Carl Lewis of The Connected Enterprise Podcast interviews Dan Straw, Director of HCM Solutions at Vision33 to discuss retaining talent with HR technology.
Show Notes
Carl Lewis:
Welcome to The Connected Enterprise podcast. I’m Carl Lewis, your host from Vision33, and my guest is Dan Straw. Dan's headquartered in the UK and is the director of our Human Capital Management division. Dan, welcome to the podcast.
Dan Straw:
Thank you. Great to be here.
Carl Lewis:
Dan, please tell us about the HR situation in the UK and what you hear about the US from a recruitment standpoint. How are things going in those countries?
Dan Straw:
There are many similarities between the US and the UK in most territories. Organizations’ biggest challenges are twofold. One: How do they identify and retain their top talent? It’s a competitive landscape out there, with competitors offering many benefits to entice people away. So, how do you retain your people?
Two: How are you recruiting the right people to fill your skill gaps? Bringing people in is expensive. We hear of organizations using agencies, but agency fees are high. So, how do we help people from a technology perspective?
That's what I'm passionate about.
Carl Lewis:
How did you become an HR specialist?
Dan Straw:
I started as an operational trainer in an insurance company, teaching people about insurance policy. Which I quite enjoyed. But it also allowed me to deploy a learning management platform within our organization. I found that taking my understanding of the training process as it was then and the whole training function and marrying that into one system—and then seeing the impact on the organization—was something I enjoyed.
So, I moved into a partner role, helping organizations deploy technology and get value from it. Through that, I've ended up where I am today: heading up a team that works with customers to solve those challenges. I bring that inherent HR understanding and passion for how technology enables people to succeed.
Carl Lewis:
Many people don't know there's a lot of training involved in HR. From hiring and onboarding to negative stuff like how to dismiss somebody properly. What issues typically drive companies to get HR software?
Dan Straw:
It comes back to efficiency, like having automation and technology to remove manual effort. I talk to many customers with two or three people whose jobs are to maintain spreadsheets of data. And that inherently comes with challenges because spreadsheets are only as up to date as the last update. You hear the horror stories of corrupt Excel files; I'm sure we've all experienced that. So administrative efficiency savings are critical. But for me, that goes hand in hand with having access to data.
In most organizations, people are their greatest asset—but we have these people, and we don't understand them. We don't understand our headcount. We don't understand their skills and capabilities, so making strategic decisions as a business leader can be difficult. Then, you get technology that can bring that information together. And it doesn’t just give you the data—it helps you analyze it, understand it, and make the appropriate business decisions. That's one of the big drivers I see.
There’s also the employee experience. As an organization, we talk about our people being our greatest asset, but how do we engage them from the moment they find us on a career site? That's the first impression somebody gets of us. Are we showing them our culture and what we're like as an organization—and carrying that through the recruitment process, how we onboard them, how they interact with HR and the organization daily, etc.? If we get that right and get engaged employees, guess what? They add more to the organization, they're more productive, they stay longer, and they become leaders.
Carl Lewis:
Sometimes people don't understand the benefits of a system designed to assist us with our whole human capital management program, through the entire life of an employee and how it can help us keep them. What are the benefits people rarely think about from this software experience?
Dan Straw:
There are many, but if I summarized them, there are some less attractive benefits in compliance. When we're dealing with people and data, there’s this huge compliance responsibility that organizations must ensure they're capturing the right data, reporting the right data, and handling that data the right way. Often, it’s sensitive data, so there's a huge compliance savings by getting that right and not being subject to fines or penalties.
Another benefit is reducing overall costs because technology inherently brings automation, which saves money. And linking, again, to that employee experience perspective—we have more engaged employees who are performing higher, so the organization does better because everybody's working toward the same thing. We don't have pockets of employees just working for their manager and not connected with the wider organizational strategy.
Carl Lewis:
About the employee experience. The podcast has always focused on what companies do to stay connected to their vendors, customers, and employees. The last one seems to be the most difficult to talk about because it's like, “What are we doing to keep everybody connected?” How does HR software help employees in their experiences with the company?
