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DBS COO’s 5 tips for setting up a human capital analytics team

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DBS COO’s 5 tips for setting up a human capital analytics team

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To date, DBS Bank's human capital analytics team has uncovered hidden insights into how the bank hires, retains and maximises performance, successfully articulating them to the bank's management in a way that disrupted the thinking in its workforce.

Over a year ago, business leader turned HR practitioner, Grace Yip, chief operating officer of group HR at DBS Bank, was tasked to set up and run the human capital analytics team for DBS. After a year on this challenging yet fulfilling journey, Yip shares the five things HR leaders should keep in mind when setting up their own human capital analytics team.

I've always been a strong believer of human resources teams using data better.

Before I became a HR practitioner at DBS Bank, I was a business leader, running a business and managing people. Data-backed solutions to HR problems were always more effective than making decisions based on "gut feelings" in creating value and improving productivity for the organisation.

So when analytics first appeared in the world of people operations five years ago, I thought it was great. I had read much about it and found myself selling these solutions to clients. It was fascinating to see how big data transformed gut feel into deep insights and recommended actions in the hiring and retaining of talent.

But I didn't truly understand the power of human capital analytics until I had to set up and run the human capital analytics team for DBS a year ago when I joined the bank.

For starters, it's ridiculously hard work. In that first year, we developed our target operating model, hired the team, built our employee analytical records (ours has more than 600 attributes) and completed modelling for two projects, which are being deployed this year. Phew!

Here are five things I've learnt since setting up the human capital analytics team at DBS HR just over a year ago. It may not be rocket science, but it's a meaningful reflection of this challenging yet fulfilling journey:

1. Set a clear direction and an inspiring vision

I've found that having a clear direction of how human capital analytics operates and why it's important is key to attracting the right talent.

Data scientists aren't satisfied with simply knowing what projects they'll be working on. That's not enough. Instead, they want to feel that they fit in and are part of a critical function in the organisation. They want to understand the larger plan and if the organisation is committed to it - or if it's just a passing fad.

A clear direction helps align with the organisation's overall people priorities. It lets you tackle the easy wins, especially at the start of the journey, by showing your stakeholders that the team knows what it is doing, and that analytics is a tool that helps them and delivers value to both HR and the Business.

Today we have summarised our overall vision for human capital analytics into a single phrase: Powering HR into the Future; Powering our People into the Future. Our approach, analytical process, capabilities and services are illustrated in a single infographic using the analogy of a race track. Putting the human capital analytics team at the heart of insight has led to more effective decision making.

ALSO READ: The Futurist: DBS Bank on the 3 key skills future HR heads must acquire

2. The answer lies at the crossroads of small and big data

It is so easy to get caught up in the big data, especially when you have a lot of it, that we often forget the context of the problem.

This was my most painful lesson, learnt on one of our two projects last year, but also the most powerful one. We lost our way even though we began with a solid hypothesis, which drove our data collection.

Often, getting answers from big data is like finding a needle in a haystack. But you also need to understand the context of how human behaviour manifests itself.

You need the "small data" to get meaningful insights. You need to speak to people on the ground and understand their behaviour, to be able to detect patterns and analyse how that behaviour changes over time.

It was only when we took a step back, spoke more with our colleagues and observed the subject matter - gathering the small data - did we truly understand what we were solving. We had to reframe and re-contextualise our analysis. But once we did, everything fell into place and made sense.

One of my favourite reads of 2016 is Martin Lindstrom's book, Small Data. It cemented my perspective on using both big and small data into our analytical approach.

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READ MORE: Why future HR leaders will be like data scientists

3. Never forget the return on investment

We are so busy with the day-to-day functions at work that we often do not make time to establish a closed-loop process on projects; that is, taking action and giving feedback on this action.

But embarking on the human capital analytics journey is pointless unless someone decides to use these insights and acts on them.

At DBS, we make sure this closed-loop process is set up and followed.

We explain to managers that they must use these insights to help their teams grow well in concrete and actionable ways. The return on investment on our time, energy and resources is how we measure our success.
ALSO READ: HR digitisation: Reaching for the clouds
4. Storytelling is critical in getting buy-in

It's no secret that data scientists have their own data speak. Yet few have mastered the art of distilling the essence of their findings and telling a compelling story to those who are not in analytics.

Our human capital analytics team spends much time thinking through our storyboard that delivers a salient message in a brief but powerful summary.

We have found the use of short animated videos to work incredibly well for us. In three minutes, we are able to take the audience from zero awareness to a level of amazement at the insights we have uncovered through analytics. For those who are interested, you can take a look at one of our videos here.

READ MORE: Suite Talk: Piyush Gupta, CEO of DBS Group

5. The world of data scientists is ripe for disruption

In the short year where I've immersed myself in the data analytics community, I've found that I often need to separate the wheat from the chaff. Many can speak analytics, but not all can execute.

Analytics tools are also evolving so quickly that, soon, the average business person will find it easy to wield the power of analytics. In the near future, developing and refining statistical models and algorithms may be as simple as fiddling with Microsoft Excel.

Today, data scientists must not only have deep technical skills but also start building the breadth of capabilities to become high performers.

David Green's LinkedIn post, "What constitutes best practice in people analytics", is a great read about developing your capabilities. The stronger your breadth of capabilities, the more irreplaceable you will be even when disruptive technology comes knocking at your door.

I have also become a complete data geek and now truly appreciate the value that data brings to HR. Human capital analytics is core to recruiting and retaining the best people. It lays the foundation for the business, but requires perseverance and grit to get there.

Our human capital analytics team has uncovered deep insights into how DBS hires, how we retain and maximise performance. The most satisfying part of the journey has been how we have been able to uncover hidden insights and articulate them to DBS management in a way that disrupted the thinking about our workforce.

And on this one-year journey, my team and I have experienced first-hand how we can #bethechange and #livefulfilled.
This article was first published by Grace Yip, chief operating officer of group HR at DBS Bank on LinkedIn.
Photo / provided
READ MORE: Case Study: How DBS trained more than 2,000 employees on innovation

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DBS COO's 5 tips for setting up a human capital analytics team

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I've always been a strong believer of human resources teams using data better. Before I became a HR practitioner at DBS Bank, I was a business leader, running a business and managing people. Data-backed solutions to HR problems were always more effective than making decisions based on "gut feelings" in creating value and improving productivity for the organisation.

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Five Forces, Six New Roles and a Challenge to HR

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In September 2013, top HR leaders undertook a voluntary and collective effort to envision the HR profession in 2025. They conducted interviews, focus groups, reviews of published findings and drew upon their significant personal experience through CHREATE (The global Consortium to Reimagine HR, Employment Alternatives, Talent, and the Enterprise). Their findings included five forces shaping the future of work and organizations, and six necessary roles. They envisioned a step-change in organization challenges, responses and workplace capabilities. These changes will affect organizations differently, but the CHROs, as well as the CEOs and Board members they interviewed, believed they are relevant to virtually every organization.

Should they be guiding your own strategies, organizational initiatives, capability development and HR functional design?

Five Forces Shaping the Future

Exponential technology change. This includes technological breakthroughs that produce exponentially accelerated disruptions in markets and business. They include rapid adoption of robots, autonomous vehicles, commoditized sensors, and artificial intelligence, enabling global collaboration and re-thinking work and global commerce. To respond, organizations will engage flexible, distributed and transient workforces that adapt to rapid cycles of business reinvention. They will become more accurate in choosing big long-term bets and more flexible when predictions are uncertain. Workers will need to successfully engage with automation, and be prepared for more constant job loss and rapid skills obsolescence.

Social & organizational reconfiguration. This force will include increased democratization of work, shifting organizational forms from the hierarchy in favor of more power-balanced organizations and communities, with less employment-based and more project-based relationships. Talent will engage with organizations increasingly based on aligned purpose, not simply economic exchange. The organizational responses will include networks replacing hierarchies, and social and external collaborations as vital elements of product and service development. Business practices and culture will reflect shared purpose and mission and horizontal and shared leadership. Talent sourcing and engagement processes will use diverse work arrangements including part-time, full-time, free agents, outsourcing, talent exchanges with partner organizations, and engagement based increasingly on a purpose-driven mission.

A truly connected world. Inexpensive mobile devices, personal interfaces, virtual collaboration and new media will enable global and real-time communications that accelerate ideation and product development. Market strategies will use rapid prototyping with intensive user feedback. Organizations and their operations will be globally transparent, with extremely short product development and release cycles, immediate feedback and relationships based on trust. Work will be sourced from anywhere at any time, by workers organized in the cloud, and networks of free agents. Work will be engineered through newly defined talent management systems that support a distributed and global workforce, high-trust cultures and purpose-built networks, empowered with big data.

All-inclusive global talent market. Work will be seamlessly distributed around the globe with 24/7 operations enabled by new corporate and social policies. Extreme longevity will allow mature talent to stay in workforce longer. Female and non-white ethnicities will become talent majorities. Organizations increasingly segment work into projects, tasks and micro-tasks directed to the best talent within and outside the organization through diverse work relationships. Leadership and engagement will evolve to address highly varied and differentiated cultural preferences in policies, practices, work designs, pay and benefits. Purpose-driven organizations will excel in attracting, engaging and motivating workers from many sources.

Human and machine collaboration. Analytics, algorithms, big data and automation will accelerate and enhance productivity and decision making, and automate and abolish tasks previously performed by humans. This will frequently disrupt product, service and labor markets, with greater volatility in unemployment and re-employment. Organizations will migrate tasks from people to machines and/or robots, mastering big data. They will augment their capabilities beyond regular full-time employment by creating and maintaining external partnerships that manage workforce transitions without hurting their reputation as a fair and attractive place to work. This will require exceptionally strong social and community relationships and ethics.

Six New Workplace Leadership Roles:

The CHREATE teams envisioned that these changes will require organizational capabilities embodied in new roles like those described below. These roles may be embedded in an HR profession of the future, but they reflect a profession with boundaries that extend well beyond traditional HR:

The Organizational Engineer is an expert in facilitating virtual teams, developing leadership wherever it exists, and talent transitions. She is an expert at talent and task optimization. She is the knowledge resource on principles such as agility, networks, power and trust.

The Virtual Culture Architect is a culture expert, advocate and brand builder. He connects current and potential workers' purpose to the organization's mission and goals. He is adept at principles of values, norms, and beliefs, articulated virtually and personally.

The Global Talent Scout, Convener, and Coach masters new talent platforms and optimizes the relationships between workers, work and the organization, using whatever platform is best (e.g., free agent, contractor, regular employee, etc.). She is a talent contract manager, talent platform manager, and career/life coach.

The Data, Talent & Technology Integrator is an expert at finding meaning in big data and algorithms, and how to design work that optimally combines technology, automation and humans.

The Social Policy & Community Activist creates optimal synergy between goals that include economic returns, social purpose, ethics, sustainability, and worker well-being. She influences beyond the organization, shaping policies, regulations and laws that support the new world of work, through community engagement.

Should your organization be building these capabilities? Will they reside in your future HR function, your leadership, or your line managers? Will your pipeline for this talent include professionals in procurement, marketing, finance, operations, business development and external relations, as well as from traditional HR academies and functions? Are you ready for this future?

Note: You can see more of the teams' work in this Prezi file by Marianne Jackson and Gautam Srivastava.

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Workplace 2025: 5 Forces, 6 New Roles | Visier Inc.

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In September 2013, top HR leaders undertook a voluntary and collective effort to envision the HR profession in 2025. They conducted interviews, focus groups, reviews of published findings and drew upon their significant personal experience through CHREATE (The global Consortium to Reimagine HR, Employment Alternatives, Talent, and the Enterprise).

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Here’s Hoping We Can Build a Sturdy Bridge

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This article was originally published on .

HR stands on the edge of a precipice with only two options. Invent a way across the chasm, or disappear into it. With technology and science disrupting the traditional work environment, questions about the direction in which HR is heading, what the future of work will look like, or whether we will work at all, are being asked.

With new challenges rearing their heads each day, the role HR must play in navigating this territory has never been more important. However, this turbulent digital era, generated by business demands and technology transformation, means many HR departments are floundering just trying to keep up with the change, let alone offering strategic foresight to trek into an unknown future.
What Today's Workplace Environment Looks Like
Last week, Intrepid Group announced it had appointed a millennial CEO to help grow the company's long-term sustainable tourism vision. At 35 years of age, James Thornton will be responsible for 1,600 staff in 27 offices around the world. The next generation of executives and C-suites are rising up the ranks more quickly, and are younger, than ever before. In fact, your new boss might not have even finished high school. Already we're seeing the rise of 'kidpreneurs' taking the world by storm, as budding youngsters who are yet to hit puberty use their entrepreneurial spirit to build and grow sustainable businesses.

