hr-technews-blog

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Employee engagement analytics is the application of people analytics techniques to quantify employee engagement and identify key drivers of engagement. Modern HR software like human capital management (HCM) systems enables organizations to collect vast amounts of data on their employees. Right from employee working hours, to historical performance data, organizations have access to data that can help them accurately determine the levels of engagement.

Measuring Employee Engagement

A good starting point can be analyzing the following factors:

Discretionary efforts put in: Organizations can analyze the amount of work that an employee performs outside of normal working hours. Engaged employees are more likely to volunteer their personal time to complete tasks and projects during nights and weekends, as they are more invested in the success the of the organization.

Professional networks: Employees with large work connections outside of their immediate team or region are more likely to be engaged.

Short-term turnover rates: A high number of resignations in the early days of employment indicate a culture of disengagement.

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Thanks to Marie Kondo, people around the world are purging their homes and hearts of everything that does not “spark joy.” Beyond her popular Netflix series, Kondo has built an entire franchise around the idea that holding on to only the positive elements in one’s life is more conducive to a focused, clear mindset. While it’s not possible to apply this concept in its entirety to the workplace, there are steps you can take to declutter your in-office mindset and physical workspace will make you happier and more productive.

Make a list and check it twice

According to behavioral scientist Dan Ariely, the best time to get down to work is usually the first hours after waking up. Start your day my making a list of things you want to accomplish. And then look at it with a critical eye.  Will completing a task drive a meaningful outcome or contribute to a larger effort that will? If so, make it a priority. If not, consider why it’s on the list and either delegate or delete it. And don’t beat yourself up if something more pressing arises that you need to tackle and you need to adjust your list. Tomorrow is another day.

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Learning and Development (L&D) programs are a critical component of an organization's health. Without strong L&D programs, employees will have a harder time being productive, moving up in the organization, and contributing to overall financial performance. Additionally, it can also lead to lower employee engagement and increased turnover. However, despite the obvious positive effects of L&D, most efforts go without any success measurement or insights into how they impact the overall business.

According to one ATD report, only 35% of talent development professionals surveyed reported their organizations evaluate the business results of learning programs. Furthermore, only 15% measure the ROI of any learning programs. While “reports” of who attended or feedback forms on trainers are not uncommon, without a connection to outcomes, the L&D organization is hard pressed to answer the most important questions to their success. This makes L&D less of a valuable organizational driver and more of a nice-to-have.

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The top players reshaping HR departments are business process automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Company leaders should thoroughly evaluate which tools are the most feasible and beneficial for their organization to get the best return on investment, but awareness is the first step! Let’s look at the significance of automation and AI in commonplace HR roles.

Recruitment

Since more than three out of four employees are leaving their jobs for preventable reasons, it's vital to start off on the right foot. Automation and robotics have decreased hire regret by 75 percent, saving time and frustration for both candidates and recruiters. By utilizing the latest tech tools in recruitment, HR departments convey candidate value from the beginning by providing a smooth process.

Process automation, one of the first steps in a digital strategy, puts HR on an organized, consistent track for each hire. New hire requests, screening questions, applicant tracking, and interview scheduling require time-consuming data-heavy tasks. Automated workflows ensure consistency in forms and procedures on a cloud-based platform accessible on-the-go. Automation's numerous benefits are being realized: 47 percent of surveyed global companies reported deep involvement in automation projects to streamline operations.

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Although technology is a crucial component in our daily lives, many businesses are still using the rusty old spreadsheet to manage hourly employee and shift-based positions. As staff information continues to accumulate, coupled with expanded scheduling needs and changes during the peak season, HR teams embracing cloud-based staff scheduling can easily and accurately manage hectic employee holiday schedules in real-time. A cloud-based staff scheduling platform helps businesses spend less time managing employees and more time investing in their company growth and profitability.

