Episode 40: How Can People Analytics Drive Business Value? (Interview with David Green)

To celebrate the one year anniversary of this podcast and over 100,000 listens, we thought we would do something different. The team managed to persuade me to record a special role reversal episode of the podcast with me in the hot seat and the show’s co-creator Ian, firing the questions that some of you, including one of our previous guests Dave Ulrich, have kindly taken the time to send in. In this episode we look at the role of People Analytics in driving business value and how it is a key ingredient in HR’s success in the future. You can listen below or by visiting the podcast website here.

In our conversation, Ian and I discuss:

• Five steps to getting started in People Analytics and why analytics is a team sport

• Where People Analytics belongs in an organisation and how the field has been impacted by COVID-19

• The most important skills required by HR professionals in a digital context

• The factors that provide me with optimism and pessimism about the future role of HR in delivering value both to the organisation and to the employee

• Why a human centred approach encompassing analytics, employee experience and digital technology promises a bright future for HR

This episode should be an interesting listen for anyone in a workforce or People Analytics role. HR and business professionals interested in how people data can drive business outcomes and CHRO’s looking to build or scale their People Analytics capabilities.

Support for this podcast is brought to you by Insight222. To learn more, visit https://www.insight222.com.

Interview Transcript  

Ian Bailie: Welcome to this week's special edition of The Digital HR Leaders Podcast where I am not David Green. I am Ian Bailie, but I am delighted to welcome David Green as the special guest on this week's podcast. Hello David.

David Green:  Hello Ian. It is a bit of a role reversal this week.

Ian Bailie: It is. It is. I can tell you are not feeling very happy about it are you?

David Green: Ah we will see, ask me at the end.

Ian Bailie: Right, very good. Well I know you are going to be amazing.

So we are both recording this from our homes in the UK. Obviously we can not get into the studio at the moment so we are doing this virtually, as we have been doing a number of shows virtually recently.

So first of all, what I want to say David, is a huge congratulations to you. We have just gone past one hundred thousand listens for the podcast, which is a massive milestone. This episode is going to be the 40th episode of the podcast as well, so I think it would be great for listeners just to learn a bit more about you for once, rather than the guests. How you got started in people analytics and what your current role is at Insight222?

David Green: Well firstly Ian, I think a big reason for the show success is down to you, both as a producer and co-creator. Obviously what you have built with Manpreet with the myHRfuture platform is fantastic, so congrats to you too, I am getting you on my side you see here.

So as for me, I am going to show my age by sharing that I started my career in HR all the way back in 1997. Spent quite a lot of time in the talent acquisition space, in a variety of recruiting, sales and consulting roles and have been in the people analytics field for around seven years. But funnily enough, it was not really because of HR that I got started in people analytics, there were two other routes coalesced together.

First, I spent seven years living and working in the South of France, as you have probably heard me mention a few times. I worked for a company out there called Amadeus, which is a specialist tech company in the travel industry. We started using data and analytics to create insights and develop products for our customers and I thought, well why did we not do that in HR when I was working in that function. That kind of sparked an interest, which I kept in my head for when we moved back to the UK, back in 2011 I think it was. In parallel at the same time, you will know Ian because I bore you about it all the time, I am pretty passionate about cricket and also whilst I lived in France I developed a moderately less successful cricket blog, which I kept going for a couple of years. It taught me the rudimentaries of social media. So when I came back to the UK, I did my research, I went back into the HR space working mainly in recruitment process outsourcing companies for the first few years. I uncovered articles like Competing on Talent Analytics, last week's guest Jeremy Shapiro co-authored that one. I started finding out that there were some companies doing people analytics, not many at that stage, but there were some doing it and I started writing about people analytics and sharing what I had learned. Eventually this led to speaking opportunities, some consultancy work and eventually a job at IBM.

