Making the Digital Employee Experience More Personal w/ Ivan Harding, Applaud

In this HRchat, we talk about the importance of personalization in the digital employee experience. Bill's guest is Ivan Harding, CEO, and Co-founder at Applaud, a firm on a mission to help businesses of all types and sizes have the luxury of easy-to-use, consumer-grade technology in their workplaces. 

Listen and discover: 

• What impact does offering personalized digital employee experiences have on the workforce?
• What are the new ways that the HR function is being augmented by tech? 
• What does it take to successfully implement a digital workforce experience platform? 
• How can businesses embrace and design journeys that intertwine digital and physical experiences? 
• How far can personalization support the health and well-being of employees? 
• According to Applaud's research, less than 10% of organizations offer hyper-personalized digital employee experiences. Why have organizations been slow to adopt personalization technology?
• For HR leaders looking into utilizing personalization technology, what are the steps they need to take?

More About Applaud

Applaud specializes in bringing together customers' current HR platforms with the world of consumer and employee technology; giving employees the same tech experiences at work as they expect in their home life. Learn more: applaudhr.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Welcome to the HR chat podcast, bringing the best of the HR and talent communities to you.

Speaker 2: 0:21

Welcome to another episode of the HR chat show. I'm your host today, bill Banham and in this HR chat, we're going to talk about the importance of personalization in the digital employee experience. My guest this time is Ivan Harding CEO, and co-founder over at applaud a firm on a mission to help businesses of all types and all sizes to have the luxury of ease of use consumer grade technology in their workplaces, applaud specializes in bringing together customers, current HR platforms with the world of consumer and employee technology, giving employees the same experiences at work as they expect in their home life. Ivan, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3: 1:04

Good to be here, bill. Thanks for the invitation and a great introduction.

Speaker 2: 1:07

So be on my way introduction there. Ivan, why don't you start by telling us a bit about, about yourself, about your career background and the mission of the club.

Speaker 3: 1:15

So, uh, I've been in HR technology for just shy of 25 years. Started my journey in the product side of the business, uh, worked with Oracle for about 10 years and the product team working on their HR product. Um, I left there and I went to the other side that is about five years and the other side of the fence and consulting. I spent time in the consultant mode implementing the products that we've been building for customers, which is very interesting. I was probably the most instrumental period in my career. One of the jobs I always remember is, uh, after a difficult go live on a recruitment system, I was getting the job to, to floor walk, uh, around the, uh, the floors of the offices and sit with managers who are having difficulty with the system, did things like raising vacancies and stuff like that. And, uh, goodness, I had some tough meetings, um, you know, as the it guy walking up and I was having some, uh, uh, people take out their frustrations on me, not why do I have to do this? Why is it so hard? What a lousy system might be to do? Uh, and one of the things that really stuck with me by then, we're going back over 10 years now is a woman just said to me, we would never put our customers through this. And there's a combo, the light bulb moment there at the time, you know, I phones and iPads were coming out. This was a big thing, was a big focus on user experience. And to me it just seemed a big disconnect between the HR tech vendors out there, and then users are meant to be using this stuff. This, this was technology that's being built for HR, not the end users. So that's really where the seed of applaud started. Uh, we were looking around and no one was really sort of addressing that area of the market. Um, we started up in about 2010 and uh, 10 years later, this is, we still are, um, interesting that one of our, uh, big, uh, influences in the industry is Workday and also Apple, uh, 10 years later, actually most of the customers we work with these days want to take customers say, yeah, the upload now we've, we've produced a no-code platform, uh, six across all the employee manager services that customers have, doesn't matter what systems they have in place. And our mission really is to deliver a simple to use consumer grade experience across the HR services. So we're all about the workers.

