• Productivity
    超级员工的崛起 -The Rise of the Superworker: Delivering On The Promise Of AI 《超级员工的崛起》研究报告揭示了AI如何深刻改变工作场所与工作方式。随着AI技术融入工作流程，传统工作模型被重新定义，AI正助力“超级员工”以创新的方式提升生产力和创造力。 报告指出，企业若想在AI时代中保持竞争力，必须重新设计工作与组织模式。首先，需要通过AI实现任务自动化并提高工作效率；其次，推动工作流程的整合，利用智能代理提升整体生产力；最后，培养员工适应变化的能力，推动动态化的工作环境。 AI并不是简单地取代工作，而是通过赋能实现员工能力的跃升。例如，一些企业利用AI快速生成培训计划，将原本需要数月的工作缩短为数天。报告也强调，随着AI成为“同事”，全新岗位将随之出现，如知识库维护员、AI数据隐私与伦理管理者等。 为了迎接这一变革，报告提出了五大关键战略：重新设计工作与组织模式，构建动态人才模型，调整薪酬与绩效体系，加强以人为本的领导力，以及加速系统性HR®的转型。只有将技术与人的因素完美结合，企业才能成功实现AI转型。 报告强调，AI的核心并非技术，而是通过创新推动人与组织的共同成长。1月28日的发布会将深入剖析这些趋势与战略。 We’re excited to launch our groundbreaking research “The Rise of the Superworker,” a deep dive into the impact of AI on the future of work. As our hallmark research for the year, it defines the roadmap for leadership, technology, and HR. (Register for the launch webinar on January 28.) The Workforce and Workplace Environment We are entering a year of political change, economic disruption, and changing labor markets. As I discussed recently (The Tumultuous Year Ahead), the world is experiencing talent shortages in front-line and blue collar work (US unemployment remains at 4.1%) while white-collar employment is softening. CEOs are investing in AI in a quest for productivity and workers are asking to be retrained. And many core values (diversity and inclusion, pay equity, remote work) remain challenging. Companies believe that AI will transform their business, so investment in technology is exploding. Yet as history tells us, this “trillian dollar AI-based re-engineering” effort is about people, not technology. As the research points out, the AI revolution, as exciting as it feels, is all about redesigning the way we get things done. And that lands in the laps of HR: how we redesign, reskill, and redeploy people in a world of highly intelligent systems. Understanding The Superworker and The Superworker Company Let’s start with the basics. Companies are filled with business processes, tools, and job models designed around traditional people-centric work. Every job function, from sales to marketing to manufacturing, has been designed around the old-fashioned job families of the past. In other words, we’ve run our companies as “people machines.” We design a set of jobs and job families, then hire, train, and promote people to grow. This model creates a sprawling company filled with skills challenges, people wanting promotion, and fragility as the business goes through change. The digital revolution, which defines the last 27 years of transformation, did speed things up. It automated many processes and opened up the ideas of self-service, e-commerce, and direct consumer transactions. But it didn’t fundamentally change how companies are organized: rather it accelerated the processes we had. Suddenly, with AI everything is different. As the most intelligent and data hungry technology ever, AI stands to integrate and redefine every business process and “superpower” every employee. And this shift, toward copilots, agents, digital twins, and intelligent platforms, forces us to rethink how we’re organized, what we do, and what we define as a “job.” We are building a company of Superworkers. What exactly is a “Superworker?” A Superworker is an individual who uses AI to dramatically enhance their productivity, performance, and creativity. As routine work gets automated, AI has the potential to empower everyone, eliminating some roles while empowering many others. A “Superworker company” is an organization that embraces this transformation, building a culture of adaptability where people reinvent themselves. Our new Dynamic Organization research shows that such change-ready companies outperform their peers by six-times. Just as Superman Clark Kent learned to channel his powers, we must learn to harness AI for individual and team performance. This means not just automating existing tasks, but rethinking how work gets done, empowering people to do more, and creating opportunities for growth. The Historical Perspective: From Automation to Autonomy We’ve seen waves of automation before, but this time it’s different. In the past we used machines to automate the work of craftsmen and tradespeople. A welder, farmer, or shoemaker had his or her expertise built into a machine so their craft could scale at low cost. The expert didn’t go away, rather he or she helped design the machine. AI does the same for white collar work. Writers, analysts, marketers, and sales people are now superpowered, leveraging their skills to drive scale. AI will not replace these special individuals: it empowers them to scale and expand their impact. But in the case of AI we go further: it doesn’t just automate tasks; it becomes a co-worker itself: listening, learning, reasoning, and acting. So new and better jobs are created, designing, training, and managing the AI. And the shift to Superworker happens everywhere: from the retail clerk to the nursing supervisor to the senior executive. The New Corporate Imperative: Redesign Work and Jobs This transformation won’t happen without effort. Today, as AI systems still mature, our challenge is not implementing AI, but redesigning jobs, and business processes around AI. And that’s why success with AI is a people problem, not a technology one. And if you don’t get this right, your AI transformation will lag. Academic studies show that 45% of change management programs fail, and 72% of the reason is “people resistance.” So consider this: For each dollar spent on machine learning technology, companies may need to spend nine dollars on intangible human capital,” Erik Brynjolfsson wrote in 2022, citing research by him and others. Consider the four stage model below, where we look at “current jobs” vs “re-engineered jobs” on the horizontal, and level of output on the vertical. AI transformation begins with assistance, then moves to augmentation, then to work replacement and then to autonomy. The level of performance improvement goes up exponentially. This process of rethinking business processes takes time. When electricity was invented companies replaced horse-driven machines with motors. Decades later engineers realized we could redesign the entire manufacturing process by integrating the entire supply chain. The same will happen again. We may start by automating emails and data access, but over time we build “digital twins” and configurable agents to manage entire projects and business processes. One of our clients built an entire platform that can interview stakeholders, import documentation, build training programs, and publish training and certification programs by AI. Humans are still needed, but now they’re the “super-curators” and “craftsmen” perfecting the product. New programs that took 3-6 months can be generated in a few days. This kind of redesign is now being used for claims analysis, sales enablement, RFP generation, and workplace design. (Our report 100 Use Cases For Galileo explains dozens of such solutions available now for HR.) The Work Redesign Challenge How do we get there? Business and HR teams work together, following these stages. Improve efficiency at current job: Use AI to make existing work more efficient: same job as before, new tools to make it easier. Examples include an office worker using MS Copilot. Automate tasks to increase scale: An engineer uses AI to write code. A marketer builds videos and campaigns automatically. An HR manager rapidly builds job descriptions or analyzes performance. Integrate processes to improve productivity: Agents now handle multiple connected steps. A retail clerk automatically checks out customers; a nurse uses a machine to monitor dozens of patients and make diagnostics; an HR manager builds learning programs in minutes. Leverage autonomy for more: The AI manages multi-step processes (customer service, candidate communications, recruiting, campaign design) and the people “manage” the digital employee. This creates four types of Superworker: An Example: The HR Business Partner Consider the role of HR Business Partner (HRBP), a complex job that’s constantly changing. An HR business partner (HRBP) equipped with AI like Galileo™ can automatically analyze turnover, productivity, individual performance, and leadership potential. The AI HR Agent can help compare job candidates against multiple requirements. Analysis, coaching, and hiring speed goes up, and the HRBP is now a Superworker. Then the transformation continues. What if we give the AI to managers. Do we need the HRBP at all? (IBM has made this step.) Yes, now the HRBP manages the AI. Just as Wayze may drive you automatically, someone behind the scenes is monitoring your trip to help you when things go wrong. This “Superworker” job is the upgraded role of the HRBP. AI As A Job Creation Technology Many new jobs will be created. Who maintains the knowledge base that feeds the AI? Who ensures data privacy and security? Who handles the ethical issues that arise? Who monitors the AI to make sure it’s trained well? And once these multi-step digital employees exist, who will manage them? These are new Superworker jobs. Five Imperatives for 2025 How do we make this transition a success? Here are five key imperatives detailed in our study: Redesign Work, Jobs, and Organizational Models: Focus on the customer, how success is measured, then apply AI. This is what we call “productivity-based job design”. Deconstruct work into activities, evaluate AI solutions, and determine the human role alongside AI, using the models above. Create a Dynamic Talent Model: The traditional “prehire to retire” model is becoming obsolete. We need a more dynamic approach where people move across roles and projects. Prioritize internal mobility and foster a culture of growth. Focus on “doing more with what we have” by upgrading the productivity of our existing workforce. Focus on building “talent density“. Rethink Pay, Rewards, and Performance: Move from traditional pay models to “systemic rewards,” based on role, skills, and output. New roles may warrant higher pay, not lower. (Lightcast sees a $45,000 premium for workers with AI skills.) Refine Leadership and Culture: Focus on human-centered leadership: this is a time of change. Ensure leaders understand AI, foster innovation, and focus on productivity, not headcount. Start co-design projects in every functional areas. Get line employees involved in transformation efforts. Accelerate the Shift to Systemic HR®: HR must operate in a consulting role. Integrate HR silos, develop a change-enablement team. Experiment with AI tools in HR and train the HR team about AI. Let me give you an example. One of our large clients, a healthcare company, created a “transformation enablement” team in HR that does co-design workshops throughout the business, helping with process redesign, role design, job changes and pay and rewards changes. They built a set of tools and methodologies which are well established. HR professionals rotate into this team for education. Every HR function should set up “AI transformation teams” like this. AI isn’t here to replace us; it’s here to empower us. How To Get The Research and Learn The Rise of the Superworker predictions report is available to all users of Galileo™, The Josh Bersin Academy, or Corporate Members. (A Galileo Pro membership is only $39 per month, and JBA membership is $49 per month.) If you want to learn more and follow our ongoing case studies, briefs, and AI tools, download the Rise of the Superworker Overview today. You will be registered for regular updates. And please register for our launch webinar on January 28 where I will detail this entire story. The Superworker era has arrived, join us in the journey!
    Productivity
    2025年01月16日
  • Productivity
    The best HR & People Analytics articles of December 2024 The December edition of the Data Driven HR Monthly is an opportunity to reflect on the year that is about to pass into history and look forward to what lies ahead. 2024 has proved to be another tumultuous year of geopolitical tension, economic uncertainty, and upheaval in the world of work. Perhaps for HR and people analytics it is a case of “in chaos, there is opportunity,” as we move into 2025. Enjoy this month’s collection of resources, and to all readers who are taking a break over the festive season, I wish you Happy Holidays, and a prosperous and healthy 2025. Thank you to everyone who has supported Insight222, the Digital HR Leaders Podcast, and the Data Driven HR Monthly in 2024. It means a lot and is much appreciated. This edition of the Data Driven HR Monthly is sponsored by our friends at TechWolf Task Intelligence: rethink work, redefine skills Work happens at the task level, where skills meet action. But are your skills aligned with the work that drives impact? TechWolf has proven that bridging the gap between tasks and skills is the key to workforce transformation. By applying Task Intelligence within our own teams, we’ve unlocked measurable results: $76,000 saved in productivity gains by automating repetitive tasks. Freed up time for strategic, high-value work. Reshaped hiring strategies by focusing on the skills that truly matter. At TechWolf, we believe that getting close enough to the work being done is the key to doing skills right. As our own 'customer zero'; we’ve put our AI to the test, integrating it with JIRA to analyze and optimize our work processes. The results speak for themselves in our first Task Intelligence Impact Case: $76,000 saved in productivity gains by automating repetitive tasks. Freed up time for strategic, high-value work. Reshaped hiring strategies to focus on the skills that truly matter. What is Task Intelligence? It’s a new way to connect real-time task data with workforce skills to: Identify tasks that drive the most value. Adapt skills as work evolves. Streamline processes and unlock productivity. As Jeroen Van Hautte ?, TechWolf CTO, says: Skills tell us what people can do. Tasks show us why it matters. Task Intelligence brings it all together. ? Discover Task Intelligence ? Insights from the Experts: Explore how Gina Jeneroux, MBA FLPI, Chief Skills & Innovation Officer at Executive Networks, is helping organizations move beyond learning to embed skills strategies into their business. ? Read Gina’s interview The future of work demands more than adapting—it demands leading. Task Intelligence is how you get there. To sponsor an edition of the Data Driven HR Monthly, and share your brand with more than 140,000 Data Driven HR Monthly subscribers, send an email to dgreen@zandel.org. What are the biggest opportunities for HR in 2025? HR’s role in creating a thriving workforce and organisation is the underlying theme of my recently published 12 Opportunities for HR in 2025 article (see FIG 1). I’m crowdsourcing the final two opportunities, so if you’d like to contribute suggestions for opportunities 11 and 12, please click here and add your suggestion in the comments. FIG 1: 12 Opportunities for HR in 2025 (Source: David Green) December Road Report The main event for December was the publication of the fifth annual Insight222 People Analytics Trends study, which was our biggest yet with 348 participating organisations. A summary of the key findings follows in the ‘People Analytics’ section below, but one is that 62% of companies told us that they were in the first year of their AI journey in HR. Click here to download the report, and see how the people analytics function in your company compares to ‘A Teams’ by taking the Leading Companies Diagnostic. I had the privilege of taking the findings from the study out on the road to two events in December. First, I delivered the opening keynote at Visier Inc. Outsmart Local in London, which also featured the likes of Nick Hudgell, Rosemary Byde, Kevin Metherell, and Neera Ridler-Mayor, AIA (see more here). The following week I was in Amsterdam for Workday Rising EMEA, where I was interviewed on stage by Phil Willburn, as well as delivering a keynote on the characteristics of People Analytics ‘A Teams’ (see more on Workday Rising here). 