Really that time at IBM was where I really saw that I was actually effectively taking my hobby and being paid for it, which is quite nice. I met lots of like minded people both at IBM and through my work with IBM, you, Jonathan and others. We created Insight222, where I am one of the managing partners. With overall responsibility for the People Analytics Program where we are working with 70 global organisations doing a bit of strategy and transformation consulting, the myHRfuture Academy and just helping those leaders and their teams to create more value out of people analytics.

Also of course, I usually host this podcast and I must say I definitely prefer being on the other side of the microphone.

Ian Bailie: Well, thank you. I think everyone will have loved hearing that journey. The cricket blog, can I check that out somewhere? Is that still online and updated on a regular basis?

David Green: I am not doing that anymore; I think it might be online or I think I may have stopped paying for the annual subscription.

So, it was called The Reverse Sweep, which I know you are not a big cricket aficionado but it is one of the shots that you can play. I think I kept it going until about 2012. There was lots of stuff about Don Bradman and Bodyline, stuff like that, stuff that I am sure you would find riveting.

Ian Bailie: Excellent, I can hear everyone googling for it right now. All right, let us get it back on topic.

What we did in preparation for this episode is we did a few posts via LinkedIn and other channels to ask people for their questions for you. We have had a great number of questions come in, some of them are quite tough, I am just going to warn you now. So I am going to start you off with an easy one, which is a question I know you get a lot of the time. But for people that want to get started in people analytics, why should they and how can they get started?

David Green: Well, firstly we could probably speak all day about this and I might try and do that to avoid getting to the difficult questions, but also I would like to thank people for actually making the effort to submit questions. I was quite surprised when we put the post out on LinkedIn and actually got quite a few responses.

I am sure you are going to give me some of the tricky ones as well.

Firstly, Ian you have been in this space as well for a while, interest in people analytics has been growing quite steadily over the years, but it almost seems in the last 18 months or so that growth has become a bit more exponential.

For those of us that have been in the space a long time, when you see LinkedIn include people analytics as one of the four global talent trends for 2020, you know that the discipline has finally arrived, which is great.

So in terms of getting started, I actually wrote an article on this very subject earlier this year on the myHRfuture blog and I offered five steps to getting started. So I think the first one, wherever you are with people analytics, if it is something you are interested in yourself, it is all about solving business problems. So learn your business, focus on your business and try and speak to people. Speak to people in the business, inside of HR as well as outside of HR, find out what the big challenges are and try to relate those to maybe some people problems and then start to frame the right business questions that you could potentially answer using analytics and develop some hypotheses as to why you think things might be happening. So I think that is certainly one.

Two, look outside the organisation as well. Read, learn, network and grow. There are lots of great articles out there, I try and collect the best of these together on a kind of monthly basis, so hopefully that helps people. There are also some great books out there. Obviously, I will mention The Power of People, as our co collaborator Jonathan Ferrar, was a co-author of that. I think what you will find in the people analytics community it is naturally collaborative and it is a pretty open community as well.

Jared Valdron, who is a people analytics leader just put a great post on LinkedIn about questions that he gets asked that he is giving back to people that are interested in getting into this space.

In the normal world, before COVID, there were a lot of conferences. There is now a lot of virtual conferences that you can find out more about people analytics and hear from practitioners. There are also lots of meet-up groups, probably virtual meet-up groups now as well, so I would suggest getting involved in those.

Then I guess back inside the business, get the right stakeholders in your business involved. CHRO and the HR leadership team are really important as they get you access to the right stakeholders, maybe the right business problems that you could potentially solve using analytics, get you access to budget and resources.

But also, as I said, look beyond HR to leaders in the business as well because they will give you the problems that you can then go away and look at. Do not be afraid to focus on a quick win, it is all about building momentum and creating excitement about analytics and using that momentum to grow.

Then also remember that analytics is a team sport, there will be other analytics teams in the business. HR is traditionally the last to move of the major functions, so there will be people in finance, IT, legal, marketing, who can help you and support you.

