DAVE ULRICH EXPLAINS THE ROLE OF THE HR BUSINESS PARTNER IN A DIGITAL AGE

[Music] welcome to a very special edition of the digital HR leaders podcast we're live in New York and I'm delighted to be joined by Dave rich the father of modern HR I think you've been told welcome to the show it is such a delight to work with you thank you mean you say welcome to New York that's Saturday Night Live it's one of the American comedy legacy shows so that's that's a great line Thank You Dave if you like a few brief words to introduce yourself and let listeners know what you're up to now so

I don't think you need much of an introduction I'm a I don't know we're we're best to go the the things that matter most is I'm a grandfather of 10 father of three husband of one wife and in professionally I'm still professor at the University of Michigan and trying to do a little bit of writing and continued thinking we were talking about some of your writing at some point during doing this discussion HR you know the focus on HR perhaps has never been so big when I look at Harvard Business Review it seems that 80%

of the articles are now really about HR or very closely related to it it seems that HR finally has this seat at the table that everyone that's been talking about but what's your what be really interesting what's your view of HR what do you think the purpose of HR actually is you know it's really interesting I I have the luxury of doing conferences not as many as you obviously know the like and I often start with a question with business leaders or HR leaders what's the most important or best thing HR can give an employee

it's an interesting question because it triggers a dialogue and and the answers are usually a sense of purpose a sense of belonging opportunities learn compensation teamwork and my answer is you've missed it the most important thing HR can give an employee is a company that wins in the marketplace and so when you say where is HR headed I think one of the evolutions is from inside the firm with our customer being our employee and the stakeholders inside to outside the firm that what we do in HR is not because of it is not what goes

on inside it's how we add value to customers to investors to communities and my sense as business leaders are begin a sense that that this is not HR yesterday this is HR today that creates real value for the business for the investor and and you see that showing up for the customer for the community and when HR is about outside the business we're gonna get much more visibility and if we look at HR and we pretty generalizing a little bit now where is it today against that vision that you've painted that's a great question and

you visit a lot of companies that I visit a lot of companies and my hope is HR is never caught up to the vision we have because there always should be an aspiration that exceeds our capability and if our aspiration matches our capability we're not moving forward so my hope is there's always a set of aspirations to continue to push us forward I see some HR organizations and you work with them they use your wisdom and that may be why they're there we're doing incredible things and you hate to start mentioning them because next year

they may not but they're doing incredible things some are terrible there was an article a number of years ago why I hate HR and and I was interviewed about that and I said if you want to find some bad HR people I can help you if you want to find bad camera people I can help you if you want to find dad finance marketing manufacturing there's always bad but I think in general HR is getting better and if we want to find good we can find it quickly do you agree that at CHR is probably

more important than it's ever been given all the change that's going on yeah I mean you say what does the business need to do to win in the marketplace we need money well you know you can find money today in a global world capitalist transient it goes across global boundaries we need a strategy whether it's blue pink purple or green ocean we got to figure out where we're gonna compete and how we're gonna play yeah to be honest that's not impossible to create we need operating systems that's the technology the system supply chain management we

got it what's the differentiator its organization its people its talent and that's why I think HR is moving into a more prominent position not because HR people are more more intelligent smarter but the business is requiring that in the world that we live in so we did some interesting research at my HR future this year we actually asked HR professionals what are the skills that you want to learn moving forward and they told us the things that we kind of expected around people analytics strategic Workforce Planning we're going to talk about that later because I

know you've got to take on strategic Workforce Planning as well Design Thinking digital but then softer skills such as consulting and influencing and stakeholder management which kind of lends itself to that business impact that that you've been talking about now I know you've done a lot of research over a number of years around the skills at HR people need what are you finding out there well you know it's and it's always interesting and this is a point of view that I started with our point of view it's not about the skills whatever those skills are

digital analytics information processing managing change it's will those skills drive outcomes that matter and so we think the bigger issue is to say what are the outcomes HR should be co-creating around personal reputation so you're seen as legitimate you get to the table whatever that metaphor is around building customer and investor confidence in the company around business results and so what we're finding is it's not just about the skill set you've got is how those skills will drive outcomes that make a difference in what matters we have found for example right now if I want

