have more and better data than ever before.

Next, think of an AI engine and personal assistant deployed not simply on our smartphone – but across the whole of our business enterprise.

What are the possibilities for HR?

What it Means

The answer becomes: whatever it is that a forward-thinking HR strategist might want to know.

Perhaps not at this moment, but certainly within the next 18 months, technologies will be far more effective in helping to answer questions such as: How effective are our training programs? Today, when we conduct a sales training class, 20 or so staffers are ushered into classrooms to be shown, for example, a range of strategies for increasing the number of appointments secured from any given set of leads. In the HR world of today, connecting productivity outcomes to what staffers were shown in such a class would be tenuous at best. How many paid attention to the course content? How many are actually attempting to use the new techniques they were shown? More than likely, HR today has only the most rudimentary means of eventually determining whether or not the course led to a spike in productivity, let alone sustained improvement.

Moreover, any such measures would provide only a static, look-back view of organizational performance.

Enter “The Matrix,” so to speak, the brave new world of connectivity and analysis. There are technologies already in use or nearly ready to deploy that can scour virtually every aspect of these sales productivity students’ working existence. Text messages; discussion boards; e-mails; virtually any information entered into any word processor, spreadsheet, or calendar; virtually any words spoken into any phone; even ambient workplace conversations: it can all be digitized.

Now HR can query and analyze the data. Are people using the new scripts, routines, or other course-provided tools/insights? Are they having the right forms of communications with the right people? How frequently are their interactions and follow-ups? Ultimately, are they booking more sales appointments into their calendars than

before the training?

Human Resources can now see, interactively, in real-time, which people are putting what they learned to use, and which people are not. Managers can take matters a step even further to see whether or not the training actually improves results for those who are adopting the prescribed behaviors. From an HR perspective, the business is able to relate productivity drivers, training, and outcomes to a bottom-line result in ways that can be continuously explored and more deeply refined. The return-on-investment (ROI) of training becomes more of a standard output as opposed to the unreachable Holy Grail.

How capably are our employees addressing their development goals? Think about annual performance reviews. The practice today is to meet with the employee, discuss the prior year and develop a plan for the year ahead.

But, being honest, far too many, if not most, of such plans are then tossed in a drawer and not even thought of again until next year’s review.

But, with fast-arriving technologies, HR will have the ability to evaluate performance against objectives, again, in real-time. Using structured and unstructured data, HR can “listen” to employees as they go through their day-to-day working routines. Artificial intelligence will catalog key goals for each worker and, in turn, analyze data in a way that associates and tracks evolving performance against objectives. Human Resources can see, for example: these four executives are paying close attention to their development programs; these two seem to be making little-to-no adjustments or progress. So, rather than waiting for another year before re-engaging with individual employees, HR can identify problem areas and intervene in time to make a real difference in each worker’s career development. Will this replace the need to have performance discussions? No. However, they will provide more data-driven evidence of progress or the lack thereof so more actionable plans can be made and surprises are minimized.

Who in our organization consistently demonstrates which skills – and are they more productive as a result? Today, we are asked to provide a self-scored inventory of what our skills and experiences are and they are stored in a static table. Our colleagues, customers, and others are able to rate the capabilities of our employees with which they have interactions.

Such results are, in turn, tallied and displayed by business-oriented social media. But, how objective are such ratings? Does the mere reporting of a skill really give us a sense of proficiency? Are skills measured by frequency of citation alone?

Do they measure the depth of any particular skill attributed to an individual or merely indicate the person has been known to delve in any specific

Our colleagues, customers, and others are able to rate the capabilities of our employees with which they have interactions.

Such results are, in turn, tallied and displayed by business-oriented social media.

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area? Put another way, just how reliable are such measures of this person’s abilities in consulting, strategy development, etc.?

Human Resources managers today are often called upon to conduct detailed competency assessments. But, not only do such evaluations require significant time and effort, they are also highly subjective. However, by harnessing today’s technologies, HR has better objective and factbased tools and a great deal more information available for understanding workers’ true capabilities. With whom do they interact and how often? Are they sought out by others for access to a given set of skills? How often and how deeply do they interact with product developers, marketers, finance, customers, or risk professionals?

Moreover, the analysis easily expands to an even more insightful question: does the existence of a particular skill result in stronger performance for this position within the organization? With the swipe of a touchscreen, HR can now see an up-tothe-minute, unbiased employee skills evaluation and related queries based on objective observations of performance and the actual body of work.

Which of our employees are engaged?

Today there are commercial web- and mobilebased communications applications that use tools like natural language recognition to scour what could be millions of interactions per hour to gauge the mood of a city, state, or region. Sophisticated algorithms track, for example, how many negative or positive words are being expressed at any given moment. Are the people of the United States more or less happy at this moment?

What is the mood of your organization – not solely at this moment, but over the course of the day, week, quarter, or year? Today, HR runs pulse surveys. Are employees happy, satisfied, upset, or motivated? The exercise is labor-intensive; episodic as opposed to ongoing and overall; and subject to bias.

But, allow AI and machine learning to comb through the content of emails, instant messages (IMs), message boards and related communications, and suddenly HR is no longer wondering about engagement, but can actually develop a moment-by-moment index. Now, think of all the additional capabilities technology delivers. Human Resources software can decipher the mood of the organization, allowing it to better understand the drivers of employee engagement. The result is not only better-targeted strategies and tactics to enhance organizational ethos, but also the ability to concurrently evaluate their effectiveness and to demonstrate that the company is actually listening to what employees are saying, and reacting accordingly.

What are “other” potential tools/insights? We are barely scratching the surface of

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where technology is leading to breakthrough HR effectiveness. As AI and machine learning are implemented, notice that so much of HR’s more mundane, repetitive and less value-adding work will become increasingly automated and streamlined. In short, HR professionals will be spending less time on administration and more time on strategy.

As executives probe more strategic questions, their learning, and thus their contribution to the organization, increases. In a real-world example, a data scientist in a risk practice had been scrubbing emails seeking insight and early warning mechanisms for predicting which employees are displaying signs that they may leave the company.

Indeed, the company can now answer the question: can we better predict who is about to leave?

But, even more importantly, for our most critical positions, what steps should be taken before it happens?

Reducing attrition and its associated risks and costs may have been the primary goal. But, zooming in on a secondary cut of the data, the analyst learned not only which employees are most likely to leave the organization, but which ones are the most likely to attempt to steal intellectual property when they leave. In short, the matrix is leading to insights beyond basic HR transactions and entering the realm of profound, tangible, and actionable insight.

The Fear of 1984

There is no doubt that employees, HR administrators, regulators and many other interested parties are already instinctively reaching for their figurative/virtual emergency brakes. And, they will surely achieve a degree of success in slowing the advance of this kind of technology into day-today HR processes. However, the breakneck pace of technological advancement, coupled with societal evolution guarantees that this is an inevitable future.

Society itself is already well on its way toward accepting (and, in many cases, embracing) such an epoch. Web and mobile sites already track, analyze, and seek to monetize our every move.

With the advent of the internet of things (IoT), more and more of our devices will be sending more and more data about our whereabouts, energy usage, media-viewing/recording, dining and driving habits – on and on. What we do, who we do it with, when and how much we spend along the way is quickly becoming a digitized, machineretrievable/searchable/record book archived – a circumstance which only the boomers, far less so the millennials, seem to mind.