I think particularly if we think about people analytics, it is about people. If we think about customer analytics it is about people. So, there is a lot to learn from marketing and some of the techniques that have been deployed there over the last 10 or 15 years as well.

So they are just some of the tips I would say.

Ian Bailie: Excellent, that is great. Why should people get into this space? We are very passionate about it. It is a growing space. Why do you think this is an area that someone who maybe has a background in HR, or even if they do not, should get involved in?

David Green: Well, I think if you have got a background in HR, a lot of us get into HR because we care about people, analytics is a great way of finding out things that can help people. So a lot of the work in people analytics is around understanding, designing and improving the employee experience and wellness. We are seeing a lot of that during the COVID-19 situation at the moment.

A lot of the people analytics teams we work with, a lot of the work they are doing now is around understanding employee wellness and helping their organisations make decisions that actually enforce and support employee wellness. I think if you care about people, it is good.

if you are more technically minded, maybe you have done analytics in another part of the business, HR is a great place to come into because it is almost like a green field space in many respects in some organisations. So there is an opportunity to really create an impact but also do something really interesting because what could be more interesting than helping your fellow employees enjoy work better, be more productive, get on and support their careers. Also you can have a huge impact on the business, people are the biggest cost in most organisations. So if you can identify insights that helps improve productivity by 1% you are having a huge impact on the success of the business.

So those are some of the reasons.

Ian Bailie: Absolutely, those are great. Excellent, thank you.

One of the other questions that came in was where does people analytics belong? Where does it belong today? Where should it or will it belong in the future? But I am actually going to add in another question that I had come in around COVID-19 as well, and the impact that that is having on the space, particularly the way it is impacting HR and obviously impacting people analytics as well. We are seeing a massive shift actually in the importance of people analytics as a result of the crisis. So if you wrap those together, how do you see everything that is going on impacting people analytics? And what do you think that is going to mean in terms of where it belongs in the future?

David Green: Well, as you said, people analytics was already important in the organisations that have invested in that and started to have success with people analytics. They know the importance of people analytics and COVID-19 has just reinforced that in those organisations.

I am obviously biased, but in terms of where it sits, I think people analytics sits right at the heart of HR and people strategy. It should not be stuck away in some obscure part of HR in some centre of excellence, reporting into learning or something ridiculous like that. For me it should be at the right hand of the CHRO, almost the eyes and ears of the CHRO really. At Insight222 we are seeing most of the Heads of People Analytics that are part of our group, either reporting directly to the CHRO or mainly at the moment still CHRO’s minus one and I expect that is a trend that will continue.

Interesting where it will sit, there has been debate in the past about whether it should be in HR or whether it should not be in HR. I think overwhelmingly it is mostly in HR. I think there is an opportunity to connect people analytics to enterprise analytics teams as well. You might be certain resources if you have got specialists around text analytics or data science and you have got a small team, do you need someone full time in your team or could you borrow a resource from other parts of the business, that might be a good way of getting started.

It is interesting actually because one of our recent guests, Thomas Rasmussen who runs people analytics and a number of other functions at National Australia Bank. He has been in the space for a while, he did a great paper with Dave Ulrich which came out in 2015 I think, they actually advocated at the time that HR analytics should be taken out of HR and situated somewhere else. I think the main underlying premise of that argument was otherwise it will not have impact and it will not work on the right problems.

But Thomas has actually changed his mind and what they have done at National Australia Bank is they have combined people analytics, employee experience and digital. It has almost created a powerhouse of analytics. The analytics tells you what is happening, the EX helps you shape it and actually serve it up in digestible deliverables for people to actually use and then the technology helps you to scale it. I think it makes more sense to keep it in people analytics. I think there are a number of reasons, but I think the main one is ultimately it is about people. In HR you have got people who understand psychology that actually can take some of these findings that the data scientists might have, but can actually apply them to people or make them practical. So I think that is important.

