Tag Archives: HR Technology

How AI is Changing HR for the Better

[Update 2019: This information has been woven into my new book, Artificial Intelligence for HR, which highlights the key skills we need to compete with machines in recruiting, engagement, and more. The book is getting rave reviews. Check it out here.]

Last week I was one of several thousand people that attended the 2018 HR Technology Conference and Expo in Las Vegas. I had the opportunity to share about my take on the HR Technology landscape as it pertains to AI and automation technology that is affecting recruiting, talent management, core HR, and more.

In the video below, I answer a few key questions about how AI is driving value for employers that leverage it to solve HR and people-related challenges. This is from my upcoming book (now available for presale!) on Artificial Intelligence for HR. It’s a very practical look at where HR is today and how technology can enable us to FINALLY be strategic in ways we’ve always dreamed of by automating some of the simpler, transactional components and “grunt work” that we all have to do on a daily basis.

Plus, I grew a mini beard for HR Tech this year. Enjoy. :-)

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HR Technology Vendor Demos: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly [Podcast]

One of the aspects of my job that I love is helping HR leaders select the right technology for their firms. (Thinking about changing technology this year? Let’s talk.)

How many vendor demos have you been through lately? Could the demo have been run more smoothly? Were there any issues? Do you have pet peeves about how vendor demos should run?

If the group of HR leaders we examined has anything to say about it, there is a clear need for improvement in how these demos are managed. From showing up without contextual understanding of the business or the industry challenges to selling software features that don’t yet exist, there’s room for improvement. In the podcast episode below, industry expert George LaRocque and I explore these and other issues plaguing the vendor demo scene.

Subscribers, click through to listen in to the discussion.

Show Notes

Show link: https://beneubanks.podbean.com/e/were-only-human-21-hr-tech-vendor-demo-makeovers-with-george-larocque/

Demos! Within the sales process, HR technology vendors often put more effort on prospecting and phone conversations than on the demos themselves. That’s why more than a dozen people recently weighed in on how vendors could improve their demo skills and delivery in one online forum dedicated to HR and talent technology. From demoing without context to discussing ROI and value, there was no shortage of issues and complaints about how technology demos are often run with HR software providers.

george-larocqueIn today’s conversation, I speak with George LaRocque, founder of HRWINS and co-moderator of Talent Product Plays, a Facebook group targeting users, sellers, and analysts in the talent technology space. We walk through some of the top ways that vendors can improve their demos as well as some key lessons for buyers and HR practitioners on how to evaluate and select their technologies. This time of year many companies are re-evaluating their approach to HR technology, and this conversation could influence how your own organization either succeeds or fails at finding the right software to enable your business to succeed.

  • To learn more about George, please check out www.larocqueinc.com
  • The Facebook group can be found here: www.facebook.com/groups/talentproductplays/

Interested in checking out additional episodes of We’re Only Human? Visit our podcast page to learn more about the show, our mission, and what we’re all about.

Help Me Pick the Next Great HR Tech Company

This year I have the honor (and challenge) of being one of four analysts working with the HR Technology Conference to pick the next great HR tech company. Of the hundreds of submissions to this year’s contest, eight have been selected and four will actually get to present on-stage at HR Tech to a live audience. That audience will vote on who is the best and a new champion will be crowned.

With that in mind, I’d love some help! I am coaching two companies in the contest, Papaya Global and Proxfinity. In this semifinal round of voting, you can only pick one, but I’d love for you to take a few minutes and check out all of the contenders and make your vote heard!

If you like the podcast medium, you can listen here to Steve Boese, Chairman of the HR Tech Conference, and George LaRocque, a friend, analyst, and the President of the Ben Eubanks fan club (his words, not mine) talk about the eight companies.

If you prefer to read, here is the link to the contest overview where you can learn about the participants and place your vote.

About My Picks

I have two completely different companies in the running and both of them are doing really innovative work. I love both of these companies and would be thrilled to see either of them enter the finals!

