Helena 00:00

Mark, it's good to see you. We're former colleagues and we've stayed in touch for quite a while, but over the last week or so, I've noticed you posting some interesting questions on LinkedIn with the hashtag HR identity. Tell me what this is all about.

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Mark 00:18

Yeah, good to see you too. Look, we're trying to create a conversation, I think. Our focus is really around the Australian organisations and what I guess we're interested in is what's happening in HR at the moment. And within that, it's thinking about how HR is adapting to the challenges that are being faced in the talent world at the moment. From my perspective as a consultant, I've always felt quite privileged to go into organisations and support them around a whole bunch of HR issues that they might be having. And as a former HR professional, that's where I started my career. I know how important the function is, the success of

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Mark 00:56

the organisation. So as we look at this campaign, and you're right, there's five or six questions out there at the moment. The research that we're doing is really about what's happening in HR, whether it be around tech, whether it be around process, structure, capabilities, we're interested in kind of understanding what's happening with the HR function, what they're doing and how they're responding on their kind of transformation journey, because in my experience, HR is kind of always on a transformation journey of some sort. You know, we know that talent is consistently a top three focus for the C-suite.

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Mark 01:30

The question for me is, therefore, how is HR changing and whether it's delivering similar products in different ways, how it's utilising the latest technology. You know, I've seen in your posts on LinkedIn where you kind of post the different kind of job titles that you're seeing out there. So to my mind, HR is doing something different. It's kind of like, what is it and how does that change HR going forward?

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Helena 01:55

And if people want to get involved in these questions or maybe get a wrap up of the research that you've done, how can they get involved?

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Mark 02:03

So look, at the moment, it's very much around LinkedIn and kind of engaging with myself and my colleagues on LinkedIn, kind of do interviews, do these kind of conversations. We're also going to be doing some state-based events within the KPMG offices. I guess it's a bit different from how we've done research in the past. In the past, you'd kind of sit in a darkened room, dare I say it, and kind of come up with these great ideas and then post something. And that would be that.

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Mark 02:31

I guess we're looking more about having this conversation, doing this research in public and kind of developing HR's identity with our colleagues, with our clients and so forth. And maybe getting to the point in the future where we kind of like say, this is what we think HR's future identity looks like. But we don't want it to be a big reveal. We kind of want to see the the conversation develop in public.

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Helena 02:54

And who would you love to hear from or get involved in this research?

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Mark 02:59

Oh, look, everyone and anyone. I mean, obviously, we're interested in talking to those who are working in HR at the moment, and it doesn't have to be, you know, again, the C-suite. We just want to talk to the people that are helping to shape HR. But then within that, and I think it's important from this perspective is also to talk to HR's customers.

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Mark 03:17

So talk to the business, talk to the talent world. I mean, if you're in HR and you're shaping your talent acquisition agenda, you know, you've got to be thinking about the new talent that's coming into the workforce, that's coming into the talent marketplace and how they may be different from the talent generations that have gone previous.

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Helena 03:39

Well, we're now facing the reality of having six generations in the workforce for the first time ever. So I'd say anyone in a kind of people and HR team, anyone leading people, anyone hiring people has probably got their work cut out for them at the moment.

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Mark 03:53

100%. I think that was something that we were having a conversation on last week around one of the questions around employee experience. I don't think you can necessarily be an organization with one employee experience now. The employee experience you need for the younger generation is almost certainly going to be different from my generation and from the generation kind of before me. So this kind of one size fits all approach just is definitely not going to work within a workforce that's got six generations. 

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Helena 04:25

So just to recap on this, Mark, people can connect with you or they can look for the hashtag HR identity to have a look at the questions and get involved in the dialogue. And I guess watch this space for publications and events in a state near you.

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Mark 04:36

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just as I say, get involved, respond to the questions that you're seeing, post questions yourselves, post comments, or just reach out directly. And we'd love to have a conversation with as many people as possible.

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Helena 04:47

Fantastic. Now, I think it's only fair that we turn the tables on you, Mark, and ask you to answer a few of these questions for us. So I picked a couple of the six questions that you're posing as part of hashtag HR identity. So first question for you,

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Helena 05:06

who do you think's responsible for the employee experience?

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Mark 05:09

Look, I think as you get into the employee experience, I mean, there's obviously got to be somebody at some point who crafts what the intent of the employee experience is. So you know, I think HR definitely has a role in understanding what sort of experience the workforce want. And as we just mentioned around potentially recognizing that there are multiple experiences required within a

multi-generational workforce, you know, HR is best place to do that. It has the skills, it has the expertise, it has the ability to go and do the research

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Mark 05:43

to be able to do that. But ultimately it's shaping the employee experience on behalf of the business, because it's the business that is looking to recruit the right people, retain the right people, engage the right people to deliver against the business objectives.