to be seen as personally effective as an HR professional zero to 100 how good is David 99 well why it's credible activist it's not we used to call that trusted advisor but it's credible I enjoy working with you I trust you and you have a point of view you're willing to push me you're willing to challenge me that's an interesting skill set that drives an outcome once you get invited to the business discussion then we call it strategic positioner it's not knowing the business that's kind of a baseline I can I know finance marketing how

do I take that knowledge and help me win in the marketplace with customers with investors how do I take my business knowledge and help me anticipate what's next that's a strategic position err but the one that drives business results the most is paradox navigator which is a really interesting idea because it says what do you need to know and do in HR so that the business is more successful and the and the outcome of our research was navigate paradox which means manage tension tension is a good thing we should agree to disagree we should have

tension without contention we should disagree without being disagreeable whatever metaphor you want good HR folks engage in that dialogue and they create teams that engage in the dialogue so that they respond better to a new world and that's what we found drives now in the future and this is way too long of an answer and I apologize that is something I feel passionate about one of the things we found is what drives results and if results we want to create a company that wins in the marketplace is a talent or is it people that's people

talent or is it systems yeah and one of the things we found is that what wins in the marketplace more is not the individual talent but the organizational systems so we think HR people need to be increasingly competent at building the systems or the culture or the capabilities not just the workforce but the workplace not just the people but the process so it's it's managing those systems that we're gonna start exploring this year how do you build that organization as a system that helps us succeed in the marketplace and I think you've said on a

number of occasions HR isn't about HR it's about the business yeah so in your world what set of skills do you see HR people requiring what's what's missing for them well I think what we're always asked around analytics you know what's the first thing I should focus on and I say we'll focus on business challenges index you know it doesn't need to be the most sophisticated analytics in the world it's just as long as it's something that's actually important to the business so where do you find an understanding of the business challenge where do you

where if I'm an HR person where do I find that hold speaking to people in the business is a super good start you know actually you know meet with the business stakeholders the people running the business ask them what their challenges are and then actually start to think other people check their people elements off that are the one piece I might add to that and I agree I mean where does HR started it starts with business leaders the relationship to understanding we we often saw in the HR field that strategy was kind of the mirror

here's the strategy the business leaders have to build your HR I'd encourage you to also go meet with some customers yeah go meet with some investors and a lot of HR folks oh I can't meet with a customer we'll go meet with your key customers what it cuz business is about winning in the marketplace customer what are you buying for who are you looking at other than us why did you pick us why did you pick them what is it we could give you is it finance know your prices are the same is it product

quality meaning your prices are the same what is it we give you well you give a service you give us trust you give us relationships how do we then build an internal organization to meet your customer needs and so one of the things when you say where is HR headed I hope it's not just headed inside the firm which I totally agree with go meet with your business leaders because your contract with them you partner with them you ally with them but go beyond them and with the customer become a customer somebody once said you

know if you're gonna do a job in a in HR you had to be a customer of the company and find out how you're treated and find out how other customers are treated then bring that knowledge into your business conversation yeah I mean we probably don't do enough of I am a child to be honest I don't think we do one company that did some of that was harley-davidson motorcycle company they decided with some coaching all of their HR people needed to attend one or two rallies a year so the rallies are imagine Harley people

the you know the the the the stereotype along comes they had a compensation for Harley riding a motorcycle and she shows up at the rally they don't care she's in HR she's from Harley yeah and so they're telling her giant my manifold doesn't work well this doesn't work well she takes notes she's with the customers she comes back is the head of comp and says look I'm hearing from customers we got to be doing this better I think that's cool because now when she gets into compensation the standards the criteria she envisions that customer riding

that bike saying I need this to be better and she builds a comp system against that set of criteria simple example so some of the work that you're probably stone for is the human resource business partner model that you was part of your human resource champions but back in 1997 I think it's fair to say it's had quite an impact made and actually changed HR now some of the critics of the model say that it's not relevant to today's business world what's your response earlier if I were sitting with that critic I say pull out

your cell phone I have mine yep that cell phone is not 1997 it's sunny what was your cell phone in 1997 you had a flip phone firstly I sure was big and it had a stem and if you showed up today with the big thing in the stem or the flip phone they'd go what are you doing well you know that's change and the model has a by the way that was a great phone it was great for its time that model was appropriate for its time time has changed yeah my phone is different my

