Q What are your secrets of running HR like a business?
Running HR like a business means delivering on the ambition to provide the best HR consumer experiences for our employees. To do this, HR professionals need to leverage digitization – with technology, we can analyze and simplify things faster than ever. We have the opportunity to adapt to the requirements of our talents and create positive experiences for them.
In the past years at SAP, we have been optimizing our services on an operational level. By simplifying and standardizing our operations, we constantly improved our consumers’ satisfaction. With our focus on HR Consumer Experiences, we are now shifting gears and are going beyond the operational level. We leverage X-data (experience data) and O-data (operational data) to get a holistic view of our HR Consumer Experiences. We use this data to identify “Moments that Matter” to our employees. We then design Wow-Experiences for the identified Moments that Matter to create a lasting emotional impact with our employees.
Q Where specifically can AI be used in HR and how can it help us understand employee’s needs?
Artificial intelligence (AI) allows technology to perform some of the tasks formerly undertaken by humans, leveraging data algorithms. In the context of HR, this is particularly true; AI can boost the effectiveness and efficiency of high-volume processes with the previously often high manual workload.
For example, recruiters have already begun to reap the benefits of AI to source potential candidates. HR teams often have to scour through countless CVs and cover letters, according to a survey of talent acquisition leaders, 52% said that the most difficult part of the recruitment process is recognizing talent from a gigantic pool of applicants. These time-consuming tasks can be easily automated with AI. Disregarding gender and ethnicity, the software will help shortlist the most suitable candidates for a certain position. This process, that would normally take weeks to complete by a person, is done in just a few minutes with AI. Thus, the role of HR professionals moves more towards ensuring a positive employee experience, HR teams can dedicate more time to developing strategies, engaging with employees, and supporting a progressively more diverse workforce.
Q When you think of the future of work, what do you imagine?
The future of work for employees looks bright with jobs being more meaningful and more intellectually stimulating. Basic, repetitive and time-consuming tasks will be finished in minutes with AI, machine learning and automated tools. This will give employees more freedom to experiment and innovate, providing higher-level value to their companies. Employees will be able to easier share their ambition and wishes – the future of work will foster better Employee Experiences. Companies and leaders will have more information to actively address the needs and requirements of individuals, resulting in a better partnership and experience for everyone. And already today at SAP, we use our own Qualtrics solutions for our People Survey to get fast and frequent feedback from our employees to act quickly and improve their experiences.
Q Inclusive culture empowers every employee. How do you think, what are the ways of infusing inclusion with the help of hr technology?
At SAP, our commitment to diversity and inclusion plays an integral role in our success. As a global organization with employees from more than 150 nationalities, across five generations, and from all walks of life, we know that for our company to perform at its best our employees must feel free to be their authentic selves.
Technology helps us bring this to life, from tracking our ambitious targets for KPIs such as Women in Management to identifying areas where SAP employees embrace workplace diversity, to helping our leaders with smart coaching applications. We use Artificial Intelligence to help us develop tomorrow’s leaders to be empathetic, inclusive and responsive.
This culture of inclusion not only helps to make us a great place to work, but also drives the success of our business. When people feel free to express who they are, the result is greater engagement and creativity. When teams reflect who our customers are, we can better understand and meet their needs. When we collaborate with others who have different points of view, we come up with a greater mix of ideas that spurs our innovation.
Meet Christian Schmeichel in person and learn so much more first-hand from him and other senior HR practitioners, talent acquisition experts, global executives, from large complex organizations with their valuable insights on HR trends and the future of work to learn how to manage human resources, at the TOP HR event of the year – Attend our upcoming HR Vision event – register now!
