HR joins the tech revolution
EVOLVING: ROADMAP FOR BUSINESSES READY TO CHANGE HOW THEY MANAGE STAFF The technology revolution has swept away most vestiges of the old ways of business. But not all. Now the HR department is about to be disrupted.
There is hardly a mainstream business that has not been transformed by technology, yet the management of human resources (HR) remains stuck in early 20th century mode.
This is ironic, considering the massive emphasis put on young workers and the new generation of job-entrants. The problem is that buzzwords are being used to paper over the cracks in the system. The term “millennial” has become a convenient byword for describing this new kind of employee, despite the fact that the 17-to-37year-old age group it defines is utterly meaningless. The result is that, while tremendous effort is made to attract young talent, little is done – outside youth-oriented brands like Google and Facebook – to retain them. Performance measures and reward systems may well be in place, but little is done with the huge amount of data collected in the process, and little effort goes into understanding what makes employees tick, and what contribution HR can make to the business.
Yet, in the age of big data and artificial intelligence, HR should be given as much emphasis as sales, marketing and the customer experience. This gap explains the massive growth of a business like SuccessFactors, which provides human capital management software solutions via the cloud. Listed on the NASDAQ exchange in 2007, it was acquired by SAP in 2011 and now serves 6 000 companies and 45 million subscribers across more than 60 industries.
“A lot of people believe on-boarding ends when someone is sitting in their office,” said Stefan Ries, chief HR officer of SAP, opening last week’s SuccessFactors SuccessConnect 2017 conference in London. “It doesn’t stop there. You need to check it after 30 days, after 60 days, after 90 days.”
Ries was brutal in his assessment of HR’s failings but equally frank in what needed to be done, providing a roadmap for businesses ready to evolve in how they manage employees. Even those who have moved from thinking of staff as customers had not caught up to the way other areas of their business were being disrupted.
A lot of people believe on-boarding ends when someone is sitting in their office. Stefan Ries Chief HR officer of SAP
“On the one side you’ve got to listen to the younger generation, but on the other side to pay attention to other generations. You have customers out there with managers and leaders in their 50s or 60s who may say, ‘Why bother?’
“They will bother if they see the benefits, that they have to work for another 10 to 15 years and can experience the advantages of the new approach. And at home they are confronted with the same challenges with kids or in the broader family. The magic word is integration.”
A company that seems to have got it right is the venerable automotive brand, Jaguar Land Rover.
“We thought we would have a lot of rejection of the whole concept, so we geared up for putting out fires, and over-supported people through the change,” said Jon West, the company’s director of manufacturing HR and employee relations.
“Actually, we found that there was a high level of acceptance,” he told media at the SuccessConnect conference.
“A significant amount of people in the organisation – 40% of employees – are older people who’ve been with us for a long time. But over time we brought in a lot of new people, and they were expecting this new approach. We’re lucky we have such well-established, premium brands, and we have to make sure our HR practices do the brands justice.”