Today's post comes to us from board member Bob Clements. Bob understands what's required to ensure that when you implement enterprise software, you'll get the results you want.

Do you remember Mad Libs? You know: the word game where one player asks another for a list of words by type (adjective, verb, adverb, etc.) to finish a story that when read back is often hysterically funny but sometimes nonsense? I loved Mad Libs as a kid, and I am reminded of Mad Libs every time I start a new Human Capital Management (HCM) or Workforce Management (WFM) project to implement enterprise software, because software implementations are a lot like Mad Libs.

Just as Mad Libs provides the framework of a story that the players need to complete, the software license provides a framework of a solution that the project team needs to complete. The difference is that success with an implementation is measured by the ROI of meeting business requirements, which is considerably less silly (although arguably more rewarding) than the story produced by a Mad Lib.

Nobody would mistake the process of filling in a Mad Lib with writing a story from scratch, but IT departments do mistake implementing software with developing software. This is particularly evident as IT departments around the world adopt Agile as their project methodology.

If you are not familiar with Agile, it is a set of software development practices codified in methodologies such as Scrum, Kanban, eXtreme Programming and Lean Development. Hallmarks of Agile are daily stand-up meetings; short, time-boxed phases called “sprints” that end with working software; walls of Post-it notes known as “task boards” that contain requirements or “user stories”; a minimal amount of “Just Barely Good Enough” documentation; and small, cross-functional, self-organizing teams in which team members decide what they are going to work on rather than being directed by managers.

With Agile software development, products get to market faster and better meet the users' needs with fewer defects at lower cost compared with the traditional waterfall approach. This makes Agile very attractive to corporate CIOs. The problem is that most IT departments do not develop software products; they implement them.  

Because of its origins in software development, Agile, as described in most books and training courses, is not directly applicable to enterprise software implementations. And, most people feel like they are fitting a square peg into a round hole when they try to apply what they learned about Agile to their project. I have heard more than one project team describe Agile with adjectives only used in NSFW Mad Libs. There are several factors that make this problem particularly acute for HCM and WFM projects.

First, the requirements are complex and not well-suited to incremental delivery. Consider pay rules: a payroll or timekeeping system needs to support all pay rules that apply to an employee. Anything less and you will be getting a call from employment lawyers and/or the Department of Labor.

Second, WFM and HCM often depend on integrating data with other systems. Designing, building and testing integrations is time-consuming but required to go-live. Therefore, integration becomes the long pole in the project. On top of that, it is considered a best practice to re-test integrations anytime software is upgraded. In an Agile environment, this means that integration needs to be tested with every sprint. This is challenging from a timeline perspective and may be cost-prohibitive when it comes to procuring and maintaining the technology environments and staff needed to conduct the tests.

Third, because HCM and WFM systems affect most - if not all - of your workforce, it is risky to deploy new software to all employees at one time, which is often referred to as a “big bang”. Instead, the best practice for most enterprise-level projects is to pilot new HCM/WFM software to a small group of employees before deploying to the rest of the company in waves. Agile's focus on delivering incremental improvements to software with each sprint forces project teams to either adopt a big-bang approach which is risky, or run several versions of a system which can be cost prohibitive.

There are elements of Agile that can be applied effectively to improve enterprise HCM and WFM implementations. For example, my company Axsium Group has incorporated iterative build-and-test cycles into our standard implementation methodology to improve user collaboration and reduce defects. Task boards are a great way to manage project tasks. We have also organized software roll-outs into iterations in which each iteration involves configuring, testing and deploying for a small subset of employees.

The key to applying Agile principles is to be creative about when and where they make sense. Doing this will enable you to finish the phrase in the above Mad Libs-style headline with the adjective “Best”.

Today's post is submitted by Joyce Maroney, executive director of the Workforce Institute at Kronos.

Often we don't notice how well something is designed until poor design gets in our way.  The beautiful light fixture that requires an MIT degree to change the light bulbs. That hard plastic clamshell packaging that can send you to the emergency room if you're not careful removing it.  Or the website that makes it so hard to find what you are looking for that you give up altogether.

