Tag: HR technology

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The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace

communication with artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers or the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior.

Despite its nascent nature, the ubiquity of AI applications is already transforming everyday life for the better.

Whether discussing smart assistants like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, applications for better customer service or the ability to utilize big data insights to streamline and enhance operations, AI is quickly becoming an essential tool of modern life and business.

In fact, according to statistics from Adobe, only 15 percent of enterprises are using AI as of today, but 31 percent are expected to add it over the coming 12 months, and the share of jobs requiring AI has increased by 450 percent since 2013.

Leveraging clues from their environment, artificially intelligent systems are programmed by humans to solve problems, assess risks, make predictions and take actions based on input data.

Cementing the “intelligent” aspect of AI, advances in technology have led to the development of machine learning to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to perform the task. With machine learning, algorithms and statistical models allow systems to “learn” from data, and make decisions, relying on patterns and inference instead of specific instructions.

Unfortunately, the possibility of creating machines that can think raises myriad ethical issues. From pre-existing biases used to train AI to social manipulation via newsfeed algorithms and privacy invasions via facial recognition, ethical issues are cropping up as AI continues to expand in importance and utilization. This notion highlights the need for legitimate conversation surrounding how we can responsibly build and adopt these technologies.

How Do We Keep AI-Generated Data Safe, Private and Secure?

As an increasing number of AI enabled devices are developed and utilized by consumers and enterprises around the globe, the need to keep those devices secure has never been more important. AI’s increasing capabilities and utilization dramatically increase the opportunity for nefarious uses. Consider the dangerous potential of autonomous vehicles and weapons like armed drones falling under the control of bad actors.

As a result of this peril, it has become crucial that IT departments, consumers, business leaders and the government, fully understand cybercriminal strategies that could lead to an AI-driven threat environment. If they don’t, maintaining the security of these traditionally insecure devices and protecting an organization’s digital transformation becomes a nearly impossible endeavor.

How can we ensure safety for a technology that is designed to learn how to modify its own behavior? Developers can’t always determine how or why AI systems take various actions, and this will likely only grow more difficult as AI consumes more data and grows exponentially more complex.

For example, should law enforcement be able to access information recorded by AI devices like Amazon’s Alexa? In late 2018, a New Hampshire judge ordered the tech giant to turn over two days of Amazon Echo recordings in a double murder case. However, legal protections for this type of privacy-invading software remains unclear.

How Should Facial Recognition Technology Be Used?

The latest facial recognition applications can detect faces in a crowd with amazing accuracy. As such, applications for criminal identification and for determining the identity of missing people are growing in popularity. But these solutions also invoke a lot of criticism regarding legality and ethics.

People shouldn’t have to worry that law enforcement officials are going to improperly investigate or arrest them because a poorly designed computer system misidentified them. Unfortunately this is becoming a reality and the consequences for inaccurate facial recognition surveillance could turn deadly.

According to a 2017 blog post, Amazon’s facial recognition system, Rekognition, uses a confidence threshold set to 85 percent and upped that recommendation to a 99 percent confidence threshold not long after, but studies from the ACLU and MIT revealed that Rekognition had significantly higher error rates in determining demographic traits of certain members of the population than purported by Amazon.

Beyond accuracy (and the lack thereof in many cases), the other significant issue facing the technology is an abuse of its implementation — the “big brother” aspect.

In order to address privacy concerns, the U.S. Senate is reviewing the Commercial Facial Recognition Privacy Act, which seeks to implement legal changes that require companies to inform users before facial recognition data is acquired. This is in addition to the Biometric Information Privacy Act of Illinois, which is not specifically targeted at facial recognition but requires organizations to obtain consent to acquire biometric information, and that consent cannot be by default, it has to be given as a result of affirmative action.

As San Francisco works to ban use of the technology by local law enforcement, the divisive debate over the use — or potential misuse — of facial recognition rages on. The public needs to consider whether the use of facial recognition is about safety, surveillance and convenience or if it’s simply a way for advertisers or the government to track us. What is the government and private sector’s responsibility in using facial recognition and when is the line crossed?

How Should AI Be Used to Monitor the Public Activity of Citizen?

The future of personalized marketing and advertising is already here. AI can be combined with previous purchase behavior to tailor experiences for consumers and allow them to find what they are looking for faster. But don’t forget that AI systems are created by humans, who can be biased and judgmental. By displaying information and preferences that a buyer would prefer to keep secret, while more personalized and connected to an individual’s identity, this application of AI technology could evoke sentiments surrounding privacy invasion. Additionally, this solution would require storing an incredible amount of data, which may not be feasible or ethical.

Consider the notion that companies may be misleading you into giving away rights to your data. The impact is these organizations can now detect and target the most depressed, lonely or outraged people in society. Consider the instance when Target determined that a teen girl was pregnant and started to send coupons for baby items according to her pregnancy score. Her unsuspecting father was none too pleased about his high-schooler receiving ads that, in his mind, encouraged his daughter to get pregnant — and he let the retail giant know about it.

