3 Things you should Never Shortchange when Embarking on an HR Technology Rollout

1. The “what's in it for me” perspective of each class of user; e.g., employees, applicants, HR specialists and business partners, line managers, executives, relevant external partners, etc.

Keep in mind that HR Systems have been getting procured and implemented for decades, and often times, neither the organization nor the products being implemented were totally ready. Organizational readiness can relate to other strategic initiatives going on that are perceived as more important; or perhaps there was a need to (first) change the HR processes being automated as they were deeply flawed. Moreover, historically, it often took several releases from HR software vendors, and responding to customer feedback, before usability and depth of functionality reached acceptable levels. These factors could certainly contribute to a “negative bias” against HR Systems across different stakeholders and end-users, exacerbated further by how aggressively systems in the past were promoted as the missing piece in truly leveraging a workforce for competitive advantage. These potential negative biases or lack of receptivity to embracing the new system can be countered by framing the business case and designing all end-user communications in the context of “what’s in it for me?” This is obviously part of a much broader Change Management framework and program.

2. The importance of end-users being in control of, and accountable for, data quality.

According to industry research firm IDC, worldwide spending on HR software has now surpassed $5 billion USD annually, propelled in-part by organizations jumping on the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) bandwagon. SaaS-delivered HR solutions allow customers to avoid the costly and disruptive upgrade cycles associated with on premise-installed enterprise software, make for much more predictable spends on HR Technology, and also enable customers to more readily share their experiences from using the software - as the SaaS model generally means they will all be using the same version of the software. Arguably, though, outside of effective change management, the biggest “Achilles’ heel” that continues to compromise business benefits that could be achieved from these investments is inadequate attention to data quality. A data ownership / accountability and integrity assurance plan must be a central part of every HR Technology rollout; and ownership should ideally be in the hands of the person who has the biggest vested interest in the data being correct!

3. Focusing on business drivers, how they might be changing over time, and how the HR Technology platform or software suite aligns with those drivers.

Successful organizations are usually very fluid, or to cite an over-used cliché, the only constant is change. When planning an HR Technology rollout, both planned and potential changes must be considered and factored-into the enterprise solutions being brought in; e.g., how scalable and adaptable is the software to a broad range of events and/or business decisions that might occur. Whether the change driver is a decision to expand into new markets, pursue a growth through M&A strategy, a move to outsource non-core functions or capability sets, or simply invest more heavily in talent management and employee retention / engagement programs, the software vendor’s current offerings and planned product roadmap must be evaluated against these possible scenarios to ensure on-going fit.

Steve Goldberg HR Technology & Transformation Advisor

Applying Gladwell’s “10,000 Hour Rule” to Advances in HR Technology (**Excerpt from my article being published on HRZone.com this month)

In Malcolm Gladwell's 2008 bestseller Outliers, the popular author known for his provocative assertions supported by memorable anecdotes and scientific research (some might say cherry-picked research) introduced the "10,000 hour rule.” The rule posits that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert and likely very successful at anything. Examples given connected people not often linked such as Bill Gates and The Beatles.

Let’s take a look at how something like the 10,000 hour rule might apply to the HR Technology domain and how it continues to evolve, but using the threshold of 5 years’ worth of “collective industry efforts” instead. But first we need an appropriate starting point for the 5-year cycle; and for the purposes of this blog post, we’re going to use a starting point of when most of the elements were in place within these solutions to drive the broad range of business benefits customers hoped for.

While HR Technology solution providers were purveying their offerings in the 70’s and 80’s, clearly these were not platforms for managing the strategic aspects of human capital management to achieve competitive advantage. Then between the 90’s and early 2000’s, a flurry of HR software companies were launched to tackle specific HR processes like Recruiting, Performance Management and Learning Management, but in more robust and innovative ways not evident in the HRMS / HR-ERP platforms dominating the market.

So, should we consider 2004/2005 the starting point for when offerings in the HR Technology space really started delivering ROI consistently, and creating business value aligned with customer expectations and budget allocations … and therefore start the 5-year “Gladwell-inspired clock” around then? Probably not.