Then you have the other end of the spectrum. With healthcare advances, mortality rates are lower and life expectancy grows. The retirement age has extended, with many people working into their 70s and even 80s, creating a diverse pool of Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials and Gen Z's all working together.

As new platforms spring into existence, roles that have never been imagined before are being created. Snapchat Producer, Chief Listening Officer, App Developer, Social Media Manager, Big Data Architect and Cloud Services Specialist didn't exist 10 years ago. And at the rapid pace we are creating and innovating, roles will continue to appear, disappear and transform, at breakneck pace.

Workplaces and structures are also being revolutionised. The next generation office has quiet zones, gaming areas, cafes, sleep pods and exercise areas to optimise inspiration, interaction and innovation. The days of hierarchy are diminishing, with many leaders choosing to sit with their teams and hot-desking to get people out of their comfort zones and talking to each other. For some, there is no defined workplace at all. The cost of running an office can be hefty and many organisations are cashing in on replacing a traditional work environment with hubs and teleworking.
The Challenges the New Frontier Presents
Progress always comes with a set of trials and tribulations and this new digital era is no exception.

Unicorn companies (privately owned start-ups with a $1 billion valuation) are on the rise. Think Uber, Snapchat, Airbnb, WeWork and Lufax to name a few. While it's exciting to watch disruptive enterprises burst onto the scene, a critical question is: what impact are they having on the human workforce? The top 10 unicorns are valued at a combined $324 billion, but only employ around 40,000 people. That's around $8 million of company value per employee compared with Walmart's $0.1 million. Unicorns can achieve billion-dollar company valuations with a fraction of the labour force they have displaced, so while specialised roles are in high demand, moderately skilled jobs are at threat of disappearing.

Today's multi-generational workforce is also testing the ability of HR to manage the needs, wants and perceptions of different demographics. Nurturing the enthusiasm of Gen Z's and Millennials, while channelling the knowledge and experience of older workers will keep HR on its toes. Not to mention balancing various work/life expectations, incentives and flexible work environments, to suit the lifestyles of different age groups.

Cognitive computing and artificial intelligence are propelling us into the future and while it's fun to imagine the world we might step into in 20-years' time, it is equally causing anxiety as we consider the repercussions this will have on employment. Moderately skilled jobs such as office administration, sales, construction and manufacturing that are routine, lend themselves to automation, creating an employment hole and a wave of re-education, re-training and redundancy.
The Opportunity for HR to Pave the Way
For HR and business leaders, there are certain skills and mindsets that will play a key role in maintaining effective workplace management.
Digital intelligence
Organisations today need to have a deep understanding of how technology can help them achieve business objectives. This means having a strategy that optimises your products and services for digital, people and technology capabilities that are aligned to that strategy, and a culture that promotes digital innovation. The challenge for HR is to rethink and align the human resources processes to complement this digital strategy.
Cultural intelligence
This encompasses social and emotional, cross-cultural and organisational intelligence. It is imperative that HR departments take the lead and develop structures that support cultural intelligence. Measuring individual's applied emotions, understanding various cultural differences and being aligned with the company's values, can impact everything from an organisation's productivity to annual profit growth.
Business intelligence
The value of HR lies in its ability to align current and future human capital needs with the business goals they were hired to achieve. For HR executives, this means actively participating in strategic business planning, being accountable for non-HR business outcomes and representation on business or industry councils.

The best HR teams have a strategy that provides a clear path between future challenges and how the organisations human capital will meet them. Unfortunately, many HR departments continue to apply traditional approaches over and over again despite them not working. It has never been more urgent for HR to muster a new level of courage, vision and progressive thinking to align themselves with the workplace of the future - or risk being left behind.

Future of HR |

, future of HR, future of work, innovation

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HR on the Precipice: Here's Hoping We Can Build a Sturdy Bridge

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This article was originally published on . HR stands on the edge of a precipice with only two options. Invent a way across the chasm, or disappear into it. With technology and science disrupting the traditional work environment, questions about the direction in which HR is heading, what the future of work will look like, or whether we will work at all, are being asked.

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Recruiter Certification Exam Will No Longer Be Available | LinkedIn Help

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LinkedIn Help - Recruiter Certification Exam Will No Longer Be Available -

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A Human Resources Career is Not for “Nice” People

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A Human Resources Career is Not for “Nice” People

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Brian Walker

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Chief Human Resources Officer / Global HR Executive

Fair, Not Nice
Over the years I have often had young talent come to me asking for mentoring because they want to work in Human Resources. I love to mentor, but I like to do it for the right reasons. So I have usually asked the question: "Why do you want to work in HR?" More often than not the answer goes something like this: "I love working with people, developing them and helping them". To which I usually respond: "If that's what you want to do then you should work in operations or general management, not in HR." This is often a shocking response, but it's an honest one. The misperceptions that HR is a "nice" place to work because we work with people is pervasive, and often leads to the wrong kind of talent in the function.

To be fair, being nice is usually an expectation and requirement to be in HR. It's hard for most people to imagine their HR partners as not nice people. But I think this is where some young talent gets confused. They see "nice" HR colleagues and leaders, perceive that the role is all about helping people, and mistakenly assume that being a nice person is qualification enough for the function. However, "nice" is only a starting point - it is not nearly enough.

As I was speaking to a friend and former colleague about this one time, he validated my point by pointing out that in Human Resources "we aren't in the nice business, we're in the fair business". I believe this is a very insightful statement. Let's consider a few Human Resources roles as examples :

Restructuring - Whenever there is an organizational restructure there are winners and losers. Dealing with the people that land on their feet is easy. But in any restructure there are those that lose their job, face demotions, or sometimes end up in a role that they don't like. These people deserve a respectful and fair process. Nice is just not enough.

During my HR career I have been involved in a lot of restructuring projects. There was a time that my wife began calling me "Grim Reaper" because during that time it seemed that I was always leading and executing really difficult restructuring efforts.

I remember one person in particular. A colleague that I knew and liked, but who didn't have the right experience/capabilities for the revised structure. When I informed him that there was no job for him, he took the paper I tried to give him with key data, crumpled it up, and threw it in my face. It was emotionally very painful, for both of us. I ran into him about a year later while shopping in a local store. He saw me and called my name. I braced myself for what might come, but he was as friendly as could be. He informed me that he had a great job, and thanked me for making it possible for him to be in a position to get that. This is a rare and gratifying experience, as usually we never get the back story. Sometimes they don't turn out that well. But whatever the case, we must take satisfaction in treating professionals with fairness and dignity.

Recruiting - There are few things as enjoyable as telling somebody they got the job they were really hoping for. Unfortunately, for everybody that gets the job, there are many people who wanted it and didn't get it. It's not so fun to make those calls.

Compensation is about paying people what the job is worth, not what they want. This often causes disagreement and friction. HR professionals must learn to explain facts and reality not only to employees at all levels, but also often to their managers who feel they should just be able to pay more. Sometimes we get to give great news in this regard, but more often we must find ways to keep integrity in the compensation structure.

Talent management is about differentiating top talent and investing in them disproportionally. Delivering that news to the selected individuals can certainly be enjoyable. But for every top talent there are many who are not, and we often must explain why we have rewarded others disproportionally.

Learning & Development should be about giving people the training they need, not what they want.

Labor/Employee relations is about ensuring we have a consistent and fair work environment, not to make everybody happy with their circumstances.

Culture is about creating a great and/or effective working environment, not necessarily a nice environment. Great and nice aren't synonyms.

It's not hard to see that the common perceptions that HR is an easy place to work, nice, or fun, are completely misguided. Of course, it can be fun. But when done well, it's difficult work.

I made a recent acquaintance at a conference. This gentleman started his career as an Aeronautics engineer, moved to Finance, and now works in HR. I asked him about his transition into HR, and I loved his quote:
Empathy is the Key

"I was surprised about how difficult HR is. Designing airplanes that won't fall out of the sky is a lot easier than managing HR."

Balance
Well said.

I believe that what HR professionals really need is not niceness, but empathy. That is, understanding and taking into account how people feel. We must do the work, sometimes tough work, that our organizations need. Doing so with empathy, and helping other leaders have empathy, makes such a difference. As a function, we are often expected to give difficult news and feedback, or to help other leaders give such feedback. It's always better to give it in an empathic way.

As HR professionals we have to keep it all balanced if we want to maintain sanity. Balance in life is critical, otherwise it can become overwhelming and tempting to slide into nice for nice sake in order avoid some of the tough work, which is not what organizations need. It's important to take a breath sometimes and keep it all in perspective. I love my job, not because it's "nice", but because I find fulfillment in helping the organization achieve it's objectives through human capital. It is strategic, but it is also an art that must be practiced daily to be truly good at it. Helping and watching people grow is great. But helping and watching the company grow through it's people is even more important and more fulfilling.

So, if you want to work in HR, please take note of what's really required for success and make sure you are pursuing this career for the right reasons.
Brian Walker is an International Human Resources executive with significant experience in Latin America, Asia Pacific and Europe. He is passionate about strategic HR, transformational HR and culture. Brian currently resides in Flower Mound, Texas.
If you already work in HR, take a breath, keep perspective, and focus on what's most important. Have empathy, but do the right thing and don't be afraid to give the tough messages.

If you're neither of these, please go give your HR partner a hug and appreciation for what he/she does.

Chief Human Resources Officer / Global HR Executive

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A Human Resources Career is Not for "Nice" People

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Over the years I have often had young talent come to me asking for mentoring because they want to work in Human Resources. I love to mentor, but I

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The Employee Experience Is The Future Of Work: 

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The Employee Experience Is The Future Of Work: 

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10 HR Trends For 2017

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In 2016, I wrote about the transformation happening in human resources and I called it the "Consumerization of HR," referring to how companies create a social, mobile, and consumer-style experience for employees. Now, as we enter 2017, the next journey for HR leaders will be to apply a consumer and a digital lens to the HR function creating an employee experience that mirrors their best customer experience.
The Future Workplace: Building A Consumer And Digital HR Organization
Today, almost every company is undergoing a digital transformation. Cloud and mobile computing, artificial intelligence, and increasing automation have created the potential to transform nearly every aspect of a business. A survey of CEOs conducted by Fortune asked whether they thought their company was a "technology company" and 67% of CEOs said yes.

The same can be said for forward looking HR departments like those at IBM and General Electric. HR leaders such as Diane Gherson at IBM, and Susan Peters at General Electric, are transforming HR to deliver an employee experience that is human centered, uses the latest digital technologies, and is personalized, compelling, and memorable.

According to Forrester, 47% percent of executives surveyed believe that by 2020, digital will have an impact on more than half their sales. We see how digital has transformed media, retail, transportation and education. Now it's HR's turn. Digital and consumer marketing are permeating new ways of recruiting, working, learning, and engaging employees.

Applying a consumer and digital lens is much more than just incorporating new solutions in HR. Being employee-centered and digital is about having a new mindset, plus a set of consumer-focused and technological skills to creating new HR solutions. Above all, it requires a belief in the power of leveraging the latest consumer technologies inside HR. This starts with how a company engages prospective new hires. Consider how Zulily, an e-commerce company selling clothing, toys, and home products, invites candidates applying for a job on its social media team to submit an Instagram post that best represents themselves and what they would bring to the team. Or consider how MasterCard, BMO Financial Group, Cisco, and Silicon Valley Bank develop new HR solutions by conducting hackathons to co-create new ways forward with employees.

2017 is the year to prepare for transforming HR to be agile, consumer-focused, and digital. The 10 trends below will matter most this year.
#1: Focus On Creating A Compelling Employee Experience
As Susan Peters, Senior Vice President, Human Resources at General Electric says, "We define employee experience simply as seeing the world through the eyes of our employees, staying connected, and being aware of their major milestones. In the last year we have appointed a Head of Employee Experience and we are developing a strategy to create an employee experience which takes into account the physical environment our employees work in, the tools and technologies that enable their productivity, and learning to achieve their best at work. All of this is part of continuously evolving our HR capabilities."