Unfortunately, not only are businesses gathering eye-opening amounts of information — many are being racially, economically and socially selective with the data being collected. And by allowing discriminatory ads to slip through the net, companies are opening a Pandora’s box of ethical issues.

How Far Will AI go to Improve Customer Service?

Today, AI is often employed to complement the role of human employees, freeing them up to complete the most interesting and useful tasks. Rather than focusing on the time-consuming, arduous jobs, AI now allows employees to focus on how to harness the speed, reach and efficiency of AI to work even more intelligently. AI systems can remove a significant amount of friction borne from interactions between customers and employees.

Thinking back to the advent of Google’s advertising business model and then the launch of Amazon’s product recommendation engine and Netflix’s ubiquitous “suggested for you” algorithm, consumers face a dizzying number of targeted offers. Sometimes this can be really convenient when you notice that your favorite author has come out with a new book, or the next seasons of a popular show launched. Other times it comes across as incredibly invasive and seemingly in violation of basic privacy rights.

As AI becomes more prominent across the enterprise, its application is a new issue that society has never been forced to consider or manage before. While the application of AI delivers a lot of good, it can also be used to harm people in various ways, and the best way to combat ethical issues is to be very transparent. Consequently, we — as technology developers and manufacturers, marketers and people in the tech space — have a social and ethical responsibility to be open to scrutiny and consider the ethics of artificial intelligence, working to hinder the misuse and potential negative effects of these new AI technologies.

Rob Carpenter is the founder and CEO of Valyant AI, a Colorado-based artificial intelligence company focused on customer service in the quick-serve restaurant industry.

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Is Blockchain the Next Frontier in Combating Sexual Harassment?

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

Vault Platform has developed an app that uses blockchain technology to allow employees to document and report workplace sexual harassment on their smartphones.

“Interesting,” you say,” but what’s blockchain technology?”

Great question. I asked my partner, David Croft, who chairs Meyers Roman’s Blockchain & Cryptocurrency practice group. His answer: “Blockchains are decentralized databases, maintained by a distributed network of computers that rely on network effects and economic incentives to secure the network.”

In other words, blockchains are secure bits of data secured across a decentralized network of digital devices, for which the keys to unlock rely on every other block in the chain. Or, described another way (per Blockgeeks)—

A blockchain is a growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block a timestamp, and transaction data. By design, a blockchain is resistant to modification of the data. It is “an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way. …

A blockchain is, in the simplest of terms, a time-stamped series of immutable record of data that is managed by cluster of computers not owned by any single entity. Each of these blocks of data (i.e. block) are secured and bound to each other using cryptographic principles (i.e. chain).

Which brings us back to Vault Platform’s sexual harassment documentation and reporting app.

The app uses blockchain technology to provide a safe space or a “vault” allowing workers to write reports of harassment and store any evidence, says Neta Meidav, CEO of Vault Platform. The vault itself is private, she says, but at any time workers can use the app to send that information directly to HR. …

If workers decide to report harassment directly to their HR department they have two options, they can elect to individually report or they can choose to go together, Meidav says. By using go together, the platform will search for other complaints about the same individual. If others exist, then the reports will all be sent to HR together. If not, then it will be held until another employee reports that person. …

“The technology will identify if there has been past or present complaints about this person as well,” she says. “Your claim will go to HR with other people who have reported in the past.”

Blockchain has the potential to transform human resources management. It’s being used in hiring and recruiting, paying employees and contractors, tracking time and attendance, and verifying backgrounds (among other uses).

This post is in no means an endorsement of Vault Platform. I’ve never used it and don’t know of any company that has; everything I know about it is from reading its website and the few articles about it I found on the internet. That said, it is illustrative of how blockchain may, in the near future, disrupt HR.

If you are not at least investigating how blockchain technology can help you organization take its HR management to the next level and into the future, you are doing your business a disservice. Thankfully, I know a few attorneys who are at the ready to help.

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Here Are the 4 Must-Know Trends in Gig Hiring

ethics

Hailing a ride. Delivering takeout. Tidying up the house.

They all fall under the growing list of services offered in the gig economy. Many of us have made such conveniences staples in our personal lives.

More businesses have started using gig economy services through online labor platforms. Think of the platforms as Uber-style portals that connect companies with on-demand talent. While the gig economy as a whole is not growing as fast as headlines would indicate, the labor platforms that help fuel them are.

Why have these matchmaker platforms gained steam in corporate America?

The reasons vary, though most boil down to the challenges associated with today’s tight labor market. Rising labor costs and a dwindling number of available workers have compelled companies to seek new options when it comes to recruiting.

And as a sign of their growing popularity, the companies that use platforms to tap gig workers extend well beyond small businesses and niche start-ups. Today, large legacy companies count platforms as key tools in their staffing toolkits.

Here are four ways businesses are integrating gig-style platforms into their talent acquisition strategies.

Hiring Blue-Collar Workers

Who would have ever thought? These days, companies have more difficulty recruiting blue-collar workers than white-collar workers.