Then the second part of your question was around COVID-19. I agree it has made people analytics more important. I think it has really elevated some of the people analytics teams that we work with, their work is now going on a more regular basis to the most senior people in the organisation, the CEO. Pretty much every people analytics leader we work with and certainly those that have already developed that strong stakeholder equity within their organisations, they tell me they have never been so busy. Also CHRO’s and their partners in the C-suite, they really know now the capability that people analytics can provide and how it helps them run the country successfully during the crisis, but also beyond the crisis because, let's be honest we are in a very different world now, whenever we get out of this crisis.

So yes, I think it has elevated the function. I think for some of the early people analytics teams, I think the global financial crisis did that back in 2008/2009 and I think for the people analytics teams that have been set up in the last four or five years, I think the crisis will do the same for them as well.

So there is a silver lining, I guess, but it is a global pandemic at the end of the day. It is a shame it has taken this to really help elevate people analytics in some organisations, I think those organisations that have invested are glad that they have.

Ian Bailie: Yes absolutely. I guess to build on that, as you said, we have seen some organisations tapping into central data analytics teams and being able to leverage the expertise there. As you have also said, we have even seen some teams become part of those central groups. Is there a risk that HR will almost become a victim of its own success?

There is one belief, and clearly I do not think you believe in this so would love your perspective, but that HR will not even be needed in the future because we are automating everything. We are empowering managers, there is a lot of self service, so why would we need HR? There is a similar train of thought on that which is, why do we need a special people analytics team? Really it is just analytics and it should sit in a central group.

So what are your thoughts on that, around whether HR is going to end up becoming a victim of its own success and we just won't need it in the future?

David Green: Let's deal with the people analytics thing first. What i did not say earlier which i should have said is I think that there is a whole thing around ethics. Ultimately this is analytics on your workforce and I think there is extra sensitivity about that even more than there is sensitivity I think around customers, just because we can do something does not mean we should. I think the natural home for people analytics is in HR, because typically in the organisation HR is almost a custodian of the workforce. So I think that it is more likely that you are not going to do stuff, not only that you should not be doing but stuff that just is not ethically right to do. That is why I feel that people analytics should sit within HR but that does not mean that you should not be closely connected to the data community and the analytics community throughout the rest of the organisation. Because as we have talked about, if you are going to be working on business problems, it is likely that you are going to be using data from other parts of the organisation and that could extend to resources. That can even extend to working with some of the customer analytics team with some of the people analytics team on a project to try some insights to maybe help employees and help customers.

On the HR thing, it is quite interesting because I, probably like you, I remember the story in HBR a few years ago about blowing up HR, which created quite a furore at the time. So it is nice now that we are talking about HR going away because it is so good rather than it being so bad. I think there is always going to be a home for HR. I think clearly HR teams are evolving, as most functions are with the fourth industrial revolution.

But I think that if you pair analytics with the employee experience and some of the technologies that we are seeing, and this approach of actually doing things with and for employees rather than to them. So moving away from this one size fits all HR program of the past to something that is more personal, more personalised,

I think good HR becomes even more important. Some of the things that we have talked about with some of the guests and some of the stuff that is clearly happening around personalising learning journeys, we are talking now about your pension is your ability to learn. That typically has always sat within HR and I think it probably makes more sense for it to do so. Ultimately it is the workforce that make or break a company strategy and as long as HR evolves, embraces digital as we have talked about, becomes more analytical, puts human centred design at the heart of what it does and it eschews this one size fits all approach, then I think HR will be absolutely fine. Technology, I am sure we will talk about this later, might take away some of the more rudimentary routine tasks, but if anything that helps make HR more strategic. We have not even talked about strategic workforce planning yet.

So if you think about how much more complex that is getting as well, by tying that together with people analytics, I think there is plenty of room for analytics to grow yet.

Ian Bailie: There is still a lot of runway, isn't there? So let us stick to that theme of HR being successful.