Therefore, once HR has shaped an experience based on its research, based on its conversations with the business, ultimately the business and the line leaders are there to deliver an employee experience.

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Mark 06:08

There's no point HR describing an employee experience as XYZ if the business are delivering an experience which is ABC. But whilst HR may be responsible on behalf of the business to create what the employee experience looks like, ultimately the whole leadership team, every line leader, everybody in the organization is responsible for delivering that employee experience.

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Helena 06:33

So you see HR as more of a custodian and a kind of maybe an agitator, would that be true?

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Mark 06:39

Yeah, I think so. I mean, if you think about organizations that will be doing this well, HR will have its finger on the pulse in terms of the sort of employee experience that the organization should be delivering. And within that, HR will be able to recognize where that employee experience maybe isn't being delivered as well as it could and should be.

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Mark 06:59

You think about your culture surveys, your engagement results and so forth. And the important thing with that is it should be a moving target. This isn't about doing employee engagement survey once a year to find out whether people are feeling engaged, whether people are recognizing the employee experience.

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Mark 07:14

It's about doing it on a regular basis to understand where are the pockets of the organization where maybe HR, sorry, where maybe the employee experience isn't being delivered in a way that is intended and maybe you're seeing pockets where you've got high levels of attrition and so forth. Ultimately, yes, there's culture,

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Mark 07:33

but culture is part of that experience.

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Helena 07:36

I'll share one thing I did in the company that we both worked for, when I wanted to sort of highlight some of the discrepancies I saw in employee experience, and this was largely the sort of digital employee experience, this was only kind of one facet of it, is when I was a few months into my employment there, is that I got a big piece of butcher's paper and I mapped out every touch point I'd had, because I don't delete emails, which is a bit of a weird trait actually, and I printed off every single kind of like digital interaction I'd had for pre-boarding, on-boarding, and in my first three or four months of being

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Helena 08:20

in the company, and I printed off every interaction I'd had and every kind of like inconsistency or frustration, and it was a really... First of all, it was humongous. It was a bit disjointed. So tone of voice and things like that were quite disjointed and involved multiple systems. So maybe one tip I'd say is if you just want to get started,

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Helena 08:40

if it feels like a massive project, it's just do something on paper to let people see what it looks and feels like to be on the receiving end, let's say of some of the employee experience touch points that you received. It was quite confronting and quite amazing.

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Mark 08:56

Absolutely, I mean, I read not so long ago that one of the highest points of engagement of an employee is at the moment where they sign a contract to join. And typically there's then four weeks between them signing that contract and them joining. And in a lot of organizations, nobody speaks to them in those four weeks, apart from maybe somebody from an onboarding perspective to complete the police checks or what have you. So again, if you think from an experience, HR can design it in a way where there are

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Mark 09:24

some touch points. Why shouldn't that person come to a team meeting or an event or send them things, contact them, be in touch? But again, that delivery has to be by the hiring manager or by the hiring manager's team. So that's, you know, for me, that's an example where you can design the best experience, but people have got to carry it out to enable that engagement.

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Helena 09:47

I think it's not, it's not easy, but it's not impossible. And I think my personal advice is do something, get started, just map it out. If that's all you do is kind of inventory or map out what you've got now. Just don't let the sort of hugeness of this task stop you from, you know, just even working out where you are now. I don't know if you have any other advice for people on the employee experience journey.

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Mark 10:13

I think for me it's really about being open, you know, as a former HR professional I can't sit here and say that I know the exact experience that each organisation should be delivering for each facet of its workforce.

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Helena 10:26

And each stage of the journey, right?

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Mark 10:29

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, HR has got to be comfortable and, you know, I see it often around how it engages the business, how it understands where the business is going, and how it talks to its current employees, its previous employees, its future employees around what it is they're actually looking for. And I think, you know, those leading HR functions are those that are comfortable in not necessarily knowing all the answers.

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Helena 10:54

I think also they can take a leaf out of the marketing playbook. I think if you thought about your employees the way that your company thinks about its customers and its physical, digital journeys, for example, I think there's a lot to be learned from that function.

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Mark 11:11

Definitely, I think. We'll probably talk about it a little bit when we talk about technology, but there's that aspect of how do you bring a consumer grade experience within an organization, you know, people in the way that they interact with various organizations in their personal life. They're getting constant delivery of different experiences. And quite frankly, it's that, again, consumer grade experience

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Mark 11:36

that they're looking to be delivered internally. So I agree. I think, you know, looking to your marketing function, looking to those who design this for your customers are absolutely the right people to help you then think about how you shape it for your employees.

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Helena 11:50

Well, let's segue into the next question then. And the question that you pose is, how can HR tech get you a seat at the C-suite table? It's not just about tech, though, eh? How do you see this question?