2024 seemed like the year when the 'in-person' event fully returned - and as such it proved to be a busy year on stage. I emceed Unleash World in Paris, People Analytics World events in Zurich, London, and New York, and the Insight222 Global Executive Retreat in Amsterdam. I keynoted at the three People Analytics World events, Workday Rising in Las Vegas and Amsterdam, Gloat Live in New York, the Deloitte Workforce Innovation Forum in Dallas, a Mercer/Corporate Research Forum event on Productivity, Purpose and Profit in London, and Visier Outsmart Local in London. I moderated panels at a number of these events as well as at Strategic HR Analytics MeetUp in New York. Share the love! Enjoy reading the collection of resources for December and, if you do, please share some data driven HR love with your colleagues and networks. Thanks to the many of you who liked, shared and/or commented on November’s compendium. If you enjoy a weekly dose of curated learning (and the Digital HR Leaders podcast), the Insight222 newsletter: Digital HR Leaders newsletter is published on Tuesday: subscribe here. 2024 REFLECTIONS HUNG LEE -  What Happened in Recruiting in 2024 - Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Don't be fooled by the title, Hung Lee's 2024 reflections covers topics much broader than recruiting, and contains a plethora of data, analysis and visualisations that should act as a guide for the year ahead too. Taking one highlight from each of the four-part series (and 20 reflections in total), I'd go with AI and Automation (Part 1), the re-emergence of Talent Density (Part 2), Atlantic Divergence on DEI - see FIG 2 (Part 3), and War on Middle Managers (Part 4). If you don't already follow Hung's twin newsletters, Recruiting Brainfood, and This Week in Recruiting, I highly recommend you do. FIG 2: Is DEI a 'good thing'? (Source: Pew Research Center) 2025 HR PREDICTIONS, TRENDS AND PRIORITIES STEVE HUNT - A guide to HR predictions, trends, and forecasts | ANDREW SPENCE - 5 Big Questions for Work in 2025 | DANIEL ZHAO - Glassdoor Worklife Trends 2025 | VISIER – Embracing the AI Driven Workforce: 5 Workforce Trends for 2025 | i4CP – 2025 Priorities and Predictions | LARS SCHMIDT - 7 ways HR will look different in 2025 | JOSH BERSIN - A Tumultuous Year Behind: A Challenging, Important 2025 A people analytics team cannot sit on the sidelines while AI is poised to transform the world of HR. If you don't embrace AI to surface insights and support data-driven decisions, you may miss out on the ability to scale decision intelligence Putting my own 12 Opportunities for HR in 2025 to one side, there are a plethora of other HR trends, predictions, and priorities being published. Here are seven resources that I recommend digging deeper into. (1) Firstly, Steve Hunt provides a helpful ‘buyer beware’ guide on eight lessons to consuming HR predictions, trends and forecasts, including a warning that most HR forecasts are designed to influence buying behaviour. (2) Despite being a Man United fan, Andrew Spence’s Workforce Futurist newsletter is one of the best around. In a recent edition, Andrew ponders five big questions for work in 2025 including: Is the office dead or just evolving (see FIG 3)? (3) Daniel Zhao presents five trends based on Glassdoor data including: Employers are investing in holistic wellbeing. (4) Visier Inc.’s five workforce trends for 2025 includes the need for organisations to build the backbone of data infrastructure to fully realise the promise of AI in HR and workforce topics, and features contributions from the likes of Dawn Klinghoffer, Eric Bokelberg (see quote above), Angela LE MATHON, Ryan Wong and Adam McKinnon, PhD. (5) As Kevin Oakes writes in his Foreword to The Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp)’s thoughtful annual look at the year ahead: “perhaps the safest prediction we can make is those who embrace agility will have much more success than those who resist change.” (6) Lars Schmidt takes his annual look at how HR is likely to evolve as a function in the year ahead, with my favourite of his seven being that "Learning and development will take center stage." (7) Josh Bersin looks back at a tumultuous 2024 to highlight the priorities for the year ahead in his big idea of 'Citizenship': "Our job in HR is to help our leaders and organizations practice this kind of citizenship. In a year of tumultuous change, Citizenship will serve us well." FIG 2: Office utilisation 2020-now (Sources: Andrew Spence, Nicolas BEHBAHANI) HYBRID, GENERATIVE AI AND THE FUTURE OF WORK BRIAN ELLIOTT - Five Hybrid Work Trends to Watch in 2025 | JOSE MARIA BARRERO, NICK BLOOM, SHELBY BUCKMAN, AND STEVEN J. DAVIS - SWAA December 2024 Updates | LYNDA GRATTON - Seven Truths About Hybrid Work and Productivity | BETH SCHINOFF, ASHLEY E. HARDIN, KRIS BYRON, AND RACHEL BALVEN - Research: How WFH Can Actually Strengthen Bonds Between Coworkers Forward-looking organizations will shift toward measuring performance based on results, not attendance As I wrote in 12 Opportunities for HR in 2025, HR has the opportunity to help their organisations elevate the conversation on hybrid working from where to how. With outliers like Amazon getting a lot of column inches about their decision to bring employees back to the office five days a week (although this move may not be working out well), HR leaders in other firms may come under pressure from their CEOs to follow suit. Five articles that can help resist this move are included here. (1) First, Brian Elliott outlines five hybrid work trends to look out for in 2025 including: “Organizations that embrace flexible work will steal talent from organizations that impose harsh return-to-office mandates.” (2) The latest data from Nick Bloom and his WFH Research team finds that only 44% of employees would comply if their company imposed a five-day return to office (compared to 53% in 2022), which suggests Elliott’s prediction is likely to be prescient. (3) Lynda Gratton unveils seven key findings from what she is seeing from experiments in hybrid working including: (i) Hybrid work is a continuum. (ii) Productivity is usually challenging — and measurement is always complex. (iii) It’s useful to view hybrid work as fundamentally a job design option. (4) Beth Schinoff, Ashley Hardin, Kris Byron, and Rachel McCullagh Balven present research that finds (contrary to beliefs that employees are able to form richer relationships in person than they can working remotely), remote work can actually make coworkers feel closer by giving them authentic glimpses into each others non-work lives through video calls. FIG 4: Compared to Fall 2022, Persons Who WFH 1+ Days/Week Are Less Willing to Comply With RTO Mandates (Source: WFH Research, December 2024) RASMUS HOUGAARD AND JACQUELINE CARTER - How AI Can Make Us Better Leaders In their article for Harvard Business Review, Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter outline their research, which finds that AI can enhance and empower leaders, and actually help them to be more human. They explain why leaders need to focus on the core leadership qualities of awareness, wisdom, and compassion, as well as take on a both/and mindset. In this way, the “AI-augmented leader” can leverage both the power of AI and develop their most human qualities, bringing the best of both human and machine to their leadership practice. FIG 5: The AI Augmented leader (Source: Potential Project) PEOPLE ANALYTICS JONATHAN FERRAR, NAOMI VERGHESE, AND MADHURA CHAKRABARTI - Harnessing Data for Growth: The Impact of People Analytics Article | Full Report The fifth annual People Analytics Trends study was our biggest yet at Insight222, with 348 participating organisations. The four key findings were: (1) Growth: people analytics continues to expand in scope and investment. (2) Intelligent automation: the advent of GenAI has catalysed HR’s use of AI with people analytics at the core and central to AI strategy in HR. (3) Adoption crisis: the adoption of people analytics remains a challenge with a significant gap between the democratisation of people insights and data (71% of organisations) and a high-level of adoption within HR (47%) and outside HR (28%) – see FIG 6. (4) Value: measuring and demonstrating value is now essential for people analytics teams to increase their impact and drive greater ROI. Kudos to the authors: Jonathan Ferrar, Naomi Verghese, and Madhura Chakrabarti, PhD. Thanks too to the practitioners featured in the study: Adam Tombor (Wojciechowski), Peter Ryan, and Phil Willburn. FIG 6: Trends in the democratisation and adoption of analytics (Source: Insight222) RICHARD ROSENOW – People Analytics is Growing | People Analytics Roles Review Richard Rosenow devotes part of his monthly People Analytics Roles Update newsletter to data highlighting the growth of people analytics. He cites three sources: (1) The 30% increase in people analytics roles that Richard and the One Model team have tracked between 2023 and 2024. (2) The aforementioned Insight222 study, which found that the ratio of people analytics professionals to total employee headcount has improved from 1:4000 in 2020 to 1:2500 in 2024. (3) Data by Jason Saltzman at Live Data Technologies, which finds that both core and specialist people analytics roles are on the rise (see FIG 7). FIG 7: The growth of people analytics jobs (Source: Live Data Technologies) BENJAMIN ROGOJAN – Data Science v Data Engineering | PATRICK COOLEN – What Is Not People Analytics | PIETRO MAZZOLENI - The Power of Integration: Why People Data Thrives Within Enterprise Frameworks | JACKSON ROATCH - From Correlation to Causation: Levelling Up People Analytics with Econometrics | SCOTT REIDA - Transform Performance Evaluations with GenAI: Smarter Grading, Visual Insights, and Next Steps | CHRISTOPHER ROSETT – Storytelling: The Story Arc and The Journalist’s Pyramid In each edition of the Data Driven HR Monthly, I feature a collection of articles by current and recent people analytics leaders. These are intended to act as a spur and inspiration to the field. Six are highlighted in this month’s edition. (1) Thanks to Richard Rosenow for highlighting Benjamin Rogojan’s post, which may be the best explanation (and visualisation – see FIG 8) yet on why you need data scientists and data engineers in an effective analytics team. (2) Patrick Coolen provides a powerful list of what is not people analytics – my favourite is: “People Analytics is ??? about HR (only). It should be strongly focused on high impact business threats and opportunities.” (3) In a recent edition of his (excellent) People Data Platform newsletter, Pietro Mazzoleni explains how HR and people analytics leaders can increase their impact by integrating people data with broader organisational impacts. (4) Jackson Roatch outlines how people analytics teams can create more impact by adding econometric methods to its tools and capabilities. (5) Scott Reida explains how to use GenAI to transform employee performance evaluations from vague feedback into actionable insights. (6) Christopher Rosett breaks down two models – The Story Arc and The Journalist’s Pyramid (see FIG 9) – that can be used to underpin storytelling with data in different contexts. FIG 8: How data engineers and data scientists deliver value (Source: Benjamin Rogojan) FIG 9: The Story Arc and The Journalist’s Pyramid (Source: Christopher Rosett) THE EVOLUTION OF HR, LEARNING, AND DATA DRIVEN CULTURE DAVE ULRICH - The Next Agenda for Human Resources: What’s So? So What? Now What? Evidence shows that organizational capability has 4x more impact on results than individual talent efforts alone - yet most of the HR field remains heavily focused on talent. Dave Ulrich provides some astute observations on the current state of the HR field, and concludes that most of the focus is on the talent domain of his human capability model (see FIG 10) and so on individuals rather than organisational capability. He then provides four ‘next agenda’ recommendations to shift the profession to creating stakeholder value through human capability: (1) Advance that HR is less about HR and more on creating stakeholder value. (2) Offer a complete human capability agenda and assessment. (3) Prioritise using analytics and AI. (4) Upgrading HR professionals. FIG 10: Human Capability Taxonomy (Source: Dave Ulrich) KENNETH KUK, DONALD DELVES, AND JOHN BREMEN - A Board Outlook on Effective Human Capital Governance Human capital governance can be an overwhelming subject for the board. They do not want to get stuck with minute detail about HR policies or programs. Best practice is for the board to focus their oversight on human capital areas most material to the business, either because they pose a significant risk or are a differentiator for competitive advantage. Kenneth Kuk, Don Delves, and John Bremen present the findings of WTW research into board prioritisation of human capital governance. Findings include: (1) Boards do not spend enough time on long-term strategic workforce planning. (2) Leadership succession and development, talent attraction and retention, and workforce planning and skills for the future were identified as the top three priority human capital topics. (3) Only one-third of board members agree that human capital governance is effective on their boards. (4) Boards do not spend enough time, nor do they receive the right level of information, to engage in meaningful and strategic discussions about human capital governance (see FIG 11). FIG 11: Boards do not spend enough time or receive enough information on human capital governance topics (Source: WTW, Directors & Boards) WORKFORCE PLANNING, ORG DESIGN, AND SKILLS-BASED ORGANISATIONS WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM AND PwC - Leveraging Generative AI for Job Augmentation and Workforce Productivity: Scenarios, Case Studies and a Framework for Action The organizations quickest to adopt GenAI in their workforce are those that could be described as “data-driven” In their new report, the World Economic Forum and PwC present the findings of their study into how early adopters are leveraging GenAI across the workplace, the impact it is having, and the lessons they have learned along the way. The big takeaway is that they found that success depends as much on people as it does technology. Workers need to understand, trust and adopt GenAI. The report also presents four different scenarios for how the deployment of GenAI in organisations could play out (see FIG 12). With the recent Insight222 People Analytics Trends study finding that 62% of companies are in the first year of their journey with AI in HR, this report will be required reading. Credit to the authors: Adèle Jacquard, Isabelle Leliaert, Till Alexander Leopold, Shuvasish Sharma, Peter Brown MBE, Marlene De Koning, Kiera Thomas, and Astrid van der Werf. FIG 12: Four scenarios for the near future of GenAI (Source: PwC and World Economic Forum) THE BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE - Measuring the Impact of Skills-Based Talent Initiatives A helpful and practical guide from The Business Roundtable group of companies to help other organisations effectively implement skills-based hiring and talent management strategies. The report provides a blueprint for how to measure the success of skills-based talent strategies, which is comprised of four components: (1) Aligning on goals and selecting the right metrics to achieve them. (2) Enhancing internal data reporting (see sample balance scorecard in FIG 13). (3) Leveraging data for strategic change management. (4) Collaborating to report success at scale. Thanks to Brian Heger for highlighting in his Talent Edge newsletter. FIG 13: Measuring the impact of skills-based talent initiatives – sample balance scorecard (Source: The Business Roundtable) EMPLOYEE LISTENING, EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE, AND EMPLOYEE WELLBEING SHARON K. PARKER AND CAROLINE KNIGHT - Design Work to Prevent Burnout Small, locally led work design changes can have a powerful effect on work quality. Employee burnout and disengagement is bad for business and bad for workers. A much better approach is to create healthier and more sustainable jobs through good work design. In their article, Sharon Parker and Caroline Knight, outline their SMART Work Design model (see FIG 14), which is designed to improve worker wellbeing and performance. The authors describe each of the five characteristics in the model, before emphasising that the first step in improving work design is to start with data: “The first step in improving work design is to assess its current state, using employee surveys, interviews, and observations. The most comprehensive assessment would incorporate all three.” They then provide guidance on five ways to use the model to drive positive collaboration between managers and their teams to: (1) Redesign teams' work, (2) Align people management systems, (3) Build leader capability for SMART work design, (4) Guide and evaluate operational change, and (5) Encourage and support employee job crafting. FIG 14: A model for making work smarter (Source: Sharon K. Parker and Caroline Knight) JACQUELINE BRASSEY, AARON DE SMET, AND DANA MAOR WITH SHEIDA RABIPOUR - Developing a resilient, adaptable workforce for an uncertain future To successfully move their business strategies forward, 21st-century leaders need an engaged and innovative workforce that can change course quickly, effectively, and fluidly. A recent study by the McKinsey Health Institute finds that when employees experience strong levels of organisational support, psychological safety, resiliency and adaptability, these are associated with high levels of engagement and innovation (see FIG 15). In their article, Jacqui Brassey, PhD, MA, MAfN ?