TV is different the the leading technology of the day was Sony gameboy or something that had 128 K well with a hundred twenty eight K your son couldn't play his video game today he would pac-man remember pack I mean remember we're gone and so when people say that I think you're missing the whole point HR is evolving and we're continuing to evolve now some of the principles are the same I mean you still got to help business win and we talked about that but the evolution of that is tremendous back then we talked about the

four roles and by the way I don't get asked this very often but when I do today it's not about four roles it's about principles that will help HR deliver victory in the marketplace yeah and that's a big shift that we've seen which I think is healthy well I wanted to give you the opportunity to respond and actually you know you've been filming a course with us today actually on the HR business partner 200 model so we're not going to go into a huge amount of detail now because obviously we've just recorded that course but

if if you were to give the highlights of that the 200 model and encourage people to maybe actually take the course what would you say my sense is there's four buckets of highlights one is some assumptions about HR and we just talked about what your assumption was I'd go visit the business leaders my assumptions I'd go visit customers yeah so the assumption is outside in the assumption is the biggest thing or besting HR give company is not commitment of employees meaning purpose belonging its winning in the marketplace the stakeholders of HR this is the assumptions

are not just the employees or the customers the investors and we got a broad interview the second bucket of stuff is what do we uniquely deliver in the HR field and you've been around it it's people talent and so we do people analytics we do talent analytics we deliver the war for talent we win the work I think we gotta broaden that it's not just about talent it's about organization and our research shows that you're gonna you know people can win a champion be a champion but organizations win championships that it's the organization and we

should be bringing in HR wisdom insight analytics not just about people but about organizations and the systems we create so you got a bucket of assumptions a bucket of deliverables or outcomes around talent leadership and organization you got a bucket of stuff around how do you run the HR department and and where I'm coming out more recently as you've got to have role clarity how do you manage your relationship you have a relationship you still gotta have roles you're gonna have experts you gotta have administrative stuff you got to have integrators but how do you

have relationships so bucket a is assumptions but could be as deliverables buckets see is how we do HR within HR and bucket D are some of the emerging tools and this is where you are literally a thought leader tools around analytics let's not make decisions without data yeah and let's make sure that the data is not just our data but the business data let's use technology technology is changing the world let's use it in HR let's get the tools of our trade that enable us to do those things so I think in being a business

partner you got to change your assumption your unconscious bias you got to get outcomes around talent leadership organization you got to get HR working within HR and you got to get current in the tools so maybe looking at sharp business partner role now to the CHR right now all we see it's a critical role and how have you seen the changes and in the responsibilities of that role as well and I'd love to hear your views as well but let me share some research we did out of data from Korn ferry big search firm they

have tons of data about business leaders they had I think was 15 dimensions or competencies a business leader and they profiled the top 20% in terms of success of CEOs so here's the profile of the CEO in 15 dimensions then they did chief information officer chief marketing officer chief financial officer and chief HR officer top 20% in terms of performance which is a simple measure of compensation control for and they said here's the CEO 15 competencies here's the profile chief marketing officer chief information officer chief financial officer chief HR officer which one most matched the

CEO and it was chief HR officer right okay which is really counterintuitive you'd assume it's marketing or finance the IT you can get around here's what we found is the best they found in their data the best heads of HR had the same leadership profile as the best CEOs now we published that I found that fascinating so what does that say about the chief HR officer you're not here to do HR now you're here to help the business win and you should have the skills of a CH ro what we also found that we did

ended up not publishing is when you looked at the median the average HR person the average marketing the average IT they were the biggest gap against the CEO what it says is at the top of our HR field we have some exceptional folks you've interviewed some and and you hate to share names because they made they may rise and they may fall but you've interviewed some of that top creme de la creme I'm assuming you're finding they are phenomenal they're thoughtful they're good the average HR person sometimes has a gap yeah in part of our

