The dash for dashboards – good news for HR ?
Add a few metrics vaguely to do with what HR really do, add a few charts, organize them in some fancy way and hey presto – actionable insights!
And so ends another HR Technology show in Las Vegas – still the biggest in the world, even bigger than last years apparently. Judging by the expo area, it certainly looked like the tallest and most coffee enabled. Forget the glitz of the strip, if you’ve never been it’s one for the bucket list…
Some software vendors promoted their brand with massive multi storey stands topped with impressive 20 foot diameter circular “hats” suspended from the convention centre’s rafters with logo proudly displayed and declarations of how they can “help” or “change” or “empower” HR to be even better. A few vendors with the larger marketing budgets went a little further and chose to spin the whole affair turning the hall into a giant Mexican hat dance. I overheard one attendee muttering that the height of each exhibitors stand was a great gauge to how useful their understanding of analytics was – “the taller the worser”. Maybe in the battle for limited budgets, the marketing department, as ever, won the budget bun-fight to the detriment of product development.
On a more positive note, my spirits were lifted when I realised what I had been banging on about for far too many years was now being taken seriously by nearly all major HR software vendors – well sort of seriously….Apparently, HR Analytics IS the next big thing hitting HR (or People Analytics or Workforce Analytics or HCM Analytics depending on the level of brand snobbery). Seriously good news.
But software providers have been seduced or more accuately tring to seduce you by the worn word “vizualization”. Collectively they’ve cobbled something thats both pretty and “drilldown-y” thereby claiming the right to call it Analytics with the majority making the dash for dashboards. The simple recipe for success seems to be to add a few metrics vaguely to do with what HR do, add a few charts, organize them in some fancy way and hey presto! – you have suddenly transformed your product to have “real actionable insights” – or some similar overused marketing nonsense.
A well designed, well thought out dashboard is absolutely definately a step in right direction but this first step seems to be viewed as the end rather than the start point. Isn’t it just the same old HR reporting rebadged with prettier charts with a hefty monthly charge to show it has some sort of intrinsic value ? A pretty chart is great in a product demo, but in “real” life – Insights? Actionable ? Really?
The problem with focussing on boxed up and standardised dashboards are multiple – it doesn’t overcome the challenge of aggregating data from different systems in order to get metrics which show a holistic view of the workforce, it doesn’t overcome data inconsistencies and gaps, they don’t seek out insights for the novice end user who neither has the time nor skills to find them for themselves, they don’t give those same end users tools to test their own hunches and a ultimately, for the the large minority of visualization atheists and agnostics, a pretty chart doesn’t paint a thousand words (contrary to the well-known quotation).
Meaningful metrics are incredibly powerful in describing an organisations strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats but to be useful to their consumer – they must be relevant to a decision or to a strategy that talks in the same language that the decision makers intrinsically understand. Don’t talk to a Sales Director about attrition, talk to them about missing target because their best sales execs have walked. Don’t talk to a ward manager about saving costs, talk to them about how many extra nurses they’d have with the money saved. And don’t talk to a CEO about having a well educated workforce, tell them about the bottom line impact of a training programme.
Saying all that, my strongly held views were humbled during a recent experience when a progressive HRD of a large energy company in the US. He discovered he had a looming crisisc in retaining corporate knowledge after viewing a simple age by tenure distribution chart. In his own words he had too many experienced old timers heading for retirement leaving the payground kids left to run the farm (and by kids he meant my age which analytically speaking is unfortunately unacceptably inaccurate).
Hardly analytical rocket science, but hey ho… I guess there are always exceptions.
JURY SERVICE. Like death and taxes, eventually, it comes to us all.
I jest, but as a small business it has a large income and reputation impact when you can’t deliver services. Having delayed the inevitable call-up (to finish analysis for the NHS to recruit thousands of vaccinators), I dutifully attended court.
I say court. it was in fact a cinema. Imagine the scene – the entire jury COVID-ly dispersed across the cinema theatre each juror with their own individual camera with a live feed from the court projected onto the big screen. It felt as though you were going to see the ultimate immersive blockbuster movie with the ability to vote for which ending you preferred. You couldn’t help but be impressed how they’d worked around COVID.
Having mentally prepared myself for an extended absence with stupidly long hours to catch-up, I was not prepared for the disappointment of being only a substitute juror – couldn’t make the first team, on the bench, not a proper juror, what a failure. Ultimately I was destined for an early bath – thanked by the presiding judge for my “sacrifice”, I was sent home.
