Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Next Generation Workforce and Workplace

We help individuals, organizations, and communities think innovatively about the next generation workforce and workplace. Read these forward-thinking stories and best practices from our work and lives.

The Surgeon General’s Warning and Professional Development

As I take in my daily dose of news fed to me via email by the New York Times on Saturday, August 31, I’m surprised to see the title: Opinion: Surgeon General: Parents Are at Their Wits’ End. We Can Do Better.

Saturday’s Times email blast usually features a more lighthearted piece, especially on a holiday weekend.

But as I opened the article, I couldn’t help thinking, “No sh*t!” to what the Surgeon General was saying. You see, I have literally just cleaned up sh*t (Or wait, was it vomit?) off the floor of our bathroom as child number two out of three started with a full round of the stomach bug and didn’t quite make it to the toilet.

Such are the “joys”, I guess, as the Surgeon General references in his opinion piece. It is back to school season and everyone is passing around germs.

But this is not all that has come during back to school month in a household of three children ages 13,10, and 5. When they are healthy, EVERYDAY at school, everyday of life, demands something.

Take for example, the day before the holiday weekend started. One child had to bring a snack for his class that corresponded with the color of the day- black. In case you are wondering, Oreos were a hit for the group of four and five year olds. And don’t forget, he had to wear black too. This is day nine of ten days of the color game where corresponding outfits with the color of the day are a must. We opted for bracelets two of the ten days because I refused to go buy clothes just to meet the color demands of Pre-K.

The ten-year-old had student council speeches at 8:15 am the same day. Prior to said speech, this required the speech to be written and turned in for approval and posters to be made. Oh, and a parent form to sign. Of course, it outlined the requirements and obligations of both parent and student for accepting the role of leading the student government of an elementary school. She ran for President and lost, so cue in the emotional support needing to be provided there. This support takes place in between trips to the said toilet with the stomach bug.

And the thirteen year old. Well, his struggles have been much like the Surgeon General leads his article with- serious health issues. On this Thursday before the Labor Day holiday, he had just been discharged from an almost week long hospital stay.

So, you can see why I was saying “No sh*t!” to the Surgeon General op-ed. It has been a season for our family of intense stress. Honestly, it takes a toll even when someone isn’t hospitalized or throwing up everywhere.

The demands for black snacks, constant school events- which nine times out of ten requires you to send money and fill out a form- is ongoing. And let us not forget figuring out how the heck you are going to carve out time to work to pay for all this stuff and get work done (if you are fortunate enough to have the flexibility to leave work) to attend kids activities in and out of school or care for them when they are sick.

I have it made, but…

The Surgeon General and I may not be in identical boats, but we both have it “made” when it comes to the lifestyle we can afford for ourselves and our children.

As the first comment I saw of the NYT piece said, “Dr. Murphy had access to top shelf medical care and a supportive workplace. He is very lucky. A lot of parents don’t have these advantages.”

I have these advantages too. My husband and I work for ourselves and therefore have a ton of flexibility when it comes to when and where and how we do work. At least one of us can make the 8:15 am student council speech and another the 2:15 carline pick up line because our five year old is too young to go to extended day at the elementary school where he attends. We don’t have to punch a time clock, and we are able to divide and conquer.

Our health insurance is uber expensive and not that great of coverage honestly, but we have it. We don’t have to make decisions on whether to access the healthcare system if any of us needs it based on whether or not we can afford it.

That doesn’t negate the stress, though, of the 12:08 am email that had to go out to a client the night my son was admitted to hospital to say, last minute, that I wouldn’t be at his facility the next morning given what I described to him vaguely as “a family medical emergency.” Or the meeting I had to put off twice about starting a new contract with another client with the same vague reasoning. I eventually had to delegate the meeting to a person on my team who I know executed everything beautifully. But it is just another example of the constant- and I mean constant- reshuffling I have to do to try to work- and I’m lucky that it is work I love- and raise kids.

I cannot imagine the toll day-to-day parenting takes on the single parent, the parent that can’t leave work or they will be fired, the parent who doesn’t have insurance, and the parent who doesn’t have a village of people around them helping them.

We’ve been raising kids since the beginning of time. Has it always been this hard?

So maybe it is just the way things are today. Me and peers are making too much of parenting, spending too much time worrying about our kids, engaging them and us in too many activities in and out of school, worried too much about them missing out. Or are we both working when only one of us should? Or are we worried about missing out on every single thing they do because of the comparison and judgment between parents that show up for everything and those that do not?