You obviously speak to a lot of people analytics leaders, you attend and speak at a lot of conferences, read a lot of articles, share those articles, thank you on behalf of everyone for doing that. I know everyone finds that enormously valuable and helpful. So based on all of these experiences and conversations that you have, what would you say are the most important factors for people analytics leaders? How do you build a successful people analytics function?

David Green: I can probably draw on some of the things we talked about earlier actually about getting started. Ultimately it is about solving business challenges. I think it was Piyush Mathur who we had on the show, who said that “Insight without Action or insight without outcomes is overhead” I think it is all about working on the right business challenges. Yes identifying the insights is important, but actually getting those insights actioned is the most important thing that you can do.

What is the secret of doing that? Well, I guess good prioritisation, work on the right things, but I think a lot of it boils down to having really strong stakeholder relationships in the business. Nurture those relationships, really understand where the business is moving and how you can help and I think nurture those over time and go across functions as well. I think if you are a people analytics leader as well, you have to ask yourself, does my CHRO care about people analytics? Do they really believe in it? If not and you do not think that you will be able to change their minds on that, then maybe you want to look to move on to an organisation that does.

So I think that that CHRO relationship, Head of People Analytics relationship is very important as well.

A lot of the really good people analytics leaders I see have learned tactics from marketing. They've created a brand, sometimes even a logo for the people analytics team, certainly a vision and mission, and they are really good at communicating the work that the team does across the organisation.

Because if you think about it, a lot of times you are effectively creating a startup within an established function within an established organisation and that requires slightly different thinking to running a talent acquisition team or running a learning team or anything else. But I think that the whole branding thing and learning from marketing there is really important.

Working in partnership with HR business partners and your learning team perhaps to help develop a data driven culture. I think a lot of the, again, some of the better people analytics leaders I see, they understand that it is not just about getting HR business partners to be more data driven. It is about also them and their team understanding some of the challenges that HR business partners are facing every day. So I think there is definitely a partnership there.

Developing strong governance around people analytics, I think is very important. That helps you with the prioritisation that we were talking about.

Creating an ethics charter and doing that, not just with HR and legal, but maybe actually doing it with employees as well, or employee representatives. I think ethics charters are really important and again, the more successful organisations that we see out there, like Microsoft or organisations that we work with like Lloyds Banking Group, they have these ethics charters in place and it almost provides a bedrock for what they can do their people analytics work on as well.

You have got your team, so you have got to grow the team. The space is growing all the time. It is not just about having lots of great data scientists in, you need to understand there is a consulting front-end potentially and then there is maybe a user design element in there as well now because analytics has moved from just doing projects to creating products. Now, you will know this Ian with your background, but if you are going to create a product, you need people to use it. So you need to think about the user.

There are also challenges around building a team and getting the right mix of people into that team and if you are running a small team, perhaps knowing where skills are that you can borrow from other parts of the organisation, perhaps, some thinking around that.

Then I think also the space is moving so quickly so I think having those strong relationships with the external community as well, both peers but also vendors, there is a lot of innovation going on in the HR tech space.

I think it is important to know the vendors and the analysts around that, some of the leading consultants, it is a fast moving space, easy to fall behind.

You would expect me to say this, but joining a program like the one we have created through Insight222, with a safe environment and an opportunity to co-create with your peers, I think it does add a lot of value and it helps you support your own learning and that of your team as well.

But hey, Head of People Analytics, it is an exciting role, it is a fast moving role. We know and work with some highly capable people in that area, I think you will see some of the future CHRO’s coming from this role in the future.

Ian Bailie: Yes it is a massive shift, isn't it? The complexity that you have just described there is actually huge around some of that stakeholder management, but obviously the core technical skills that are needed as well.

What does that mean for HR? We have talked a lot about skills, an area close to my heart as well, but what do you see in the broader HR organisation is shifting in response to what is happening in the people analytics space?