Five key benefits for HR professionals to consider when assessing cloud-based scheduling technology:

1. Flexible Scheduling

Schedules vary and change more frequently during the holiday season when there is an increase in vacation requests or shift pickups, especially in industries where employees do not have fixed, standard, or repetitive schedules. Cloud-based scheduling software empowers employees with the flexibility to control their schedules, without putting the business at risk. When scheduling is a simple and flexible process, talent attraction, retention, and productivity are all bolstered.

With advanced, data-driven scheduling, employees can request to work additional hours, work specific times that match their schedules and put in vacation and time-off requests, all in one simple platform.

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Over the past few years, app building has emerged as an essential part of every large organization’s digital transformation strategy. As a result, more and more companies are investing in mobile app development today. According to an app market research firm App Annie, India ranked as the fastest growing market for apps with year on the year growth rate of 41% in Q1-2018.

While building mobile apps, organizations want their employees to access their IT resources in a truly multi-channel, multi-modal fashion. In other words, they want their employees to enjoy the freedom to access IT applications and services anytime, from anywhere, and via any device—moving seamlessly across devices, networks and applications, thus, supporting a high workforce mobility. Users too demand their enterprise app experience to be akin to their consumer app experience—simple, engaging, and intuitive.

Organizations have a few additional requirements in their app development projects. Companies using several Windows-based applications find it challenging to optimize business processes for mobile use. The apps they use should provide access to their mission-critical legacy systems including the Windows-based enterprise applications.

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Today, payroll managers to administration services leaders face up to a 96% chance of automation - and they aren’t the only ones. Gathering data, analyzing information, and recommending solutions are just part of a manager’s job description, and AI is getting powerful enough to take on these responsibilities and more. Will your manager be next?

AI Supplements, Not Replaces

Well, the short answer is: probably not. The long answer lies within the failed recruiting AI built and later abandoned by Amazon. Designed as a state of the art tool to fast-track hiring while eliminating bias, the AI was fed ten years worth of resumes to help it learn patterns, content, and skills that lead to successful hires. However, the mostly male-dominated industry was reflected in these resumes leading the AI to begin prioritizing male candidates over female candidates. By the end of this projects in 2018, the AI had begun penalizing resumes that included the word “women” and listings of all-female colleges. Screening algorithms like this one may help identify best surface-level applicants but is far from an end-to-end solution. The social, cultural, and most importantly, ethical factors that go into hiring and operating a business, in general, are yet out of the grasp of AI.

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The increasing demand for e-learning solutions in business has produced a number of innovations that aim at delivering better retention rates at a lower cost in less time. Trying them is recommended, and applying them successfully is feasible, but some approaches and their combination yield better results than others do. While deciding on the best solution will take an individual analysis of each particular case, two trends in e-learning development deserve special attention: mobile learning aka m-learning, which refers to making learning programs available on mobile devices, and microlearning—which is about delivering concise, objective doses of learning for quicker consumption.

Are they truly worth the hype?

They are. In fact, let’s start by dispelling the buzzword aura surrounding the terms and clarifying why the concepts matter. Traditional desktop-based e-learning, effective as it is, still requires learners to be at home or at the office and sit in front of their computer to engage with the course. That feels time-consuming and somewhat impractical at times because it unfortunately is. M-learning, on the other hand, allows the employee to make use of devices such as tablets and phones in order to have easier access to the learning materials on the go. It’s training whenever and wherever the employee is.

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This news is critical for business owners because millennial workers bring with them a new set of values, work habits, and employer expectations. One trend that's taking hold with this group is alternative work concepts. Alternative workplace solutions can include anything from virtual employment to serviced office spaces to open concept floor plans. Flexibility and balance are the key themes when it comes to this concept, and millennial workers are craving this unique landscape. If you are considering making this change here are a few options to consider as well as a listing of the advantages of alternative workplace solutions:

Your Options

As we've already seen, alternative workspaces contain a wide spectrum of choices. You'll need to evaluate your existing structure and choose something that works best for you and your team. Here are some of the more common choices:

1. Reusable Furnishings

For some organizations incorporating this concept can be as simple as using the same office space or cubicle for multiple employees. For example, some organizations have employees that work opposite shifts or have alternating travel schedules. The same office furniture, equipment, or space can be used by multiple staff members based on their schedules.