HR leaders are leading this effort by reaching outside of the HR function to partner with heads of Real Estate, IT, Marketing, Internal Communications, and Global Citizenship to create one seamless employee and customer experience. The Future Workplace and Beyond.com study entitled " The Active Job Seeker Dilemma" found that 83% of HR leaders said "employee experience" is either important or very important to their organization's success, and they are investing more in training (56%), improving their work spaces (51%), and giving more rewards (47%). Companies are also driven to focus on creating a compelling employee experience as the war for talent heats up. Mercer predicts that 90% of employers anticipate more competition for talent, especially in India, North America, and Asia. So making the workplace an experience allows companies to embed their culture and values in the workplace and use this to recruit and retain top talent.
#2) Use An Agile Approach To Recruit And Develop Employees
An agile approach is typically used in software development to operate with speed and manage unpredictability. This approach is now being used to recruit and develop employees. When Amber Grewal was the global head of talent acquisition at GE Digital (Amber is now the VP of Talent Acquisition at IBM) she led a transformation of talent acquisition by applying an agile approach used to develop software. In the process Grewal created a new role, "Agile Recruiting Scrum Master." The result: recruiters were able to deliver top talent to clients within 2 to 6 weeks versus an average of 10-15 weeks. Agile is not only being applied to recruiting but also to learning and development. I've interviewed many heads of learning and identified a number who considered themselves intrapreneurs of the learning function rather than learning and development subject matter experts. What they did differently was apply an agile approach to corporate learning by making it easy for employees to find, rate, tag, and consume learning. They saw their job as learning curators rather than content creators. Companies like IBM, Visa, MasterCard, Adidas, and General Electric, to name just a few, are adopting new intelligent digital platforms to create a Netflix-like experience for corporate learners.
#3) Partner With Real Estate To Create Spaces That Promote Culture
In a TED talk, Susan Cain made the case that most workplaces are, "designed mostly for extroverts and their need for lots of stimulation." She highlighted how introverts are highly talented individuals with a very different set of characteristics. So companies should ask, "How can we accommodate both our introverts and our extroverts in our work spaces?" Try asking yourself four simple questions regarding the work space you have in your organization:

1. Where do you go to do your best work?

2. Where do you go to get the job done?

3. Where do you avoid meeting or working?

4. Where do you go to recharge?

Although a majority of American workers go to offices with open floor plans (70% of us, according to the International Facilities Management Association), companies are beginning to acknowledge that this isn't always the best for getting work done. In fact, research from Steelcase conducted with a global sample of 12,480 employees across 17 countries documents that workers who have control over where and how they work, and are free to choose a work space to fit their task at hand-either focused work or collaborative work-are 88% more engaged at work. The decision is not whether or not to design an open space, but rather how to give employees choice in where to work based upon the activity they are working on.

The HR takeaway: work space is not just a building, but part of the HR agenda to extend the company's culture and engage employees.

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The Employee Experience Is The Future Of Work: 10 HR Trends For 2017

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In 2016, I wrote about the transformation happening in human resources and I called it the "Consumerization of HR," referring to how companies create a social, mobile, and consumer-style experience for employees. Now, as we enter 2017, the next journey for HR leaders will be to apply a consumer and a digital lens to the HR function creating an employee experience that mirrors their best customer experience.

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Technological tools provide a new opportunity for the function to reach its potential and drive real business value.

A leading US healthcare company was struggling recently to recruit more nurses and stem high staff turnover. Patients were suffering, and the crisis was beginning to hit revenues.

Instead of just continuing to "firefight," however, the company's human-resources department responded by launching an in-depth analysis of the tenures in the group's nursing population, noting in its study some surprising correlations between length of service, compensation, and performance.

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HR leaders quickly saw the source of the problem-as well as a solution. They raised the minimum rewards for those early in their tenure and tweaked the total rewards for those with longer career paths, with the result being that the company retained more early-tenure, high-performing nurses. When the company rolled out the plan more widely, employee engagement increased and productivity jumped by around $100 million.

The story shows what can happen when HR steps out of its traditional silo and embraces a strategic role, explicitly using talent to drive value rather than just responding passively to the routine needs of businesses. That's a transformation many companies have been striving to make in recent years as corporate leaders seek to put into practice the mantra that their people are their biggest asset.

Some companies are making progress. The best HR departments are creating centers of excellence (COEs) in strategic areas such as organizational development, talent acquisition, and talent management. They are also providing better support to line managers via strategic HR business partners, and gaining points for pulling up from administrative minutiae to work on the long-term health of the business.

But there is still a long way to go. We hear continued frustration from business and HR leaders alike that the value of the much touted "strategic" approach remains at best unquantified, at worst ill-defined and poorly understood. Too many HR organizations still fail to make a hard and convincing connection between talent decisions and value.

This article sets out an agenda for renewed action. We believe the time is right to accelerate the reinvention of HR as a hard-edged function capable of understanding the drivers of strategy and deploying talent in support of it-most importantly as a result of the availability of new technological tools that unleash the power of data analytics.

The new HR-at a glance

To advance the agenda, we believe businesses need to concentrate on four things: rethinking the role of business partner to enable a better understanding of the vital link with strategy, using people analytics to identify the talent actions that will drive the value, fixing HR operations so they are not a distraction from HR's higher mission, and focusing HR resources in more agile ways so as to support these fresh priorities. Companies that take these steps will move toward a next generation of HR that's data driven, not experience driven; systematic, not ad hoc; and consistent, not hit and miss. (For more, see sidebar, "The new HR-at a glance.")

Rethink the role of the business partner

The starting point is for HR business partners-those senior HR individuals who counsel managers on talent issues-to stop acting as generalists and show that they really own the critical talent asset. This is a big enough change that it calls for a change in roles: replacing the business-partner role entirely with a new talent value leader (TVL), who would not only help business leaders connect talent decisions to value-creating outcomes but would also be held fully accountable for the performance of the talent.

The talent value leader

A TVL should have real authority over hiring and firing, even if actual decision rights remain with managers in the way actual spending decisions are taken by budget owners rather than being dictated by the finance function. Think of the manager of a European football team who is responsible for allocating resources using acquisition, compensation, evaluation, development, motivation, and other levers to maximize the players' collective performance.

Unlike the typical HR business partner of today, TVLs should be held to account using metrics that capture year-to-year skills development, capability gaps, engagement, and attrition. And to the maximum extent possible, they should be disconnected from the day-to-day concerns of operational HR so as not to get pulled back into dealing with employee issues-that means eliminating the HR liaison role that so many HR business partners play today.

TVLs, however, won't succeed without being able to deliver analytically driven talent insights to business managers systematically. This is a substantial change from today; while many HR business partners are resourceful and smart advisers to managers, few possess a data and analytical mind-set or the appropriate problem-solving tool kit.

When adopted, the expanded HR role we are describing starts to be taken seriously, as some companies are beginning to discover. A leading global materials company, for example, has been moving in this direction, specifying competencies for its HR leaders that now include the ability to "use analytics to diagnose and prescribe talent actions," to "translate talent decisions into profit-and-loss impact," and to "measure talent outcomes and their impact on value while holding managers accountable." The results have been significant. After an adjustment period, internal surveys show managers are substantially more satisfied with the support they receive from HR. Anecdotally, we also hear that more business leaders are scripting a role for their talent advisers during the strategic business-planning processes.

Broader leaders for a bigger role

A key challenge, of course, is where to find appropriate candidates to fill these bigger HR shoes. Many business partners, after all, have grown up in traditional HR roles with an operational-service culture. HR departments should therefore start a cohort-based, high-potential program that balances rotations in and out of HR with dedicated time for skill building. Companies can also reward executives from other functions for stints in HR, and potential HR leaders should experience line and other functional-leadership roles-in finance, for example-in order to build better business-strategy capabilities. Eileen Naughton recently stepped in to run people operations at Google from her role as managing director and vice president of sales and operations in the United Kingdom and Ireland. And Pepsico has begun to fill some HR roles with people from engineering, technology, or process-oriented backgrounds: leaders at the soft-drink giant say that engaging the business with data is critical to expanding the strategic role of HR.

Put people analytics at the core

Many organizations have already built extensive analytics capabilities, typically housed in centers of excellence with some combination of data-science, statistical, systems-knowledge, and coding expertise. Such COEs often provide fresh insights into talent performance, but companies still complain that analytics teams are simple reporting groups-and even more often that they fail to turn their results into lasting value. What's missing, as a majority of North American CEOs indicated in a recent poll, is the ability to embed data analytics into day-to-day HR processes consistently and to use their predictive power to drive better decision making.

In today's typical HR organization, most talent functions either implicitly or explicitly follow a process map; some steps are completed by business partners or generalists, others by HR shared services, and still others by COE specialists. Many of these steps require a recommendation or decision by a human being-for example, the evaluation of an employee's performance or the designation of a successor to a specific role.

Embedded analytics, by contrast, either inform or replace these steps with algorithms that leverage the data to drive fact-based insights, which are then directly linked to the deployment steps in the process. For example, many companies now use HR analytics to address attrition, allowing managers to predict which employees are most likely to leave and highlighting turnover problems in a region or country before the problem surfaces. By making the development and delivery of insights systematic, HR will start to drive strategic talent value in a more consistent way, rather than episodically and piecemeal as at present.

To understand more concretely the role of people analytics in an HR organization's journey toward a more strategic role, let's look closely at a single process-succession planning-and then assess the potential business impact of a broader suite of initiatives.

Analytics in action: Succession planning

A standard approach starts with a talent-management or organizational-development COE laying out the process for the organization, designing the tools or templates, and training key stakeholders in what to do. Managers might then sit down with their HR partners and discuss potential succession candidates for key roles-ideally taking skills, competencies, and development pathways into account (in practice, of course, there may be a bit of "gut feel"). A traditional best-practice process would then create individual development plans for potential successors, based on the gap between that person and the potential role. As vacancies occur, these potential successors may or may not be tapped, much depending on whether the manager (or his or her HR partner) bothers to refer back to those plans.

An analytics-driven succession-planning process looks and feels very different. First, machine-learning algorithms might review years of succession data so as to understand success factors in a given role. Using that insight, the company might then derive the top five internal candidates for that role, accompanied by customized development plans (that is, what courses to take, what skills to build) based on their individual competencies. Such information would support subsequent strategic decisions, consultations between managers and strategic HR partners, and cross-functional assessments of enterprise bench strength.

Business impact

The real prize is for those that can use data analytics not just to improve a single process, like recruitment or retention, but also to drive business performance-as has happened at a leading global quick-service restaurant business. The company mined data on employee personality traits, leadership styles, and working patterns and introduced changes that have improved customer service and had a tangible impact on financial performance (see "Using people analytics to drive business performance: A case study," forthcoming on McKinsey.com).

To achieve such impact across the board, leaders will have to make significant investments in analytics skills and capabilities-but the returns should be commensurate. Based on a study of a range of industries with diverse workforces, operating models, and financial features, the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that companies using a portfolio of HR-analytics solutions could realize an increase of 275 basis points in profit margins, on average, by 2025. These increases will likely come about through productivity gains among front- and middle-office workers (which can translate into revenues or other increased-output opportunities) and through savings in recruiting, interviewing time, training, onboarding, and attrition costs.

Fix HR operations

The current reality of HR, as many business partners will attest, is that of the function routinely being pulled into operational issues and distracted from its core strategic mission. McKinsey research, indeed, shows that typical HR departments still spend close to 60 percent of their time and resources on transactional and operational HR, despite decades of pushing work out to shared services; the best-performing HR departments spend less than 40 percent of their time and resources on these transactional activities.

As part of its continuing transformation, HR must therefore raise service levels and improve the employee experience, using next-generation automation tools and standardized processes to drive higher productivity. There are three critical operational priorities for the HR organization of the future: continuous process improvement, next-generation automation technology, and user-experience-focused service improvement.

Continuous process improvement

Based on our work with companies, we see several ways to make HR operations more efficient-including finding further things that individuals and managers can do more easily themselves-notably by providing direct access to information or transactions online, introducing simpler processes, and ensuring clearer decision making. It's also worth considering more geographically diverse sourcing of work and talent, as a leading agricultural company did when it found deep pockets of high-end instructional design talent in several Indian cities. These people, it turned out, not only were less costly but proved themselves capable of delivering equal or better service than the relatively well-compensated instructional designers who had served the businesses previously, mostly from the United States and Western Europe. There is always scope for smarter sourcing of external vendors, whether through insourcing or outsourcing: one US insurance company, for example, improved its reliability and cut the overall cost of its payroll process in half by bringing it back in-house.

Next-generation automation technology

New automation technologies will soon reshape a number of HR processes, building on core human-resource-management-system platforms (both on premises and in the cloud). Robotic process automation (RPA), smart work flows, cognitive agents, and natural-language processing, for example, will automate HR tasks previously carried out by people. The case of a leading global automotive-component manufacturer that was struggling with its employee-onboarding process is instructive. Thanks to the cross-functional complexity of the work flow, with different HR people needed to complete steps such as employee paperwork and scheduling orientation-and with IT, facilities, and security people needed to complete others-onboarding used to take weeks. RPA solved the problem with a bot that can access multiple systems, follow an intelligent work flow, and initiate communications. Onboarding time, on average, has been reduced by more than two-thirds, many errors created by manual tasks have been eliminated, and the journey has become more compelling for the individual.

Using people analytics to drive business performance: A case study Read the article

For operational HR, the new frontier of technology is cognitive agents, especially when paired with natural-language processing. The former have developed to the point where in many cases employees can't tell that they're interacting with a piece of software. Natural-language processing may not yet offer seamless unstructured voice conversations for an HR setting-but leading HR-service organizations already leverage chat as a communication channel to answer most questions, "learn" from past interactions, and conduct "warm" handoffs when needed. One major international food and beverage company believes these automated technologies can reduce its costs by 20 percent while maintaining or increasing service levels (for instance, by enabling 24/7 immediate response).