️ (née Schouten), Aaron De Smet, Dana Maor, and Sheida Rabipour, PhD present a blueprint composed of four actions for leaders to develop their own capacity for change while in parallel fostering resilience and adaptability in the workforce: (1) Setting a North Star for the organisation. (2) Building a psychologically safe community, not just a workforce. (3) Ensuring that leaders themselves are resilient, adaptable, and can serve as role models. (4) Encouraging teams to build resilience and adaptability skills in groups. FIG 15: The relationship between organisational support, psychological safety, resilience and adaptability with engagement and innovation (Source: McKinsey) LEADERSHIP, CULTURE, AND LEARNING STEVEN LEVY - Relevance! Relevance! Relevance! Microsoft at 50 Is an AI Giant—and Still Hellbent on Domination | KATHLEEN HOGAN AND DAWN KAWAMOTO - How Microsoft’s chief people officer built a dynamic company culture In 2015, Nadella called for a major transformation of Microsoft’s culture: from a ‘know-it-all,’ fixed mindset culture to a ‘learn-it-all’ growth culture When Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, Microsoft was seen as lumbering and uncool. Together, with Kathleen Hogan, who he appointed as Chief People Office, Nadella cleaned up a toxic culture, crafted the deal of the decade, and put Microsoft back on top. These two resources provide the context from a business perspective and a people one, on who this was achieved. The first article, in Wired, tells the business story: including the acquisitions of LinkedIn and GitHub, the partnership with OpenAI, and how Microsoft closed the AI gap with its competitors. The second article and video, sees Kathleen Hogan sharing how the company changed its company culture and how that evolution continues: “We always joke, the minute you think you’ve arrived and have a growth mindset is the minute you have a fixed mindset.” MICHAEL ARENA AND PHILIP ARKCOLL - When flatter isn’t better: The hidden cost of collaborative demand In an effort to create flatter organizational structures, indiscriminately cutting managers without first assessing collaborative demand can have detrimental consequences. In order to speed up decision making, companies like Meta and Amazon have cut managers as part of a ‘flatter is faster’ approach. The theory is that fewer managers means more speed, more agility, and more innovation. In their article, Michael Arena and Philip Arkcoll provide a counterpoint through Worklytics data showing that when managers are stretched thin—leading teams of seven or more— they encounter overwhelming workloads, rising burnout, and reduced ability to effectively support their teams (see FIG 16). To strike the right balance, Arena and Arkcoll advocate the use of data to assess collaborative demand and drive targeted actions. They provide guidance on (1) Optimising span of control , (2) Focusing on managerial overload, (3) Providing delegation strategies, and (4) Monitoring workloads. FIG 16: Manager hours worked compared to team size (Source: Worklytics) ARNE GAST, ERIK MANDERSLOOT, KAI GRUNEWALD, AND NEIL PEARSE WITH CARMEN JAMES AND NATACHA CATALINO - All about teams: A new approach to organizational transformation Team-focused transformations can lead to 30 percent efficiency gains in organizations that implement these strategies effectively. According to McKinsey, when it comes to organisational transformations there is a third way beyond the top-down or bottom-up approaches that are typically employed. That is a team-centric approach. Indeed, in their article, Arne Gast, Erik Mandersloot, Kai Grünewald, Neil Pearse, Carmen James, and Natacha (Simon) Catalino reveal that a team-centric approach can lead to 30 percent efficiency gains in organisations that implement these strategies effectively. The article provides guidance on four practical steps to empowering teams and unleashing their potential: (1) Identifying the highest-value teams, (2) Activating the value-creating teams (see FIG 17), (3) Lifting the leaders to support their teams, and; (4) Scaling this approach to more and more teams. FIG 17: Transformation requires collaboration within and across teams throughout the organisation (Source: McKinsey) HR TECH VOICES Much of the innovation in the field continues to be driven by the vendor community, and I’ve picked out a few resources from December that I recommend readers delve into: FRANCISCO MARIN - Unlocking HR Potential with Organizational Network Analysis: Insights from Gartner’s 2025 HR Priorities – Francisco Marin of Cognitive Talent Solutions takes inspiration from Gartner’s Top 5 Priorities for HR Leaders in 2025 report to highlight the role ONA can play in areas such as change management and leadership development – highlighting a case study by Allstate that is contained in the Gartner report (see FIG 18). FIG 18: Network model for change planning and execution (Source: Gartner) LISA K. SIMON - AI Isn’t Coming for Your Job—Unless You Ignore It – Lisa K. Simon reveals insightful data from Revelio Labs, on the exposure and adoption of different roles to AI. Findings include: (1) High AI exposure is positively correlated with higher salaries: A ten percentage point increase in AI exposure is associated with 25% higher salaries. (2) The higher the AI exposure, the higher the adoption of AI tools (see FIG 19). FIG 19: Data scientists lead the way in AI adoption (Source: Revelio Labs) BEN WIGERT AND COREY TATEL - The Great Detachment: Why Employees Feel Stuck – Ben Wigert, Ph.D, MBA and Corey Tatel, Ph.D. present data from Gallup that finds that employees across the US are increasingly detached from their jobs – hence The Great Detachment – with satisfaction at record lows, employees seeking new opportunities at the highest rate since 2015, but with a cooling job market organisations face risks with regards to productivity and  future talent loss (see FIG 20). FIG 20: Overall satisfaction and intent to leave, among US employees (Source: Gallup) PODCASTS OF THE MONTH In another month of high-quality podcasts, I’ve selected five gems for your aural pleasure: (you can also check out the latest episodes of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast – see ‘From My Desk’ below): NICK HUDGELL - AI And Data Governance – Nick Hudgell, Global Head of People Insights at Sanofi, joins hosts Stacia Sherman Garr and Dani Johnson on Workplace Stories, to discuss how his team has built an infrastructure that connects disparate systems, improves data quality, and uses machine learning to unlock insights that genuinely improve employee experiences. LASZLO BOCK - Becoming a Courageous, Data-Driven HR Leader - Laszlo Bock, co-founder of the Berkeley Transformative CHRO Academy joins Lars Schmidt on what looks like the last episode of Redefining Work (for now at least – see here) to share his journey from shaping Google’s data-driven HR practices to mentoring the next generation of CHROs. If it does prove to be the final episode, Lars you certainly went out on top. MARK MA - RTOs: Research-backed Realities and Recommendations - Mark Ma, a research professor at the University of Pittsburgh, joins host Sophie Wade on the Transforming Work podcast to shares his discoveries that stock market declines generated RTO mandates but not improved corporate results. In the episode, he advocates for workplace flexibility – giving choices to employees and teams. ERIN SPENCER AND MACKENZIE WILSON - AI and innovations in HR technology – In this episode of the Capital H podcast, hosts David Mallon and Franz Gilbert sit down with Human Capital analysts Erin Spencer and Mackenzie Wilson to discuss innovative AI solutions emerging in the market from established vendors and agile startups. BRYAN HANCOCK AND BROOKE WEDDLE - What works—and doesn’t—in performance management – In this episode of McKinsey Talks Talent, Bryan Hancock and Brooke Weddle join host Lucia Rahilly to share their research on what drives performance: what motivates employees most, what matters less than you think, and the changes organisations need to make to ensure their feedback, ratings, and review processes are on track. VIDEO OF THE MONTH BRIAN ELLIOTT, LAURIANNE MCLAUGHLIN, AND M. SHAWN READ - RTO Mandates: Hard Truths for Leaders In this video, Brian Elliott, who we featured earlier in the special on hybrid working, discusses the impact of RTO mandates with Laurianne McLaughlin and M. Shawn Read. Brian highlights data and examples that shines a light on return-to-office directives, offers predictions for those companies who have implemented these mandates. He also provides alternative, evidence-based strategies that forward-thinking leaders can use to boost productivity without hurting employee trust, engagement, or talent retention. RESEARCH REPORT OF THE MONTH SHONNA WATERS, ERIN EATOUGH, SHEHZAD BASHIR - People Analytics Across Company Growth Stages: Evolving Your Approach as You Scale In an era where people are at the heart of organizational success, making data-driven talent decisions is no longer optional - it's a strategic imperative. In their white paper, four esteemed experts in people analytics - Shonna Waters, PhD, Erin Eatough, PhD, Shehzad Bashir, and Ian OKeefe, break down how to build and refine people analytics capabilities that grow with your organisation. The authors introduce a practical framework for people analytics based on four pillars - each with its own set of capabilities: Governance (with seven capabilities including strategy, ethics and compliance), Infrastructure (also with seven capabilities such as storage, performance and security), Methods (with eight capabilities including primary research, statistical models and machine learning), and Products (with nine capabilities including metrics, dashboards, and nudges), which they state form the basis for organisations to build and subsequently scale their people analytics function. This is a well-researched, practical and helpful paper. HR Analytics adoption is associated with higher return on investment by an average of 6.2% for return on capital employed BOOK OF THE MONTH KATARINA BERG – Bold: A New Era of Strategic HR Behind every innovative company there should be an innovative HR function. That certainly applies to Spotify and Katarina Berg, the company’s Chief People Officer where being bold is etched into the DNA of the HR function she leads. This is evident in the Spotify HR Blog, and now in Bold, which is finally available in English. As I describe in my endorsement of the book: The pandemic has thrust HR into the spotlight and given the function the opportunity to lead in shaping the new model of work. To do this, HR has to embrace data and digital. It must deliver for leaders and employees alike. Above all, HR must be bold. Spotify’s HR function, under the leadership of Katarina Berg, is setting the template for other to follow. With ‘Bold’, Katarina and her team build on the visionary Spotify HR Blog, providing a rich vein of insights on the practice of a leading-edge HR function and how it delivers value for employees and the business. BONUS RESOURCES Some bonus resources to also consume this month: Andrew Kilshaw provides data, insights and guidance to companies looking to streamline their organisations in Middle Management Is Tough Enough As It Is.... If You're Going to Streamline Your Organization, Do It Right And Give Them "Space to Lead". The latest edition of Gareth Flynn’s consistently excellent newsletter summarises the findings of his research into skills-based approaches to talent management: 2024 Skills Research - You Don't Need to Become a SBO or SPO to Drive Value From Skills. Tejas Kumar provides some helpful guidance on how to grow professional relationships (see FIG 21). Madeline Laurano and Kyle Lagunas provide some helpful guidance on how HR Tech vendors can build better partnerships in 2025. Donald Sull highlights here the excellent series of 'Culture Champions' based on a webinar series and research by Donald and the CultureX team, which features interviews with leaders including Sharon MacBeath, Manny Maceda, Jim Whitehurst, Marvin Boakye, and Katie Burke. Rob Briner provides a cautionary tale about telling stories with data. FIG 21: The Journey to Synergy (Source: Tejas Kumar) FROM MY DESK December saw the final three episodes of Series 43 of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, sponsored by TechWolf (thanks Maaike Standaert, Andreas De Neve ?). MIKAËL WORNOO - How to Use Skills Data to Solve Business Challenges – Mikaël Wornoo? joins me to explore how organisations can move beyond surface-level discussions centred on build a skills-based organisation to drive real business impact. MELISSA DAIMLER - Drive Success Through Intentional and Adaptive Company Cultures – Melissa Daimler, Chief Learning Officer at Udemy and author of ReCulturing: Design Your Company Culture to Connect with Strategy and Purpose for Lasting Success, joins me to share how HR leaders can design company cultures that are intentional, adaptive, and aligned with business goals. CHRISTOPHE CABRERA - How to Navigate Challenges in Skills-Based Transformation Journeys - Christophe Cabrera, Director and Head of IT Talent and Company Reputation at UCB, joins me to share how UCB kicked off its skills transformation with an initial proof-of-concept for 500 employees, how it used AI, and its rollout across additional parts of the company. LOOKING FOR A NEW ROLE IN PEOPLE ANALYTICS OR HR TECH? I’d like to highlight once again the wonderful resource created by Richard Rosenow and the One Model team of open roles in people analytics and HR technology, which now numbers over 550 roles. THANK YOU Oli Meager for including me in his list of HR Tech Analysts you can Trust along with a number of people I really respects such as Stacia Sherman Garr, David Perring, FLPI, Kyle Lagunas, and Dani Johnson Gareth Flynn for posting about the Digital HR Leaders podcast episodes with Sandra Loughlin, PhD and Mikaël Wornoo? as part of sharing his insightful learnings on skills Josh Tarr for also posting about the Digital HR Leaders podcast episodes with Sandra and Mikael here Serena H. Huang, Ph.D. for including Excellence in People Analytics as one of ten books that inspired her to write her first book, The Inclusion Equation, which is published in January 2025 Laureano Pérez Caballero for including Excellence in People Analytics in his selection of five books to give as gifts Thomas Kohler for including the November edition of Data Driven HR Monthly in his list of HR resources Thinkers360 for including me in their list of Top Voices EMEA 2024 Teamflect for including me on their list of leaders redefining HR Paul's Job for including me in their list of Experts Shaping the Future of HR Voxeon Communicationsfor including me in their list of Visionaries redefining the Future of Work Finally, a huge thank you to the following people who either shared the November edition of Data Driven HR Monthly and/or posted about the Digital HR Leaders podcast, conferences or other content. It's much appreciated: Tanguy Dulac Joseph Nabarro Sven Hultin Alan Susi Sibusiso Mkhize Sebastian Knepper Samir Murgude , SPHR®, SHRM-SCP, IHRP-SP Catriona Lindsay Amardeep Singh, MBA Kouros Behzad Matthew Hamilton Ian Grant FCIPD Dave Millner Vijay Patnaik, MBA Kathleen Kruse Danielle Farrell, MA Aravind Warrier Alexis Fink Errol Kruger Jose Luis Chavez Vasquez Marijana Brasiello, MHRM Andrew Pitts Joachim Decock David Simmonds FCIPD Dr. Jeeta Sarkar Maximilian Lankheit Chris Long Maria Alice Jovinski Felipe Jara David McLean Danielle Bushen Swechha Mohapatra (IHRP-SP, SHRM-SCP, CIPD) Lukasz Sowinski Geetanjali Gamel Timo Tischer Henrik Håkansson Serena H. Huang, Ph.D. Sander de Bruijn, Kristin Saboe, Ph.D. Giovanna Constant Ravin Jesuthasan, CFA, FRSA Russ Fatum BS, BS, MSA, MBB, PMP Ekta Lall Mittal Luis Maria Cravino Sameer Raut Chandresh Natu Praful Tickoo Ron Ben Oz Emanuele Magrone Laurent Reich Scott Nemeth Chris Lovato Philippa Penfold FCIPD Gal Mozes, PhD Christina Bui Matt Burns Bhawna Bist Melissa Hopper Fritz Rex Blodgett Delia Majarín Asaf Jackoby Joonghak Lee Jaejin Lee Mark Lawrence Kimberly Rose Mariami Lolashvili Malgorzata Langlois Irene Wong Kelly Monahan, Ph.D. Doug Chartier Sophia Huang, Ed.D. Caitie Jacobson Roxanne Bisby Davis Hanna Salo Toon van der Veer David Littlechild Jeff Wellstead Pedro Pereira Dr. Sebastian Projahn Melissa Arronte Linda Jonas John Healy Greg Pryor Kristina Kersiene, PhD Kris Saling Dr Philip Gibbs John Golden, Ph.D. Irada Sadykhova Dolapo (Dolly) Oyenuga, Phil Inskip Joseph Frank, PhD CCP GWCCM Lina Makneviciute Alexandra Nawrat John Brazier Marcela Mury Jacob Nielsen Søren Kold Lucie Vottova Stephanie Murphy, Ph.D. John Gunawan Gawain Wang Dave Fineman Craig Starbuck, PhD Ralf Buechsenschuss Bob Pulver Daniel Ivezaj Nico Orie Greg Newman Brandon Mistry Elizabeth Esarove Julia Brandon, PhD Evan Franz, MBA Erik Otteson Higor Gomes Ken Clar Ruben Santos Dr. Peter Schulz-Rittich Mattijs Mol Tina Peeters, PhD Tim Peffers Ludek Stehlik, Ph.D. Abhilash Bodanapu Mukesh Jain Ohad Geron Jonathon Frampton ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Green ?? is a globally respected author, speaker, conference chair, and executive consultant on people analytics, data-driven HR and the future of work. As Managing Partner and Executive Director at Insight222, he has overall responsibility for the delivery of the Insight222 People Analytics Program, which supports the advancement of people analytics in over 100 global organisations. Prior to co-founding Insight222, David accumulated over 20 years experience in the human resources and people analytics fields, including as Global Director of People Analytics Solutions at IBM. As such, David has extensive experience in helping organisations increase value, impact and focus from the wise and ethical use of people analytics. David also hosts the Digital HR Leaders Podcast and is an instructor for Insight222's myHRfuture Academy. His book, co-authored with Jonathan Ferrar, Excellence in People Analytics: How to use Workforce Data to Create Business Value was published in the summer of 2021.
