Humanising HR Tech — it’s here to enable not to replace

At HR Tech (now UNLEASH) in Amsterdam, the theme that stood out was humanising tech. Technology enabling, not replacing. Tech helping humans do a better job, to learn, to transform workforces for their digital future.

In a world where we believe 50% of work today will soon be automated, according to closing keynote Henrik Scharfe, the HR tech market is hot. Meanwhile Peter Hinssen appealed to HR to “think like marketing and create bespoke experiences for employees” and Josh Bersin told us it doesn’t matter what HR tech you buy if “it doesn’t improve the employee experience”. It’s clear HR needs tech to deliver the right combination of personalisation and efficiency.

It’s busy!

The HR tech landscape is busy. As I learned at the conference, there have been more HR tech start-ups in the last 12 months than in the previous two years! Globally, venture capital and private equity companies invested $1.87 billion in HR and workforce-related products during the past two years.

My observation on this is that a lot of innovation has been in the talent acquisition space. There is far less focus on collaboration, knowledge sharing and preparing workforce for the future. The risk is significant if organisations don’t fundamentally shift their culture and siloed thinking. For their current workforce — it just makes sense. For the increasingly demanding workforce of the future — it will be an expectation!

Updating, creating and sharing knowledge are as important for business as finding the right talent in the first place. In fact, costs associated with relationships, reputation, re-work and regeneration are estimated to be as much as 20 times the cost of recruitment and training and consequently, “learning experience platforms are white hot” says Deloitte.

Technology in this space puts people at the centre in a consumer centric world, enabling employees to create internal networks, share ideas and collaborate. Which is where Talking Circles, recognised by Faye Holland as standing out in this year’s HR tech StartUp Zone, comes in.

Why do it with tech?

Josh Bersin said that when he visits corporate L&D departments he finds “their learning assets to be a bit of a mess. They have hundreds of courses, books, articles, videos, and many other artefacts of learning, and both employees and the L&D department are trying to assess the relevance of all these materials”

This is anathema to me! Learning, knowledge sharing and collaboration are nothing new, but doing it better by using technology. However, much of the tech in the learning space is traditional in its structure rather than having true collaboration at the heart of its infrastructure;

· Engagement: Genuinely connecting people with people moves learning away from compliance and towards achievement. At Carglass, employees placed requests for more than 100 skills and volunteered to share more than 200 skills with colleagues within two weeks of using Talking Circles.

· Collaboration: In distributed workforces, such as our retail client DIA, collaboration brings efficiency and consistency to learning. Supervisors and sales staff can learn from other stores, thus breaking down silos. In fact, their goal is to ultimately reinvent customer service. Of course, they need to do things differently!

· Personalisation: Technology ‘learns’ about employees based on their goals and objectives and with whom they want to connect. This means we can provide an exceptional and completely personalised experience.

· Gamification: Recognition from managers and peers is something employees value but don’t get often enough. With Talking Circles, badges, based on level of activity and changes to skills, incentivise and reward people for sharing knowledge.

· Privacy: In a world where Google is the go-to source, HR tech provides a verified, trusted authority without compromising privacy. For example, if someone is looking for help resolving a conflict they can search, based on recommendations, for colleagues offering that skill.

· Data for continuous improvement: Skills, knowledge, best practices are the primary drivers of a platform like Talking Circles, but we can learn so much more from data. For example, behaviour, usage, and creation of actionable outcomes which can be linked to KPIs.

Humanising HR Tech

At Hilton, Talking Circles is helping their team members share best practices across their UK hotels, markets and brands in the UK and Ireland:

· 94% of staff have signed up and created a profile

· 98% say they have learnt something they can apply to their work

· 95 % had a great experience connecting with colleagues

· and 100% would recommend the colleague they’d connected with to others.

With a global workforce of more than 300,000 people, the scale of learning has the potential to be incredible. Why does this approach work so well?

Because it brings together the best of technology and the best of our people. In our consumer-driven world, the focus is on the customer: net promoter score, guest experience, personalisation — the customer is everything. Digitalising the employee experience using tech, is enabling Hilton to do the same for its employees.

If you were in Amsterdam and would like to catch-up or if you’re interested in this area of HR tech please get in touch, I’d love to hear from you. sayhello@talkingcircles.co or request a demo.