I think we have talked about this before, we do not necessarily expect all of HR to become data scientists, that is not what we are saying, but what are you seeing changing in the successful HR organisations where you are seeing a culture of analytics really blossoming?

David Green: Yes I think as I said earlier, there is that partnership really between the people analytics team, HR business partners in particular but it is the CHRO that really is espousing the benefit of a more data driven and digital approach. I think that it is exciting as an HR professional, I think it is also possibly daunting as well. As you said, I do not think it is helped that there has been a lot of commentary out there which almost suggests that suddenly HR professionals need to become data scientists. That is definitely not the case. Understanding your business, which hopefully HR business partners in particular do, the clue is in the name I guess. Being able to ask the right questions and work closely with the analytics team, certainly in the initial part, to actually frame those into questions that can be tested with analytics and some hypothesis, I think that is important.

I guess what most organisations are looking for is for people to be comfortable with data. So understanding even basic statistics, we are not asking people to suddenly program in R or anything else, I certainly could not do that. I imagine you probably could Ian.

It is interesting that I think it is not just about analytics, we ran that research last year at myHRfuture, which for those of you that have not seen it, we asked an open text question that said, if there was one skill that you could learn in 2019 what would it be?

People analytics came out first, which is interesting and kind of busted that myth that we hear sometimes that HR professionals do not want to learn about people analytics. That seems to say that to the contrary. Then you look at the other skills in there and I think it provides a clue of the way HR is going.

Strategic workforce planning, so design thinking. Again that concept of doing things with and for employees rather than to them. The whole digital technology space, which I know you are so passionate about Ian. But then I think also that the softer skills, consulting and influencing and stakeholder management, which are two of the most important skills in a people analytics team, but also for wider HR to work with an analytics team to make sure that they are working on the right problems. They are identifying insights that can be actioned and then actually measuring the impact of those actions as well. So really quite interesting.

I think I would add one or maybe two skills to those six. I think business acumen is very important for every professional that works in an organisation. It does not matter what function you sit in, but I think in HR it is increasingly becoming important and I think there are ways that you can learn the business and I guess the more time you spend in the business and talking to people who are working in the different functions is a good way of doing that.

So I think the more that we understand the business, the more that we will focus the work of HR on helping the business deliver its priorities and its strategy, whilst actually providing the right culture and environment for our employees to thrive as well.

Ian Bailie: You said there were two more, what is the other one?

David Green: Well, the other one is probably curiosity. Particularly if we think about the whole COVID-19 situation, we are likely to be going back into very different workplaces, when we do go back. Some things will revert to normal but almost the genie is out of the bottle now, some organisations did not let anyone work remotely until two months ago and now they are actually requiring it of people. So it is going to change things. No one can really predict what is going to happen and anyone that does, you have got to take it with a pinch of salt, I think.

I think that curiosity of thinking how can we redesign things so that they are better? So they are better for our customers, they are better for our employees, they deliver better outcomes for the business. That curiosity almost is the start of identifying some of the stuff that you could do with analytics. So I think that kind of inquisitive, curious mind of doing that, which I think comes with some of the skills that we have talked about anyway, but sometimes it is worth calling out separately.

Ian Bailie: No I like that, that is great. Alright, so changing tack a little bit, I told you I was going to warm you up to the tougher questions. So, one of the people that actually commented on your LinkedIn post was none other than Dave Ulrich, a previous guest on the show, we are a big fan of Mr Ulrich.

His question, Dave being Dave was actually that he had two questions. So the first one is, what gives you the most confidence about the future role of HR in delivering value?

David Green:  It is a good question, like you would expect from Dave. Similar to a question I tried to ask him when we interviewed him back in New York about a year or so ago.

Ian Bailie: Can you remember his answer, that is the question? Can you just repeat that?

David Green: I bet his will be much better than mine. I know what gives me confidence, there is a recognition from CEO’s and other people in the C-suite, that HR or certainly people are important. People ultimately are what deliver value to the business.