    Productivity
    2024年12月29日
  • Productivity
    How To Make Productivity Soar: Four Stages of AI Transformation We’ve been doing a lot of advisory work on skills and job design and now that AI tools have arrived, we’re reinventing work faster than ever. So let me give you some thoughts on this process, and you can also learn more from my recent podcast. As you know, there are many types of AI business tools: Copilots, Assistants, Agents, Talent Intelligence Systems, and embedded applications. Each of these products are built on an AI-first foundation and they layer on domain expertise, use-case analysis, and iterative design to build smarter and smarter systems. Self-driving cars started as voice assistants, automatic braking, and lane warnings. Now they keep you in the lane and slow your car when the speed limit changes. And soon enough they’ll be driving for us, so we can sit in the back seat and read a book. Our HR Assistant Galileo started as a research and problem solving tool, and it’s rapidly becoming an AI coach, benchmarking tool, recruiting, and change management system. So all these tools go from simple use-cases to deeper applications and autonomy over time. As the tools get smarter and more domain focused we are going to have to rethink our jobs and business processes. And unlike ERP, where we essentially trained people to “adopt” the system, now a lot of the groundbreaking applications come from the bottom up. Individuals will discover capabilities for AI and then apply them in increasingly innovative ways. And over time, as they get smarter, our jobs move more to “supervisors” and “trainers” of AI, not just consumers. For example if our self-driving car took a bumpy route, we may “retrain it” to take a longer but smoother road. As I discuss in the podcast, I believe there are four stages of adoption today. And we’re in the middle of doing all four at the same time. Level 1: Make existing work easier. (Same job, better tools.) This is where we click on the Microsoft Copilot or Zoom or Teams and the system analyzes a meeting, summarizes emails, or writes a document with our help. We do our jobs the same way we did before, but we now have a “super-productivity” tool to make it easier. These “add-on” use cases are emerging everywhere, and they already feel like a commodity. In most cases employees see 10-15% or more improvements here, but life isn’t that much different. And sometimes the tool slows us down (Copilot doesn’t create slides well at all yet) and may actually get in the way. But we can expect this mode to continue and most of us figure this out on our own. Level 2: Major steps eliminated, but the job is the same. (Same job, tools eliminate work.) At level 2 we automated a lot. Software engineers now use copilots to develop 70% of their code, so they’re spending more time testing and prompting the AI. Their individual coding skills may atrophy, but they can now work on more architectural issues. The “job” of software engineer may still be the same, but the output is far greater. So we’re making the same pay, doing the same work, but using highly automated tools. This includes scenarios like chip designers, software engineers, supermarket checkout clerks, nurse scheduling jobs, and even recruiting assistants. Paradox customers, for example, virtually eliminate “scheduling assistants” for recruiting. At this level companies can see 50-75% productivity improvement, and free time to focus on quality management, customer service, and ongoing improvements to the tools. Level 3: Re-engineered work, partnered with agents. (New job, redesigned process, agents automate work.) At level 3 we go further: we re-engineer the process and the work. Imagine how McDonald’s replaced its counter workers with a kiosk, eliminating the “may I take you order please?” role. This took some major design effort but resulted in a whole new set of roles, workflow, and management structure in the restaurants. The “cost per burger” went down, and the customer experience is almost as good (not quite). Here we need to be careful because sometimes the “self-service, AI-enabled” experience doesn’t work. A good example is the supermarket self-checkout. It rarely works well and usually takes longer than standing in line. But it will get better, and the resulting experience is faster throughput, more data (the self-service agent might offer you a discount since it knows your buying history), and far superior employee roles. In level 3 the employees are still involved, and we are more or less “working with the machine,” aiding and supporting the process. Level 4: Autonomous intelligent agents, people training and managing the AI. (New job, redesigned process, people “manage” the agents.) At level 4 we go even further. Imagine an AI recruiter (Paradox does this) that could email a hiring manager and his team, gain feedback and requirements on a job and role, consolidate input, and create a total description. This Agent could then review this job against the company culture and pay policies, compare the job against similar jobs in the external market, and tweak the level, job title, and description to be competitive. And then it could start sourcing, and give the hiring manager and human recruiter a set of candidates ranked by various criteria. That process, which takes dozens of steps for a recruiter, could be fully automated and vastly improved. The Agent could even look at prior hires and get even smarter about who to source based on the success of other candidates. Now the human job is to “train” and “monitor” and “manage” this AI Agent, who has effectively become a digital employee. (Note: Salesforce is doing a terrific job of building this out for sales and service.) The Rise of the SuperWorker Our thesis is that AI is not a “job-replacement” technology, it’s a “SuperWorker empowerment” technology. In other words, most of these scenarios result in higher value jobs, higher pay, and value creation (not cost reduction) in the business. This is happening fast. We’re in the middle of a big study in this area and I’ll be explaining this more in our upcoming 2025 Predictions report. The upside of all this will be new and higher paying jobs, faster response to business change, but a lot of IT, design, and data management to do. But based on our research, this is coming soon.
    Productivity
    2024年12月01日
  • Productivity
    Josh Bersin:Digital Twins, Digital Employees, And Agents Everywhere 2025 年，数字员工和人工智能助理的崛起将彻底改变人力资源运营，改变招聘、数据分析和员工管理等任务。 这些技术包括数字双胞胎和智能代理，它们将与人类专业人员一起工作，以提高生产力和优化工作流程。 随着人工智能工具成为日常业务不可或缺的一部分，人力资源领导者必须拥抱这些创新，同时继续关注技能培训、心理健康和包容性工作环境。 向人工智能的转变还将重塑团队动态，这对人力资源部门重新设计角色和流程以保持竞争力提出了挑战。 I recently heard Elon Musk predict that every citizen would have multiple Optimus robots in their homes within five years. And while I often ignore his predictions because they’re exaggerated, I think he’s on to something. We are about to witness an explosion of Digital Employees in our companies, and these may be the “robots” we’ve heard about for years. Let me explain. This week I talked with dozens of vendors and clients at Unleash and then visited our development partner Sana Labs in Stockholm. It’s now clear that we’re going to be working with multitudes of “digital employees” in the year ahead. (And as Dario Amodei, the founder of Anthropic explains, AI can do many more positive things in business, science, and health than we ever imagined.) By “digital employee” I mean a software powered agent that can talk with us, answer detailed questions, solve complex analytic problems, and navigate a multitude of systems. ChatGPT and its peers, which introduced the idea of an agent, has now spawned dozens of “agentic” use cases, which I’d be willing to refer to as personalities. Let me start with a “Digital Twin.” Imagine you have a superb customer service agent with years of experience helping your most demanding clients. If you load the last five years of their emails, coupled with all their internal documentation, and a log history of their last two years of service calls, you can essentially “create him or her” digitally with all the knowledge, style, and internal contacts this person has developed. This twin, which may look initially like an AI assistant, could then carry on this employee’s work when the real life worker is on vacation. One of our clients, a large insurance company, has already built “digital twins” for claims processing. If you think about the complexity and workflow of processing a claim, much of it could be learned by an agent, making the “claims robot” an expert on this important process. And as you change claims rules and limits, the agent will learn new guidelines in only seconds. Our AI assistant Galileo, a trained expert on HR (Galileo is trained on 25 years of research and thousands of conversations with clients and vendors), is essentially a “digital twin” of me and the other analysts in our firm. I’m not saying Galileo is as fun to talk with as we are, but I can assure you that he (or she) is as knowledgeable and supportive. And Galileo is even smarter than I am: he has instant knowledge of skills models, compensation benchmarks, turnover statistics, and other data bases which I can only access by looking them up on demand. And using the Sana platform we can configure Galileo to have multiple personalities. Galileo the “Recruitment Agent” might have in-depth knowledge of screening, interviewing, and candidate skills assessment and he may have direct linkage to SeekOut, Eightfold, or any other sourcing applications. In his candidate facing personality he may be able to answer candidate questions, explain shift schedules, and “sell” the company to top job candidates. (This is what Paradox has done for years and vendors like Eightfold and LinkedIn are launching now.) But there’s more. Imagine that this “digital twin” or “digital employee” has intimate knowledge of Workday, SuccessFactors, or a variety of other systems. Now the assistant can not only answer questions and help solve problems, he can also process transactions, look things up, and run reports against multiple system. The digital employee has turned into a “digital analyst,” who can find things and do work for you, saving you hours of effort in your daily life. (Vee from Visier is designed for this.) Suppose you ask your digital friend to attend meetings for you, participate in conversations on certain topics, and alert you in real time when urgent issues come up for discussion. He could help you scale your time, keep you informed about decisions you need to know about, and help you manage your action items. And the list goes on and on and on. Best of all, what if your digital twin can talk to you. Suppose he “checks in” with you about the project you asked for help with last week, so you inform him how things are going and he gets “smarter” about what you may need next. Galileo does this today, prompting you to dig into a problem and explore areas you may not have considered. And if you ask him about management or people issues, he could give you advice and coaching, based on the leadership models or even CEO interviews in your own company. (BetterUp, Valence and others are working on this.) This is not science fiction, my friends. All this is becoming reality and will certainly be common next year. Every vendor has a slightly different focus. The Microsoft Copilot specializes in MS Office-related activities, ServiceNow’s focuses on internal service and support, Galileo is focused on the needs of HR, and Joule is an expert on all the functions of SAP. Each of these “digital employees” needs training, feedback, and connections to stay current and relevant. So it’s doubtful that one digital employee will do everything. (Training a digital employee means managing his or her corpus of information, which will be a major new role in HR.) One thing is very clear: we are going to be living and working with these guys. And as we use them and see what they’re capable of, we’re going to redesign work. Little by little we’ll offload tasks, projects, and workflows. And as we do, we’ll get smarter and smarter about redesigning our teams. I liken the process to that of a carpenter who gets a new multi-function power drill. Before the drill he may have manually drilled holes, carefully selecting the drill bit and the level of pressure based on wood density. Now he drills holes faster, more accurately, and with more precision. Soon he just speeds through the process, spending more time on cabinet fit, finish, or design. The same thing will happen to our HR tasks, projects, and designs. And these new digital employees are programmable! So once we figure out what they’re capable of we can adjust them, customize them, and connect them together. Eventually we’ll have intelligent assistants that operate as entire applications. And that’s the threat to incumbent software companies – the agents hollow out many of our existing applications. How Do Our Digital Employees Impact Our Own Work? One more observation. Many a few of the clients I talked with kept asking “what about our softskills?”  What work is truly human? I think that’s the wrong question. Rather we should ask the opposite: how much can I delegate to my new friends as fast as possible! Have you been upset that your vacuum cleaner took away the rewarding human work of sweeping a floor? How much joy do you get from washing dishes? Did your dishwasher make you feel deflated when you stopped splashing around in the soapy water? Of course not – these tools eliminated tasks we considered to be “drudgery.” Well today, thanks to digital assistants, creating a pivot table to do cross-tab analysis has become drudgery. You can stop getting your hands wet with that task – ask Galileo or Copilot to analyze the data, and then ask him to chart it, add more data, and try new assumptions. The more we learn to use these new digital employees the more “drudgery” we can stop doing. And consider complex “human-centered” activities like “change management.” A client asked me “how could Galileo help me with change management for our new HCM system?” I answered her with dozens of ideas: ask Galileo for case studies of other companies and have it build a checklist to consider based on what other companies did. Then ask Galileo to build a training plan; ask it to read the user documentation and create a table of what features are new; then ask Galileo to rewrite that change plan by role. And finally ask Galileo to write a press release about success, craft some compelling communications to employees, and ask it to compute the ROI of all the steps eliminated. These are all “manual” human tasks we do today and they take time and ingenuity to figure out. If you went through this process in Galileo you could ask your digital employee to save these steps and prompts in a “template,” and you have just taught your digital employee how to do change management. The next time you need him he can step you through the process. As I started to explain this to my client I stopped and said: wait a minute. I can’t possibly show you everything Galileo can do. You have to try it for yourself. And that’s my big message. Don’t wait for a vendor to drop a finished solution in your lap. These are intelligent, trainable, digital experts. You have to get to know them so you can figure out where they fit in your job, your projects, and your company. Just like you do with any new hire. I say it’s time to get started. No more sweeping floors or washing dishes by hand. Let’s meet our digital employees, tell them about our projects, and ask for their help. Step by step, day by day, we can redesign our jobs to be more more productive, liberating us to do greater things.