I think since the beginning of time parenting has been stressful. Cue Cain and Abel and that tragedy. I’m sure the death of one son at the hand of the other was pretty stressful for Adam and Eve income, privilege, and societal demands of the time and all aside. The stress of trying to provide the very best care for our children so they can grow up to be healthy adults is not new, and I think it is one all parents have shared since the beginning of time.

But there are some things today that are different. As comments in the NYT article point to, screens and social media do, I think, play a role in the difficulties. They aren’t to blame, but they do play a role. The way the structure of work is misaligned with education and childcare (access and affordability) plays a role. The way we are constantly striving for more, more, more plays a role. And as many of the comments in the NYT Op-Ed point to, this seems to be unique to America. Do kids really need to go on two field trips in one month at school? Do we really need to operate this factory 24/7/365? The healthcare system, as MANY comments in the NYT article point to, plays a role and adds a lot of stress if and when you have to encounter it. And if you are alive, you will at one point or another.

And as I write this last paragraph, my inbox dings with a breaking news alert from the Times, “Four people were killed and at least nine injured in a shooting on the campus of a Georgia high school, the authorities said.”

Yeah, there is that stress too. If I send my kid to school today, are they going to get shot?

Yes, things are the same as the beginning of time, and yet they are different.

So how on earth do I- or people like me who have pretty constant caregiving demands and stress- even think about professional development?

We’ve been focused on the importance of professional development on the blog for the last few weeks. We’ve talked about what we’ve been up to for professional development, the ROI of it, and how to do it when you don’t really have a budget for it.

But what if you are in a season of life where you just don’t have the time for it or the mental bandwidth to focus on it? Did you notice in the what we’ve been up to for professional development post what I’ve been doing for PD? Nope, you didn’t. That is because I am not doing a thing! Practicing what I preach I am not.

What if you are leading someone or working along someone that is in this season? Many of which are sandwiched caregivers- caring for growing children and aging parents all at once.

Or are you leading someone who really needs to focus on caring for themselves? Or a spouse or other loved one? Let’s face it, everyone has something with varying degrees of intensity and capacity to handle that intensity.

As I am contemplating this post while caring for the thirteen year old through his go-round with the stomach bug (yes, it made its way through all of us), I get a text from someone that works with me. I cringe when she says she works “for” me, but I pay her. I’m supposed to be that leader who is focused on the ROI of her professional development.

She asks when would be a good time for her to call me. I tell her I’m free and the phone rings shortly after.

After checking on us and also talking about her family, she says, “I’m pregnant.”

I congratulate her and we talk about some work things. Then, she circles back around to what I know has been on her mind the most. How does she navigate having and raising this child with work?

How do I do it? she asks. Well, not really well at the moment I want to tell her!

I know she wonders if the same privilege I gave myself of easing back into work after having all three of my kids be afforded to her? Of course it will. Of course.

And what about healthcare? Can she get on the company’s family coverage? I reach out to get the benefits plan information from our insurance provider to send to her shortly after we get off the phone.

The Surgeon General points to things in his piece like paid parental leave and changes in healthcare to help with the “toll” of parenting. Whereas I don’t think anything he mentions are bad things, my political philosophy inclines me to think that it isn’t the government’s job to alleviate “tolls” we face, but our very own.

It is the job of families, employers, and communities to create a healthy society. To help society successfully navigate and mitigate the tolls this life lays on each and every one of us and to revel in the joy that comes with life too.

Some of the hard cannot and will not be avoided, but some of it can be made better if we care for and treat each other well. That is where the joy mostly comes from.

And, yes, families, employers, and communities need to play an active role advocating for the government to play its role where it should, but we can’t turn a blind eye to the choices we have in each of our roles to make a difference.

We can treat people like humans, honor the stage of life they are in, and design a workplace around getting work done and getting it done with excellence while also realizing a person’s productivity may ebb and flow based on where they are in life. And realizing it will really ebb in the wrong direction if we neglect to see the whole person and if we try to treat humans like machines.

Some balls bounce and some balls break

A week or so after the conversation with the pregnancy announcement, we have our monthly one-on-one. We talk through a lot of client work and potential work. It is kind of hectic. We have to call another team member in at one point to talk through an execution plan for a new client.

And as we usually do in one-on-ones, we spend some time talking about her professional development within the context of her needs and the company’s needs.

I can tell she is concerned about taking on too much during this season of her life where a new child will enter and in her current state where she just doesn’t feel good and she never knows when that may or may not hit. Thus are the joys of growing a human being inside you.