Global research we conducted earlier this year indicated that 48% of employees wish that their workplace technology was as accessible and easy to use as their personal technology.  That it isn't can be due to a number of factors.  If organizations rely on obsolescent processes or technologies, their employees are going to spend more time on low value administrative tasks than they should have to.  Most of those employees are carrying a smartphone that allows them to call a ride, order groceries, deposit a check, or watch a movie with just a couple of keystrokes.  Many workplace applications suffer by comparison.

Let's assume that your organization has efficient processes, applications that meet your needs, and the desire to give your workers more self service capabilities via their mobile devices.  One of the key technology terms you need to familiarize yourself with is responsive design.  What this means is that the web interface for your applications is designed to automatically resize itself for the device a user is accessing it from.  This is critical if you expect your workers to use their mobile devices for those self service transactions.

My Kronos colleague Keen Hahn, with the collaboration of several of our Workforce Institute board members, authored a white paper that explores responsive design and its impact on employee experience.  Fear not, this is written for we civilians, not for web developers.

Click here to access the white paper The Rise of the Responsive
Employee Experience.

 

 

 

Today's post is courtesy of board member, Alexandra Levit. Alexandra's new book  Humanity Works: Merging Technologies and People for the Workforce of the Future is available now.

There's a lot of hand wringing these days around the idea that increasingly smarter computers will soon render human employees obsolete. There are many reasons why this is unlikely to happen, but one of the most critical is that humans and machines are simply better together.

In Cognitive Collaboration, a Deloitte University Press paper, authors Jim Guszcza, Harvey Lewis, and Peter Evans-Greenwood reminded us of what famous cognitive scientist J. C. R. Licklider articulated about artificial intelligence many years ago. “Rather than speculate about the ability of computers to implement human-style intelligence, Licklider believed computers would complement human intelligence,” wrote the Deloitte authors. “He argued that humans and computers would develop a symbiotic relationship, the strengths of one counterbalancing the limitations of the other.”

Humans Identify Problems for AI to Solve

How might this work? Well, we already see it today when we use apps like Google Translate and Waze. Humans specify goals and criteria, and algorithms do the heavy lifting of data to offer up the most relevant insights and options to aid in decision-making. In many cases, we've already identified the sweet spot where artificial intelligence can add the most value, and that involves a large data set on which one wishes to perform a routine task.

But when it comes to a novel situation or problem, you need a human to formulate hypotheses and decide which ones to test because, as the Deloitte authors pointed out, algorithms lack the conceptual understanding and commonsense reasoning needed to do anything more but make inferences from structured hypotheses. Human judgment is absolutely required to keep algorithms and their output in check.

Human Judgment Is Imperfect, But Essential

Cognitive scientists might like to think that AI decision-making processes are based on human ones, but this is far from the case. Not only are artificial minds less biased, but they don't fatigue, they apply consistent effort regardless of circumstance, they can pull out the most relevant ideas in Big Data systems in mere seconds, and they can simultaneously examine so many sources that making an accurate prediction about a future situation is a piece of cake.

Notice, though, that I said less biased, not unbiased. The Deloitte authors cautioned us to avoid outsourcing tasks associated with fairness, societal acceptability, and morality to AI systems. Algorithms cannot be assumed to be fair or objective simply because they use hard data, and oversight is required.  “Recent examples of algorithmic bias include online advertising systems that have been found to target career-coaching service ads for high-paying jobs more frequently to men than women, and ads suggestive of arrests more often to people with names commonly used by black people,” the Deloitte paper shared. And: “If the data used to train an algorithm reflect unwanted pre-existing biases, the resulting algorithm will likely reflect, and potentially amplify, these biases.”

In other words, the solution to eliminating bias is not to trust that AI will do it on its own, but to teach humans how to do it so we can mold smart machines in our own new and improved image. And this means, of course, that we still have our jobs.

Today's post is submitted by Joyce Maroney, executive director of the Workforce Institute at Kronos.

According to a recent survey of 800 retail managers across multiple countries we conducted with our research partner Coleman Parkes,  for every 10 hours of in-store labor budgeted, more than one hour is wasted due to staffing misalignment caused by unplanned employee absence.  We've written a lot about the impact of absence on business in the past, but not with this focus on retailers.  As the holiday season looms, in this climate of record low unemployment, retailers are more concerned than ever about finding and keeping the right person in the right place at the right time.