    Productivity
    2024年10月19日
  • Productivity
    2025年HR领域的6大关键趋势：迎接未来工作的变革 随着技术的进步和员工期望的不断变化，2025年的人力资源管理将面临前所未有的挑战和机遇。以下是六大关键趋势，它们将推动未来职场的发展： 1. 远程和混合办公模式的普及 远程和混合办公已成为员工最期待的工作形式。2025年，更多企业将采用灵活的工作安排，不仅能提高员工的满意度，还能减少运营成本。HR团队需要确保远程员工享有与办公室员工相同的支持和资源。 2. 人工智能（AI）深度融入HR流程 AI技术正在快速改变HR流程，如招聘和绩效管理。2025年，AI将更加普及，帮助HR自动化日常任务，并提供数据洞察以优化决策。但企业在使用AI时必须保持透明，定期进行偏见审查。 3. 强调员工健康和心理健康 员工心理健康在疫情后成为企业的首要关注点。到2025年，企业将进一步加大对员工健康的投入，如提供灵活的工作安排、心理健康资源等，以提高生产力并减少员工流失。 4. 多样性、公平性和包容性（DEI） DEI是未来工作的核心。2025年，更多公司将推进多元化招聘和公平政策，培养包容性的企业文化，以推动创新和更好的决策。 5. 技能提升与再培训 技术的快速发展导致技能过时的速度加快。到2025年，50%的员工需要再培训。企业将需要投资于员工的持续学习计划，以确保其技能与未来工作需求匹配。 6. 人才分析的兴起 人才分析通过数据驱动决策，使HR能够更有效地管理员工并优化业务成果。2025年，企业将加大对数据工具的投入，提升HR决策的科学性和精准性。 2025年，企业若能掌握这些趋势，将在未来职场中占据竞争优势。
    Productivity
    2024年10月19日
  • Productivity
    The best HR & People Analytics articles of September 2024 September has been a phenomenal month. Indeed, in the ten years I’ve been writing the Data Driven HR Monthly, I can’t recall a month when there has been so much insightful content to choose from. I believe this is indicative of the journey HR is on from its traditional role as a support function to becoming a true strategic partner to the CEO and the board. As Janine Vos, Managing Board Member and CHRO at Rabobank, highlighted this past week at the Insight222 Global Executive Retreat, people analytics has an important role to play in elevating the HR function and enabling it to successfully navigate this transition: People Analytics helps give the chief human resources officer credibility (with the executive team and board). This edition of the Data Driven HR Monthly is sponsored by our friends at Worklytics A New Way to Approach Manager Effectiveness If you’re using eSat scores to evaluate Manager Effectiveness, you’re moving too slowly. eSat scores are a lagging indicator of how it’s going.  And in today’s distributed work environment, you can’t afford to wait. Instead, use ONA-powered outcome driver analysisto identify what your best managers are doing differently. You might measure behaviours like: Manager Cross-Department Connectivity Co-Attendance in Directs’ Meetings Manager-Driven Disruptions (Slack DMs) Curious to see what that looks like in practice? Find out how your managers stack up. To sponsor an edition of the Data Driven HR Monthly, and share your brand with more than 135,000 subscribers, send an email to dgreen@zandel.org. The Changing Role of the People Analytics Executive My personal highlight of September was the 7th annual Insight222 Global Executive Retreat, which took place from September 24 to 26 at the Duin en Kruidberg for member companies of the Insight222 People Analytics Program®. I’ll share more about the Retreat in a separate blog in a few days time, but for now I'll highlight this year’s theme: The Changing Role of the People Analytics Executive, and the stellar cast of inspirational speakers: Janine Vos discussed the strategic influence of the CHRO and the close partnership she has at Rabobank with the people data and innovation team led by Marc Jansen. Prasad Setty shared insights from his 14 years leading people analytics at Google as well as painting a vision of the future of people analytics in the age of generative AI. Kevin Friesen, Neora Myrow PhD, and Nancy Duarte delivered an interactive workshop on influencing through data storytelling. Erin Meyer ended proceedings with a tour de force masterclass on leading across cultures I global organisations. The Retreat is one of the services included as part of the Insight222 People Analytics Program. If you are a people analytics leader and would like to find out more, you can contact the team here. Attendees at the Insight222 Global Executive Retreat 2024, Duin en Kruidberg, Amsterdam September and October World Tour As well as the Retreat, I’m speaking at and attending a number of events in October. This week, I’m in New York, moderating a panel on Workestration at the New York Strategic HR Analytics Meetup (Sept 30), and chairing People Analytics World (Oct 2 and 3). The next stop after that will be Paris, where I’ll once again have the privilege of hosting the main stage at UNLEASH World (Oct 16 and 17) - thanks to Marc Coleman and the team. Then it’s back to the US for the North America Peer Meeting for member companies of the Insight222 People Analytics Program®, which will be hosted by Phil Willburn and his team at Workday in Pleasanton (Oct 22 and 23). I hope to see some of you at one of these events. Thanks too to Marcus Downing for hosting me at the recent Mercer event in London where I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Ravin Jesuthasan, CFA, FRSA (see here), and Jennifer Neumann for inviting me to speak at Workday Rising in Las Vegas (see here), where it was great to meet up with the likes of Priyanka Mehrotra, Richard Rosenow, and Cory Edmonds. Speaking onstage at Workday Rising, Las Vegas, 2024 Register for an Insight222 webinar on October 10: Building the People Analytics Operating Model Join me and the Insight222 team on October 10 when we’ll be hosting a webinar on the recently published research on. You can register for the webinar here. Share the love! Enjoy reading the collection of resources for September and, if you do, please share some data driven HR love with your colleagues and networks. Thanks to the many of you who liked, shared and/or commented on August’s compendium. If you enjoy a weekly dose of curated learning (and the Digital HR Leaders podcast), the Insight222 newsletter: Digital HR Leaders newsletter is published every Tuesday – subscribe here. HYBRID, GENERATIVE AI AND THE FUTURE OF WORK ANDY JASSY - Message from CEO Andy Jassy: Strengthening our culture and teams | JOSE MARIA BARRERO, NICHOLAS BLOOM, SHELBY BUCKMAN, AND STEVEN J. DAVIS - The Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes – September 2024 | ANNIE DEAN – Lessons Learned: 1,000 Days of Distributed at Atlassian This special on hybrid work was inspired by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s announcement that Amazon is going back to five days in the office: “to further strengthen our culture and teams.” This comes hot on the heels of KPMG’s CEO Outlook Survey, which finds that CEOs are hardening their stance on returning to pre-pandemic ways of working, with 83 percent expecting a full return to the office within the next three years. Forensic analysis by Bruce Daisley (here), Phil Kirschner(here) and Nick Bloom (here) examines Amazon’s move and the validity of KPMG’s claim. This confirms that (1) Amazon is an outlier. (2) The findings by KPMG contradict the WFH Research that Nick is publishing every month, which shows working from home has remained flat since early 2023 and has stabilised at around 25% (see FIG 1). As Bloom suggest “shock sells,” which explains the extent of the media coverage about Amazon and the KPMG survey. To balance things out, I recommend reading about Dropbox’s Virtual First model (which chief people officer, Melanie Rosenwasser explains has “led to clear benefits, including higher employee engagement and retention.”). I also recommend reading a new report authored by Annie Dean summarising the findings from the first 1,000 days of Atlassian’s Team Anywhere approach to distributed work. As Rabobank’s CHRO Janine Vos urged in her session at Insight222’s Global Executive Retreat this week, the role of HR and People Analytics teams is to provide data that steers executive decision making around hybrid and return to office. It would be interesting to learn what data (if any) was used to inform Amazon’s decision to return to the office five days a week. FIG 1: WFH is stable at c35% of days (Source: WFH Research) BCG HENDERSON INSTITUTE - GenAI Doesn’t Just Increase Productivity. It Expands Capabilities The ability to rapidly take on new types of work with GenAI - particularly tasks that traditionally require niche skills that are harder to find, such as data science - can be a game-changer for individuals and companies alike. The BCG Henderson Institute follow-up their first landmark study on GAI in the workplace (see: How People Can Create - and Destroy - Value with Generative AI). The sophomore experiment tests how workers can use GenAI to complete tasks that are beyond their current capabilities. The findings from the study are illuminating: (1) Participants were able to instantly expand their aptitude for new data-science tasks, even when they had no prior experience in coding or statistics. (2) Those with moderate coding experience performed better on all three tasks, even when coding was not involved. This suggests that an engineering mindset - which coding helps develop - could be a key success factor for workers adapting to GenAI tools. The article also provides guidance on: When and how to pair humans with GenAI (see FIG 2), as well as visualising and detailing the workforce change-management implications (see FIG 3). (Authors: Daniel Sack, Lisa Krayer, PhD, Emma Wiles, Mohamed Abbadi, Urvi A., Ryan Kennedy, Cristián Arnolds, and François Candelon). FIG 2: When and How to Pair Humans and GenAI (Source: BCG Henderson Institute) FIG 3: Workforce and Change-Management Implications (Source: BCG Henderson Institute) GARTNER - Hype Cycle for the Future of Work, 2024 Only 14% of organizations have reached the level of maturity where they are able to empower workers to embrace new ways of working. Gartner’s inaugural Hype Cycle for the Future of Work (see FIG 4) highlights the core technologies set to transform how work is done by augmenting and enhancing human capabilities with intelligent technology. Five standouts from the analysis are: (1) Workers want a more personalised experience, and are building it for themselves. (2) CEOs are captivated by AI and are investing in new strategies. (3) Low digital workplace maturity is a barrier to improving worker productivity and time to competency. (4) Data Storytelling and Generative AI (already!) have entered the Trough of Disillusionment. (5) Hybrid Work and Self-Service Analytics are on the Slope of Enlightenment. The article also contains some illuminating analysis on a number of the ‘on the rise’ innovations including Exoskeletons (Tori Paulman), Cyberpsychology (Cynthia P.), Digital Twin of the Employee (Helen Poitevin) and Workforce Nudgetech (Rania Stewart). Thanks to Phil Kirschner for alerting me to this work in his excellent LinkedIn post on the study, which linked to an insightful article Phil co-authored with Natasha Ouslis, PhD and Dr. Julia Sperling-Magro on applying behavioural science and nudging to the workplace. FIG 4: Hype Cycle for the Future of Work, 2024 (Source: Gartner) NICKY DRIES, JOOST LUYCKX, AND PHILIP ROGIERS - What 570 Experts Predict the Future of Work Will Look Like While it’s impossible to know exactly what the future of work will look like, it doesn’t stop (lots of!) people from having opinions. In their study, Nicky Dries, Joost Luyckx, and Philip Rogiers from KU Leuven, asked 570 experts to rank the likelihood of predictions made by technologists, economists and journalists. They landed on the sequence of events laid out in FIG 5, which get increasingly concerning and dystopian by the decade. Not one for the faint hearted! FIG 5: A timeline of future of work predictions (Source: Dries et al) MCKINSEY - Charting a path to the data- and AI-driven enterprise of 2030 Generative AI has increased the focus on data, putting pressure on companies to make substantive shifts to build a truly data-based organization. These are the opening words to a recent article by McKinsey’s Dr. Asin Tavakoli, Holger Harreis, Kayvaun Rowshankish, and Michael Bogobowicz, which provides guidance on seven essential priorities for leaders to focus on to realise the data-driven enterprise of 2030. They argue that the key enabler to realising the potential of GenAI is data: “Without access to good and relevant data, this new world of possibilities and value will remain out of reach.” Three of the seven priorities outlined are (1) Data Leadership (“Companies need to find leaders skilled in governance and compliance, engineering and architecture, and business value"). (2) Talent (see FIG 6), and (3) Digital Trust. FIG 6: New skills to manage GenAI will likely lead to both expanded and new data roles (Source: McKinsey) PwC - 2024 Workforce Radar Report Executive Summary | Full Paper The workforce of today won’t become the workforce of tomorrow unless businesses act right now. But how? That’s the exam question that PwC’s inaugural Workforce Radar study attempts to answer across an insightful and thought-provoking report of 48 pages. The research identifies five workforce signals (see FIG 7) that business leaders and chief people officers can use to deliver enterprise-wide transformation. (1) Taking both a talent magnet and talent factory approach (e.g. levers such as meaningful work, skill-building, and culture). (2) Devising a location strategy that appreciates over time. (3) The intelligent enterprise – through HR harnessing and taking the lead on GenAI (see FIG 8). (4) Empowering transformation with a workforce balance sheet. (5) Investing in building transformative leadership. Kudos to the authors: Anthony Abbatiello, Julia Lamm, Reid Carpenter, Craig O'Donnell, and Christopher Hannegan. FIG 7: Five Workforce Radar Signals (Source: PwC) FIG 8: Emerging areas for Leading Digital HR Leaders to lean-in (Source: PwC) PEOPLE ANALYTICS NAOMI VERGHESE, JONATHAN FERRAR, AND JORDAN PETTMAN - Building the People Analytics Ecosystem: Operating Model v2.0 ARTICLE | FULL REPORT In the August edition of the Data Driven HR Monthly, I highlighted the new Insight222 study on the evolution of the people analytics operating model. This month I’d like to highlight one specific aspect of the report about the role of the people analytics leader. The research, which was conducted by my colleagues, Naomi Verghese, Jonathan Ferrar and Jordan Pettman, found that three profiles of people analytics leader are emerging (see FIG 9): (1) Data and Analytics Specialist Leader (focused on a scope for data and analytics research, insights and analytical product development and deployment). (2) Analytics-led Strategy Leader (encompassing a broad set of analytics responsibilities: consulting, research, employee listening, product development, reporting, data governance, workforce planning and AI). (3) Portfolio Analytics Leader (responsibility for people analytics and one or more other closely associated topic, such as people strategy, HR technology, HR operations, skills management, or employee experience). Read the report for more detail on each of the profiles together with examples of each leader persona Featuring Anthony Ferreras, Aashish Sharma, and Alexis Saussinan. FIG 9: Responsibilities of the three people analytics leader personas, aligned to the People Analytics Ecosystem (Source: Insight222) COLE NAPPER, JIN YAN, AND BEN ZWEIG - What is happening to people analytics? A 15- year trend (Part 1) How has people analytics employment changed in the last 15 years, and specifically how has the environment changed in the last two years? That was the question that Cole Napper along with Jin Yan and Ben Zweig sought to answer after being inspired by Alexis Fink to analyse these topics. The study identified a number of interesting – and perhaps counterintuitive – findings. These include: (1) People analytics positions in the US have actually declined in the last two years – the data suggests more than 1,000 people have left the field during this time (see FIG 10). (2) 83% of people leaving the field move to roles outside people analytics but mostly in HR. (3) People analytics positions are sensitive to changes in interest rates and money supply. FIG 10: People analytics positions have been decreasing in the last two years (Source: Revelio Labs) PIETRO MAZZOLENI - People Data Excellence: Driving Quality through Empowerment, Standardization, and Automation Ensuring high-quality (people) data is crucial for building leaders' trust in data-driven talent decisions and reducing the need for manual reconciliation. Moreover, maintaining top-tier data quality is essential for the successful implementation of AI and GenAI technologies. In the latest edition of his excellent People Data Platform newsletter, Pietro Mazzoleni breaks down the three ingredients IBM brought together to build Workforce 360, IBM’s internal people data platform, and deliver people data excellence: (1) Empowerment (“Putting Data & Knowledge in the Hands of Users”). (2) Standardisation (“Establishing a Unified Approach for data and processes”). (3) Automation (“Enhancing Efficiency Through Technology”). FIG 11: Source – Pietro Mazzoleni HENRIK HÅKANSSON - People Analytics: Generative AI | AMIT MOHINDRA – Definitions of People Analytics | KEITH MCNULTY - The Three Most Common Statistical Tests You Should Deeply Understand | LAURA HILGERS - How to Measure Quality of Hire, According to 4 Experts | JILL BARTH - How people