2010 has been a fascinating year in so many ways. Despite experimenting with a variety of new and interesting businesses my mind simply cannot stop thinking about potentially viable opportunities for our highly fragmented and ever-changing industry. These theoretical concepts seek purchase yet rarely crack through their cranial prison. This creates noise and can be incredibly distracting…

Until now.

Over the next few months I will be giving most if not all of my ideas away. I commit to documenting my thought processes and any initial supporting data/materials and simply clicking “publish”. Most will likely be the most absurd and ill-conceived notions you’ve ever encountered. Others may already exist in the real world (thus exposing my myopic and limited purview). No matter. I’m willing to face public humiliation and ridicule if there is even the slightest chance that someone can take a single grain of an idea and turn it into something material.

So what’s in it for me?

Nothing but closure. I don’t seek credit or any rights to whatever happens from here. If you can turn my steaming pile of coal into diamonds you deserve all the praise, believe me. You’re a brilliant group of people and I have tremendous faith in your ability to execute on anything you put your mind to.

So stay tuned as I embark on this potentially career-limiting journey. And if others want to join in by posting their own ideas, perhaps we can turn this into an interesting industry-wide experiment. Welcome to my personal HR Idea Lab.

What Happened

It’s both simple and complex.

First the simple part — Approximately 130 human resource professionals, recruiters, pundits, consultants, executives and industry representatives converged on Chicago for an ‘unconference’. This meant a fun venue conducive to freeform conversation, an agenda emphasizing facilitation over lecture, and the freedom for attendees to make this experience their own. Like last year’s inaugural event, we all came with a different set of expectations for what we wanted to occur, who we would meet, what would be said and what would happen next. The bar was set high (perhaps too high) but minds were open and hearts in all the right places. Because of the gracious support of a variety of sponsors, the event only cost $100. Based solely on the standing ovation during the closing session, my sense is that most attendees felt like they received many times their fixed cost in value.

Discussions ran the gamut of the profession itself. These included branding, benefits, diversity, devices, recruiting, influence, behavior, learning, generations, technology, community and the future of HR. Since no one wants to read a 5,000 word post I’m going to skip the details for now. For the sessions I personally attended, I found people generally respectful to one another (although not always), including the right to disagree and/or voice their opinion. If you didn’t like a session, you were able to vote with your feet without anyone taking offense. It was a fluid, dynamic and unique experience.

As for the complex part — Change is painfully difficult and highly personal. The pacing is too fast for some and too slow for others. Public disagreement is uncomfortable with some voices loud and dominating over those who are soft yet serious. In the whirlwind of moving from room to room, conversation to conversation, session to session, we sometimes forget to pause and take stock. We’re frustrated and can’t explain why. We’re impressed but don’t know what to do. We simultaneously analyze and paralyze. And then as we get on our planes and board our trains we wonder whether it was worth all the pomp and circumstance.

I think it was.

What I Could Have Done Better

I was fortunate to have a senior role by serving on this year’s planning committee. This included a wonderful team of people you should know (if you don’t already), including Jason Seiden, Trish McFarlane, Steve Boese, Ben Eubanks, Crystal Peterson and Joan Ginsberg. These are passionate and dedicated professionals who decided to add to their already full plates by volunteering to organize an event whose primary reward is to leave the audience hungry for more. I’m proud to have served with them and admire their dedication and selflessness.

After last year’s event I questioned whether this is an HR evolution or HR revolution. Frankly, I’m still on the fence. My sense is that last year’s attendees would have hoped for more revolutionary talk whereas the new folks preferred an evolutionary approach. Which brings me to two things I could have done better.

First, I neglected to realize just how foreign the concept of mediated conversation is to both presenters and attendees. We are trained from a young age to show up on time, take our seats and listen to the person in the front of the room speak to us. As we get older some get comfortable raising their voices during the appropriate time and begin to confidently share their own wealth of knowledge and perspective. But we’re not trained or really even encouraged to do so, and as time goes on and we enter the professional world, the behaviors of old are simply reinforced. As speakers, the problem is frankly a bit worse as many lack the skills or training to extract insight or action as opposed to imparting one-sided wisdom.

So picture yourself arriving in a largely unstructured environment that is the antithesis of most everything that has come before. It’s scary and definitely doesn’t feel safe or even appealing. We missed an opportunity to make this easier on people. The good news is that now I know this is something to be addressed.

As for the second item, it’s a personal one. When you agree to jump into the fray and help organize it comes with a sense of responsibility and accountability that I take very seriously. As a result, I missed a wonderful opportunity to spend quality time with those I admire and respect. Despite the hectic melee I should have taken the time to stop and meet each and every one of you. I didn’t do that enough and for that I’m sorry.

What The Future Holds

There have been a number of terrific posts on the event and it would be difficult for me to call them out here today. Fellow organizer and HRevolution co-founder Ben Eubanks will be hosting a Carnival of HR dedicated to all the HRevolution posts on May 19th. Be sure to read what others have said (good, bad or indifferent) about their experiences and perspectives as this will inform your thinking about what’s next.

HRevolution has a number of decisions to make and each one has serious implications for the movement. Do we try and build larger events with more attendees and offer more tracks to keep the sessions small? Should we take this on the road and hyperlocalize to cities and counties around the world? How about dividing by functional area? …size of employer? …topic(s)? Do we imbed HRevolution into traditional conference settings to attempt to offer an alternative for individuals who are attracted to the format? The permutations are seemingly endless and your feedback is strongly encouraged.

