Is HR Ready to Meet Employee Expectations?
Deepa Damodaran interviews Lakshmi C from Accenture
Posted on 10-22-2018, Read Time: - Min
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“Due to the changing workforce demographic, business models and employee expectations, HR should be focusing more on individuals than on processes and transactions,” notes Lakshmi C, Managing Director, Human Resources, Accenture India. Deepa Damodaran of HR.com had the opportunity to interview her in the backdrop of the SHRM India Annual Conference & Exposition 2018 held recently in New Delhi, India. |
Excerpts from an interview:
What are some of the major trends that HR professional should be aware of from an Indian market perspective?
“We are going to see the war for talent further heating up because new technologies are reshaping businesses itself.
As per recent HR research, 78% of business leaders believe that their business will become digitized over the next 2-3 years. Moreover, a demographic shift in workforce is happening too. More than 85% of the Indian workforce is comprised of millennials today. Also the gig economy is on the rise as more and more part-time workers are now working alongside full-timers.
Given these contexts, the expectation from the talent is changing too. Today, employees want to be able to structure their careers by themselves. They seek more flexibility in work, want to work in project-based modules, and seek hyper-personalized experiences at work.
HR has to start reimagining where it is focusing its efforts on. We need to quickly leverage technology in order to let go of some of the more transactional HR processes we follow. We will have to focus a lot more on individuals to understand what is important for our people at an individual level, so that we can better respond to what an employee really wants. Are they expecting time away from work, more flexibility, work-life integration, or possibly some other benefit?
HR should be focusing more on individuals than on processes and transactions for which we can leverage technology.
Required skills of HR professionals will also be very different. We need people who are a lot more strategic, capable of understanding data, leveraging analytics, and much better at coaching their teams, at enabling our leaders and coaching them in turn.”
As per recent HR research, 78% of business leaders believe that their business will become digitized over the next 2-3 years. Moreover, a demographic shift in workforce is happening too. More than 85% of the Indian workforce is comprised of millennials today. Also the gig economy is on the rise as more and more part-time workers are now working alongside full-timers.
Given these contexts, the expectation from the talent is changing too. Today, employees want to be able to structure their careers by themselves. They seek more flexibility in work, want to work in project-based modules, and seek hyper-personalized experiences at work.
HR has to start reimagining where it is focusing its efforts on. We need to quickly leverage technology in order to let go of some of the more transactional HR processes we follow. We will have to focus a lot more on individuals to understand what is important for our people at an individual level, so that we can better respond to what an employee really wants. Are they expecting time away from work, more flexibility, work-life integration, or possibly some other benefit?
HR should be focusing more on individuals than on processes and transactions for which we can leverage technology.
Required skills of HR professionals will also be very different. We need people who are a lot more strategic, capable of understanding data, leveraging analytics, and much better at coaching their teams, at enabling our leaders and coaching them in turn.”
Will the learning and development of millennials be any different from their predecessors?
“Yes, it will be different. Things have already changed and are further changing. At Accenture, for many years we have curated learning content. With our own learning platform that considered an individual’s career programs, a personalized f training was created Employees were required to attend classroom, virtual classroom sessions, or take online courses.
Now, on-demand learning is the norm. We have learning boards that have much less content, and little chunks of learning that are available in bite-sized formats for learners to leverage wherever and whenever they want. We believe these will help them to continuously upgrade their skills in areas that they want.
Earlier leaders and managers used to nominate people to attend learning programs. Whereas, today learners’ demands are considered to determine what they should learn and when. We, as HR professionals, need to ensure learning is available for them to leverage on-demand. We have to avail a variety of learning models.
We have been doing this over the last year. Our leaning expenditure has been about a billion dollars globally. We will continue to invest similar dollars because 60 percent of our revenue is digital. So we cannot achieve this if people are not constantly upskillig themselves in the new technologies, whether it be digitization, cloud etc. – in order to help us grow. “
Now, on-demand learning is the norm. We have learning boards that have much less content, and little chunks of learning that are available in bite-sized formats for learners to leverage wherever and whenever they want. We believe these will help them to continuously upgrade their skills in areas that they want.