Speaker 2: 3:30

Talk to me a bit about the, uh, the digital HR technology. Can you paint a broad picture of, of ways that the HR function is maybe augmented or, or assisted today? And how has that evolved? You know, we've got a lot of, uh, HR folk are working from home right now, Ivan and, um, that they're having to get used to new ways of working because some of their function is being augmented or indeed being replaced. And in some ways, and they're wondering what that's going to look like when they return to the office, hopefully sometime later this year. Um, so talk to us a bit about what those changes are and, and, uh, and, um, what we can maybe expect as well in the next 12 months.

Speaker 3: 4:14

I think one of the things that fascinates me about HR technology that's kept me in it so long as it's just how it evolves all the time. It kind of mirrors consumer trends. Um, you sort of think about mobile coming along 10 years ago, sort of seeps into the workplace. Five years later, we're starting to get used to the things like digital assistants, where we do our shopping, that's coming into the workplace now. And HR is always at the forefront of technology changes within the business because the audience is the entire workforce, much of the time. I think what we're seeing now, um, as we've had this kind of land grab over the last 10 years of customers moving to cloud, and that's been the real big push over the last decade. I think what we're seeing now is that that move to cloud hasn't necessarily delivered the simplicity and adoption that customers are wanting. And now they're really starting to focus on what we call work attack rather than HR technology, which is technology, HR buying for HR. We're really starting to look at work attack, and that can be things like teams and Slack and Yammer and those sorts of collaboration tools. Obviously we'll, we'll use to those over the last year, but I think in the HR sphere and the HR leaders, they're looking at platforms that can help this sort of simplicity of service delivery, um, make it easy for people to find out what they need to know what the policies are, get information out quickly, um, uh, adapt processes really fast and putting together all the services they have into sort of a one stop shop. That's a term we hear quite a lot. Now we want a one stop shop for our employees. We want it on mobile. We want it on a whatever, um, device people are using to be able to get our information across. That's probably the trend for the coming up with this idea of a personalized service as well, which is obviously something we'll talk about the idea of getting content to people that's relevant for them. So we're not overwhelming people with information that's not, not relevant to their work, uh, or what they're doing day to day. So there's definitely a trend towards what we call work, attack technology you're buying for your workers, not necessarily for the HR administration practice,

Speaker 2: 6:19

Personalized content, the long tail. Is that still cool to people still say the long tail,

Speaker 3: 6:25

The long tail,

Speaker 2: 6:26

The long tail that, that, that was all the rage a few years ago, when it, whenever you want to talk about personalization and, you know, um, um, focusing, focusing on particular segments and whatnot anyway, um, let, let, let's, let's talk a bit about now what, what, what it takes to successfully implement a digital workforce experience platform. How can, how can businesses embrace and design journeys that intertwined digital and also physical experiences?

Speaker 3: 6:55

Yeah. So is a smart way of, uh, asking the question. And I think that's a challenge that a lot of HR leaders are looking at. Um, this isn't something that just says purely in the digital space, because there is so many processes that we go through and things we do at work that involve physical things. Um, so one of the analysts we liked to, to mention, and we can happily watch and recommend other people listen to this just person, you know, thought leader in our industry. And he talks about, um, start moving away from, uh, putting in programs or putting in solutions and talking about experiences. Um, and if we cannot come and put some color around what that means in practice, we might look at our HR stays and think, well, it's not working for us. So let's do something like we're putting digital assistants or chat bots, or maybe we'll have some sort of survey tool we put in, or maybe we'll improve our case management system, but sort of nibbling away, um, and layering more systems on rather than, uh, at instant visits. If you sort of take a step back and think about, uh, how we make it easy for customers to buy for us, you've got to have that, that same way of thinking, uh, within the, uh, within the workplace. So, um, personalization comes through again, and I think where we make a start with this is really to start looking at workers that make up in our organization, uh, and realize that not all workers in our organization need the same things. So, uh, retail is a good example. If you think of a retail organization and ticket to some of the different roles and responsibilities you might have within the retail organization, you might have young part-time students coming in at the weekend. You might have drivers transporting goods around. You might have someone on the manufacturing line. If you're in consumer packaged goods, you'll have people in your back office doing finance. There were workers, right. There are workers in your business, but they all have very different needs and they have a different technology, demands and expectations of you. So a good digital experience was really starting with the people as you're using the technology. It's not with, what's the best vendor it's looking at, who the workers I've got in my organization, what they need, where are the pain points at the moment, what processes are causing me issues, what processes are taking our service desk time up and raising lots of tickets and sort of taking a step back from there. Once you've started to model, um, the people in your workforce, persona design, we called it. And that's the thing to Google. If you're looking to do some reading afterwards and start thinking about the journeys, those being contained, things like onboarding or relocation, or what happens when I open a new office and move people there or global transfer, or even off-boarding, and then make an unexperience of leaving the company a positive one, then you can start to, um, model, uh, how you use the technology to make those processes a lot more smoother and untangled. We want to move away from these kinds of ideas of link farms and these internets. We've just got policies all over the place, and it's a very static experiences to make something more dynamic and tailored to the individual. And that's what a good Dex looks like.