Young adults are shying away from the trades and manual work and instead are flocking to white-collar work. And at the same time, those who perform much of America’s blue-collar work — baby boomers — continue retiring in droves.

Blue-collar shortages will persist for at least another decade in sectors including hospitality, transportation, manufacturing and retail. Without a sufficient pool of available workers, companies will have to offer higher wages and absorb weakened corporate profits as a result.

Consider Coca-Cola, which uses the platform Wonolo to hire merchandise delivery drivers for restocking shelves in between scheduled deliveries. For fast-moving consumer-goods companies like Coke, hiring drivers on demand can mean avoiding “out of stocks” and salvaging billions of dollars in revenue missed due to empty shelves.

Developing Talent Marketplaces In-House

Rather than rely on outside third-party platforms, some companies are creating their own. Internal freelance platforms can offer many benefits: workers who are a better cultural fit, distilled onboarding so they can hit the ground running, and reduced compliance and IP risks.

PwC has developed its own platform and talent network. While initially focusing on alumni and its current community of contractors, it also accepts external independent professionals to bid on projects. And then there’s The Washington Post. Its internal platform streamlines the process of hiring freelance journalists from anywhere to cover almost any subject, allowing them to more effectively report breaking news.

These in-house labor platforms, with their hand-picked talent pools and direct connections to internal projects and teams, encourage ongoing relationships between companies and independent contractors. As such, both parties benefit.

Hiring On-Demand Teams

The conventional thinking is that online gigs work best for one-off tasks or discrete projects that can be completed by an individual. Think of driving from point A to point B, designing a new company logo or tagging website images.

But rather than focus on individual freelancers, companies can now turn to “flash organizations.” Such groups comprise teams that are assembled on demand and then disband after they finish the project. In much the same way that a Hollywood film is created — by hiring a director, producer, and actors, all with predefined roles — a flash organization fills a predefined hierarchy of temporary roles. But it does so dynamically, using algorithms that source talent from online labor platforms.

IBM and Mastercard have used Gigster’s AI-driven platform to hire on-demand software development teams. Using these teams, the companies designed and created programs in a matter of days or weeks, compared to months of planning and sourcing using legacy hierarchies.

Achieving Innovation Through Crowdsourcing

To accelerate innovation, some companies are leveraging not teams but, rather, the power of the crowd. General Electric uses various crowdsourcing platforms, including its own GeniusLink and Fuse, to find solutions to tough engineering problems and innovate new products. For example, in one crowdsourced competition, an Indonesian engineer solved the company’s challenge to increase airplane fuel efficiency by reducing the weight of a single part by 84 percent.

The scope of services being offered through on-demand workforce platforms is widening. Expect online labor platforms — especially those outside of transportation — to continue innovating on the types and modes of work that independent contractors can complete. As such, labor platforms will intensify their offerings of enterprise solutions so that more businesses can use them for taking their talent efforts up a notch.

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Don’t Slack on Employee Communication

If you have more than a handful of employees chances are they are using some kind of internal communication platform.

Maybe they are among the 10 million people who use Slack every day, or maybe you’ve deployed Microsoft Teams, Yammer, Workplace by Facebook, or some other internal chat tool.

The key is, your employees have a place to collaborate, plan projects, brainstorm and share ideas. But are you sure that is all they are doing?

If a company has a communication culture where sexist jokes are casually exchanged, or employees think it’s OK to share client information via chat, it’s a just a matter of time before a crisis occurs. With that kind of risk simmering in the background, companies can’t just assume employees are following all the data-privacy rules and social protocols when using these internal platforms.

Unless HR is paying attention, these seemingly valuable collaboration platforms can quickly become problematic, said Jeff Schumann, CEO of Aware, a provider of monitoring software for collaboration platforms.

“A large company might have thousands of different public chat groups going at any given time,” he said. Thousands more employees will be exchanging private messages with other individuals or small groups. “It’s important to know what they are saying.”

Chances are employees are sharing information or communicating in a way that HR should be worried about. Columbus, Ohio-based Aware’s “Human Behavior Risk Analysis” report found that 1 in 50 private messages on these platforms contains sensitive information, including passwords and client data, and 1 in 90 are “negative in nature.” They also found that 1 in every 250 public messages — those shared with a large group — contain confidential information.

The challenge is how to monitor these conversations and respond without scaring people away. Smaller companies can mitigate these risks through human monitoring — assigning an HR person or team leader to keep track of the conversations and to address any issues that arise. But in big companies such oversight is impossible.

Instead, many firms are utilizing monitoring software with artificial intelligence and natural language processing to constantly read messages and alert HR if a problem arises. These platforms can be often customized to look for certain types of information, or conversations that might indicate a regulatory risk (sharing client data), or suggest cultural concerns, or forms of harassment.

Taking a proactive approach gives companies the information they need to prevent data breaches and to respond to bullying, racism or other negative exchanges, said Linda Pophal, founder of Strategic Communications, an employee communications consulting firm.