The question becomes: if society already accepts retailers and marketers and IoT devices

delving into our deepest, personal realities, where will the line be drawn within the workplace? Already, the privacy limits between employees and employers are blurring, as data miners are already well-entrenched in the analysis of structured and unstructured data as it relates to a wide range of business processes and individual performance. In this sense, the brave new world to come is much less a revolution and more of an evolution.

Certainly, regulators, unions and other interested parties will seek to limit digital reach by employers. But, over time, protests will likely become less vocal and less entrenched. Just as society migrated from high alert to relative (but not absolute) acquiescence over the intensive tracking of their personal data by online and mobile marketers and others, so too will there be evolution in the employee/employer digital surveillance compact.

Marketers have learned: when customer data is harnessed to improve products and services offerings, customers don’t seem to mind and can

actually decide to share even more information.

So too must employers – HR – learn that the benefits of heightened tracking must flow two ways. The brave new world of HR is not one of control, but rather of insight and optimization – of helping individual employees achieve their greatest potential within the organization.

On a final note, though each of the individual capabilities described above is already a reality, only now are various leading practitioners and providers seeking to refine and consolidate such tools into a comprehensive set of solutions for HR. This is indeed advanced HR technology in the current day. But, we must recognize that the pace of technological innovation is so profound that those who have yet to embrace the advances of the past few years are now in a position to absolutely leapfrog what may have been leading edge just 18 months ago. How far and fast will HR move into the realm of the possible? Armed with the facts and the possibilities, that’s a decision each company will need to make for itself.

What will your role be in this evolution?

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Ernst & Young LLP or any other member firm of the global Ernst & Young organization.

About the Author

Wes Wu is a principal in Ernst & YoungisLLP’s People Advisory Services group.

He provides experience with Artwork prepared at 200% Final Ad Sizedeep Prints at 71/2 X human 5 inches) capital technology, talent and service delivery strategy, and helps guide customer organizations through cloud deployments all over the globe. Wes is a skilled communicator and executive partner. He has spent over 20 years helping organizations with their HR, talent, technology and analytics strategies. He can be reached at wes.wu@ey.com.

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feature

Susan Sanders, Spinderok

Putting HR Technology into Perspective: The best thing to happen to HR Technology in the Future won’t be Technology

“Thousands of SaaS HR software solutions across many different categories have been launched like ships into the night, all promising to unlock the myriad business benefits that a fully engaged workforce offers.”3 However, reality is quite the contrary – simply implementing a new piece of software will not magically engage your employees.

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The current HR technology landscape has rapidly become more complex and diverse with significant investments being made in new solutions and the evolution of existing solutions.

When I look at the exhibitor list for the HR Technology Conference 2016, it’s easy to see just how complex the landscape has become; the exhibit hall is expected to have over 400 companies and over 40 new exhibitors will be featured at the Startup Pavilion. HR technology categories currently include core HCM solutions that enable basic self-service, along with applications to support recognition, performance management, talent acquisition, employee engagement, compensation, HR analytics, onboarding, and well-being, etc.

We predict new vendors and quickly evolving solutions, and new categories of HR technology solutions will continue to flood into the market.

It’s very exciting to think about what’s on the horizon, but perhaps a bit overwhelming as well.

One would think that all of this activity is producing leading edge options that will help drive employee satisfaction and engagement, and corporate efficiency. Here’s the rub. Companies tend to operate in silos and their technology tends to reinforce that structure. As a result, even when organizations build, or buy and configure leading edge solutions, the overall employee experience will still be disjointed and inconsistent. In addition, too much expectation is placed on technology to solve core structure and cultural issues, and often the real underlying issues remain.

So who is this technology really for anyway? Not surprisingly, employees who are awash in existing company culture and processes don’t think in the same terms as the HR technology marketplace. Unless they are HR managers, they don’t get excited that

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compensation planning is integrated with performance management. During interviews, they don’t ask, “What onboarding application do you use?” Their HR technology categories are centered more around places – the place I go to do my performance assessment, the place I go to see how much PTO I have, the place I go to find training classes, the place I go to see how much I’ve saved for retirement, etc. Changes in technology are often difficult and are not made easier by slapdash implementations. Who wants to have to remember 15 different logins to go to 15 different places?

What is the result of all these changes and disjointed experiences? Employees are frustrated. They stumble in trying to get seemingly simple tasks completed and struggle to remember where to go to find resources to help resolve specific issues. Because it’s not configured in a way that takes their day into account, they see technology as an obstacle they are being forced to use, not an enabler. With an experience that is less than intuitive for a new and infrequent user, they aren’t clear on the benefit to them whenever a solution changes or a new solution is introduced.

Predictably, employees react by fighting adoption of new and evolving technology, often doing only the bare minimum to accomplish what they need to get done and not leveraging new functionality. This diminishes the ROI of the technology, and more importantly negatively affects employee engagement levels leaving a company in an even less advantageous position than before the big “spend” on HR. What is the connection between employee engagement and the employee experience?

Employee engagement remains a top priority for many organizations. Less than a third of U.S. workers are engaged.1 Even worse, is that for the

last 16 years we’ve known about it and haven’t been able to improve2 – even with greater focus and investment, and a proliferation of new employee engagement technology.

The Starr Conspiracy noted in a recent Starr Report on Employee Engagement, “Thousands of SaaS HR software solutions across many different categories have been launched like ships into the night, all promising to unlock the myriad business benefits that a fully engaged workforce offers.”3 However, reality is quite the contrary – simply implementing a new piece of software will not magically engage your employees.

If big investments in technology aren’t going to get the job done, what should we do? First, let’s identify that current offerings are divided into solutions that help you measure engagement and solutions that could affect engagement (such as recognition). But what we have come to know is engagement isn’t that simple, especially sustainable engagement.

Next generation solutions will also need to support efforts to improve levels of engagement by addressing other common drivers such as career development and manager effectiveness. So, by definition, every technology solution an employee touches becomes employee engagement technology. Plus, when successfully integrated into the overall employee experience, it becomes an additional positive driver of engagement.

HR needs to adopt new approaches and strategies that focus first on the employee experience, and view each individual solution and application within an employee experience ecosystem – the right combination of HR technology solutions, programs, and services, woven together in a meaningful way.

In todays’ modern workplace, obviously we can’t define the employee experience without considering all of the digital touchpoints. But when we look beyond the technology, it’s clear that HR software and technology solutions should support and enable the experience, not drive it.

Looking forward, HR has an opportunity to redefine the way it works, and ultimately redefine the employee experience. This isn’t a prediction – there’s too much evidence pointing to the need to make a change – it’s a call to action.

Think of employees as consumers. We often hear, “That’s really catchy, but what does it mean?” Thinking of employees as consumers means that you are designing, building or buying technology as a service to them, not as a convenience to HR, Finance, and Payroll. That’s

a huge paradigm shift as the people who initiate the change are usually the HR department and the first thing they need to do is show the ROI on the purchase. It’s much easier to justify the expense of streamlining a process than improving employee engagement. However, as we indicated previously, if employees don’t use the solutions, it can diminish the anticipated ROI. How do you drive adoption? Design an employee experience from their perspective, beyond specific application use cases, or process improvements, factoring in other aspects of the experience such as motivation, readiness, context, device, and environment.

Put it into a consumer prospective: Imagine if you could only request an Uber from your desktop, or each product category on Amazon had a different interface and search engine. We wouldn’t use those solutions nearly as often.

That’s what it feels like for many employees.