I think out loud and I can tell my thinking out loud may be overwhelming her. I even sometimes overwhelm myself with it.

So, I stop. I ask her to think about one thing she wants to grow in professionally. Just one. I can tell she doesn’t want to stall her learning and growth, and she says as much, but she also wants some grace as she navigates what looks like a very different season coming up for her.

I don’t want her to stop learning and growing. I want her to continue to grow in her confidence and skills where she can continue to add value to the organization. But I know she won’t do either of these things if she is overwhelmed.

None of us perform at an optimum level when we are overwhelmed. And let’s face it, I’ve been overwhelmed pretty much all year. What is it the Surgeon General called it? Oh yes, I’m at my “Wits’ End.”

So, as I heed advice to her, I heed advice to myself. What is the one thing I want to grow in? Not ten things, not three things, one thing.

Seasons come and seasons go, and right now the season for both of us is one of intense child-rearing. If I’m honest (and you can probably already tell based on my tone to begin with), I am sometimes resentful of the intensity of this child rearing season that takes me away from a focus on professional growth.

But like my colleague said in the same meeting, we have rubber balls and we have glass balls. If we drop a rubber ball, it will bounce. But if we drop a glass ball, it will break.

My professional growth and hers will bounce.

Our children are glass and we parents will do everything in our power to make sure nothing causes them to break. Sometimes we need help discerning what will help our kids grow and what might break them, just like we do for ourselves.

But in this season of life for both of us, we both need something we can claim for ourselves and our own growth, even if it is just one thing. One small thing. It will, I know, make us better parents to have this one thing to call our own and to have each other to challenge us to do it and not take our eye off that ball, even if it will bounce.

The whole person of each of your employees and the value they bring to your organization are glass balls too. What are you doing today to make sure they don’t break? Especially when the Surgeon General is issuing warnings about it?

And what are you doing to give them a ball or two to bounce so they learn and grow and continue to add value for themselves and your organization?

September 24, 2024
Investing in People Makes Cents
Last week, Emily kicked off our new series on professional development. What it is and why we should care about it. I’m pulling that thread to talk about the dollars and cents of why you should invest in people and why you should do it NOW.

I just read a powerful article from McKinsey titled Increasing your return on talent: The moves and metrics that matter that hit me square in the face with this quote: “McKinsey research indicates that companies that put talent at the center of their business strategy realize higher total shareholder returns than their competitors.”

One more time for the people in the back: spending money on your people makes you more money. McKinsey’s research let them to the startling stat that some companies could be missing out on $480 million a year just by not investing in employee engagement and skill development.

McKinsey goes on to lay out a 5 step plan for companies to “maximize their return on talent”, and it’s a an excellent plan that relies on an already existing, already strong HR team. If that doesn’t describe the situation at your company, you might not be ready for McKinsey’s 5 step plan. Instead, maybe you need the Dollar Tree plan.

Last week, I had lunch with a great friend who also works in the HR space. She recently stepped in for me to facilitate some pro-bono training when I couldn’t make the date work. Her tactic? Conversation cards from Dollar Tree.

She spent $3.75 plus tax on conversation cards that turned into meaningful relationshipping for the group and several people left interested in adopting conversation cards with their own teams. Weeks later, my friend is still riding the high of a $3.75 investment. When we invest in people, it’s about the intent and the follow through more than the amount of money spent.

Horizon Point’s operating values include Continuous Learning & Improvement, and it’s truly part of everything we do. Our operating values make up the structure of our planning meeting agendas. Seriously, the line items are grouped by value:
1. People First
  - Catch up
  - Review accomplishments
  - Schedule one-on-ones
2. Productivity
  - Company performance
  - Open projects
  - Business development
3. Continuous Learning & Improvement
  - Review program & project feedback
  - Identify continuing ed / professional dev opportunities
4. Give Back
  - Volunteer leadership
  - Financial support
Just the act of talking about our learning with intention generates engagement and a future-focused mindset. But the impact is compounded when we put our money where are mouths are. I asked Mary Ila today about Horizon Point’s investment in continuous learning for team members, and the total so far this year is over $10,000, just for the 5 of us. She doesn’t hesitate to invest in people, as long as the purpose is aligned with the mission of our work at HPC and, of course, as long as the investment is reasonable and works in the current budget. Our work is about talent development and better workplaces, and it only counts if we practice our own preaching.