“If it’s a small issue, managers can address the issue privately,” Pophal said. But if the exchange represents a bigger systemic problem or it puts the company at risk, HR should be ready to step in. In these cases, a response may involve deleting the post, reprimanding the people involved and sending out a companywide reminder about appropriate use of these chat tools.

Pophal also urged HR leaders to post a follow-up message about how the situation was resolved. “You can’t just take something down and assume no one will notice,” she said. “Use these situations as an opportunity to communicate what’s happened, and to change the direction of the conversation.”

Pulse of the Workforce

She noted that monitoring isn’t only useful to uncover communication mistakes. HR leaders can also use monitoring as a way to gauge employee sentiment. “If something is going on at the company people are talking about it,” Pophal said. Monitoring these platforms lets you know what they are saying. Maybe they are mad about hikes in health insurance costs or confused about the new paid time off program. “HR can track these conversations and respond when necessary.”

They can also see when people are excited about a new program and to identify who are the communication influencers and who is opting out of the conversation, added Laura Hamill, chief people officer of Limeade, an employee experience software company. Hamill also is chief science officer of Limeade Institute, which researches employee well-being, engagement and other workplace issues. “Monitoring gives you a sense of whether people feel engaged,” she said.

These platforms provide employees with a virtual community that becomes inherent to the workplace culture. “Monitoring won’t solve your communication problems,” she said. But when HR pays attention to how people communicate, and sets the tone for appropriate behavior, it will ensure that everyone feels safe, included, and connected.

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The DMV and Cybersecurity

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

I spent way too much of a recent Saturday morning at the local department of motor vehicles. My plates were expiring and I had forgotten to take advantage of online registration.

So there I found myself at 10 a.m. waiting in line. To be fair, it was the “express” line, designated for registration renewals only. My experience, however, was less than express, thanks to the patron two spots ahead of me.

On her turn, the clerk asked for information stored in some account on her phone. She did not, however, remember the necessary password. She then removed an inch-thick flipbook of Post-it notes, each containing a login and password to a different account.

I watched her rifle through the stack. Ten minutes of life that I will never regain, with my frustration mirrored on the faces of everyone else in line.

One of the top cybersecurity tips is to maintain proper password security. Storing passwords on a notepad or stack of sticky notes does not qualify as secure. What does?

• Using passwords with differing types of characters.

• Avoiding the most common passwords (like “Pa$Sw0rD”).

• Setting a regular schedule to change passwords (although some research shows that most people use near identical passwords when forced to switch).

Four issues warrant additional discussion.

First, do not reuse the same passwords across multiple accounts. If one account is hacked, you’ve exposed every other account for which you’ve used the same password.

Recently, for example, Intuit disclosed that its TurboTax product had suffered just such an attack. The criminal accessed TurboTax user accounts by taking usernames and passwords it had stolen from a non-Intuit source to attempt TurboTax logins.

For those with which it was successful, the criminal was able to obtain sensitive tax return information. (If you want to know if one or more of your online accounts has been compromised, check out haveibeenpwned.com.)

If you are not going to reuse the same password across multiple accounts, how will you generate and remember hundreds of different and complex passwords? The answer brings us to point number two. Use a password manager.

A password manager is an online service that stores all of your passwords (encrypted on their end). All you need to do to unlock the password for any given account is to recall the lone master password you have chosen for your password manager of choice. Passwords are also synced across devices.

The top competitors offer variations on the same service. Compare and contrast pricing, what each offers and pick one. The money you spend on an annual subscription pales exponentially to what you will spend undoing the damage caused by an account compromised by a weak password.

The question I get most often regarding password managers? “Aren’t you worried about them being hacked?”

Technically yes, but functionally no. At least one has been hacked without the exposure of even a single user password because all of the stored data is highly encrypted.

If you are comparing the security of reusing passwords or using different password but storing them in a notebook or sticky-note flipbook versus a password manager, the security choice is clear.

Third, check your URLs and only input account information on sites that use HTTPS web encryption.

HTTPS provides an encrypted online session between you and whichever site you are visiting. With a non-HTTPS site, everything you send is visible to anyone on the same network. Even safer, use a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, to create a secure channel between your computer and the internet.

Finally, use two-factor authentication for any account that offers it.

Two-factor authentication, or 2FA, requires a user to input a unique code sent to a device of choice (usually by text message) any time they log in to an account from a new device. 2FA is not foolproof.

For example, it does not take much skill for even a low-level cybercriminal to steal a phone number and intercept the code. More complexly, criminals can use social engineering to ape one’s identity and trick a mobile company to send a new SIM card to the attacker, diverting all 2FA text messages to the criminal’s mobile device.

Thus, while one should not rely on 2FA as the only method to secure one’s account, it’s added layer of security certainly can’t hurt.

No one is immune from being hacked. However, taking a few simple (albeit mildly inconvenient) steps to secure your passwords and accounts will go a long way to mitigating against this very serious and costly risk.

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We’re Addicted to … Everything? How to Handle Digital Addictions in the Workplace

As the years go on, so too does the list of things to which people become addicted. Emerging front and center as a relatively new but common modern addiction — to which employers are having difficulty responding — is the concept of a digital addiction.