Become employee experience architects and designers. Traditionally, HR tends to think about solutions as a program rather than an experience. Kristen Robinson, chief HRO at Pandora believes that this perspective, is “disastrous” and makes efforts seem “Dilberty,” suggesting that a better approach is to “make it more organic.”4 How can HR shift from traditional thinking?

There’s much that we can learn and leverage from customer experience, behavioral change, and product design experts that will help to redefine the employee experience.

As Josh Bersin explains, “High-impact HR teams are now starting to practice design thinking — they are creating personas to understand their employees, and measuring employee behavior and engagement just as we measure our customers.”

He predicts that design thinking and behavioral economics – “the art of choice architecture and nudges” represent a new opportunity for HR.5 Perhaps one day in the near future, every organization will have chief employee experience officers, and well-defined employee experience strategies. But until then, what are some of the ways to get started now and realize more immediate results in terms of employee engagement?

Learn more about concepts such as design thinking and behavioral sciences.

Fortunately, while relatively new to HR, the ideas and methods in these areas are already mainstream. It’s a matter of applying them to the employee experience.

Follow recognized thought leaders.

Following are some of the thought leaders that inform and inspire me and my team:

View each individual solution and applications within an employee experience ecosystem - the right combination of HR technology solutions, programs and services, woven together in a meaningful way.

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Thinking of employees as consumers means that you are designing, building or buying technology as a service to them, not as a convenience to HR, Finance and Payroll.

•

Josh Bersin, principal and founder of Bersin by Deloitte, a keynote speaker and author who has actively been advocating the application of design thinking to HR technology.

•

BJ Fogg, Ph.D., innovator, behavior scientist, and teacher from Stanford University, who frequently speaks and writes about the application of behavioral science to employee well-being.

•

Nina McQueen, vice president, Global Benefits at LinkedIn, who recently published a great series about “LinkedIn’s journey to create an exceptional employee experience” – on LinkedIn.

•

Kristen Robinson, chief HR officer at Pandora, who was featured last year on the Future of Work podcast, who candidly shared “what Pandora is doing to unleash the employee experience to make it a better work environment for everyone.”

Actively listen to employees. That could mean doing a deeper dive into existing engagement measurement data or HR analytics, or collecting even more insights through other listening and empathy exercises, such as journey mapping and focus groups. Then share these insights broadly and let them guide you in whatever role you play within HR technology; whether it’s leading programs and initiatives that the solutions support, creating the technology roadmap, evaluating and selecting new solutions, designing or configuring solutions, providing user services and support, or producing communication and training that wraps around the technology.

Understandably, this is a big change for internal teams from HR and IT, but luckily the path has already been forged by Sales and Marketing.

Using the tried and true methods of attracting and retaining customers to your company will yield similarly dramatic results in improving your employee engagement.

Endnotes

Gallup, “U.S. Employee Engagement Steady in June,” July 25, 2016. (http://www.gallup.com/poll/193901/employeeengagement-steady-june.aspx?g_source=EMPLOYEE_ENGAGEMENT&g_medium=topic&g_campaign=tiles) 1

2

Gallup Business Journal, “”Employees Want a Lot More From their Managers” April 8, 2015.

TSCIU, “Employee Engagement: A New Technology Category Emerges” 2016. (http://campaigns.thestarrconspiracy. com/2016-employee-engagement-brandscape/understanding-the-report/) 3

Future of Work Podcast, “Creating a Great Employee Experience – Lessons from Pandora,” September 15, 2015. (https:// thefutureorganization.com/creating-a-great-employee-experience-lesson-from-pandora/) 4

Bersin by Deloitte, lead author Josh Bersin, “Predictions for 2016: A Bold New World of Talent, Learning, Leadership, and HR Technology Ahead,” 2016. (http://www.bersin.com//uploadedFiles/011416-predictions-2016-final2. pdf?aliId=85284023) 5

About the Author

Susan Sanders is the principal consultant, strategic advisor, and “coach” at Spinderok focused on improving the employee experience and creating cultures that foster well-being. Her extensive and diverse consulting experience spanning more than 16 years, plus deep technology expertise give her a rare perspective when developing employee experience strategies and designing solutions in a digital world. She is known for her ability to work across all levels and functions in an organization, seeing the big picture and being able to connect the dots to create something more holistic and meaningful. Sanders is recognized as a thought leader in the fields of digital employee experience, employee portals, employee collaboration, and social media for business. She holds an MBA from Arizona State University and can be reached at sanders@spinderok.com.

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September 2016 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

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2016 Outsourcing/ASP Buyers Guide

The 2016 Outsourcing/ASP 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 2016 purchasing decisions.

Product Categories

Outsourcing

General Enterprise Information Resources Inc. (EIR) Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)

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Application Service Providers (ASP)

General Enterprise Information Resources Inc. (EIR) Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Career & Organizational Development Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Compensation DECUSOFT Compliance Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Employee Relations Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Performance CRG emPerform Recruiting/Retention Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)

September 2016 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

2016 Outsourcing/ASP 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.

CRG emPerform

6 Antares Dr. Phase 1 Suite 200 Ottawa, ON K2E 8A9 877.711.0367 613.232.4295 info@employee-performance.com www.employee-performance.com Eliminate the hassle of manual appraisals and get easy-to-use, affordable, and effective ongoing performance management. emPerform delivers a full suite of employee performance management functionality to align, develop, reward, and retail a world-class workforce. Online appraisals & selfassessments, ongoing feedback, 360° reviews, compensation management, reporting, surveys, and talent identification. Get started with a free trial. See our ad on the Back Cover.

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70 Hilltop Rd Ste 1003 Ramsey, NJ 07446 Michele Weiss 201-258-3395 201-785-0774 Michele.Weiss@Decusoft.com www.decusoft.com

Enterprise Information Resources Inc. 271 Waverley Oaks Rd. Suite 207 Waltham, MA 02452 Gin O’Leary 855-589-9451 617-924-4802 info@erpinforesources.com www.erpinforesources.com

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Enterprise Information Resources Inc. (EIR) Get the most from your talent management strategy with EIR expertise, proven technology and service offerings. EIR DataTools are advanced automation tools that turn your system into a major company asset providing the accurate, actionable data necessary for reaching a true competitive advantage. EIR is a member of the SAP PartnerEdge program. We are authorized to resell and are a certified implementation partner for SAP SuccessFactors solutions. See our ad on page 19.

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The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is the world’s largest HR professional society, representing 285,000 members in more than 165 countries. For nearly seven decades, the Society has been the leading provider of resources serving the needs of HR professionals and advancing the practice of human resource management. SHRM has more than 575 affiliated chapters within the United States and subsidiary offices in China, India and United Arab Emirates. Visit us at shrm.org. See our ad on page 23.

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 our ad on the Inside Front Cover.

www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • September 2016

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Executive Interview

A WSR interview with Tina MarronPartridge, the worldwide leader for IBM’s extensive people solutions and services practice — Talent and Engagement — where she leads a forward-thinking team of consultants focused on solutions and services.

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WSR: Tina, thanks for taking the time for this interview. I know our audience will appreciate your insights. Let’s jump right in. What are the most important trends that you’re seeing in the world of HR technology today?

Tina: Thanks for the opportunity. To my mind, there are three big trends that we’re seeing. And I would summarize them as: trends that are being delivered, trends that are being designed, and trends that are being investigated.

The first is clearly Cloud. All of our clients generally in some way, shape, or form, are on their journey towards transforming the employee experience while delivering HR on a Cloud platform, so whether they are in the business case phase of that, trying to select the technology vendor, are well on the way, or are even done, that Cloud trend has been hugely impactful around the world of HR. This is clearly a trend that is in a state of “delivery.”