User experience

Operational effectiveness is a critical part of employee satisfaction with HR. But whether it's understanding the customer decision journey in marketing or understanding user needs as the foundation to driving digital user experience, other areas of the business have sought to improve customer satisfaction in ways that most HR departments generally have not. The HR department at the Orlando International Airport is a notable exception. It found that staff employed by about 60 organizations based at the airport, ranging from airlines and security to retail and janitorial, faced a common set of challenges. These challenges were both undermining the employees' job satisfaction and affecting the quality of services they were providing for passengers and other customers. An overhaul of the staff experience tackled both problems. The airport revamped its shuttle-bus schedules, reducing commuting time for workers using the employee parking lots, which had a tangible effect on morale at the start of the day. The airport also made it easier for employees to find their way through its buildings and facilities. Finally, it took an entirely new approach to onboarding employees, providing them with updated weekly information so that everyone, regardless of their role, could help customers with queries about directions, the availability of services, or events taking place in other parts of the airport.

Focus HR resources in more agile ways

The changes discussed not only require the HR organization to recruit a new cadre of TVLs and to use people analytics to drive business value-they also demand a new type of agile organizational structure. Applying agility to the organization of HR will be critical to HR's ability to deliver a harder link between talent decisions and value.

Agile HR: A case study

It's easiest to understand HR agility through an example. A leading European bank implemented an agile HR model aligned to this vision, with great results. Previously siloed HR resources responded to opportunities or issues slowly and inefficiently, their work dominated by transactional and operational tasks. Morale was low as a result of a lack of role clarity and a surfeit of meetings aimed at engaging every conceivable HR stakeholder. In response, the bank's HR leaders implemented an agile "flow to the work" organizational model: there are a limited number of deep specialists and talent value leaders in a few global roles, and they are supported by strong shared-service centers and a pool of multiskilled HR professionals-people with capabilities to perform most HR actions and who are responsible for much of the talent work.

The model reduced the HR budget by 25 percent in its first year of implementation, the goal being 40 percent within three years. Just as important, the HR organization is working with renewed purpose, implementing key talent initiatives faster and substantially accelerating HR's response to opportunities and issues. Now fewer in number, the bank's HR business partners (TVLs in all but name) and COE leaders are devoting much more of their time to connecting talent to business strategy.

Agility, operations, and structure

As this example suggests, the move toward a more agile HR organizational model has both operational and structural implications. Operationally, HR functions need to be able to create a solid backbone of core processes that either eliminate the clutter or camouflage the complexity to the business, all while delivering the basics (such as payroll, benefits, recruiting, and simple employee and manager transactions) without error or delay.

Agility, combined with analytics, also suggests structural change, particularly for centers of excellence. With more automation of insight generation, and especially the mass customization and delivery of those insights through technology, HR COEs will probably be a much smaller group in the HR organization of the future. Shorn of transactional resources and unburdened by operational responsibilities, these pools of talent will be able to work across disciplines (talent management, learning and development, and organizational design), supporting the new talent value leaders and business as a whole (exhibit).

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Calls for a more assertive and strategic role for HR are not new. The idea that the CHRO (controller of human capital) should be part of a C-suite triumvirate that includes the CEO (principal owner of strategy) and the CFO (owner of financial capital) has been championed by our colleague Dominic Barton, among others. But if HR leaders are to finally achieve the promise of being strategic-the sustained delivery of talent insights and actions that drive real business value-they will need to transform their own function to provide a foundation. By changing the way HR interacts with the business on strategic questions, notably through the creation of new talent value leaders, HR can gain responsibility and accountability for driving talent-linked value. By deploying data-driven insights and solutions in a systematic way, HR can dramatically ramp up the level of talent insight it delivers to the business. By driving continuous improvement in operational performance, HR can create the space for its leading thinkers to drive strategic talent insight and solutions. And by adopting a more agile approach to its resources, HR can drive significant productivity and focus execution and investments on the core initiatives each year that are proven to link to value.

About the author(s)
Frank Bafaro is a consultant in McKinsey's Southern California office; Diana Ellsworth is an associate partner in the Atlanta office, where Neel Gandhi is a partner.

The authors wish to thank Gregg LeStage for his contributions to this article.

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Technological tools provide a new opportunity for the function to reach its potential and drive real business value. A leading US healthcare company was struggling recently to recruit more nurses and stem high staff turnover. Patients were suffering, and the crisis was beginning to hit revenues.

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How HR Can Become Agile (and Why It Needs To)

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How HR Can Become Agile (and Why It Needs To)

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Editor's Note: SHRM has partnered with Harvard Business Review to bring you relevant articles on key HR topics and strategies. In this article, the author discusses how tech teams often find that the pace of work they desire can be hindered by the lack of agility in HR.

If software has eaten the world, then agile has eaten the software world. While initially designed to improve the responsiveness of software development teams, more recently agile has become the default team-based operational model for companies big and small, across industries and sectors, with the promise of a substantial and sustained spike in team productivity and efficiency.

And there is no shortage of information and advice on how agile should be implemented in your tech organization. The tactics are clear, well-documented, and offered up in a myriad of flavors. For example, a Google search for "agile software development" returns over 14 million results. An Amazon search on the same phrase returns nearly 2,300 books and other materials. The bulk of this agile canon will teach your individual teams to deliver higher-quality code, faster. The next layer of books and articles will help you scale these practices to 10, 50, or 500 teams.

But a big and growing challenge is emerging: Once your tech teams have begun to master these new ways of working - improving time to market, continuous learning, responsiveness, and collaboration - they often find that the pace of work they desire is substantially hindered by the lack of agility in HR.

With agile processes and new technology permeating every corner of our organizations, there is surprisingly little published knowledge about how to integrate HR and other crucial supporting functions into the product development process or how to increase the agility in the ways they work. Agile espouses short cycles, regular reflection, and course correction based on evidence collected during the software production process. Yet HR regularly works in annual (or, at best, quarterly) cycles.

In an agile organization, HR needs to provide the same services it's always provided - hiring, professional development, performance management - but in ways that are responsive to the ongoing changes in the culture and work style of the organization.

Consider the cautionary example of a large bank I recently worked with. The team I was engaged with had its agile vocabulary down. Team members spoke in a way that would make any outsider believe they were one of the more advanced, enterprise-level agile successes (and, in many ways, they were and continue to be). But although the vocabulary the organization was using had changed, the qualities being evaluated in the performance management system, for every employee, reflected a different mindset. Agile espouses collaboration, customer centricity, team-based culture, and continuous improvement. These ideas and practices, however, were nowhere to be found in the evaluation criteria of the bank's employees. Instead, the manufacturing-era qualities of individual heroism, delivering product on deadline (whether proven or not), and contribution to high-level, often unaccountable business metrics were the main determinants of employee competence, success, and promotion. Yes, the words they were using every day had changed (which is a good start), but without changing their incentives, they were continuing to work in the same ways they always had.

A success story in building agility at scale comes from ING, which understood that language shifts, and even new incentive structures, were necessary but not sufficient. Agile HR also requires having the right people in place to practice and refine these new processes. To prove this, ING made every employee at its headquarters (nearly 3,500 people) re-interview for their job. Staggeringly, 40% of these people ended up in new positions or parted ways with the company. And this result wasn't just about their skill sets. In fact, in many cases the employees' skill sets were still highly relevant. Rather, it was a specific mindset that was lacking - one that could embrace the uncertainty of a software-based organization while seeking out new, better ways to deliver that service. The HR team had to play a major role in understanding what this mindset looked like and how best to determine which staff members possessed it, which could be trained, and which had to be let go.

Here are two essential activities your HR team can do today to help your organization's agile efforts succeed.

Go and See

To understand what qualities are required to support an agile way of working, your HR team needs to go see these teams at work. If they're not up and running in your organization, visit other companies that are doing it well. This is exactly what the leadership teams at ING did. They visited digitally native companies like Spotify, Netflix, and Zappos to understand what makes their cultures nimble, responsive, tech-centric, and attractive to top talent. By visiting these teams at work, you get a sense for the collaborative work environment and style of agile teams across the whole organization.

While visiting these teams, talk to them. Interview them to understand what they like about this way of working, what's frustrating, and what they look for in colleagues, not just in their own discipline but also in other groups with which they collaborate. Read their job requisitions. Notice that while hard skills are important, they can be taught. The crucial soft skills needed for agile environments - curiosity, humility, and collaboration - can only be encouraged and modeled.

Try HR Retrospectives

As we detail our book, Sense & Respond, there are valuable agile practices that, while originally intended for software development teams, must be broadened to the whole organization, including to supporting disciplines like HR. A retrospective is a regularly cadenced (e.g., biweekly) meeting with a team involved in a particular project or initiative to review how things have gone since the last retrospective. Often, the time between "retros" is short, to allow new ideas to be tested and to review their efficacy.

Retrospectives can be held with the HR team alone, as well as with their internal clients. For example, on the hiring side, several recruiters can meet regularly to review job requisition language that seems to attract better candidates, or interview questions that reveal a candidate's propensity for agile work, and use this shared insight to optimize their process. Colleagues can then take and modify these ideas in their own practice to see whether they'll have similar successes.

Retros can also be held with hiring managers, particularly after a new "HR event" like a hiring, firing, or performance review cycle. This is a "customer-centric" approach that agile espouses. The point is to understand whether the work HR is doing is delivering the intended value. If not, what can you change in the next cycle to try to improve that? Retrospectives reveal that and help assess the impact of small changes over short periods of time.

Agile offers many benefits to large organizations, but getting the full set of benefits requires going beyond being simply a software development process, to become a mindset for the entire organization. When HR is included and buys into the values of organizational agility, the promise of increased productivity, efficiency, and higher-quality products and services can be fully realized.

Jeff Gothelf is an organizational designer and executive coach. He co-founded Neo Innovation in New York City and helped build it into one of the most recognized brands in modern product strategy, development and design. He is the co-author of Sense and Respond(HBR Press) and (O'Reilly)

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How HR Can Become Agile (and Why It Needs To)

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Editor's Note: SHRM has partnered with Harvard Business Review to bring you relevant articles on key HR topics and strategies. In this article, the author discusses how tech teams often find that the pace of work they desire can be hindered by the lack of agility in HR.

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The next few years will be a time of seismic change in the rapidly advancing digital workplace. Chalk it up to a combination of trends - from the the death of classical hierarchies and top-down management to a new focus on inclusion, productivity and innovation.

To understand what the future holds for human resources (HR) professionals, we asked four industry experts for their perspectives.

The article was originally published on CMSWire.com.
Head of London & Head of Engagement (Branches) at CIPD. David is an experienced OD professional focused on improving organizational and team performance, with practical, grounded experience of most HR disciplines.
1.More Digital Workplaces

Speaking about the future of HR, we will continue to see the trend towards more digital workplaces - be that through collaborative tools, the encroachment of wearable technology into the office or more of a focus on people analytics.

This will present increasing challenges around the good practice of handling that data and using it to add value. What is organizational data and what is personal?

This is not a decision or area for IT to resolve. This is less about legal requirements and more about what it is to be a good employer, and HR should be at the heart of thinking about how working practices mature.

I see virtual reality as a massive opportunity for recruitment and learning and development professionals, given its ability to create truly immersive experiences in a safe environment and its increasingly accessible pricing. I can envision nimbler organizations making use of the cheaper platforms (Daydream, Cardboard, etc.) to think about learning experiences in a very different way.

For recruiters, VR will enable attraction campaigns to incorporate a realistic snapshot of the office environment for candidates to evaluate and even to support the onboarding process, supporting efforts to provide a transparent view of the workplace. We will see increasing automation, hopefully strategically employed to augment our capabilities and free up resources rather than for opportunist cost saving.

We will continue to see the evolution of the law and debate around zero-hour contracts, the gig economy and the changing nature of employment. This will continue through 2017 and beyond as organizations continue to vary their organizational structures to find ways to be more competitive.

We will see some organizations in this space recognizing that investing in people is a way to be more competitive. Employee wellbeing needs to be at the heart of their strategy - with the cost of not doing this being crippling in terms of both time and goodwill.

3.Development of Ethical Workplaces

And one more trend shaping the future of HR. The last 12 months have put people's beliefs and desire to be heard at the forefront of public consciousness. HR practitioners will be expected to lead and set the standards of what is acceptable in terms of conflict and debate in the workplace, while at the same time reflecting hard on their own values and principles and how they manifest in their work.
Chris Russell is considered the 'mad scientist of online recruiting' by his peers. He's built dozens of job boards, apps, & recruiting tools since he started in 1999. Today, he consults for HR tech vendors and job boards at Rec Tech Media (rectechmedia.com).
Inequality, access to education, social mobility, democracy, voice, immigration and the ethics of HR technology are all issues that will bridge our personal and professional lives. It will be complex and at times difficult, but it also places HR where it should be: at the heart of ensuring inclusive and productive workplaces, championing better work and working lives.

