With rapidly changing business demands as well as workforce mindset, location and needs, HR faces a daunting task to build a sustained workforce capability that scales and extends as needed. What are the related challenges and how are HR leaders looking to tame this beast? Where can IT partner?

Contributors

• • Amy J. Rislov, Chief Human Resources Officer, Aurora Health Care
  • Dr. Jonathan Reichental, Chief Information Officer, City of Palo Alto

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Transcript

Sanjog Aul [00:00:22]:

Hello, and welcome to the segment on CTN. To learn more, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. And as always, we invite you to join the discussion on Twitter and look for the show as #HR and #transformation. Today’s topic is Enabling Much Needed HR Transformation, and our guests for today’s show are Amy J. Rislov, who’s the Chief Human Resource Officer with Aurora HealthCare. Hi, Amy. How are you?

Amy J. Rislov [00:00:48]:

Great. Good morning.

Sanjog Aul [00:00:49]:

Good morning to you. And we also have Dr. Jonathan Reichental, who’s the CIO of the City of Palo Alto, California. How are you, Jonathan?

Dr. Jonathan Reichental [00:00:56]:

I’m good. It’s pretty early here, but it’s great to be on the show again.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:00]:

I hope you had your pot of coffee.

Dr. Jonathan Reichental [00:01:04]:

Yep.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:05]:

Alright. Good. So the very reason we wanted to do this show is because among different things that we have covered in technology, people have always been the biggest challenge, and also they could be the best assets an organization can have. And in order for us to have the people provide the most value or be the best they can be, HR plays a very crucial role. And it has been there. It has always been supporting. But the way it had been running in the past, the processes, the technology, the information they have available, would that serve equally well given the type of changes we are seeing in the business, the way the business is being run, the change, the complexity, the scale. So that’s what we would like to discuss today. So I’ll start with you, Amy, just to set the stage. If you were to compare how HR was earlier and the way HR was perceived the role of HR was perceived earlier, how has that expanded or transformed given the changes that you see today?

Amy J. Rislov [00:02:05]:

Great question. I look at the past 10, 15 years, and HR’s role has become critically important to an organization’s success. I don’t think that was recognized in the past. When you look at our workforce and how it’s changing, becoming more mobile, millennials becoming a great part of our population of working age people, really, 3/4 by 2025, white Americans becoming the majority within 3 decades, our workforce is changing significantly, and organizations have to reassess their culture and really make important adjustments to assure that they’re a more diverse workforce and inclusive work practices are in place. So for HR, that means lots of change. I specifically have experienced major change within our organization, really shifting from an HR team that are doers, trackers, and some even call us the police in the past, or people that plan parties and events to really looking at how do we drive the business? How do we help the business get to where we need to go? And that’s meant transforming ourselves to enable the organization. And some of the things that IT has been helpful with supporting us with is data and analytics to be able to do that more effectively so we can forecast what trends are gonna be, where things are heading both within our organization and outside. But really the bottom line for HR is that we need to be ahead of the business. We need to really understand the business, have the right analytics and tools, change process in place that help enable the workforce that we need.

Sanjog Aul [00:03:54]:

So, Jonathan, let me come back to you. When you look at HR, and I’m sure you must have worked and partnered with HR to get ahead with what you want to accomplish, traditionally, HR was seen as people who were doing just benefits and payroll and very process centric and not really connected to where the business wants to go. They are told what to do. Now that has to change, of course, as we discussed now and as Amy mentioned. But that perception still continues in many cases, and that’s why many people don’t go to HR. If you were to look at your department and what you want to accomplish, what is your approach to enabling HR or basically helping HR help you?