We analyzed the responses of retail managers across Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the U.K., and the U.S. to examine the broad impact of absenteeism on retail organizations with more than 1,000 employees. According to more than half of retail managers worldwide (52 percent), absenteeism is one of their organization's most difficult, complex, and time-consuming issues.

I sat down with our board member Mark Wales, a long time veteran of the retail industry, to talk about some of the key findings of this research.  Mark  has more than 30 years of experience in the US, Europe, and Asia with leading retailers such as Starbucks, Ralph Lauren, Williams-Sonoma, Selfridges, and Tesco, where he has focused on implementing workforce management strategies and solutions to drive company performance and customer experience by investing in the retail employee experience.

You can listen to a podcast of our conversation at the bottom of this post.  We discuss key findings of the research and Mark's recommendations about why these issues occur and what store executives and managers can do to improve their planning for and response to staffing issues.

In the podcast, I posed the following questions to Mark:

  1.  More than half of global retail managers (52 percent) say unplanned absence is one of their organization's most difficult, complex, and time-consuming issues. Did that number surprise you in any way - or was this your experience working in the field?
  2. For every 10 hours of in-store labor budgeted, more than one hour is wasted due to staffing misalignment caused by unplanned employee absence. In fact, retailers are understaffed 25 percent of the time thanks to last-minute absenteeism. Why do you think retailers have been unable to address this issue effectively?
  3. Our survey also found that nearly half of retailers worldwide (48 percent) find it challenging to deal with administrative issues resulting from associates working additional shifts and/or incurring overtime to cover unplanned absence, and 42 percent feel a big impact on labor costs. Why do you think this is such a headache for retailers?
  4. I'd love to get your point of view on the practice of over-scheduling: our research found that the vast majority of retail organizations (88 percent) proactively over-schedule additional labor each day to cover for anticipated absences. This is most common in France (95 percent), the U.S. (89 percent), and Germany (88 percent). Why has over-scheduling become the norm - and how can retailers better ensure the right level of staffing?  And to what extent do you think this is data driven vs. store managers' individual assessments of their needs?
  5. We also saw that while most schedules are posted 1-2 weeks in advance, 86% are amended to some degree after they are published.  What can retailers do differently to balance their needs for effective schedules with their employees' needs for predictable hours?

Click on the player below to hear Mark's answers:

Photo by Fancycrave on Unsplash

Today's post comes to us from Americas board member Dennis Miller, Chief Employment Officer at Cal Poly Pomona Foundation.

While enhancing employee engagement in any organization is a valuable endeavor - especially when organizations are effectively measuring valued business outcomes directly related to employee engagement - there is something I see all too often in the public sector, which I view as an obvious barrier to employee engagement.

During the last decade there have been about 60 or so bankruptcies of public entities in the U.S. While there are no doubt many distinct reasons for these particular bankruptcies, one common thread a colleague and myself found through one-on-one phone interviews was that 60% of them still used paper timesheets. Further, the tone and inflection I heard from those who stated they used paper timesheets was quite telling. It sounded to me like the person answering the question was a little embarrassed.

What this indicates to me is that a barrier for many organizations to achieving higher levels of employee engagement is failing to evolve the basic processes surrounding employee and/or manager tasks, such as time keeping.

If your organization has a desire to explore the benefits of increased employee engagement, it must first remove the most obvious barriers. Companies can begin by leveraging technology to transact time and attendance, and then exploring the use of technology for all of the common tasks an employee will experience starting from the time they apply for a job, to the time they leave the company, and everything in between - the complete employment life-cycle.

Failing to use technology for the most basic of employee transactions is definitely an obvious barrier toward enhancing employee engagement. And, as we can observe, generally, from the public entities that have experienced bankruptcy during the last decade, while any company that ends in a bankruptcy has resulted from a series of complex issues to be sure, it is not exactly a stretch of the imagination to consider that any organization which fails to use technology for basic things like time and attendance, can and will experience bigger issues that ultimately may result in broad and deep negative impacts to the company.

Stated differently, when the smaller opportunities to improve are missed or delayed for long periods of time, those decisions often lead to missing bigger opportunities as well, and that can end badly for any organization.

