Measuring Employee Engagement

In recent times, one of the most talked about and very easily misunderstood term in the HCM world is Employee Engagement. There are technology vendors who talk of importance of Employee Engagement and how their products enhance or facilitate better engagement. And there is the eco-system of analysts, observers, writers and bloggers like me who talk of Employee Engagement and how it impacts / facilitates an organization in its quest to excel in the market place.

How do you measure employee engagement?

It is important to think of what is employee engagement in terms of “outcome”. The engagement is actually the result of experience of employee(s), and this engagement drives certain outcomes in the organization’s collective performance. As a result, the engagement itself is an outcome of employee experiences in an organization. Now this does not end there. 

The Positivity or Negativity of these engagements drive outcome in other aspects of employees’ interactions with the organizations – it may be in setting and achieving goals, it may be in compliance, it may be in continuous voluntary upskilling etc.

One of the easiest and foremost measure of engagement that HR leaders can use is Employee Referrals. If you can measure the percentage of Hires that are coming through Employee Referrals, it gives you an indication on the influence your network (your employees) has on the extended network (your employees’ networks).

The higher the percentage, you reasonably assume that the employee engagement is higher. However, you need to remember that this is only one measure that is easiest and available to you without any surveys or complex modelling. An organization still needs to measure other parameters and look to improve the employee engagement holistically.

Employee Referrals as the percentage of overall Hires can be used as an immediate metric to measure an organization’s Employee Engagement parameter before and after engagement interventions. This can also be used as a signal that shows that Engagement interventions are necessary.

But then you also need to look at another dimension of this parameter. What is the duration of “stay” of these Referrals. 

Moving to Cloud HCM - Beginning not an End

With the help of SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), Mobile, Analytics and other technology innovations, organizations have started leveraging the “Digital” revolution and adapting to “Digitalization” at a much faster pace.

When we talk of Digital in HCM, we need to keep in mind that the Consumerisation of enterprise IT or HR-IT in an enterprise perspective is still evolving. While companies adapt to SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics & Cloud) faster, a comprehensive Digital HCM is still in its nascent stages in many of the organizations.

To actually achieve a comprehensive Digital HCM, there are 3 fundamental prerequisites to achieve success:

1)      Digital HCM Strategy – a clear understanding and visualization of what and how of the future state of HR-IT (how the organization wants to leverage its investments in SMAC, beyond the low hanging Self Service or Anywhere/Anytime, what it wants to provide to its employees as user experience, how it wants to engage with the employees, how it would like the employees to use it, etc)

2)      Milestones - a timeline map of “What” and “When”- Digital HCM is pervasive across the entire HCM processes and hence the What and When matter if you want to achieve success. A bits and pieces adaption without coherency in its theme of digitalization is bound to let you down.

3)      Transformation & Innovation – not merely an acceptance, but a transformational outlook to the entire HR processes and a mindset to innovate. This is based on a constant feedback that comes from both user intelligence given by the systems themselves as well as the users.

In the public space, the applications like Google or Amazon or Facebook that we use, not only provide user experience in terms of the User Interface (UI), but they are also intelligent to understand the users and accordingly keep the user experience richer.

For a successful Digital HCM in HR-IT, a continuous feedback loop needs to exist to ensure constant innovation and transformation.

This feedback loop coming out of the user intelligence is an important piece in public consumer applications. When applied to enterprise HR-IT, this translates into user analytics as a necessary component be it from an employee portal or any other Anywhere, Anytime application functionality.

A simple use case could be user analytics from a Learning application – when users are provided with a Learning portal, apart from the usual self-services like enrolling for courses, approvals and e-learning, the portal should also be used to track and present choices of learning curriculum / courses based on the job profile of the employees automatically.

Another option could be to present users with information on what courses are being actively pursued by other employees. A tag of “See what your peers are learning” could be a tool to motivate learning. Another use case is about mobile learning. The business benefit of “Mobile enabled” or “Wearable enabled HR” is not from providing an app to approve leave of absence or travel expenses.

