HR Must Lead With A “Digital Mindset” In 2023

Key competencies for HR practitioners of the future

Whether the Great Resignation is diminishing or simply giving way to the epidemic of Quiet Quitting, one thing is clear: We have entered a new period of competition and care for talent, one complicated by economic stressors for both businesses and employees. It has never been more critical for organizations to develop new ways of demonstrating the value they place on people.
 

Sustaining meaningful connections for employees in an increasingly geographically dispersed workforce is an opportunity ripe for data and digital tools, but the success of these efforts arguably relies upon the right organizational mindset.

In their new book, The Digital Mindset, Paul Leonardi and Tsedal Neeley make a case for leaders and companies to embrace digital tools and data skills in the workplace in a meaningful yet balanced way. Leonardi and Neeley offer a roadmap for business leaders and HR practitioners to maximize the potential of digital and data while also watching out for possible pitfalls. Ultimately, the “digital mindset” is a growth mindset that leans into a practice of continuous learning in order to thrive in a world of continuous change.

Continuous Learning Led by HR Requires Expanding Key Practices

HR practitioners have an opportunity, but also the responsibility, to lead alongside business leaders in the landscape of continuous learning amidst continuous change.

Three core practices can be driven or supported by HR in 2023.

1.    Adopting New Technology and Practices Around Business Processes

Leonardi and Tsedal emphasize the opportunity to take advantage of new digital technologies that accelerate response to challenging business circumstances or create competitive advantage. The adoption of new digital platforms requires intentionality and advocacy.

2.     Analyzing Data Generated by Employees and Their Engagement with Technology

Adoption of new digital technologies brings with it a whole new realm of data generated by the activities of end users within the workforce. New employee data will be generated passively (“digital exhaust”) such as usage or log data generated by digital tools. Active employee data is collected through intentional processes and efforts such as performance reviews or engagement surveys.

An HR practitioner’s ability to effectively identify and leverage these two types of data will unlock new, meaningful ways to understand and support the needs of the organization’s people

3.    Supporting a Culture of Transparency and Trust in the Organization’s Digital Transformation

Leonardi and Tsedal give considerable attention to company culture as fundamental to the successful growth of the digital mindset. Fostering several dimensions of psychological safety around data analysis and digital experiments is necessary when companies want employees to share of themselves (i.e. their data) while also participating in evidence-based analytical pursuits that will create failed experiments alongside successful discoveries.

Translating all of this directly to the HR context, opportunities for the advancement of a digital mindset emerge around topics such as hiring and onboarding, employee engagement, and performance management—all involving potential for leveraging a growing number of purpose-built tools, whether freestanding or integrated within the HRIS.

Speed to Hire with Digital Platforms

Efficiency and quality of the hiring process is important to maintain workforce capacity. But ease and speed of the hiring and onboarding process also contribute to higher employee engagement, positive sentiment around new employment fit, and stronger employee retention.

In order to maximize efficiency and effectiveness around hiring, HR must lead:

Digital Platform

Modern Applicant Tracking Systems and sourcing platforms create opportunities for HR and hiring managers to connect directly to the world of professional social networks and global job sites to quickly build pipelines of good-fit candidates.

Data Analysis

Digital tools make it possible to measure how well an organization’s hiring practices work compared to those of organizations in other related fields. Purpose-built tools that offer insight into time-to-hire, cost-of-hire, and the average volume of candidates and applicants can aid in understanding where a company is doing well and what aspects of the hiring process might be working against their goals for talent acquisition. Benchmarks related to hiring shed light on norms within today’s competitive landscape.

Transparency & Trust

Today, talent acquisition leaders can leverage modern systems that help bring clarity and process to the hiring process, but now more than ever, choosing tools that allow unbiased hiring and collaborative feedback when selecting candidates is essential to building a high-trust organization.

Cultural Reinforcement and Employee Listening

Tsedal Neeley has also written in greater detail about the specific challenges and opportunities of creating strong teams in the world of remote work. Digital tools give employees leaders the chance to cultivate a virtual presence as never before, while at the same time, allowing employees to share opinions and feelings about their teams and organizations in ways that can catalyze meaningful action from leaders.

In order to enable a virtuous culture in a remote/hybrid world, HR must lead:

Digital Platform

Opportunities abound for leaders to communicate with whole employee populations by cultivating an asynchronous digital presence. Ranging from videos in shared digital spaces to leader spotlights in LMS-delivered onboarding content, HR practitioners should encourage business leaders to be known by their employees. At the same time, purpose-built platforms to survey employees at regular intervals make it easy to ask for employee feedback.

Data Analysis

Analyzing employee sentiment in the form of well-designed annual engagement surveys and more frequent pulse surveys is an important way to know how key talent segments feel about the work they are doing and the direction of the company. Trust in senior leadership is steadily a top reason for employee satisfaction and retention.

Transparency & Trust

Demonstrable digital presence from business leaders is one way to encourage an open culture of sharing from employees. But it is more important that employees see action related to the sentiment (data) that they offer. The best way for employees to feel safe and interested to share their opinions is to publish aggregate analysis and show that employees are being heard.

Perpetual Performance Management

For the past several years, performance management has shifted to an ongoing conversation that centers on development toward personal goals as much as it does accountability to company goals. Peter Cappelli and Anna Tavis charted this transformation in recent years but it has become all the more compelling in the age of hybrid and remote workforce opportunities.
HR must lead . . .

Digital Platform

Performance management is no longer simply an annual conversation and rating. Regular interaction among managers and employees that focuses on professional development alongside accountability is enhanced by digital tools that offer all parties the chance to easily record point-in-time thoughts and nudge steps toward the next key milestones.

Data Analysis

Compelling data stories can connect employee performance to business outcomes and employee retention in ways that business leaders, HR practitioners, and employees can view together. Patterns in performance and productivity across the competitive landscape are increasingly surfacing with modern digital tools in performance management.

Transparency & Trust

Similar to employee listening activities, employee trust in privacy and the process surrounding performance conversations is crucial to enabling stronger, more meaningful participation in performance discussions and collaboration. HR has the responsibility to set new tones and practices around performance management to ensure that managers and employees adopt new practices.

New digital tools for Performance Management help this process by nudging both managers and employees toward ongoing dialogue, sharing meaningful feedback regularly through a secure, trusted system.
Purpose-built digital tools and people analytics offer many new possibilities for effective work and collaboration in 2023 and the years to come. HR must make the most of new opportunities in leading change by exhibiting the new digital mindset. Leonardi and Neeley offer a fantastic framework that HR can bring to bear to drive the business forward.

Adopting new digital platforms, analyzing data, and ensuring transparency & trust are key competencies for HR practitioners of the future.

Author Bios

	Brian Kasen is the Director of Business Intelligence, and Andrew Sallee is People Analytics Consultant at Trakstar.