analytics transformed this org’s HR from old-school to inspirational In each edition of the Data Driven HR Monthly, I feature a collection of articles by current and recent people analytics leaders. These are intended to act as a spur and inspiration to the field. Five are highlighted in this month’s edition. (1) Henrik Håkansson highlights a common predicament for people analytics leaders – stakeholder requests to implement GenAI. He offers sage advice on the ideal response: “GenAI is a solution. So naturally I ask: What is the problem? What is the value? Why would GenAI be better than what we are doing today? Are we trying to save money and cut costs, or actually do things better or faster?” (2) Amit Mohindra assembles a handy list of definitions of people analytics. (3) As Keith McNulty explains, hypothesis testing is one of the most fundamental elements of inferential statistics. In his article, Keith uses an example to show three common hypothesis tests (Welch’s t-test, Correlation test, and Chi-square test of difference in proportion) and how they work under the hood, as well as showing how to run them in R and Python and to understand the results. (4) Laura Hilgers’ article on the elusive quality of hire metric is a must-read for people analytics and talent acquisition professionals. It features guidance from four experts in the field: Hung Lee, Tim Sackett, SPHR, SCP (see FIG 12 for Tim’s equation to measure quality of hire), Stacey A. Gordon, MBA, and Jennifer McClure. (5) Finally, Sonia Boyle, CHRL - chief people officer at Gore Mutual, explains to Jill Barth HR Tech Editor how people analytics has been at the centre of the company’s HR transformation. FIG 12: How to measure Quality of Hire (Source: Tim Sackett) THE EVOLUTION OF HR, LEARNING, AND DATA DRIVEN CULTURE DAVE ULRICH - Realizing Talent Advantage: Evidence and Implications from the Organization Guidance System In 2020, Dave Ulrich and his colleagues at The RBL Group, developed the Organization Guidance System (OGS), which was designed to align desired stakeholder outcomes across four human capital pathways: talent, organisation, leadership and human resources. Five years on, in a new series of articles, Dave provides an update on the key findings to date. In this article, Dave focuses on the talent pathway, highlighting ten talent investments that deliver stakeholder value, and then presents analysis from 187 companies on the relative impact of these investments across five stakeholder outcomes (see FIG 13). The article then describes how individual companies can use the OGS to guide investment in the areas that will provide them with the greatest return. FIG 13: Heatmap of impact of ten talent initiatives on five stakeholder outcomes (Source: Dave Ulrich) JILL GOLDSTEIN, CHRIS HAVRILLA, CHACKO THOMAS, AND CATHY FILLARE - Reimagine human potential in the gen AI era: Revolutionizing work to boost business value With their unique perspective and understanding of organizational culture, workforce needs, skills development, and change management, HR leaders are well-positioned to take a leadership role in their organization’s future of work strategy. A new study by the IBM Institute for Business Value and Oracle, highlights the top concerns facing executives around the future of work, including the need for a skills-focused foundation and a well-defined strategy. The big takeaway for HR leaders is that while executives acknowledge that HR contributes to their organisation’s future of work strategy, not enough of them are in the driver’s seat. Only one in five executives say HR owns the future of work strategy in their organisation today. The report provides guidance to HR leaders on possible actions: (1) Build a future-ready culture that encourages experimentation. (2) Give your workforce a voice in the future of work strategy. (3) Drive technology transformation and champion AI use case adoption. The report also highlights critical workforce skills that will increase in demand by 2026 (see FIG 14). (Authors: Jill Goldstein, Chris Havrilla, Chacko Thomas, and Cathy Fillare). FIG 14: Critical workforce capabilities—increases from today to 2026 (Source: IBM Institute of Business Value) WORKFORCE PLANNING, ORG DESIGN, AND SKILLS-BASED ORGANISATIONS MCKINSEY - The gen AI skills revolution: Rethinking your talent strategy Developing the software talent companies need to grow means thinking in terms of skills rather than roles to navigate this period of uncertainty around talent. According to McKinsey research, nearly 70 percent of top economic performers, versus just half of their peers, use their own software to differentiate themselves from their competitors. GenAI offers an opportunity to multiply this value. In the article, Alharith Hussin, Anna Wiesinger, Charlotte Relyea, Martin Harrysson, Suman Thareja, Prakhar Dixit and Thao Dürschlag, provide guidance on: (1) The new skills software teams will require. (2) How their evolution will alter roles and risks. (3) How companies can orient their talent management practices toward developing skills for greater flexibility and responsiveness. This includes grounding strategic workforce planning in business needs and skills. The talent transformation starts with HR leaders developing a strategic workforce plan that’s built around skills. FIG 15: Generative AI affects every phase of the software development life cycle (Source: McKinsey) EMPLOYEE LISTENING, EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE, AND EMPLOYEE WELLBEING VOLKER JACOBS – Squaring the Circle: Why the old promise of P&O transformation –more for less – can finally be fulfilled With effective, generative AI, P&O transformations can deliver a better, friction-free work experience for managers and employees. With a friction-free experience for managers and employees, we enable higher productivity and engagement levels. And it goes without saying that with AI taking on P&O tasks we can reduce cost of the function: More for less. Squaring the circle. Three ingredients: Data, AI, and EX. In his thoughtful paper, Volker Jacobs, CEO at employee experience experts TI PEOPLE, highlights how HR transformations have historically undelivered their promise of more business value at lower cost. Instead, Volker argues, with the capabilities offered through AI and digitisation allied to rising expectations for better work experiences, the scene is now set to realise the dream of ‘more for less’. The catalyst? A shift from transformation focus on process to data as one of three ingredients to square the circle: Data, AI and Employee Experience leading to the business outcomes including improved productivity, better customer experience, and lower cost (see FIG 16). FIG 16: Shifting HR transformation focus from process to data (Source: Volker Jacobs, TI People) MALISSA CLARK - A Workaholic’s Guide to Reclaiming Your Life In the latest edition of the Harvard Business Review, the Big Idea Series focuses on an increasingly important topic: Overcoming Overwork and Workaholism. Workaholism is defined in the lead article, by Malissa Clark, as: “Workaholism is when work dominates your thoughts and your activities, to the detriment of other aspects of your life, including but not limited to your relationships and your health.” Does that sound uncomfortably familiar? If so, like me you’ll probably welcome the six coping strategies Malissa outlines in her article: (1) Redefining “urgent”. (2) Reinventing the to-do list (see FIG 17). (3) Learning to say “no” and delegate. (4) Fixing the workaholic clock. (5) Controlling rumination. (6) Embracing rest and recovery. Through mechanisms such as redefining what is and is not urgent, fixing the workaholic clock, and embracing rest and recovery, workaholics can unlearn toxic behaviors and reclaim their time and lives. FIG 17: The Eisenhower Matrix (Source: Marissa Clark, Harvard Business Review) LEADERSHIP, CULTURE, AND LEARNING PER HUGANDER AND AMY EDMONDSON - Skills Training Links Psychological Safety to Revenue Growth Organizational performance can be improved by viewing psychological safety as a trainable skill that individuals develop with practice. Hugander Per and Amy Edmondson present a case study from Nordic bank SEB where training for executives on psychological safety and perspective taking was identified as the catalyst that enabled the investment bank to achieve revenues 25% above yearly targets in a strategically important market segment. The article provides four recommendations for leaders who want to make progress on strategic challenges and improve financial results by leveraging psychological safety and perspective-taking: (1) Focus on two levels in parallel: individuals and teams. (2) Expand leadership responsibility. (3) Keep strategy and performance front and centre. (4) Link skills to short-term gains to counteract perceived costs. For more on psychological safety, tune in to Amy’s conversation with me on the Digital HR Leaders podcast: How Learning to Fail Can Help People and Organisations to Thrive. ANDREW WHITE, ADAM CANWELL, AND MICHAEL SMETS - Is Your Organizational Transformation Veering Off Course? Leaders who achieve successful transformations create and maintain an environment where people can experiment, learn, and take ownership of their work — and ultimately feel good about their effort According to a study by Andrew White, Adam Canwell and Michael Smets, 96% of all organisational transformations face significant challenges that can derail the whole program. Their research identified that changes in a team’s emotional energy (“the collective mood, vibe, and intensity of emotions within a group”) can signal when a transformation is in danger (see FIG 18). They then reveal the three-step process successful leaders use to navigate a turning point – increasing transformation performance by 12 times from 6 to 72 per cent: (1) They look for shifts in the team’s emotional energy (e.g. lack of clarity on how to proceed, ineffective collaboration, decreased engagement). (2) They dig into the underlying issue at play – by involving the whole team to decide the course of action. (3) They get to action — quickly (e.g. by creating team alignment, adjusting organisational priorities, and investing in the skills and mindset required for the transformed company). FIG 18: How emotional energy can signal a transformational turning point (Source: White et al) DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION, AND BELONGING LORI NISHIURA MACKENZIE, SARAH A. SOULE, SHELLEY J CORRELL, AND MELISSA C. THOMAS HUNT - How DEI Can Survive This Era of Backlash When they’re given adequate support — like protected time, advancement opportunities, leadership development, and compensation for their DEI work — ERG leaders can act as a strategic conduit between employees and organizational leaders. Despite recent backlash against and cuts to organisational DEI initiatives, researchers from the Stanford VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab - Lori Nishiura Mackenzie, Sarah Soule, Shelley J. Correll, and Melissa C. Thomas-Hunt - argue in their Harvard Business Review article that DEI isn’t dead in the U.S. Instead, they say it’s experiencing a period of what social movement scholars call “closed doors,” where the obvious route for change is no longer easily accessible. They recently convened a gathering of 14 chief diversity officers (CDOs) to unpack what’s happening in their world. In the article, they highlight the striking similarities between current DEI strategies and the tactics used by feminist movement builders during times of closed doors — and present four strategies for continuing the important work of DEI while it’s under attack: (1) Sustain networks of people engaged in DEI work. (2) Preserve the collective memory. (3) Reframe and rename the work for survival. (4) Nurture the collective identity within the DEI community. HR TECH VOICES Much of the innovation in the field continues to be driven by the vendor community, and I’ve picked out a few resources from September that I recommend readers delve into: JASON CORSELLO AND THOMAS OTTER | ACADIAN VENTURES - 2024 Future of Work 100 - An excellent resource compiled by Jason Corsello and Thomas Otter of Acadian Ventures counting down the top 100 venture-backed companies building businesses that make work better, fairer, more meaningful, and ultimately more productive. Together, the Future of Work 100 has raised a cumulative $29.5 billion with a total market valuation over $140.3 billion. FIG 19: Source – Acadian Ventures PHIL WILLBURN - Global Workforce Report: Top Talent Is Hard to Find, Harder to Keep – Phil Willburn, head of people analytics at Workday summarises the key findings of the recently released Workday Global Workforce Report: Restoring Trust Before Your Top People Leave covering hiring, turnover of top performers, meaningful work, and internal mobility. Phil also highlights the key actions for business leaders: (1) Rebuild trust through transparency. (2) Make work meaningful. (3) Personalise your employee experience efforts based on tenure. (4) Embrace AI strategically. An absolute must-read. FIG 20: Current use of AI and ML for recruiting (Source: Workday) CATHERINE COPPINGER - Manager Facetime: Why It's Useful and How to Measure It – The latest in a series of insightful articles by Catherine Coppinger of Worklytics analyses the importance of manager facetime and provides guidance on how to use the insights identified to improve team effectiveness. FIG 21 – Source: Worklytics BEN COWAN - You Don’t Need to Abandon Jobs to Become a Skills-Based Organization – Ben Cowan of Degreed explains that while jobs aren’t likely to disappear this shouldn’t hinder efforts by companies to adopt skills-based talent practices: “The reality is that moving away from jobs is not something most organizations are likely to do in the near term and it does not need to hold you back from adopting other skills-based practices.” FRANCISCO MARIN - Towards a Network-First Future of Work – Francisco Marin of Cognitive Talent Solutions provides an insightful breakdown of the differences between Hierarchy-First and Network-First approaches across then organisational concepts (see FIG 22): “While hierarchies have long been the norm, favoring clear lines of authority and collaborative control, the network-first model prioritizes collaborative freedom, decentralization, and the strength of informal relationships.” FIG 22: Hierarchy-First vs. Network-First Approach (Source: Francisco Marin) PODCASTS OF THE MONTH In another month of high-quality podcasts, I’ve selected five gems for your aural pleasure: (you can also check out the latest episodes of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast – see ‘From My Desk’ below): JEREMY SHAPIRO AND CHRIS SHULTZ - HR, Workforce Automation, and GenAI at Merck – Jeremy Shapiro and Chris Shultz join Stacia Sherman Garr and Dani Johnson on RedThread Research’s Workplace Stories podcast to share how (and why) Merck is embracing AI to streamline HR processes, support innovation, and maintain ethical considerations. COURTNEY MCMAHON – People Analytics at Colgate-Palmolive – Courtney McMahon joins Cole Napper and Scott Hines, PhD on the Directionally Correct podcast to discuss how to get a smaller people analytics function to punch above its weight, and how Colgate-Palmolive is using One Model to scale people analytics to HRBPs and the business. KEITH MCNULTY – Applying Mathematical Principles to People Analytics Part 1 | Part 2 – In a two-part episode, Keith McNulty joins hosts Matthew Lampe, PsyD, Natasha Ouslis, PhD, and Bilal Alperen Ergun on the ScienceForWork podcast to discuss how mathematical principles can be applied to organizational data and people analytics. JEFFREY PFEFFER - How Modern Work is Creating a Health Crisis - Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behaviour at Stanford University and author of Dying for a Paycheck, joins Lars Schmidt on Redefining Work to discuss employee well-being and explore the harmful effects of workplace stress and poor working conditions on employee health. SUE CANTRELL AND TRAVIS DION - Beyond productivity: Rethinking performance metrics – In an episode of Deloitte’s Capital H podcast, host David Mallon, talks to Susan Cantrell, and Travis Dion about moving beyond traditional employee productivity metrics —followed by a roundtable discussion featuring David, Sue, Julie Duda, and Diane Sinti. VIDEO OF THE MONTH LASZLO BOCK - Former Google exec talks about what makes a strong CHRO candidate In an interview with Human Resource Executive, Laszlo Bock, former Head of HR at Google and a arch proponent of people analytics, provides guidance on what makes a strong chief people officer. He emphasises the need for HR executives to develop their understanding of business beyond a simple familiarity with their company’s products and services: “It’s not that (CHRO candidates) don’t understand that we make widgets. It’s that