Speaker 2: 9:58

Okay. Thank you. I want to tease a little bit more out view, uh, connected to that, that last question and answer you spoke. I think mainly in terms where talking to, uh, to the HR professionals and to the leaders are listening to this podcast today, which makes sense. I've been given it, this is called the HR chat show. Um, but what, what about, what about the employees? What, what impact does offering a personalized digital experiences have on, on the workforce?

Speaker 3: 10:28

Well, this is the target audience, of course, isn't it. So it's the right to ask. I think, again, let's take our lead from the consumer world. Um, one of the most famous examples of the personalizing experiences, Netflix, you log into Netflix. I see a much different set of programs and offerings and content and say, when my daughter looks on, um, my mind's a lot less pink, but I look at my home screen. Uh, you compare it to the old days. You know, I'd look up to my cable box, I'd have 300, 400 channels. Would I watch and spend time going through the menus? So Netflix is a good example of, of content. That's personalized for me, makes it easier for me to get stuff that I want to see if we transpose that into the workplace. Um, when I look on as a worker, um, to my interests on dry portal, again, I want this concept of a one-stop shop. I want everything at my fingertips. I don't want to keep using a search. Doesn't give me results or having to experiment with different links to find out the place I need to do to read my ad and my latest leave policy. Uh, if I'm a worker in a retail store, for example, I'm on a 24 seven schedule, and I try to book some holiday the policy around what me, uh, and what applies to me is going to be probably different to someone that's working in the back office on a, on a Monday to Friday schedule. So, you know, when I go in to do that, uh, booking, how about having the right information? That's the right in front of me alongside where I'm actually working my leave. And if I get problems, how about having the help that I need right there, you know, access to a service desk agent, or a helpline or a raised wanting to raise a help desk ticket or something like that, having an intelligent help pop up, let's say, I'm struggling with a task. Uh, we've got the technology now where we can actually detect them. You're taking like two minutes on this form today takes 30 seconds. Let's pop up a little bit of advice on the screen to help guide you through it. Uh, and then if nothing else works and that sort of do some listening and some take some feedback, and while it didn't work for you or you, it seems like you're struggling to find the information you need. Can we get some feedback about what's working, what's not working and feed that back into the loop and improve the process for next time. So personalize the experience for the worker perspective, it should be seamless, but what you should be seeing when you are getting stuff that's relevant for you, you shouldn't be logging in and seeing things that, uh, on users irrelevant or appropriate for another role in the business. Um, we should be streamlining that out, uh, make it simple and easy for you to find the things you need to do.

Speaker 2: 13:04

And if all else fails, allow all cookies listeners. Boom.

Speaker 3: 13:10

Right.

Speaker 2: 13:15

Um, I've been in a recent post on the applaud site. You wrote that, uh, over two fifths, uh, 43%. In fact of HR leaders said that keeping a strong company culture alive will be the single biggest challenge this year with, with organizations continuing to work virtually and developing new hybrid working arrangements and ensuring both existing employees and new starters buy into your company's values. That's going to be particularly challenging. Then as they explained, what are the two or three biggest challenges to employee engagement right now? And how can organizations set themselves up to retain their top talent? When, when we do return to some degree of normality and large numbers, possibly October onwards of 2021 large numbers of employees start looking elsewhere.