3 main reasons for starting the 5-year clock several years later; e.g., let’s say 2011:

(1) It wasn't until around 2010/2011 when most of the specialized or best-of-breed HR solution vendors truly started evolving into Talent Management Suite providers, linking the various strategic aspects of managing human capital using integrated modules or solution components, and often a common data model. Solution vendors that built-out talent management suites through acquisition have invested heavily in recent years in integrating acquired assets and in user experience modernization / harmonization efforts to try to match a unified (usually organically developed) platform’s obvious advantages. These efforts are completed or near-completed for some, still a work-in-progress for others. Of course, an engaging, modern user experience and consistent, unified system architecture removes some of the bumps in the road toward broad-based user adoption of HR Technology – but not all.

(2) Citing just two of the many key research findings on customer satisfaction with these platforms and their ability to drive transformational change in managing human capital: Bersin & Associates reported in 2011 that average customer satisfaction with HR / Talent Management systems overall was the equivalent of a “C+”; and the Hackett Group in 2012 reported that 79% of executives were dissatisfied with talent management support … a telling stat given that by 2012, likely over 80% of larger enterprises were heavily invested in talent management technology. Both of these findings were likely based on product implementations occurring in 2009, 2010 and earlier.

(3) It was in 2011 that several like-minded and long-term HR Technology enthusiasts -- myself included -- starting writing and speaking about the elephant in the room: What it really takes to drive high levels of user adoption … and the fact that key elements of this picture had little to do with the 20-30% variability in functionality offered by different vendor’s systems. Moreover, perhaps even the now-ubiquitous emphasis on SaaS (Software as a Service) … although SaaS still encompasses variations, each with associated implications, consumer-like user experiences / systems of engagement, and the “big 3 HR Technology themes of the day” -- social, mobile and HR analytics / big data -- have to some extent kept the buying public from having the right perspective on user adoption.

So, what other progress has been made toward achieving much higher levels of customer satisfaction, expected business results and user adoption in HR Technology since 2011 (or 2 years into this posited 5-year cycle toward more consistent successes in this domain)? 6 words capture it: Much more attention on Change Management.

I’m not sure why it’s taken this long for research and analyst firms, industry influencers and many solution providers to shine a very bright light on the importance of Change Management in driving far more success and satisfaction in HR Technology; but frankly, after operating in this arena for 30 years, I’m thrilled it’s happening now … and we still have 2+ years left in the 5-year Gladwell-like cycle!

Why do I say it’s happening now? Some evidence:
- A prominent CIO Survey from 2012 concluded that … “of the top 10 barriers to a successful ERP journey, 5 can be addressed by developing and implementing a structured change management program.” This finding from one of the world’s largest consulting firms also highlights one reason why various boutique consultancies around the globe have achieved considerable success over the last 20+ years, even without employing thousands of consultants: These firms have an end-to-end focus (from readiness assessment to sustainability planning) on systematically managing change, clearly a major component in all enterprise technology initiatives. Clearly, appropriate communications strategies, tactics and tools, including sound expectation management, is a critical element.

- The annual Cedar Crestone HR Technology Survey is probably the most highly regarded out there. After presenting tons of findings related to technology and vendor capabilities and trends, the presentation of survey results at the 2013 HR Technology Conference netted out customer success on HR Technology rollouts not to system / vendor attributes -- but to Change Management!

By way of concluding this piece, let’s return to those white hot themes mentioned earlier and link each one to key “change management dependencies” that must be accounted for in order to leverage recent product advances across these themes:

White hot theme #1: Social collaboration tools in HR Technology; e.g., to allow employees to move around and up internally, pursue informal learning, identify and take advantage of mentors, provide and receive feedback on interactions and impact, etc. Change Management component: Career gatekeepers; i.e., managers must be receptive to hiring internals, not be concerned about having to replace people that move out, fully encourage mentoring and informal learning, and make the retention and engagement of top quality employees “job 1.”

White hot theme #2: Mobile computing in HR Technology – or “taps trumps clicks.” Change Management component: Bear in mind that while users of HR systems and information now clearly prefer mobile devices over traditional laptops or desktop computers, we’re still in the very early stages of highly strategic “people management capabilities” (e.g., planning capabilities) being rolled out on mobile devices. The point here is that managing expectations around what capabilities will be available via mobile / when is a must – for both vendors and customers. Additionally, keep in mind that while the mobile device provides much easier access to HR / Talent Management business processes, decision-support frameworks (e.g., analytics dashboards) and key people information in general -- all of these pieces being accessed via mobile devices should have first been properly optimized, well understood, and perceived / received as rational and reliable.

