I wanted to share with our readers an interesting blog post by Winning Workplaces titled Could Artificial Intelligence Replace Human Intuition in Assessing Unsatisfied Employees?
Like everyone, I'm a huge fan of using technology to simplify my life and make more informed business decisions. CRM's are a great example. Since we switched to SalesForce.com managing customer and prospect relations has improved dramatically. In fact, I'd like to think that our own product HRmarketer.com has helped simplified the lives of marketing departments in the human capital marketplace and allowed them to make better marketing decisions.
But can technology, specifically artificial intelligence, help employers measure employee engagement and/or predict which of their employees are most likely to quit?
That is exactly what Google is reportably now doing with a new algorithm that will help them calculate which of their employees are most likely to quit.
As the blog referenced above points out, this may be useful for large employers who have to track the engagement of thousands of employees where HR departments are "strapped keeping track of everyone's needs and trying to satisfy them".
But in smaller firms the author of the blog Winning Workplaces suggests that this is the responsibility of management where "leadership and HR are better equipped to know not only if people are not satisfied, but if they're going to bail". He writes:
"I think that small and midsize businesses can save money and have a pulse on their workplace cultures by continuing the proven, decidedly 20th century practices of MBWA (managing by walking around), having an open door policy, and continually seeking ways to solicit and benefit from employee feedback."
But why can't large businesses do the same, without the use of artificial intelligence by using their existing talent management platforms and/or by using affordable surveys and assessments already available by a host of leadership development firms? I think they can.
And HR's role?
Ultimately, measuring employee engagement and performance is the responsibility of managers regardless of company size. Only a manager can effectively monitor the engagement of their direct reports on a day-to-day basis. Technology certainly can and does play a role. At it's core, HR is a "people" department and regardless of the size of the organization HR can and should equip their managers with the tools to help them identify engagement - not necessarily do the job entirely by themselves.
And there are plenty of these tools available already.
And as the author of the blog referenced above suggests, "maybe Google will enter this space if it wanted to go into that as a new business model :-)
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
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3 comments:
This article makes it sound like there's a commonly accepted measure for employee engagement. There isn't. And that makes it hard to manage directly. What managers need to pay attention to are behavior and performance. Everything else is supposition, one step removed from reality.
Thanks for citing our blog, Mark. I'm glad this is helping to spur more discussion of this issue. You make a good point about large firms' participation. I don't doubt that they can do this too -- obviously it's working for Google -- but my point was that I think small firms inherently have a better sense about who is unsatisfied as a precursor to who might leave. This may mean they have a leg up on large firms when given access to the same employee satisfaction-assessing technology -- or they may not. I guess time will tell.
The original article said: “Current and former Googlers said the company is losing talent because some employees feel they can’t make the same impact as the company matures. Several said Google provides little formal career planning, and some found the company’s human-resources programs too impersonal.”
And the goal is to solve this with more technology and less of the human touch? What I read here is employees crying out for some personal time and recognition of their efforts and contributions — more importantly, they don’t want just a pat on the back. They want to be told, specifically, how their efforts ARE making a tremendous impact.
This isn’t that difficult — strategic recognition is designed to accomplish precisely this by giving employees the appreciation they deserve while tying those efforts and recognitions to strategic objectives achieved. This line of sight combined with appreciation is what Google seems to need — not another algorithm.
More on this concept of line of sight and appreciation is available here: http://globoforce.blogspot.com/2009/05/defining-employee-engagement-whats-your.html
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