job your job my job is to raise the tide to get the next generation better that's a long answer but that's some kind of interesting data about the CHR oh there are some inspirational CHR O's out there which I think that can act as you know inspire the rest of the field really - really absolutely now they're not going to be a CEO in my view unless they know finance and marketing and business because you can't if I'm an investor and they say oh this is a great interpersonal person I'm going in and I really

like you and we'll go to dinner but I'm not going to put my my resources behind you but when they know finance when they know marketing when they know how business operates and they bring those profile skills to differentiate the good ones I think we're gonna see more of those HR folks in seat your positions and I think we're also seeing more people coming into the CH ro role now who from outside and there are other examples now indices are added asset she'd never worked in HR people but you came into the CHR over oh

I'm bringing in some of that that marketing part which is opposite up focus on the customer we're coaching that new CHR o who doesn't have HR experience what would your coaching be well I think the business experience is probably more important people in HR HR well then that's what I'd say to that new CH or it is I'd say to her you know to be really good as a CH or you got a no business which you know but you've also got a no HR there is a body of knowledge here go to compensation go

to training go to staff and go to org design and you got to know change I would advise her to say surround yourself with some really bright HR experts really bright ones who you can trust to say but when we get into compensation decisions there's some there's a body of knowledge when we get into learning and training there's a body of knowledge don't assume because you're the CHR you know that knowledge and so you got business expertise surround yourself with some really bright folks but also change so I think some of the companies or CH

ORS are saying when I when I populate my HR group I got a third business a third a chart and a third change that's not a bad pneumonic to begin to play with well I don't say you can't be a great conductor unless you've got a great Orchestra can you say that's a great line that's a great line that's a great line by the way if you bring in a head of HR who comes out of the HR legacy you say to him or her get out to know the business do what you just said

yeah go go go muse customers and investors get on every investor call because you need you bring great HR wisdom but you need to get great business depth so for the next part of our discussion I'm gonna dip into some of the articles that you've published recently on LinkedIn and I know you published an article every two weeks so I do encourage people to to read them firstly owners focus on asking you publish reaching around digital HR firstly how much of this stuff we hear around digital is hype and how much is reality what would

you say what percent I think there's a lot of hype I think house use reality and they you know I think there's we price it I think there's both and it's not because it's about HR it's about the world we live yes I mean for me technology is a means to create digital information and and what digital information does it allows us to make more informed decisions because if I haven't in my metaphors if I have an analog watch I can tell time yeah but if I have a digital watch suddenly that watch becomes a

communication device for the world it measures my help that measures my my in taker measures my steps it measures it allows me access to email the digital world just opens up a world of information that we never had before and that's not going to change not an echo see it's not about putting digital processes or digital technology on analog processes we don't touch that won't work use it as an opportunity to change our processes as well so you do a lot in the digital space what's your greatest enthusiasm and greatest fear about digital HR I

think the best thing that the opportunity for me is it easy we can actually give some of the data back to the people providing it to them so the workers give them insight so that can help them improve their well-being and their performance their career thanks I think that it's the biggest opportunity for me as well as creating great business outcomes of course as well I think the biggest fear is is that the companies will misuse the data and will start to see similar scandals in you in the workplace privacy issues yeah I think it's

more just people misusing the day so I think I think is is there's that transparency and we and we're very clear with employees what they feel can make really why we're collecting it what the benefit is the business and what the benefit is to them and I think it's great but if we don't have that open conversation that I think we really could don't get I mean I mean I can see that so in doing a 360 simple thing we've all been involved we don't want to know who filled that out because if I know

that you filled a 360 out on me and I filled it out on you we've got bad data and Josh person and others say you got to start information with good data and I think that's a really good insight we found as you look at it has a business impact and that's why it's not going to go away every industry I know is being shaped by digital information from automotive obviously the driverless car to taxis to lodging to entertainment to education everything is digitized in the HR field we sort of identified four phases of digital

phase one is efficiency take your HR process and get it digitized and and you see that happening with the big players the workday the s AP the Oracle that's happening and and you see it everywhere phase two is innovation I just had the privilege of seeing Josh person he said there are twenty four hundred new innovative companies around people performance information and work doing all kinds of innovation you must run into that all the time I've latest thing he managed to attract them otherwise I don't know how he does it have you ever seen any

