Consumerization Of HR: 10 Trends Companies

Will Follow In 2016

Jeanne Meister ,

In 2015, organizations used social technologies for recruitment, development, and

engagement practices, all which can be read about in my Forbes columns on Social HR
for 2014 and 2015.

In 2016, we will see companies bring even more transformation to human resources in
what I call the “consumerization of HR.” This is much more than simply using social for
recruitment, development, and engagement.

Consumerization Of HR: What Is It?

Consumerization of HR refers to creating a social, mobile, and consumer-style
experience for employees inside the company. As MIT research finds, the expectation of
social and collaborative tools in the workplace is no longer just a Millennial request. We
are all digital citizens. The lines are blurring between HR and marketing, real estate,
communications, and IT. The new objective is to create one employer brand which
provides a seamless experience for current employees, potential employees, and
consumers.

Here are ten trends to watch as organizations rethink how to create the type of
memorable employee experiences we associate with extraordinary customer
experiences. The Consumerization of HR is happening, is your organization ready?

1. The Workplace As An Experience

Forward-looking companies are well aware that top talent is looking for more than a
job with benefits. While some companies create experiences central to the “place of
work,” such as access to gym facilities, free massages, and gourmet
food, Airbnb and Pandora, to name just two, are creating what I call the “workplace
as an experience.” The essence of the “workplace as an experience” is where all the
elements of work—the physical, the emotional, the intellectual, the virtual, and the
aspirational—are carefully orchestrated to inspire employees. The column I wrote
on this subject can be found here.

What exactly are Aribnb and Pandora doing to create a workplace as an experience?
Two innovations stand out; First, both Mark Levy, CHRO of Airbnb, and Kristen
Robinson, CHRO of Pandora are responsible for the typical HR functions of
recruiting, talent management and development, HR operations, and total rewards,
but they also have an expanded scope which includes internal communications, and
in the case of Airbnb, facilities.

Secondly, for Pandora, Robinson has taken the concept of Employee Resource
Groups and given control over to Pandora employees. Often ERG’s are separate
groups and the company decides which areas to focus on and fund. Some
companies I have interviewed have had the same ERG’s for the last 30 plus years
and are usually most often organized around only the demographics of gender, age,
and cultural background! At Pandora, however, employees just have to find four
others to create what is known as a PERG (Pandora Employee Resource Group) and
the company funds the ERG up to $1,000 a year. Some of the 250 PERGs funded
focus on professional developmental topics such as data analytics and leadership,
but many are just for the fun of learning and connecting around shared interest, and
have names like Badass Bakers, Meditation, and Soccer Pandas. The goal is to
provide Pandora employees the chance to bond together while learning about a
topic (either a personal one or a professional one) and in the process form
relationships that will benefit collaboration at work.
2. The Blurring Of Marketing And HR

2015 saw a brilliant example of the blurring of talent acquisition and marketing with
GE’s “What’s the Matter with Owen?” campaign?

In the amusing ad, Owen was hired as a programmer—but everyone from his
classmates to his parents thought GE was still only a manufacturing company.
Owen tries to explain why everyone should be impressed with his new job but
instead they give him condolences or baffled stares. The campaign was designed to
reinforce GE's position as a digital industrial company and recruit young people to
join the company as industrial Internet developers—the YouTube ads include links
to GE's jobs section. The results: after airing the campaign, Tony Denhart, University
Relations Leader at GE Corporate, and Andy Goldberg, GE’s Chief Creative
Officer, said visits to GE's online recruitment site increased 66% month over month.

While some companies see the lines blur between HR and marketing, others have
gone a step further and combined the two under the direction of one individual. At
Lincoln Financial Group, for example, both corporate functions report up to
Executive Vice President and CHRO Lisa Buckingham. The expanded scope
includes not only managing Lincoln Financial's brand, enterprise communications,
and corporate-social-responsibility activities, but also all of the functions
traditionally associated with HR. The rationale is a simple one according to
Buckingham: “I believe we need to create one consistent employer brand value
proposition, internally and externally.” Are companies ready to actually merge HR
and Marketing functions? Time will tell. But to start, companies can begin to merge
HR and Marketing on key projects such as talent acquisition campaigns, employee
segmentation research, and identifying shared goals related to brand awareness and
engagement to see how these two functions can add value to each other.

3. Employees Become Brand Advocates

Companies have discovered their own employees can be advocates for their brand
and are finding out this is good for business!

Employee advocacy programs, which encourage employees to share updates about

the business on their own social media accounts, have grown by 191% since 2013
and are due to continue to increase in 2016. According to research conducted by
Edelman Trust Barometer, 49% of people believe a company’s employees rank
higher in perception than the CEO, Founder, or PR department, 50% of employees
already share content about the company on their social channels, and importantly,
58% believe that socially engaged employees are more likely to attract new talent to
the company.
 Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite, says when done properly, employee advocacy
programs not only expand a company’s social media reach but also produce
impressive results. Content shared by employees gets eight times more
engagement than content shared by brand channels and is re-shared 25 times more
frequently.

It’s not surprising that companies like ADP, Kronos, and Hitachi are leveraging
employees today as a voice an advocate for the company.