A digital addiction is more than a mindless but incessant checking of one’s phone, more than browsing Facebook while taking a break from company-focused work. It is a complete disruption to and dysregulation of the daily life of an individual, due to compulsions to engage in the addictive and cyclical behaviors.

Digital Addictions and Treatment

Like other addictions, a digital addiction essentially renders an “addict” unable to perform a major life activity, such as sleeping, eating or working. As with other addictions, a digital addiction often arises out of feelings of discontent, stress, pressure, anxiety, depression or other underlying mental health condition. Although the behaviors themselves (use of electronic devices) may seem more benign than drugs, alcohol or sex, the personal impact is no less severe.

And perhaps even more concerning is the fact that digital addictions can be hard to spot and even harder to stop. We live in a day and age that virtually necessitates constant and unwavering digital and electronic connection. Behaviors that may be dangerous for a minority of the population with a digital addiction are entirely socially acceptable for the majority of individuals, rendering the line between an addiction and a habit blurrier than ever.

As the prevalence and understanding of digital addictions rises, so too does an understanding of the disorder and its treatment. Although this addiction is not yet recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or the DSM-5, treatment programs are seeing the growing need for programs specifically tailored to digital and gaming addictions. Additionally, organizations worldwide have begun conducting investigations and research into the impact of a digital addiction upon both the quality and productivity of life.

What Does This Mean for Employers?

In recent years, employers have come to understand their obligations related to mental health issues and disabilities — employees are to be granted reasonable accommodations for mental health disorders the same as they would be for a physical disorder or illness. This includes, when applicable, leave to attend treatment on an inpatient, partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient or outpatient basis under federal laws like the Family Medical Leave Act or Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as state laws, like the California Family Rights Act and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act. What then is an employer’s obligation if an employee exhibits a digital addiction?

It is prudent to accommodate an individual with a digital addiction the same way you would accommodate any other individual: engage in the interactive process and review and discuss any restrictions, limitations or accommodations that may be needed. While there may be concerns regarding an employee’s ability to return to work in the digital age after receiving treatment for a directly related addiction, this concern cannot be used as a basis to engage in an adverse action against an employee.

This remains the case even if the disorder is not officially “diagnosable.” In other words, an employer must take a digital addiction seriously, even if it does not understand the addiction or personally believe the addiction is legitimate.

Where Do We Go From Here?

For now, there are several best practices employers can use concerning digital addictions. An up-to-date compliant handbook with policies addressing leaves and accommodations goes a long way. A handbook creates the foundation for your policies and procedures. If your handbook is wrong, or if you do not have a handbook at all, your internal policies and procedures are much more likely to be problematic and subject to tougher scrutiny.

Your handbook also needs to be acknowledged by your employees. You can use an employee’s acknowledgement to show they were well aware you were more than willing to reasonably accommodate them and welcomed any and all accommodation requests.

Documentation. Document notice of an employee’s alleged disability; meetings and communications discussing the alleged disability; and requested, offered or denied accommodations. Without documentation of this interactive process, it may as well have never happened.

Train your managers and supervisors. They can make or break your defense. They typically receive notice of an alleged disability or requested accommodation first. If they fail to take this seriously and begin the interactive process, your defense can be severely undermined. They need to know what constitutes “notice,” that the company has interactive process obligations and how to handle accommodation requests.

Do not be too quick in denying accommodations. The law requires that you participate in a “good faith” interactive process, which means considering each and every possible reasonable accommodation in “good faith.” Document any legitimate reasons why an accommodation may not be “reasonable,” but understand that not everything is “unreasonable.” While employers do not have to provide accommodations that are unduly burdensome, “undue burden” is an extremely tough standard to meet and is looked at primarily in financial terms by courts.

Finally, stay up-to-date on changes in the law concerning digital addictions. A critical part of avoiding future claims is being aware of your ever-changing legal obligations.

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Collaboration Tools Are Great for Communication — Provided They Are Properly Implemented

employee communications

Organizations around the globe are communicating with employees through digital tools to improve engagement and retention, increase productivity and more.

poor communication

Connected workforces improve time-to-innovation by 31 percent, according to a McKinsey report. Digitally connected employees are 51 percent more likely to have strong job satisfaction and 43 percent more likely to have a positive view of work-life balance compared to workers who lack these tools, according to a recent study.

A growing number of organizations are adopting collaboration platforms such as Workplace by Facebook, Yammer and Microsoft Teams to break down silos, create a more vibrant culture, and foster a community of real-time teamwork. For instance, Workplace by Facebook provides a user experience similar to the company’s popular social media tools, enabling organizations to engage employees in a variety of ways, from live leadership broadcasts and news updates to polls and sentiment surveys.

Yet many organizations lag behind in implementing these tools. Because of their positive impacts on innovation and connectivity, use of digital collaboration platforms often pop up in pockets of organizations as employees seek more efficient ways to work. This unsanctioned shadow IT often lacks the appropriate governance or compliance mechanisms, carrying with it a myriad of risks, such as insider threats or vulnerable data. The organization must then play catch-up to roll out collaboration in a more controlled way.