Speaker 3: 14:06

Yeah. It's going to affect us all businesses, small little artist, something I'm thinking about myself as a, um, a co-founder of the company. I think, um, the last year, as I said on the article, you're quoting, we focus a lot on the, on the fun stuff. Um, we've done things like virtual games, you know, meet up and drinks at the end of the week, give surprises and perhaps that's all, that's all great. That was a really good thing to sort of lift people's spirits and trying to make them feel connected as we kind of move pulse there. I think we've got to kind of look at how do we keep people motivated and informed of the company goals. Um, what's, what's our mission as a company and how can employees support and go face up to the fact that people aren't going to be going back to work in the normal way anymore. Especially in, in some industries where remote working is, is a perfectly fine thing to happen. So technology is an enabler. We always said that, I'm sure everyone says that, you know, you can't, you can't solve business problems with technology that can enable, uh, other things to happen. But for me, it's all about communication. Um, and from the very top level down, um, and then using technology to the different channels available to push company objectives and news and events and recognition success, and, and be open on the challenges that businesses are facing as well. And that needs to ripple down. It's no good to see your top level management putting out a newsletter once a week or once a month or quarterly all hands. If the management underneath on doing that too, I think Joel's place in this is really the PR providing the facilities to take that feedback from, from the workers, uh, you know, what's going on. Are we seeing churn in the business, looping that back up to the executive community? And you can do that through all sorts of things, whether it's virtual collaboration, uh, technology, but a big thing that's a lot of companies are investing in now is not, not survey technology, but listening technology. There's a slight shift. The treaded employee survey that you can see once a once a year or twice a year is kind of losing the effectiveness and a lot of organizations view. So we're starting to look at listening technology and post-surveys, if you like, uh, the ability to do like spot checks on how employees are feeling and, uh, take, take, uh, take feedback on what's working, what's not working, um, things like nudges and notifications, as well as there's another growth area within technology to give another channel, to, uh, push out information and, uh, Australian on, in the business news in the business, uh, and against celebrating success when it happens. So technology is enabled that sort of thing for me, but really is down to the leaders in the business to really understand that they might have to up their game with communication and openness about what's going on at the top level.

Speaker 2: 16:54

Okay. So, uh, you've should a little bit of, of your, your, your personal thoughts there as a leader of an organization about, and about what you'll be planning right now to ensure that you can retain your top tablet where you are. Um, we're actually recording this interview at the, towards the end of February. And just yesterday as we recorded this Goldman Sachs boss, David Solomon, he would just, he rejected remote working as the new normal, and he labeled it as an aberration in status. Um, I've got my opinions on this, but what would you say to those out there who say that the tech doesn't exist to allow for, for effective work from home and, and, and, uh, effective ways to maintain company culture?

