How Industry 4.0 meets HR tech 4.0
Brian Sommer, Founder, TechVentive, is an industry veteran, who for over 30 years has been advising the world's largest firms on strategy, change, process and technology initiatives. He has assisted fortune 500 companies in software selection and continues to advise a wide array of high technology firms globally.
Brian held a keynote session on “Experience and Productivity when Industry 4.0 meets HR Tech 4.0” at the region’s biggest and most relevant HR virtual conference: ‘HR Tech 4.0: Driving the Talent Economy’. The virtual event was hosted by PeopleStrong and People Matters, and had over a thousand business and HR leaders signing up for the event to hear perspectives from global thought leaders like Brian.
During the keynote session, Brian shed light on what Industry 4.0 entails, what challenges and opportunities it holds for HR tech 4.0, and how the end goal of digital adoption should be to be delightful and painless for its users - in this case, employees.
Read on for insights from Brian.
The Industry 4.0 landscape
Sharing his thoughts on the scope of technological capabilities under Industry 4.0, Sommer noted that companies have been able to take advantage of very low-cost technology to identify what happens inside the firm - what do they use, what they consume, what do they emit, and how things move through the entire supply and value chain in their organisation. “Not only do those devices come at a meagre cost, but they now capture data at incredibly granular levels. When you combine it with some of the new tools and new advanced technologies like machine learning, artificial intelligence and the like, you can get incredible insights into what's happening inside your firm and how it's going to interact with other constituents outside of the company, including suppliers, customers and so forth.”
Highlighting the impact of this “incredible change”, Sommer noted how predictive technology can equip organisations with the requisite insights to minimise operational disruptions. For example, through advanced tools, one can predict when a piece of equipment will potentially fail. “You can use that knowledge to pre-order replacement parts, schedule mechanics or repair personnel. You can do that to minimise disruption to the organisation. This delivers some incredible business value that helps drive major new efficiencies, savings and bottom-line impact for companies.”
HR Tech 4.0: The Opportunities
Extending the benefits of industry 4.0 to the HR domain, Sommer explained that by applying the same kind of advanced thinking to the HR value chain or talent value chain, employers can tap into new opportunities in the whitespace around HR technology. Some of these opportunities are:
Sommer delved into the HR 4.0 advantage with an example. “There are some big data stores now where you can capture as many as a billion passive job seekers out there in the global economy. While it is incredibly powerful to be able to tap into that, the question is do you have the tools to make sense of that and at speed?” That's where big data, analytic capabilities, and machine learning come in, he said.
Speaking of the impact HR 4.0 can bring in career planning, Sommer recommended using tools that look at the velocity of someone's career beyond what they've done, maybe just inside the firm. “Knowing that will change the company’s training, career, and succession planning activities. You're going to need algorithms and access to data outside the firm, and you would want to take advantage of some of those tools there.”
Organisations will need a talent operating system that leverages data to break down HR silos, enabling organisations to focus on an integrated talent management approach and make informed decisions to increase their organisational capabilities and unlock their performance potential.
Tapping into one of the biggest concerns for HR in today’s disruptive world of work – employee engagement – he encouraged leaders to ask themselves how they can create a holistic employment experience? One of the greatest difficulties in most companies is that people are leaving in large numbers, said Sommer, adding that a big part of that has to do not with money so much as issues with their manager. “People generally don't quit their employer; they quit the person they're working for.”
He emphasised the need for tools that help find out who the cycle bosses are and identify which training organisations can implement to help shape these managers and enlighten them into being better bosses in the longer term.
He further noted how many companies are exploring technology to create more self-sufficient and self-service HR processes as opposed to requiring manual intervention, to take the friction out of these work processes. “Make all the systems a delight, not a pain to use. Many new technologies can fundamentally change what HR does and what HR is all about.”
HR tech 4.0: The Challenges
In HR, as empowering as technology can be, it needs to function within certain guidelines. For instance, the same technology that you can use for capital equipment, machine tools and support, you can't necessarily use that for people, cautioned Sommer.
“There have been a lot of HR technologies that have tried to come up with what I call mood rings for employees, to figure out how they are feeling today and not realising that a big part of how people feel may be determined outside of the workplace, and problems at home. We can't just literally lift and shift the Industry 4.0 world to HR 4.0. We've got to be a lot more subtle, nuanced, and more creative in the way we're going to approach these kinds of matters.”
Sommer identified some key HR 4.0 challenges as below:
Enabling a seamless intersection of Industry 4.0 and HR 4.0
The bottom line, said Sommer, is there are a lot of new opportunities, but not everybody needs the same thing and “not everyone's going to take the full HR 4.0 deal or at least not immediately”. Breaking down the organisational need for technology, he bucketed firms under four segments with individual focus areas:
- Building core capabilities and HRMS: Focused on short-term growth
- End being dysfunctional post-pandemic: Focused on restoring economic viability
- Attempting gradual digitalisation: Maintaining short-term relevancy
- Heading for full-blown digital transformation: Long-term competitive differentiation
Commenting on the last segment, Sommer said, “We've got those who want to steer away from incremental adoption and go ahead with full-blown digital transformation. They want to do it to gain a competitive advantage. They are not looking for committed parity; they are looking at gaining competitive advantage in this market.”
One size does not fit all and remains true as ever. Sommer advised leaders that while they have different goals, the key goal should be to develop technology that delights employees.
“You want to create new processes that remove all kinds of friction and make the employee experience something delightful. And you want to create a great work environment and have enlightened bosses that will make things a joy to deal with, beyond just a regular transactional process.”
About PeopleStrong:
PeopleStrong is Asia Pacific’s leading, and the most comprehensive HR tech SaaS platform. PeopleStrong with capabilities spanning across the employee lifecycle from hire to exit, including Human Capital Management, Payroll, Talent Acquisition & Management, and Collaboration.
PeopleStrong has simplified work life for over 500+ large enterprises across the emerging economies of Asia Pacific. Today, PeopleStrong empowers the lives of 2M+ employees with a mobile-first, AI & ML-powered talent operating system.
PeopleStrong is rated among the Top 5 in the Asia Pacific on Gartner Peer Insights and named Customers' Choice of HR Tech for 1000+ employee enterprises in the Gartner 'Voice of the Customer' Report.
For more information, visit www.peoplestrong.com