Dr. Jonathan Reichental [00:04:36]:

Yeah. I think you characterized it pretty good. There’s been significant changes in how we identify talent, onboard talent, retain talent, and then keep talent engaged. It’s for all the reasons Amy provided there around changing demographics, changing expectations, it’s a different environment we find ourselves today than when I started my career almost 20, 25 years ago. Now, the situation that I find myself in right now is sort of the extreme in that I’m hiring tech people in Silicon Valley. And not only that, I’m hiring tech people into government in Silicon Valley. So it’s doubly difficult. We have to continue to make the case that public service is a great place to have your career, and public service is a really compelling place for Silicon Valley individual to bring technical skills to a public service environment. So it can no longer just be, the relationship between IT and HR can no longer just be one of here’s what we need. Thanks very much. Come back to us when you’ve identified the candidates. It really has to be, as Amy talked about, a very close relationship, a partnership, between our needs, the needs of the organization, and the ability for the human resources organization to be deeply embedded in how we go about acquiring talent in the marketplace, bringing those people on, and retaining them. So I would say what I’m seeing and what is really useful in my world is that deep partnership, having someone who is really getting to know our organization well. And, by the way, equally us as an IT organization understanding how HR operates and how we can best serve them. So that’s the kind of broad context. Now I know that in the conversation today, we’ll get into more detail. But we have to recognize that there for me, and I think all IT leaders, the environment in which we now operate is entirely different than the one we were faced with just 5 years ago. And we’ve got to respond to that.

Sanjog Aul [00:07:20]:

So Amy, one fine morning, you get invited by the top leader and say, okay, we want you to align yourself to the business, and we want you to get the people ready so we can charge at 100 miles an hour. You’re not expected or you cannot basically produce miracles. Still, you don’t understand enough about each department, the psyche of the worker as it is changing, the kind of business initiatives that they have, which are understood at enough depth for you to be able to map it out to say what kind of skills, etcetera, you need. And secondly, even more important is the semantics. What an IT leader understands about their workforce, you may not suddenly get that light bulb lit up for you to know exactly what you what what these guys need. How what’s your process or what should be the process for HR to get up to speed before they can take ownership of this task? Because otherwise, there would be a failure.

Amy J. Rislov [00:08:15]:

I think the first thing that an HR organization needs to think about in a situation like that is how they align with the business. So in our case, what we’ve done, and I think many organizations have or are in the process of doing, is really looking at how they align key HR leaders with key functions like IT, finance, any other part of the business, and assure that there’s people embedded in those functions that truly live, eat, breathe, what those functions do each day, what they need to accomplish, and understand both what the business strategies are, but also what the potential challenges are that they’re running into, which most often have to do with some sort of a workforce issue, whether it’s the right people, the right number of people, people developed to do what they need to do. The issues are varied. But if HR is doing it right, we are literally assigning business partners to that business to partner directly day to day with what’s going on there.

Sanjog Aul [00:09:36]:

Would you say some incubation is needed before you can talk alignment where you at least get to understand business to the degree which you should have known, but earlier it was more of a peripheral role and now you’re expected to embed yourself?

Amy J. Rislov [00:09:48]:

Yeah. It does take some time. In our case, we’ve been working on this transition or transformation for well over 2 years, and we’ve brought in new individuals to partner with the IT organization here at Aurora HealthCare. And it does take some time to get up to speed, even if you’re coming from within the organization. And to truly understand what the challenges are, you need to understand the leaders. You need to understand where their strengths and growth opportunities might be. And then you’re truly helping them leverage their strengths, bring in the right talent to help work with where they might have opportunities for growth, and somebody else can help them shore up in an area and to really think more strategically as the sort of the next phase after that understanding is established.

Sanjog Aul [00:10:47]:

So, Jonathan, when you look at your, you know, the way HR has come and you’ve started working with them, what do you think they could improve upon? Or what they could be provided as resources or knowledge or support which will help them up their game? Yeah. Well,

Dr. Jonathan Reichental [00:11:08]:

I think there’s a need to rethink how we identify and hire people in a much more transformational way than we have historically done. I’ll tell you why I believe that. There’s some interesting phenomena going on in the world of work. I was surprised to learn that in the gig economy, this is people who have decided either to supplement their sort of day job or leave their day job and do things like drive a car or have people in their home or cook meals. Do a whole series of those activities that they can choose to do and make some income on. In fact, despite the fact there’s no benefits, they can actually bring in quite a lot of income. But the American participation on that has been 90,000,000 Americans. It’s about a little less than 1/4 of our entire country. So we have people thinking differently about how they’re gonna spend their time and earn income. The other statistic about our environment, and this may be equally as interesting as we think about the future, is how many people now are just beyond the gig economy, where they’re providing service themselves. They provide their skills to organizations on a freelance basis. The numbers now are getting close to about 50,000,000 people, which is 1/3 of our workforce. So that, combined with shorter tenures, you have a very different workplace. I guess the last point that’s just kind of setting the table a little bit for your question is it’s becoming clear that in America, we don’t necessarily have a problem with openings. We have a problem with finding people who have the right skills. So we have these sort of, like, I would call them three or four major trends that are occurring that we need to all of us as employers and people who work in traditional organizations need to respond to in not just incremental ways but radical ways. So as you think about how do you acquire talent in the marketplace, you can’t do it necessarily in that old way. So back to your question, I would be looking to partner with our HR organization to rethink how we post positions, how we find people, how we bring them in and retain them, in ways that we haven’t had to think about before. And use some of the new contemporary tools to do that. The old sort of method of a person going to job description, filling in their credentials, hitting submit, waiting for response, coming to a panel. Maybe that isn’t the way anymore. And we have to create a new model for recruitment. And really appreciate that the people that come to work for us may only be there for a short amount of time. And so knowing that, how might we work with them and what kind of services might we provide to them during the time that they spend with our organization. So I think core would be really embracing the change in radical ways more than we’re doing today, I think, would be my primary objective here working with HR.

Sanjog Aul [00:15:06]:

Let’s take a quick break. We’ll be right back. And, Amy, you got quite an interesting follow-up for the response to this question where if there is a change in the workforce, now we are no longer in a widget economy. We are where people want to do multiple things at any given time at work or outside of work. And there are different approaches to how they want to build a career, not necessarily at one company. With all of that coming into the mix, what’s your strategy? What are you thinking you will do new, more, or different? Please stay tuned listeners. We’ll be right back.

Speaker 0 [00:15:44]:

Today, enterprise technology is both strategic and global. Each week on CTN CIO Talk Network, IT thought leaders from around the world share their experience with listeners as they discuss with Sanjog Aul how they are trimming costs and partnering with business to innovate and help IT become more competitive, better care for customers, and improve the corporate bottom line. If you want to keep up with IT thought leadership, listen to CTN, CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul at ciotalknetwork.com. You are listening to CTN CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul. To learn more about our program, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. Now back to the show.

Sanjog Aul [00:16:38]:

Welcome back. So, Amy, you heard Jonathan’s response to the question I asked, and he also added a number of he kind of threw a bunch of curve balls where he said, we have challenges with us not thinking the same way. Our workforce doesn’t want to work the same way. They don’t want to work for the length we expected earlier. So everything is kind of fundamentally shifting. What’s your plan?

Amy J. Rislov [00:17:04]:

You’re correct. That could be construed as a curveball question just because it is probably the biggest question for any workforce today. It’s incredibly challenging to see this changing workforce ahead with a group of young people that are becoming working age that are going to basically be the majority of our working population in no time. So I agree that it’s a really important issue for us as organizations to contend with. My solution would be threefold. First, on the recruitment end, it’s really important for us, whether it’s HR with IT or HR with any part of an organization, to be a partner when it comes to the recruitment process. We’ve found in our organization that where we really get creative is when we’re working together to kind of look at what are the different types of people that might be able to fulfill a need the organization has. What are the different types of backgrounds and experiences that we might be able to transfer to effectively do a new position or role. The second thing is that we need to look at flexibility in our workplaces. And this is extremely challenging. The bigger the organization, I think, the tougher it is to change what you’re used to or what is the norm in the organization. And so for an organization of our size, this is something we’re really thinking about, because how do you embed that? Everything from what was described around the gig economy and people wanting to do multiple jobs and multiple things, there’s a lot of truth to that, and it provides people the flexibility in life, it gives them maybe a little extra excitement, meeting new people, doing new things, or meeting financial needs. So the third thing is, I think what we need to do as organizations is, whether it’s IT or any other part of a business, is think about how we meet people where they are. There’s a lot of people out there of any age, any background that, yes, they may want a short assignment. They may only want to be with a company for 2 years. They may prefer small to large. But bottom line is, how do we understand those people and what their needs and interests are, and help to look at your own organization and to flex to those needs, to create the right experience where you can leverage their strengths to do something really important within your organization. And that starts to change the picture for people, and might even make them want to stay longer than they normally would.