4. MOOCs And SPOCs Grow Inside Companies

I was an early advocate of the power of MOOCs-- defined as Massive, Open, Online
Courses—to transform corporate learning as noted in my Forbes column, “How
MOOCs Will Revolutionize Corporate Learning And Development.”

According to data collected by Class Central, the total number of students who
signed up for at least one MOOC has crossed 35 million—up from an estimated 17
million last year. With a distinct focus on monetization in 2015, many MOOC
providers and partner universities focused on offering more MOOCs in Business
and Management areas as well as offering distinct credentials, such as
Udacity’s Nanodegrees, Coursera’s Specializations, and edX’s Xseries.

Some CLOs like Kelly Palmer, CLO, Learning & Talent Development Executive
at LinkedIn, and Rolando Lange, Global Director of Tenaris University, were
inspired by the MOOC design to create SPOCs (small private online courses) as a
new way to create memorable learning experiences, rather than offering standard
eLearning courses. While LinkedIn created their own custom corporate SPOCs,
Tenaris customized the edX platform to offer a series of MOOCs for both internal
employees as well attract engineering students to Tenaris. The is no shortage of
choice in creating SPOCs or curating the entire MOOC landscape with companies
such as edX, Coursera, Udemy, Udacity, NovoEd, and Lynda (LinkedIn), to name
just a few of the leading corporate partners.

And this innovation is desperately needed in light of recent research by CEB Top
Insights for the World’s Leading Executives, which shows nearly 70% of the money
that organizations spend on training is going to waste due to low quality,
redundancy or simply out of date content that no longer meets the strategic
priorities of the company.

5. Workplace Flexibility Is The New Norm

As Cisco uncovered in its Connected World Technology Report, workers value

flexibility over almost anything else. Those surveyed indicated that flexibility was
 the second most important factor, after salary, they consider when evaluating a job
offer. 66% of American Millennials said they felt an organization that adopts a
flexible, mobile, and remote work model has a competitive advantage over one that
requires employees to be in the office from 9am to 5pm. In an age when finding and
retaining top talent is among the strongest predictors of a company’s success,
workplace flexibility is now a critical way to find the best talent and provide them
with opportunity for greater productivity. A Polycom-commissioned
study showed 90 percent of businesses in the U.S. are offering or expanding remote
working options and this is changing how we work.

A survey by ConnectSolutions finds 39% of those work remotely report 77% greater
productivity while working off site and 42% of remote workers feel they’re just as
connected with colleagues as if they had been working on-premises. Some
companies like Sodexo, a global French services corporation that is a leader in
delivering sustainable, integrated facilities management and food service operations,
also report increased engagement with remote workers. At Sodexo, their USA talent
acquisition team mostly works from home. According to Arie Ball, Vice President of
Talent Acquisition, recent research shows that remote employees often have high
levels of engagement. What is Sodexo doing right? Three things:

 Culture of performance not face time, focusing on goals achieved rather than
time to complete them;
 Regular communication both in person and weekly virtual meetings and virtual
water cooler sharing of personal and professional accomplishments;
 Focus on personal health with a five minute Stretch Time at start of all virtual
meetings and tracking movement on company provided FitBit.

As I noted in a previous Forbes column on workplace flexibility, companies which

view workplace flexibility as a strategic imperative rather than an employee perk
will benefit by attracting, engaging and retaining the best talent.

6. Hackathons Used To Re-Imagine HR

Hackathons bring together graphic designers, computer programmers and software

developers to collaborate for up to a week to create a new product or service. I wrote
at length about the concept of the HR Hackathon in a recent column.

At LinkedIn, Pat Wadors, SVP for Global Talent at LinkedIn, used the Hackathon
model to identify ways to re-invent HR from outside HR. Wadors identified the
issue of employee engagement, and focused on how to improve levels of
engagement across the employee lifecycle, from on-boarding and developing
interns, to full time employees and alumni. Rather than pull together a group of HR
professionals, Wador instead brought together a group of Millennials who worked
 as interns in Silicon Valley to participate in a LinkedIn HR Hackathon. The winning
team created an app to tackle the problem of unsatisfactory internship experiences
by allowing interns to give and receive feedback from management, learn about
opportunities related to their personal and professional interests, and connect with
employees who can help them achieve their long-term goals.

We will see more pilots like this where a CHRO takes a leadership role in tapping
Millennials to provide a voice into HR for a host of issues like employee
engagement, job retention and career development.

7. Gamification Of HR

In a previous column in Forbes, I wrote that gamification inside the workplace was
migrating from a few isolated pilots to a new way to recruit, engage and recognize
high performing employees. In fact, Brian Burke, Vice President of
Gartner, estimates “employee focused gamification applications now exceed
customer focused gamification applications.”

Gallup’s latest research shows why companies are increasing their interest in
gamification. The Gallup study finds 31% of employees are engaged at work (51%
are disengaged and 17.5% actively disengaged). But what is most interesting is this:
Millennials are the least engaged generation, according to Gallup, with only 28.9%
engaged as compared to 32.9% for Gen Xers and Boomers. As Millennials continue
to become a larger part of the workforce, companies are piloting new ways to source
and engage them and gamification is a powerful method.