of those new apps that you just scratch your head and go you gotta be kidding gonna but they're happening that's just a plethora of innovation in apps the one I joke about I got asked and you probably get asked to endorse they said we will take a picture of your face and based on your forehead nose eyes we will tell you your leadership strengths I remember riding him back and I said you see my face because it's I couldn't be any way but there's a phase one is efficiency face to his innovation I think that's

where 80 to 90% of HR digital is right now and I think we need to move beyond it phase three for me is information so how do we get more information out of this digital age about people and performance iBM has done some great work on that who's likely to leave and and some of those are simple processes but how do we get a guidance system about what do we need in terms of talent leadership and organization to win in the marketplace and we need that information and that's not a simple app the phase four

is where I don't know where to go it's the issue in the world with technology the technology that should connect us often isolates us yeah that the research shows among adolescents teenagers the more time they spend on snapchat or Instagram or FaceTime the more depressed they are the more isolated they feel the more anxious they feel there's someone I know who's really thoughtful and he has an 8 year old and a 10 year old and when that 8 year old and 10 year old son and daughter started getting hooked on technology and spending more of

their time on technology they get distant from the world and so I think one of the issues we've got to face in HR is how do we use this incredible technology that should be connecting us to not isolate us so that's around the experience but where I see the field right now is doing a lot around innovation and efficiency hopefully more coming around information and guidance around strategy and goals and then I hope we're gonna see more innovation in that connection experience base and do you see that connectivity is you see that as a child's

biggest challenge in embracing these new technologies I think I see it as one of the biggest because I think technology that allows me to work from home that allows me to the first book I wrote we dedicated to the approachable app top computer without whom we could not have written the book because we wrote it while we were traveling on airplanes you know that's an isolating technology working at home working in my basement I think we need to find a technology that connects us now people have argued day that's because you're old I'm next generation

I can x-ray technology I still think there's something to be said the the relation and I don't mean to be intrusive but there is something to be said that you and I have connected through Lincoln for 10 years I've adored your work it's the most incredible work I've seen in this space but but but there's something different when I meet you when I see you when I sense who you are as a person and I think we shouldn't lose sight of that relationship piece yeah I think we naturally social animals humans always something yeah and

I'm a huge introvert I mean it's hard for me when I'm done with the class I go hide and but there is something to be said for technology that connects us and how do we use that to celebrate successes I think we'll see more of that and and some of it and I'm sorry to get carried away because I think we need to see it in companies as well as in our personal lives our daughter with her three grandkids lives distant from us we can x-ray technology we know her grant and we know our grandkids

through technology through FaceTime and once in a while she says dad I'm struggling with something the technology enables me to know when to connect in a relationship hmm that's happened recently dad were struggling with something I look at my wife and I and she lives an hour and a half away by flight we're on our way technology enables relationships and boy do I hope we can see more of that and of course another fallout from digital technologies is this whole challenge around skills and you wrote a really good article recently again about you took a

shift from work force to work task planning can you describe that's our listeners it is such a simple idea that's already happening all I did is create a word that goes with it when you go to a grocery store at Tesco or I don't know where you shop then they used to have you'd always go through the checkout lane and in the end the checker would take your thing and swipe it and there's any time a job is about transferring information from your product in your basket to the to the payment that job is going

to be done through technology so I'm assuming in the store where you shop today a lot of it you can swipe yourself yeah well what we need then is less a focus on the workforce and the tasks that need to be done and so we've worked with a quick service restaurant who says we have 25 employees in our restaurant a lot of the restaurant job is information based digital based we don't need people to do that and so we're gonna have restaurants with 15 people and their job is to do the relationship and I think

we're seeing that in a lot of industries we see it in hotels check in yourself we see it in restaurants place your own order and that's the task and so HR has been excited about the workforce full-time part-time gig economy contract yes yes yes yes and add another dimension our robots is automation going to be able to do some of those tasks I don't think it can do what we're doing here hmm because we're building relationships and and we're working but we may not need that cameraman guy we may not need the sound guy anytime