Papaya Global is a solution that helps companies that are expanding globally. They focus not just on the compliance side and helping employers understand how to set up entities (or not), hire locally, and manage their payroll and benefits, but they also provide a technology platform that offers transparency and scalability. I’ve hired internationally before. It’s a huge challenge for smaller companies that don’t have a ton of resources and experience. And with more companies expanding globally than ever before (the US has a 4% unemployment rate, for goodness’ sake), this is the time for a company like Papaya to step up. The other angle on this is the increasing reliance on contingent labor. If I need a part-time developer for six months, it may be easier to find and hire that person in Singapore or Brazil than it would be to find, hire, and release that person in my home country. These project-based hires are becoming more frequent in today’s world, which means there’s a big need to fill.

Proxfinity is focused on creating connections in and among your workforce and providing analytics on those connections in ways you could have only dreamed of. It hinges on a few things, primarily a wearable badge that flashes when you are in proximity to someone else with similar interests so you can make that physical connection. I’ve always said there’s nothing that substitutes for a face-to-face conversation and Proxfinity is making those easier than ever. Plus, you can see analytics on the back end, which opens up a world of possibilities. For example, you may find out that your onboarding meetups are not properly mixing your new staff with executives, which may prompt you to change your approach. Or you might realize that while you promote diversity and inclusion, in reality the various groups of workers don’t mix as you might hope. Finally, you might just need to get your people outside their comfort zone and interacting with workers in other departments and functions, and you can program the badges to light up when someone is nearby that doesn’t have your same type of job. It’s a new area for HR to get into but I think there is incredible promise, and it’s the only solution in the competition with a wearable/hardware component.

Don’t forget to vote here. And if you’re going to be at HR Tech this year, let me know and we can try to connect!

How Talent Technology Enables Employee Engagement [Podcast]

Talent management technology has come a long way in recent years. I can still remember seeing a demo for a technology solution back in 2014 and the salesperson was so proud of the fact that I could copy and paste data into the system. By the way:

  • It wasn’t searchable.
  • You couldn’t run reports.
  • You couldn’t export anything.

There was no way to actually USE the data in there, but I could put it in if I wanted. Sigh.

Anyway, today I am sharing a really fun podcast interview with you, featuring a recent conversation with Carsten Busch, CEO of the Talent Management Business Unit, and Laura Fuller, Country Sales Manager US for Lumesse. In the conversation we not only talked about how technology has become incredibly user friendly and more employee-focused, but about some of the age-old talent questions that companies face every day, such as why managers are willing to hire an external candidate even when there are perfectly qualified internal candidates available to take the job. Carsten’s answer to the question was phenomenal and I was taking notes because it will be my new default answer to that common issue.

Additionally, Carsten and Laura talk about the shift in technology from the static, administrative-focused versions mentioned above to the talent-focused systems that Lumesse and other companies are developing today.

Also, at the tail end I mention how you can get one of my upcoming pieces of research entirely for free by signing up here for a webinar I’m doing with the team at Lumesse. Here’s the gist of what the webinar will be about:

The June edition of HR Magazine has a feature that focused on how some companies like Gap and Siemens are trying to create development opportunities that connect candidates and employees to the firms for a long period of time. The double benefit of this kind of development is that if businesses can drive retention, then they get the value of a more productive workforce for a longer period of time. This is the incredible value of talent mobility, and that’s the focus of the webinar and this upcoming piece of research.

I hope you’ll join us for that session, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on the podcast as well. It was a really fun conversation.

SMB to Enterprise: The HR Technology Divide (#HRTechConf)

Recently I was interviewed by a good friend from SHRM’s Public Affairs team, Mary Kaylor. She asked me a few questions about the HR Technology Conference, and you can read it all here. What I want to expound upon here is the final question in the interview. I had to be succinct in my response to her but I think it’s worth a discussion. The question that spurred today’s discussion:

As technology evolves, what do you think the future of HR will look like?