Sanjog Aul [00:20:14]:

Amy, I had a listener tweet directly to me while listening to it, and they had an interesting question that if we talk about business and HR partnership and you really start showing to the people within the organization that you’re partnering with business, there has been a sentiment about us versus the business, which is the workforce versus the business. So if you show that you have an affinity towards the business, that means HR becomes against them or a perception of HR becoming against them versus being a neutral third party. Is that a risk?

Amy J. Rislov [00:20:50]:

I don’t know if I totally understand the question, but that might be because of where I come from. No. When you

Sanjog Aul [00:20:56]:

say the business aligns with HR or HR aligns with business, that means you are doing what the business wants you to do. And in that process, they may say, okay. We have to let go of certain number of people or we have to groom a certain skill set versus not use the other skill sets. And the performance of an individual is more when they work the most versus having a work life balance as an individual worker. So when you become more aligned to a corporation, could you see that being perceived as you’re going against the very people who are trying to serve?

Amy J. Rislov [00:21:28]:

I don’t think so. I think HR and the business can come to the right answer together on these types of issues. I don’t see this as an Us and them type of issue. In my organization, I see my HR team as part of the business. And so in the right situation, a progressive HR organization, that’s where they’re gonna come from.

Sanjog Aul [00:21:56]:

Jonathan, when you look at the information that’s available to HR, because I’m sure you’re running your systems and you’ve seen other organizations offering HR the necessary tools and technology and, of course, process improvement, where do you think they may be running or they may have the risk of running blind or at least not having a complete vision of what’s happening at a business level for them to be able to make an informed decision and refine their strategy?

Dr. Jonathan Reichental [00:22:24]:

Well, part of it is gonna remain analog. As Amy said, an HR organization just has to be in the meetings and has to be working with management and all levels of the organization. So I just encourage organizations to do more of that. That’s not always just about tech. I think though on the tech side, every HR leader would probably argue they don’t have sufficient insight into the business data and the marketplace data that they would like. Part of that is many organizations, particularly big ones, deal with these ugly legacy HRIS systems. They weren’t built beautifully 15 years ago, and they still exist. So in many cases, we’re still dealing with some older tech. I’m really impressed with some of the new HR tools that are starting to emerge. I look at something like Cruncher, and it uses and adopts and accounts for some of the contemporary ways we’re thinking about looking at data, both visualization, but also predictive analytics. So an HR organization can begin to use the insight they’ve gained through interviews and marketplace data to input into a system and then look at things like supply and demand of talent, succession planning. So I think the enlightened organizations that want to embrace some of the new tools should be looking at some of the available analytics that have emerged. Another area that HR would argue they don’t have good visibility to and where IT can help is in the understanding of the channels of communication between an organization and the social media world. Everything from using those channels to acquire talent or to source people and to engage with people, but also understanding sentiment. A space that we haven’t seen yet fully embraced by organizations is sentiment analysis where the feeling that prospective employees have about your organization can be determined. As a result, HR can feed that, working with marketing and others, to executive leadership to position the organization to be more attractive to those employees who perhaps have a poor perception of that organization as an employer. So there are some contemporary tools and visibility that HR needs that IT can help with that is going to really contribute towards a better experience.

Sanjog Aul [00:25:41]:

So, what we could do is to take a quick break right now. And, Amy, if you were to have your way and if you had to fundamentally rethink your HR, of course, in terms of mindset and partnering is one thing, but what information you should be having or you should we should make it available to you as an HR department and or what all meetings you would like to sit in so that you see firsthand the performance versus something being told to you secondhand by the manager who may have his own or her own reasons to tell you what they are talking about. What all would you change in HR for you to do your job and become that next level of HR, which is truly aligned with all parties? Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.

Speaker 0 [00:26:37]:

Today, enterprise technology is both strategic and global. Each week on CTN CIO Talk Network, IT thought leaders from around the world share their experience with listeners as they discuss with Sanjog Aul how they are trimming costs and partnering with business to innovate and help IT become more competitive, better care for customers, and improve the corporate bottom line. If you want to keep up with IT thought leadership, listen to CTN, CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul at ciotalknetwork.com. You are listening to CTN CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul. To learn more about our program, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. Now back to the show.