HRevolution exists for no other reason than to change the lens through which we view our roles and responsibilities. No one is going to hand you the answers so you’re going to have to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work necessary to break through the norm. It’s not for everyone and that needs to be okay. Those who disagree with the approach or find it unappealing have a right to voice their constructive criticism. A movement based on embracing the voices of all cannot suddenly quiet those in dissent. It’s counter to a healthy dialogue that improves the experience for everyone.

I leave you with the same feeling I had last year. I’m excited but dissatisfied. I see a need for this type of venue and sense a growing appetite for something new. I see discontent among those who have paused long enough to question the norm and feel their desire to effect positive change. I personally intend to fuel the flames in a constructive way and welcome your thoughts. No one can do this alone but we can do it together. Thank you once again to everyone who participated and let’s keep this extremely important conversation going.

How to Self-Destruct provides a useful thought-exercise when considering the frustrations of your own career trajectory.  So many of us are concerned about what we should be doing to succeed in the workplace.  Seiden takes the opposite approach – what should you do if you were trying to ruin your career?   Shockingly, the behaviors that could ruin your career are identical to the “play it safe” strategy most of us use to advance and protect our careers – being defensive, not taking risks and making sure that blame falls on someone else.  

Recognizing behaviors to avoid can be equally, if not more, useful to career advancement than focusing on behaviors to adopt.  It will take several pages to get used to the reverse language in the book.  And sadly, I’m convinced there are some readers who won’t get the point and may actually employ Seiden’s advice literally.  Flame on brother, flame on….

If you want an entertaining snapshot, take a look at Seiden’s “explosive trailer” below.  Let’s keep those grenades at the ready and the conversation going.

It’s been questioned whether this is a fake or not, but either way it makes you think twice about how to take down an emotionally unstable cubicle mate.  A big shout-out to Laurie Rueittmann at Punk Rock HR for turning me on to this gem!

Let’s keep the conversation going (and the violence to a minimum).
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This is a very significant acquisition and will have a cascading effect on the HR industry.  In my opinion, Hewitt has effectively boxed out both EAP and HRO providers from potentially leveraging LCG’s Nucleus technology platform and other value-added services.  What remains to be seen is if Hewitt continues to offer distribution and access services to its former outsourcing foes as part of a wisely morphed (and highly focused) transition to be “all-things-benefits” in the HR industry.  I applaud Hewitt for seeing the value in the particular subsegment.

So why all the hubbub?  According to the most recent CCH Unscheduled Absence Survey, while 34% of employees call in sick at the last minute due to “personal illness”, 66% of those are actually dealing with personal or family issues.  Said CCH Employment Law Analyst Pamela Wolf

“Unscheduled absenteeism is a problem that no organization can afford to ignore – either from a cost or productivity standpoint. With the appropriate programs in place, businesses can significantly reduce the number of last minute no-shows, improve the work environment for all employees and realize substantial savings.”

And the LCG/Hewitt combination addresses much more than just unscheduled absences.  Said the announcement:

With solutions including administration and management of all forms of absence, Web-based data integration and reporting, root cause analysis, and innovative return-to-work programs, LCG’s approach identifies and addresses the fundamental causes of unplanned absence to help employers better manage costs and maintain compliance. The combination of Hewitt’s rich health plan usage data and expertise in absence management consulting, coupled with LCG’s absence and clinical information, will allow Hewitt to identify the unique patterns linking health and absenteeism that, when addressed proactively, can lead to improved workforce productivity.

Having personally seen the LCG system in action, I will say that this is a tremendous value-add to the Hewitt portfolio.  So who else is left in the market?  Most of the major HRMS/HRIS systems have basic absence management capabilities, but they lack significant depth in features and functionality.  Absentys is also on the market and had announced a distribution relationship with ACS/Buck in July of last year.  In my opinion, this will continue to be a hot sub-market with tremendous potential ROI.

Let’s keep the conversation going. 

Convergys is not to be vilified for their financial results, as the market has devolved to a state whereby the victor in highly competitive HRO bidding processes is forced to subvert initial profitability in support of highly productive tailing revenues in outlying years.  The premise of success is not on the back of any single client implementation, but instead rests with the hope that economies of scale across multiple HRO clients will render the cost of any particular HR service line significantly lower, thus benefiting all participants. 

In large market HRO (15,000 employees and above), this has proven to be a daunting challenge.  The majority of these clients are complex, global organizations and may demand that the outsourcers retain the unique nuances of their employee-facing solutions.  This, at best, mitigates the net benefit of replicable solutions across multiple clientele and requires “one off” solutions to be supported in a highly volatile HR marketplace.

So will anyone “clean up” in this market?  Are HRO clients provided with proper incentives to modify their HR offerings in support of economies of scale?  Let’s keep the conversation going.

I would like to be the first to welcome you to Inflexion Point, the new blog offered by Inflexion Advisors.  Over the course of 2007, we will be offering our thoughts and observations across a variety of topics with a goal of providing informative, useful and provocative content to our members. 

As always, we welcome your feedback at any time either directly through this medium or via email at info@inflexionadvisors.com.  Thank you for registering and look for additional content over the next few days.

Warm regards, Mark Stelzner