Personalisation In HR: Some Ideas
Are you able to personalise?
Are You Able and Willing to Personalise?
It has to do with the ability and the willingness of the organisation to personalise, and with the level of acceptance of differences of the employees in the organisation. If you want to engage and retain the employee who lives far away, you might want to tailor your offering to his wishes. Can he work from home? Can he work from an office closer to his home? Are the remote working facilities up-to-standard? Can he have a driver and work from the car? Can you support his relocation to a location closer to the office?
Segmentation is not Personalisation
Treating employees as individuals and not as part of a group or segment is one of the most important long-term trends. The way organisations deal with employees is still far behind the way organisations deal with clients, but there is movement. HR can learn a lot from marketing.
What is Personalisation?
Personalisation and customisation
In her article “Personalisation defined: what is personalization?,” Katie Sweet defines personalisation as
“The act of tailoring an experience or communication based on information a company has learned about an individual.”
Personalisation is different from customisation, but the concepts are closely related. In personalisation a company modifies an experience, without any special effort of the customer (or employee). With customisation the customer (or the employee) can tailor the experience him/herself.
Hyper-personalisation
These days you also hear a lot about “hyper-personalisation”. My understanding: this is personalisation, but faster and allowing for even more granular personalisation, by leveraging artificial intelligence and real-time data.
Do People have Common Needs?
- Certainty: The need for safety, security, comfort, order, consistency and control
- Variety: The need for uncertainty, diversity, challenge, change, surprise, adventure
- Significance: The need for meaning, validation, feeling needed, honoured, wanted, special
- Love and connection: The need for connection, communication, intimacy and shared love with others
- Growth: The need for physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual development
- Contribution: The need to give, care, protect beyond ourselves, to serve others and the good of all
The work of Robbins builds on the famous work of Abraham Maslow; the hierarchy of needs. The more fundamental needs (physical, security) were taken for granted in the list of Robbins.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Source: Neel Burton
The thought could be: before bothering too much about personalisation, please first make sure the basic human needs are met.
Learning More about Candidates and the Workforce
Personalised HR: Some Ideas
Some thoughts about the implications of a more individual approach in different HR areas (in alphabetical order). Some personalisation, and some customisation.
Compensation & Benefits
From Kerry Jones: The most desirable employee benefits. HBR, February 2017.
Internal Communications
The trend is: from ‘sender determines channel’ to ‘receiver determines channel’.
Today it is easy to find out the preferred communication channels for each of our employees. If you want to communicate in an effective way, as management or as organisation, you have to find ways to tap into these preferred channels and to adapt the way the message is communicated to the different channels.
Learning & Development
Leaning & development is typically an area that is still dominated by a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Standard onboarding programs. Traineeships. The typical management development programs for different levels (beginners, middle management and senior management). Many organisations state that they are in favour of the 70:20:10 approach, but in reality they focus on the easy 10% (courses and training).
In the two pictures below, I try to outline some elements of personalisation, in relation to learning. In the “old” situation: groups of people (new employees, high potentials, leaders) are treated as a group, and receive basically the same learning intervention. Often in a classroom, away from the real work.
Traditional classroom learning. The triangle is the workplace, the rectangle the classroom
In the new situation, employees (and other people working for an organisation) are treated as individuals. Most learning takes place on-the-job (the lower part of the picture). Tailored to the individual needs, a wide variety of micro-learning solutions is offered. Of course, when people must learn something new that will take a considerable effort, this will happen off-the-job, but preferably not as collective as in the old situation.
Micro- and macro learning. Micro learning: small learning interventions provided in the flow of work. Macro learning: learning something new, in the classroom or in another way.
Personalisation related to learning and development can be done for different aspects.
- The actual work of the employee
- The performance level of the employee
- The learning style- and preferences of the employee.
Management & Leadership
There might be other opportunities to personalise management and leadership, like matching managers and employees based on personality and other relevant criteria.
Office Layout
Many organisations are moving back from the “everybody in open space” concept. Employees prefer an individual approach, where they are able to choose their working location in line with their individual preferences and personal needs. Not one-size-fits all. This will require more creativity and flexibility of the office designers. Tech can help to make the best match between current needs and available space.
Onboarding
Onboarding can benefit a lot from personalisation and customisation. A simple example. A big retail store offers all their new shop floor staff a standardised onboarding program of around twenty hours. Per hour the program outlines in detail what the new employee should do. The onboarding program is not personalised. Some of the new employees might already have experience with some of the tasks. There are people who learn faster than other people. Some learn by doing, others learn best by listening to instructions. By personalising onboarding, this retail company could save money, and improve the employee experience.
Organisational Design
Sometimes it looks like all organisations are transforming into self-managed teams, holacracies, flat organisations and what have you. A flexible workforce is the norm. Most of the time the shape of organisations is not taking the individual needs of employees into account. There are people who flourish in a hierarchical organisation. Others are looking for a secure job, preferably from nine to five. Some people hate to be told by a boss what they should do. There are people who prefer to work alone and people who love to work in teams.
People Analytics
Most people analytics efforts today are very much focused on the needs of the organisation. Focusing on the benefits of people analytics for the employees requires a different approach. Some people are very eager to learn more about their behaviour, and how they can use personal data to improve their performance. You could focus on this group. Provide the early adapters with personal trackers, monitor their behaviour and performance and help them to analyse the data and use the outcomes to become better.
Performance Consulting
Performance Consulting is focused on helping people to become better. The focus is on the individual employee.
Recruitment
Recruiting for specific jobs and standard traineeships are slowly fading. The trend is to look for people who have future proof capabilities and a certain personality and who have a fit with the culture and purpose of the organisation, and then check how suitable candidates fit with opportunities. Less fixed jobs, and more diverse teams with individuals with complementary capabilities who can be assigned to a challenging opportunity.
The Talent Experience
Talent management has also suffered from the unstoppable urge to standardise. High potential profiles, career paths, training programs and coaching and mentoring are often designed for the group, and not for the individuals.
Work
Personalisation and customisation of the work people can do, is probably the most promising area.
- Job crafting. Allowing employees to reframe their work, physically, socially and cognitively. Read: Job crafting – The DIY approach to meaningful work. It could also mean making sure there is a good match between the capabilities, wishes and needs of employees and the assignments you give them.
- Flexible working hours. A classic customisation solution, making it possible for employees to create a better work-life balance by working on the hours that suit them best (to a certain extend, as most flexible working hours arrangements are rather rigid).
- Flexible working amount. HR can learn from football here. Many football players are measured in the morning, and based on their physical and mental state their individual training program for the day is designed. This could be done at work at well. Detect the readiness of an employee, and adapt the daily workload. My AutoSleep app gives me a daily readiness report.
- Work location. Also one of the more traditional solutions, that could be extended. A call centre found out, that home-work distance was a good predictor of retention (shorter distance > longer retention). The cut up the big call center in small units, that were located centrally in residential areas. Some personalities fit well in an urban environment, some more in rural surroundings. The more options you offer, the more you are able to personalise.
- Employee-Boss fit. Can you determine the employee-boss fit? I am sure that with some creativity (and solid data) you can make some predictions. Letting employees choose their own boss might also be a possibility. Similar matching processes you could design for employee-team and employee-client.
Author Bio
| Tom Haak is the founder and director of The HR Trend Institute. Prior to founding the HR Trend Institute in 2014, Tom held senior HR positions in companies as Arcadis, Aon, KPMG and Philips. The HR Trend Institute detects, follows and encourages smart and creative use of trends in the field of people and organizations, and also in adjacent areas. Visit https://hrtrendinstitute.com Connect Tom Haak Follow @HRTrendInst |
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