Tweet at @ChrisRussell .
Jeff is a Partner - Digital People Practice at Digital Works Group. He is a Talent & Innovation Accelerator and Future of Work Consultant for small businesses in the emerging, fast-growth high-tech sector, as well as mature businesses undertaking digital transformation.
There has never been more HR technology than exists today. That trend will only accelerate in 2017 as more software developers and vendors try to put structure around recruiting and HR processes. What I fear is that many of them will simply create HR technology that doesn't solve practical problems. Too often I see new products come out that don't take into account the actual workflow of a recruiter or human resource professional.

Products need to involve actual practitioners to be effective. For instance, we have good examples of interview management tools that evolved from an actual problem in the recruiting process that wasn't being well served by ATS vendors.

Technology like AI sounds cool, but folks in HR and recruiting are not techies. They need products that are simple, easy to use, and most importantly save them time! Time savings is probably the best feature any vendor can build into its product. If it doesn't make the recruiter's job easier, think twice about adding it.

5. New Organizational Structures

Classical hierarchies and top-down management and decision making are dying, giving rise to devolved decision making by cross-functional teams that work in sprints of activity, are funded via micro-budgets, and able to deliver at unheard of speeds.

Digital transformation is not just shiny, new HR technology - it's a new way of organizing, engaging with customers and employees, and how we build networks of expertise and trust - through cooperation and collaboration - working faster, better, smarter than ever before.

Thus the 'team' becomes the ultimate productivity structure within your organization, and HR needs to be right in the middle of this new construct to build out the optimal team design, ensure the right personalities and skills are represented and to drive new methodologies to ensure the best possible outcomes.

6.More Tools to Support Work and Collaboration

HR teams need to jump headlong into creating the environment, structures and tools to support 21st century speed of creation, innovation and collaboration.

New tools (wearables, mobile apps, digital platforms, virtual reality and artificial reality) are all coming to market now with some very credible, tantalizing and powerful capabilities. Where does HR stand relative to these tool sets, and how to assess their capability, financial impact, personal impact, data generation and implementation?
Perry is Founder and Chief Energy Officer, Alongside his own business, Perry is a Certified WorldBlu® Freedom at Work Consultant, Coach, and an international and TEDx speaker on HR and the future of work. - aiming to change the world of work. He is a Chartered Member of the CIPD and a Visiting Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University.
Today, I'd say HR isn't remotely prepared for this challenge - and often look to the IT department to support anything 'technical' as it's just not in their remit to sort this out. But it's very much in HR's wheelhouse to address the incorporation of these sorts of tools, and to scrape data off the back end of using them to derive meaningful and actionable insight to improve their business' ability to compete, differentiate, innovate and build value.

7. Learning On-Demand, Just-in-Time

There are all sorts of web-based tools and mobile first applications that can help employees access just what they need to know, when they need to know it. Learning and development has become a science of mental and psychological enablement, no longer a nice-to-have that makes people feel good about their company investing in them.

Learning and performance are closely linked together. And with the incredible expanse of knowledge that employees need to be successful - wherever and whenever they need to know it - it is a mission critical advantage now.

Organizations need to train one another, provide tools and access across the company, and empower people to succeed under any circumstance imaginable, at rapid speed.

8.Connecting With a Greater Purpose

One trend shaping the future of HR that probably covers the whole picture of work is the need to connect with a greater purpose than simply having a job and transacting through life. This could be pretty controversial for some people. Because a lot of people think, "Oh, work is just about economic considerations, it's just to get money to live." And I think we are seeing an increasingly damaging trend - people are still "chasing" more money. But they are also ruining their health, their family lives are suffering, and society has fragmented because people are not connecting to each other enough.

So, where I have seen people as a complete being flourish, is where their work has a purpose. And so I think that in 2017, companies will take a really long, hard look at themselves. And ask: apart from money, why am I here? Because I think they need to connect to people on a different level. There needs to be a more, almost intrinsic and moving reason to work, and more purposeful things that people can connect to. I think that all companies need to look at their purpose, their reason. If it's just to make money, I genuinely don't think it's good enough anymore.

9. More Inclusive Workplaces

Inclusion, of course, covers gender, race, religion, age, disability ... all those protected characteristics. But it also means people want to be included and involved in shaping the services, products and future of the company they work with.

They want to share with a company what a customer really wants, they want to influence a company to stop chasing ridiculous targets and center on the customer.
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Some of the most sustainable companies are those that involve their people in decisions from something as radical as open-book accounting, where anybody can see the financial state of the company, to things like being involved in a new product, or being involved in a shifting customer need with the launch of a new initiative.

I would like to see HR being more involved as the instigator and the creator of more inclusion activities where people can find themselves shaping and helping to decide what the company is all about.

10.Increasing Innovation

With so much change and so much shift in what people expect from life, people's views on the world and on the products they want - green agendas, rapid transportation, autonomous vehicles, and artificial intelligence - there is so much going on that HR needs to be involved in creating as much innovation as possible to not only deal with that change, and the shifts, and the technological disruption, but also be in a leading position for that activity and drive it to ideas to execution.

I think the companies that will do best aren't just the ones who can hold onto the rails, so to speak, but the ones who will set the rails in motion. I think there is an enormous amount of innovation powering companies that we don't see leveraged and I think you want to look at these three as the connecting pieces as they are, because if people know the purpose of the company and they are included into shaping its destiny, then innovation will naturally start to generate conditions of success and form projects and activities that become a part of their job. So I think if we left innovation to research & development, we would struggle. Because I don't think it can work like that anymore. I think we need everybody to get involved in some sort of a crowd-sourced agenda for the future.

Read more :

Digital Workplace: How HR Will Change In 2017>>>

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The next few years will be a time of seismic change in the rapidly advancing digital workplace. Chalk it up to a combination of trends - from the the death of classical hierarchies and top-down management to a new focus on inclusion, productivity and innovation.

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HR Professionals: How to Take Your Weaknesses & Capitalize On Them…

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HR Professionals: How to Take Your Weaknesses & Capitalize On Them…

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By Alan Collins Wouldn't it be fantastic to have every skill you need for a successful HR career?
Then again, in an ideal world, it would be great to have fantastic hair, zero body fat and a winning lottery ticket in your pocket.

Unfortunately, we live in an imperfect world. We all have to face the fact that we're good at some things. Just adequate at others. And horrible at some that are really important.
For example, if you're an HR generalist, it can be frustrating not to be brilliant in areas like: talent acquisition, total rewards, OD, labor relations and every single one of the 5000 other essential HR competencies.
You probably also would love to be able to constantly dazzle your clients with your brilliance, know the business as well as your CEO and be the nationally-recognized inspirational leader that everyone in your organization envies.

Well, guess what? Chances are you're not. And I'm certainly not. We both have areas we need (and want) to improve. Just like every single one of the other 2 million HR folks on the planet.

So what do we do? Typically, we toil for years working on and chipping away at our weaknesses until we have them under control. Or we learn to live with them.

And for most HR folks, that's fine and dandy.
But today, I want to offer you another, even better choice.
It is this:

Step 1: Pinpoint your weaknesses.
Step 2: Figure out how to move your weaknesses into the strengths column.

Here are just a few examples to illustrate this process:
Example 1:
Are you an HR generalist, but not good at everything?
Instead, be an HR generalist, master of ONE thing.
Find your ONE niche and blow people away with this singular towering talent you have. It could be for example:

Providing insights based on HR analytics

Crafting an HR strategy

Attracting hard-to-find talent

Developing innovative total reward programs

Designing training programs

Facilitating groups

Building competency models

Running engagement surveys

Or any one of a hundred other high-demand specialty areas within HR.

Look for additional ways to demonstrate your ONE chosen talent. This could include amazing others by creating data, training, tools and templates that they can use to make themselves more effective in your area of specialty. Become their trusted advisor or the organizational expert in this area.

Do this while continuing to be the imperfect, jack-of-all trades generalist you already are.
Not a good presenter?
Be a great intimate communicator instead.
Hey, just a thought.

If you aren't good at talking to large groups, why sweat it? Get your work done communicating to small groups or persuading one-on-one instead - and learn to be really brilliant at that. Speak in ways that connect intimately with people that draws them to you.

Instead of speaking to the masses, leverage your already effective small-group communications and one-on-one skills to get buy-in on your HR projects and as a foundation for building your reputation.

Example 3:
Don't have a large client group?
So be more intimate and build stronger bonds
with the small group you have.
Example 4:
Lack leadership skills?
Launch your own leadership development
group and lead it instead. Example 5:
Not organized?
Simplify things.
Only working with small populations of clients? Then, turn them into raving fans and your biggest advocates. Take advantage of the fact that you can really get to know every single one of them deeply beyond the workplace - their families, hobbies, pets, special interests.

Then leverage this intimacy and trust to hone your HR skills, test new ideas and get things done faster. Be a pilot ground for the larger organization when new HR projects are developed or experimented with. Capitalize on the edge that having a small group (versus a huge one) gives you to get quicker feedback and implement results faster. Look for ways to have fun and take risks with your tiny group of clients, who trust you, in a ways the HR folks impersonally serving a more massive number of clients can't.

Pull together a group of 5-7 peers with the objective of building each others' leadership skills. Invite in-house executives or outside leadership speakers to talk to the group over lunch. Have discussions about great books, articles and blog posts on leadership. Scout out leadership opportunities for each other - task forces, volunteer or non-profit assignments. Discuss and share key learnings with each other. By spearheading all this yourself...guess what, you're leading.
Example 8:
Got a weakness?
Look for ways to serve others with
the same problem.
Look for shortcuts, hacks, templates that simplify things and help you stay organized. Do this so you don't need to organize (if you only have a few things, you don't need to organize them). Be a creative genius instead of a diligently organized person.

If you can't write a persuasive HR proposal, pitch it to people in person. If you can't write a great report, do a presentation. If you can't write a great article to save your life, do a video instead.
Having shared these eight examples, what are your thoughts?
Value being more thorough and introspective. Seek out more strategic HR projects and assignments, which require more thoughtful assessments and decision-making. Do this instead of putting yourself in positions where you have to react quickly to a lot of tactical, day-to-day fires.

For example, launch a Toastmasters chapter for those (like you) who want to improve their presentation skills. If you're out of work, start a networking group.

There's an old saying: "Aggravation is the mother of invention." If not having a skill you need is a problem for you, you can be sure it's a problem for others as well. Many successful HR careers came about as a result of someone launching an initiative that he or she needed themselves.
Hidden in your weaknesses are your strengths.
weakness you have can be reframed into a strength. Now it's your turn.
So think about ways you can help both yourself and others compensate for your deficiency. Your weakness could wind up leading you to the doorstep of a successful new career opportunity.

Is this doable?

Obviously, listing all the potential possibilities would be impossible.

But here's the point...

So, as an alternative, stop working so hard at correcting ALL your weaknesses. Instead, accept SOME them and figure out how to move them into the strengths column. The more you practice this mindset, the better you'll get at it.

Let's practice.
Feed your network - If you like this article, feel free to share it with your contacts by clicking the buttons below...

1. Pick one of your biggest weaknesses.

2. Figure out how to leverage it as a strength.

3. Share it in the comments below by clicking HERE.

Onward!

###

Want to discover more ways to capitalize on what you already know and are good at in HR? Then check out: YOUR HR GOLDMINE (pictured left). The book itself will provide you with tons of ideas and a step-by-step plan for putting them into action.

About the author: Alan Collins was Vice President - Human Resources at PepsiCo where he led HR initiatives for their Quaker Oats, Gatorade and Tropicana businesses. He is Founder of Success in HR, Inc. and the author of a variety of best selling books for HR professionals including YOUR HR GOLDMINE.

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HR Professionals: How to Take Your Weaknesses & Capitalize On Them...

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By Alan Collins Wouldn't it be fantastic to have every skill you need for a successful HR career? Then again, in an ideal world, it would be great to have fantastic hair, zero body fat and a winning lottery ticket in your pocket. Unfortunately, we live in an imperfect world.

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What would you do if you weren't afraid?

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What would you do if you weren't afraid?

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5 Presentation Tips for HR Pros Who Hate Giving Presentations

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5 Presentation Tips for HR Pros Who Hate Giving Presentations

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5 Presentation Tips for HR Pros Who Hate Giving Presentations

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5 Presentation Tips for HR Pros Who Hate Giving Presentations Are you, like most people, not a natural performer? Does the prospect of giving a presentation make you a little weak at the knees? Never fear!

