FUTURE TALENT November - January 2019/2020 | Page 31

ON TOPIC
might not otherwise have taken place or might have
been constrained by the limits of, for example, a
paper-based annual appraisal system. He is also aware
of the company’s responsibility to help clients build
reliable and properly managed data sets and to be clear
how employee data will be collected and deployed.
“Organisations need to be completely transparent
with their people to build the trust they need for tech
systems to work properly,” he says. “When people can
see that their data is being used to drive positive action,
to improve their working lives, that’s when tech can
really contribute, augmenting and supporting, rather
than replacing, the work of HR professionals.”
H
R tech is undoubtedly here to stay. It might
already be a necessary part of modern and
efficient practice. Used well, it can be a great
enabler. But we all need to be aware of the
possibilities and pitfalls of how, when and why it should
be deployed. With HR teams facing the perennial
question of the value and validity of their work, it’s
tempting to see data and metrics as a route to
establishing credibility. But that might mean looking for
efficiency and effectiveness in the wrong place.
Alan Watkins, CEO of Complete and author of The
HR Revolution, warns that HR still takes a narrow view of
efficiency, largely focused on process and operations. He
suggests that “step-changing efficiency in the future
will mean focusing on the efficiency that flows from
enabling individual and collective wisdom”. In his book,
Watkins tracks what he calls “the seven great waves of
HR”.  He believes that too  many HR  professionals
are stuck in wave 5.0, obsessed with metrics and trying
to p rove t he m s e l ve s co m me rc i a l l y. Und e r
pressure,  some have even  regressed  to  wave  4.0,
reverting to process-and rules-based approaches to
get to grips with the complexities they’re facing.
To move up to HR wave 6.0 and 7.0, Watkins envisages
HR teams  who understand that  efficiency  is
much more to do with the “maturing of our minds”. He
uses the example of the greater maturity of the mind of a
12-year-old, compared to a six-year-old. This greater
maturity means a 12-year-old can solve problems much
faster and more efficiently. “Real efficiency in
organisations comes with having more people with
HR teams are in
danger of process
AI-ing themselves
out of existence
O
more mature, higher-level reasoning capability who
are  able to deploy this capability both individually
and – crucially – collectively,” he says.
Watkins isn’t anti-tech, but he is concerned about
using the right tech for the right outcomes: “Unless HR
teams can get to grips with tech such as network
analysis, that helps accelerate individual and
collective vertical development, they’re in danger of
process AI-ing themselves out of existence.” He
concludes that HR teams need to start being less
reactive, particularly now that business is finally
beginning to understand that ‘people really are our
most important asset’. He suggests that if HR can
change the workplace, it can also change the world.  
Heady stuff. It’s interesting, though, that the definition
of ‘efficient’ has two different meanings, one for
systems and machines, the other for people. We elide
the two at our peril. At certain times, HR 4.0 and 5.0
approaches might be precisely what are needed, but,
with HR responsible for the entire cultures of
organisations, and as leaders of personal development,
on their own, they’re not enough. Ambidexterity
requires us to continue to put out faith in people and
to enable them to look ahead while optimising the
processes that underpin our businesses today.
When private equity billionaire Stephen Schwarzman
donated £150m to Oxford University to fund a centre
specialising in the ethics of AI, he said it was “important
for people to remember what being human is. Why are
we here? What are your values? How does technology
deal and interact with that? It can’t be allowed to just
do whatever it wants because it can”.
As organisations become more complex, and
tempting technology solutions proliferate, there is a
danger that we lose sight of a person-centred approach
to managing people. At its extreme, a focus on data
and rules, however efficient, is inimical to personal
development and contribution at work, disincentivising
creative thinking and individual problem solving.
Writing in Harvard Business Review, management
consultant Michael Mankins distinguishes between
efficiency – doing the same with less, shrinking the
denominator (inputs) – and productivity – doing more
with the same, expanding the numerator (outputs).
And this is not just about making widgets. Mankins’
research has resulted in three fascinating conclusions:
organisations can improve productivity by removing
‘organisational drag’ (bureaucratic structures and
processes that consume time and stop people getting
things done); deploying talent strategically, and inspiring
a larger percentage of their workforce.
The challenge for HR teams is to have the courage
to make this shift and the far-sightedness to embed it
throughout their organisations. By all means, make the
most of tools that streamline the transactions and
processes necessary to run and support ever-more
complex organisations, to help remove that ‘drag’. But
use the time saved to create the cultures and enable
the relationships that will really make a difference to
our workplaces. Use it to put the human back into
human resources.
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