These are already being practiced in many organizations. And this is a step in consumerisation of IT in enterprises. The consumerisation here is not about pay-per-use but about the user experience and enhancing it to consumer grade experience similar to a public consumer application to increase employees’ engagement and connect with the organization.

The user intelligence is based on usage pattern over a period of time. Hence we have to understand that the entire process of actually digitalizing HCM is a journey and not a one-off exercise. The importance as well as the success of Digital transformation lies not in migrating to Cloud or mobile enabling. These are not end by themselves. Digitalisation is a journey and involves continuous innovation as well as adapting faster to changing paradigms.

The success of a digitalisation journey for an organization is not based solely on which Cloud product they are adapting. It is more about use cases of “how to use”. This is invariably where the HR leaders need to think beyond traditional boundaries and innovate.

Disclaimer: Some of the wordings like Systems of Record / Systems of Innovation etc are reused from already existing materials on the internet. Thanks to those creators.

Extrapolating from Rob Scott's blog - Why HR Applications still continue with Employee Self-Service?

Why a product like LinkedIn would be a much better HR application for certain areas of HR or HR Service Delivery?

Continuing off from my earlier blog on whether we are duplicating On-Premise HCM onto the Cloud.

Why do I believe we have not seen anything fundamentally different yet?

a)      I would have been happier if the entire concept of Employee Self Service had been made obsolete.

b)      I am not convinced that we should be having Recruiting application as part of HCM Application landscape of an Enterprise in the “Age of Machines”.

In this post, we will focus on employee self-service.

First up, let me say this is a continuation / extrapolation of a blog by Rob Scott. You will see why in the later part of this post.

Let’s take a step back and assess the context.

An understanding and appreciation of the trends espoused in various blogs, articles and research reports like “The Deal in 2020” by the Work Foundation ( http://www.theworkfoundation.com/DownloadPublication/Report/255_255_deal202_050710.pdf ), Peter Sheahan in his speech during SuccessConnect 2014 also quotes examples of how organizations effectively use crowdsourcing to provide solutions which they cannot resolve by themselves https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhYtAoYxRwI. All these point to a reality where organizations will deal with and/or engage a floating workforce who may not be part of the organization on a regular basis.

Some of the content in “the Deal in 2020” present a realistic picture. An example of this would be the lack of faith on the leadership. People becoming increasingly cynical. This has manifested in the recent past in geopolitical space, be it the so called “Arab Spring” or more recently in HongKong. Let’s not fool ourselves that what happens in political / public space is not related to organizations. It is the same human beings who work in organizations. And Business & Politics have been accepted as two faces of the same coin. Politics is run as a business and in business you have high political activity. No surprises there anymore. We have come to accept that.

On the question of Employee Self Service, me & my colleague Immanuel Kingsley were discussing whether Employee Self Service is really needed from a HR context.

Our method was on what is generally provided as Self Service:

a)      Updating personal data – addresses, contact details, family details;

b)      Benefits nominations

c)       Any education or training completions

d)      Viewing payslips

e)      Probably updating time sheets and applying for Leave of Absence.

We felt that when we start breaking down the services in this ESS, we will find most of these to do with updating personal information of the employee. Basically a tool to allow employees to own parts of their own data and keep it updated. The responsibility of this data is theirs. But the real issue is the data is in the databases of an organization and is repeated across as many organizations as the employee joins and quits.

If the spouse also works, it is all the more replication for the same family data across the enterprises they work! Ofcourse, their individual non-family data is different.

At the same time, there are many other transactions that are enabled for an employee but they fall into the category of Employee Portal than Self-Service per se.

The focus of the discussion Immanuel & I had was why none of the Cloud HR Application providers have tried to disrupt this model of Employee Self-Service and what happens when a large percentage of the workforce is contingent workforce. If people keep floating In & Out, or if some of the projects or jobs are carried out by people who are not even part of the organization, how does the organization track their personal data?

We decided to do some research on this and voila, I came up on the blogs of Rob Scott. I would strongly recommend anyone interested in HR Technology to go through his blogs. I am a fan, obviously!

I was pleasantly surprised that Rob had already written about this in his blog on Personal Data Stores . Similar thoughts and motivations for this line of thought across time & space!

