Going Digital - Unclear Destination, Unknown Path
AI. Robotics. Analytics. Deep data. Big data. Machine learning. Digital. Virtual assistants. IoT Self-driving vehicles.
Every day, we are bombarded with these terms, some of us have some understanding of these terms, a few of us are even implementing a few. But all of us are unanimous that we are going through an inflection point where Digital has the power to disrupt how we work and live.
Organizations are responding to the advent of digital in a world that is experiencing change at an exponential speed; which demands that organizations develop the ability to embrace digital change in a manner that they can transform not just once, but over and over again. In the backdrop of this scenario, are HR strategies within organizations evolving in a way that can embrace the various stages of digital transformation and those that are yet to unfold?
As we set out to discover this, the golden question we asked ourselves is, how do you define ‘digital’? Every organization we spoke to indicated that everyone has a perspective about ‘digital’ but there is no concrete framework of what ‘digital’ really looks like. There are various concepts and suggestions on what constitute digital. However, since no organization has yet implemented these end to end, opinions continue to outweigh reality and businesses continue to face the challenge of acquiring a holistic picture of their ‘digital journey’. Some firms seem to be repeating the errors of the “IT automation days” by trying to transform existing processes into digitally enabled ones. At the core, organizations need to revisit their digital strategies and identify means to redesign the digital framework from scratch. However, many are embracing the uncertainty and taking it one day at a time, digitizing key processes as clarity emerges.
We are seeing greatest adoption of Digital by B2C companies where frontline salesforce is being equipped with tablets or phablets. This enables journey tracking, providing sales intelligence and support in a real-time, on-demand basis and also generates tremendous data that can be analyzed for impact. Some organizations we spoke to are already able to identify what the top 20% sales-professionals do that is different from the others. This insight is then being used to help others to raise their performance resulting in a net increase in revenue. This also has tremendous impact on transparency and objectivity of performance management and balances intuition with information.
Some Indian states have already deployed drones to monitor highways and assist in traffic management, IoT sensors and controllers are being used on newly laid gas, water and sewerage pipelines in order to monitor and manage flow.
A metals and mining firm has automated, self-driving wagons that transport ore from the mines, while IoT sensors measure air-quality conditions for mine-workers and proactively trigger alarms.
Another area of rapid adoption is in the talent acquisition function where deep analytics are resulting in insights that are helping organizations predict who is more likely to succeed in their culture, thereby enabling greater prediction and accuracy of hiring. As organizations embrace digital, Analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play a leading role.
One of the key challenges for leaders and HR, as they strive to adopt digital, is age and hierarchical mindsets. Most people who “get” digital are between 25-32 years of age. Culturally it is not easy, for senior veterans to acquire “wisdom” from their younger counterparts or even to understand their perspectives. To step back from leading to being led. They are also hampered because they look at digital as shell which they will place over the skeletal systems of their old-world organizational designs and systems. When digital professionals attempt to completely redesign or rewire the organization that has delivered past success, this causes exasperation and unintended resistance and conflict. Looking at digital with a conventional lens will require a radical shift in mindsets and being able to view it from the lens of a 30 year-old “digital native” will not come easy.
This has ramifications for organizational culture. Going ‘digital’ will require a fresh way of looking at things and new ways of working. It will require leaders to be self-aware, humble and inclusive in their thinking and actions. Driving this culture shift is going to be key to how well organizations adopt and implement digital across their business. HR professionals, across the board, cite this as one of the key challenges to overcome.
Within the HR function, there is a sense of excitement and eagerness to adopt and drive digital both for HR and across the organization. HR practitioners are keenly aware that they will have to be aligned with the right set of digital stakeholders and play a decisive role in supporting the business to design and deliver a fit-for-purpose digital framework. The present-day HR professional is energized by the prospect of improved employee experience via the deployment of AI and chatbots which will provide greater intelligence and a balance between tech and touch for the employee. The radical impact of predictive analytics will enable HR to be truly business partnering and will also lead to greater accountability and measurement of the impact of HR and leadership. While forward-looking organizations are already adopting these, much of this has yet to be experienced by the large majority.
In the medium-term future almost every HR function spanning across Compensation and benefits, Performance & Talent Management Systems etc will be automated and AI based. An employee will be able to engage with an AI to redistribute their salary breakup to either optimize for taxes or savings/investments, with virtually no interface with an HR professional. These advances will further reduce the operational and process management role of HR. The HRBP role will gain increased salience and will transform into a more strategic, advisory, interventional and business oriented role than ever before.
Developing consultative skills, driving change, integrating M&As, redesigning organization structures, resolving conflict, enabling high performing teams will become critical skills. HR professionals will need to be more numerate, have a working understanding of data sciences, data modeling and statistics than ever before. Designing predictive models, developing and coaching Artificial Intelligences will be a new area of competence, more so in HR since chatbots will provide the bulk of employee services.
In conclusion, it is clear that digital is here to stay and will have a significant impact on the way we do business and how workforces are managed. It is equally evident that as yet, no one has a clear framework for what digital will look like; much of the current rhetoric is speculative and “predictive”. Hence this is an evolutionary phase which will go through a set of iterations before models are tested and fully implemented.
HR will need to transform itself, develop a renewed set of competencies and reskill HRBP’s in order to be ready for newer and more challenging roles. We are all building this airplane mid-flight and the journey is both exhilarating and unnerving.