White hot theme #3: HR or Talent Management Analytics / Big Data. Change Management component: Perhaps start with the premise that anyone that has been a user of HR systems (or even its data) for several years might actually have a negative bias against these tools. Expectations have simply not been managed well by many organizations’ internal and external HR Technology protagonists, data ownership and integrity has often been neglected in rollouts, and purveyors of on-premise installed solutions historically had minimal skin in the game in terms of ensuring customer success and satisfaction once the up-front license fee was collected (of course, this has changed considerably for the better with the SaaS model).

Beyond these factors, leveraging HR Analytics starts with having data and metrics standards (e.g., how are terms like turnover defined and measured); and must also include an understanding of how different metrics and dials should be looked at together before potentially premature or misguided actions are taken.

Just 1 example ... other examples provided in the article being published on http://www.hrzone.com/:

Concluding that a metric indicating “organizational bench strength” for key roles is in good shape might require a second look to confirm that the same high potential or senior employees aren’t being mapped to multiple roles at the same time – or that all successor candidates aren't flagged as “ready now” (much better to have readiness levels staggered of course).

Steve Goldberg, HR Technology Industry Advisor

The Emergence of Strategic HR Risk Management … Finally

HR Risk Management, as a functional area within the broader Human Capital Management domain, seems poised to evolve beyond defensive (i.e., mostly compliance-related) strategies, programs and capabilities. This might actually be a major untapped source of strategic or competitive advantage for many organizations.

Proactively managing the Human Capital risks inherent in building, running, re-structuring and/or transforming a business is arguably as important to having a successful enterprise as having winning products and services, the best sales and marketing machines, highly efficient back-office operations etc.

So here is a list of 4 "Strategic HR Risk Management" opportunities that most organizations can still focus more attention and resources on to drive improved business results:

1. Advanced Human Capital Due Diligence … in the context of hiring new business leaders, M&A transactions (pre and post deal closing), corporate re-structurings around key executives, investing in businesses largely due to key personnel or people capabilities, etc. As two concrete examples:

· Confirming previous accomplishments or the scope of former positions that a key employee decision is partially or largely being made on … since the average person exaggerates at least to a modest extent when promoting themselves, and some embellish in ways that place personal integrity (and possibly the health of the business) in question. A type of claim such as … “grew the business from $10M to over $50M” is often made by multiple people talking about the same company during the same time period!

· Assessing degree of culture or “work style” fit, as well as the fit with a direct manager’s style or particular team dynamics … while most people intuitively recognize these issues to be legitimate areas to think about, many organizations simply do not make a serious attempt to evaluate these factors – PARTICULARLY when other factors such as revenue production history or impressive credentials are creating a “halo effect.” Moreover, while validated assessment tests can be employed to identify some of these potential risks or gain assurances that there’s no major cause for concern, proven techniques and processes which look at work history patterns using the right analytical models/ frameworks can often serve the same purpose as sophisticated assessment tests while perhaps covering a broader area of potential risk.

2. Leadership Risk Management … including ensuring an adequate bench of future leaders and successors from both inside and outside the company, since externals bring new perspectives, internals should ideally measure up to the best people the external market has to offer, and very few organizations have enough “potential successor coverage” for all key positions relying exclusively on internals – particularly when unplanned vacancies occur in critical roles at the same time. Leadership continuity issues = business continuity issues.

3. Ensuring that all major sources or indications of “actual or potential business value” associated with each employee are known, catalogued on an appropriate system (e.g., as “Employee Value Indicators”) and considered when making employment or career-impacting decisions about that employee.  As an example, an employee may only be a “slightly above average” performer in a non-mission critical role but (a) could be a much better performer if they could bring some of their other competencies to bear in a different job; or (b) is perhaps a major contributor in non job-specific ways such as referring many new employees each year who are ‘A’ players, or is considered a mentor by many younger employees, or is a key ‘connecting node’ within that organization’s internal social network.

4. And finally, not just identifying key employee retention risks, but predicting key employee retention risks and taking appropriate steps to mitigate. Similarly… not just identifying employee engagement downturns, but predicting employee engagement downturns. Both retention risks and engagement downturns are typically triggered by a workforce-related event -- such as changes in Comp and Benefits plans, the announcement or aftermath of an M&A transaction (which might result in staff redundancies in particular areas of the business), change in HR policy (e.g., eliminating a work from home policy), payout of deferred bonuses, etc. Some organizations have the analytical models ready before the event so that risks can be appropriately mitigated.