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One of my insightful management experiences happened on a rainy evening in London. I was exhausted after a day of wall-to-wall meetings and hoped to grab dinner at a nearby pub. However, I had a conference call with my team back at our Boston headquarters. Calling into that meeting was an eye-opening experience. It was difficult to follow the flow of the conversation since I couldn't read anyone's body language. Employees were having side conversations that I couldn't hear. In the background, I listened to the crinkling of potato chip bags as people grabbed a midday snack. As my team discussed various projects, they quickly made decisions without asking for my feedback. They weren’t being malicious, it was merely a case of “out of sight, out of mind.”

I was surprised by how much the conference call left me feeling isolated and disengaged. I had always been the boss in these situations and never had to dial into these conversations. Half of my group worked remotely. I could only imagine what it was like for them, having to subject themselves to this type of experience all the time. Not understanding their situation was a failure on my part. Since that day, I’ve made it a point of emphasis to improve how I manage remote teams. It’s a skill that I expect will become even more valuable in the future. Since 2005, the number of employees spending the majority of their time working remotely has risen 115%. Today, 43% of American workers spend at least part of their time working remotely. (I gave you two options for a stat here. Pick whichever one you like more.)

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IBM Watson has always been recognized as a pioneer in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) space. Conceptualized way back in 2011, as a simple question and answer engine, Watson has come a long way. IBM Watson now includes a vast suite of products, helping technology innovators in several industries adopt AI. For HR, IBM has a specialized AI-based Talent & Transformation suite, based on select Watson services. We’ll take a look at these in greater detail later in this article – now, let’s begin by unraveling the most recent innovation revealed by IBM.

In October of 2018, IBM introduced OpenScale with an eye on answering common challenges around AI adoption. These include a genuine understanding of how AI apps take decisions, bridging the AI skills gap, and solving complexities around a multi-vendor AI environment. A modern HR environment, for instance, will have AI-based recruitment modules, AI employee self-service bots, AI-driven payroll automation, and much more. How do you reconcile all these technologies into an integrated environment? How do HR innovators ensure that progression is unified and synchronized across verticals, despite AI silos?

These are only some of the questions that IBM Watson OpenScale strives to answer.

Understanding IBM Watson OpenScale and its Potential for HR

As a long-standing player in the AI industry, IBM is all too familiar with the pain-points around AI adoption. These are even more severe when it comes to young HR technology companies, looking to scale rapidly and utilize a variety of AI tools, without adding business complexities.

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In order for your staff to be comfortable utilizing artificial intelligence, employers must follow three key steps to successfully onboard employees for AI in the office, regardless of background or skill set.

1. Bridge the AI education gap

When implementing AI for your business that requires either employee engagement or a customer-facing experience, employee education and comprehension is critical to successful deployment. “AI” can carry a level of intimidation with it, so it’s important to remind people that it’s AI that helped Amazon recommend the great spy novel they just finished, and AI that Netflix relied on to recommend their new guilty binge pleasure.

With any new technology, there will be a learning curve as employees explore working with AI. Employers need to prioritize the investment and make AI onboarding accessible through tools, training, and resources that foster smooth implementation. Artificial intelligence can be like a virtual teammate, handling new employee onboarding and everyday questions that can slow down individual workflow.

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Many of us work at companies where leadership truly values employees and sees them as the company’s most critical investment. While many companies make a bold statement about this in their talent acquisition efforts, once candidates are converted to employees, there can be push back on the costs associated with learning and development (L&D) programs. Enter new digital training opportunities. With these evolving offerings, many HR teams have learned how to utilize digital or online training for cost containment, but also for speed, ease, and the ROI gains that investing in continuous learning programs for employees yield.

