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#StratBlog: Shifting the HR Service Delivery Model with IOT and a robot named Sophia


A little of 20 years ago I accepted my first HR position. As a HR generalist, I was given the opportunity to be everything to everybody. While in this role, I also had my first experience with Service Delivery. To level set, at that time a service center was "best practice" and manager and employee self-service meant that you were given the opportunity to receive HR services as long as you came to HR between 8am - 5pm.

To help streamline the process, IT decided to roll out an "employee portal", which was designed to the be the one stop shop for all things. The portal was the first attempt to leverage technology to deliver self-service and became known as Tier 0. However, since no one took accountability for managing the content after a short period of time, all things, meant all things. The experience can only be described as going to the local dump. There appeared to be a method to the madness, but resulted in confusion and a lot of useless stuff. In the end the portal did provide access to some forms, but they still needed to be dropped off or delivered to HR via interoffice mail for processing.

On a cold Monday morning in September, one of our HR leaders had returned from HR Tech. There was a mysterious glow in her eye, a swagger to her step, and a new focus that no one had ever seen. Needless to say, I learned more about SAP on-premise self-service than I care to repeat. Regardless, she was on a mission to streamline our processes, eliminate paper, and create efficiency in HR. This combined with the portal would be the ultimate Tier 0. However once deployed, we now were receiving more questions, a higher number of transactions, and significant data and quality errors. We transitioned our Service Center into, a Tier 1 HR Help Desk and Processing Center. This of course led to a Tier 2 HR Expert Support, and a Tier 3 IT/HRIS system support.

What is the purpose of this story? It is three fold, One, my sense is that I am not the only one who experience this, Two, this all happened over a span of about 3 years, and Lastly, HR Service Delivery has been rapidly shifting due to the influence of Technology ever since. The question that must be posed is, where are you on your HR Service Delivery Journey, and How many of you are still using a PAF? You don't need to answer the second part of the question.

If we fast forward to 2016-2017 we have seen a significant leap in innovation with IOT, Machine Learning, Intelligent Services, AI, Bots, Virtual Reality, and the one that intrigues me the most is Artificial Intelligence. (If you haven't heard a robot name Sophia was granted citizenship by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia this year (2017).  Watch Sophia Here) Absent of Sophia, what has been truly fascinating is that this innovation is no longer segmented to certain line of business. We are no longer looking at technology as business applications, but as enterprise platforms. Which means, that all technology is being developed equally. What is now available to IT, Finance, Supply Chain, etc. is now available to HR. In fact, in many instances HR is leading the charge in many of these innovations. 
Hello, My Name is Sophia......
What does all of the mean for HR Service Delivery? It means a lot!!! It means that it is no longer good enough to be interested in changing your HR business model, it means you must commit to changing it to maintain relevance to the business, have competitive differentiators, and be prepared to meet the demand of the workforce with the right service delivery approach. I would like to take a few minutes to outline some of the recent, near term, and long term changes you can expect. 
  • Tier 0 is still focused on self-service, but has dramatically changed from a transaction to insights. The power of the enterprise information is informing Executives, Leaders, Mangers, and Employees of specific actions, considerations, and recommendation to be taken.
  • Tier 1 is still focused on HR transactions, however, delivering 5 star Workforce/Workplace Experience is the focus. Transactions will rarely be done by HR and will now be triggered or predicted through the use of machine learning, intelligent services, conversational HR, and artificial / virtual reality. 
  • Tier 2 will shift a toward HR Help Desk, however not the 24x7 global call centers we know today. Managers and employees will have limited interaction with a "Human" HR representative and will interact with the likes of Sophia, Amazon Echo, or other responsive Bots. 
  • Tier 3 will face the biggest shift is will now focus on HR advisory and management. HR Advisory will require an entirely new set of skills and capabilities. We will face the need for resources with greater business and analytical acumen, creativity, and problem solving. HR will be side by side with the business as a People Advisor. HR management will be a part of an enterprise platform team proactively evaluating, planning, and delivering new technology innovation.

In 1951, The Day the Earth Stood Still was release and the world was introduced to one of its first robots Gort. In 2017, sixty-six years later we have our first robot citizen Sophia. We have a clear decision a head of us, disrupt or be disrupted.

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