During the process, I was fortunate enough to chat to a fellow reject juror which turned out to be THE most educational experience I’ve had since I met my now wife in Newcastle 7 years ago. He was the director of a company building offshore wave and tidal energy solutions. We skirted around a wide range of subjects including
· Seaweed for carbon capture and why it needs to sunk to 1km
· Carbon offset schemes – eg providing solar panels for remote African villages as an alternative to diesel to generate power
· Big corporates taking responsibility – Microsoft not only committing to net zero but repaying their carbon impact dating back several years
We turned to my most recent post about #nudges and #thebigapproach Jeremy Campbell being a way of embedding new habits for the good of the planet as well as wellbeing and business performance. Asked what his top daily nudge for us, ordinary individuals to collectively make a difference would be – after “vote for the right government” (impossible to make a good habit), he landed on “eat beans not beef”. The current meat supply chain is an end-to-end eco-disaster – land desecration, water usage, farty cows. Eating beans imported from Namibia is more environmentally friendly than eating Sunday roast from your local farm. So until we genetically modify cows to be less gaseous and meadow consuming, we’re stuck with reducing our meat intake by around 30%. That’s just two meals per week being vegetarian-based rather than meat – easy? Venison is fine, apparently Scotland is overrun with deers but convincing the population to eat Bambi for breakfast to save the planet is a daily nudge too far.
In summary, what an amazing week – experiencing justice in action, chance encounters, seeing how tech transforms and finding a really powerful daily #nudge
And love my clients for their understanding!
What does the most technically advanced car in the world, clean teeth and your workforce have in common ?
As 2020’s Formula 1 season drew to a close, the rather predictable news was that yet again that dispite a massively COVID disrupted season a German team (based in Britain) powered by a German engine (built in Britain) and led by a British driver (not based in Britain) had won 13 of the 17 races. Behind those stats suggesting the rather depressing scenario of domination rather than competition it’s still worth remembering that the 20 cars after driving nearly 2 hours for 200 miles racing at 5 times the speed an average family saloon still crossed the finishing line within a feet of each other.
Imagine that.. still that close even after the ten teams have spent their colossal annual budgets totalling around £2bn. Consider the variability in the system – tens of thousands staff based around the world with different ideas, different engines, different aerodynamics, different brakes, developed over several years racing on different tracks, different corners with thousands of ways to set a car up, different tyres types and tyre pressures, different pit stop strategies, different racing lines – the list goes on. And the biggest variable of all – the stroppy, egotistical and over-emotional driver eeking out every last inch of advantage out of the delicate £100m car on a narrow and twisting wet track at 200mph.
A hundredth of a second per lap is the difference between winning and losing – so F1 teams are as much in a development race as in the actual race itself. After the initial big improvements have been made – what next ? They have deep pockets to find the smallest performance increments that a faster car is all about the aggregation of marginal gains. Key to this is that the better teams analyse the mass of data collected about performance and environment, then put it in the hands of those geniuses who are able to make important design decisions.
So what’s this got to do with HR ? In the same way as F1, HR provides many of those small increments in improving the workforce for competitive advantage – not just to “win” once or twice, but to keep on winning time and time again. And in the same way, HR measures and tests what incremental benefits an employee (/ skill / training programme / absence policy / and so on) will / has made over the competition.
But HR are special, right ?
One of the most successful F1 teams has used analysis of data for every single aspect and movement to reduce the time taken for a pit stop (changing all four tyres on the car) reducing from over 5 seconds a few years ago to less than 2 seconds time and time again (next time you have a flat, time yourself) – orchestrating the most precise choreographed dance of twelve burly mechanics kitted out in helmets and heavy fire suits you could ever imagine. The same team was asked by British pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline, to reduce time for their own pit stop – swapping over production lines for different toothpastes. The outcome – an increased production of 7 million tubes of toothpaste and an estimated £100m bottom line impact – using data.
No doubt the naysayers will be shaking their heads in exasperation pointing out that it might work for F1 and cleaner teeth (and marketing and sales and operations) but it’s just “not relevant to HR”. Orchestrating a workforce is completely different – more complex, more moving parts, more variability, and requires the human touch. Which in conclusion means gut feel is the only way to go.
The counter-argument – there are many technical challenges to overcome which may seem daunting to adopt an evidence based HR function (all of which are entirely solvable without the need for a £2bn annual budget) – but in the end, the biggest challenge to overcome is the right mind-set to embrace data as a key ally for decision making in the quest for those marginal gains to aggregate.
The aggregation of marginal gains is a concept made famous by British cycling coach Dave Brailsford, who lead the British cycling team to 10 gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Prior to this, the team had not managed any significant wins.
HR system Darwin-ism – the Breeders continue to proliferate
So what ethos is winning the battle between the single unified HR solution versus the multiple “best of breed “ employee systems for HR, recruitment, talent and attendance?
Well, surprise, surprise, it seems the Breeders still continue to dominate the Unifiers. A recent survey confirms this with over two thirds of organizations having four or more different employee systems covering the various HR specialisms. Good old Gartner and a host of other reputable neigh-sayers are having the same non-purist thoughts.
Why ? Well no doubt Breeders are seduced with generally more functional rich (or should it fit for their needs ?.. ahem) and quicker / cheaper to deploy systems when compared to the six figure $ costs and complex implementations measured in double digit months rather than single figure weeks.