Given the impacts on employee engagement, HR leaders often play a major role in the adoption of collaboration tools. But it’s important to look before you leap. Human behavior risk can proliferate without the right controls. The informal communication that speeds innovation can also cross the line into sexual harassment, discrimination and bullying. It’s essential to provide safeguards that ensure employees behave appropriately within these digital platforms to protect the company culture.

Others will share these concerns:

  • Cybersecurity will need to understand any new types of threats collaboration brings into the technology landscape. While enterprise-grade collaboration platforms are highly secure from outside attacks, it is essential to mitigate potential insider threats. Whether accidental or malicious, the chatty environment of collaboration tools can cause an employee to divulge sensitive or confidential information to the wrong people.
  • Compliance will have questions regarding data privacy regulations such as HIPAA and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, which went into effect in 2018. In industries such as healthcare and financial services, it is essential to have a process to enforce data removal and retention policies. Compliance will also want to know what measures will be in place to ensure employees adhere to the organization’s policies and guidelines for appropriate behavior, including in closed or secret groups.
  • Legal will have be concerned with addressing legal hold situations and efficiently completing eDiscovery processes and internal forensics investigations. Unlike email, collaboration tools offer revision or deletion functionalities on messages and shared content. This can create liability and compliance concerns. As a result, legal may require access to an archive of all public and private content relevant to pending litigation – including revisions and deletions.

To address these stakeholder concerns, organizations need an effective community management strategy when rolling out digital collaboration. This strategy will define what endorsed behavior looks like, along with a response plan for unsanctioned or distracting behavior. It will also detail how the community manager will monitor the digital community and reinforce the desired behaviors.

Community managers should introduce accompanying solutions that satisfy stakeholder needs. This will keep unexpected incidents or requirements from threatening digital workplace rollouts. These include:

  • A well-configured monitoring tool that scans public and private conversation areas. This solution will automate the day-to-day work of digital community management, providing real-time alerts as issues arise. Real-time surfacing of concerning content—whether an HR violation or a sensitive data share—is critical to reinforcing desired collaboration behaviors.
  • A searchable archive that serves as a protection against legal action. Introduce a practice of storing authored messages and posts, as well as corresponding context—including revisions and deletions. Legal teams can then efficiently search and extract relevant conversation data for litigation scenarios.
  • A data management solution that enforces retention policies, satisfies user data removal requests outlined by the GDPR as well as supports the need to manage legal holds. Organizations own the conversation data that is generated by workers. It is critical to have a way to purge, protect and extract as needed.

By staying mindful of stakeholder needs, champions of collaboration will address the risks and requirements that can derail organization’s collaboration rollout. By identifying and addressing these issues before employees start using the platform, community managers can ensure a positive user experience and digital workplace sponsorship across the organization’s leadership.

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The New Rules Around Communication to Engage Global Teams

For managers who are building or inheriting teams in today’s fast-paced, digitally enabled business environment, things are far more interesting, productive and creative. But that doesn’t simplify managing a modern global team.

Most enterprise companies now do business overseas, and they employ teams that span many boundaries: cultural, functional, geographic and global teams are becoming more of the norm. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, worldwide employment by U.S. multinational enterprises increased 0.4 percent from 42.1 million in 2015 to 42.3 million workers in 2016 (the latest year available).

The good news is that people typically enjoy working on global teams. Based on data from a 2019 “Global Employee Survey” conducted by my company, professional employer organization Globalization Partners, 72 percent of people said they like to be part of global teams but like them even more when they feel listened to and treated fairly. Also, the flexibility in work locations lets companies hire the best talent anywhere in the world, and the diversity that comes from global teams can be a huge benefit.

But there are challenges that generally fall into three types: communications, logistics and culture. Communication issues are no surprise, but if not tended to can snowball to become serious problems. Also, the same diversity that brings new ideas into the mix and inspires us can cause conflict and disagreement, or misunderstandings and hurt feelings.

What does it take to succeed in managing a global team? It rolls up to two kinds of activities: establishing good systems and establishing trust.

Establishing good systems means following the laws and knowing the customs in the places where your organization does business, taking the time to understand how your team will need to work together and then acquiring the technology to support it. It also means communicating with your team — in a firm, clear and inclusive way — to help them adhere to those systems and use those tools. Here are some best practices.

  • Understand the law. Work with finance, legal and HR teams to be sure you are always operating according to local laws.
  • Set up centralized information sharing. Make sure your team can all access the same files and tools, and establish centralized, cloud-based sharing to save yourself endless headaches and revision nightmares.
  • Establish strong communications methods. Choose your tech wisely and stick to it. Plan for differences in schedules and augment text-based communication (email, instant message, text) with face-to-face meetings whenever possible using online video tools. Difficulty with languages or accents? Try more text-based collaboration.
  • Rotate time zones fairly. Introduce your team to tools like world clocks, which tell you what time it is anywhere in the world. When scheduling meetings be sure not to eat up all your “golden hour overlap” time when everyone is available with meetings, leaving no time for spontaneous collaboration. Also, be aware and respectful of holidays, which of course differ from region to region.
  • Encourage participation and communication. Make sure the processes and tools you put into place encourage people from all backgrounds to have a voice in the conversation. People who connect daily with global team members feel more connected, engaged and involved than those who don’t.