This only confirmed our belief that probably a product like LinkedIn is an example of an HR Application of the future. Most of us have our professional details in LinkedIn. What does it take for LinkedIn or a similar product to actually allow us to store personal data as well? The architecture may look something like this:

This may not be the perfect architecture and not the model. But this is an attempt at conceptualizing how it may look like. Ofcourse, there are issues on how to link to an employee id, integration pitfalls, what should be the API, etc. I guess we are only at a starting point.

The benefits of this type of a Personal Data Store are highlighted by Rob in his blog http://robscottinsyd.com/2014/01/10/dear-hr-vendors-are-you-thinking-about-personal-data-stores/

Most of us use smart phones where we categorise our contacts as Family, Friends, Co-workers etc. A similar concept can work wonders in the access grouping of Personal Data Store. 

And in the context of a floating population, this kind of an approach to employee data (applicable to both floating and continuous) might make sense for enterprises. It frees up the Enterprise from the need for granting and removing (whether manual or automated) access to Self-Service, delivery of Self-Service through handheld devices (mobile, tabs etc), authentications, implementations, user training etc.

Ownership of the data is with the employee, contractor or otherwise, and platform is any product such as LinkedIn. And the data is pulled On-Demand using a service. The HR systems of the enterprises may need to undergo some change to accommodate such a concept, as well. Similarly, when the employee wants to pull some data from the organization related to him/her, like a training completion, certification, appreciation etc, that can be allowed to be ported to the Personal Data Store (for the part related to that particular employee) by the Organization.

While there will be pros and cons of this approach of Personal Data Platform, the surprise for us is why is this not thought about by any of the HR Application providers. This would have been really disruptive. 

And it is in this context, I feel a product like LinkedIn may probably be a HR application of the future. Most of the current HR Application vendors provide a functionality to bring in our profile from LinkedIn already. So the capability to pull data from a Professional Data Store (LinkedIn in its current avatar) already exists.

I am sure many in HR and HR Technology would have a lot of inputs and thoughts on this subject. Would love to hear from the community.

The second part on why I feel Recruiting should not be part of HR landscape of an Enterprise, we will see in the next post.

Define TALENT before getting into Talent Management

The new age HRMS Software applications facilitate innovative HR practices to identify, nurture and manage Talent, enabling increased focus on Talent Management as a compelling theme and a MUST HAVE for organizations to win in the market place. 

However, there are challenges as well for HR practitioners and organizations for which they cannot depend /or expect the software to provide them with answers.

Going through the research reports like “The Deal in 2020” by the Work Foundation  http://www.theworkfoundation.com/DownloadPublication/Report/255_255_deal202_050710.pdf one cannot help wondering, if the future workforce will not be loyal, is likely to be more ready to freelance and work on specific assignments basis, will the definition of "Talent" be same as in the past?

Before organizations decide to embark on a journey of Talent Management, taking a step back may help us navigate better. Organizations might be better off answering questions on:

a)    What do we mean by Talent?

b)    How do we Define Talent?

Without answering these questions, if we plunge headlong into Talent Management strategies and start evaluating or implementing Talent Management Software, it is likely that organizations will find they are no better off than when they started, that too after investing millions of their currency.

Talent in this age of disruption does not limit itself to a prescribed definition that might have helped us in the past. And Talent for today’s context or ability to manage 'Business As Usual" is irrelevant. It is an age of constant innovation, that too extreme, to stay relevant in tomorrow’s world, and “Tomorrow’s context” has to be the main theme. 

In one of the conferences I attended, a senior HR practitioner of an organization boasted how they identified and earmarked a future Talent – one of the future Talent was a person who came back to office on a holiday because there was a fire in the next building and this person wanted to ensure their office is not affected. The HR Practitioner was eloquent on how they identify such significant contributors who walk the extra-mile and earmark them through a fast-track “future leaders” program.

While the act of ensuring our office is not affected in a fire can be construed as a dedication and may attract a reward, does it really define “Talent”?

Can an organization afford to keep looking at skills they have? Or should they look at skills that will be needed tomorrow? Can organizations afford to look at employees based on their loyalties, or dedication to their work? Based on how much time employees spend on their work or based on how much work they complete within a specific time span – the typical ‘Productivity’ conundrum?