To close the loop on the McKinsey research, they reported that:

the most effective organizations encourage personalized, adaptive learning. Employees are motivated to own their journeys by deciding which skills and areas of expertise they want to focus on. They are given feedback, along with coaching and peer-learning opportunities, and they are supported by a digital ecosystem that can help them track their progress over time.

We strongly agree with this approach, and we spend a lot of time and resources talking about it and being about it. We learn together, we learn individually, and it’s all based on the skills or areas we want to develop. As McKinsey puts it, we own our journeys. We also train and coach our clients on this adaptive learning model using our Leaders as Career Agents process. We help them customize learning opportunities that drive their organizations forward and create more value.

To invest in people is to invest in a thriving future. Talk about it and be about it. Investing in people makes cents!
September 10, 2024
What To Know About Shopping For an HRM

What To Know About Shopping For an HRM

Over the past few years Horizon Point has helped multiple clients vet and implement a Human Resources Management System. Each client had very different wants and needs, and each implementation was unique. So what do companies need to know about vetting an HRM?

1) Understand what an HRM can offer your organization. Not every HRM system is created equally. Some systems are all-or-nothing, meaning that you cannot customize the functions you want or need, you pay for full functionality whether you use it all or not. Many vendors offer systems that are modular, meaning that you can pick and choose which functions you want built into your system and you pay based on the modules you select. HRMs have some or all of the functions below:

a. Data storage
b. Payroll
c. Timekeeping
d. Benefits administration
e. Applicant Tracking
f. Onboarding and offboarding
g. Performance Management
h. Compensation
i. Training
j. Asset Management
k. Employee Self-Service

2) Understand what you need from an HRM. Just because an HRM offers a vast array of functions doesn’t mean that your organization needs them all. Many organizations already have systems in place to manage some functions, such as payroll, timekeeping, or applicant tracking. In order to determine if these functions should be moved to a new system, you have to consider factors such as cost to convert the processes over, if the data can be imported from the old system to the new or will it have to be manually entered, or if the new HRM can work with the current systems you have in place.

3) Don’t just consider what your organization needs now, but what it may need in the future. Do the systems you’re considering not only meet your organization’s needs today, but will they grow with your organization and still be the right system for you in five or even ten years? Some systems are great for small businesses but as companies grow the system can no longer meet their needs and they find themselves needing to go through the vetting and implementation process all over again in just a few years. Some systems are great for large companies, but the expansive functionality is not needed for small businesses and the cost is too high. Be sure to consider if a month-to-month payment plan or a long-term contract is right for your organization as well.

4) What does implementation look like? As I mentioned above, I have implemented multiple systems for clients, and each vendor manages implementation differently. Generally, your company is assigned to a dedicated implementation specialist who walks you through the process of collecting and importing data. Depending on the system selected and the functions being implemented, the process can be fairly easy and take a few weeks, or can be extremely complicated and take a few months to fully set up and roll out.

When vetting and implementing an HRM, it’s critical to understand the needs of your organization and what a system can offer you. That includes not only functionality, but growth capabilities, cost, implementation complexity, and the return on investment.

To learn more about HRM vetting, read our blog post Selecting an HRIS that’s Right for You. If you’re interested in how Horizon Point can help you vet an HRM, ATS, you can read more about how We Help You Hire Right.

August 28, 2024
Creating Actionable Insights from Open Text Survey Questions

We are excited to feature a post by Dr. Larry Lowe with RippleWorx in our AI for HR series. We’ve been fortunate to work alongside RippleWorx with mutual clients, and Larry and I were classmates in Leadership Greater Huntsville’s Flagship Program. Larry is wicked smart, but better than that, he is a really great guy!

We trust Larry’s in-depth insights on AI for HR and how they (and you) can utilize it to your advantage to understand your workforce’s needs and impact organizational culture. Enjoy!

Guest Blogger: Dr. Larry Lowe, Chief Scientist at RippleWorx (larry.lowe@rippleworx.com)

Major Changes Are Coming to Your Organization

When your organization faces significant changes, a common first step is to send out a survey to understand your workforce’s views on specific topics. Your survey will likely include Likert scale questions, Net Promoter Score (NPS) questions, and some open-text questions. While Likert and NPS questions are straightforward to analyze, open-text questions pose a unique challenge. These responses can be messy in terms of length, sentiment, context, content, format, spelling, and even include emojis and text speak (SMH). Despite this messiness, open-text questions often provide the most context and insight. Distilling them into common subject categories is difficult and time-consuming. It is mentally draining to read and categorize thousands of responses, and keeping biases from influencing our decisions is challenging. If only there was a tool to help create structured insights from unstructured data…

RippleWorx has cracked the code to actionizing real data insights to drive meaningful change in organizations. With years of experience analyzing customer feedback, RippleWorx has developed the right AI models to drive continual organizational performance improvements.