Sanjog Aul [00:27:31]:

Welcome back. Imagine Amy going to a war with fewer ammunitions than what you need and one hand tied behind your back. That’s not really gonna help you. So if you had your way in running HR, transforming HR, what would you like to put as your wish list and demands so that you are able to do your job that’s been tasked?

Amy J. Rislov [00:27:52]:

Well, this is an exciting time for me to have my way, so thank you for that. What I would do is two things. First of all, I would ask for the best workforce analytics solution I could get, and that would provide me predictive analytics, deep insights into my talent, identify the linkages of workforce analytics to the business analytics. And from that, I’d be able to really pull out important data that the business needs in order to drive their goals. Coupled with that, my team, and I think that’s where we are today in my organization, has HR people that are embedded in the business. And I said that before, but what I mean by that is that they’re seeing, as things happen, what the business issues are. So they’re in meetings about strategy. They’re in meetings about budget and plans for the next 3 to 5 years. They are involved in some of the operations decisions and issues that are potentially barriers and or will help to elevate some of the strategies and goals that need to be moved in a business organization. So by coupling the right data and tools with being a part of business and really seeing, and maybe sometimes bringing ahead of the business, bringing forth what the issues are that they’re seeing, I think that’s really where we need to be, and that would be if I could have my way the way I would have it.

Sanjog Aul [00:29:40]:

So, Jonathan, Amy, of course, laid out her wish list. And when we talk about the absolute best analytics tool and I’ll come to you, Jonathan, about this. So what do you think is the best for them? Does HR, first of all, is able to articulate? Are they in a position to understand what they need, or we are supposed to go and coach them on that?

Dr. Jonathan Reichental [00:30:02]:

Well, let’s just say in the sort of 21st century workforce, everything should be a collaboration. It’s give and take. It’s partnering. It’s finding solutions together. No one individual or team has the answer today. Everything is just too complex for that. In a good healthy collaboration between two departments, two groups, they’ll get in a room where they’ll have a series of activities that will get to the best answer. That said, I would look to HR leadership to articulate a vision and a set of business needs. And then as a provider organization here in the IT organization, look to see how we could meet those needs and look out to the marketplace for contemporary solutions. I don’t know that I would necessarily list the best tech today. I’m pleased with some of the emerging solutions that we simply have not had in the past. Part of that has been enabled by big data, the ability to study unstructured data in large volumes, glean meaning and identify patterns in the data. We’re getting good at that, and this is changing organizations. So you’re gonna see a lot of tools, a lot of innovation, in that space. Some small to medium sized solutions that are now becoming providers to HR organizations are trying to be sort of the full suite of solutions, everything from recruitment to benefits, and then they’ll have their analytics reporting piece. An interesting organization that is doing neat things and influencing others is Zenefits.com, despite a bit of a bumpy ride over the last few weeks, which we’ll see how it all transpires. I think they’re creating sort of potentially a new model for how we think about the full suite of services for HR, including the analytics piece, which inherently gets baked into all the different functions as a part of the architecture. So that I would say is probably more of the emerging trend on the small to medium size. If we get to the enterprise, the large organization, I think we need to think about business intelligence and some of the leaders in the business intelligence space. There’s a range of those. But to Amy’s point and to your question, we were able to unlock insights today that we couldn’t before. And the only question really for HR leadership is, are you doing it? And if you’re not, when are you gonna do it?

Sanjog Aul [00:33:19]:

So Amy, you have a chance to respond here.

Amy J. Rislov [00:33:22]:

Great. Thank you. Actually, we are, and while I mentioned that I’d love to have the most advanced analytics, it’s interesting, and this speaks to a lot of what we talked about earlier, when you hire the right talent, results come. In our case, we hired someone who had an engineering and strong background in statistics and analytics, and he’s built something for us in a very short time period that’s giving us incredible insights and the opportunity to bring important insights into the workforce to our business partners, both within the health care part of the business, where health care is delivered, and also to our business functions. We’re a little early on in that process, but it’s absolutely where we need to be. It’s where my organization is now, and we’re already reaping the benefits. It’s a really positive thing both for the business and for HR to be able to really deliver what in their hearts they really want to.