Today's post is written by Kronos Summer Intern, Megan Grenier. Megan is an intern on our mid-market marketing team. She'll be returning to Saint Anselm College this fall where she's studying communications.

My experience as an intern at Kronos this summer has been incredible. I have had the opportunity to learn and do so many new things. One of the most interesting aspects of my work experience - and sometimes one of the most challenging - has been learning to communicate appropriately with colleagues who span many generations.

When I first started, I had to learn many new technologies that I was not accustomed to. Next, I had to learn how each person I work with communicates. I work with fellow Kronites who span Generation Z, Millennials, Generation X, and Baby Boomers. It can get a little tricky trying to balance all of the communication styles!

I have had to ask a lot of questions: when should I send an email versus an IM? When is an in-person conversation the best option? Is it okay if I stop by my boss's office unannounced?

With so many questions, I have made a few mistakes: like not hitting “reply all” on an email or starting to work on a task my manager just emailed me about without first telling him that I was available to do so. While I have made my fair share of mistakes, I have learned a lot because of them. Perhaps the biggest two things I have learned is that it is okay to ask questions, and it is better to overcommunicate than to under-communicate.

And so, based on my experience, my two pieces of advice to future interns would be:

  1. Ask as many questions as you need to: It is better to get clarification early on, so you can be led in the right direction, rather than making errors along the way. I have noticed that my managers and coworkers appreciate my consideration, and it makes my life a whole lot easier.
  2. Overcommunicate. My managers always prefer when I give them more information than less. They want to be kept in the loop. So, it is okay if you send them that extra email, they will appreciate it.

Communicating with people in general can be a challenge, but multigenerational communication is a whole new ball game. To learn more about the topic, check out my series The ABC's of XYZ on Kronos's What Works blog, where I dive deeper into these questions, to help bridge the communication divide in a multigenerational workforce.

You've probably heard and maybe used the expression "you can't manage what you can't measure".  Leaders pay a lot of attention to staff expenses, but may not pay as much attention to the payroll function until there is a problem.  And the costs associated with not getting payroll right can be significant.  The Wage and Hour Division of the United States Department of Labor reported that in fiscal 2017 they recovered more than $270 million in back wages from employers who weren't compliant with wage and hour laws.

Yet, research we did earlier this year focused on labor law compliance revealed that 66 percent of payroll professionals and 51 percent of HR practitioners say their organization occasionally cuts corners that may jeopardize compliance.  This is true for more than two-thirds (69 percent) of all respondents whose systems are more than five years old.  Beyond the costs associated with labor law violations, there is an adverse impact on employee experience and loyalty when paycheck errors occur.  Research we did in 2017 indicated that more than half of American workers had experienced a payroll error during their careers. Thirty-seven percent indicated that they'd had to make a late payment on a bill due to a payroll error by their employer.

Despite these well known costs of insufficient payroll practices, in newly published research that Kronos Incorporated conducted with the American Payroll Association, nearly half (49 percent) of all organizations surveyed admitted to not tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) in their payroll department.  This study polled nearly 1,000 payroll professionals from small, mid, and enterprise-size organizations across all industries.

For nearly a third (29 percent) of survey respondents, their payroll solution is 10 or more years old.  The findings suggest outdated, manual processes and legacy payroll solutions limit a payroll department's ability to track and report KPIs.  Approximately half (49 percent) of respondents admitted that their payroll team does not regularly track and report on KPIs, a possible side effect of using older solutions.

For those who do track KPIs (51 percent), the most common metrics added over the last decade include measuring the impact of manual/voided/stopped payments (31 percent), payment errors as a percent of total payroll payments (23 percent), and total processing time per pay cycle (18 percent) - all of which are direct indicators of payroll performance and accuracy.  Progressive payroll departments are also focusing on their impact on the employee experience: about one-fifth (19 percent) now measure the average time to service employee requests per day, week, and month. This is significant because a slow response to payroll requests has a direct, negative impact on engagement.

Payroll professionals know they need better tools to manage and measure KPI's.  This newest research reveals a wish list of capabilities that our respondents would like to have in order to address both compliance and employee satisfaction:

How confident are you in your organization's capabilities when it comes to managing the payroll function?

