might be on the move. A building’s technology could actively manage the employees at the building that it hosts, offering facial recognition, understanding who is coming in, linking them via real-time alerts to other employees in the building that may have similar objectives or projects – and even automatically closing the blinds in the room if the temperature is getting too high prior to your meeting. So when we talk about “personas,” the building you work in could eventually become a persona in its own right. Or more simply you may visit a country that you’ve traveled to several times before. The technology could be automatically put you into rooms or meetings or order you lunch based on your previous purchasing history. Another example is social interaction badges. We see companies developing chips that can be added to your work space, identity cards to track your movement, who you interact with, and what impact that has on your productivity. Those are a few examples and there are many, many more. I guess the reason I think this is in its infancy is because a large obstacle that’s getting in the way of many of the examples is the concern for employee data privacy. We need to strike a balance whereby privacy is respected but the personal benefits for each employee are realized. WSR: Let’s move on to artificial intelligence and machine learning. How do you see these technologies affecting the HR organization? Tina: Well, I think these technologies are very much starting to change the way we think about automating the employee experience and are at the heart of how you’re going to deliver a better and more interactive experience. This is a significant part of our plans for how we’re building our cognitive solutions for the workforce as well. In fact, we recently ran a huge internal exercise to get our IBMers to come up with ideas for a “cognitive build” program. And what I thought was really interesting was how many of the ideas were around HR. In fact, the overall winner was the cognitive build called My Career Advisor (or MyCA). There was another one, Attractive, which uses personality insights based on tests to evaluate the suitability of a candidate for a particular job or for identifying alternative jobs. We just launched an app called ULearning internally at IBM and now we’re working through the first stages of commercializing it for the market. ULearning uses cognitive computing to create
tailored learning suggestions for individuals based on their career goals, their learning practices, organization goals, webinars they are viewing, or even books they are searching for on Amazon. We will launch a YouTube video of ULearning soon so our customers and clients will be able to see it. Cognitive computing is, in fact, coming along very nicely with ROI potential for the HR organization. WSR: Certainly lots going on in that area, but let’s shift gears a bit. From your perspective, what changes have you seen in the HR analytics space and what do you think is coming next? Tina: Well, HR analytics is something that we’ve been working with for some time now – from static reporting to the identification of trends, and now predictive analytics. We are moving from the kind of factual report which is what HR has lived on towards real predictive analytics. I think we are now moving on to more sophisticated predictive analytics powered by the cognitive computing I just described. For us, though, the opportunity here is not just being able to take the structured data, the core systems data, but also using unstructured data for HR analytics. And that will be increasingly important as we move from current analytics to cognitive. WSR: Finally, as you are talking with CHROs, and listening to what their issues and concerns are, what guidance would you provide to them regarding the future of HR technology?
About Tina Marron-Partridge Tina Marron-Partridge is the worldwide leader for IBM’s extensive people solutions and services practice — Talent and Engagement — where she leads a forward-thinking team of consultants focused on solutions and services to enable C-suite leaders, especially Chief Human Resource Officers (CHROs), to leverage advanced analytics, cognitive HR and behavioral science to optimize investments in talent and create the optimal culture for employee engagement and business performance. This includes contemporary business strategy and digital change management to help maximize the returns of transformational change. The IBM Talent & Engagement practice includes HR Transformation, Business Process Outsourcing for HR, Learning and Recruitement, Cloud HCM, Employee Experience and Business Change Management. The practice offers an integrated service of consulting, implementation and operations for IBM clients. She can be reached at tina.marron-partridge@uk.ibm.com.
Tina: Well, I think that the first big piece of guidance would be to have a plan. Make it factbased. Get educated on technology and make an informed plan. HR needs a strategy to create a workforce that can deliver and support the organization’s mission and brand. That means researching the market, benchmarking what that strategy looks like, understanding your priorities and what you’ve got to invest in. From a technology perspective, the plan has to be more than “we’ll move to the Cloud and hope for the best.” CHROs need to look at which of the available technologies can deliver on the priorities that they pick and then put the acquisition and implementation of those technologies into the plan. WSR: Tina, thank you so much for your time and insight. You have given us quite a few things to think about! www.ihrim.org • Workforce Solutions Review • September 2016
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