Earlier leaders and managers used to nominate people to attend learning programs. Whereas, today learners’ demands are considered to determine what they should learn and when. We, as HR professionals, need to ensure learning is available for them to leverage on-demand. We have to avail a variety of learning models.
We have been doing this over the last year. Our leaning expenditure has been about a billion dollars globally. We will continue to invest similar dollars because 60 percent of our revenue is digital. So we cannot achieve this if people are not constantly upskillig themselves in the new technologies, whether it be digitization, cloud etc. – in order to help us grow. “
What are the top qualities that you seek while recruiting candidates?
“It varies depending on the level of the position. In the entry level, the focus is on the right qualifications and aptitude. When we look at the leadership or team leader level, we are looking for more alignments with our leadership DNA. We have defined a set of behaviors which will help us be more innovative, agile and thus help us excel in the future. Some of the questions to be considered will be: Will they be able to give more personalized experience to our people?Do they have a curiosity mindset or diversity mindset? Are they able to advocate a vision for their functions etc?”
How do you ensure that unconscious bias does not affect your recruiting process?
“I believe the journey begins with creating awareness for each one of us regarding what our unconscious biases are. During the past three years, we have been investing in programs that help each one of our leaders and people go through a workshop to re-examine what their unconscious biases really are. For example: While recruiting am I looking at skills similar to mine? Am I biased by the colleges that the candidate is coming from? Am I biased by the marks the person has or am I biased towards men when it comes to staffing people at offsite locations, etc?
Some of these are not called biases in the traditional sense. We are helping people to be aware of such unconscious biases that are influencing their hiring or staffing or promoting decisions so that they can avoid them during such decision making processes.
We are encouraging and guiding recruiters and managers to have conversations with candidates or staff members to understand what they want and what they are capable of. Conversation will help them understand what the other employee’s aspiration or constraints are and thus help us make better decisions than those taken based on mere assumptions and biases.”
Some of these are not called biases in the traditional sense. We are helping people to be aware of such unconscious biases that are influencing their hiring or staffing or promoting decisions so that they can avoid them during such decision making processes.
We are encouraging and guiding recruiters and managers to have conversations with candidates or staff members to understand what they want and what they are capable of. Conversation will help them understand what the other employee’s aspiration or constraints are and thus help us make better decisions than those taken based on mere assumptions and biases.”
How much and where do you leverage AI and data analytics technologies?
“A little over a year back, we launched a chatbot which is built on artificial intelligence technology. It started off as a tool that would interact with employees to respond to queries such as policy, etc. Today it has evolved in to a more sophisticated tool where it can do more than just direct employees to a location. The tool can inform them more about what the policy is about and what it means to an employer given their particular situation. We want to eventually take it to a much more intelligent coaching level as well.
We have also used AI in the case of staffing where we have an AI enabled smart solution where the algorithm has helped match opportunities that are open to the internal staff, thus reducing the cycle time around staffing. It helps us identify the talent and enables better staffing outcomes.”
We have also used AI in the case of staffing where we have an AI enabled smart solution where the algorithm has helped match opportunities that are open to the internal staff, thus reducing the cycle time around staffing. It helps us identify the talent and enables better staffing outcomes.”
Where do you see the Indian market currently is in terms of AI and data analytics adoption? Are companies still adopting a stand and watch strategy?
“I have seen a number of start-ups in the SHRM event who are into AI and data analytics. I think people are a lot more open to experimenting with some of the new technologies. The dilemma is more about whether they want to buy or build the technology internally. That decision will depend upon the size and scale of an organization.
It would be too late if they just sit back and watch to see where the market goes, because the shift to companies viewing employees more as consumers is already happening. So if we don’t become more savvy about how we can manage those employee aspirations, we will lose. You can’t do it unless you have an intelligent way of mining that information and using that information to drive your talent strategy.
Only by leveraging technologies, such as data analytics and AI, can we understand what an individual’s expectations are right now and how it will evolve in future.”
It would be too late if they just sit back and watch to see where the market goes, because the shift to companies viewing employees more as consumers is already happening. So if we don’t become more savvy about how we can manage those employee aspirations, we will lose. You can’t do it unless you have an intelligent way of mining that information and using that information to drive your talent strategy.
Only by leveraging technologies, such as data analytics and AI, can we understand what an individual’s expectations are right now and how it will evolve in future.”
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