Speaker 3: 17:42

I thought it was a really, really interesting article. I read it as well and had my thoughts on it too. And I, I think some of it might be taken a little out of context in the came across as a sort of a bit stern and gruff, uh, when the article came through, I think, um, this is, I think in, in certain industries, we won't get back to everyone working in office Monday to Friday nine to five. Um, there's certain industries where you can quite effectively work from home from a number of days a week. Um, and I think organizations that don't recognize are probably going to lose out on talented people that don't want to do a Monday to Friday in the office, and that's going to be the reality. But I think what he was saying in his article that I agree with to a certain extent is it's not the company that's losing out. Why people not coming in is, is the workers themselves. He was very much coming from the angle of, you know, we're on apprenticeship and these young guys coming out of the college, uh, coming into our firm and they need experienced people around them to mentor them and, and in a virtual environment as much harder to do. And it's right in there for every team's meeting or zoom call, it doesn't quite match up to what you can do in the office. Uh, so, uh, I think remote working goes so far, but I think most new normal probably been more likely to be hybrid work working, uh, as opposed to permanent office space staff. Um, and I don't think that it's going to get to the point where needless to say, uh, I could potentially hire people anywhere in the world, but actually I still want to hire people that are within commutable distance to our office. Not particularly to go there everyday, but to get some face time with people that when we want an all hands meeting where team out outing or whatever is better for me in my people are within traveling distance to that office. So that face time, I think one thing that this has told me is where there was excitement about remote working to start with as a woman bit new, a and fun. I saw this with my kids as well, by the way, from remote learning. Um, now everyone wants to get back. My kids want to get back to school to see their friends. So many of our teams say I can't wait to get back to the office to sort of see my colleagues and that the social science, as well as the collaboration on work. So there is a sort of a design for what for workers to get back as well. Um, but I mean, going back to your question about the, the Goldman Sachs quotes is very thought provoking as interesting for leader to make that sort of statement is a little bit against the grain, but I think he's basically reflecting that actually is for our employees benefit to get that interaction back again, sometime

Speaker 2: 20:12

And listeners, actually, if you address it in this stuff, you can, you can learn more in a recent episode that I did with, uh, with a chat from Gardner, uh, where we, where we looked at the, the, the future trends for, for working from home and, and the projections over at Gartner was that 28% of, of employees will, once we're through the pandemic, uh, we'll continue to work from home full-time and 50% that they claim from, from, from their studies, uh, we'll work from home. Uh, part-time maybe a couple of days in the office there per week, as Ivan was just mentioning. Okay.[inaudible] how far can personalization support the health and wellbeing of employees? We haven't really touched on this too much yet. Talk to me a bit about the challenges and how digital employee experience can, can help with employee health and wellbeing.

Speaker 3: 21:02

Yeah. Cause there's a there's points in time. A health and wellbeing is a thing that's going on at the moment. And there's the longer term effects after that. Um, I think, um, HR has had tremendous challenges over the last 12 months with the pace of change and happens around really fast to government decisions that can sometimes happen, uh, without notice and haven't affected in the next couple of days. Um, and I'll say that's had a tremendous impact on people's physical health and Murray about, uh, coming back to work and safety at work, but on, on mental health being at home as well. Um, and again, I would say the technology is an enabler. It doesn't, it doesn't solve these things, but it does help, uh, HR get out, uh, information that they, they need to do more fast. Um, one of the trends I think we're seeing over the next 10 years is, is looking into platforms that are now not just HR, but line of business react fast and deliver services and content and knowledge more, uh, more quickly than they've been able to do in the past. We're moving away from a requirement, comes up and we've got to trot off to it, to hopefully secure their Java developer for, for a little bit of work we need to do, you know, we need technology that is more nimble and agile in that. Um, so an example was I can think of, we, uh, we had one university customer last year, uh, thinking about how to get, um, staff back onto campus in a safe way. And some of the information they needed to retrieve was things like, um, are you shielding, do you have any vulnerable members? Have you had the virus yourself? Um, and you know, in the old days this would be some sort of online spreadsheet that said, fill out managers report into HR, but they use the platform to, um, to build a quick return to work for, um, knocked out in a couple of days. And they had something that was very robust to make us start tracking people coming in their office like that. Um, other things that platform could do it can obviously deliver the personalized content. We keep talking about that. So I went to do one on that too much, but, uh, it can push things that, uh, where the company is providing support, like EAP schemes, employee assistance, program schemes. Um, a lot of companies have these schemes that have a really great support for employees, especially if they're struggling with mental health issues and so on. Um, you know, start pushing that out. Um, this listening technology, I'm talking about, uh, the, the real-time feedback. If you remember those days, we used to go to airports and to go through customs. Hopefully they'd be back again soon. And you said the little buttons with the green and red faces to say what your experience is like, but start using the technology that these are the tools we're using. And can we capture when people were feeling a bit low and trigger that, and, and maybe we can, um, reach out for help. So also the little bits and pieces we can use technology for, um, but really it's really to detect, uh, what what's going on with workers and, and react to that and helping us do that function.