the task is about information sharing there's a chance that's going to be done through technology he's kind of that shift from focusing on jobs to focusing on skills absolutely and what work needs to be done and then how can I best be done how can I best be done that and and it's interesting I was in a company that does a lot of manufacturing they said we're gonna move to robots we know it's coming right now robots are a bit expensive and we know that robots going to bring our cost of operations down and people

are going to stay high we don't know when we're gonna and I don't want to name this company because somewhere we're gonna make that cross right now it's cheaper to have people labor market workforce than it is to have robots as the cost of robots comes down with technology and digitization that class is going to come down people costs we're gonna cross that line and you look out I think we'll see that in almost every industry every industry I just can be interesting isn't it because you know if we go back in history which is

normally a good predictor of the future every Industrial Revolution yes jobs were replaced but new jobs are created in fact I what do you think you think there'll be more jobs or fewer jobs I think there may be more yeah but I'm an optimist and two but they're gonna be different and then it becomes an interesting collaboration between government education industry who's gonna take the stewardship to give those employees who are being displaced if your job is transferring information from A to B I hate to say it you may be replaced so someone's gonna have

to help Reese kill you and and you're gonna own it I believe in personal accountability but is it the company is that the government is that the education is labor somebody's gonna have to help those people because I think they're gonna be more jobs not fewer probably more highly skilled as well I'm sorry well hopefully more human skills though we saw some work on robotics and and artificial intelligence and it said the human brain has 100 trillion synapses the latest robots can do a billion and between a billion and a hundred trillion is a way

before the robot will replace humans but that billion for example in our HR area we have a thousand people apply for a job we can match our skill requirements with their Facebook with their email with all of their data their resume and we can go from a thousand down to a hundred then we can do a second level of analysis and get from a hundred to ten that's robots but to get to ten to the three we hire requires a sense of human touch that's the billion to 100 trillion synapses I think that's really a

great example we don't need someone to sort a thousand resumes robots you sort it to a hundred will now do some joint sorting down to ten now we're gonna talk we're gonna be person to person we're gonna we're gonna sense those fit and that skill in that relationship and then we hire the right three well you wouldn't expect me to be doing a discussion without talking about people analytics so we are getting to where people analytics now and again it's a recent article I think it's some research she did about a year ago now you

did some analytics on on people's analytics and you found some interesting findings it shocked us this is why I think analytics are so helpful because you find insights that you didn't expect so we here's the study we did we went to about I gotta remember about four thousand HR professionals and we had a 360 so we had data from about thirty thousand people and we said to what extent do you know how to do people analytics and we rated them on about six dimensions then we took that result again for four thousand people from twenty

six thousand Raiders and we correlated it with business outcomes so we had an indicator of business outcomes for the business you're in we would assume Wow those who know analytics have great business impacts of the nine competence domains it was the eight and impact it had almost no impact by the way that set me back because I thought everybody loves information and we've got it we've got to use the information and insights to do predictive analytics but our data showed and you can't walk away from I mean you can walk away from three pieces of

data but not thirty thousand yeah that when HR people did people analytics they got in trouble here was our take away and be fun to get your take HR analytics should not be about HR that the baseline event I did a book called the H I co-authored a book called the HR scorecard about twenty years ago fifteen twenty years ago today I should be shot because it's not about an HR scorecard and what we found is when you looked at information and HR people who know quote people analytics the HR pieces of that doesn't drive

business results but when you look at information that connects the marketplace to the company it had the single biggest predictor of business results as an organizational capability we called it external sensing in Wayne brockbank is the thought leader he said when HR can create external sensing that looks at market opportunities from customers and investors bring that into the company that's the biggest driver of organization that creates business results so we did an article tongue-in-cheek with Thomas Rasmussen whose brilliant gray awesome the analytics on analytics are not very positive and every oh I'm mad and then

he said but be careful when you link analytics to the business it has huge impact yeah I'll give an example and I get in trouble for this there's a big movement in our field with with the movement of names and ideas and shiny objects employee experience an employee experience my take is employee experience is not the issue it's how does employee experience correlate with customer experience and what I'm not as interested in is what drives employee experience I'm interested in what drives that causation and correlation so what's your take where is analytics gonna have the

