Internet of Things and how it impacts Human Resources

Everything seems connected to the internet. From cars and mobile phones to the fridge and the lights in your living room. The future of machine-to-machine technology seems unavoidable as people are on the constant look out for smarter applications to fulfill their ever-growing hunger for new information and their desire to do things quicker and better. After SMAC took the enterprise and the consumer domain by storm over the last couple of years, there is a new buzzword that is rushing through the business & the geek world and that is ‘IoT’. So, what is IoT? IoT stands for Internet of Things and it is about creating digital representations of real-world objects. It is a phenomenon that draws on rapid developments within IT, ICT and telecommunications to spark insights and to help companies create entirely new types of services and business areas.

As we move into the Networked Society, there will be an expansion not only in the scale of connectivity, but more importantly, in its scope. Devices will become more capable and more broadly utilized, and when they connect to the internet, they will be integrated into vast numbers of different applications across sectors. This is what is going to drive the evolution of the IoT. And the IoT is already taking off, as organizations, governments and businesses move to better understand – and connect to – their physical surroundings in order to innovate, increase efficiency and become more sustainable.

Current examples that fall into the Internet of Things category include:

• Fitness and activity trackers that monitor our movements throughout the day
• Smart thermostats that use weather forecasts to adjust temperatures automatically
• Web enabled lights that can be controlled from phone apps

So how will the Internet of Things impact the Human Resource function? Here’s how:

Talent Acquisition: Using the Internet today to find people is not a surprise to anyone. Everyone knows about Linked In, Facebook and Twitter and other social media sites in addition to the job boards. However, the Internet of Things is a different entity altogether, a potentially very different way of finding the people that fit our needs exactly. Since everything will be connected to the internet, human beings will not only reveal information on where they are, what they do, what they eat, and how their health is, but it will also help them understand their deficiencies and their strengths. An employer with this information could more easily find someone who not only has the educational and work background they want but could also look at the measure of your creativeness, or tenacity, or some other variable important to the job. This is not the kind of information that currently appears on a resume or a profile, but at some point may be available via the IoT. E.g. When it comes to hiring temporary staff to fill a sudden resource gap, potential new hires will be evaluated and made an offer in real-time, then on-boarded and informed on the spot via their mobile since in the IoT, all the devices and systems are interconnected.

Talent Management: This data would also help in career development from the employee’s point of view. They would be able to determine what experiences they would need to have to accomplish their career goals and would be able to evaluate a company to learn if the company offers such an opportunity

HRIS & Payroll: With organisations deciding to be part of the IoT universe, all the systems & tools will be interconnected via the internet. As a result, the HR professional’s job would be easier with employee related data accessible at the touch of a button. Many of the errors which occur due to data entry in the HRIS systems & tools would primarily be avoided.

Conclusion: Even as machines become more intelligent and capable, there are some essential business qualities, including contextual problem-solving, relationship-building, and innovation, that are uniquely human. At least at the beginning, devices in the IoT will need human managers if they are to be truly effective. Humans will also be needed to take full advantage of the new IoT businesses springing up all the time. Human resources is essentially about developing a workforce’s capabilities, and that will be more important than ever as the IoT takes us where no one has gone before.

Disruptive Thinking in HR

Before we get into the concept of Disruptive Thinking, let us understand the meaning of the terms Disruption and Disruptive Thinking. Disruption takes a turn by literally uprooting and changing how we think, behave, do business, learn and go about our day-to-day. Harvard Business School professor and disruption guru Clayton Christensen says that a disruption displaces an existing market, industry, or technology and produces something new and more efficient and worthwhile. It is at once destructive and creative.

Following on from this brief definition of Disruption, let us try to understand what Disruptive Thinking is. Instead of defining it, let us imagine a real life scenario. Take the case of any major airport in India, if you are dropping someone off for an early morning flight, there are likely many other people doing the same thing, making the departures lane crowded with traffic, slow, and frustrating. But – very few flights are arriving in the early morning, meaning that the arrivals lane is wide-open. Try dropping off your passenger at the arrivals gate – sure, they may have to go up one level to reach the security lines, but the time and frustration you both stand to save is more than worth it.

HR often gets a bad reputation when it comes to Disruptive thinking. Now, we may ask ourselves why is Disruptive thinking required in HR. To find the answer to this question, we need to look around us and understand that if we as a function are going to go about functioning as the staid old HR departments of yore in the current dynamic business environment, are we going to keep pace with the constantly changing business scenarios and challenges? Can we effectively function as Business partners if we refuse to think out of the box?

We in Human Resources are a conservative lot, we care about consensus, for one thing. We tend to be careful and cautious, for another. In HR, risk often feels more dangerous than interesting. Disruption seems to require leaps of intuition, something of a maverick mind set, and a real willingness to take on risk. So does that mean HR can’t think disruptively?

No. In fact, disruption isn’t anathema to HR at all. In fact, it is essential to HR. Now stay with me out here! The point is, if a company wants to be a disruptive force in the market, that disruption must start with human resources, not trickle down to it. Because it is people, not products, that are at the heart of disruptive thinking in any company.  Here’s how Karl Moore put it in a Forbes article:

The mind set and culture of your HR team has an exponential impact on the entire organization: everyone is influenced by HR. Therefore, changing your organization and becoming more successful and innovative begins by tearing apart your beliefs on this role. Who is in a better position to campaign for and express the culture and needs of your organization at all touch points (hiring, policies and programs, new employee on-boarding, succession planning, performance management, etc.) than HR?

I think we all get that disruption / innovation is important for success. But it is also true that caution and consensus have their place. HR has its own style of innovation. We can’t and won’t charge cowboy style into disruption for the sake of it. Luckily, there are ways to innovate, and ways to bring this dynamic into your company culture while still building agreement and mitigating risk.

One way to do that is simply to pay more attention to what is already there and simply amplify it. Find the things that are working best in your organization—the disruptions that are already there—and develop them. Here are some very simple ways to extend the innovations already seeded in your company.

Get Clearer Insight: The first step in causing disruption is having a clear understanding of what is happening and where. Find ways to manage your culture and get clear insights into how your values are faring down on the ground. Identify those outliers in your organization who are currently out there innovating and taking risks, and learn from them.

Use the Technologies You Have: Look at the technology you already have at your disposal. Are you making the most of it? Can you use technology such as electronic communications or enterprise social tools in new ways? Employees are data consumers via technology in their private lives—are there ways you could bring that same level of control, fluidity and self-service to more mundane HR functions, such as benefits or reporting?

Use the Data You Have: More than ever, HRIS tools are generating powerful data. Are you making the most of the data you’re creating? Think outside the box. How can you use data from one function to strengthen another? For example, recognition data can be instrumental in helping you to identify top performers for succession management. Are you just collecting data, or are you analysing it and leveraging it in innovative ways?

Realign Processes: We all have processes. They are a critical way to make work scalable in any organization. But processes can be one of the worst offenders when it comes to blocking disruption, because they make us resistant to change. You don’t have to break all your processes to innovate, but you do need to be willing to rethink processes that may be causing you to stagnate. One perfect example of this is the performance review process. Is yours working? Could it be better? Could simple adjustments like referencing input from crowd sourced performance data help you to make reviews significantly more meaningful?

Get Out in Front of Change: Are you aware of the next big thing in the field? Are you ready for it? Learn what the pioneers in HR are doing. You may not be ready to implement everything tomorrow, but you’ll be able to see it coming, prepare the ground, and make the leap when it is right for you.

We should not let anyone tell us that HR cannot think disruptively!