IoT as a Socital compliance tool

We have all been reading about and updating ourselves in the exciting field of IoT. Transportation / Automobiles is one of the areas where good amount of IoT use cases are being explored in a big way. 

However, I would love to see some kind of societal compliance related use cases. This may be a surprise to certain geographies, but however, may be much needed in certain geos. 

Take example of replacing of factory / manufacturer fitted equipment  / parts and using spurious parts or parts which are not in line with the Road rules of a country. Can there be a central control centre in the car which tracks and gives indication to the car owner, manufacturer, service rep, govt. authorities? 

Can a car refuse to switch on high beam when it detects it is inside city limits? Similar to speed governor?

When societal compliance is no longer automatic or is in danger of flouting due to whatever reasons, can Technology help?

Or should technology only focus on profit?

IT Services Industry – System Integrators – Way forward

This follows my post in LinkedIn few months back. I was writing about the state of affairs in Indian IT Services Industry. You can access it here.

A year has passed and we still see the same old story. Anyone who follows Vinnie Mirchandani’s blogs (access here) will understand it.

Recently, Narayana Moorthy (founder of Infosys) lamented the absence of any real innovation coming from India. And Vishal Sikka spoke about identifying / analysing problems rather than solving them after someone identifies them. 

The Analysts and Strategists alike call “blurring of Products and Services”. It might be worthwhile to take a step back and think this through. Is there a real blurring or merging? If you look back, in every space, products were replacing services or redefining the way services were performed.

You bought a vacuum cleaner. The service of cleaning / dusting the house that was done previously by your maid was replaced by the vacuum cleaner.

You bought a dishwasher. It replaced the washing of vessels by a maid or by you.

When you bought a car, which replaced the service provided by a horse. And a driverless car replaces the service provided by a driver. But you still travel from place to place in that.

You have heard these things as part of the narrative of the current “age of disruption”. However, it is not a disruption. The service performed by someone or by something was done better by something else. 

If in the case of vacuum cleaner, it was a human being who was replaced, in the case of a car, it was an animal which was replaced.

However, you still got the service. The “service” in itself was not disrupted. 

You visited another location by airplane for a conference. This was replaced by a product of “Video Conferencing”. Or, in future, by BEAM, as per Peter Diamondis.

But what was disrupted was only the travel part. Not the part where you communicated with others or attended someone else’s communication. You still did it sitting in your favourite couch.

Coming back to the present. In my opinion, the whole concept of “blurring lines between Products & Services” is misleading and in my opinion, this is where Indian IT Industry is making a mistake. They look at their business and think they are providing a Service. And as a result, the moment one talks of “Products”, they go defensive and start talking about being in Services industry and not in Products business.

And totally miss the reality that the so-called “Products” actually give the “Service”.

Transforming themselves to providing “Service” through “Product” is not going to be easy for an industry which was the largest job creator, linear modelled with FTE count and tasted medium-to-large contract values.

The only way the industry can re-invent itself is to innovate – not in the name of process automation to perform a service, but to take a re-look at the whole problem chain and provide solutions that nullifies the problem at the root. Not to introduce a software program with a “robotic process automation” tag and yet still provide the same service.

Taking the human out of the equation is not innovation. It is again a temporary painkiller. The only way will be to take the problem itself out of the equation with solutions. That’s really innovation.

However, this will mean:

• Cannibalising one’s own revenues;
• Trial-Error-Trial-Error-Succeed cycle for which risk taking becomes an innate requirement;
• Ability to look at “Products-that-provide-service” as a separate stream, while creating them and not to measure them through the legacy “Service” mindset;
• Leapfrogging and thinking about Long-Term compared to Q-o-Q earnings.

To me, this appears to be the only way the so-called System Integrators can survive and re-invent themselves. They need to realise that the so-called “Products” actually are providing “Service”. And nothing wrong in “Service-thru-Products” business.

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.

We will all be JEDI – Not too far into the future?

On the one side, the “Digital” juggernaut is attaining critical mass. SMAC is accelerating. On the other side, there is a recent development which has a potential to transform all of us into Jedi. Scientists have successfully experimented brain-to-brain communication, albeit at its rudimentary stages. They deserve credit for the pioneering work they all do.

Go through these articles:

http://www.vox.com/2014/9/7/6115573/telepathy-brain-communication-EEG-TMS

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/indianorigin-professors-reaserch-could-help-paralysed-communicate/article6600378.ece

When the brain-to-brain communication becomes a reality, probably it will in a decade or so, the SMAC as we know it today, is likely to change.

Exciting use cases will be coming up for brain-to-brain in all processes. And there could be instances where the SMAC stack products / services that we know of today will be inadequate and new line of products / services might emerge.

With modifications, the brain-to-brain might morph into “brain-to-machine” and change and shape the IoT as we know today, facilitating Machines@Speed-of-Thought. (Thank you Bill Gates)

Quite a few interesting use cases can come up in the HCM processes. 

We may no longer need mobile phones – smart or otherwise. We may no longer need an e-mail.

Most importantly, the major changes might be required in the statutory and regulatory framework of nations and enterprises.

On the lighter side:

Forget about the attrition analysis after I leave. Probably the moment I contemplate a job change, the analytics machines might trigger an alarm to my current employer’s HR and my manager. And send my resignation automatically? Remember the movie Minority Report.

I have nothing against it as long as it also triggers a job offer from another company, ofcourse, with a substantial hike!!!

We are likely to see new brain “waves” and probably brain “quadrants” in the next decade.

Successfactors will be bragging about “brain experience”.

WorkDay will trumpet about “multi-tenant brain”.

Oracle will come out with “Brain Fusion”.

An Analyst firm will come up with a new terminology: Brain-as-a-Service (BaaS)

N.B 1: My family name is not Wan-Kanobi

N.B 2: I am again going to view the DVDs of Iron Man 3, Minority Report, Star Wars and above all T3: Judgement Day

Why Recruiting is still part of the Enterprise HR Applications landscape?

Why Recruiting is still handled in the Enterprise HR Applications?

One of the main issues in Recruiting is about reaching out to the “Passives”. How do you attract and invite someone who is not actively hunting for a job but may be a good talent for you to have.

The hurdle I see for Recruiting Applications in an Enterprise is that it is still to a large extent inviting a candidate to apply /or come to the career site and register.

One of the applications that provides a great Social Recruiting is SAP Successfactors. The Recruiting Marketing functionality uses Social Recruiting in a powerful way. However, it still has to be integrated with a “professionally social networking” site such as LinkedIn.

When you go into LinkedIn, if you watch carefully, there are some strong tools for recruiting / attracting “Passive” job seekers.

LinkedIn sometimes shows messages like “xxx companies in your network are hiring”. What this does is to pique the interest of the users and take some steps to explore more. That slight push then transforms into a Attract, Engage & Select process. It would be worthwhile to find out how many actual. I think LinkedIn has stopped this messaging.

However, the point is, these are the very techniques that might be useful to help the reach of initiatives to hiring “Passives”. When a career site is part of an Enterprise HR Application, it is not reaching out beyond a certain level. Even with a functionality like Recruiting Marketing.

My doubt is on this particular issue – how relevant is it to have an ATS as part of an Enterprise HR Application? Are we not limiting the ability to cast the net wide? Other than the obvious ability to integrate better with main HR application, what is the real motivation to have an ATS as part of HR-IT landscape? 

Would welcome the views of the Community.

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.