Dan Straw:
It starts right from their onboarding experience. Typically, they've been through a recruitment process. The organization has worked hard to convince them to work for them. For hiring managers, it’s a sigh of relief: "Phew, I've filled that vacancy." Then things go quiet while that person works their notice at their old job. But technology can give you a digital engagement platform that allows that employee to start giving you the information they need to get set up, review the policies/procedures, and learn about their coworkers. There's immediate engagement with the organization that seems to take away some anxiety people naturally feel when they start a new job.
If we’re then in the organization, I think about how I have some performance objectives/goals I'm working toward. I can see how they align with what my manager wants to achieve and how that aligns with the organization’s strategy. So, I immediately know what I'm doing and how that contributes to everyone’s success. Typically, people want to do a good job at work, but do we give them the space and information they need to do that? That includes connecting them to the organizational strategy.
Second to that, how do I drive my career in the organization? Technology can help me do that. It helps me understand my development path, which roles exist in the organization, and what other opportunities exist. We all know the area we work in, but how well do you know what's happening outside your area? Do you see the available opportunities? Connecting with the people managing those opportunities and having conversations like, “I want to move into this area; how can I do that?” helps with internal mobility. So, on several levels, multiple parts of the HR process have an opportunity to keep that employee engaged and help them bring their whole self to work and deliver the best they can.
Carl Lewis:
Does the HR software bridge the gap of the remote vs. hybrid vs. in-office situation?
Dan Straw:
Absolutely. A basic example is as simple as requesting an absence. I remember asking colleagues, "Is anybody off on this day? I'm going to request it." But HR software can give me that information. When I want a day off, I can see that other colleagues are out, so I choose a different day. But also, it's that face of the company, isn't it? I'm used to interacting with HR software, so whether I'm updating my goals or thinking about the available development and training, the technology makes it easier for me to find information and think about how it might apply to me.
As most software vendors did, we saw a huge increase in people moving to HR software through the pandemic because they went from having people in an office and paper processes and whiteboards with annual vacation on it to employees at home. They needed to stay on top of that. Technology was a great way, and they've kept it because they've seen the value. Nobody has said, "We don't need that anymore. We're back in the office." They've adapted their working models because they now have tools that allow remote or hybrid working.
Carl Lewis:
My experience is that investing in HR help isn’t something companies do proactively. There needs to be an event like the pandemic to show them the need. Otherwise, those processes are chugging along. Then, if the workload becomes heavier, they realize what they’re spending, and being more proactive makes sense. This is a great opportunity for companies to get on board with that concept before the next impending event forces them down that road.
Dan Straw:
Absolutely. And think about most businesses and where they invest. For example, a manufacturing business will have invested in and maintained the best production, machinery, and tools because they recognize it's critical to business. If they can't deliver a quality product efficiently, they lose their competitive advantage. But you’re right—they don’t look at their people through the same lens and ask, "How do we get the most and best out of these people and make sure they want to stay with our organization?"
It's a shame there’s often a compelling event like the pandemic. Or “We just got a compliance fine because we weren't managing data correctly,” or, “We're suddenly losing our great people because we're not engaging them.” But it’s that opportunity to say, and there's also a misconception that it's a glorified spreadsheet for managing data. HR technology was like that many years ago, but now, like any business platform, it has so much technology. We see AI and machine learning enabling customers to move away from the administration of people data and use the technology to identify trends and patterns and partner with the business to drive the strategy forward. That's critical. HR is here to be the business enabler—to allow the people to deliver the business strategy. And if we don't have the right investment, we’ll be that broken production line giving the same poor-quality outcome we don't want but don't know how to fix.
Carl Lewis:
Tell us about Vision33’s HR offerings.
Dan Straw:
We have two: SAP SuccessFactors and BambooHR. SuccessFactors is part of SAP’s product portfolio, and it’s very robust. There’s a misconception that it's only for big businesses, but that's not true. It works for small and medium organizations too. It has deep functionality in every HR process area—LMS and recruiting capabilities, etc. And for organizations that frequently recruit or have a lot of employee turnover, it has great functionality to automate recruitment and help recruiters focus on their great candidates. So SuccessFactors is a functionally rich platform. It’s also modular, so you don't have to take the whole platform, just the modules that align with each part of the HR life cycle.