My dream is for HR to be as savvy with its technological approach and focus on data as someone within the sales and marketing organization. Ask a marketer how a campaign went, and she can tell you stats about landing page visits, conversion rates, and more.

Ask an HR leader today how a particular program is running, and they will probably give you a blank look. Okay, they might be able to give you anecdotal information or even a basic piece of information, but they can't drill down to the level of these other functions. I see this as a chicken-or-the-egg type discussion. Instead of waiting for solutions and support from the vendor community, HR leaders need to be demanding the tools and services to enable this change.

The more HR executives make data and analytics capabilities a requirement for their vendor partners, the more robust and mature those functionalities will become. HR in the future will be a technology-enabled, company-leading function that drives immense value through the people resources.

The Great Divide

One of the most striking things that hit me when I became a full-time analyst a few years ago was the divide between large and small organizations when it comes to technology. Small companies have limited solutions and budgets, often cobbling together free tools or going with the old standard for an HR system: Microsoft Excel.

There are companies that will budget something to get beyond 100% manual processes in areas like learning (training delivery/tracking) or recruiting (applicant tracking). But it’s still an ad hoc approach and is hard to prove value.

Other companies at the larger end have already reaped the rewards of that initial technology implementation (time savings, reduced admin burden, etc.) This often comes in the form of a patchwork of systems and solutions that don’t integrate well, if at all. For instance, I spoke with a friend at a large (20k+ employee) firm and the company is using five different systems just to manage end-to-end recruiting. In the words of my friend, it’s a “Frankenstein” approach to getting the job done, and it’s not even all that effective at anything other than creating frustration for users.

Smaller companies are getting into the tech game thanks to solutions like Zenefits, but it’s still just a piece of the overall HR puzzle and doesn’t solve some of the challenges around integration, data, and decision-making.

One of the areas I’ve been keenly interested in over the recent months has been the slew of small to mid-market solutions that are serving the HR community with a variety of technologies and services. I’m going to be meeting with several of these firms this week at the HR Tech conference and hope to get some good insights about how they are helping to bring these smaller firms along.

The big suites are too complex for small companies. Just like paper and manual work don’t scale up beyond a hundred or two hundred employees, the massively complex systems offered by the large providers can’t scale down to fit the process needs of a small firm (assuming we ignore the price).

My Vision for HR

I want to see HR leaders being as intentional about technology as their counterparts in other areas of the business. Marketers are smarter and faster because of their technology. Why can’t HR see these tools as enablers of performance as well? As I said before, the HR function of the future will be a technology-enabled, company-leading function that drives immense value through its people resources. I don’t think tech is going to replace people any more than processes will replace people. I think it’s going to help us to deliver greater value to the workforce and to our employers over the long haul.

What are your thoughts? How has your firm used technology to support HR? If you haven’t, why not?

Engaging Employees with Technology Choices

Last week I had the chance to speak with a local HR leader. She was lamenting her company’s hideously awful HR module that was an add-on to the company accounting software. The firm paid plenty of money for the module, but it is ineffective, inefficient, and virtually useless. It looks like it was coded/developed in 1993, if that tells you anything. There are no reporting, searching, or other core capabilities that would make the system a valuable tool to help improve the HR team’s service delivery. So I told her to stick with Excel for a while longer until they can convince the CEO that they need real technology. A while back I wrote about a very similar topic: how consumer demands for technology are shaping what we and our employees want in our workplace technology.

Consumer Trends and HR Technology

When we asked global participants in our recent Employment Value Proposition survey whether their HR technology makes life easier by providing access to relevant information to help employees manage their career, the response was a dismal 13%. About one in 10 companies believes HR technology is truly making life easier for employees, and that is a problem, because employees have high expectations for the technology they use.

hcm technologyWhen it comes down to technology selection, there are a wide variety of inputs that help to drive the decision. Some of them are very specific, revolving around cultural or business-oriented requirements. Others are larger in scope, affecting virtually every company that is evaluating technology. The two global trends that are having the greatest impact on technology selection today are consumer-driven demands and personalized recommendations.