 

 

 

 

 

Today's post comes to us courtesy of board member Mark Wales.  What's your take on the pros and cons of technology that knows where you are and what you're doing?

Workforce technology is meant to simplify the workplace and improve productivity - but when does it go from being cool to being creepy? I recently hosted a panel of industry thought leaders at an international Location Based Marketing Association (LBMA) conference. Amongst the topics we discussed was the emergence of location-based data and technology, and what the implications might be for employees. The rapid innovation and changing relationship between product companies and customers is having an immediate impact on customer expectations and as well as on what retail employees are expected to know.

For instance, an employee in a retail location today may be asked to understand:

Complexity for the employee is escalating rapidly.

And beyond just the customer, location-based technology is giving employers much more detail about their employees and overall operations.

For example, companies can now know not just if their employee has clocked in, but where they are and what they're doing. Technology can now show where customers are in the store, whether staff are in the right place to service the customer, and whether employees have restocked the right products or sizes.

A pilot in the UK placed a large screen in the back of a retail store to show employees the customer demand and whether there was sufficient staffing in the right departments - a not-so-subtle way of trying to tackle the eternal retail problem of too few employees interacting with customers and too many in the back doing task work.

Technology can also improve the quality of work life, such as by reminding the employee that they've forgotten to punch out when they leave the store which simplifies life for the manager and employee.

But, as with all change, there is often risk and resistance.

The current backlash over the use of personal data doesn't stop with Facebook. Many people are nervous about the vast amounts of data that enable just about anyone to figure out who you are, where you are, and what you're doing.

Our panel was asked by the audience if anyone thought there might be a movement to buy back privacy. While this might be an option in a private setting, how it would work in a corporate environment is less clear. The interactive discussion with the audience exposed a generational issue, with older attendees leaning much more to desiring their privacy, and perhaps being willing to sacrifice functionality or pay for it. Meanwhile, the younger generations seemed much more accepting of the value derived by the sharing of information.

Personally, I think connection through social media, the service of automated bots and the curation from personalization are integral parts of our lives that I certainly don't want to lose. However, it remains to be seen how corporate organizations will manage the human side of emerging technology.

Image courtesy of By jannoon028 / Freepik

Today's post is courtesy of our board member Bob Clements.  Bob is President at Axsium Group,  a leading workforce management consulting firm.

Workforce Management (WFM) implementations are hard. If fact, WFM is harder than almost any other system to successfully implement for two primary reasons. First, rules that govern WFM are surprisingly soft. What makes a good schedule is highly subjective, supervisors have preferences about which employees work well together, and even pay rules are subject to interpretation. Second, WFM impacts employee schedules, leave and pay. If you mess it up, you will not only upset your people, but potentially upset your customers and make headlines.

A change management program consisting of communications (why we are implementing this system and how it will affect users) and training (how to use the new system) can help, but by itself, change management is often not enough to ensure success. This is because change management occurs when the system is ready for deployment. By that time, it's too late to avoid the two challenges listed above.

To overcome these pitfalls, end users should be involved in the project from the start. The right course of action is to form a Field Advisory Council (FAC) made up of front line employees and supervisors experienced with current WFM processes. Members should include users that will be part of the first group receiving the new system and who are respected by their peers.

The FAC helps make a WFM implementation easier. It provides input while gathering requirements, helps validate system design, and participates in user acceptance testing all while ensuring the WFM system delivered reflects what people do in the field today. Most importantly, since the FAC helps shape the solution and increases credibility with employees, users will become champions for the system when it is deployed.

The image above is from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.  It is the "eye" used by computer system HAL 9000 to monitor a space ship and crew bound for Jupiter.  Released in 1968, the movie raises questions about what might happen if (when?) the artificial intelligence technology humans develop as tools to help ourselves develop self-determination and a conscience of their own.  At a critical point in the movie, Astronaut Bowman asks HAL to "open the pod bay doors".  HAL responds, "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."  HAL's in charge and Dave is on a desperate mission to save himself.

I saw 2001 the year it was released - 50 years ago.  As a young teenager, obsessed with all things science fiction, I was obsessed with the themes in this movie and the questions it raised about whether there was a limit to how far artificial intelligence technology should go.  In 2018, we have more questions than ever on this front.  There is more technology active in our daily lives than we would have imagined possible in 1968.  There is more debate than ever about how artificial intelligence will change the workplace for workers.