BambooHR is an end-to-end platform with functionality around recruitment, onboarding, core HR, performance, training management, and time tracking. It’s an off-the-shelf SaaS product, so there’s minimal implementation effort. Customers can choose their settings, and it’s perfect for organizations without complex people requirements that need technology to help manage people data, automated onboarding, and time off management. One software isn’t better than the other—it’s about your requirements and what you need the platform to do. We recommend the appropriate software based on that.
Carl Lewis:
Are they both cloud-based?
Dan Straw:
Yes. Both cloud-based, full software as a service, all your maintenance upgrades baked into the subscription.
Carl Lewis:
That sounds much better than deploying a solution on-site.
Dan Straw:
Absolutely. And it means the time to implement is quick. We can have BambooHR up and running in four weeks. People don't believe me, but I've proven it and have customers who will attest to it. SuccessFactors can take longer, but it’s just a couple of months, not six or 12 months. It’s quick. And to reassure our HR and business colleagues out there, security is handled by the provider at the industry level, and all the data is handled to global standards. A lot of ongoing challenges and risks our organizations might face are handled in the subscription. Then we can focus on looking after your people and delivering the business strategy.
Carl Lewis:
These days, people are doing everything they can to connect all their systems. Are we planning on or working on or dreaming about connecting these solutions to our ERP solutions?
Dan Straw:
Absolutely. We already have connectors for BambooHR to our ERP solutions and connections from SuccessFactors into SAP Business ByDesign. We’re working on others for our broader ERP stack. The connections are pre-built because they’re on our platform, Saltbox. They just need to be enabled and field mapped, and they're good to go.
Carl Lewis:
Wonderful. I wasn't sure what progress we'd made on that front, so that's great to hear. If someone's interested, how can they prepare to make an HR implementation go smoothly?
Dan Straw:
The biggest drain on time in any implementation is data. And that's not exclusive to HR—it’s in any system deployment. Depending on the data source and how accurate and up to date it is, it can be time-consuming. But I'm talking weeks, not months.
The second thing is being clear about the business requirements. Different industries have different requirements regarding people, so we need to know those requirements. We have experience in many industries, but we need the client to say, "I need to capture X, Y, and Z information, as that's reportable to my regulator." Having the data and knowing what data speeds the process up.
Another thing worth mentioning is that we often use a move to a solution like BambooHR or SuccessFactors as an opportunity to transform. We don't want to do what we've always done because, without the technology, we had to work a certain way. New software transforms the processes and how we work because it often eliminates the manual effort we were doing.
Carl Lewis:
Vision33 works with a lot of small to midsized organizations. I've met probably 400 customers and been on site in my 15 years at Vision33. They may not have had an HR department. The recruitment is done by the departments, or the president/CEO owns the company, and they do all the recruitment. But if they decide to stop doing that and hire an HR professional, is that a good time to say, "This is what we're going to use as software to change our company culture regarding recruitment and the rest of HR"?
Dan Straw:
It would. And when you're interviewing that HR person, that's likely to be a question they ask: “What platform do you use to manage HR?” Because HR professionals see the benefit of technology. I've never met anyone in HR who went into HR to work with spreadsheets—but unfortunately, their job is often 80% maintaining data or providing data to other areas.
And when we deploy the technology for them, they realize it's not a case of, "Wow, I have all this free time now. I can sit back and have a cup of coffee." But they can do what they got into HR to do, which was to partner with the business, work with people, and drive the business forward. But yes, back to your original question: When you're bringing that HR resource in is the perfect time to think about the platform you’ll use to drive that into the organization.
Carl Lewis:
We have a lot of customers who listen to this podcast. If they want to know more, what's the best way for them to engage with us about our HR offerings?
Dan Straw:
The first place would be through their assigned CRM. They contact them and tell them they want to discuss HR solutions. They can come through me and my team, and we have a ton of information on our website. The great thing is that here at Vision33, everybody knows my area, so as soon as they mention HR, they'll be pinging me a message to say, "We need to get you on a call to talk to this customer."
Carl Lewis:
That would be great. And between now and the next impending event is a good time. Because once that event happens, there will be a crowd.
Dan Straw:
Absolutely, Carl.
Carl Lewis:
Dan, this is great information. I’ve wanted to have you on for months, so thanks for joining us. And until next time, everybody out there stay connected.
