Show report
Where e-HR meets e-Learning
Presenters: Bryan Hopkins and James Markham
It's something of a relief when the speaker's hidden agenda is
right up front. Hopkins and Markham blatantly admitted that they
were here to plug their book, 'E-HR:
Using Intranets to Improve the Effectiveness of Your People',
the fruits of their considerable experience in implementing e-HR
solutions. This experience formed the basis of Bryan Hopkins's section
of the presentation, with extra emphasis given to e-learning.
The big vision I got. It's about broader-based access to
HR information, with more 'self service' - i.e. employees
managing their own data and activities. The employee portal
provides a central point of access to personal details, performance
records, training information, job application systems, organisational
information, document management systems and benefits information.
Previously discrete strains of management information are
pulled together and allowed to cross-pollinate, forming new,
exciting configurations.
However, going down a level in granularity, Hopkins then
offered a definition of e-learning which I couldn't buy in
to so readily:
- Online self-paced courses
- Online workshops and briefings
- Just-in-time problem-solving tools
- Knowledge-sharing
This seemed, to my mind, to lack a few parts. No blended
learning, for instance, no collaborative learning, no learner
support…
Just-in-time problem-solving tools seemed to be given a great
deal of emphasis here (and also in other presentations) and
I wondered whether this was because it falls fairly easily
under the portal-based, self-service model - whereas issues
like blended learning can get far more 'messy'.
James Markham, the other part of the double act, then took
the stage, and outlined some factors that hinder e-learning
- cultural inertia, lack of line manager buy-in, infrastructure,
end-user technology illiteracy (join in if you know the words)
- and added some which in the future might help it prosper.
This list of helpers was not exactly earth-shattering, and
basically boiled down to people gradually accepting technology
more. I began to feel that the view of e-learning taken here
was a rather fuzzy, lo-res one.
Which is not in any way to belittle the speakers. It's just
that the presentation gained far more force and authority
when they talked about their real areas of specialisation,
which in Markham's case was the nitty-gritty of e-HR implementation.
Headbangers, tree-huggers and 'bridgers'
Markham has 20 years in business and people change. His specific
focus is 'how you actually make people do things differently'.
The ultimate success of an e-HR project, in his experience,
depended on the successful coming together of IT and HR. How
these two widely differing skillsets rub along together was
critical.
And there's the rub. Because attitudinally, culturally, and
in several other ways besides, IT and HR are about as far
divorced as it is possible for two business areas to be.
This set heads nodding in agreement around the auditorium,
and certainly chimed with my own experience. You only have
to visit a few trade shows. Tech expos are all about bullet-headed
men with laptops and glamour models in bacofoil miniskirts:
the stands are vast, flashy and deliberately intimidating.
Your average HR exhibition floor, by contrast, looks more
like a garden centre. Natural images of rocks, trees, chameleons,
kumquats, whatever, adorn every surface, with aromatherapy
foot massage on tap.
You'd be forgiven for concluding that this merger between
HR tree-huggers and IT headbangers is going to have a bit
of a hard time!
It seems, however, that a new breed of HR professionals is
busy being born that unites these two apparently contradictory
worlds. Markham and Hopkins set great store by these 'bridgers'
(not a word they used, but one I have seen frequently in other
contexts). They are vital people because while IT, with its
greater experience of writing technical specifications, can
do much of the job of buying in an e-HR system, it is HR that
ultimately has to own, drive and run it.
Markham gave plentiful examples of failed implementations
where these culture and change issues had not been successfully
tackled, with the resulting waste of millions of pounds. However
there were as many successes to point to, Barclays and Cable
& Wireless (Epic clients, I was pleased to note) among them.
He suggested that we reverse the balance that presently exists,
where 80% of spend goes into tech and only 20% into change
consultancy. But as a change consultant he would, wouldn't
he?
Ashley Wheaton goes twelve rounds with Ambiguity
Hopkins and Markham were joined for a panel discussion by
Ashley Wheaton of InfoBasis who, under questioning, divulged
his vision of an end-to-end learning process. There was a
steely clarity to his gaze as he outlined how technology would
coax the various ducks of skills management, objective setting,
content production, mentoring, collaboration and risk assessment
into a row.
I could almost see it. Almost. Is learning really an end-to-end
process? What about leadership learning, which in the Army
lasts pretty much your whole career… what about lifelong learning?
Wheaton also described his experience running internal training
for Microsoft, and the four years he spent ironing ambiguity
out of the Training Needs Analysis. Here I was definitely
impressed: impressed by his thoroughness and also by his patience.
Let's face it: four years is a hefty slab of your life to
spend doing a TNA.
Next>>>
Introduction
Hopkins and Markham: e-HR and change
Mark Doherty plays buzzword bingo
Case study: On the bus with the Co-op
SAP: What is the return on training investment
Conclusion
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