Linked to that, the second trend, which I would put in the “design” phase, is Cognitive HR. Quite a few of our larger clients, as well as IBM itself with Watson, have moved into what I would call proof of concept, or pilots, in a number of areas where we are looking at bringing cognitive to the HR function.

Examples of this trend include the development of automated helpdesks to add value to the customer experience, using personality insights for more effective recruitment, and determining learning pathways to tailor talent development to the individual. This particular trend relating to cognitive HR is definitely in the design stage.

And then the third trend, that is also reasonably well-documented but I would think is in its more “investigative” phase: the Internet of Things and the impact of that on the workforce.

It’s my view this is still very much in its infancy. But the potential benefits around creating a consumer-grade employee experience are huge.

I think we’ve only really scratched the surface of how we bring the Internet of Things and the role of HR and technology together in an impactful way.

Clearly there are huge prospects with these trends. But I think these are the main trends. We do see other trends that may be termed as more niche technologies or specialist technologies that are doing interesting things. But I’ll stop here.

WSR: Thanks Tina, that’s very helpful and your answer leads us into the next couple of questions.

You mentioned the employee experience and cur-

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rently there is a lot of “buzz” around that. How do you see technology playing a role in improving the employee experience?

Tina: So this topic of employee experience, this is obviously the Holy Grail of HR today. It is well-documented that employees would like the consumer-grade experience with work that they have come to know and expect in their personal lives.

We think it’s a really meaningful topic to pay attention to. And at IBM, our own senior HR team is actually measured and rated on improving employee engagement and developing a more effective employee experience. I think that shows, really, how much HR has moved forward in this regard.

We also see our clients considering the user experience as a number one decision factor as they choose new technologies. Clearly technology plays a very large part in enabling a better employee experience.

It’s also the platform on which the processes, the policies, the data is built. And that is the medium by which we experience HR. So if we look at Cloud technologies, every platform offers a significantly enhanced user experience over the older on-premise solutions that were delivered before.

In addition to the user experience is the ability to adopt and automate processes and the ability to use any device, anytime, anywhere. This actually automatically enhances the employee experience.

WSR: In your answer to the trend question, you mentioned the Internet of Things and the potential impact it will have. You said it’s in its infancy, but can you provide more detail on how Internet of Things will impact HR? Tina: This is an area where technology offers a huge future mechanism to deliver a personalized and automated employee experience in the future.

I think the art of the possible is staggering if you consider how connected devices could provide insightful and, more importantly, actionable data.

One example could be how employee travel could be enhanced. Connected devices could tell you in advance the impact of delays in particular flights on the overall journey, what the cost basis is in an unfamiliar city, even the clothes to wear when you meet the client due to certain weather changes in your destination.

Another example is related to workers who

might be on the move. A building’s technology could actively manage the employees at the building that it hosts, offering facial recognition, understanding who is coming in, linking them via real-time alerts to other employees in the building that may have similar objectives or projects – and even automatically closing the blinds in the room if the temperature is getting too high prior to your meeting. So when we talk about “personas,” the building you work in could eventually become a persona in its own right.

Or more simply you may visit a country that you’ve traveled to several times before. The technology could be automatically put you into rooms or meetings or order you lunch based on your previous purchasing history.

Another example is social interaction badges.

We see companies developing chips that can be added to your work space, identity cards to track your movement, who you interact with, and what impact that has on your productivity.

Those are a few examples and there are many, many more. I guess the reason I think this is in its infancy is because a large obstacle that’s getting in the way of many of the examples is the concern for employee data privacy. We need to strike a balance whereby privacy is respected but the personal benefits for each employee are realized.

WSR: Let’s move on to artificial intelligence and machine learning. How do you see these technologies affecting the HR organization?

Tina: Well, I think these technologies are very much starting to change the way we think about automating the employee experience and are at the heart of how you’re going to deliver a better and more interactive experience.

This is a significant part of our plans for how we’re building our cognitive solutions for the workforce as well. In fact, we recently ran a huge internal exercise to get our IBMers to come up with ideas for a “cognitive build” program.

And what I thought was really interesting was how many of the ideas were around HR. In fact, the overall winner was the cognitive build called My Career Advisor (or MyCA).

There was another one, Attractive, which uses personality insights based on tests to evaluate the suitability of a candidate for a particular job or for identifying alternative jobs.

We just launched an app called ULearning internally at IBM and now we’re working through the first stages of commercializing it for the market. ULearning uses cognitive computing to create

tailored learning suggestions for individuals based on their career goals, their learning practices, organization goals, webinars they are viewing, or even books they are searching for on Amazon.

We will launch a YouTube video of ULearning soon so our customers and clients will be able to see it. Cognitive computing is, in fact, coming along very nicely with ROI potential for the HR organization.

WSR: Certainly lots going on in that area, but let’s shift gears a bit. From your perspective, what changes have you seen in the HR analytics space and what do you think is coming next?

Tina: Well, HR analytics is something that we’ve been working with for some time now – from static reporting to the identification of trends, and now predictive analytics. We are moving from the kind of factual report which is what HR has lived on towards real predictive analytics. I think we are now moving on to more sophisticated predictive analytics powered by the cognitive computing I just described.

For us, though, the opportunity here is not just being able to take the structured data, the core systems data, but also using unstructured data for HR analytics. And that will be increasingly important as we move from current analytics to cognitive.

WSR: Finally, as you are talking with CHROs, and listening to what their issues and concerns are, what guidance would you provide to them regarding the future of HR technology?

About Tina Marron-Partridge Tina Marron-Partridge is the worldwide leader for IBM’s extensive people solutions and services practice — Talent and Engagement — where she leads a forward-thinking team of consultants focused on solutions and services to enable C-suite leaders, especially Chief Human Resource Officers (CHROs), to leverage advanced analytics, cognitive HR and behavioral science to optimize investments in talent and create the optimal culture for employee engagement and business performance. This includes contemporary business strategy and digital change management to help maximize the returns of transformational change. The IBM Talent & Engagement practice includes HR Transformation, Business Process Outsourcing for HR, Learning and Recruitement, Cloud HCM, Employee Experience and Business Change Management. The practice offers an integrated service of consulting, implementation and operations for IBM clients. She can be reached at tina.marron-partridge@uk.ibm.com.

Tina: Well, I think that the first big piece of guidance would be to have a plan. Make it factbased. Get educated on technology and make an informed plan.

HR needs a strategy to create a workforce that can deliver and support the organization’s mission and brand. That means researching the market, benchmarking what that strategy looks like, understanding your priorities and what you’ve got to invest in.

From a technology perspective, the plan has to be more than “we’ll move to the Cloud and hope for the best.” CHROs need to look at which of the available technologies can deliver on the priorities that they pick and then put the acquisition and implementation of those technologies into the plan.

WSR: Tina, thank you so much for your time and insight. You have given us quite a few things to think about! www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • September 2016

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From our Advisors John Sumser, HRExaminer

The Present of HR It’s not the future, it’s now. It may not have arrived in your office, but it’s at your competitors’ offices. The hardest thing to grasp these days is what is already possible. We changed from an analog society to a digital world in under a decade. Overnight, amazing improvements in HR technology moved from the labs and into the offices of companies that chose to invest.