Sanjog Aul [00:34:35]:

Now, with what you just said, do you think what you have is enough at today? Like, if suppose I were to make you as a representative of the HR community and say, okay. If I gave you the right HR tools and you had blessings of the business, do you think you have everything that you needed? And if yes, when are the results going to show up, and what would they look like? So that we say, okay. We have really transformed HR. What would that look like?

Amy J. Rislov [00:35:03]:

The first thing I would say is, you know, I think we’re never going to arrive. I think that every business function and HR at the top of the heap, we need to continually evolve. I think what you’re seeing today with HR is a full understanding that many of us have got behind, and we really needed to step into a leadership role in the organization because the workforce literally enables everything that needs to be done within an organization. So with that in mind, I think we’ve really shifted and repositioned ourselves, and those that haven’t already, I think most are in the process of doing so. So again, I don’t think you ever arrive. I think you take some great tools, great insights, and you continue to build to constantly look at how you evolve because, frankly, the business is just changing so quickly that we have to.

Sanjog Aul [00:36:11]:

And so, Jonathan, if you were to say, you’re gonna help, become a partner to HR, and one is not just only when you need to or when they ask you, you go and help them, and the collaboration has to be ongoing. To what degree would you elevate this collaboration? Would you say, okay. Come sit in my meeting so I when I’m doing my performance appraisals, I’m not basically telling you what I think and it’s not limited to a manager’s relationship with that candidate. What are places would you actually take the collaboration to the next level?

Dr. Jonathan Reichental [00:36:45]:

There’s different ways to think about that question. I might ask why we’re doing performance reviews. I think that is worthy of discussing. We should be challenging whether performance reviews work and whether there isn’t a better way to provide people with continuing feedback and the feedback they need for their career. I think we can do a better job of bringing our HR colleagues into appropriate meetings, into our town halls and all hands meetings. As the IT organization looks out at the marketplace and sees trends, it’s not just about tech but about behavior. We ought to be bringing those to all our colleagues. And, in a reciprocal basis, they can bring it back to IT, which they will through business needs. An interesting example is reconciling the efforts of an IT leader and a marketing leader today. They seem like such different worlds and yet there now is this intersection because if you think about the role of social media and the broad range of social media tools we have today, they typically started with IT people and the IT people brought it to the organization. Subsequently we’ve realized the enormous marketing value these have and they were then adopted by marketing, and they have strong technical competency needs. Now we have this interesting collaboration going on between IT and marketing. In some ways, I think we might see similar partnerships between IT leadership and HR leadership in the way in which we analyze data to make business decisions. These analytics tools we’ve been talking about, they’re not easy. They need sometimes very specific skills to build reports and to script queries. So there’s a necessary collaboration I think that we’ll see more of. The last point I might make is we’re seeing interesting demands across the marketplace, but IT here in Silicon Valley is particularly difficult in that we’re hearing it loud and clear from prospective employees why they’re making choices and what they’re looking for. That’s a very important voice that I think tech companies are hearing and IT people are hearing that we can provide to the broader HR community. Amy earlier talked about the fact that millennials will become the majority of the workforce between 2020 and 2025. This huge cohort group has very different expectations about their career. Of that group, the people who will go into a technical role have particular needs. So getting right back to the core of the question, the need to collaborate between departments and particularly between IT and HR has never been greater. I hope I made a strong case for that.

Sanjog Aul [00:40:34]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners. And when we come back, Amy, if you were to fundamentally rethink HR so if you’re saying we are gonna transform it, I hope it is not gonna be a better mouse trap. Right? So your community, HR community is looking at not same way the way a performance review was done or the way people were supposed to behave in a meeting and or with the customer. So those ground rules that were created are fundamentally being disrupted or there is no rule per se. I mean, not totally, but there are different ways to look at how you engage with the business and internally. So if the new age that we are looking ahead and you want to transform, are you thinking rethink what is possible, or are you thinking rethink what we have been doing and just build a better mousetrap? Where are you drawing the line and to what degree are you fundamentally disrupting your own HR department for the end quote? Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.