While we do need to take advantage of these online opportunities, we also recognize that there are still justifiable reasons to offer classroom style in-person training. Digital transformation in L&D gives us a reason to revisit the basics of our continuous learning programs. How can you create programs employees not only accept, but clamor for? What do employees really need and want to learn? Where is your business lacking certain skills? And, how can you best leverage new and existing tools to meet your company’s needs?

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Digital is coming for your organization whether you are ready for it or not – it is an unstoppable force.  Faced with this inevitability, companies can either wither and die or prepare for and grasp the opportunity.  Often this is seen as a technology, or change management task, as though in some way it belongs to one specific group, but it is much bigger than that.  The whole company has to have bought its tickets and be ready for the fast-paced rollercoaster ride!

So, when it comes to digital transformation, how can you kick things off and sustain forward momentum? In my experience, there are five big questions that can become the engine of transformation for you and your organization, and as we’ll see HR is woven throughout them all.

1. How are we defining “digital”?

“Digital” can mean many things, from technology to developing new products or creating new opportunities, to ways of working and thinking. It’s important that you understand that “digital” can be very broad, but you need to be precise in the ways you use it. It starts with asking questions and determining the answers.   What does digital mean for you and your business? In terms of your brand and strategy, what is the expected impact of digital? Do you have clear insight into the possibilities of what digital can mean to you? How are you prioritizing digital efforts and determining which actions to undertake?

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With a large number of technologies out there capable of accurately assessing a candidate and enabling data-driven hiring decisions, dependencies on paper resumes should ideally decline. So, what are the different methodologies you could look at when looking to adopt data-driven hiring models as opposed to traditional resumes? Here’s a quick list:

Blockchain Can Help Verify Qualifications in Real Time

Blockchain technology addresses a foundational challenge with resumes – the possibility of fraud. Blockchain’s peer-to-peer operating model scans each data entry against a variety of stakeholders ensuring each and every detail is factually accurate. While this may not be able to process more high-level or subjective information such as personality traits or professional goals its application in verifying basic information cannot be overlooked. That’s why Blockchain could play a major role in enabling data-driven hiring, especially for seasonal workers, mass hires, and qualification-driven positions.

“Imagine a world where you can look at an employee’s resume with near certainty that everything on it is factual. That is what blockchain technology aims to deliver to the hiring process,” commented Gaurang Torvekar, Co-Founder and CEO at coding assessment company, Indorse.

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“Use forms to make sure managers and employees talk about what they used to write about.”

This comment succinctly captures a significant shift in performance management design. Historically, many companies used performance management forms as a substitute for conversation. There seemed to be a belief that detailed goal plans and performance appraisal forms could effectively capture employee job expectations and performance contributions without actually speaking to employees.  This concept never worked and is completely ineffective in a fast-moving digitalized world where anything written on a form may quickly become irrelevant to an employee’s current situation.  

Forms and checklists do provide value in performance management. But they should be used as tools to remind managers and employees to discuss job expectations, have coaching conversations, and capture information from these discussions. Forms should be designed to support conversation, not replace it. They should capture a minimal level of information needed to support future dialogue and decision making. Forms should never ask people to provide information unless they have a clear understanding of who is going look at it, when they are going to look it, and how it is going to be used.

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For modern employers, finding, engaging, and retaining top talent can be a challenge. This can be attributed to a number of factors: declining unemployment rates, a widening skills gap, or the rise of social channels like Glassdoor or LinkedIn. It’s no surprise, therefore, that when a company successfully zeroes in on a best-fit employee, ensuring and extending their tenure is a top priority. Having an effective reward strategy in place is an important part of this. Your reward strategy should be capable of recognizing high-potential/high-performing employees, defining the best possible reward, and analyzing impacts. Big Data (raw, unstructured data pouring in from various platforms) can help at every step of the way. Let’s explore this in further detail.

Data and Analytics Helps to Identify Deserving Candidates

Thanks to Big Data and major advancements in data analytics, it is now possible for employers to access detailed employee profiles, analyze past performance trends, assess relevance to business outcomes, and even predict future possibilities. Needless to say, this is almost a compass guide to creating a pool of potential reward-recipients.