No one reading this article will be unfamiliar with the dread that accompanies the email inbox. Information is shoveled in our direction with such intensity that we lose track of what’s happening. Busyness and our increasing focus on the next transaction on our to-do lists creates a paradox. We are firmly in the present moment while losing sight of what’s possible right now.

It’s not that we are overwhelmed by data as some would suggest. We all solve the so-called overload problem every day. We ignore, filter, and procrastinate the things that matter least until they disappear into sludge at the bottom of our lists.

Rather, our deepening focus on the immediate present prevents us from seeing the broad expanse of right now. Urgency and relentless choice conspire to keep us from noticing how much better things have gotten, how much more capability we have.

On the HRExaminer, I’ve noted that there are between 70 and 120 discrete silos of HR software. They are the component subsets of the 10 or 12 major areas of expertise. Each is available as a subscription service. Each arrives with the paucity of support that makes Software-as-aService currently so profitable.

No single HR department will ever implement all of these options. And still, they are necessary for some.

They stand as evidence of the fact that there are no standard practices in HR or HR technology. Rather, HR is always a snowflake. It looks like other snowflakes but is driven by the business and its needs, not by some overarching HR reality. As we get more and more comfortable with HR as a set of good practices that are tailored, we will become more adept at under-

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standing how a department might best organize and execute.

Human resources departments depend on good, not best practices. Great HR is always local and always an optimization of a recipe. Following a recipe precisely is, in itself, a recipe for disaster. In other words, each HR department is its own set of adjustments. It is the way that HR works here at our company.

Every HR professional reading this article spends his or her time covering the gap between standard HR practice and what is needed in the company. Sometimes the fit is strong and sometimes, it’s loose. That’s what keeps us, as a profession, so busy.

Meanwhile, the HR technology industry continues to develop amazing new tools and techniques. In the past several years, new ideas blossomed as the direct result of massive investment in new companies. Here are a few of the capabilities you might not have noticed emerging while you were busy.

1. Integrated Recruitment Marketing Systems – There are really two aspects of recruiting, internal and external. Integrated recruitment marketing systems offer a suite of tools designed to handle the outbound components from employment branding to job distribution, from job ad distribution to drip marketing campaigns to candidate pipelines. Both Smashfly and CareerBuilder cover this terrain.

2. Résumé Handling and Parsing – Most applicant tracking systems license software that moves unstructured text from résumés into structured databases.

The process, an artifact of the days of paper résumés, is outmoded. New natural language tools are emerging that do things very differently.

3. Analytics Performance Guarantees – If vendors can predict performance using algorithms, modeling and AI, shouldn’t they begin to guarantee the results? That’s the premise at SMD, an assessment firm

that combines employee surveys, structured equation modeling and service guarantees. They call it performance-based pricing.

4. On-Demand Benefits – With four (or five, depending on how you count) generations in the workplace, there is no such thing as a standard benefits package. What matters to a single grandmother may not be very interesting to a 25-year-old man.

The most advanced providers are delivering benefits as they become relevant to the employee across the life cycle.

5. Embedded Coaching Tools – Both Ceridian and Ultimate Software include embedded coaching tools based on personality assessments. Similar tools are emerging online as guides for communication in email and meetings. “You’re a ‘xyz’ and he’s an ‘lmnop.’ Therefore, you should take the following steps to be sure you are understood.”

6. Varieties of Performance Management – What began as a broad recognition of the fact that performance reviews were crushing morale and sowing confusion is evolving into a cornucopia of tools.

Ranging from traditional reviews to daily “check-ins,” the industry now offers a nut for every bolt. There’s a lot of experimentation involved in figuring out what works for your bolt.

7. Survey Onslaught – Related to the explosion of performance tools is the overwhelming variety of employee surveys.

One asks, “How is the work going?” The other wonders, “How do you like management?” Driven by the craze over engagement, the employee desktop is becoming

a maze of questionnaires. The next perk may well be “survey free” periods for excellent performers.

8. The Prediction of Everything – Without much in the way of actual testing (you know, the kind that let’s you know if a tool actually works), we are being exposed to predictions for cultural fit, future performance, retention risk, attendance, communications success, and project completion likelihood, among others. It’s a messy period and many mistakes will be made.

Still, learning how to make decisions with the aid of machine intelligence is happening at your competitor’s office.

9. Real-Time Data Integration – Theoretically, the biggest hurdle in the way of solid evidence-based HR is the complete lack of underlying data models. Wellintentioned practitioners make ad hoc decisions regarding data structure to solve this moment’s problem. There are currently a few companies like OneModel and CloudMills that are trying to bring order to the chaos.

10. Chatbots – Artificial Intelligence is racing into the HR department. Chatbots are being used in settings ranging from job candidate concierge services to help desk problem-solving. Artificial intelligence frees HR pros to handle unique, highvalue problems while delivering higherquality service.

On some levels, the present of HR is unrecognizable. If your experience with HR is that it’s the same old, same old, you’re missing what’s happening. It’s not the future. It’s the right now.

It’s the present of HR.

About the Author John Sumser is the principal analyst and editor-in-chief of the HRExaminer. He is an independent analyst covering the entirety of the HR technology ecosystem from payroll and benefits to recruiting. He has a particular focus on ethics and practices in predictive analytics. Sumser routinely advises Human Resources and Recruiting departments and talent management vendor teams with product analysis, market segmentation, positioning, strategy and branding guidance. He’s been published and quoted in every imaginable outlet from The New York Times to the HR industry trade magazines. He is currently experimenting with the use of Facebook as a forum for industry dialog. Follow him there. You can also reach him at john@hrexaminer.com.

www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • September 2016

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Product Focus: Personal Safety Robb Monkman, React Mobile

Taking Personal Safety Personally – How React Mobile is Giving Remote Workers a Lifeline Heightening personal safety is more than just the mission behind React Mobile; it has become my individual purpose in life.

Several years ago, as an undergrad at a university in California, my roommates and I were victims of an armed robbery. We were held at gunpoint by a pair of assailants that had burst into our off-campus home late one evening. During the event, they took one of my roommates as a hostage and threatened to kill him if we were to notify the police.

It was a feeling of complete horror and total helplessness that is hard to characterize, but it’s a feeling that will never escape me for the rest of my life. I honestly thought that we were going to die that night – and there was absolutely nothing I could do. There was nowhere to run, and calling for help was impossible.

Fortunately, my roommates and I all survived the ordeal, but I am forever changed. While I feel extremely lucky to be alive, I’ve also found a deeper sense of purpose: never to allow anyone to be in a position where they cannot call for help.

In the days and weeks following the event, I came to understand that people are confronted with situations like this all the time – and in a lot of instances, it happens while alone at work. Every day there are people who desperately need to call for help, but they simply aren’t in a position to dial a friend, family member, or employer. It became my passion to solve this problem and to provide a solution that anyone could use to alert others in a moment of crisis.

Three years ago, I founded React Mobile, and spearheaded the development of a personal safety solution that turns any smartphone into a powerful lifeline. We developed a Bluetooth panic button, called The React Sidekick, that pairs with our app – The React Mobile Safety App. With a single click of the Sidekick, users can activate the app and issue an SOS alert for immediate emergency assistance, even when their phone screen is locked or their phone is out of reach.

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The app’s “Follow-Me” feature shares the user’s location with friends, family, administrators or colleagues, enabling them to track the user’s whereabouts in real-time and follow him or her to safety. If the duration of a “Follow-Me” session expires, the app will automatically send out a message to your emergency contacts letting them know that they should check in with you.