they don’t understand why we’re willing to pay $1.3 billion to buy a company but not $1.4 billion.” For aspiring chief people officers, I’d also recommend investigating the Berkeley Transformative CHRO Leadership Program, where Bock is co-faculty director. BOOK OF THE MONTH RAVIN JESUTHASAN AND TANUJ KAPILASHRAMI – The Skills-Powered Organization: The Journey to the Next-Generation Enterprise Ravin Jesuthasan, CFA, FRSA and Tanuj Kapilashrami provide a step-by-step guide to designing, implementing and activating the skills-powered organisation. They outline why and how jobs are giving way to skills as the currency of work and why this pivot requires us to rethink everything we know about work. The inspiring cases presented in the book discuss how leading companies are reinventing themselves to be skills-based organisations and how this is helping them to transform value for customers, communities, and stakeholders. RESEARCH REPORT OF THE MONTH MARGRIET BENTVELZEN, CORINE BOON, AND DEANNE N. DEN HARTOG - A person centered approach to individual people analytics adoption – In their paper, Margriet Bentvelzen, Corine Boon, Deanne Den Hartog study people analytics adoption through the lens of the implementation of people analytics technology. They identify four profiles related to differences in user satisfaction and the frequency and versatility of PA technology use. They demonstrate that performance benefits, social influence, required effort, and facilitating conditions jointly affect the use of PA technology, but that the latter two might be the most influential factors. FIG 23 demonstrates the four user profiles identified in the paper: the skeptic diplomats, the optimistic strugglers, the optimists, and the enthusiasts. Thanks to Dirk Jonker for highlighting this insightful contribution to the field. FIG 23: Source – Bentvelze,  Boon and Den Hartog (2024) FROM MY DESK September saw the return of the Digital HR Leaders podcast after its summer sojourn with the first four episodes of Series 41, kindly sponsored by our friends at Visier Inc.. Thanks to Adedamola Adeleke and the team. LYNDA GRATTON AND DIANE GHERSON - The Key Role of HR In Successfully Integrating a Blended Workforce – Lynda Gratton and Diane Gherson join me to discuss the impact of a blended workforce on organisational structures, the evolving role of managers, and the opportunities and challenges for HR. ANGELA LE MATHON - How GSK is Using Data, Analytics and AI to Drive its HR Transformation - Angela LE MATHON, Vice President of People Data and Analytics at GSK, joins me to explore how GSK is utilising data-driven strategies and AI integration to future-proof their HR initiatives. KEITH BIGELOW - HR’s Strategic Role in Managing the AI-driven Talent Restructure – Keith Bigelow, Chief Product Officer at Visier, joins me to explore the critical role HR plays in leading digital transformation—and how AI is changing the game. TANUJ KAPILASHRAMI AND RAVIN JESUTHASAN - How to Build the Skills-Powered Organisation – Tanuj Kapilashrami and Ravin Jesuthasan, CFA, FRSA join me to share insights from their book, The Skills-Powered Organisation: The Journey to the Next-Generation Enterprise (see Book of the Month). Tanuj also shares insights from the skills journey at Standard Chartered, including how the bank quantified a saving of $60,000 per person by upskilling and reskilling employees to redeploy talent from sunset jobs to sunrise jobs. Skills [are] becoming the currency of work and work flowing not to jobs, but to skills... If done well, it has the massive power to unlock untapped productivity potential within the company. LOOKING FOR A NEW ROLE IN PEOPLE ANALYTICS OR HR TECH? I’d like to highlight once again the wonderful resource created by Richard Rosenow and the One Model team of open roles in people analytics and HR technology, which now numbers close to 500 roles – and has now been developed into a LinkedIn newsletter too. THANK YOU Srikant Chellappa and the team at Engagedly Inc for including me in their 8th annual list of the 2024 Top 100 HR Influencers Hallie Bregman, PhD for her wonderfully generous post following our meeting at the Boston People Analytics MeetUp organised by Ramesh Karpagavinayagam – Hallie, it was wonderful to meet you too. Paul Daley for referencing the Digital HR Leaders podcast episode with Diane Gherson and Lynda Gratton in his post on how HR strategy needs to support the independent / blended / contingent workforce of the future Similarly thanks to Olimpiusz Papiez for his post sharing his takeaways from the podcast episode with Diane and Lynda Thanks also to Jaqueline Oliveira-Cella for her post, are you ready for the shift, which was also inspired by the podcast episode with Diane and Lynda Piyush Mathur for providing his takeaways on insight without outcome is overhead in relation to his speaking sessions at the Peer Meetings in New York and Vevey for member organisations of the Insight222 People Analytics Program Esther Abraas for including my article, The role of Organisational Network Analysis in People Analytics, in her excellent list of ONA resources. Wayne Tarken for his post on How AI can Help HR, which was informed by the digital HR Leaders podcast episode with Nickle Lamoreaux on how AI is transforming HR at IBM. Thomas Kohler for including the podcast episode with Keith Bigelow in his weekly round-up of future of work resources. The Talent Games for including me in their list of HR Leaders redefining the Future of Workin recognition of HR Professionals Day. Finally, a huge thank you to the following people who shared the August edition of Data Driven HR Monthly and other content in the last few weeks. It's much appreciated: Craig Forman Zornitza Iankova, SPHR Brandon Merritt Johnson Hrvoje Bulat Rebecca Hone Michael Arena Emma Mercer (Assoc CIPD, MLPI) Dr. Max Muge Bakkaloglu Priyanka Mehrotra Kerry Ghize Deviprasad Panda Richard Stein Stela Lupushor David Balls (FCIPD) Emily Ricci Danielle Farrell Dan George Patrick Coolen Catriona Lindsay Katrina A. Stevens, CHRE Kouros Behzad Kathleen Kruse Martha Curioni Adam McKinnon, PhD. Greg Newman Dr Philip Gibbs Sally Smith Hanadi El Sayyed David van Lochem Amardeep Singh, MBA Rick Rome Ken Oehler Vaibhav Deshmukh María Victoria Sáinz Roshaunda Green, MBA, CDSP, Phenom Certified Recruiter Aysun Öz Serena H. Huang, Ph.D. Nelson Spencer Tristan Hack Penny Newman Vivek Ojha Aravind Warrier Francisca Solano Beneitez Kalifa Oliver, Ph.D. Stephanie Murphy, Ph.D. John Healy Greg Pryor Lewis Garrad Jose Luis Chavez Vasquez Audrey Burke-McCarthy, MBA, Adv Dip Coaching, MII Grad Aurélie Crégut Max Blumberg (JA) ?? Vanessa Monsequeira Shujaat Ahmad Jeff Wellstead Jackson Roatch Maria Alice Jovinski Rafael Uribe Truong Hong Ha (Mr Niem Tin) Dan Weiss David Hodges Toby Culshaw David McLean Dr. Peter Schulz-Rittich Timo Tischer Stephanie Denino Jacqui Brassey, PhD, MA, MAfN ?️ (née Schouten) Gianni Giacomelli Terri Horton, EdD, MBA, MA, SHRM-CP, PHR Placid Jover Andrews Cobbinah, MLPI, ACIHRM Emily Killham Al Adamsen Tim Frazier Tim Peffers Julie Asselin Chandresh Natu Anabel Fall Ralf Buechsenschuss Anna A. Tavis, PhD Marcela Niemeyer Meta McKinney, MLIS Aritra Majumdar Gustavo Araujo Vijaya Das Kirsten Edwards Graham Tollit Joy Kolb Remco van Es Ahmed Salah ?? Sebastian Knepper Melissa Beasley Bo Vialle-Derksen Malgorzata Langlois Abhilash Bodanapu Isabel Naidoo Marino Mugayar-Baldocchi Nirit Peled-Muntz Ron Ben Oz Littal Shemer Haim (ליטל שמר חיים) Joseph Frank, PhD CCP GWCCM Bob Pulver Jaejin Lee Kristhy Bartels Geetanjali Gamel Chris Hare Alicia Roach Caitie Jacobson John Gunawan Doug Shagam Davey Nickels Paul Davies Tatu Westling Mia Norgren Nick Lynn Alexandra Nawrat Gal Mozes, PhD Dave Millner Prachi Agasti Jacob Nielsen Matt Elk Chris Long Kimberly Rose Ilse Venter Søren Kold Irada Sadykhova Dave Fineman Agnes Garaba Sebastián Mestre Victoria Holdsworth Elpida Ormanidou Megan Buttita, MLIS Danielle Bushen Robert Bolton Stephen Hickey Dolapo (Dolly) Oyenuga Higor Gomes Irene Wong Ludek Stehlik, Ph.D. Sonia Mooney Mariami Lolashvili Joonghak Lee Raja Sengupta Swechha Mohapatra (IHRP-SP, SHRM-SCP, CIPD) Alfonso Bustos, Ph.D. Marcela Mury Olivier Bougarel Martijn Wiertz Veronika Birkheim ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Green ?? is a globally respected author, speaker, conference chair, and executive consultant on people analytics, data-driven HR and the future of work. As Managing Partner and Executive Director at Insight222, he has overall responsibility for the delivery of the Insight222 People Analytics Program, which supports the advancement of people analytics in over 90 global organisations. Prior to co-founding Insight222, David accumulated over 20 years experience in the human resources and people analytics fields, including as Global Director of People Analytics Solutions at IBM. As such, David has extensive experience in helping organisations increase value, impact and focus from the wise and ethical use of people analytics. David also hosts the Digital HR Leaders Podcast and is an instructor for Insight222's myHRfuture Academy. His book, co-authored with Jonathan Ferrar, Excellence in People Analytics: How to use Workforce Data to Create Business Value was published in the summer of 2021. MEET ME AT THESE EVENTS I'll be speaking about people analytics, the future of work, and data driven HR at a number of upcoming events in 2024: September 30 - New York Strategic HR Analytics MeetUp - Workestration: Working across human, digital and physical workplace dimensi (New York) October 2-3 - People Analytics World (New York) October 16-17 - UNLEASH World (Paris) October 22-23 - Insight222 North American Peer Meeting (hosted by Workday in Pleasanton, CA) - exclusively for member organisations of the Insight222 People Analytics Program November 12-14 - Workday Rising EMEA (London) November 19-20 - Insight222 European Peer Meeting (hosted by Merck in Darmstadt, Germany) - exclusively for member organisations of the Insight222 People Analytics Program More events will be added as they are confirmed.
    Productivity
    2024年09月29日
  • Productivity
    Josh Bersin: With Thoughtful Design And Culture, Dropbox Proves Remote Work Is A Winner Dropbox, a company with a $7 billion market cap and over $2.5 billion in revenue, has adopted a "Virtual First" strategy in response to the pandemic, transforming its work model from lavish San Francisco offices to a remote-first approach. This shift was led by CEO Drew Houston and Chief People Officer Melanie Rosenwasser, moving away from an office-centric culture to enhance productivity and teamwork through remote work. The strategy includes home office stipends, Dropbox Studios for face-to-face interactions, and innovative meeting management services. Despite initial challenges, this approach has led to high employee satisfaction and a strong talent strategy, allowing Dropbox to thrive in a competitive tech landscape. One of the most interesting tech companies we’ve studied is Dropbox, a $7 billion market cap rocket ship generating more than $2.5 billion in revenue. This kind of company, which sells a platform that competes with Microsoft, Google, and other major players, lives in a world of brutal competition: competition for product leadership, sales deals, and talent. And today, as AI engineers are in short supply, Dropbox has to attract the best and brightest to continue its growth. In its early days, Dropbox was a typical San Francisco-based tech company with gourmet food, gorgeous offices, and a culture of lavish benefits. In the pre-pandemic 2010s this was the rage, and Dropbox became a hot place to work. The pandemic upset that applecart. Not only did “work at home” obsolete the company’s real estate and gourmet investments, it forced the company to rethink its culture. The Chief People Officer, Melanie Rosenwasser, told me that the first few months of the pandemic were traumatic. Employees were upset by working at home and weren’t sure what the company stood for. She and Drew Houston, the CEO, had to rethink the whole operating model. As Melanie described it to me, they took a risky, irreversible move. They decided to totally shift their operating model from that of “San Francisco gourmet offices” to “energized, empowered, team-based, remote work.” Not an easy decision. Note that just this week Eric Schmidt, the ex-CEO and board member at Google, blamed Sundar Pichai for “remote work laziness” as cause for Google’s “falling behind in AI.” So the debate about remote work continues, and some of the most successful leaders still haven’t figured it out. Well Drew, Melanie, and the Dropbox team placed a bet. Knowing that the pandemic had interrupted their campus investments, they dramatically shifted to a “Virtual First” strategy. And they told the company “we are moving away from an office-centric culture” and going to a model of remote-first work. And this included converting offices to Dropbox Studios as well as a carefully architected approach to teamwork, collaboration, and periodic face-to-face activity. Rather than ask people to “come in 3 days a week” (this kind of policy bugs people because they drag themselves into the office just to zoom with others at home), they designed one of the most sophisticated approaches I’ve seen. Employees receive a generous stipend for home office improvements and the company now offers a series of programs, services, and tools to make team and personal productivity thrive. While it seemed risky it worked exceedingly well. By holistically thinking about culture, management, teamwork, and productivity, the company developed a set of innovations that empower people to work at their best, meet with their teams at least one week per quarter, and come together when and where it makes sense. And this model, which looks like an HR innovation, became a business innovation that helps the company thrive. While Dropbox lost a significant number of employees at first, now the company has one of the highest Glassdoor ratings in its industry (4.3, 85% recommend CEO, higher than Google). Dropbox wins awards for employment brand. And not only does Virtual First create productive operations, it helps the company build “tools for the new world of work,” which is where every company is going. Work at home is complicated. In between dogs, kids, gardeners and delivery people we’re futzing with MS Teams, Zoom, Webex, Google Docs, and dozens of other tools. Most of them work well but they’re each different and inconsistent. Dropbox, as a “system designed for remote work” simplifies this enormously. Virtual First helps Dropbox test its products on itself. Why has Virtual First succeeded? As Melanie and the team explains, the shift turbo-charged its talent strategy. Now Dropbox can hire people from any geography in the world (reducing labor cost) and they look for high-energy, passionate, high-performers (not employees who like the offices). Teamwork is stronger than ever. I know, from our company, that this works well. We have 40+ people in our organization and we rely on frequent face-to-face meetings, an open culture, and tremendous amounts of training and communication to grow. Back when I ran our company in an office we hardly talked with each other unless we had a meeting. Things are much more collaborative and productive now. Dropbox has proven this at scale. You can read about Virtual First on the Dropbox website, but one of the innovations I want to point out is the company’s “concierge service” for meetings. (The Offsite Planning Team.) When you as a leader want to have a meeting, this team helps you decide your objectives, reviews the outcomes you want to achieve, and then puts together a detailed plan (location, logistics, agenda, tools) to help you make it work. This removes enormous amounts of wasted time from managers and helps the company operate productively. I cannot tell you how much time I’ve wasted “managing offsite meetings.” To have a seasoned, professional group that helps with this entire strategy in process is a godsend. For Dropbox, this team now knows precisely how the teams work and can continuously improve its consulting services to make sure face-to-face meetings are impactful. A “new manager introduction” meeting, for example, is different from a “get product ready for launch meeting” as you can imagine. How does this apply to your company? Regardless of industry, I guarantee you have remote work teams. Many companies have front line workers (healthcare, retail, manufacturing, transportation) who have to locate with customers. But think about finance teams, IT teams, scientific teams, and HR. We all need productive remote work practices, and Dropbox has proven that a strategic focus on this area will pay off. Melanie and I will be doing a webcast in the near future and she is joining us at our Irresistible 2025 Conference as well. Dropbox has taken the lead in this new world, and they want to share their learnings with all of us.
