IMV44: Technology in HR

The following is a transcript for IMV44 : Technology in HR. The original podcast is located here.

Announcer:

Welcome to the Internet Marketing Voodoo podcast, brought to you by MindComet. And now, here’s your host, Paul Lewis.

Paul Lewis:

Welcome to Internet Marketing Voodoo. Today’s session is focusing on technology in human resources. Our guest speaker today is Samantha Hanson. She’s the vice president of HR for Vurv Technology.

Sam’s background includes managing HR activities for all of Vurv, worldwide, as well as coming from a variety of HR experience with companies such as CitiStreet, Accenture, and Best Buy.

Sam, can you start out the program by telling us just a little bit about Vurv and why it’s such an exciting company?

Samantha Hanson:

Vurv is a very exciting company because it is tying the ever-evolving role of HR and the need to drive HR into businesses through technology. So putting information about talent, people, and things that are important to HR, such as talent management and compensation, providing HR leaders with the technology and software that had that information, literally, at their fingertips, so that they can leverage that and drive difference in their organization.

Paul Lewis:

So clearly, you’re up to date on some of the challenges that a modern HR manager faces and just in general about human resources and management within an organization. Tell us a little bit about some of those challenges that are cropping up in organizations now with all the changes in technology that have come about recently.

Samantha Hanson:

Right now, the challenges that HR managers have are – there is a little bit of old and new. So let’s take the old first. From the tried and true side of development, how do we develop talent effectively to keep up with the ever-changing pace of successful business?

The other side of that is performance management around how do we continue to drive the processes and the exchange between managers and employees to make sure that we are accomplishing the right thing, building the right skills and competencies and giving feedback in a way that is effective to employees.

And let’s talk a little bit about the new. So what’s different? What’s different with employees in today’s workforce that might be different than what it was ten or, certainly, twenty years ago? With technology and with infrastructure today around information, our employees today want to know the what’s in it for me. Anyone that has read Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail knows that we as consumers and also as employees want information that’s individualized. We all have iPods. We all have TV on demand. We have Internet on demand. We have – we know how to get information that is specific to our needs and for us as individuals.

We as employers and as an HR discipline owe our employees the same type of things. So how do we provide an employment experience that is not one size fits all but is individualized to that employee? That’s how we’re going to attract and retain better talent.

The second point around that is communication. So how are we communicating effectively via our managers and via our organizations effectively to individuals? So let’s take the iPod, for example. We’re trying to address employees who are used to getting information when they want it and how they want it. Are our communication internally to our employees, is it up to that test? Can we offer employees information real-time, when they want it, what’s important to them, how are they performing, how are they tracking towards incentives and rewards. That’s a question we should be asking.

And another issue around HR managers in this new work environment is around flexibility. Our employees today, again, in this real-time, when I want it, how I want it type environment, also require employment environments that work in that same way. So are we prepared to manage and drive performance in an environment that is also flexible, so that this new employee generation can get their individual needs met outside of work and inside of work. And that requires a different way of managing business and driving human capital results.

Paul Lewis:

So it sounds like there’s almost three levels that an HR professional needs to consider. One is getting management buy-in and a full understanding of what can be tracked, what are the true goals, the definitions of an employee’s success, then having the right tools in place and ultimately investing in the human resource layer and making sure the employees are clear on their goals, clear on using the technology, have the technology available to them and are in the right compensation and flexible work environment that suits them.

Samantha Hanson:

That’s absolutely right. That’s absolutely right. My recommendation and what we’re doing here at Vurv and what we did at Best Buy is we just took those layer by layer and make sure that we were building the culture where a flexible work environment or a results-only work environment could be sustainable, but you had to challenge all the myths of, “My highest performers are the ones that are sitting in front of me performing in front of me all the time.” Well, are you truly defining outcomes? Because the employee that might need to work six hours in the office and four hours later that night after they have gotten their kids home and in bed might be a much higher producer of outcomes, but if you’re not set up to measure that and allow for that, you wouldn’t necessarily see it.

And conversely, again, we’re going to be in a talent situation where we’re going to have to think differently about work and outcomes because our employee population is going to demand it, and we’re going to be in a talent war, and arguably, in many areas, we already are, where we’re going to have to build that flexibility in our environments and with our managers. And HR can be a leader in this space to help challenge those assumptions and create a workplace where employees not only will come to work but will come and stay.

Paul Lewis:

Clearly, things have changed, and the way that HR has been managed in the past is not identical to the way that they should look and the tools that they should utilize to manage it today. How are HR professionals coping with that? Are they going back to school? Are there other types of seminars? What are some of the ways that HR professionals should try to keep themselves up to date with where things are at?