With React Mobile, it’s like having your own personal security guard on hand. The idea is that the people you alert – campus police, co-workers, relatives, or friends – will get a message with a link to your location (that gets updated every 30 seconds) so that they can come to your rescue, or send someone who can help. Users also have the option to post React alerts to Facebook and Twitter to let a wider network of people know about an emergency.

In recent months, React Mobile has continued to develop products centered on wide-spread emergency alerting with GPS location sharing.

Most recently, we launched the React Dispatch Console, a software solution designed exclusively for companies, universities, and other professional organizations responsible for the safety of their employees or private community. The React Dispatch Console helps corporate security professionals quickly identify incidents, shorten response times, document events – and ensure the safety of everyone under their protection. Using the React Dispatch Console, 24/7 emergency operations centers can receive React SOS alerts around-the-clock, as well as the ability to identify the person in distress – and their exact location.

The React Dispatch Console combines alert management, computer aided dispatch, and incident reporting in one central application for improved situational awareness and faster response times. GPS-enabled maps allow safety personnel to visualize where incidents are occurring in realtime, enabling quicker response and greater visibility during critical events. Once incidents have been identified, responded to, and documented,

the React Dispatch Console’s advanced analytics also help security professionals identify locationspecific incident trends or patterns, strengthening preventive safety measures.

In addition to the React Dispatch Console, we’ve also released the React Mobile API, providing the development community at large with access to React Mobile features and data. Using the API, developers building wearables, apps and other platforms can leverage the React Mobile safety platform and add widespread SOS alerting capabilities to their products.

As a company, we are hyper-focused on the voice of our customers, and the feedback we receive and seek out from our users has helped to shape the React solution. Everything that we have developed as part of the React Mobile platform (apps, panic button, dispatch center solution, API) has been the result of customer input, validation, and feedback.

For example, early in our development, we learned that in many emergencies, an app alone may not be enough. What do you do if you can’t get to your phone to call for help? This led to the development of the React Sidekick Bluetooth safety device. Although React Mobile is a software company, we developed this critical piece of hardware (the Sidekick safety device) to make our solution more powerful, ensuring that our users can get help immediately. One-click activation with the Sidekick is all it takes when a phone screen is locked or when a phone is out of reach.

While a number of our initial customers were individual consumers – like runners, hikers, and bikers – after several pilot deployments at large universities and other enterprise organizations, we realized that we had built a powerful emergency communications platform that can be leveraged by large corporations and schools.

Today React Mobile also has enterprise offerings that include the React Dispatch Console, The React API, custom branding offerings, and we have been integrating our alerting capabilities into other security platforms. Our technology is currently serving a wide range of customers and

partners including, Seattle University, Occidental College, BNSF Railway, and Windermere Real Estate. We’ve also secured key national partners such as Take Back the Night and we are a Featured Safety Provider in the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) REALTOR® Safety Program.

Seattle University, one of the top ranked universities in the Western U.S. serving more than 7,400 students, has integrated the entire React Mobile safety platform, including the React Mobile App, the React Sidekick wearable device, and the React Dispatch Console. Located in the heart of the city, Seattle University already provides a number of services to alleviate safety concerns.

These include Blue Light Emergency Phones and Escort Patrol. Looking to add an additional layer of security for community members, Seattle University police looked to React Mobile.

“We’re continuously seeking to improve safety throughout our campus and to provide the latest technology to our students,” said Craig Birklid, director of Public Safety for Seattle University.

“Our use of the React Mobile platform allows us to capture more detailed intelligence on the safety of our students. We can use this information to not only respond more quickly to safety concerns, but to be more proactive in our overall safety efforts.”

Moving forward, as the intersection between personal devices and personal security widens, we’re excited to play a role in the development of other wearables, apps or platforms. We’re also excited to see where our enterprise deployments take the next generation of React Mobile products.

For me personally, it’s been extremely fulfilling to see React Mobile evolve into a powerful emergency communications platform that is helping people all over the world – from families and loved ones, to students and employees.

Knowing that React Mobile has already assisted with hundreds of distress calls – and has perhaps saved someone’s life – has helped ease some of the emotional scars I still bear to this day.

About the Author Robb Monkman is the founder and CEO of Seattle-based React Mobile. He started the company after being the victim of an armed robbery and hostage situation, which left a lasting impression on him. Today it is his mission to transform the way people call for help in emergencies and make tomorrow a safer place for everyone. He can be reached at Robb.monkman@reactmobile.com or www.reactmobile.com.

www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • September 2016

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Product Focus: Gamification

By The pymetrics Science Team

Gamification of the Hiring Process Dr. Darshana Narayanan

Avital Gertner-Samet, LLB

Dr. Matthew Malter Cohen

Dr. Friday Polli

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The application of game mechanics and game design – often called gamification – in non-gaming contexts such as in business, education, and social projects has emerged as a major trend in recent years. When applied effectively, gamification solutions produce tremendous benefits.

Successful examples are as wide ranging as Xerox improving engagement and information retention in employee training sessions using a gamification app,1 Khan Academy implementing gamification elements into learning curriculums,2 gamers playing a protein-folding game and unlocking the structure of an AIDS-related enzyme in one week, something the scientific community had been unable to do for a decade.3 Gamification has a particularly special place in the HR community. Modern day HR divisions take an increasingly data-driven approach to people management, i.e., the people analytics approach. People analytics bear on issues such as recruiting, performance evaluation, leadership, hiring and promotion, job design, compensation, and collaboration.

Integral to gaining these insights is the ability to collect high-quantity and high-quality data.

Gamification can enhance this endeavor. People love games! If the Pokemon GO craze is not proof enough, think of the scores of games you have seen played around you. Suddenly, even your technologically outdated, VCR-owning uncle is a gamer. The Dutch historian and anthropologist Johan Huizinga, founder of the field of cultural history, went as far as calling our species “homo ludens” (the playing man). Gamification can tap into this near universal love for game play and channel it into driving increased participation and motivation in employees and potential employees. For instance, gamifying employee training at Xerox led to an impressive 94 percent employee participation rate of the training. Increased participation and motivation leads to increased quantity and quality of data.

Gamified strategies are especially successful

September 2016 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

with millennials.4 A recent Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data shows that millennials are now the largest share of the American workforce.5 Consequently, game solutions offer to engage the majority proportion of the working population.

Elevating participation is not the only advantage provided by games. Games are a powerful instrument for studying human behavior. In a game, rather than asking someone what they did, you can directly observe their behavior.

For instance, the popular party game Mafia6 has been used to study the psychology of group behavior.7 In recent years, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Army Research Institute, and the U.S. intelligence community have been supporting projects that test human behavior using video game platforms.8 By coupling the data advantage provided by gamification with sophisticated analytic techniques, meaning can be extracted. These data-driven approaches are better at dealing with complex data sets, capturing nonlinear relationships, and predicting future outcomes. As a result, they are better suited to modeling real-life complex problems.

The general benefit of gamification solutions using a data-driven approach is the future. We will now return to HR activities and focus on an important one, the hiring process. We will consider some of the major challenges in the hiring process and discuss gamification approaches to overcome them. The issues fall into these categories: (1) recruiting efficiency (2) workforce diversity, and (3) employee retention. Many of the solutions we offer come from pymetrics, a next generation career search platform (think OkCupid for careers). pymetrics uses game versions of science-based behavioral assessments and data science techniques to help companies effectively harness human capital and help jobs seekers find career paths that capitalize on their strengths.