    Productivity
    2024年08月30日
  • Productivity
    Josh Bersin: When Will The Trillions Invested In AI Pay Off? Sooner Than You Think. 近年来，生成式人工智能（GenAI）的投资已达数万亿美元，但围绕其回报问题的争论不断升级。一些分析师，如麻省理工学院教授达隆·阿西莫格鲁（Daron Acemoglu）和纽约大学心理学与神经科学教授加里·马库斯（Gary Marcus），对AI的经济影响持悲观态度，认为其对美国生产力和GDP增长的推动作用有限，甚至可能导致市场崩溃。相反，另一派如高盛的全球经济学家则乐观地认为，AI有望在未来十年内大幅提高生产力。然而，文章指出，生成式AI的真正价值在于其特定领域的应用。例如，Paradox和Galileo等HR技术平台通过高度专业化的解决方案，显著提升了招聘和人才管理的效率。最终，文章强调，AI行业仍处于早期阶段，成功的关键在于找到具有专注性和精确性的创新解决方案。 In the last few weeks there has been a lot of concern that Gen AI is a “bubble” and companies may never see the return on the $Trillion being spent on infrastructure. Let me cite four analyst’s opinions. Will Today’s Massive AI Investments Pay Off? MIT professor Daron Acemoglu estimates that over the next ten years AI will impact less than 5% of all tasks, concluding that AI will only increase US productivity by .5% and GDP growth by .9% over the next decade. As he puts it, the impact of AI is not “a law of nature.” On a similar vein, Gary Marcus, professor emeritus of psychology and neural science at New York University, believes Gen AI is soon to collapse, and the trillions spent will largely result in a loss of privacy, increase in cyber terror, and a lack of differentiation between providers. The result: a market with low profits and big losses. Goldman Sachs Head of Equity Research Jim Covello is similarly pessimistic, arguing simply that the $1 Trillion spent on AI is focused on tech that cannot truly automate complex tasks, and that vendors’ over-focus on “human-like features” will miss the boat in delivering business productivity.  (He studies stocks, not the economy.) And Goldman Sachs Global Economist, who is a fan, estimates that AI could automate 25% of work tasks and raise US productivity by 9T and GDP by 6.1% over the next decade. He follows the traditional business meme that “AI changes everything” for the better. What’s going on? Quite simply this new technology is very expensive to build, so we’re all unsure where the payoffs will be. Buyers Are Looking For A Return Soon If we discount the work going on at Google, Meta, Perplexity, and Microsoft to build AI-based search businesses, which make money on advertising (Zuckerberg essentially just said that in a few years AI will guarantee your ad spend pays off), corporate IT managers are asking questions. An article in Business Insider pointed to a large Pharma company that cancelled their Microsoft Copilot licenses because the tool was not adding any significant value (Chevron’s CIO was quoted similarly in The Information). Another quoted a Chief Marketing Officer who stated Google Gemini’s email marketing tool and the new AI-powered ad-buying tool performed worse than the human workers it was intended to replace (or support). Given that these tools almost double the “price per user” for the productivity suites, I think it’s fair that CIOs, CMOs, to expect them to pay for themselves fairly quickly. What’s Going On?  The Big Wins Will Be Domain Specific As with all new technologies that enter the market quickly, “the blush on the rose” is over. We’ve been dazzled by the power of ChatGPT and now we’re searching for real solutions to problems. And unlike the internet, where research was funded by the government, there’s going to be a lag (and some risk) between the trillions we spend and the trillions we save. Given that ChatGPT is less than two years old and OpenAI has morphed from a research company into a product company, it’s easy to see what’s happening. Every vendor and tool provider is narrowing its AI “strategy” and not just pasting little AI “stars” on their websites, looking for useful things to do. And this process may take a few years. In the world of HR, I think we can all agree that a “push the button job description generator” is a bit of a commodity. However if the AI analyzes the job title, identifies the skills needed through a large skills engine, and tunes the job description by company size, industry, and role, then it’s a fantastic solution.  (Galileo does this, as does SeekOut, SAP, and some other vendors.) The more “specific” and “narrow” the AI is, the more useful it becomes. Generic LLMs that aren’t highly trained, optimized, and tuned to your company, business, and job are simply not going to command high prices. So while we all thought ChatGPT was Nirvana, we’re now figuring out that highly specialized solutions are the answer. Let me give you some examples. The first is the platform built by Paradox, a pioneering company that started work on AI-based recruiting agents in 2016. Paradox, now valued at around $2 Billion, delivers an end-to-end recruitment platform that automates the entire process of candidate marketing, candidate experience, assessment, selection, interview scheduling, hiring, and onboarding. Most people believe its a “Chatbot” but in reality it’s an AI-powered end-to-end system that radically simplifies and speeds the recruitment process in a groundbreaking way. Companies like 7-11, FedEx, GM, and others see massive improvements in operational efficiency and both candidates, managers, and recruiter adore it. It took Paradox eight years to build this level of integrated solution. The second is our platform Galileo. Galileo, which is now licensed by more than 10,000 HR professionals, is a highly tuned AI agent specifically designed to help HR professionals (leaders, business partners, consultants, recruiters, and other roles) do the “complex work” HR professionals do. It’s not a generic LLM: it’s a highly specialized solution designed specifically for HR professionals, and we’ve added specialized content partners and are building special integrations with other HR platforms. Our clients tell us it’s saving them 1-2 hours a day. The third is the platform HiredScore, that was recently acquired by Workday. Founded in 2012, the HiredScore team built tools to help identify “fit” between individuals and jobs, and tuned its AI to be highly explainable, unbiased, and very easy to use. It took Athena Karp and the team a few years to nail down the use-cases and user interface but now HiredScore is considered one of the most powerful recruitment “orchestration” tools in the market, and is also used for internal hiring and many other applications. Every customer I talk with tells me it’s essential and saves them months of manual, error-prone effort. The fourth is the platform Eightfold, which was invented in 2016 as a way to build “Google-scale” matching between job seekers and jobs. Through many years of engineering, product management, and ongoing sales process the company has become the leader in a new space called “Talent Intelligence,” now a billion dollar rapid-growing category. The company is about ten years old and now has some of the world’s largest companies building their hiring, career management, and talent management processes using AI. Companies like EY, Bayer, and Chevron now use it for all their strategic talent programs. Each of these vendors, including others like Gloat, Sana, Arist, Lightcast, Draup, Uplimit, Firstup, and hundreds of others have patiently taken the power of Generative AI and applied it with laser precision to their solutions. Each of these companies is different, and as we work with them we see lightning bolts of innovation: not in AI itself, but in finding new ways to solve problems and do what I call “crawling up the value curve.” This is the path for AI in the coming years. As with all new technologies, the “trough of disappointment” is always followed by the “bowling pin” of hitting the nail on the head. Innovators, entrepreneurs, and startup founders are the ones who will take GenAI and apply it in unique ways to solve problems. And soon enough, “AI-powered” will be a phrase we barely even need to say. The Best Solutions Will Be Narrow Not Wide GenAI solutions require a large “platform” of data, infrastructure, and software. That alone is not where the value resides. Rather, the big productivity advantages come after years of effort, focusing the data sets and working with customers to find the features, UI designs, and data sets that add enormous value. And we are still in the early stages. If you want to learn more about HR Technology and AI, join me at the HR Technology Conference on September 24-25 in Vegas, or at Unleash in Paris in October 16-17. While I can’t predict who will win the core AI platform game (Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Meta, Amazon will fight it out), I can predicts this: Generative AI will deliver massive improvements in business productivity. You just have to shop around a bit and wait for just the right solutions to arrive.
    Productivity
    2024年08月10日
  • Productivity
    Josh Bersin: 随着经济放缓，关注未来的技能：改变的能力 本周，我们看到美国失业率“上升”到 4.3%，经济学家开始呼吁降低利率。对于那些每天与公司和领导者交流的人来说，我会说我们正经历一个正常的经济周期。 上一次重大衰退（不包括疫情，因为那不是需求放缓）是在2008年和2009年。这意味着我们已经有近16年没有经历严重的经济周期了，几乎是通常周期的两倍。虽然疫情确实让公司放慢了脚步，但我们迅速恢复了。所以从失业率来看，它大致是这样的。 在经历了50年的失业率变化后，目前的失业率比五十年前降低了12%，这让我得出结论，我们正生活在“长期劳动力短缺”中。同时，美国的GDP在此期间增长了1500%。 虽然我们目前的GDP增长可能有所放缓（我认为这是由消费者价格使我们耗尽了支出引起的），但实际上我们只是看到从“工业化、高劳动密集型企业”向所谓的“后工业化”公司的长期转型，这些公司往往需要更少的“工人”和更多高技能员工。（阅读我们的后工业时代研究。） 仍然有大量的小时工工作：护理、医疗、交通、建筑、零售、娱乐、能源和许多其他行业依赖各种类型的“劳动”工人。这些工作随着时间的推移变得越来越自动化，导致工资提高和技能升级，但美国仍有约63%的工人没有大学学位，其中大多数人找到了工作。 虽然每个人似乎对英特尔、UKG, Intuit或其他“与AI相关”的裁员感到有些恐慌，但美国经济的反应良好。我知道许多公司正在试验AI和其他技术，每个公司都担心失去有价值的人才，因为劳动力市场依然竞争激烈。 是的，一些公司会进行裁员。通常这是由糟糕的领导、糟糕的规划或只是对投资者的本能反应引起的。最终，随着出生率保持在低水平，我们仍将面临劳动力短缺，人的价值将继续上升（正如我过去指出的，裁员并非不可避免）。 在过去的三周里，我与欧洲超过20家大公司会面，每家公司都在投资于员工发展、技能再培训、内部流动性和提高生产力的项目。在欧洲，裁员既困难又昂贵，因此公司感受到劳动力短缺的压力，他们仍在投资员工。 至于消费者需求开始下降，我们正面临一个“长期结束”阶段，这是由高价格的延续引起的。消费者对过去五年的高价格感到厌倦，而在此之前，我们经历了近十年的零利率时期，房价和大多数资本品价格持续上涨。现在这两个因素都结束了，我们只是回到了更正常的经济状态。 换句话说，如果你因为“可以”而提高价格，最终你将付出代价，当消费者反抗时。如果你停止投资于员工，他们会“悄然离职”或另寻他处。这些是我认为的“正常商业经济”，我认为我们正看到这种正常性的发生。 作为一个动态组织运营 当然，最大的“趋势”是各行业的数字化和AI革命。汽车制造商被“虚假”引导进入电动车领域，发现混合动力发动机、数字相机和电子产品以及新的购车方式非常具有破坏性。出版商正在找出如何应对AI平台，这次他们保留了自己的知识产权并协商了许可协议。能源公司正在慢慢转向新来源，其他公司都在找出如何实现数字化、AI赋能，并进一步简化我们生产和销售的产品。 这都是商业的“激动人心的工作”，一切都与成为一个动态组织有关。我们的研究指出，以动态方式运营完全是关于人。 经济，通常以周期性变化（通常由过度兴奋和随之而来的疲惫引起）为特征，只是需要应对的事情。对于我这样经历了许多这种高峰和低谷的人来说，当事情不再上升并且我们看到一些冷却期时，我总是感到有点“解脱”。 是的，股市可能会暴跌。它总会在某个时候发生。但那实际上是“众包”效应，通常与我们的公司无关。如果你照顾好你的客户，投资未来，迅速学习AI和所有新技术，你将顺利过渡。正如许多HR领导本月与我谈到的，你的成功很大程度上取决于人。 未来的技能很明确：推动变革的能力 今天我与一群我们每隔几周就交流的HR领导进行了一次有趣的会议。每一位CHRO和其他领导都告诉我们，他们正在投资于员工的“变革管理”和“业务转型”技能。这意味着什么？ 这意味着这样。虽然我们都希望公司有更多的工程师、制造专家、科学家和销售与营销专家，但我们最需要的“技能”是“推动变革的能力”。这种特定的技能非常复杂，需要时间来学习，并且在当前尤为重要。这引出了我的最后一点。 如果你是图凡·厄金比尔吉，劳斯莱斯的首席执行官，你正处于业务转型的过程中，旨在推动工程效率和卓越，你不仅要担心工程师。你要担心那些能够推动、领导、激励和创造变革的人。我相信，这些就是大家常谈的“未来技能”。如果你作为一个专业人士、经理或领导者真正知道如何“推动和执行变革”，这些经济周期在你的职业生涯中只是“一个小波折”。 在与HR领导交谈超过30年并在许多周期中经营我们自己的业务后，我敦促你“不要过于担心”这些大的经济数据。我们正生活在一个每个公司中每个人的经济价值飙升的时期。投资于你的员工和自己，随着经济的变化，你会做得很好。   https://joshbersin.com/2024/08/as-the-economy-changes-focus-on-the-real-skills-of-the-future/
    Productivity
    2024年08月03日
  • Productivity
    The Key to a Thriving Workforce? A Smart Approach to AI 微软的最新数据强调了人工智能对员工赋权、活力和生产力的积极影响。领导者可以通过关注其员工队伍是否在“繁荣”中来促进良好表现，微软将“繁荣”定义为被赋予权力和充满活力地进行有意义的工作。员工信号调查显示，人工智能的使用能通过减少乏味工作并促进有意义的工作来提高生产力、努力和影响。人工智能工具还与更高的赋权和活力得分相关，表明员工队伍的“繁荣”。成功的关键在于将人工智能与支持性文化相结合，提供必要的培训，并使人工智能项目与公司目标保持一致。 New data reveals how access to AI can help employees feel more empowered and energized, and find more meaning in their work. what’s the best way for leaders to foster good performance? How can they tell if their efforts are successful or not? Often, companies try to answer these questions by measuring metrics like engagement or financial results. And while those are critical to business success, at Microsoft, we also want to explore whether the workforce is thriving. “Thriving has become the North Star for how we understand employees,” says Microsoft VP of People Analytics Dawn Klinghoffer, who leverages data to help leaders understand and improve employee’s experience. “We define thriving as being empowered and energized to do meaningful work. Are people excited to come to work every day, excited about the opportunities ahead?” One of the ways we gauge this at Microsoft is with our Employee Signals survey, a biannual company-wide poll. The recent results not only offered insights into the tangible benefits of thriving, they also uncovered a key catalyst for fostering it: access to AI. The Benefits of Thriving We are focused on fostering a culture of thriving because our research suggests that doing so can boost how effective our workforce perceives itself to be. We also found that employees who are thriving are likely to have the highest scores on our indicators of high performance, like productivity, effort, and impact Additionally, survey results suggest that employees who are thriving are more likely to go above and beyond what is expected of them. They take more pride in their work and they are less apt to look for employment elsewhere. Recent Employee Signals survey results give us some new insights about what it means to thrive in this new era of work. We discovered that higher scores on what we’ve identified as the most important factors that support thriving—finding meaning in work, feeling empowered, and feeling energized—also translate to a measurable boost in productivity. Furthermore, access to AI seems to correlate with higher scores on each of these pillars. Meaningfulness: According to our data, employees who find their work meaningful are 59% more likely to say they are productive at work—and 28% more likely to say they put in extra effort. Key to that is minimizing time spent on tasks that don’t feel meaningful. This is where AI comes in: AI assistants can lighten the load by generating rough drafts, sifting through piles of data, or simply acting as a sounding board and brainstorming partner to help people nail down a plan of action. Crucially, incorporating AI into the day correlated to a 20% jump in scores relating to meaningful work. “What we find is that AI is really there to help you take friction and toil out of the system, and to remove the drudgery of work,” Klinghoffer says. “And when people are able to remove some of that drudgery, we see that they’re more productive, and they thrive more.” Empowerment: Survey results also point to a future in which AI empowers people in their jobs. People who are empowered do not feel they have resource constraints, and they aren’t overburdened with people telling them how to do their work, Klinghoffer says, “so they have more freedom to do things the way they want and need to get the job done.” Access to AI tools and resources, we found, correlated to 34% higher scores for questions related to empowerment. Energy: Our employees who say they feel energized are 44% more likely to say they feel proud of their work, and 22% more likely to say they take the initiative to be productive and put discretionary effort into their work. All levels of AI use— learning about it, grasping its value, incorporating it into processes and products, or simply having AI resources—correlated to higher reported energy levels. In fact, scores on energy-related questions for those using AI jumped almost 27%. These results offer solid evidence that AI can be a catalyst for thriving and high performance. But how a company goes about making AI available will determine whether the company can reap these benefits. If employees are equipped with the right knowledge, tools, training, and resources to leverage AI in their work, they can begin to tap the full potential of an AI companion. The key to success, Klinghoffer says, is integrating AI in a way that spans culture, learning, and people management. That way, everyone will understand how AI can help them focus on the most meaningful work. The ABCs of Thriving with AI Klinghoffer recommends keeping the following blueprint top of mind. Accelerate alignment: Strengthen connections between employees, the company’s mission, and the transformative potential of AI. Clarify how AI initiatives align with the company’s goals and employees’ roles. Celebrate contributions to AI projects to highlight their impact on the company and customers. “Employees who felt more connected to the mission and really understood how their work fits into the larger system were also the ones who were really thriving,” says Ketaki Sodhi, Senior HR Data Analyst at Microsoft. “When we looked at Copilot and employee sentiment around AI, these were also the folks who were willing to experiment and find ways to use AI to take some of the drudgery out of the day-to-day.” Smart leaders should seek out those internal champions and offer them support and encouragement. Be inclusive: Create an environment where all employees feel equipped to engage with AI. This includes providing AI education, training, and resources, as well as fostering a culture of innovation and supporting a safe space for experimentation. Regular check-ins and feedback sessions can help employees express concerns and share ideas related to AI. Once users are encouraged and equipped to explore the possibilities of AI, our research suggests that a time savings of just 11 minutes a day is all it takes for them to start to appreciate its value. Cultivate collective growth: Create a culture that empowers employees to decide how to do their best work, while investing in moments that matter together. Provide employees with the flexibility to plan their days and create time to meaningfully engage with AI. Encourage them to explore how AI can help them free up time for creative and strategic work. Then highlight use cases and foster collaboration among teams to encourage knowledge sharing. Collective growth encompasses in-role experiences (how do we create time and space for employees to learn within their role?) and beyond (what comes next for me? Is there a viable career that excites me at this company?). AI can help with both—by eliminating the drudgery that keeps employees from doing more creative work, and by facilitating positive employee movement. “You see a huge boost. People get excited doing something new, growing their skills and experiences, and furthering their career,” Klinghoffer says. “A couple of months ago on my team we had people who were interested in a different role raise their hands, and we facilitated changes for about 20% of my org.”
    Productivity
    2024年06月24日
    • 123
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