Speaker 0 [00:41:48]:

Today, enterprise technology is both strategic and global. Each week on CTN CIO Talk Network, IT thought leaders from around the world share their experience with listeners as they discuss with Sanjog Aul how they are trimming costs and partnering with business to innovate and help IT become more competitive, better care for customers, and improve the corporate bottom line. If you want to keep up with IT thought leadership, listen to CTN, CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul at ciotalknetwork.com. You are listening to CTN CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul. To learn more about our program, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. Now back to the show.

Sanjog Aul [00:42:42]:

Welcome back. So, Amy, as you’re holding the baton for HR transformation, is the intention building a better mouse trap or fundamentally disrupt?

Amy J. Rislov [00:42:52]:

I would go with fundamentally disrupt with one caveat that there’s certain things that will remain true that you still need to have within an organization. I’ll speak to both sides of that equation. I think we do need to look at how we change how we manage in an organization. And frankly, it’s going to start with a paradigm shift from supervision to leadership. Really helping an organization. It doesn’t matter what the organization delivers, whether it’s a product or service. Really start to relook at leadership and what that means. The example came up earlier in the show about performance reviews. Is a performance review something you do once a year and you look back and there’s really no plan moving forward and you just look forward to the next year? Or is it something that happens every day, every week, where people are getting feedback and insight into performance and some of the things that might be opportunities, things that they’re doing well, that they learn to continue to do well? Some organizations are starting to throw away their performance reviews, as an example, and truly going with that ongoing feedback loop. Any of us who are working in an organization know that continuous feedback helps to make us better. So we do need to look at some of these more disruptive changes that are happening out there and consider how do we make those things happen. And, frankly, that means, again, going back to leadership, it’s a change in how you lead. It really changes how you handle your day as a leader. And going back to some of the things that need to stay, that I think continue to be important, let’s take leadership development or learning. It’s really important to continue to have great systems in place to develop people within an organization, whether it’s a millennial that might decide to stay for a shorter period of time, or it’s someone who has stood the test of time but continues to want to develop in an organization. I think it’s important that continues, but again, there’s some disruption that needs to occur. People are looking for and respond better often to learning in short bursts, just in time versus just in case. Tech enabled learning is something that IT can help support and think about for the IT HR team to deliver, where you leverage an app so people can learn as they’re on the go. And then really shifting a mindset from bricks and mortar type of learning to more experiential or action learning on the job.

Dr. Jonathan Reichental [00:45:53]:

These are just a couple examples of disruptions that I believe need to occur.

Amy J. Rislov [00:45:53]:

It’s something that in my organization, we’re really thinking deeply about in our HR team, and we know we’re gonna need to change.

Sanjog Aul [00:46:07]:

So one is to stand on the sidelines, give instructions as a coach, and see how the players play. Another is to embed yourself in the game. So to what degree do you think, Amy, HR is willing to embed themselves in the game? And really in the front line working hand in hand with people as it’s like, in terms of sitting in the meetings. And or, when you’re saying, okay. Let’s develop an app. Actually, become the people who give the requirements and or work together with the people who are supposed to be the ones learning, help develop the requirement versus saying, okay, this is a wish list. Go ahead and do it, and let’s see what happens. How much of an effort are you willing to put in?

Amy J. Rislov [00:46:47]:

Oh, I think we need to put in 95% of the effort. I’ve been a part of this organization for a long time, and one of the things that’s first and foremost in my mind for HR is that we need to be clear on what we need, and we need to partner to get there, and we need to research, we need to think through it, we need to understand it. And that’s not just what HR wants, that’s understanding what the business needs as well, and then representing that as we partner with IT.

Sanjog Aul [00:47:23]:

So, Jonathan, if I were to come back to you and say, okay, Amy’s asking, she’s part of your organization, she’s saying that she’s ready to jump head over heels into making this happen. What do you think you would want to do before that relationship starts at the level where they’re embedded? What preparation should be there?

Dr. Jonathan Reichental [00:47:44]:

Yeah. So you’re talking about perhaps the HR analyst being part of the IT organization? I don’t think you’re suggesting HR part of IT. Right?