Speaker 2: 23:59

Yeah. So that technology you mentioned in the airport, I do remember what happened was, um, that, that technology, you mentioned where it, with the, uh, the faces, I did an interview on the HR chat show with the, the CEO of that company. They called happy or not. Um, so wow. You were allowing me to get all the plugs in today and listeners to that interview was a while back. I think his name is Jaco and he's based in Finland and Yeah, it's an awesome company. And you should check out that interview. I'm going to take a guess it was back in 2017, something like that. So please do check it out. Um, okay. So according to our pool, it's research less than 10% of organizations offer hyper personalized digital employee experiences. W why do you think that organizations have been a bit slow to adopt personalization technology when they, when, when there are benefits to be had?

Speaker 3: 24:54

Yeah, I don't think it's from the lack of wanting team. Uh, I think it's, it's quite a tough, tricky thing to get started with. And I think the reason for that it comes back to the way you phrase earlier question is because you're starting to look at the way digital and physical processes, twine quite lightweight, but, and we've got a lot of silos in our HR technology States, you'll have your core HR system, your payroll system, and so on and so forth. And when you were talking about personalized experiences and simplifying the digital experience as a wider topic, you have to come take a step back from your silo, uh, and your silent system. And typically, no, if you've got a, a product that offers a millennial for personalization for, for that one system. And when you take a holistic view of the digital experience, you've really got to look at your whole estate. Um, and also think about, um, how you wrap in the, the, the, the physical processes as well now, where we're having your processes. If you've got things like offline forms and horrible Excel spreadsheets that someone has to fill out, say for the holidays, get an email off to HR, you know, all those sorts of things. So I think people are struggling to learn how to stop. And now there's tips and tricks on, you know, how you can kind of take a nibble of this and maybe of take some proof of concepts and, and start small. But, uh, I think the real struggle isn't that there isn't really a sort of a part of the HR technology market that has really come forward and says, this is what we do. Uh, so a lot of the customers are looking at their existing vendors and started trying to figure out how you stitch all this stuff together into this keeps saying it, the one-stop shop that they're actually looking for. And once you've got that single pane of glass to look into all your different processes and so on, then you can start to build that personalization and you can't really do it pregnancy. Uh, you are not going to believe this item because I know that you're having such an amazing time with me today, but we're almost out of time before we do wrap up, how can our listeners connect with you? So whether that's through LinkedIn, email, Twitter, wherever you might be, and also, how can they love more about applaud? I'd love them to contact me. I'm on LinkedIn, Ivan to auditing. Uh, you can easily find me there and, uh, always welcome to take an actions. Uh, if you want to learn more about Florida websites, applaud hr.com and there's plenty of little bits of knowledge on there. And, uh, you can contact us for more information too, feel free to reach out to me directly, too. Um, I think in terms of sort of learning about the, the wider topic of personalization, digital experience, uh, there's lots of great content on the website and not just that we've produced, but links out to, uh, other, uh, other parties that have done this, particularly around things like persona design and journey mapping, all those fancy new terms that are entering the mainstream. So a few months to kind of have a nibble and start small. There's some great content around that can take and investigating Alicia, but that'd be great to hear from people which is one person's jobs, meeting new customers, so that they take connections if people want to reach out perfect. And there will be links to applaud in the, in the show notes. And, uh, Ivan is not exaggerating when he says that there are a lots of amazing resources on their site. So it's applaud hr.com forward slash resources. I would encourage you to check it out and continue to educate yourself with all this wonderful content that supply, but that just leaves me to say for today, Ivan, thank you so much for being a guest on this episode of the HR track show. Thanks very much enjoyed it very much. And this is as always until next time, happy working and please do continue to stay safe.

Speaker 1: 28:38

Thank you for listening to the HR chat podcast brought to you by the HR.