Recruiting Efficiency

Data and gamification are invaluable when deciding which applicant to invite for an interview. A recent report states that each job opening attracts 250 applicants.9 Clearly, all 250 cannot be interviewed; meaning that companies need a mechanism for selecting interviewees.

For now, companies widely rely on the résumé, a mode that is disliked by both candidates and recruiters. Candidates often feel their abilities lose richness when translated to lists of accomplishments. Recruiters often complain that résumés are indistinguishable. Importantly, critical drivers of success such as emotion intelligence don’t appear on a résumé. The People Analytics division at Google has found that team success is impacted by the “social sensitivity” of team members, i.e., the ability to perceive how others feel by using facial expressions and other non-verbal cues.10 A résumé lacks this sort of information.

Games are a useful portal for obtaining such data – and in this context, simpler is better. For example, if the task is pattern recognition and the pattern is embedded within an elaborate setting, subpar performance could be driven either by poor pattern recognition or by deficient distraction filtering. Cause and effect at the data analysis stage of elaborately designed games becomes difficult, if not impossible. The greater the number of design elements, the higher the risk of result of contamination, and the harder it is to interpret behavior, to the point that it is impossible to directly link a behavior to a specific measure. If design features are limited, the game assessments can be consistently and reliably applied across all applicants. pymetrics has adapted games directly from the neuroscience and cognitive psychology research literature, attesting to their reliability and validity for measuring these behaviors. The games assess a wide range of inherent traits, such as an applicant’s ability to read the emotional state of others, their ability to integrate non-verbal cues with contextual information, and facets of their attention and memory. Lastly, the whole game suite only takes 25 minutes to complete, with immediate feedback, allowing the recruitment process to move swiftly. Screening processes at companies can be reduced from months to weeks or even days when utilizing a suite of automated services combined with traditional on-site interviews.

Workforce Diversity

Hiring processes are still biased. Men outnumber women in many fields, despite there being an abundance of objectively qualified women. This is because recruiters, men and women alike, fall prey to unconscious bias.11 Unconscious bias influences our decisions in ways we can’t notice and can’t control. Even champions for working women have rated the exact same résumé as more qualified when it has a man’s name, compared to when it has a woman’s name.12 Mitigating our unconscious bias can cause sweeping changes. One major breakthrough was in the hiring patterns of symphony orchestras.

As late as 1970, the top five orchestras in the U.S. had fewer than five percent women. In the 1970s, a number of orchestras adopted “blind” auditions whereby screens are used to conceal the identity and gender of the musician from the jury.13 In the years after these changes were instituted, the number of women increased to 25 percent, and two decades later, the number was at 35 percent. Gamified assessments can serve as a form of blind auditions. In addition, sciencebased platforms such as pymetrics go a step beyond, complementing the blinding process by removing any residual bias and guaranteeing that the predictive algorithms will recommend equal numbers of men and women, and people of different ethnicities for a position, ensuring that at a minimum, companies are sourcing an unbiased set of candidates for evaluation.

Studies show that attrition can cost up to twice the annual salary of a full-time employee. Losing an employee, whether due to voluntary or involuntary attrition, is costly.

Employee Retention

Studies show that attrition can cost up to twice the annual salary of a full-time employee.

Losing an employee, whether due to voluntary or involuntary attrition, is costly. Josh Bersin, founder and principal of Bersin & Associates, Deliotte’s talent management, research and advisory services group, makes the case that economic value of employees appreciate over time.14 The same game solutions that are used during the initial hiring process can be integrated directly into a company’s careers marketplace to help unhappy employees find a more suitable role within the same organization. Incorporating such a system reduces knowledge and cultural loss by facilitating internal mobility within the jobs marketplace of companies.

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Summary

According to industry trends, 30 to 50 percent of recruiting efforts fail, meaning that the job offer is not accepted or the person resigns within the first year.15 This is not a consequence of deficient human capital; it is the consequence of using impoverished data for key decision-making processes.

The right game-based assessment can drastically improve the hiring process. Gamification can increase engagement, get an objective read on behavior, and provide a platform for blind auditions. In symbiosis with advanced analytics and data-driven decision-making, we can now achieve recruiting efficiency, unbiased talent assessment, and increased employee retention.

References 1

I. Kuo, When Xerox gamifies employee training, everybody wins, Gamification.co, Enterprise, June 18, 2015.

2

E. Bruenner, Play to learn with Khan Academy, Gamification.co, Education, May 26, 2011.

3

M. Peckham, “Foldit gamers solve AIDS puzzle that baffled scientists for a decade,” TIME Magazine, Sept. 19, 2011.

4

E. Arellano, 3 Learning strategies to engage millennials – We Aren’t That Different, Elearningindustry.com, May 16, 2013.

5

R. Fry, Millennials surpass Gen Xers as the largest generation in U.S. labor force, PEW Research Center, May 11, 2015.

6

M. Robertson, “Werewolf: How a parlour game became a tech phenomenon,” WIRED Magazine, February 4, 2010.

7

A . Smith, and F. Varese, “Payment, Protection and Punishment: The role of information and reputation in the mafia,” Rationality and Society, 13, no. 3: 349–393. SOS-impresa, 2001.

8

J. Hsu, “Game On: Video Games Help Test Human Behavior,” LiveScience, December 17, 2010.

9

Top HR Statistics. The latest stats for HR & Recruiting Pros, Glassdoor, 2016.

10

C. Duhigg, “What Google learned from its quest to build the perfect team,” The New York Times Magazine, Feb. 25, 2016.

11

E. Huet, “Rise of the bias busters: How unconscious bias became Silicon Valley’s newest target,” Forbes Magazine, November 2, 2015.

12

A .W. Watts, Why does John get the STEM job rather than Jennifer?, Gender News, The Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Stanford University, June 2, 2014.

13

C. Rice, “How blind auditions help orchestras to eliminate gender bias,” The Guardian, October 14, 2013.

14

Josh Bersin, Employee retention now a big issue: Why the tide has turned, Linkedin Pulse, August 16, 2013.

15

F. Polli, It’s Time to Rethink the Resume, Linkedin Pulse, April 8, 2015.

About the Authors

Darshana Narayanan, Ph.D., is the head of Research at pymetrics. She has long-standing interests and formal training in the study of human behavior at multiple levels (individual behavior and group behavior) and at multiple time scales (behavior both in developmental and evolutionary time). She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology and Neuroscience from Princeton University and M.S. in Neuroscience from Brandeis University.

Avital Gertner-Samet, LL.B., is the general counsel at pymetrics. She concentrates on policy-making in legal terra incognita, suggesting rules and guidelines that have been adopted by regulators. She holds a law degree from Haifa University and is licensed to practice law both in California and in Israel.

Dr. Matthew Malter Cohen completed his dissertation work at Cornell in Dr. BJ Casey’s lab. He has a Ph.D. from Weill Cornell Medical College, a M.A. in Psychology from Columbia and a B.S. in Psychology from Carnegie Mellon. As an expert in research methods and design, he has integrated cross-species methodologies that span genetics, molecular biology, psychophysiology, various neuroimaging technologies, and psychology. He has been an invited speaker at MIT and Carnegie Mellon, and has contributed to numerous publications in PNAS, Neuroscience, Neuron, and Biological Psychiatry.

As a pre- and post-doctoral fellow at Harvard and MIT, Dr. Friday Polli studied cognitive and emotional processing in healthy controls and psychiatric conditions. She has more than 30 publications, conferences presentations, and plenary talks. She has 11 awards in neuroscience including several National Research Service Awards from the National Institute of Health (NIH), as well as a NARSAD Young Investigator Award.