Consumer-Driven Technology Demands

The release of the first iPhone in 2007 was a leap forward in delivering a delightful user experience. Since then we've seen an increased number of companies focusing on usability as a key driver of selection decisions. The apps, video content, and social capabilities of the smartphone era have enabled users to be more productive. These tools enable users to achieve more in less time, helping them to fully realize the value of technology like never before.

And now those expectations extend to workplace technology as well. Your employees are accustomed to personal computing experiences that are intuitive, engaging, and user-friendly. They now expect their work environment to provide technology of the same quality and fidelity, whether mobile or desktop.

Personalized Recommendations

Users have become ac­customed to visiting Amazon and other online retailers for their shopping needs, and one thing these stores do very well is offering personalized recommendations based on browsing history, previous purchases, and other online activity. Bought a purse? They will offer you a similar one, or a complemen­tary item. Purchased a food item? The site can help give you recommendations based on what other similar us­ers liked.

This concept applies to talent technology in the form of guided experiences. Employees appreciate hav­ing a personalized experience with technology without it feeling too scripted or forced. The benefit here for business leaders is less time spent walking users through the software or tailoring it to each individual's needs. It's a win-win for both parties and helps to keep users engaged.

The Technology Outlook

When we look at satisfaction ratings for technology, whether learning, talent, or HR, we see a definite trend. Companies are not particularly happy with their existing technology. Just 19% of organizations say they are very satisfied with the quality of their overall technology environment, according to the 2015 Brandon Hall Group EVP study.

It's time to look at your technology options not just as a means to an end, but as a method for engaging your workforce through multiple touchpoints on a regular basis. From the applicant tracking system, onboarding tools, and performance management platform to something as mundane as an address change, you have the opportunity to create a great experience for your employees with your technology.

Consider your existing HCM technology. Would you say it provides an engaging experience for employees? Why or why not?

The Problem with HR Technology Integration

Technology is everywhere in the workplace today, but one of the biggest problems for many companies is integrating the various systems they have. If you have a favorite performance management system and want that to feed into your company’s learning management system so you aren’t duplicating entries and potentially messing up data, good luck. That’s a big reason why so many organizations go with suite providers (companies that offer multiple modules–performance, compensation, learning, talent acquisition, etc.) I had the thought recently just how absurd this would be in the real world, and that was the foundation for this post.

hr technology integrationA human example of technology incompatibility

There are ten people sitting in a room working furiously. Nobody speaks to each other.

When a business problem arises, each person has a different solution, because each only has a piece of the overall story.

Oh, and each person has a different method/preference for interacting.

  • Bob only accepts conversations in batches between 2:00 and 3:00am on weekends so as not to interrupt other activities.
  • Anything you say to Mary will immediately overwrite what others have said to her on the same topic.
  • Charles only speaks a rare language that requires a $150/hr interpreter to translate.
  • 30% of what you tell Floyd is immediately forgotten and requires you to re-tell him again.
  • When you ask Carrie to look something up it takes her half an hour and what she finds is completely irrelevant.
  • Nobody ever interacts with Jamie and nobody is sure why he is there, but then again nobody has ever dared to ask.

There are consultants for hire whose sole job is to attempt to help each system to talk with one another. It takes forever and costs a lot of money, and even when it works you’re mostly disappointed.

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See how crazy this analogy is? We wouldn’t let this happen with people in the workplace, but with technology this is unfortunately an all-too-common story. We have all of these amazing technologies that help us to do things in more efficient ways than ever before, but the whole integration thing is holding us back.

I’d love to hear from some of you that have different technologies in the workplace that need to “talk” with each other. How were you able to solve the problem? Or do you just work around the issue instead of addressing it, because it is easier in the short term?