Gaming concepts have begun working their way into HR processes for both
recruiting new candidates as well as learning and development. Companies such
as Badgeville, BunchBall and Axonify all provide interesting gamified solutions.

Examples abound. PwC’s gamification of recruitment, Multipoly, is a game

modeling a day in the life of a PwC consultant. This game produced a 190% increase
in job candidates and 78% of those who completed the game were interested in
learning more about a job at PwC. Additionally, Walmart’s gamification of safety
training produced a 54% decrease in incidents among eight Walmart distribution
centers.. More than points, badges and leaderboards, gamification engages at a core
emotional level. Walmart associates who played the safety game not only became
competitive about amassing points and badges but started talking about the
importance of safety protocols during their work day! And Qualcomm is using
gamfication of their technical Q/A process so employees who ask and answer
technical questions are recognized and find their way to top of a leaderboard.
 For HR leaders the challenge is how to use gamification strategically as part of an
overall business strategy impacting employee motivation and engagement levels
rather than just a way to dispense points, badges, and a leaderboard.

8. The Gig Economy Workforce Expands

Over the last five years the convergence of mobile technology, changing societal
habits, and the desire for workers to live their “entrepreneurial” dream have given
rise to the gig economy worker. Fifty-three million Americans, or 34% of the US
workforce, are considered contingent, temporary, diversified, or freelance
employees today, with that number expected to reach 40% by the year 2020.

This rise of the gig economy worker is forcing organizations, and HR departments in
particular, to re-think how they source and develop non-traditional talent. For
employers, the gig economy allows them to hire on-demand, lower their
employment costs, and have access to a flexible global talent pool.

There are a number of implications of the gig economy Workforce. As a recent

survey conducted by Randstad, the Sourceright 2015 Talent Trends Report, reports,
47% of HR leaders are factoring in independent contractors as part of their talent
acquisition strategy. As organizations increase their gig economy workforce, they
need to re-think how to engage these contingent workers and consider how the
employer brand is perceived across the entire employee population from full timers
to gig economy workers. Gig economy platform companies are popping up across
many industries such as video animation; where Fiverr shines, legal contract
drafting, where UpCounsel is gaining speed, and on-site technical work in the retail,
hospitality, and telecommunications industries; where Field Nation leads.

As companies increase their dependence on Gig Economy workers, we may see a

new C-suite job created: the Chief Gig Economy Officer, a role designed to maintain
and grow an organization’s partnerships and reputation within the freelance
community. Anyone interested in being groomed for this new role?

9. Workspace As Cultural Differentiator

WorkSpace is increasingly recognized as a lever of competitive advantage. On the

one hand, we see employees working virtually but at the same time we see
companies investing in new office space. What’s going on? Well, companies are
starting to use performance data, from network analytics to sociometric badges, to
capture interaction, communication, and location information in the workplace.
Using this data, companies are finding what works best in terms of collaborative
office design where employees can collide with one another: meaning have chance
encounters which will increase their working and collaborating together.
 In fact, Jon Fredrik Baksaas, the CEO of the Norwegian telecommunications
company credits the design of the company’s Oslo headquarters with helping it shift
from a state-run monopoly to a competitive organization. Baksaas thinks the new
workspace is not just an office but a communication tool to increase the collisions
between workers. And it’s these collisions which lead to improvements in
collaboration, innovation, and overall employee engagement.

In addition to creating open space for collisions to happen, companies are also
taking a page from WeWork, with its informal and collaborative ethos, and are
designing a range of new spaces from open, quiet, huddle rooms, to neighborhoods
each providing a distinct space to work. In a survey completed by Gensler on the
workspace of the future, the design firm found that employees who can effectively
focus in quiet rooms are 57% more able to collaborate, 88% more able to learn and
42% more able to socialize in their workplace.

The space goal for companies is to provide employees choice in selecting a work
environment that gives them flexibility to move from one space to another during
the day.

10. HR Is A Team Sport

Finally, what is becoming clear from the examples of Airbnb, Pandora, Lincoln
Financial Group, LinkedIn, and Telenor is that HR is a team sport. The CHRO is
becoming the Chief Employee Experience Officer and in so doing reaching beyond
HR to deliver a differentiated in the workplace. The days of operating in a HR silo
are over. Increasingly, this will mean partnering with functions such as marketing,
internal communications, IT, and real estate to create a seamless and engaging
employee experience which mirrors the consumer experience a company is
delivering in the marketplace. The essential question for HR leaders is not whether,
but rather when and how, to develop more robust partnerships with other C-Suite
officers to create memorable and engaging employee experiences.

The employer brand and the employee brand have now become one and the same,
forcing HR leaders to rethink their role for the future.

How will the consumerization of HR impact your role? What will you do? What
barriers do you see? To learn more, join me for "The Consumerization of HR."

Jeanne Meister is a partner at Future Workplace and co-author of The 2020 Workplace:
How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrow’s Employees
Today. Follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn, or sign up for her newsletter.