The MIT Technology Review compiled all the sources they could find from pundits opining about how that burgeoning tech is going to impact the workplace and workers.  Their conclusion? The opinions vary wildly as to what impact AI will have on jobs.  Some believe that new jobs will be created, others that the need for many existing jobs - or parts of jobs - could be completely eliminated.  Both of these perspectives are true, depending on the jobs and industries under consideration.  Strategy consulting firm McKinsey says 6/10 current occupations have more than 30% of activities that could be automated and that globally up to 14% of the current workforce may need to change their occupation by 2030.

We decided to do some exploration of our own.  In partnership with Coleman Parkes Research, we recently completed a global survey of nearly 3,000 employees across eight nations.  Our research focused on employee attitudes about their workplaces and their experiences at work.  We got back a lot of insights about  their managers, the technology used in their organizations, and their perspectives about how artificial intelligence is likely to impact their jobs.

Overall, we found that four out of five workers can see the potential benefits in AI to improve their workplace experience, but have concerns due to a lack of strategy and/or communication on the part of their leaders.

Here are some of the survey highlights:

Would you like to learn more and/or get involved in the conversation?

 

The following guest post is courtesy of our board member, David Creelman.

Ray Kroc, who built McDonald's into a global chain, is famous for saying “If you've time to lean, you've time to clean.” A better slogan for today's front-line workers might be “If you've time to lean, you've time to learn.”

Training front-line workers has always been difficult because they are dispersed in many locations and are too busy to take a day-off (or even an hour off) to go to a training course. However, they do have little blips of free time: 3 minutes here, 5 minutes there. That free time could be used to clean, but it could also be used to learn.

Smartphones are what makes the difference. It would have been impractical to put a learning kiosk in, for example, every McDonald's location, but now we can deliver excellent training via the person's own mobile device. The technological leap of affordable smartphones, makes a new approach to training possible.

To take advantage of smartphones, training needs to be delivered in very short chunks–and that's an entirely achievable objective. Manage the whole thing with the right learning management technology and you'll have all you need to deliver and track the training a front-line worker needs.

New technology (smartphones) and new training modules (short chunks) are two of the pillars of change. The last pillar is mindset. Managers of front-line workers will normally be happier seeing staff doing something (even if it is just gazing outwards, hoping a customer will walk in) rather than looking at their phone. Companies will have to convince managers that ongoing training matters, and also find some way to visibly show that the person is accessing a learning module, not social media. Mindset is the toughest challenge, but that's what change management is for.

Does ongoing training pay off? That should be an empirical question. A company could run all kinds of experiments to see what kind of training has the biggest impact on results. However, I must admit that one of the payoffs I would seek has little to do with better unit performance. The jobs of front line workers are threatened by automation. Their best hope for a bright future is learning new skills. If a company creates an atmosphere of continuous learning then that should have spin-off benefits in their employees' confidence in their ability to master new things. A company can't teach the specific skills these workers will need for future work; it can teach employees to be good learners.

It's hard to break out of the idea that learning takes place in classrooms. That old model still can deliver results, but it was never suitable for front-line workers. At last technology has created the opportunity to provide great learning that fits neatly into a front-line workers day. Let's embrace it.

As we enter a new year, it's always interesting to reflect on what we accomplished and what mattered most to us in the prior year so we can change course as needed in the year to come. Here at the Workforce Institute @Kronos, we saw some significant changes in 2017.   We launched The Workforce Institute in Europe,  redesigned and relaunched our website, and welcomed new board members who'll help us expand our perspective. 

Throughout 2017, we continued to publish articles and podcasts to share those perspectives.  Some of the topics you found most interesting this year included implementing an unlimited vacation policy, the future of workplace technology, and manager effectiveness.  Whether you're currently snowed in or just need a break from being back to the grind, we hope you'll take a few minutes to read through the top 10 most popular posts we published here at The Workforce Institute in 2017.  And if you have topics you'd like us to write about in 2018 - or even better, if you're interested in contributing to this blog yourself - please let us know by commenting on this post.

Thank you to all of our guest authors in 2017, and Happy New Year!

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