Sanjog Aul [00:48:01]:

So Amy says that she’s willing to have people get embedded at whatever capacity. To what degree do you think you would allow that? And second is, what would you welcome in terms of collaboration? So we can always say HR never works so it is never gonna work, etcetera. But now HR is saying, yes. We are willing to give our 95%. We are willing to take on analytics, and we are ready to use the actionable intelligence provided and put that into execution. And now IT come step up, work with us hand in hand. What’s gonna be your response? What are you going to, in what ways would you step up as well?

Dr. Jonathan Reichental [00:48:38]:

Well, that’s the best case you’ve described there. That’s exactly what everybody wants on both sides. HR wants a high quality responsive IT organization, and IT wants customers who know what they want and that can help articulate needs and document those needs. So you’re describing a utopia state. Yes.

Amy J. Rislov [00:49:05]:

Exactly.

Sanjog Aul [00:49:07]:

So what would prevent us from making this happen? Now I’m seeing Amy sitting on this side saying, I’m ready to do it. Are you thinking, Jonathan, that IT is not ready to embrace it, or that’s too much of a shock for them that they actually are getting a business stakeholder who’s ready to come all this far? Or you’re just waiting for that to happen?

Dr. Jonathan Reichental [00:49:28]:

No. Every organization is very different. There has been a traditional role of IT, which has been more back office. A sort of service provider that you throw a need over the wall and hope that IT responds. What we’ve seen in the more successful enlightened organizations is technology is seen as a strategic enabler and a partner. There’s big differences in the performance of those organizations when that actually is the case. With every organization today being a technology organization of some form, one would hope we’d see a lot more of that. So I think there’s a little bit of tradition. We have to shift from the back office model to being partners at the table. And then we need to create organizations that have that in place but are still struggling. We need a platform to enable it. What I mean by the platform is I’ve seen a lot of success with IT governance. A structure by which requests are made and then fulfilled and an accountability baked into it. What you’re describing is a high performance IT governance between HR and IT where the needs of HR are really well understood. There’s a road map. There’s a partnership on how to achieve that road map over the course of months and years. So you’ve gotta have IT at the same level as other units within the organization, talking at a strategic level about business objectives and organizational objectives. You have to have a platform for the exchange of knowledge and the agreement on what will be delivered. I would suggest IT governance, a governance review board for that. And finally, the most enlightened, which is what you really were talking about, is to what degree can we not only embed and have HR take on more technical skills, which invariably they will because just the way things are happening in organizations, but to what degree can we embed IT within HR? Should we have, for example, dotted line responsibilities for an analyst between reporting to an HR manager and an IT manager. The answer there is what makes sense for your organization, what culturally is acceptable, and what will actually succeed. Those are some characteristics I would look for.

Sanjog Aul [00:52:22]:

One final question for you, Amy. If you were to look at making this transformation happen and get it done, in a predictable fashion and also sustain it, what do you think should be the changes in mindset capabilities and the sponsorship that you need for you to make this happen?

Amy J. Rislov [00:52:43]:

Well, I think Jonathan made a few comments that made me think about HR’s role in this change process. We really need to be experts in our field. We need to be really strong listeners, inquisitive about the business. And then as we partner, we need to be flexible, relevant, and really provide practical solutions to business issues. I think at that point, IT or any other business will have no question in wanting us to be at the table and be a part of business strategy and planning. And I think that’s where the partnerships will begin, when we let go of the old HR of the past, and we’ve fully transitioned to that strategic partnership that the business needs.

Sanjog Aul [00:53:37]:

On behalf of the show and our listeners, I’d really like to thank you both, Amy and Jonathan, for sharing your thoughts on how HR can actually fundamentally rethink what it stands for and also transform so that everyone in the organization benefits and how IT can partner with this transformation. Thank you so much again.

Amy J. Rislov [00:53:55]:

It was a pleasure. Thank you for inviting us.

Dr. Jonathan Reichental [00:53:59]:

Thank you too. Thank you.

Sanjog Aul [00:54:00]:

So much again, listeners. Hope you enjoyed the conversation. Please like us on Facebook. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn discussion group. We have a good news for you coming shortly. Thank you again for listening. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host. Till next week. Take care and God bless.