The Power of Generative AI

If the problem of analyzing a large amount of employee feedback data sounds familiar, good news! One of the greatest benefits of Generative AI in the workplace is its ability to create structured insights from unstructured data. Let’s clarify some terms.

Structured Data: These are items that fit neatly into rows and columns, like a well-organized Excel spreadsheet where the columns contain consistently formatted data. With structured data, it is straightforward to calculate averages, count categories, or identify outliers. The structure naturally leads to clear insights.

Unstructured Data: These are items that do not have a predefined format or structure, such as the varied responses to open-ended survey questions. The lack of structure makes deriving insights extremely challenging and sometimes misleading.

The key to analyzing the open-ended feedback questions from your employees’ surveys is to generate structured, actionable insights from highly unstructured data. Different analytic approaches can be applied, but there are trade-offs. Let’s explore a few.

Traditional Methods to Analyze Open Text Responses

Traditional methods for analyzing open text responses include:

· Manual Coding: Reading each response and categorizing it into predefined themes or codes.

· Content Analysis: Reading the entire corpus to determine patterns, themes, and meanings.

· Statistical Text Analysis: Counting word frequency or creating word clouds.

While statistical text analysis is expedient, it often lacks understanding and semantic meaning across all responses. Manual coding and content analysis are both complex and time-consuming endeavors. When the unstructured data set is large, the human brain cannot equally consider all expressed thoughts. We often get tired and start “seeing” our biases in the data.

A New Method: Generative AI

By now, I hope everyone has experimented with the latest chat completion models, such as GPT-4, Claude 3.5, and Gemini 1.5. These models excel at summarizing large corpora of text into easily interpreted bullet points or narrative paragraphs. If the open text responses are saved as a PDF, follow these steps for effective summary insights:

1. Attach the PDF in the prompt window.

2. Write the following prompt into the chat window:

“You are a helpful HR assistant. I have attached a document that includes open text survey questions along with all the responses aggregated across the entire organization. I need you to summarize the top three most mentioned themes in the open text responses. The summary output format should be bullet points, each less than 200 words.”

Two key benefits arise from this approach:

1. Semantic Interpretation: The models semantically interpret all open text responses simultaneously, resolving the “messiness” of varied responses. This addresses human fatigue associated with processing large amounts of information, as the language model interprets every response equally and almost instantaneously.

2. Coherent Output: The model connects extracted themes from the responses and generates a coherent summary following the provided instructions.

These models’ ability to identify threads and concepts from numerous responses is remarkable. Adjusting your prompt can extract additional information from the PDF. For example, you can ask the model to summarize the top “positive” and “negative” themes mentioned or to develop an action plan addressing the top issues in the responses.

While these models significantly improve and expedite the summarization of open text questions, there are important considerations. Uploading corporate information into a public chat completion model poses risks. Sensitive topics discussed may not be intended for public disclosure. This data could be used to train future models, or your prompts and attached data could potentially be hacked and published later. Ensuring data security should be paramount when using Generative AI in your workflows.

An Even Better Method: Generative AI Mapped into a Performance Taxonomy

For even greater insight, integrating an organizational performance taxonomy into the prompt allows the model to categorize responses into different dimensions of the organization before summarizing actionable insights. This approach provides more precise results by highlighting not just the overall organizational strengths and weaknesses but pinpointing strengths and weaknesses to specific areas within the organization.

RippleWorx has created a model for organizational performance called the Performance Chain. In the Performance Chain, an individual addresses a role, roles combine to form teams, and teams combine to form the organization. A performance taxonomy accompanies each link in the chain. The taxonomy for the individual includes motivation and well-being concepts. The taxonomy for the role covers hard and soft skill proficiency and employee readiness. The taxonomy for the team covers collaboration and tactical task execution. The taxonomy at the organizational level covers strategic leadership, culture and climate setting, and key performance metrics.

Embedding the performance taxonomy within the prompt flow results in more precise insights within the organization. For instance:

General Prompt Response: “Communication is an issue in the organization.”

Performance Taxonomy Prompt Response: “Multiple middle managers are having trouble communicating action plans with their teams.”