She won the MIT Life Sciences Track Entrepreneurship Competition in 2010. She has a Ph.D. in Neuropsychology from Suffolk University, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a B.A. in English from Dartmouth.

To learn more about pymetrics, please visit https://pymetrics.com/.

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The Back Story Dr. Katherine Jones, Mercer

The Threat Within: HR’s Responsibility in Preventing Cybersecurity Issues In the early days of Software-as-a-Service, organizations worried about the security of their data “up in the clouds.” Now the human capital management (HCM) vendor community has largely alleviated that fear. Today, however, organizations face a new fear – the fear of cyber attacks into a businesses’ private computerized data.

The pace of cyber attacks is accelerating in both business and governments; organizational tactics are shifting to include identification, prevention, detection, response and recovery. The key message for today: prevention isn’t enough – HR has to plan for recovery.

We are talking about what is commonly called “hacking” here – and this is not the cat and his hairballs. How big is the problem? Big. And it isn’t going to go away. Think of it this way: There are going to be 50 billion connected devices in the world by 2020 – 6.5 devices for every person on the planet – many in the workplace, all hackable. This is an “up close and personal” issue, because we are talking about the devices that you and your employees use at work every day.

Mercer, 2016.1

In all, we tend to look at cyber threats as something outside the organization – when the bad guys break in. Many may be – but there is indeed a threat within as well: there it is in our purview to monitor and plan to address. First,

we need to think about cyber risk as a “permanent enterprise risk,” not an “isolated IT event.”

Second, we need to plan a workforce cybersecurity strategy. And, this involves HR. Know your people (we say we do – but do we?). In background checking, do we ask about any untoward computer activity in previous positions? We better. And, we need to educate our workforce. Falling for phishing, for example, is one of the more common ways that workers and the population in general succumb to what looks like a normal email or web request, only to discover they have opened a back door to viruses, worms, and a host of other vermin. Consider this data point: 23 percent of recipients open phishing messages, 11 percent click on attachments; this means that a phishing campaign sent to 50 people will net five to six victims in the catch – hardly small fry.

IMPLICATIONS FOR HR

Education is the first round of defense, and very likely something almost all organizations do today. It has to be recurring, however, as complacency, lack of awareness, or negligence on an employee’s part can lead to actions that allow more malicious perpetrators into your computer systems. Encourage your employees to check with IT when any email comes through where clicking on a link is requested and they are unsure of the source – even if it looks official.

Training should also include disseminating information on privacy and HIPPA legislation, e.g., maintaining security of equipment such as mobile devices and laptops both in the workplace and when traveling, and use of the controls such as dual authentication when accessing business content over the corporate network.

But, people being people, initial education is not always enough. Technically savvy individuals may know enough to ignore or go around the corporate-mandated software choices or procedures. While not malicious (they might just www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • Septmeber 2016

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prefer a different search engine and know how to install it on their laptops), these employees should be aware of any threats their actions may pose to the organization, when applicable.

In addition, one area critical in managing the cyber-ready workforce is monitoring employee sentiment. Human Resources likely knows better than almost any other division the organizational elements or events that can trigger internal threats to security. These events may affect a group – like a corporate layoff or reorganization, or solely affect an individual employee. Employees who feel disenfranchised, undervalued, or disengaged may feel retaliatory toward the organization. Research tells us that an act of individual internal sabotage, as it were, is most likely triggered by a negative workrelated event. It may be a negative performance review, a managerial reprimand that is viewed as unfair by the employee, or a general systemic dislike or distrust that drives an employee to destructive action. Interestingly enough, the majority of such perpetrators had acted out at work previously. Their cyber breaches, when they occur, are the result of activities planned in advance. And, while it goes without saying, deactivate sensitive systems access following employee termination.

Getting Started

Cyber security management is a process, not an event. It requires a comprehensive, multidimensional approach addressing people and processes. First, know what information in your organization requires protection. It may be legally mandated, customer-sensitive or competitive information – but it is unlikely that all data internal to your organization requires the same levels of security. Then, ascertain your appetite for risk – and be realistic. What data is really worth Fort Knox-like security?

In developing your information security requirements, create “what if” damage scenarios – what would the extent of damage be if a database was compromised by external hackers or by an employee who haplessly opened the email from Mrs. So-and-So from Nigeria promising millions of dollars? Then, measure the gap between your current and your desired security states and plan and execute a risk-mitigation strategy.

Conclusion

We know that this is not the time to become complacent about workplace security and HR does have a responsibility here. Consider threats from insiders in risk assessments and dedicate specific budgets and resources for employee education and insider-threat countermeasures. Execute background checks on all new hires, conduct annual security compliance training, and foster a culture in which it is safe to raise concerns and ask questions. With your IT colleagues, track access and use of highly sensitive and confidential accounts, and audit unusual online behavior.

Better than anyone, you know your organization’s “hot spots” and can lead in tracking employee sentiment, and be proactive on potentially negative work issues. Teams with exceptionally high turnover, complaints about toxic bosses, or forthcoming organizational disruptions are within your purview. To aid in this, some companies are using data analytics software to scan email and social media posts to flag disgruntled employees within their organizations.

Help your employees be good corporate cyber citizens: educate them on the importance of cybersecurity and their responsibilities for their own data safety.

Endnotes Sources: Center for Strategic and International Studies/McAfee.net. Net Losses: Estimating the global cost of cyber crime (2014); World Economic Forum, Global Risks (2015); Symantec Internet Security Threat Report. Ponemon 2012, 2013 Costs of Cyber Crime Study; The Global State of Information Security® Survey 2014; The Betterly Report Cyber/Privacy Insurance Market Survey 2013; Cybersecurity Market Report by MarketsandMarkets, June 2012.

1

2

Verizon, 2015.

Keeney, M., Cappelli, D., Kowalski, E. Moore, A., Shimeall, T. And Rogers, S., Insider Threat Study: Computer System Sabotage In Critical Infrastructure Sectors, Pittsburgh, Pa., Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute/United States Secret Service, 2005.

3

About the Author Dr. Katherine Jones is a partner and director of Research at Mercer in Talent Information Solutions. With both academic and technology industry experience, she has been a high-tech market analyst for 18 years. Her doctoral degree is from Cornell University. She can be reached at Katherine.Jones@mercer.com or @katherine_jones.

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September 2016 • Workforce Solutions Review • www.ihrim.org

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Compensation Management

Trusted by organizations around the world since 2004, CRG emPerform delivers award-winning employee performance management software to help automate & streamline vital talent management tasks and align, develop, reward & retain a modern workforce. emPerform's full suite of functionality, configurability, and robust integration capabilities ensure it is a great fit today and can grow to fit your needs as they change.

This year, after all employees switched to emPerform, our reviews were completed on time, for the FIRST TIME EVER and consisted of the most valuable feedback we've ever received.

I would whole-heartedly, and without a moment's hesitation, recommend emPerform. Drop everything else and jump straight in. It will make your performance evaluation process ELEGANT, STREAMLINED & EFFORTLESS.

To learn more, visit employee-performance.com Let us help you get started!

Visit employee-performance.com/get-started CRG

emPerform

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emPerform is a COMPLETE SOLUTION. It includes all the features and functionality that we need to complete employee evaluations today and in the future.

1.877.711.0367 info@employee-performance.com @emPerform www.employee-performance.com