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Antonia Cusumano

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Innovating to transform the employee experience

Imagine a world of work in which all transactional HR processes are fully automated and taken off HR's plate. Now imagine that many advanced HR processes once handled manually are also automated. For example:
Change has never been this dramatic

Analytics that predict talent needs, measure performance of individuals and work teams, predict where success is likely, and red flag issues such as under performance and retention problems.

Software that monitors the company's internal social networks, collaborative teams and communication patterns, and identifies trends and successes to reinforce, recognize and reward, and rough spots to improve.

Learning platforms that inform workers when they need to acquire skills or content, point them toward bite-sized learning modules, monitor their completion and measure their success...all while linking to internal and external sources of information.

Uber-like platforms that aggregate pools of potential employees and contingent workers, rank them by competencies, experiences, and availability, connect them to hiring managers, and automate negotiation of compensation.

Before I share my point of view and ask for yours, let me offer a short analysis of why the above scenarios and the question they raise are rapidly evolving. What is HR's job in the future? How do we define an employee? HR needs to prepare now for a very different, and not too distant, future of work.

The world of work is changing dramatically. Accelerating advances in cloud computing, mobile computing, social networks, algorithms and other technologies are major drivers of change, but not the only ones. In PwC's 20th Global CEO Survey of 1,379 CEOs, innovation and human capital were among CEOs highest priorities, along with digital and technology capabilities.

In another PwC study- Work-life 3.0: Understanding how we'll work next- embracing technology was one of the strategic imperatives identified for workplace success by executives and employees.

In an earlier blog, I noted several mutually reinforcing trends that are shaping workforce development. These include:

dynamic employee value propositions

holistic workforce planning

the multi-generational workplace

the growing gig economy of freelancers and contractors

robotics and artificial intelligence (AI).

The last trend, robotics and AI, is driving the advance of HR process automation. Called "intelligent (or robotic) process automation" (IPA/RPA), it is the use of software to automate processes that interpret incoming data and trigger responses.
Workforce Strategist
But wait. If all routine HR transactions are automated and if a growing number of advanced processes are automated, what's left for the HR professional to do?

Given the trend toward advanced automation, some will argue that HR is on a path to obsolescence; it is just a matter of time before algorithms take over all big decisions. It's not that simple. While RPA could eventually automate more HR processes than we might imagine, the trends signal an increasingly competitive, fluid, and uncertain environment demanding innovative approaches to human capital that only human leadership can provide.

Freed from routine transactions and processes, HR professionals need to make the shift to providing tangible impact on strategy by working with the CEO and business unit leaders to determine the capabilities, dynamic organizational models and workforce required to achieve business goals and objectives. Economists have highlighted that investments in Human Capital have some of the highest aggregate returns, but few in HR think or act like economists or strategists. We should be talking about and driving measurable impact, long-term impact on labor productivity. The new HR role requires both art and science.

It is the science of using data to do everything from predict attrition to strategically plan the workforce. HR professionals will need to continuously align workforce strategies to current and future growth needs of the business; to ascertain the workforce and employment structures required: the right mix of full-time employees, contingent workers, and gig workers, and where IPA/RPA can and should be used throughout the company. One must be fluent in data, analytics, and fact-based decision making.

It is the art of understanding how to grow, develop, and inspire talent. One must be skilled in human understanding, motivation and how to create diverse environments of belonging. In PwC's recently completed CEO survey for 2017, respondents said the skills they consider most important to their organizations cannot be automated - problem-solving (98%), adaptability (96%) and collaboration (96%). Further, the skills they cited as hardest to find are creativity and innovation (77%), leadership (75%) and emotional intelligence (64%).

Finally, at the intersection of both art and science, leaders need to think holistically about how to plan and prepare a workforce mix (employees, contractors, RPA, strategic partnerships, and outsource providers...) to deliver business objectives and inspire and motivate people to be part of a diverse team driving the purpose of an organization.

This is not the only role that HR needs to play, but this is one of the most critical. In the new world of work, the CHRO becomes a CWO - Chief Workforce Officer.

What are your thoughts? Let's start a conversation! And if you are interested in learning more and contributing your thoughts with peers about the emerging world of work and changing role of HR, please join me at the LEAP Tech Talent Conference on March 28th and 29th in San Francisco.

Innovating to transform the employee experience

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Imagine a world of work in which all transactional HR processes are fully automated and taken off HR's plate. Now imagine that many advanced HR

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This story reflects the views of this author, but not necessarily the editorial position of Fast Company.

When Celinda Appleby was hired at Oracle as the head of global recruitment marketing, she didn't have a predecessor to look to for guidance. The role had just been created, and she was tasked with building a global employer brand team from the ground up. Appleby began to poke around for resources to help her do that, and ultimately landed upon HR Open Source (HROS), a network that I cofounded.

Practitioners are still used to playing it close to the chest, and it's holding everyone back.

HROS offers a library of free case studies contributed by other human resources professionals, and in it Appleby found one contributed by the social media company Hootsuite, which had made its own framework public. And when she had questions about modeling Oracle's employer brand program on Hootsuite's, Appleby turned to HROS's Facebook group, where over 2,300 HR and recruiting professionals in more than 50 countries regularly weigh in with their ideas and experiences.

Since rolling out Oracle's global employer brand program, Appleby has since contributed two case studies of her own to the HROS community, drawing on that experience. Having helped set up the platform, I obviously believe in open-sourcing HR issues, but I'm hardly alone. Buffer, for instance, is famously committed to laying bare its HR and management challenges and encouraging conversation around them. And you don't have to look far to find proof of concept in other fields, where sharing "institutional knowledge" means going outside your own institution.

That's something software developers have understood for decades, and there's little doubt that the "open-source" approach to writing code has contributed to some of the biggest, fastest technological advances we've seen in our lifetimes.

In HR roles, though, practitioners are still used to playing it close to the chest, and it's holding everyone back. Every couple of years, there's an article or two issuing HR's death certificate, variously claiming that the profession has failed to curb employee turnover, solve retrenched diversity and inclusion issues, or lower the pressures brought on by an increasingly multigenerational workforce. And maybe that's true. But what's certain is that there's more to be gained than lost when HR practitioners compare notes and collaborate.

Wondering how your competitor designs, implements, and measures ROI for a certain recruiting initiative? Why not go ahead and ask? Unlike the race to corner a market, for instance, HR challenges rarely amount to zero-sum games. Sure, the talent market may be tight, and competition for certain in-demand roles even tighter, but in most cases, when your competitor makes a more thoughtful hire who's likely to stick around longer, it doesn't automatically lower your chances of doing the same.

Being able to point to a case study as proof that it's doable can be indispensable.

At least that's the theory we set out to test with HROS when I cofounded the platform in 2015 with Ambrosia Vertesi, Duo Security's VP people, first as a pilot program with Hootsuite and shortly thereafter as a standalone, public initiative. From the start we've asked users to lay out the "how" of their efforts in a prescriptive level of detail, plus dish on their failures and pitfalls so others can avoid repeating them. So far, HR professionals from major companies like Cisco, Virgin Media, Dell, GoDaddy, and others have all proved willing to do so.

This creates a sense of community-and a collective intellect-that minimizes inflated fears of losing a competitive edge. Beyond the case studies and curated resources, HROS users trade ideas, knowledge, and expertise in real time through the organization's Facebook group. What's more, they save their companies money in the process. Practitioners don't hesitate to ask questions about issues their employers might otherwise hire consultants to solve, or pay fees for access to research reports and training materials.

Open-sourcing HR can fundamentally change the way practitioners work. In some cases an HR rep is struggling to make a case to a skeptical boss to do something new or different. Being able to point to a case study as proof that it's doable can be indispensable. In other fields, finding quantifiable evidence to back up a proposed approach is easy and routine. In HR, it isn't. But if those in the field don't get comfortable with offering one another tangible, comparable examples-free of charge-innovation will continue to trudge along, and we can expect to keep hearing that HR is on its last leg.

"We wouldn't have stopped to reflect on the fact that we had doubled the percentage of women on our sales team, all while growing the team."

This is especially true in some of the most pressing issues, like diversity, where transparency can make such a big difference. Over the past few years, a handful of leading tech companies have been diligent about releasing demographic data and sharing their approaches to improving the diversity of their workforces. In recent months, their progress has slowed, and certain companies have slackened their pace sharing updates with the public, ostensibly to give themselves time to retool. But with a completely open-source approach, neither big strides nor setbacks would require their own announcements-it would all be out on the table.

Even for companies that aren't comfortable going that far yet, greater transparency can still prove useful. Leela Srinivasan is chief marketing officer at Lever, a recruiting software company, which had been experimenting with ways to use its employer branding campaign to appeal to more diverse candidates. "A lot of companies have a fatalistic attitude toward the topic," says Srinivasan, believing, "'It's the talent pool, what can we do?'" By answering HROS's call for detailed case studies on diversity efforts, Lever felt challenged to quantify what it was already doing and see how it stacked up.

Otherwise, she says, "we wouldn't have gone back to find that 74% of women who joined our company during that period were influenced by employee blogging and storytelling. We wouldn't have stopped to reflect on the fact that we had doubled the percentage of women on our sales team, all while growing the team."

For Srinavasan, getting into the habit of discussing failures around issues like this-something that other companies still approach squeamishly-was the biggest upside. "Without that prodding" from the community, she says, "most practitioners would gloss over the failures, but often that's where the richest learnings occur."

To be sure, there are plenty in the HR world who aren't ready to embrace this kind of openness, and probably won't be anytime soon. The "war for talent" mind-set dictates that practices should be siloed and guarded as competitive advantages. Despite some encouraging signs of interest in greater collaboration, many still believe that keeping their recruiting and staffing strategies under wraps is the key to their success.

They're probably mistaken. The history of HR is largely one of closed practices, and seasoned practitioners came up through an environment where ideas like "radical transparency" set off alarm bells. But if that's got us anywhere, it's to a world where the interest in greater openness has never been higher. Many HR professionals can already see how past norms no longer accord with their field's biggest challenges right now. And they recognize that, just like in so many other fields, collaboration and resource sharing isn't just useful, it's the only way real, sustainable innovation comes about.

Google has its own version of open-source with its re:Work initiative, and the company's recruiters are often pretty vocal about what they're looking for and why. Facebook recently opened up its internal unconscious bias training program to the public. We'll have to wait to see how each of these shifts play out, of course, but the direction they're all pointing in is unmistakable. The future is open, and it's already here.
Lars Schmidt is the founder of Amplify Talent, a recruiting and branding agency that helps companies like Hootsuite, NPR, and SpaceX reimagine the intersection of culture, talent, and brand. He's also the cofounder of the HR Open Source initiative. Connect with Lars on Twitter @Lars.

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This story reflects the views of this author, but not necessarily the editorial position of Fast Company. When Celinda Appleby was hired at Oracle as the head of global recruitment marketing, she didn't have a predecessor to look to for guidance.

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HR leaders are sizing up a handful of challenges that they weren't yet facing in the early days of 2016. Over the next 12 months the solutions to those obstacles will have to evolve and adapt as the overall business world does the same. Still, it's worth taking a look back at what's changed in the past year in order to see what's in store for human resources professionals in 2017. These are five of the biggest trends impacting the field right now.

All the fuss and bother over the past few years about integrating millennials into the workplace is officially outdated. It's now time to welcome in the next generation. In 2017, the oldest members of generation Z will be turning 21-23 (there's some debate as to whether the new generation begins in 1994 or 1996). In the meantime, those on the older end of the millennial spectrum are already in their mid-30s. Many have been in the workforce for over a decade, having served as managers, VPs, startup founders, and CEOs for quite some time.

Gen Zers . . . are now just starting to enter the workforce as interns and even entry-level employees.

Gen Zers, on the other hand, are now just starting to enter the workforce as interns and even entry-level employees. This will present new challenges for HR leaders looking to figure out how ( and even whether) this new generation brings something fundamentally different to the workplace, and what it may take to prepare millennials to lead them.

A string of ugly scandals in recent years has hit companies like Zenefits, Wells Fargo, ANZ Bank, Mitsubishi, Volkswagen, Toshiba, and others. What they have in common is that all have been attributed, in one way or another, to a toxic work culture where unethical business practices were encouraged. In most cases, impossibly high standards set by executives and upper management led employees to cut corners (or worse) to reach them.

A combined Columbia and Duke University study found that an emphasis on figures over people can encourage unethical behavior-a finding that should surprise no one. As Shiva Rajgopal of Columbia University explained, "Our research provides systematic evidence-perhaps for the first time-that effective cultures are less likely to be associated with "short-termism," unethical behavior, or earnings management to pad quarterly earnings."

Not every company that vowed to kill annual reviews has seen the results that switch was supposed to provide.