Will it change ? You’d have thought it was a no brainer based on balancing the conundrum of having just a single supplier with a single system with zero integration versus the complexity of multiple systems, multiple suppliers, multiple integrations and your IT departments’ neurotic negative obsession over “Cloud based systems” with their mystical objections that are randomly thrown up.
Well apparently not – doing the day job more efficiently and effectively still trumps having a couple of extra invoices to process and “The Cloud” being a little damp.
All of which, whilst great for the £ per functionality and speed of deployment, raises challenges beyond multi-system integration – most importantly in a world where big data is fast becoming the old “new” (come on HR – time to catch up) – how do you combine data from multiple employee systems which is so core to good HR analytics?
So all you Breeders out there – your proliferation decision was totally justified after all….
The Theory of Proclivity
I’m sure like me, you’ve experienced that slightly disturbing feeling of “how on earth did I get home?”. I don’t mean 2am in the morning after a big night out in town, context here is when you’re driving and the journey just seems to have happened without any conscious thought. During that two hundred mile journey, can I remember any of the hundreds of times I’ve check it was safe to turn, changed gears, mirror-signal-manoeuvred, braked, accelerated, indicated, cheerily waved through the idiot jumping the queue as we wearily approach yet another set of roadworks on the A1 ? Well no. In the same way, I don’t think about breathing, walking or being completely random – it just happens automatically. Autopilot.
When I was learning to drive, every gear change required deep concentration – choreographing the switching of my foot from accelerator / brake to clutch, gear change, back to accelerator / brake – whilst steering and worrying incessantly about the every present rear view mirror. When did the ability to autopilot happen? How many miles had I driven ? How many gear changes did I have to make? Research suggests that it takes anywhere between 18 to 254 days of repetition for something to become a habit with the average being 66 days.
Which brings me to week 3 of my sprint.
Something akin to autopilot is starting to happen for my one my #nudges after just 19 days. Today I became very agitated when I hadn’t completed my daily lunch break walk – and to my surprise this wasn’t about thinking about the red dot against the day, losing my hard earnt streak or even being motivated by weight loss – it was just an innate desire to go for that walk.
As for one of my other nudges – “Post on Linkedin about the BIG approach” – this week is a busy, busy week (the next release of #nudge going out). So taking the time to write a post was not really top of the list. Until that was, Monday when a couple of people passingly said they were really looking forward to the next post on Friday. Recognition clearly is a great motivator – so here I am again.
In my first weeks’ post, I likened Jeremy Campbell of Black Isle Group | BIG as the architect behind “Everyday actions lead to big results”, to a modern-day Aristotle. This week I am going one step further up the intellectual snobbery scale with a comparison to Einstein. In between inventing the Theory of Relativity, Albert is (mis)quoted as saying “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”. Therefore, by logical deduction, the definition of sanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting the same results. And so The Theory of Proclivity is born.
So my sanity is assured – walking over and over again leads to weight loss and clarity of thinking.
Don’t make me post…
So the first week is done and (if I finish this post!), a 100% successful week of completing all my daily nudges. Doing the three things I know I should do regularly, they will make a difference, they are important – but somehow I never have enough time or something else crops up or I’m nervous about doing them or, or, or….
Yeah, I’m not a prolific Linkedin post jockey – it takes an inordinate amount of time for me to write one simple comment (teasing the right words into the right order, just enough intellectual oomph without appearing to be a show-off, humour, personality and is this really of any interest?). I love a daily walk, but without a dog, it’s just me and the F1 podcast. I convince myself I’ve far too much work on so revel in the crazy notion that another 12-hour stint in front of a screen without a proper break is the answer. And as for talking to real people unless I really have to? Give me strength, I’m an IT geek at heart and as you probably know we’re generally not known for our extroversion. Chatting to anyone on 1 to 1 basis beyond my cat and my keyboard can be a challenge if I’m not in the mood. So this weeks result is quite amazing. Only week 1 admittedly, but still, it’s a total turnaround for me.
Aristotle is quoted as saying “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit” (and before the Linkedin police start shouting I know it was Will Durant’s interpretation, but Aristotle has more star appeal). I’m not suggesting that Jeremy Campbell of Black Isle Group | BIG is the modern-day Aristotle, but his mantra of “Small steps lead to BIG results” is a brilliant business interpretation of that ancient wisdom.
The simple idea of the nudge app has the right blend of encouragement, clarity, self-accountability, coaching and tips that’s got me doing these important extra things.
And we now know this thing works – it can transform results and people. For example, in one of the pilots, a sales team dramatically improved their pipeline and became a more cohesive team. And at a personal level, I lost around 50lbs – the new health habit stuck with me.
The roadmap for the next year takes it to a different level and it’s fantastic to feel an integrated part of the team to deliver it.
Congratulations to Maverick Insights Limited‘s superb team of Jack Mills #paresh #manthan #paras for all your hard work, creativity and expertise (By the way, all of you guys please add the daily nudge of “Do not ask Matthew for another high def monitor”).
Click send. 100% done.