It’s a lot easier to build processes than trust, but you will need both to be successful. In terms of establishing trust, global virtual managers don’t get the benefits of managing by walking around that local managers get, so you’ll have to make up for it in other ways. Here are a few.

  • Do your culture homework. The very act of expressing genuine interest in an individual and their background improves morale and understanding. According to our survey data, more than two-thirds of employees (68 percent) say their companies struggle at least some of the time to align with, be sensitive about and adhere to local laws, practices and cultures.
  • Understand working styles and communications. In addition to understanding cultures, get to know your employees as individuals. Be sensitive to how people from a “dominant” culture within the team may frustrate team members from a region that is less represented or that has differing cultural norms and values.
  • Set goals, communicate, motivate and inspire: This is Manager 101, but with all the unique challenges of managing a dispersed team it can fall by the wayside. Be sure you’re working with those team members, not just on deliverables but also on their development.
  • Know your tech. Be willing to tailor your communication style and medium to the needs of different employees, based on things like time zones and language barriers.
  • Be available. The most successful managers make themselves available across multiple time zones and through different means of technology (IM, Slack, Skype, email, phone and text).
  • Check in frequently and consistently. Global team members who connect daily with their co-workers feel more engaged and involved than those who don’t. Employees who feel like they belong are 93 percent more likely to say they feel optimistic about their company’s’ future.

 As more companies continue to enter the global game, they will need to make it a priority to build and nurture a local team, set them up with compliant, equitable systems, demonstrate an understanding of local culture, and establish communications practices that make them feel valued and heard. If not, they risk losing the much sought-after international employees that can be so hard to find.

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Building Healthy Communications With a Remote Workforce

employee communication, hearing, talk, schedules

Over the past two decades, digital technologies have enabled more and more companies to utilize remote and mobile workers.employee communications

Virtual teams are commonplace, and they offer benefits for both the employer and the employee. But developing a healthy virtual culture is vital to ensure dispersed team members feel connected, engaged and valued.

According to a Global Analytics Workplace survey, 4.3 million people work from home at least half of the time, and the telecommuter population has grown 11.7 percent since 2008. Data show that working remotely is desired by employees, and the trend of working off-site isn’t going away.

Remote workers may consist of project teams working together at a remote site, individuals working independently and traveling frequently, such as salespersons, and people who work from home.

Communicating With Remote Teams

With project teams working in different locations, it is important for the leader to travel to the site regularly. Site visits allow the leader to pick up on subtle indicators of culture. Being there is often the only way the leader can assess the office environment: Do team members seem happy? Do they help each other? Do they engage in informal conversations or does everyone have their heads down? Do they feel supported by the company or cast away and forgotten?

By coming to the site, the leader can gauge what actions need to be taken to improve morale and connectedness. But more important, visiting the site lets the remote staff know that they are an important part of the team.

Research indicates the factor that most affects engagement at work is the employee’s relationship with the direct manager, so having a strong connection to the local site manager is more important than connecting with corporate leaders.

Visits from corporate may be rare when companies entrust local leaders with developing a strong culture, especially if the local culture mirrors headquarters. But other companies take an extra step by conducting strategy and vision meetings at remote work sites to help ensure buy-in and strengthen connections.

In his book “Drive,” Daniel Pink points out that people are most engaged when they have autonomy, purpose and mastery at work. Autonomy is being able to work according to your own schedule and the way you like to work, free of micromanagement provided deadlines and goals are met.

Purpose is feeling that the work you do matters and that you are aligned with the values of your organization. Mastery is being able to do high quality work and improve every day. Managers can keep remote workers engaged by providing clear goals so they know what success looks like, letting them know what quality is expected, and communicating with them frequently to learn what they care about and explain how their work aligns with the company’s goals.

Communicating With Individuals Working Remotely

Compared to on-site teams, more effort is required to make individuals working remotely feel connected. They are easily overlooked, whether intentionally or not.

An organization, for example, can address the “out of sight, out of mind” problem during video conference calls by placing large photos of remote team members in chairs around the table so everyone in the meeting room can remember their remote colleagues.

Another tip for including remote workers in virtual meetings is to remember to send the agenda and other information well in advance rather than handing out materials in the meeting and realizing remote workers don’t have them. This is also a good practice if you have introverts in the group who like to prepare and think about the topic ahead of time.

Another good practice is to have a meeting facilitator who can make sure remote workers get a chance to speak. It can be hard to know when to enter a conversation when you are on video or on the telephone; a facilitator can look for openings to bring in remote participants.