Steve Goldberg

The Basis of Highly Effective HR Work – The 3 (Not So Obvious) C’s

As more and more corporate HR functions and their stewards leave behind that vague and vexing notion of “deserving a seat at the table” and tangibly demonstrate why and how strategic HR work is vital, it’s perhaps useful to examine three key underpinnings of highly effective HR work.  Let’s call these the “3 C’s” -- and for the purposes of this post, we’ll set aside the referencing of more obvious “C” topics like key Competencies or promoting a culture of Collaboration.   

 For some context, let’s look at the Technology sector for a moment.  If we think about the HR professionals who were critical to successfully integrating dozens of acquisitions at Cisco and Microsoft in the 90’s … or those at Google in more recent years … or those at IBM who have architected that company’s internal social networking juggernaut (a key to business transformation there) … or current HR leadership at HP achieving fairly low turnover among key employees during a major corporate turnaround (highly unusual), these “3 C’s” are likely part of the mix in all these success stories:

• Connecting cross-functional business indicators / analytics
• Calibrating and re-calibrating (people) strategies / tactics as needed
• Executing “best fit” Change Management

Regarding the first of the 3 C’s, one could easily defend the position that people / talent management within organizations is a core element of nearly every significant business problem - or business solution.  Problems such as customer retention and satisfaction issues, or product/service quality issues, or declining sales or profits, or inability to sustain innovation can all be intuitively tied to people issues.  That said, going from intuitively tying these problems to human capital management (“HCM”) issues or factors, to systematically and empirically linking them – and then developing and implementing targeted HCM programs to remediate the situation, clearly influences which companies can successfully execute transformational or turnaround initiatives. 

An HR function that is effective at connecting cross-functional indicators can determine, for example, that – accompanying a decline in profits, productivity is also trending downward, AND it is tied to a poorly conceived (or communicated) change in Benefits or Comp Plans. There might also be a tie-in with a recent scaling-back on specific employee development programs.  Broadening this analysis to include a time-to-productivity (“TTP”) metric might result in determining TTP is trending unfavorable largely due to incenting early retirements.  What’s the connection?  This business decision might have resulted in losing many mentors around the organization who helped keep time-to-productivity for inexperienced new hires within acceptable ranges.

The second “C” – the ability and willingness to calibrate and re-calibrate (people) strategies / tactics based on evolving insights or events – is certainly another foundational plank in highly effective HR work.  We operate in very fast, very fluid times, with many organizations undertaking a major restructuring every 2-3 years – often in response to volatile markets, new competitive threats, or perceived new opportunities (e.g., involving globalization or technology-related factors).  These changes are often occurring while also dealing with demographic shifts within the organization and the talent management implications of those shifts.  A highly unpredictable operating environment demands that HR professionals and departments almost continually validate (and if necessary, re-calibrate) people strategies and tactics to ensure they reflect what is going on within and outside the organization.

Finally, the ability to leverage “best-fit” change management practices and formal programs before, during and after any major organizational change occurs -- whether the program is developed internally or through a trusted partnership -- is undoubtedly another hallmark of a highly effective HR function.  Countless industry studies have highlighted the fact that inadequate attention to change management (including change readiness up-front and change sustainability at the backend) usually results in major / complex corporate initiatives being compromised, or outright failing.  These can range from expensive IT initiatives, to rolling out a new product line, to transitioning to an outsourcing-based service delivery model.  

The change management arena is also perhaps the #1 place where HR professionals and leaders get to be strategic consultants and advisors.  Case-in-point is the HR executive wanting to change the mindset (and culture) of certain strategic business units in regards to spending money on training and development.  When the business unit leader asks … “what happens if we invest in training and then the people leave?” … the astute HR professional (and change consultant) responds with … “what happens if we don’t invest in training and then they stay?”

Steve Goldberg
April 2013

Why some critical HR / HR Technology projects under-perform – or outright fail

As some of my blog followers have commented to me about my reduced blogging frequency the last few months, “blogger guilt” has clearly set in.  The result is to write about an important and relevant topic I’ve been thinking about for a long time – namely, why some critical HR and HR Technology projects under-perform against expectations – or outright fail.