It may be discouraging that it takes a spate of scandals and scientific research to come to that conclusion, but it's probably a good lesson for companies to reckon with in 2017 all the same. HR leaders and executives have been talking more regularly about culture in recent years, so some shifts in the right direction may already be underway.

But what's also clear is that creating an ethical work culture requires companywide input-it can't just come from the top. This year, businesses that care about that may look to their HR teams to find ways to have those conversations with all of their employees more meaningfully and more often.

In 2015 and 2016, a number of big-name companies-including Deloitte, Adobe, Accenture, GE, and more recently SAP-announced plans to leave behind the annual performance review. This led many others to follow suit, making the last few years all about breaking with the old.

We're now roughly a year into that movement, and it seems to have slowed. Not every company that vowed to kill annual reviews has seen the results that switch was supposed to provide. In fact, some have actually found that employees' performance and engagement dropped as a result.

Getting rid of outdated systems isn't always enough, it turns out. Companies are also realizing they need to design a strong alternative in order to make the transition successful. This understanding means we'll likely be seeing HR leaders spend more time on data collection and change management in 2017. These days, performance management is an information game.

One knotty question these same companies have run into is what to do about pay. Should firms that swap a traditional annual review for continuous and/or peer-based performance evaluations keep making compensation decisions the way they used to? And for those that have reformed (or trashed) their employee ranking systems, how do you then calculate pay fairly and competitively?

Traditional job descriptions are going out the window.

As 2017 gets underway, some HR professionals are coming around to the idea that linking performance management to compensation can actually undermine the intended purpose of ditching the annual review-to create a more learning-based approach with increased feedback conversations. The solutions are still evolving, but there are already some ideas being tossed around about how to separate pay from performance and get the desired results.

A study by Fieldglass revealed that in 2015 the average company's workforce consisted of 54% traditional, full-time employees, 20% contingent workers (freelancers, interns, and contractors), and 26% that existed in a gray area somewhere between the two (including remote and part-time workers). The researchers predicted that by 2017, the share of "nontraditional" workers would grow to 25% contingent, 34% gray area, and 41% traditional workers.

The impact on job titles and responsibilities, how teams work together, and much more is already proving enormous. With over half of the workforce working in nontraditional positions, HR managers have their work cut out for them. They'll need to focus more on developing innovative ways to engage and integrate this new workforce into their organizations' cultures.

In a survey last year, businesses told Deloitte researchers that the top issue they faced was in redesigning their organizations to fit this new reality, with 80% saying they were currently restructuring or had recently completed the process. One trend we're already seeing, as a result, is the spread of cross-functional, ad hoc, and steering teams-which in many cases replace or supplement the work of a traditional, full-time team of people all working onsite together in the same department.

Similarly, traditional job descriptions are going out the window. These new types of teams are utilizing the full skill-set of each employee, rather than limiting them to a narrow range of tasks and skills demanded by a conventional department. This means that an employee with a passion for PR and a talent for graphic design may be able to do both as a project's needs evolve. Some call it the rise of "comprehensivism."

For HR leaders, performance management will need to become more fluid as a result. Whether or not a given employee has one manager, several, or none at all, they still need to get feedback-including, increasingly, from their peers -in order to keep learning and improving. To do that, they'll also need to feel free to ask for it from whomever (and whenever) they want. The shift toward self-steering learning and development is already underway, and it's up to forward-thinking HR professionals to smooth the way for it.
Steffen Maier is the cofounder of Impraise, an innovative solution that helps companies replace the annual performance appraisal with actionable, continuous feedback.

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Differences between Human Resources & Human Capital

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Differences between Human Resources & Human Capital

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Differences between Human Resources and Human Capital

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Understanding the differences between human resources and human capital. Because there are differences! Sometimes the words "human capital" are used instead of...

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Dave Ulrich

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Speaker, Author, Professor, HR & Leadership Guru

Why?

We see four forces making HR more central to business success: the context of business (STEPED: social, technological, economic, political, environmental, and demographic changes), the increased pace of change (VUCA: volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity), the demise of employee well being (individuation, isolation, indifference, intensity), and the requirement to be outside in (attend to customers, investors, and communities). Collectively, these four forces shift HR to centerstage. In our book Victory Through Organization, our first sentence is "HR is not about HR" but attending to these four forces to deliver business value.

That said, for HR to deliver more value and ultimately be recognized for what it truly is, we see three trending needs:

1. HR has to focus outside in on the value HR work creates not only for those inside the organization but customers, investors, and others outside the organization.

2. HR has to deliver individual talent, but also leadership and organization capabilities (e.g,. culture, speed, external sensing, innovation).

3. HR has to transform both the quality of individuals in HR and the quality of the HR department to make this happen.

While it is a great time to be in HR, it is not without downsides. When the dog catches the car, when a political novice is elected, when a back up player in theater or sports becomes a starter, the opportunities are great, but the challenge of responding is often greater.

Many of the HR professionals I work with are excited about the forces giving rise to HR impact and the trends to deliver more value. But, they are overwhelmed by the prospects and not sure how to make it happen. I find three models helpful for HR professionals to respond to the new opportunities.

First, resource demand.

A number of years ago, a study was done on teenage depression as captured in Figure 1 (below). The demands on teenagers went up (vertical axis) including school and grades, social pressure, individuation from parents, physical changes, creating a personal identity, and emotional maturity. It is easy to envision that these increased demands cause depression (top left of figure 1), but they do not. If/when the demands are balanced by resources, teenagers are not depressed. While some demands can be decreased, many can not and the focus has to be on increasing resources which might include friends, supportive parents, allowances, cognitive processing, technology, and so forth for teenagers.

Figure 1: Resource/demand model for teenage depression and HR professionals

Likewise, the demands on HR are increasing through the four forces. HR professionals are being asked to do more. Some of these demands can be moderated (for example, don't do non value added work). But, the focus should be on resources. What resources can HR professionals access to help them cope with their increased demands?

I see two categories of resources: personal and departmental.

Second, personal resources.

HR professionals can better respond to the increased opportunities when they have the competencies to succeed and a more personalized career map.

Competencies are the skills HR professionals bring to their job. We have spent 30 years studying which HR competencies have personal and business impact. In our last (7 th ) round, we had data from over 39,000 respondents. Through our research, we identified 9 competencies for HR professionals (figure 2). Three were foundational (compliance manager, analytics designer and implementer, and technology and media integrator).

There were strategic enablers (culture and change champion, human capital curator, and total rewards steward). But, three had the most impact on HR professionals around the world.

Being a credible activist allows the HR professional to be invited to the business dialogue and be personally effective

Being a strategic positioner helps the HR professional deliver the most value to business customers and investors outside the organization

Being a paradox navigator is the competence most connected to delivering business results.

So, while HR professionals need to recognize all 9 competencies, they especially need to master the three core competencies.

Figure 2: HR competencies

HR professionals should take charge of their career. Figure 3 gives an overview of an HR career. HR professionals can work in 4 areas: functional expertise, geographic area, business unit, or outside HR. They can work at three stages: individual contributor, manager, leader. Within this mosaic, HR professionals may choose to stay within one quadrant (e.g., functional excellence in rewards, learning, or organization design) or they may move across quadrants throughout their career (e.g., moving back and forth from centers of expertise to business and back). When HR professionals can proactively define their career, they can map how they go forward.

Figure 3: HR career options

Third, department resources.

HR professionals seldom reach success by themselves. In our research we found that the quality of the HR department had four times the impact on business performance as the quality of the individual HR professionals (this is why our new book is Victory Through Organization). Some of an effective department is making sure that roles are clear which is about decision rights, accountabilities, and responsibilities. HR departments should be organized to mirror the business organization. If the business organization has more centralized governance; HR should be more centralized with common HR practices across the enterprise.

So, as HR moves to center stage, delivering real business outcomes, the demands need not be threats, but opportunities if personal and department resources exist. Again, now is the time to be in HR-the demands have never been greater, and neither have the resources to accomplish greatness.

Speaker, Author, Professor, HR & Leadership Guru

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Why? We see four forces making HR more central to business success: the context of business (STEPED: social, technological, economic, political,

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When people talk about cultures, they often paint with a broad brush: He is so American, so French, or so Japanese. But individuals within a culture vary enormously in their behaviors and attitudes, and many societies have distinct subcultures. Even a small country like Switzerland (which has four national languages) is far from homogenous.

Erin Meyer, author of The Culture Map and "Navigating the Cultural Minefield" (HBR May 2014), has identified eight dimensions that together capture most of the differences within and among cultures - a much more nuanced approach than focusing on just one or two elements, as people usually do.

Using her method, Meyer has developed a new assessment tool for hbr.org. It allows you to see where you fall on the eight scales. She also offers insights about where people in countries other than your own typically land on the scales.

So have some fun trying out the self-assessment. After your results are tabulated, you'll receive a personal profile that can help you identify where cultural or personal differences may be enhancing or limiting your potential as you interact in a diverse world. Maybe, for example, you identify strongly as Swiss, but you don't necessarily communicate in the same way many of your Swiss colleagues do.

Whether you're from Switzerland or South Dakota, the trap is in assuming that you "know" people because you have identified their cultural pedigree. Without understanding all the dimensions of their behavior and your own, you probably won't figure out what's behind the harmony - and the friction - you encounter with them. Meyer's test will help you deepen and broaden your perspective.

Just be careful about comparing yourself with people across international boundaries. For example, you may be a Swiss who, when it comes to scheduling, is very laid back compared with your national average - but don't then assume that you'll be comfortable living in, say, India, where people often do take a relaxed approach on this dimension. Meyer's scale on scheduling might suggest you'd be happier in Lausanne or Geneva than in Zurich, but Indians occupy a whole other range on this scale - so you still may not adjust well to life in Mumbai.

Managers can also use the tool to learn a bit more about variations within countries they're unfamiliar with. Suppose you're French but managing a team in India. Chances are you don't distinguish carefully enough among the people on your team (and the various subcultures they hail from). Have each team member take Meyer's test so that you can paint a more complete picture of what they're like, and compare everyone's results with those from your self-assessment.

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When people talk about cultures, they often paint with a broad brush: He is so American, so French, or so Japanese. But individuals within a culture vary enormously in their behaviors and attitudes, and many societies have distinct subcultures. Even a small country like Switzerland (which has four national languages) is far from homogenous.

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What the Next Generation of HR Leaders Must Know

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What the Next Generation of HR Leaders Must Know

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Dr. Joseph Jones, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP, Director of HR Competencies and Resources Research, SHRM

Dr. Joseph Jones, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP, is the director of HR competencies and resources research for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), where he oversees thought leadership, product development and research for both HR professional competencies and other HR practices. In this role, he collaborates with members of the HR community to better understand, document and develop the competencies and other knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics (KSAOs) necessary to be successful as an HR professional and to lead successful HR programs. His leadership responsibilities include educating the HR profession about and managing the SHRM Competency Model as it relates to HR careers and day-to-day practices.

Dr. Jones has more than 18 years of human resource experience implementing a variety of competency modelling, talent management, HR technology, assessment and analytics projects for both private and public-sector organizations. He has presented at numerous professional conferences and conducted webinars and workshops on topics such as talent management strategy, competency modelling, employee selection, engagement, assessment design and cross-cultural assessment research. His work has been published in Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice and the Encyclopedia of Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

Whether early in their careers or highly experienced, many HR professionals ask, "What must the next generation of HR leaders know?" Yet often, when they try to find an answer to this question, these professionals become confused by the daily or weekly or monthly volumes of sometimes-conflicting information generated by "thought leaders" throughout the industry. How can they make heads or tails of this constant new information overload? What do the HR leaders of tomorrow REALLY need to know to succeed and help those around them succeed? Take a deep breath and relax. It's actually simpler than you might think.

Here is what the next generation of HR leaders needs to know:

They need to know the basics of HR.

They need to know how and when to adapt themselves or adapt the world around them.

They need to know what to do with what they know (and DO it).

They need to stop thinking that diversity and global business don't apply to them.

Above anything, they need know to be ethical and foster ethical behavior in others.

In this article, I will expand on each of these areas.
HR Is Still HR

Despite the guidance you receive out there about the future of HR, the first things you need to know, like any other field, are the basics-HR Expertise. A recent SHRM survey indicated that the most important competency non-HR executives seek among HR leaders is technical expertise. This competency was so critical that they emphasized the importance of technical expertise, along with other behavioral competencies, not only today but also a decade from now.

As HR professionals, we wear many hats. We are data analysts, consultants, technologists and change leaders. Because of this, Ethical Practice, Communication and other competencies are still critical. But without that core HR knowledge you bring to the leadership table, your organization may not view your HR function as a value-adding resource that drives business success.