So that possibly increases the expectation on HR. But I think fortunately because of rapidly advancing technology, because of data and analytics, because of employees demanding a similar experience at work as they get as consumers, I think that HR has already moved a long way. Not all HR functions, but a lot of HR functions have moved a long way towards being more customer centric if we think that the customer is the employee.

So I think the people, there has been an influx of skills into HR, design thinking backgrounds, user experience, not just analytics as well and I think pretty good technologies coming in too. So yeah, that does fill me with confidence. We have had some of those leaders on the show, there are some amazingly great CHRO's out there. Tanuj at Standard Chartered, Leena Nair at Unilever, Diane Gherson at IBM, just to name three. Kathleen Hogan at Microsoft to name a fourth, there are some amazing CHRO’s out there who have not necessarily come from having long careers in HR.

So I think we are attracting a lot of people into HR that have not worked in HR before and that is helping the function, particularly when you combine them with those that have been in the space for awhile. So I think focus on HR so it is not just CEO’s, I do not know about what you think, but when I read Harvard Business Review now, it almost is like an HR and leadership magazine as that is what most of it is about. Again this tells you what the CEO's are thinking and that the crisis has brought quite a lot of this to the fore.

We are seeing with the companies that we are working with, brilliant work is going on around leadership, empathetic leadership, around culture, around the use of people data and the focus on employee wellness. All of these things sit in HR’s wheelhouse. you know? The Economist likened the role of the CHRO in this crisis to that of the CFO in the global financial crisis. That gives you an indication of the importance that is being placed on HR and I think in many cases HR is fulfilling that expectation. Those expectations are only going to increase with the fourth industrial revolution.

The best companies need good HR leaders to survive and thrive. So I think ultimately I am confident about the future of HR.

Ian Bailie: Yes you have painted a good, optimistic, confident picture there. So then the flip side of that as the follow on question from Dave is, what gives you the most concern?

David Green: I think, we must be honest, there are still some leaders holding back the profession. Even when some of those organisations have an abundance of talent lower down in the ranks, we almost need to find a way to clear out some of the people at the top. I will not come up with ways in which we can do that, but I do think that there is still this view of HR as a control function, control and command. It should be an enabling function, really in my view. I think it should be a function that helps enable people to be the best they can at work and it should be a function that gives insights to the business to help the business be as successful as it possibly can be.

Clearly not all HR functions are doing that at the moment.

I think the other thing that probably gives me concern is probably around the whole ethics piece. I read a piece in The New York Times a couple of weeks ago, about a piece of technology that enables people to track what their employees are doing on their screens at any time or any breaks they go on and stuff like that. It was not being used in an organisation as such but you can see that there are people creating technologies that it could be used for not the best purposes by companies. So there is a little bit of a fear that with COVID-19 and some of the more, lets call it creepy, technologies that are out there that they could be misused by people. So I think there is that concern around ethics. I have got less of a concern to be honest about people in our field in people analytics, I have got more of a concern about people imposing some of those technologies and practices on HR and HR not being strong enough to resist.

So yes, those are probably the two main concerns. But I am an optimist and I think that the better HR people will grow into a much bigger group and the less good ones will dwindle away.

Ian Bailie: Yes, absolutely and I agree.

Well that is a nice segway on the technology front, I do not think it would be fair to let you get away without having to answer one of the questions that we are asking everyone that comes on the show at the moment around AI and automation. So specifically, do you see them as an opportunity or a threat to HR?

David Green: Well, it could be both and I guess that depends on the HR function that you happen to be working in. I think it is almost like HR is at a little bit of a crossroads and whether the function is boosted or diminished by AI and automation probably depends on the path it takes. So where a HR leadership team embraces the possibilities you can see automation of rudimentary and routine tasks leading to a faster, more efficient and better user experience. More human centred for that matter too. In parallel, it is fairly easy to envision that by taking that human centred approach and harnessing analytics, agile methodologies, digital technologies, HR can lead the way in designing a better and a highly personalised employee experience. We are seeing that happening in organisations already and I think if that is the direction that an HR function takes or a CHRO takes, then HR is clearly going to add more value to the organisation. It is going to improve its profile, it is going to play a leading role in the future direction that the company takes and ultimately help the company be more successful.