Samantha Hanson:

I would say that the way that HR professionals can best prepare for this new role is to learn their business. That means finding mentors of business leaders and non-HR people and learning because I think as an HR profession, we do excellent at understanding the people side of the business and the policy and the process side of the business. Where these is typically a disconnect is truly understanding how the business works and what drives results. And then an effective business person can apply those two sides, understanding the business and understanding the people and bring a unique value in saying, “If we move turnover by this amount of percentage, I’m going to put this much money on the bottom line.” Flip that around to the positive side. “If we are able to impact retention by engaging a flexible work environment,” for example, “we will improve the bottom line by X percentage,” but you have to understand how the business works and what’s important to the business. If you can build talent that has a higher level of efficiency because you actually are getting the right people in the right jobs quicker, you will be able to drive business results that are cascading through P&Ls, all the way through your business, but you have to understand the business drivers in order to be more effective in identifying and managing the talent in the right way. I think you do that through truly identifying mentors in your business and seeking to understand, get in with them, be in the right meetings, have them teach you, but don’t necessarily look towards our traditional ways of getting information in HR, seek to understand the business.

Paul Lewis:

Wow, that’s a great point. I think, as you talked earlier about managed outcomes, it’s very important to understand the outcome you’re trying to produce in order to implement it and be a changed leader in your organization.

Samantha Hanson:

Also understand where your business expects you to be and then exceed that. So in many cases, business leaders expect that HR is going to drive difference through benefits and drive difference through recruiting, but tie that to business outcomes, so not just recruiting and days to close a position, but recruiting the right talent. So show that you’ve recruited the talent that actually has produced performance scores within two quarters that at or above average, or show that you are impacting the business because you understand the business so well. That translates back into what levers we have in HR to pull. So that’s performance, that’s recruiting, that’s management support. So are you able to coach managers, so that they are getting the most out of the talent that they have. Are they identifying and managing poor performers out of the organization, so that you are driving the higher performance in the head that you have. That’s also very important. Right? So if you’ve got a finite number of headcount, are you getting the most out of that because you have managers who know how to perform those management tasks. Right?

Paul Lewis:

Yeah.

Samantha Hanson:

Are you getting people out of the organization. That’s just as important as getting people in.

Paul Lewis:

Right. It’s important to get the right people in the right seats on the bus.

Samantha Hanson:

That’s exactly right. So performance management is key. And again, tools. I think that’s one of the reasons why I went to Vurv. So I left an amazing company that was already public and was doing a great job, and I took the Vurv job because this is the future of HR. So if you put the right tools in the hands of HR people, we can be even more impactful to our business at large. So Vurv, having a compensation and a performance management and an offboarding and a recruiting, which everyone knows Vurv for is our recruiting package, you put all those tools together, HR can be an unstoppable influence in the business.

Paul Lewis:

You see HR managers being a champion of that change within the organizations, taking these concepts and making sure the rest of management understands just how much the workforce has changed.

Samantha Hanson:

Absolutely. And quite honestly, it starts at the very basic level of a manager and the employee. So do your managers know how to understand what’s unique and individual about each of their employees? If they don’t, it is our responsibility in HR to teach that because if that manager/employee relationship is solid, everything else kind of falls in place, so the communication, the retention, the performance management, the career development, if that relationship is solid, it’s the conduit for a lot of those other things. And HR sort of facilitates that at an organizational level, if you will, but how do you strengthen that manager/employee relationship because that’s where that individualization occurs that this employee base is demanding.

Paul Lewis:

Well, Samantha, this has been really informative. I think that clearly, everyone in these human resource roles are challenged with the rate of change that is occurring out there, so I think this is a good level set for them to take that into account and to recognize some of the opportunities that are also coming with those changes.

Samantha Hanson:

Oh, it’s such an exciting time to be in HR. I am thrilled for the opportunity to be able to talk to it. Obviously, you can tell I’m fairly passionate about both the current state and the future state of HR as driving business outcomes as well as people outcomes, so I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you about it.

Paul Lewis:

Great. Okay, so to wrap up the program, we’re going to go into a little thing that we like to call, “Truth or Marketing.” I’m going to say something, and then you can just tell me if you think it’s going to happen or not.

Samantha Hanson:

Okay.

Paul Lewis:

So talking about change, the year will be 2008. Here are the items. Item number one, American Idol singer, Sanjaya, will release a hit album.

Samantha Hanson:

Oh, inevitably, that’s going to be [laughs].

Paul Lewis:

Jeep will release a four-door Wrangler.

Samantha Hanson:

No, I’ll have to say that’s gonna – that’s not true, false, marketing, yep.

Paul Lewis:

Okay. And the last question, Brittany Spears will either enter a convent or run for public office.

Samantha Hanson:

Oh, goodness sakes, let’s hope that’s marketing.

Paul Lewis:

I hope so too. Well, Samantha, again, this has been great talking with you today. If people wanted more information, they could go to vurv.com, which is spelled, V-U-R-V.com.

Samantha Hanson:

Yep, send me an e-mail. I’m at shanson@vurv.com, S-H-A-N-S-O-N, be happy to talk to anyone. Thank you again for the opportunity.

Paul Lewis:

Absolutely. And also, as always, if anyone listening to the program would like additional information, they can always find that online at internetmarketingvoodoo.com. Thanks, again.

Announcer:

For more information on this week’s topic, visit internetmarketingvoodoo.com. This podcast has been brought to you by MindComet, the Relationship Agency.

[End of Audio]

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