When it comes to people working from home, it’s vital to communicate standards and expectations. Do you expect them to be online and available during certain hours? Do you only care that the job gets done and not how long they are at their desks?

Setting clear expectations makes everyone know the boundaries and lessens the need to “check-up” on remote workers. When people feel trusted they tend to live up to expectations.

If you manage remote workers, treat them as you would local staff. Make time for conversations, both work related and personal. Keep them aware of changes going on at headquarters and involve them in local activities such as charity events.

Because remote workers may not want to “bother” you constantly with minor concerns and comments, they may save them up until a later time. By then, however, issues may have been forgotten or may have festered and dealing with them may take longer than if they had been handled in the moment.

You may need to call on remote workers frequently to give them the opportunity to ask any questions and offer comments. Some managers post office hours when staff can drop in or call in; others establish set times each day for remote team leaders to check-in.

Providing feedback, both appreciative and developmental, is especially important for remote workers to help them know they are not toiling away in a forgotten backwater. Being aware of their career goals is also important; often remote workers must rely on their managers to keep them apprised of advancement opportunities within the organization.

With a little forethought, remote workers can feel appreciated as valuable members of your team.

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SAP SuccessFactors Gets Social by Teaming With Jobs on Facebook

Facebook and SAP announced integration that will allow SAP SuccessFactors to distribute job postings through the social networking site.

Specifically, users of SuccessFactors Recruiting can choose Jobs on Facebook as a source, then market their openings to Facebook’s community along with any other outlets selected for a particular posting. In addition, the integration provides analytics to measure performance at each step of the recruiting process.

For SuccessFactors, with its 6,700 customers and 100 million users, the partnership is a logical move to expand the reach of its recruiting tools. However, it isn’t clear how well the needs of SAP’s enterprise customers align with Facebook’s largely consumer audience.

SAP SuccessFactors
Jeff Mills, director of solutions marketing, SuccessFactors.

“The consensus seems to be that Facebook works pretty well for SMBs whose primary web presence is their Facebook company page, and/or companies that are hiring in sectors like hospitality or skilled trades,” said Jeff Dickey-Chasins, principal of JobBoardDoctor LLC, which consults with job board providers on a variety of issues. “LinkedIn definitely has the edge for white-collar workers, and its tools for recruiters are much more robust.”

Jeff Mills, SuccessFactors’ director of solutions marketing, has a different perspective. Many of his customers, including large enterprise organizations, have expressed interest in posting jobs on Facebook. “I do not agree that [Facebook] is best-suited to small, local businesses,” he said. “[Larger companies] are tapping into it more because it is a cost-effective way to reach a local audience.”

To Dickey-Chasins’ point, LinkedIn has an impressive presence in online recruiting. The site reports offering 20 million job postings, and says they result in an average of 4 million hires each year.

While Facebook doesn’t share its number of jobs available, in October 2018 it had filled more than 1 million positions since launching Jobs on Facebook in February 2017.

In any case, integration between HR technology vendors and sites like LinkedIn, Facebook or Indeed are common, Dickey-Chasins said. For one thing, they improve the candidate experience. When a product like SuccessFactors integrates with services that act as job-posting distributors, “that makes things easier for the candidate, which in theory should improve the successful apply rate,” he said.

A Question of Audience

Integrations like this may be more important to SuccessFactors and its competitors than they are to Facebook, observers say. For one thing, “the talent acquisition suite provider is a small fry in comparison to the whole audience that Facebook captures,” said Nikki Edwards, principal research analyst for HR outsourcing at NelsonHall.

JobBoardDoctor LLC
Jeff Dickey-Chasins, principal, JobBoardDoctor LLC.

On top of that, Dickey-Chasins suggested these partnerships don’t necessarily work to Facebook’s advantage. “Facebook wants to build an environment where its users never have any reason to leave, so an external integration is, to a certain degree, a negative for them,” he said. “They’d rather control the entire hiring process on their end.”

Facebook doesn’t see it that way. Jackie Chang, head of Business Platform Partnerships at Facebook, said the social network will “continue to identify strategic companies” in order to help businesses hire and people find work. “We’re looking to grow these partnerships,” she said. “We know many businesses are already working with HR solutions providers to manage their hiring needs and we want to make it easier for businesses to tap into the tools they already use, and help more people find jobs.”

In their publicity and marketing, HR solutions providers usually focus on how integrations offer customers a wider range of job-posting options. But just how much value end users realize depends on how sophisticated they are about the integration’s benefits, said Edwards.

“Whether the customers/users really care will depend on how savvy they are about the benefits these integrations can bring, and whether they’re using the [talent acquisition] suite to its full potential,” she explained. “Often, users are not.”

Both recruiters and analysts expect companies like SuccessFactors to continue integrating its services with the Facebooks of the world. Many platforms already have integrations in place, Edwards noted. SuccessFactors, Mills said, has integrations with “most major job boards in major markets.”

While she wouldn’t disclose how many partnerships Facebook has, Chang said the social media giant is working with JazzHR, Talentify, Workable and other vendors in addition to SuccessFactors.