HR as a Product Manager

Every day we experience great products. They range from a product as simple as a pen to mobile phones to cars, etc. These products become an intrinsic part of our lives as they solve a problem or fulfill a need for us. Organizations that build these products achieve this by following a clear set of principles and process. Role of Human Resources within the organization is quite similar. HR function in all organizations strives to create a great experience for its customers i.e. (employees and potential candidates) and to assist leaders to achieve their business goals. While the intent is correct, if you were to ask your employees today, "What does the HR Department do?” or the leaders, “Does HR add value?” the response is not always pleasant. 

I have been fortunate enough to work both as an HR in tech product companies and as a Product Manager (PM) and learn the approach used to build products. The approach used by PMs can make the HR delivery more effective and more employee-centric. This approach is even more relevant today when the business and employee dynamics are changing rapidly.

APPLYING PRODUCT MANAGEMENT LEARNING TO HR:

Understanding the Market: Most of the PMs start building a product by understanding the market it will operate in. This helps them ensures that the product strategy and plans are in line with the norms of the industry and the expectations of consumers. For HR, this translates into understanding the business model and the external market. A great way to understand the business model is to plot the same on a business model canvas and also understand the business goals. External market relates to understanding the forces that are impacting the business (technologies, govt. policies, competition, etc.) and talent landscape (demand and supply of talent, motivations of talent, etc.)

Understanding Customer Needs: Have you ever found yourself glued to the screen on Netflix for hours? Have you ever wondered how they achieve this? Netflix achieves this by carefully studying their customer needs and behavior while using the product. PMs create user personas that help them figure out the profile, personality, motivations, goals and pain areas of their users. For HR as well, before designing solutions it is important to understand these elements about the employees and the candidates they service. HR at many times is found guilty of creating solutions based on gut feel, market benchmarks and success stories of a specific organization which sometimes do not deliver the desired results as the user personas do not match. Value delivered by HR can increase immensely if they identify specific pain points and address them. Some tools can be used to understand the needs/pain points are – analyzing trends, surveys, interviews, focus group discussions and contextual inquiry.

Developing the Product: PMs use Agile methodology (like Scrum) to build the products. This framework works on iteratively building the product. It starts with building a minimal viable product (MVP) with the basic set of features needed to release the product. The MVP is then tested with a target group and improved on an ongoing basis using customer feedback. This incremental development is done by self-organizing cross-functional teams that work in sprints to deliver on specific features in a defined period of time. These teams review their performance by conducting daily review meetings, sprint reviews to seek customer feedback and sprint retrospective to improve the way of working.

For HR, this presents a great opportunity as most of the policies and processes designed by them are products consumed by internal customers. These can be designed in collaboration with the business/employees and built upon iteratively seeking their ongoing feedback. This might also mean personalizing the solutions for differing line of business to accommodate their business nuances. For e.g. Considering the business cycle, technology teams might do quarterly goal setting whereas finance might have annual goal setting. Working in such cross-functional teams will also make the HR team nimbler as they will get exposure to more domains of HR to easily support the changing business dynamics. There are certain organizations like Google, Accenture, GE, etc. that are experimenting with this approach.   

Marketing and Selling the product: Few consumer products are packaged without a distinctive logo and type of packaging. Can you imagine mistaking an iPhone for a Google Pixel? These great product companies understand that the look of their products communicates powerful messages to customers. The same applies to HR. When the HR department is launching something new or has made substantial improvements and changes, they should go all out in communicating this via all necessary forums to engage their audience. HR leaders and HRBPs play an important role here in communicating these powerful messages to key stakeholders in the organization. The focus like marketers should be on building emotional connect and persuading employees to drive adoption. Leveraging the skills of marketing professional in the cross-functional teams can add a lot of value during this stage.

Managing Customer Experience: Along with actively marketing the product to acquire new customers, PMs also focus on activation and retention. They focus a lot on ensuring that the entire product value proposition is seamlessly delivered. This includes activities like educating on features, problem-solving etc. delivered through a mix of interactive demos, chats or in-person support. HR as a function also has to deliver the same value to its employees and needs to ensure all the products launched are used by its customers. Great service will also mean HR becomes custodian of the employee experience and all visitors to the HR department get what they need, with no hassle, or needless hoops to navigate. Leveraging the right HR products and tools like chat bots etc. can help in building operational efficiencies.

Measuring success: Once the product is in the market or a new feature for an existing product is launched, Product managers track the performance of the product and analyse it to derive insights. These insights, in turn, enable the PM to improve the product. E.g. common metrics used to measure the success of an app include, downloads, log-ins, time spent on App, Heat-Map, no. of clicks, most/least used feature, etc. Among other standard metrics, HR can also measure the success of its programs by tracking critical metrics like the adoption of the program, utilization of program etc. The most critical metric that can be used by HR to measure employee experience is NPS. 

Working as a product manager would mean HR will have to build a deeper understanding of the business to assess the needs of the customer, become custodians of employee experience and use analytics to build on their products and services. Picking up from some of the aspects shared above can be a great starting point to leverage and benefit from this process. 

What are your thoughts on this concept? Do you think HR can think and engage with employees like a product manager? Please share your ideas and views.

#HR #ProductManagement #Agile #Scrum #HRforFuture