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Mark 12:04

Yeah, look, I think across the set of questions, obviously, we've tried to kind of create different conversations. So, you know, as we just talked about around the employee experience and this one is really around the technology. I think again, as we look at it, it's not really so much about getting a seat at the C-suite. We know that the C-suite is engaged in the conversation around talent. We know that it's a critical issue for chief execs and their leadership team.

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Mark 12:33

So I think HR, more often than not now, does have a seat at the top table. And more often than not, it's actually reporting directly to the CEO because of its level of importance to the agenda of the organization. I think from a technology perspective, it's really in my mind two things. One is around that experience that we talked about. So how is HR delivering a technological experience to employees that matches what those employees experience in their personal lives? So, you know, years ago I was doing a transformation and one of the chief people officers of that organization turned around and said, you know, he'd been booking a flight to, I think it was to Rome for he and his wife to go on holiday.

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Mark 13:19

And it had taken them like three or four minutes to go onto a website and book a flight. And then he said he went into the HR system to try and change his address. And after about five minutes, gave up.

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Helena 13:30

It took three business days.

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Mark 13:32

Yeah, but his challenge, and it was great. It's really stuck with me, was, you know, I want to be able to interact with my HR system as easy as it was for me to book a flight to Rome. Thank you. And throughout the transformation, that kept on being the kind of North Star, the moment that we kept on looking back to that says, are we designing this in the simplest way that delivers that kind of experience? So I think that's the first point with technology.

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Mark 13:56

And I think the second is then how HR is enabling the organisation through technology. So we're almost certainly going to get into a conversation around AI as we get into this and how AI is beginning to get into HR processes. And in many ways, it should be enabling better decisions. It should be enabling more efficient processes. And in time, I'm sure it will create a data-rich environment. I think we're still early in that conversation.

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Mark 14:27

But I think as you look at the technology, for me, it's those two sides. One is the experience side of things, and then secondly, how it's enabling the organisation.

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Helena 14:36

Do you think senior HR teams or CHROs should have a tech strategy?

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Mark 14:42

Oh, 100%. I mean, I think it's important that it's part of any wider digital strategy. You know, I don't think you want HR going off and creating its own roadmap around technology. But I think, again, where we see the leading HR organisations is those that have a digital strategy. They know where they're going. They're making sure that it's stitching together. Because I think at times in HR, there's some fantastic technologies out there. And you can get a little bit... can go a little bit crazy in many ways and go,

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Mark 15:18

we're going to have one of these, we're going to have one of these, we're going to have one of these. Whereas if you've got a single strategy, you'll be looking at it going, okay, well, you know, how does that help us on our journey? How does that help us on our journey?

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Mark 15:29

Rather than here's the latest, brightest, shiniest thing, let's go after that.

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Helena 15:33

I think though, having spent more time that side, I guess at the camp than the side I am now, kind of as the co-founder of a tech product, I found and I still find that to some degree, HR is the poor internal cousin when it comes to tech, is that all of the tech resources, budgets, go into the kind of revenue generating customer facing

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Helena 16:01

rather than enabling functions, which HR can still be perceived as. And I find that that is often why I used to turn to vendors because I had no choice. I had no, no one was really always advocating for me or I wasn't the top of the queue when it came to resources and so on.

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Helena 16:21

So I kind of had to go and fend for myself. Do you still see that happening?

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Mark 16:25

Well, I think so. I think the challenge is always going to be around if you're going to invest in, let's call it the back office, whether it be HR, finance, procurement, you're competing for funds that otherwise could be spent on your kind of inverted commas front of house. I think the case for all of those functions is really proving how any investment is going to help the organisation realise its objectives and whether that's around HR being able to better attract the future workforce that the organisation needs or deliver improved learning experiences or in many cases, quite frankly, have just better data that

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Mark 17:12

enables improved reporting around your HR performance and also your people risk, which is a much greater piece. Now, I see as many investment cases around HR technology being around the people risk side of things and being around, you know, spending money on just pure play technology because we want technology.

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Helena 17:34

Well, I'm going to ask you the third question before we wrap up then. So the final question I want to ask you from the six that you pose online is about learning. I'm really interested in this topic. So the question is, do your learning solutions match your company's skill requirements? Tell me what this question means and maybe what trends that you're seeing emerging in the learning space.

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Mark 17:59

Yeah, absolutely. I think probably the first thing I'd look at this is around whether organizations are confident that they understand their future skill requirements. We've had a lot of responses already around the workforce planning side of things and the capability of organizations to understand what those skills they need look like 12, 24 months out or even going as far as five, 10 years. And I think if you look here in Perth around the decarbonization agenda, for example, within our energy and mining sector and organizations trying what that means for their workforce. I think what becomes interesting for those organizations that do have then around whether they are going to buy that capability in the future or whether they're going to develop it. I think if you get into the

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Mark 18:48

looking at delivering learning differently. Again, we go back to the number of generations in the workforce. The younger generation coming into the workforce don't necessarily want to sit in classrooms for seven, eight hours a day to learn set things. They want their point in time learning.