I guess in companies like these, McKinsey’s vision of the G3 of the CHRO, CFO and the CEO running the company together, you can see that happening. I think that will happen, and it is happening in a number of organisations already.

The other road is probably much less palatable for HR and may lead to a severely shrunken, purely administrative, and frankly irrelevant function. I hope that does not happen, I do not believe it will. I said people analytics is a highly collaborative field and I think the same is with HR actually at the end of the day is as well.

People will see what the likes of Diane is doing at IBM. What Leena is doing at Unilever, what Tanuj is doing a Standard Chartered and they will want to emulate that within their organisations as well. Of course it is good to learn from what other organisations are doing but you need to make that relevant within your own organisation. Ultimately I am sure if you ask most people in HR whether they want to be doing boring, rudimentary work, the answer will be no and if we can use technology to automate that and at the same time help make HR more strategic and more value added to the organisation and as I said, an enabler of employee experience and culture, then that has got be a good thing.

That is where I think HR is going so I think overall it is more of an opportunity than a threat.

Ian Bailie: Excellent. Putting you on the spot a little bit, but you gave those examples of IBM and Unilever, what is it that you have seen companies like that, that are doing this well, where it is turning out to be a real opportunity?

What is it that you feel they are doing well about it and what has the impact been on the HR department?

David Green: I think again, I used to work at IBM and we have interviewed Leena on the show, and clearly a great leader is important. I think a leader that has impact at the board level, I think that is important. And then a clear vision, I think that they basically put the employee at the heart of everything that they do, whether that is giving people information. So if we are collecting data on people, why don't we give the individual benefit from that by giving them insights about their own behaviours or work life balance and giving them insights that help improve them as people and make them healthier effectively. I think that is certainly some of the stuff that was happening at IBM, or is happening at IBM.

I think personalising employee experience. I think personalising onboarding, personalising learning.

I think these are all things that employees crave and these are things that IBM and Unilever are doing in an abundance. But having that strong underlying concept of ethics and doing the right thing and at the same time, doing all these great things for employees, but providing value to the business as well.

Because ultimately there is enough research out there that tells you, if you look after your employees, they will look after your customers and your customers will look after your shareholders and your profits. So it is just taking a slightly more human centred approach.

Ian Bailie: Excellent. We are reaching nearly the end of this podcast. The time has just flown by for me, I am guessing maybe not so much for you. I do not know how comfortable you felt actually having to answer the questions for once. I just want to take a quick second to thank all of the listeners that have listened across the last year and then also specifically for providing all of these questions that put you in the hot seat for once.

It has been a pleasure asking the questions on behalf of our listeners. David, just in case for some incredible reason, people do not know how to keep in touch with you or to follow the amazing things that you do, could you just remind them how they can find you on LinkedIn, Twitter and other channels?

David Green: Of course. and again thank you to the listeners for actually taking the time to submit some questions. I am slightly disappointed that there was not any about Liverpool football club.

Ian Bailie: Yes, they fell off unfortunately, there were so many.

David Green: Yes, that was your editing probably. You can find me on LinkedIn. David Green, there are lots of David Green's on there, but probably none with a quiff as big as mine. Then on Twitter, it is @david_green_uk You can also find all my content on the myHRfuture blog, so those are the best ways to contact me.

Ian Bailie: Excellent. Well, David, it has been an absolute pleasure having you as a guest on your own show. Thank you very much for playing along.

David Green: Thank you, Ian and if we get to two years, trust me, you will be in the hot seat.

Ian Bailie:  I am busy that day. All right. Thank you, David.