Or would it be significant if organizations start looking for people who think completely out-of-the-box and moot ideas which alter the ways-of-working drastically? Even to the extent of completely changing the definition of “work” or “productivity”?

When an organization gets started with an idea on crowdsourcing to help resolve certain types of problems or projects, will the “Talent” in this context be the person who moots the idea of crowdsourcing or the people who manage the crowdsourcing activity?

Too many questions and no straightforward answers.

Some of the key issues looming up on organizations across the world is their ability to quickly adapt and redefine how they view / categorize Skills / Competencies and Talent. How they assess both and how they go about transforming the thought processes within their organizations on these areas.

Any Talent Management program, either manual or on a software application will be inadequate to help organizations if at a fundamental level, organizations do not define what is Talent for them. A software application, whatever be its rating in a wave or quadrant will not be able to do this for them. It is their own internal assessment and honest introspection that will help them find the answers and lead them towards their future.

Thanks

Venkat

Exciting Use Cases - Successfactors tools to Attract, Engage & Retain

Recently had the opportunity to talk to one of the Successfactors’ product Engineering teams on product philosophy and I was gladdened by some of the things Successfactors is working on.

We all are aware that Successfactors provides one of the best User Experiences as an Enterprise Cloud HCM system. But what is interesting is the direction Successfactors is working towards which is actually enabling organizations to have necessary tools in their philosophy to Attract, Engage & Retain.

On-Boarding is no more about checklists and routing of forms to be filled. Successfactors is trying to make On-Boarding as an experience for HR, New Employees, Managers. Now organizations can have a bonding exercise via personalized Welcome Video from Managers to the New Recruits.

What’s more, candidates can have the list of people they need to meet on First Day and maps on how to reach them, all delivered to their devices.

Some of us may argue that compared to other business processes in organizations, these are "NICE TO HAVEs" when it comes to HR. However, in the context of War for Talent, these are the use cases that provide the means when HR talks about Attract, Engage and Retain.

The way in which scenarios and use cases are being rolled out in the world of Human Resources augurs well for the road map to move beyond “Consumer Grade” to “Consumerization of HR-IT”.

HCM Technology - Are we Duplicating On-Premise onto Cloud?

Recently I had attended a series of HCM Technology Appreciation programs sitting through presentations and product demos of multiple HCM products like Oracle Cloud HCM, Successfactors, and WorkDay. 

After all the presentations and demos, I was not 100% convinced that at their current level, the products enable an organization to fundamentally change HR or have technology enablement at a different level.

Yes, we have fantastic User Experience (UEx) and we expect that this will enable organizations to engage better with their workforce and users. I could appreciate the kind of innovations, improvements that have been brought in HCM Technology through these products. 

One product seems to be focusing on 'depth" of application, while another seems to be focusing on the "breadth" of their suite.

"Customizable" has given way to "Configurable". Fine. How has that changed ways-of-working for HCM?

I could not stop feeling the current race is more about changing the delivery mechanism of HCM software applications than fundamentally changing the way HR works /or enabling HR at a much deeper level.

To a large extent my disappointment comes from the fact that we still see quite a bit of record keeping in the products. There has been tremendous improvements with a conscious effort to reduce the number of 'clicks' or 'user entries', but still I couldn't help getting the nagging feeling of duplicating On-Premise HCM into Cloud.

Take any of the Talent Management areas: Succession Planning - this was available in On-Premise as well; Performance Management - was available in On-Premise as well. Yes, the UEx probably was not as great as these products, but the functionalities existed. 

And that's where I couldn't stop wondering are we just duplicating the functionalities of On-Premise into Cloud layer with a vastly improved UEx and are we hailing the removal of coding as the next messiah? 

Probably there is still a lot more to come as Cloud HCM technology and that's the next wave that will start once the shift from On-Premise to Cloud domination / hype cycle is over. 

I believe we have still not "consumerized" HR-IT.

Would be great to get opinions from the HCM Technology experts across the world.

Thanks

Venkat