Yes, the unfortunate facts from leading research, consulting and advisory firms over the last 20 years are that MANY complex or broader-scope systems implementations (including HR / Talent Management systems), M&A deals (including addressing people and HR-related issues), and corporate restructurings to support business transformations eventually wind-up in a post-mortem or “what went wrong” discussion.

So let’s look at a dozen (project derailment) causal factors, but break them into 3 groups:

- Four causal factors that were probably more of an issue in past years

- Four still relevant causal factors, even though they likely get ample attention, and

- Four causal factors that should probably be garnering more attention

4 causal factors that were probably more of an issue in past years:

(1) Visible executive sponsorship … after decades of many thousands of people identifying this as a major causal factor in derailed strategic initiatives, this issue seems to be getting addressed in most key initiatives at this point.

(2) Competent project management … due to so much attention in recent years being paid to the need for professional project management, including certifying people as capable project managers, this ‘top 3’ consideration in planning key initiatives is now somewhat less of an issue in derailing or compromising strategic HR / HR Technology initiatives.

(3) The “don’t boil the ocean” mindset … the number of senior people uttering these words has seemingly reached critical mass in recent years. This idiom essentially translates as “break larger initiatives into smaller, more controllable initiatives to minimize risk and unforeseen threats to project success.”

(4) Rounding out this group of 4 is the growing recognition that successful project management - at senior levels - requires solid leadership skills; and that leadership is much more than keeping team members on-task, accountable and hitting their deliverable targets on-time. It also involves sustaining the motivation, commitment and energy level of all team resources needed to achieve project success over a long stretch of what will likely include several bumps in the road, possibly team or inter-personal conflicts (small or large ones), etc.

4 still relevant causal factors, even though they likely get ample attention:

(1) Competing initiatives (for project resources, management support, necessary behavioral or process changes, etc.) is perhaps the area where project risk is most fluid – and therefore what is going on within the organization that can potentially impact the project must be monitored (and coordinated with) very closely.

(2) Communication is absolutely the key to successfully implementing new programs requiring operating or perhaps behavioral changes; and it is especially critical to communicate effectively during periods of de-stabilization (e.g., right after an M&A, major re-structuring or new technology rollout is announced) … EVEN IF all there is to communicate is ‘when’ and ‘what’ leaders will be communicating. Honest communication builds trust, even when all the answers or details are not known.

(3) Lagging indicators and metrics are important, but probably not as important as leading indicators in terms of monitoring the need to make course corrections in projects. One key leading indicator is the result of periodically surveying impacted employees and managers on how they think the changes are going, what they expect, how they believe their lives will change or benefit, etc.

(4) Finally, while change management programs and models continue to get more attention (e.g., Change Management is a large part of the $350-400 billion dollar management consulting market), there are at least 2 key elements of change management that typically get neglected: Change Readiness – and Change Sustainability!

4 causal factors that should probably be garnering more attention:

(1) “Critical competency integration at the project governance level" … All competencies needed to drive successful initiatives must be present in those leading (or even advising) key projects or undertakings – INCLUDING the competency to ensure that all key competencies are somehow brought to bear – and well integrated. This is particularly true if the project or initiative leader gets high marks on some but not all critical project leadership competencies. These include but are not limited to effective project planning, risk management, cost management, change management, project communications at all levels, vendor management and key subject matter expertise -- at least enough to corroborate or question what the official SME’s on the project team are representing.

(2) Speaking of project risk management … not being absolutely vigilant in regards to surfacing and mitigating both direct and indirect project risks, continues to plague many key projects, certainly including within the HR / HR technology domain.  The best project and program managers combine experience in a broad range of project contexts -- ALONG WITH "productive thinking" about what can possibly go wrong – something broad experience allows.

(3) The false notion that the successful implementation of a new program, new technology, new set of processes or new org structure occurs when the implementation goes “live” and is very stable. This mindset totally short-changes the need for follow-on programs to continuously drive user adoption of what has changed or been implemented.

(4) Finally, project leaders – like all leaders in general -- MUST have the confidence to course-correct when necessary, and as soon as deemed necessary. First of all, course corrections don’t necessarily reflect poor decisions or strategies. As we often hear politicians say, and they are sometimes even right in saying it, the decision was made based on what we knew at the time. And if that rationale can’t be invoked to explain a project course correction, it’s probably ok just to say that the project is complex, not everything can be anticipated -- and unlike sophisticated computers, humans sometimes make mistakes.

Steve Goldberg
HR Technology & Transformation Advisor
February 2013