Human behavior

Clinton Wingrove is passionate about HR. The CEO of Pilat (North America) Inc. lectures internationally on HR process technology, performance management, HR metrics and effectiveness and executive development, while his early career in work-study, operational research and computer systems design gave him a solid grounding in the importance of performance measurement that has stayed with him and now forms a solid reference point when designing HR processes to manage and improve individual performance. “If we cannot demonstrate and substantiate real value creation and/or individual growth, then we have to question the validity of what we are doing,” he says.

Wingrove’s personal passions are working with organizations to improve individual, unit and enterprise performance through the holistic design of processes, metrics and supporting IT. “If HR is to retain its seat on the board, it needs to be equipped with data of comparable quality and usefulness to other functions represented at the board-table, he says. “We must have sophisticated datasets (valid, reliable, comparable and useful) about our most valuable asset. Only then can we make robust and defensible decisions about our people and their jobs.”

So what functions does he believe HR software will perform over the coming years? And what features will this require? “The most critical functions in the coming few years will shift from transaction processing to more behavioral engineering processes such as retaining key talent, developing talent to realize its potential and managing individual performance to optimize output per person,” he enthuses.

He believes all business software, HR or not, should have certain functionality characteristics. “First of all, it should be quick and easy for users to access, identify what needs to be done, do it and get out. It should simplify processes but make them no simpler than they really are – effectiveness should never be compromised. Second, it should be sustainable; most applications work the first cycle, but the challenge is to build software on behavioral engineering principles so that people continue to use it when the excitement of the initial usage has waned. There must be reinforcement and consequences designed in. Third, it should optimize the data-support for decision-making. The interfaces provided should encourage people to provide data and increase the probability that it will be accurate (through interface design, process design and real-time validation and/or feedback), and should assist in the analysis and interpretation of data and protect users from their own misinterpretation wherever possible. In summary, it should ensure the availability of valid, reliable, differentiating and useful data about people, their jobs, their performance, their potential and the effectiveness and efficiency of the processes they use.”

Wingrove outlines a three-tier IT approach that companies should employ to identify, collate and make use of the best and most comprehensive data possible. “First, build systems that combine the best of process design and what contemporary technology can offer – systems that collect valid, reliable, differentiating and useful data about people, their jobs, their performance, their potential and the effectiveness and efficiency of the processes they use,” he says. Next, he advocates making appropriate tools available to enable people to use data in decision-making – to trigger actions based on data, present data in a meaningful way and use data to evaluate processes and decisions. Finally, companies should “provide tools to enable people to make sense of data and also to avoid misunderstanding of data.”

In order to address these issues, Pilat provides a range of HR process software applications to support performance management, succession planning, talent management and development management. These incorporate behavioral engineering concepts to increase the quality of data that is collected; validation and feedback tools to ensure data validity and reliability; data mining options to enable users to explore data and locate cause-and-effect relationships; and tools to explore and manage the issue of differentiation in data.

So with staffing increasingly seen as a key area of investment and a strategic resource, how can companies continually measure and evaluate performance and ROI? “Yearly reviews and appraisals are often necessary components of any organization’s performance review process as these are typically required to produce the data for performance-related reward and/or deployment decisions,” says Wingrove. “However, more contemporary performance management processes incorporate rolling reviews and assessments, rolling accumulation of multi-sourced progress information and ad hoc assessments.”

More contemporary processes also collect data about a wider range of factors, not merely goal achievement. Assessments are often now collected on capability (knowledge, skill, aptitude, experience); behavior and competency (how things were done, what contribution was made to the corporate culture); and development (to what extent has the individual grown to meet even greater challenges in the future?).

“Few organizations currently assess the true ROI of their performance management and/or succession planning processes and systems,” says Wingrove. “Like competency models, their value is taken as read. However, some are beginning to study the data that contemporary web-based process make available and are looking at cause-and-effect relationships: did those who displayed these competencies perform better? Did those how followed the process apparently perform better? Did those who were coached increase in their capability?”

And what of the future? In this regard, Wingrove cites software and web-based tools as key to the further improvement of HR services. “We have made excellent progress in the field of transaction cost reduction, which will show decreasing returns, and we have also made major advances in data collection. However, there is still enormous potential to exploit and deploy web-based technology to achieve greater behavioral engineering – to influence the very way in which people go about their work and development. So far we have only scratched the surface.”