In the fourth part of this exclusive series for Ambition, Jane Sunley asks how people leaders can secure investment to develop world class HR technology in their businesses
Talent has gone digital – even great- grandparents are Skyping, texting, tweeting and checking into Facebook.
Yet the HR world hasn’t followed suit.
If the baby boomers and even ‘the veterans’ are doing it why aren’t contemporary HR professionals joining in? According to Cap Gemini, 75% of leaders in HR and talent management say their companies are behind the curve in the use of internal and social networking sites.
It might be that they don’t have the profile or the proficiency to argue persuasively for investment. Perhaps they’re risk averse; frightened of ‘getting it wrong’? Perhaps they’re so afraid of making mistakes that they’re completely bypassing the potential opportunities? Maybe they’re so bogged down in day- to-day administrative compliance and policy issues that they just haven’t made the time to think about it.
Many HR professionals are afraid to raise their heads above the parapet and rock the boat. The cliché goes that no one ever lost his or her job by not rocking the boat. Well, pretty soon they may find themselves looking for a new job if they don’t take action. It is time to bring HR firmly and determinedly into the 21st century.
Imagine completing the monthly payroll manually. That’s the past. Conversely, imagine the talent review being as easy as using your favourite social network. That’s tomorrow. It’s going to happen, so you may as well embrace it. Some people have already taken this leap – though far too few. It’s failing to move with the times like this that’s setting HR way behind the curve.
The business case is clear and acting now will create competitive advantage. There is plenty of compelling evidence out there. For example, according to Cap Gemini (US 2013/14):
- mobile devices now account for one billion job searches every year, and counting
- only 6% of organisations use social recruitment
- a staggering 80% of organisations still rely on one-way communications tools for learning and development
- gamification improves the embedding of learning by 40%
- more than half (56%) of employers lack any kind of measures for talent investment returns
Meanwhile:
- Logistics company UPS saw hires from mobile/ social recruitment go from 19 to more than 15,000 in the past three years
- UK hospitality company, De Vere Hotels and Village Urban Resorts, invested in HR technology and added £3m to their EBITDA
Recruit digital natives
Embracing social technology doesn’t have to involve a high level of investment; it does, however, need people with the skills to understand, embrace and deliver on it. There are thousands of graduates and school leavers out there with these skills (they’re digital natives), so work out what needs to be done, start simply and make it happen.
Systems for talent management and analytics will require more investment, so it’s important to be able to build a sound business case.
If ‘talent’ is your workforce (i.e. the right people for the organisation who can make a great contribution and have the potential to keep doing so), ‘talent management’ is about attracting, identifying, engaging, developing, progressing and retaining said talent, making use of their skills and knowledge in the best way for both individual and organisation. A talent management system will therefore help you to do this by digitising the processes and bringing about a bottom-up approach.
More and more systems are beginning to ‘talk’ to one another and it’s still very difficult to find any one system that can do everything to the
standard you require. It may be necessary to shop around, connecting different software to achieve the whole picture.
According to Deloitte: ‘Core human resources management systems and talent management features (e.g. payroll, performance management, recruiting, learning management, and succession management) are available from most major providers. But the exciting new tools (e.g. social and informal learning, integrated network recruiting and candidate relationship management, social recognition, real-time employee feedback and engagement sensing, culture assessment and fit analysis, and many others) are usually only available from small, innovative vendors.
‘So, as you firm up your core system of record into a single enterprise resource-planning suite, you may also find yourself wanting to buy innovative tools from smaller vendors as well.’
So remember one size doesn’t fit all – you might need to shop around.
A 10-point plan for approaching investment in HR technology
- Look at the big picture, clearly identify the issues to be fixed and know your stuff.
- Build your business case using hard measures such as ROI and softer ones, such as effect on culture.
- Think about the stakeholders; work out how to engage them.
- Craft a strategic solution.
- Phase your approach, starting simply to prove it works (ideally bring evidence of the ROI on some low-cost stuff you’ve already done).
- Build in milestones and metrics.
- Gather evidence: facts and figures, likely outcomes, case studies (including completion stats – you want to know people will use it)
- Pick the right time.
- Lobby for top-down consensus and support informally.
- Present your case accordingly, making it short, sharp and business savvy.
Case Study: De Vere Hotels & Village Urban Resorts
De Vere Hotels & Village Urban Resorts is a UK-based hotel chain with 33 properties and more than 5,000 employees at the time of writing. It has an annual turnover of £220m and £60m EBITDA, with an HR team of (just) seven.
Previously, there was little focus on, or investment in, people at De Vere Hotels and Village Urban Resorts. However, when a visionary new CEO and an HR director were recruited in 2012, with a remit to grow the business and boost financial revenue, this approach quickly changed.
A new people plan was created and prioritised on the board agenda, ensuring that people were placed at the heart of business strategy. The focus of this strategy was the combination of brand and technology. ‘V Happy People’ was introduced and launched via a social communications hub, which ensured people felt a sense of connection with the brand as a whole and were able to engage in two- way communication with the business, both inside and out of work.
Sitting alongside the communications hub was an automated performance and talent management tool which empowered people to drive their own goals and careers.
In just one year, the businesses were able to add £3m to their EBITDA; create a robust internal talent pipeline which resulted in a £400K saving on recruitment fees; achieve cost savings through greater transparency and collecting innovative employee ideas (one idea alone generated £500k per annum in savings); reduce labour turnover by 57%; and increase unsolicited job applications by 16%.
Former CEO Robert Cook, says: “We needed a phenomenal way of measuring talent in our business. We could only grow as quickly as talent was available and therefore having a pulse on this situation makes it credible. Automating our talent management, making the right changes around that completely transformed our organisation.’
Jane Sunley is a CEO, celebrated author, lecturer, speaker and mentor as well as an established and renowned authority on ‘all things people’.
She is a non-executive director and a visiting fellow at two UK universities as well as speaking and writing extensively on the subject of people and HR.
