September 2017 HRSF Conference Transforming HR: Emerging HR Roles & Capabilities - Notes

September 2017 HRSF Conference – Transforming HR: Emerging HR Roles & Capabilities - Notes

John Boudreau – Setting the Stage: About CHREATE, examples from Lead the Work, and How Work is Transforming

“Agility means perpetual obsolescence, constant upgrading” –as a function, HR must be agile and take control of our destiny if we hope to remain relevant. It’s time to move beyond our isolated “campfires” of HR reinvention to create a movement – a gathering - around a metaphorical collective “bonfire” to force clarity on the gaps between where we are today and where we need to be and to ignite momentum for change. This was the genesis of CHREATE, and remains our call today. (Click the “Learn” button and scroll down to Phase Three “Executive Summary” for more information.)

John challenged us to bust out of organizational boundaries andto change the strategy conversation in the context of the radical shifts in society, business models, changing demographics, and evolving technological advances. Rather than being responsive, it’s time for HRto provoke the business, posing questions that we don’t know the answers to but that together we must answer. We need to get comfortable with constantly upgrading and rewiring ourselves, developing our current talent and our pipeline to centralize, re-source, crowd-source, outsource, and automate the work and the workforce of the future. As we architect organizations and talent solutions, our mindset must shift from “more of a good thing is better” to “recipes,” or smart combinations and intersectionalities that elegantly meet organizational needs – for, what is a team, or an organization, but a recipe?

This set the stage for our conversation for the 5 Forces of Change, and the Learning Map Exercise.

Caroline Starner & Maria Forbes: 5 Forces of Change & Learning Map Exercise

We then discussed 5 seismic shifts in the demand and supply for talent and what they might mean for how HR shows up and adds value:

1. Exponential pattern of technological change
2. Social and organizational reconfiguration
3. A truly connected world
4. All -inclusive, more diverse talent market
5. Human and machine collaboration

Using the Learning Map, we grappled withthe implications of the 5 forces of change, global macro trends, and projections such as 50% of jobs being automated by 2033, 40% of highly skilled tech jobs going unfilled by 2020while freelancers comprise 50% of the workforce; and the shifting global talent market and concurrent high human connectivity across continents and time zones.

While the Learning Map exercise was valuable in itself, we also explored how, as HR professionals, we might bring it to our firms to generate a different type of business conversation and outcomes. As much as we love to provide answers and solutions as HR professionals, it’s time to get comfortable asking the questions we don’t have answers for, tapping into the collective wisdom, experimenting, practicing critical thinking, welcoming mistakes, iterating - in essence seeing ourselves as scientists.

This led to the discussion of the 4 emerging “roles” or capabilities that HR will require.

Edie Goldberg: Talent Pipeline and 4 New Roles

If the 5 Forces of Change and global macro-trends are real, then HR as an Organization must be able to perform 4 capabilities, or “roles” to deliver a winning organization:

1. Organizational Performance Engineer
   To help organizations meet the need for speed and agility, this role understands and leverages informal and formal networks to equip them to align, enable, inspire, and reward people to accomplish shared goals and deliver results.
2. Culture Architect & Community Activist
   To tap into the modern workforce’s desire to work in an organization that “does good,” this role replaces Corporate Social Responsibility with Social Activism as a key element of culture and employer brand.
3. Global Talent Scout, Convener, & Coach
   To unleash the potential of the global talent landscape, this role understands the entire talent picture, proactively builds a community to draw on, and finds new ways to source, engage, and connect talent in more agile, diverse and effective ways.
4. Trend Forecaster & Technology Integrator

To be able to tell a coherent, insightful story that drives business decisions, this role deeply understandsdata and talent analytics to drive decisions, while effectively leveraging technology to enable people to do different work, differently.

To bring the 4 roles to life, Eva Sage-Gavin facilitated a panel of practitioners.

Panel Discussion: Bringing the Future Roles to Life: Stories from the Front Lines

Mark Levy spoke about the role of Culture Architect & Community Activist. At Airbnb, the founders crafted their core values before hiring a single employee: Be a host, Champion the mission, Be a “cereal” entrepreneur (yes, there is a story there), and Embrace the adventure. All interviews are around the values, internal communications are based on the values, and even the physical workspace reflects Airbnb’s mission and values. Employees are encouraged to get involved in social activism, most recently by showing up at local airports in the wake of the recent travel bans, to connect with and help stranded immigrants find a place “to belong.” Ultimately, Airbnb’s goal is to focus on helping employees be their best and real selves.

Neil Frye then outlined Dropbox’s approach as Global Talent Scout, Convener, and Coach to solve big problems like gender equity (“The path to 50/50 by 2020 is the workforce imperative of our generation”), the talent exodus from key markets, and the shortage of skilled engineers. They have looked across traditional HR roles and mindsets to build Talent Scout capabilities such as market mapping, social media campaigns, and proactive pipeline management. One key to this role is to “swim in information” – know the required profiles and skills, map the market, define a sourcing strategy, develop assessments that empower and excite diverse candidates, tell a compelling story across channels and during every conversation, and WATCH THE DATA. In essence, HR Business Partners shift from HR Data Administrator to Inventory Manager, from Workforce Planner to Gig Manager.

Kalani Ching told us the story of Intel’s experiment in Organizational Performance Engineering with Freelance Nation, a 100-person workforce unit designed to meet the needs of 3 major User Groups: Employees were looking for exposure, challenge, growth, flexibility, autonomy, and community support not found in traditional functional workforce models. The Business Groups wanted ready talent, affordability, and risk mitigation that other models of “rotations” and job assignments lack. The Corporation was focused on employee attraction and retention, collaboration, velocity, and efficiency that are hard to achieve in a large, established company. Using human-centered design principles, Freelance Nation attracted people who wanted to choose projects and work that aligned to their passions, strengths, schedule, and rhythms. They wanted to come together to do the work, and when done, join new and different project teams. Although the 2-year experience has now wound down, the employee experience was overwhelmingly positive, with a high degree of collaboration and commitment, with many stating, “This was the best job of my career.”

Finally, Linda Rogers described how Dolby Labs’ use of the CHREATE tools has opened the door to designing the right stakeholder conversations to drive the business throughTrend Forecasting and Technology Integration. HR plays the role of dot-connector and analytics storyteller, knowing where the “data lakes” reside and how to create difference for the business, very differently.

The Panel Q&A was brief but rich, emphasizing HR’s role as “anthropologist” in our organizations, seeing patterns in data, making meaning of those patterns, building actionable dashboards rather than pure analytics. We discussed the need to crack the code around talent exchanges across firms, even across functions as a way to help people break into new fields, and continue to grow and contribute. Finally, we touched on the need to define HR career paths to equip people to do this work, toying with the idea of having people “major” and “minor” in different roles as part of the talent fabric within HR.

Eva talked about the importance of experimentation with new roles and new ways of working. We won’t always get it right the first time, and sometimes we are just ahead of the company’s ability to shift, but by experimenting we will move the ball forward over time. She referenced two articles:

CEOs guide to competing through HR

Reshaping business with artificial intelligence

This was our segue into individually assessing our own HR organizations’ capabilities in these areas.

Table & Group Discussion, Organization Capability Assessment and Commitment to Action

Pulling it all together, we each completed and then discussed the CHREATE Organizational Capability Assessment. Not surprisingly, most of us did not yet have high scores in many of the areas. But we left with a sense of clarity about the case for change, the requirements for success, and the larger community – the “bonfire circle” – that we can draw on as we move to a new future.