The general prompt provides a broad level of actionable insight, but the prompt with the performance taxonomy offers deeper insights, such as the need for targeted training for middle managers. The primary goal of assessing actionable insights is to implement targeted interventions that increase organizational performance.

The Wrap-Up

Organizing and analyzing open text survey responses is just one example of how RippleWorx is utilizing Generative AI to transform organizational performance. The Performance Chain framework also integrates external surveys, performance evaluations, and key performance indicator data into our Generative AI prompt workflows. Including this information along with a performance framework provides an even greater level of resolution for actionable insights. The additional resolution aids leaders across the organization in creating targeted action plans that keep individuals motivated and increases organizational momentum.

www.rippleworx.com

August 13, 2024
How HR Can Actually Use AI
As we wrap up our series on Artificial Intelligence, we’ve learned that AI isn’t as scary as some people make it out to be and that we can use it in a variety of ways- but with some caution- in order to impact our workplaces in a positive manner.

We’ve tried to emphasize that AI is best to leverage when:
You do the task a lot,
It is a manual process,
It is prone to human error, therefore:
It’s time consuming.
So if you have the data sources you need and the technology to do it,
Let AI help.
And go do something more value added with the time you save.

As I’ve wrapped up my personal deep dive into AI for HR, I’ve found our friend Ben Eubank’s book Artificial Intelligence for HR to be a useful tool in framing the technologies that can impact HR by functional area. Here, I’ll summarize some practical uses by functional areas based on Ben’s insights as well as some of my own. I’ll also recommend some tools I have seen in action.

Workforce Management (Time & Attendance)
- Clocking in and out with facial recognition
- New companies are capturing the market of the uberfication of staffing with AI tools to provide labor on demand to fill gaps in staffing. Check out Onin Flex as an example.
Payroll & Benefits
- Automating many of the payroll processes and checking for errors that many companies still do manually.
- Analyzing pay data for pay parity issues
- Offering on demand pay. Check out Immediate as an example.
- Voice activated and/or chatbot technology to respond to benefit inquiry questions or how employees can perform certain tasks on his/her own.
Recruiting/Talent Acquisition
- Screening resumes by keyword search (you’ve probably been doing this for quite some time)
- Take it a step further, once you have your technology query candidates by your filters, have the technology reach out to them to schedule the first step in the selection process
- Use tools to rediscover applicants and match old candidates for other jobs
- Use tools to rank candidates and let it learn from your rankings to screen candidates (caution: if you put bias in, you will get bias out)
- Check out LinkedIn Recruiter that has a variety of features to help identify candidates based on a variety of criteria. One criteria that I find most interesting (and Ben points this out in his book) is Candidate Receptivity. In other words, how likely will a potential candidate be interested in your opening and company?
- Use some pretty cool assessment tools. One company I’ve been following since 2018 when I met them at the HR Tech conference is Pymetrics. They are worth checking out.
Learning and Development and Talent Development and Management
- There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t hear about the “skills gap”. It’s a macro issue and an issue at every company with internal talent. There are tools on the market now that help you understand your internal talent’s skills and then help you hire internally or place people on projects based on skills analysis (Remember, tools like this are only as good as the data you put in them. If skills aren’t in the database or aren’t accurate, it won’t work.) A quick google search will give you a list of software tools in this space.
- Tools to recommend learning content for users at the individual level and at the organizational level. Think of your Amazon Recommendation list for learning content. Take a look at page 153 of Ben’s book to understand how this works.
- Giving leaders tools for coaching based on performance data and feedback so learning content is customized by user. Voice technology tools that can listen and help coach a manager through specific issues.
- Insights to help you better understand correlation and causation between a number of dimensions and employee performance and engagement. Features can include what if analysis (What if employee engagement rose by X percentage points, how much would turnover decrease?) to sentiment analysis (taking a large amount of qualitative employee survey data, summarizing it and making recommendations for action).
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging
- Identifying biased communication in email, Slack, etc. and in job postings. Check out Textio as another company I’ve been following since 2018 in this space. Their technology helps with bias and receptivity in job postings and they also have a product for writing better performance feedback.
- Blind screening tools for recruiting, removing information that would indicate dimensions in which bias may occur.
Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list of things AI is doing in HR, but it is a start. If you are thinking about vetting technology vendors, this may be a good list to begin with by walking through these items and asking, can your technology do this?

If it is a comprehensive list HRM system and it can’t do most of these things, or provide API technology to connect to tools that can, you may need to vet other vendors.

What functional area in HR are you most interested in leveraging AI technology?
August 6, 2024