most impact in the people organization space well again I think it's focusing on the business you know and I think their article that you wrote with with Thomas Rasmussen I think it was something titled endanger being a fad and then you outline some specific examples that Thomas had worked on I think of murca nutshell yeah of how they had actually tied it to the business they correlated engagement with performance with safety on oil rigs for example you know big big things for a company Rochelle yeah sure so yeah III and I think you're right I

like that you know the employee experiences lots of to talk about that but what are the elements of employee experience that drive customer experience and or investor - or investor confidence you know is in a workshop today and said how many of you are working to get measures of employee experience everybody is I mean some legacy engagement measures productivity etc how many of you are attending investor calls and sharing that data almost no one yeah to me that's that's what makes HR so cool is that I believe in employee experience I'm in HR because I

really do believe that organizations are the greatest setting in the world to help people fulfill their potential I believe that in my gut personally and visually but to sustain that agenda it can't just be a social agenda that's where your analytics work and others is if you get better employee experience and the investor gives you a 10% premium and your stock value is worth 10 billion pounds dollars 10 percent is a billion dollar billion pounds that argument is really compelling and it creates then a virtuous cycle we're not doing employee experience to make employees happy

and delighted and bring a pet to work we're doing it so that our investors can give us a premium and the company will win and then we can do some incredible things with our employees and that virtuous cycle is the one that really excites me yeah I think in breach of brenson coming something simple common the exact ways now you know happy employees make happy customers then the revenues and the profits our cost of themselves kind of thing so you know when you're Richard Branson you can say anything you can but the good news is

he's right and it's it's the employee indices whatever they are experience engagement commitment can correlate with the customer indices and we've studied that we've seen it and so when I sit down an HR over the business leader I'm not saying let's go build the employee experience I start by saying what would happen in this company if our customer experience went up 10% Wow they buy more products head buy more services our stock price would go up our cost of capital debt would go down I have a way to get you that really yeah it's not

gonna cost you a ton of money because much of employee experience is not compensation its opportunity its belief its impact it's how we frame our story for relatively little investment I can give you a 10% increase on customer engagement would you like to know and you say where's HR going I think that's where HR needs to begin ahead okay I agree well we're coming towards the end but I could ask just one other question around the researcher you don't any other research that you've been involved recently that you'd like to share with you for warn

me of that question I've tried not to prepare the questions one of the problem is I love research because I love data my PhD is in statistics that's that's I love data analytics is not new to good HR I continue to look at where does HR add value so I see investors looking at HR in a more rigorous way so we've created a leadership capital index it's like there there's a Moody's index about an investor valuing a company because they're there they're confident in their financial return I want investors to value a company because of

their confidence and the quality of leadership so we're exploring that we're trying to create a sense what is it that this employee experience or connection is about we're doing research on three things believe become and belong we did a book called the why of work which had seven things I think those three does my company helped believe become we're doing research on that but all of it is around creating organizations that win over time so that the employee experience becomes a virtuous cycle of helping the company win and the employee have a better experience what

are you doing what are some new things for you we weren't surprised and I surround the analytics face so Jonathan Farrar and I created a model funny enough nine dimensions of excellence in people analytics and as part that we can do the short survey seven seven questions seven critical success factors and what I'm finding is that most people that respond to it they score very lowly lowly around ROI so actually we determine the ROI of our analytics projects you know the average score is around to an awful three out of five yeah you know you

know as I said to people with maybe it's quite simple maybe at the outset of an analytics project maybe actually sit down with finance and actually work out how you're gonna calculate what their return on investments gonna be from that great idea is quite simple and this is the whole thing that maybe HR isn't hasn't been so good at doing is quantifying its impact you need to be able to quantify you it's not always about ROI of course there are other measures that you can do that but that is one nation well that ultimately has

to come into a finance statement either top line or bottom line has to come into a market segment the customer buys more or less or has a higher Net Promoter Score and when you can build the linkages to those outcomes for example one of the things we've done with ROI we've called it the right ROI is return on in anja bowls because when you go outside the company and look at shareholders an increasing percent of shareholder investor value in a company is not the financial numbers Amazon gets a premium the most valuable firm in the