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Mark 19:05

My son, when he's playing his Xbox games, he's 14. If he wants to learn something, he just goes on YouTube and watches a video for a minute, two minutes and understands what he's got to do and then goes and puts it into practice in his game. How we do that within a workforce, I think, becomes quite interesting.

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Mark 19:20

How do we create point in time learning for individuals to pick up individual skills rather than trying to teach them a whole host of skills in one classroom based learning?

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Helena 19:31

I think none of us have got the attention span that we used to have. I back it myself in that list as well. Even though I'm a 40 something year old, I just simply don't have the time or the patience to sit through seven hours. And I just need to know the answer point in time.

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Helena 19:44

Are you, and not every company's tooled up to do that, right? And not every company. maybe confident to bring in external sources of learning to compliment what they deliver internally. Is anyone out there or any sector crushing it?

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Mark 20:01

Look, I think you're right. And I think part of the reason for having this conversation is not necessarily to say that HR is doing a good or bad job. It's much more around understanding what are the opportunities. And as you say, where are organizations doing it? Well, there are some organizations that just simply don't have a workforce and a way of working that kind of suits point-in-time learning. They don't necessarily have people who are on their mobiles all the time and able to just go, oh, how do I do that? Let me look it up. I'll do that. It doesn't necessarily work for everyone. And even within a workforce, you might find

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Mark 20:40

that you need three or four different modes of delivering learning because you've got different types of workforce. I think we're starting to see organizations who are challenging themselves that when they get to a point where they need to do some kind of learning, they're looking at doing it differently, whether they're gamifying it, whether they're using different technology to be able to deliver it, whether they're doing it in smaller bite-sized chunks. We're definitely seeing organizations who are challenging themselves to go, okay, in a normal way, we would roll this out by getting everybody into a classroom, delivering

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Mark 21:14

it and then off they go. Let's challenge ourselves and see if we can do this differently. Let's see if we can use different channels to deliver that learning. And I think that's the exciting thing for us is around, you know, where are those leading organizations and how are they doing it? And quite frankly, is it working? Are they seeing the return on investment of delivering learning in a different way?

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Helena 21:34

I've had a few really interesting conversations with people I would regard as thought leaders in this space. And the conversation a couple of times has gone down the route of the job of learning, if that makes sense. So the organizational, why the organization wants people to learn skills

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Helena 21:51

or go through a piece of training or compliance training is evident, right? We want better people, happier people, better quality people. We have to do it for a compliance reason. There's a sort of emerging category of people that are now thinking about the job that learning does

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Helena 22:06

for the individual and what their motivations to learn might be. And if you can blend the two, so why would I want to learn something? Okay, maybe it makes my job less frustrating or whatever it was, but part of my incentives to want to learn

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Helena 22:19

are also so I can progress, so that there's something in it for me. I'm just seeing some really interesting conversations start up about connecting the dots there so that the both of the whys or the win-win is created. And I'm excited to hear people speaking and thinking that way in quite a human-centered way.

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Mark 22:36

Yeah, I think so. And I think you raise a good point around. a lot of learning that's done within organizations is the mandatory, it's the stuff you've got to do, which in many ways isn't what kind of excites people. No, absolutely not. We just recruited a new team

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Mark 22:53

into the KPMG practice here in Perth. And I was struck by bringing on a team of I think it's seven, eight people. Nearly every one of them asked us around our approach to learning at KPMG and the opportunity for them to learn new and different skills.

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Helena 23:10

And that's the why for individuals, right? It's not so that, thank you KPMG, KPMG, we are now compliant.

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Mark 23:17

No, a hundred percent. And I think we have to accept that as employers, our employees aren't necessarily going to stay with us for the next 40 years. You know, those kinds of days of joining an organization and sticking with them for long periods of time, it isn't what we're seeing in the workforce.

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Mark 23:35

That's not theory. That is just genuinely what we're seeing in terms of the time that people stay with organizations. Therefore, yes, they want to deliver for the organization whilst they're there, but they also want to learn for themselves. They want to understand what are the skills

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Mark 23:49

that they can develop in this organization that may help them in their career somewhere else in the future. And I think, again, as a leader, as a team leader, I look at my team and think about how I'm helping them develop and how I'm helping them to shape their career

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Mark 24:04

wherever that be going forward. And learning is a key part of that.

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Helena 24:07

Fantastic. Well, we got halfway through the questions. There's three more. Just to recap that people can connect with you on LinkedIn, Mark. Colleagues look for the hashtag HR identity to get involved in these different conversations. Thank you so much for agreeing to speak to me

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Helena 24:26

and let's connect again to answer the next three at some point. Thanks, Mark.

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Mark 24:30

Fantastic, thank you.

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