What HR professionals need to know today and in the future is pretty well articulated, but it is also ever-changing because of new HR laws and regulations (e.g., Affordable Care Act, changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act), innovations in technology and other trends. This constant churn serves as the foundation for continuous improvement among the next generation of HR leaders. This foundation is best exemplified in the SHRM Body of Competency and Knowledge (SHRM BoCK).TM

In a recent event at SHRM, five HR professionals participated in a panel discussion to share their experiences and needs in their HR careers. One of the panelists, when asked if he would recommend a career in HR, stated that the field has an image problem-people need to start thinking of HR as a serious practice, just like finance and law.

So the first thing the next generation of HR leaders needs to know is: HR needs to change the prevailing view from "HR is not rocket science, anybody can do it!" to "HR is not rocket science...but it's just as hard!"
HR Will Change
Yes, HR is still HR. But like every other profession, our profession will change as our culture, society, business and climate all change. John Boudreau's recent article in Organizational Dynamics highlights the need for HR to step up its game in thinking ahead to its future.[1] In the U.S. and elsewhere, the HR of today looks different from the HR of 20 years ago because the world has changed. If you had asked HR leaders back then, "What should HR leaders know about the HR of 2016?", it is unlikely that any would have predicted that HR leaders would need to understand the impact of social media on talent acquisition, regularly assess employee engagement, embrace talent analytics as a competitive advantage and, in the U.S. in particular, learn every detail about a new health care law that seeks to provide affordable health benefits to all U.S. citizens.

Of course, it would have been impossible to accurately predict all of the changes in society, technology, politics and global business that have affected what we do in HR. Although some may have foreseen an increased use of analytics in business and social media in society, very few would have been able predict the passing of the Affordable Care Act and the impact it would have on HR. Fortunately, HR leaders don't need to be futurists to succeed in their careers and help their organizations succeed.

Something profound or traumatic will happen that will affect your business and your employees. The successful HR leaders of the future will be those who are able to adapt themselves and adapt the world around them to successfully navigate through these changes. HR leaders play a key role in preparing their workforce for such events, without creating a culture of fear and control that hinders productivity and engagement. This is a key aspect of the Leadership and Navigation competency included in the SHRM Competency Model. HR leaders need to start thinking about leading change and not managing it. They need to be strategic about being strategic when it comes to change.

Ethical Practice Is the #1 Competency for HR Survival

Yes, HR professionals wear many hats. But at the core of it all, HR serves as the ethical foundation of the organization. In wearing our many hats, we are:

The collector of private data on each employee in the organization.

A safe place for employees to voice their issues and concerns.

The monitor of ethical behavior of the organization's leaders.

A navigator of the various cultural norms and customs of the employees within the organization.

An interpreter of HR laws and regulations.

Nowhere does the risk of failure for HR professionals have more potential for harm to their careers, to other employees or to their organizations than when it comes to Ethical Practice. Ethical behavior is a dichotomy-if you are good at it, you don't fail; if you are bad at it, you do.
If there is one thing above any other that the next generation of HR leaders must know to survive, it is that you will need to remain ethical, regardless of your career level, job title, organization size, organizational culture, organizational structure or industry.
Highly Successful HR Is Not Just Knowledge of HR
Successful HR leaders rise to the top because they are highly knowledgeable about HR and apply that knowledge effectively to solve problems, often before they even become problems. In the development of the SHRM Competency Model, HR professionals around the world stressed the importance of becoming proficient in both the knowledge of HR principles, policies and practices, as well as the ability to apply that knowledge behaviorally.

According to SHRM's research, although HR Expertise is a critical competency for HR success, eight other behavioral competencies are also critical, regardless of career level, organization size or industry: Ethical Practice, Leadership and Navigation, Communication, Critical Evaluation, Relationship Management, Consultation, Business Acumen, and Global and Cultural Effectiveness.

But successful HR is not only about the balance between HR knowledge and its associated behaviors; the truly accomplished HR leaders of tomorrow will be those who look outside HR for knowledge. Future HR leaders will increasingly learn from other disciplines, such as finance, psychology, sociology, anthropology, history and physics. Groups such as Ideagen, NetImpact, TED Talks and the Chautauqua Institution have become key resources for leaders across diverse vocations. HR leaders of tomorrow must look beyond HR-otherwise our profession will be left behind while others find innovative ways to solve the most pressing issues in both business and society.

Looking beyond HR is particularly important for addressing a critical need in the HR field overall-innovation. As an example, the field of neuropsychology is changing the way we view HR. Historically a fringe research area when it comes to HR, advances in neuropsychology have started gaining acceptance by businesses looking at nontraditional ways of hiring and engaging workers to create a competitive advantage.

HR leaders will have to open their minds to different ways of viewing the interaction between humans and work to innovate how they recruit, motivate, engage, train and develop, and reward the workforce. If not, they will eventually find all the top talent moves to employers that stay at the forefront of human-machine interactions at the workplace.

Thinking Globally and Culturally Is Important to You

Although HR will change, one thing that won't change anytime soon is the need for a global and cultural perspective, regardless of whether you work in a small manufacturing company in Kansas or a large multinational based in Macau. Having this perspective is about more than understanding international business and culture; it's about leveraging diversity to drive organizational success.

An example is found in a 2004 competency study conducted by the Association for Talent Development (ATD; formerly the American Society for Training and Development [ASTD]), which listed diversity as one of eight trends in the world of training and development.[2] Twelve years later, this trend has accelerated.

HR professionals need a global and cultural perspective not only to be effective in their own roles, which require working with a diverse and possibly global workforce and labor pool and understanding the diversity of the organization's customers and stakeholders, but also to build this capability for their organization. No matter where business is located, HR must apply global and cultural effectiveness across all aspects of human capital and talent development.

Case in point. Yes, the generational issue has been written about and discussed extensively.[3],[4] But with four or sometimes five generations now concurrently in the workforce, generational differences-and how those differences translate with regard to HR practices and strategy-are still a subject that the next cohort of leaders will need to understand. As Baby Boomers retire, new generational issues will arise, and we'll still see those same four to five generations inhabiting work space at any given moment. The new generation of HR leaders will need to understand how to handle the demands of these generations while still upholding the needs of their organizations.

Conclusion

So, what must the next generation of leaders know?

First and foremost, they have to recognize that much of what they need to know about HR has already been said. This does not mean that there isn't more that can be learned, nor that HR leaders should not stay abreast of the latest trends in HR. The problem they face, though, is knowing what-of all the available information-is really critical to their success and their organization's success.

This boils down, really, to the following:

1. Knowing the basics of HR.

2. Knowing how and when to be adapt yourself or adapt your world.

3. Knowing what to do with what you know (and doing it).

4. Knowing that you need to stop thinking that diversity and global business don't apply to you.

5. Knowing that above anything, you need to be ethical and foster ethical behavior in others.

HR will change. The world around us will change. But until we are all replaced by machines and technology that do not require human maintenance and operations, people will remain critical to work. And as long as people are critical, what we do as HR professionals to ensure that people are happy, safe and productive in their jobs will also be critical. Know and apply the five things I have stated above, and learn and apply the nine competencies included in the SHRM Competency Model, now and in the future-and you will be sure to achieve your career goals and help advance HR's mission.

[1] Boudreau, J. (2014). Will HR's grasp match its reach? An estimable profession grown complacent and outpaced. Organizational Dynamics, 3(43), 189-197.

[2] Bernthal, P. R. (2004). ASTD 2004 competency study: Mapping the future: New workplace learning and performance competencies (Vol. 1). American Society for Training and Development.

[3] Knight, R. (2014, Sept. 25). Managing people from 5 generations. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2014/09/managing-people-from-5-generations#

[4] Meisinger, S. (2013, Feb. 19). A lesson in generational differences. Human Resource Executive Online. Retrieved from http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/view/story.jhtml?id=534354994

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What the Next Generation of HR Leaders Must Know

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Dr. Joseph Jones, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP, Director of HR Competencies and Resources Research, SHRM Dr. Joseph Jones, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP, is the director of HR competencies and resources research for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), where he oversees thought leadership, product development and research for both HR professional competencies and other HR practices.

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A Look at the History of Human Resources & HR Certification Programs

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A Look at the History of Human Resources & HR Certification Programs

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This blog is part of a special series providing insights into HR certification. Look for a follow up article discussing HR certification options for our profession. Click here to be directed to another article providing a varying point of view.
In the HR profession, one of the most talked about, debated about and argued about topics over the last couple of years has been the topic of HR Certification. Since SHRM has announced their competency based certification in 2014, lines have been drawn and caused an (in my opinion) unnecessary furor.

Five Characteristics to Define the Human Resources Profession

In order to fully understand the whole hubbub, I think we need to look at the history of the topic. In the late 1960's, SHRM (then known as the American Society of Personnel Administrators) along with Cornell University, set out to define what the HR profession was. Over the period of two years, they came up with 5 characteristics to define the profession:

The profession must be full time.

Schools and curricula must be aimed superficially at teaching the basic ideas of the profession, and there must be a defined common body of knowledge.

The profession must have a national professional association.

The profession must have a certification program.

The profession must have a code of ethics.

Biggest Fear of an HR Certification Program

According to Drew Young, president of ASPA, all criteria was met except for a defined body of knowledge and certification program. In the early 70's, ASPA board began serious talk on creating a national certification program. In what will turn out to be a bit ironic, they shied away from using term certification because they felt the program could only test professionals on their level of knowledge but there was a fear that people might equate "certification" with competency.

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In 1976, the first accreditation exams were given and it slowly began to pick up speed. By the end of 1978, only 753 people had take the exam but by 2009, over 100,000 HR professionals held the PHR, SPHR or GPHR designation. During that time, the test had been based on the HR Body of Knowledge which covered 6 areas of knowledge of the profession: 1) Business Management and Strategy, 2) Workforce Planning and Employment, 3) Human Resource Development, 4) Compensation and Benefits, 5) Employee and Labor Relations and 6) Risk Management. During this time the accrediting organization also changed to the name they hold today, the Human Resource Certification Institute and was an independent organization affiliated with the Society for Human Resource Management (formerly ASPA).

In 2011, things began to change. SHRM began to look at the changing profession of HR as a whole. In addition to the traditional knowledge that HR professionals needed to master, SHRM started to look at the business skills that HR pros needed to demonstrate in order to support organizational goals and objectives. This lead to the beginning of the development of the SHRM Body of Competency and Knowledge (BoCK).

The SHRM BoCK looks at the area of HR expertise and knowledge that all HR pros need to master (areas of People, Organization, Workplace and Strategy) but also those areas of behavioral competencies (consultation, critical evaluation, global and cultural awareness, communication, business acumen, ethical practice, leadership and relationship management) that combine to build effective individual performance which adds to a successful organization.

In developing a certification exam to include the new competencies and existing knowledge, SHRM had to come up with a new format, one that included the traditional knowledge questions but also included a way to apply that knowledge into ways to assess the decision making and application skills of that knowledge and new competencies. That led to the creation of the situational based judgment question. I compare it to a word problem back in my school math days. A situation is outlined and 4 answers are shown. Because more than one strategy may be effective for addressing actual work-related scenarios, examinees will receive full credit for choosing the best possible answer, or partial credit for choosing the second-best possible answer. As any HR pro knows, it is not always a one solution to any problem.

How the SHRM Certification Program is Different

Since being introduced in January, 2015, the SHRM-CP and SCP almost 100, 000 HR professionals hold the SHRM Certifications. As far as acceptance of the new certifications, in an average month, approximately 5000 job postings (across all job boards) seek the SHRM Certification, an increase of 600 % from the inaugural year. Also, 3 out of every 4 exam-taker would recommend the SHRM Certification over another HR certification.

SHRM has developed an App for Certification holders that will make it easier to track recertification credits to help make the recertification process easier. Also, there are plans to make a Spanish and Chinese language version of the exam available to ensure it is a universally accepted and used accreditation. The BoCK will undergo examination and updates on a regular basis. Finally, some have asked about the status of accreditation of the exam and Certification process. This takes time but everything should be submitted and approved by the end of 2016. Every Certification has to go through this process.

Full disclosure: I currently hold both the SHRM-SCP (obtained by the Pathway AND testing) and SPHR. I have no plans on getting rid of either. I am an Instructor for Northern Illinois University's HR Outreach program teaching the SHRM Certification Preparation Program since January 2015. Prior to that I taught the SHRM Learning System preparing HR pros to take and pass the HRCI Certification exam.
This blog is part of a special series providing insights into HR certification. Click here for the sister article as part of this series. Click here to connect to HR re-certification webinars and webcast resources. You can also read more about the 4 0+ different HR certification offerings.

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A Look at the History of Human Resources & HR Certification Programs | Workology

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This blog is part of a special series providing insights into HR certification. Look for a follow up article discussing HR certification options for our profession. Click here to be directed to another article providing a varying point of view. In the HR profession, one of the most talked about, debated about and argued about...