What we often don't talk about the Future of Work, HR Tech and Digital Transformation

Originally Posted on Gautam's Blog

I try to attend a couple of HR Technology conferences every year namely SHRM's Tech Conference, and People Matters' TechHR Conference.

These conferences are unlike the more traditional HR Conferences. There's a different energy, with international speakers, a totally dedicated venue for HR Tech startups, Angel Investors hearing pitches, in addition to the traditional sponsors.

Every speaker and participant is gung-ho about the amazing difference technology can make to employees and the workplace. How it will free us of boring repetitive tasks to focus on truly creative and strategic tasks.

Some of the things that HR leaders often say in such conferences are (and I paraphrase):

"We need to reskill our employees to get them ready for the coming future of work"

"We need to embrace an agile mindset and prioritise digital transformation for putting employee experience at the centre of everything we do"

"We need to deploy tools like AI and ML and chatbots to better hire, engage and service our employees and leaders"

"Technology will free us from the shackles of a physical workspace, enabling all of us to be masters of our time and destiny creating a rising gig economy" 

I agree, all these are correct, but once in a while I wish, people would focus on the inevitable disappointments inflated expectations will bring. There is a "law" attributed to American researcher Roy Amara, commonly known as Amara's Law which says: "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."

In my humble opinion we should have more conversations about the following in the context of the future of work:

• Digital Transformation is hard to get right. According to consulting firm McKinsey the average success rate across industries is about 30%. That is because a digital transformation requires a concerted effort from every part of the organization, which might be a varying degrees of digital fluency. HR people are aware how a process or structural change initiative can falter, now imagine changing processes, technology and culture all at the same time.
• Let's address the elephant in the room: Job losses, changes in work due to automation and reskilling. Depending on which report you read, the numbers are widely different. But here's an example. At a panel on on HR for Industry 4.0, a person who was in HR at a paints company shared this example: The company selected a location in a North Indian state to set up a new plant. The state government was overjoyed when they heard the proposed output of the plant. However when the plant came up, it was so automated that it required just 200 people to manage it than what the policy makers thought would be 1000-1200 people. The skills to run such a plant were not available locally too, and the only direct local employment were in areas like building security, cooks and gardening. So yes, automation and AI will create new jobs, but most often than not the workers they displace will not be able to reskill fast enough. And it will not be a one time reskilling either. As the rate of pace keeps accelerating people will need to keep adding skills and reinventing themselves again and again. The impact that will have on the mental health of such people and the larger impact and stress it will but on the communities and social fabric is a topic that is brushed under the carpet. It has happened before, as Clay Shirky called it "Cognitive Surplus". Read a detailed summary here.
• It's also worth remembering that global companies with very deep pockets and a relatively higher skilled workforce would be able to carry out the reskilling with much less pain, if their stocks are not hammered in the stock markets, that is. It is also a fact that most employed people are in the Micro, Small and Medium sectors, which may or may not be able to afford it, even if they want to. 
• Have covered some of the issues of the rise of the gig economy in my earlier blog post here. See specially point number 10, in that post.
• Let's face it, in my personal opinion, most HR people are not very very comfortable with technology or digitally savvy. Most are risk averse and simply implement the HR module of the ERP solution they are already deploying. That's because the speakers at the HR Tech conferences are the outliers, the innovators, and believing that some HR leaders are representative of the larger community, would be a mistake. HR Tech vendors should therefore stop thinking of these innovators as the normal and get their hands on Geoffrey Moore's classic book "Crossing the Chasm"
• After which we come to the vendors, and some blame should be shared by the HR buyers also for falling to the "new shiny object" syndrome. The big issue with vendors, specially those working on point solutions, is that they don't have anyone in the founders who have worked in HR. Therefore they think they have a solution which meets their needs (primarily arising out of the pain points they have themselves felt as candidates or employees) without really understanding the dependencies and processes that need to be addressed before either Candidate Experience/Employee Experience can be improved solely on the basis of technology. Finding to a client who is willing to experiment with a new, unproven solution is being very lucky. Vendors need to be open to customising their product and not say "take it or leave it". Another reason many CHROs hesitate to try a new HR Tech startup is they do not want to be investing time, people, data and significant resources to a startup only to find 18 months later to have shut down because it burned cash and couldn't raise additional funding or has been acquired by a larger player who might turn the tech for other use. Vendors need to be open about their product roadmap and funding situation. Those who don't do that impact the other startups in the ecosystem. In the case of Artificial Intelligence in HR enough has been said about relying on past data leading to reinforcing existing biases.

These are some aspects I think that we as a HR and HR Tech community need to be having conversations about so that we don't rush in where angels fear to tread :) What do you think? Where would you disagree with me?