world not just because their cash but because their intangibles and the big intangible is people have organization and leadership the investors look at Amazon and say Bezos is a great individual leader and he is creating leadership and a culture that will outlive him and we're gonna bet on that premium yeah boy so that ROI is and that's kind of leadership capital logic that we want to create those are a wise investment return on basement or return on intangibles that really drive sustainable organizations because then they can do great things for their people I like that

study I look forward to seeing it published yeah well we want to get it we want to get the N number of it being a first before we punch it but look out for it towards the end of the year I think we'll see it so I'm now going to ask you the question that we asked all our guests on the digital HR leaders podcast which is what will the role of HR be in 2025 I don't know there's a few thoughts I mean there's a concept blue / orange blue cell mmm shows now I

have to translate that because nobody can understand my French but some of the principles are the same I mean our 97 book that I said we moved beyond the principles are the same HR in nineteen 2025 has gotta add value yes cuz that's a principle it's got to deliver talent leadership and organization I mean those are the levers that we're gonna use to add value what's gonna change I'm not exactly sure I think I think technology is gonna replace some things I'm pretty sure about I think we used to we over the last 20 years

we outsource the administrative work to the big outsource providers in different parts of the world I think through technology that's going to come back in we don't need to outsource we can insource some of the big outsource providers in India or shrinking because the technology brings it in I think we're gonna see HR an increasingly differentiator at the business because of their talent leadership and organization skills I don't know how HR will be structured and I think we're gonna find that those intangible relationships really do count inside an HR group so what would you say

well I I think you know I agree that clearly there are elements of each other are going to be automated you know the poori the more repetitive boring work and doesn't that perhaps our HR to be have even more impact by focusing on the other stuff that is really important but again it's tied to all the stuff that we're talking about isn't it it's sure you need an optimist or a pessimist I mean again I'm an optimist I think you know why maybe because I'm just always an optimist I don't know I know I think

I see us I see lots to be positive about with HR I think we gained some really great leaders coming into the space I think analytics is helping drive it forward and I think hopefully that will harness this digital technology to our advantage and yes create business value out of it but also drive customer experience through driving employee experience so Nexus for me I care about people I got into the field because organizations don't think people think and that was the mut my mentor drove that into me I honestly care that people have well-being that

they have a sense of personal belonging belief I think organizations today or the setting to get it we get it in families there's no question we may get it in neighborhoods or social groups or experiences we may get it through religious groups but we spend a lot of time in the organizations where we live and work I mean and it could be a small organization you could be starting up a small group with you and your partners and your a team and you find a connection there it could be a big organization with hundreds of

thousands of people if we can create organizations that give people that experience that then virtually connects with winning in the marketplace and investors I think we create a place where and this is a little naive and it's a little utopian where people have a better life experience and it changes what happens at home it changes what happens in in other parts of our lives and that's people say why do you stay in HR and it's not because of what's wrong is because of what's right and you know finance tracks what's happened HR creates what can

be and I still have that naive hold that we can create these organizational settings that have worked for me I'm assuming you've been in some great organizational settings I assume you're leading one right now with your partner you you have relationships that work that that give you a sense of meaning a sense of fulfillment I hope we can create that in companies that's a wonderfully positive way to end our discussion thank you Dave thank you very much it's been an absolute pleasure how come people stay in touch with you I'm on LinkedIn I try to

post a there's a lot of post I don't know how often I post almost every day but I post a new article every Tuesday one is short 100 words 150 words and one is a thousand words so every Tuesday I post an article I've done that for a year and a half I enjoyed that because it's an outlet for ideas that may be the best space or email I'm I may be old-fashioned and you can find my email it's do you at you mich dot edu I I try to respond emails quickly well Dave it's

been an absolute pleasure thank you very much your time in this series we will be speaking to a range of senior leaders who are pushing a data-driven and digital HR agenda make sure that you subscribe by your podcast app of choice and also fire on our YouTube channel for free and regular interviews with the digital HR leaders of the future