Lucinda Carney: Hello, and welcome to The HR Uprising for this week.
And I’m really pleased to have a guest speaker, who we’ve used at one of our Conferences before. He’s an author. He’s going to explain more in detail how he defines himself in a moment.
But I’m really delighted to have Mervyn Dinnen here. I didn’t mean to be making it a habit of doing podcasting in really noisy places so I apologise for the background noise. We’re actually at the Festival of Work. Mervyn is a very busy man. So, I want to take advantage. I mean I’ve just heard his speech, and heard him talking, and to find out a little bit more about that. That’s another thing he’s involved in.
So, I’m going to let you introduce yourself.
Mervyn Dinnen: Thank you, Lucinda. My name is Mervyn. I believe that what I do, is, commonly now known as a “slashie” as in…
Lucinda Carney: What’s “slashie”?
Mervyn Dinnen: Slashie as in slash. I’m a writer/analyst/blogger/author/consultant. I want to get good at it. I might get a portfolio career out of it.
Lucinda Carney: I see a link. It’s quite consorted.
Mervyn Dinnen: Well, not quite yet, but yeah. So, what it is? I supposed it’s 3 or 4 things I do. I work with HR and Recruitment Technology companies to research ongoing trends impacting the attraction, hiring, development, retention of people particularly, currently researching digital transformation, and how that is impacting things.
Author of one book called, Exceptional Talent, sorry, co-author of one book called, Exceptional Talent with a guy called, Matt Alder. And we are halfway through the second book, Digital Talent, which is due for publication in December this year. But we’ll see, if that is met.
Lucinda Carney: I remember speaking to you when you were writing your last one, that the journey is a journey of being an author, right.
Mervyn Dinnen: Yes, it is. I write blogs. I write white papers, research-based insightful white papers.
Lucinda Carney: Absolutely.
Mervyn Dinnen: Generally, I speak at conferences, and hang around. Apparently, I’m one of the world’s top 100 HR tech influencers.
Lucinda Carney: Well, there you go. I’m honoured to have you on our podcast. Thank you very much. So, I supposed in terms of the focus of today, because actually as we said earlier, there are so many things we could talk about.
Due the fact that well, time and the environment, we thought just maybe we focus on a few key trends. We talk about maybe, a bit about digital trends, which you said, it’s really important, and along with this whole theme of The HR Uprising, which you know, this is what we’re about.
How can we be seen as being more strategic? What would your advice be to HR professionals who want to rise up and be more strategic? And I guess, therefore, we need to be better at using and spotting trends, accessing them, going with them.
Mervyn Dinnen: Wow, there’s a lot there though.
Lucinda Carney: Yeah, okay, shall I break it down?
Mervyn Dinnen: No, it’s okay. It’s okay. Well, if I start, what am I doing here today? I’ve given a session, or I’ve given a talk around HR digitisation, HR process digitisation. So, the benefits of the HR team of automating, digitising. I supposed some fairly basic HR processes.
And what was interesting, was, in doing research for the book, Digital Talent, I did a series of interviews with employees as well as HR people. and I found that a lot of them get very frustrated by the technology at work. A lot of them feel that the technology is not chosen with them in mind.
In fact, PWC did a big piece of research in late 2018. They found something like 90 percent of the Sea Sweep say that they buy technology with the employee in mind. But only 53 percent of the employees felt that the technology they used, was bought with them in mind. We just automate the process of the exist rather than creating whole new ones.
So, something, I give you an example during my session of an interview I did, something simple like, reclaim the expenses. And I interviewed 3 or 4 employees from one business in the hospitality sector. They said that, which is a very simple process to digitise, that since it’s changed, it’s like almost impossible. In fact, the youngest employee, the millennial who was supposed to be attracting, who were doing all this for, allegedly said that, she thought that they made it complex on purpose to stop people reclaim the expenses, unless it was a significant amount.
So, having created a process to help obviously, ask with data for cost allocation and stuff, we’ve given our employees the impression that we’re actually trying to hit them in the pocket.
Lucinda Carney: Which is completely the buy in is it to be completely the opposite from what they want.
Mervyn Dinnen: Yes.
Lucinda Carney: So, just on that particular example. So, I heard you say that’s classic, isn’t it, where communication at the top of a change initiative is being completely interpreted differently. I guess, maybe, that’s rolled out, that’s been communicated. Did you say that’s,[ because they had automated an existing process? Or, had they tried to change it?
Mervyn Dinnen: Well, they have bought the business for a bespoke package. But yeah, I mean, they could have… My understanding, is, they could have made that process a lot easier. But they had put certain classifications in.
I know somebody complained that there are like 40 different cost classifications than they ever used to be. It’s kind of invariably your claim online gets rejected, because you need to use a different code or something.
And that kind of thing has never happened before. So, maybe, that beforehand, I would have just handed a petty cash slip in going back many years, and said what it was for. And it was up to Accounts to allocate it.
Lucinda Carney: You think he’d work it out.
Mervyn Dinnen: Yeah, Now, it’s down to the employee to work out the allocation. And it can be so many different ones.
Lucinda Carney: I mean, when you have got hundreds of costing and things, if you have that, it would be a nightmare. Because that is the interesting thing if you, kind of, want to try to make this quite pragmatic, how you can see entirely how that would happen. And we sometimes have that. We’re trying to say, we’ve got this process, and you’ve got to completely change this system in order to fit this process. I supposed going actually, is this the right…? And then 18 months later, you get people hate it. Actually, it’s not the system. It’s the process.
Mervyn Dinnen: Yes.
Lucinda Carney: And because you’ve not thought about what people want. So, I’m wondering, if there is something about us having to think better when we put something in place, and maybe, think there’s an opportunity for proving technology is.
Mervyn Dinnen: Yeah.
Lucinda Carney: To see if it’s actually going to improve the process. It is an opportunity to freshen it up rather than improving existing…
Mervyn Dinnen: It is. I remember an example. I’ve forgotten who’s giving it at a conference in the US a few years ago, where they were talking about their payroll system, because it was a big one. Obviously, going online to get your payslips, where it used to be handed to them.
A lot of people when they’re earning the same, they’re not getting different commission and stuff every month. They’re pretty much the same every month. So, they only go in every 3-4 months to get the payslips to maybe, check the deductions or something. Because people weren’t logging into this system all the time, every time they log in 3-4 months later, they have to change their password.
Firstly, I supposed how many passwords do you create. And secondly, it makes it incredibly faff. Again, you digitise the process, that people are only going to use every few months.
Lucinda Carney: It’s a complete barrier. I used to work for a large organisation, that I did training for. It will remain nameless. They had a learning platform, that you go in, and you had to log in. But the problem, was, the programme only happened every 3 months. And their policy, was that, you change your password every 3 months, which basically meant that every single time you log in, you change your password. It’s just a barrier to…
Mervyn Dinnen: I know. I know.
Lucinda Carney: That I supposed I’m not sure that’s as bad as working with IT, to say, give us some flexible systems.
Mervyn Dinnen: I mean there were the two, I supposed, very simple, straightforward examples. I mean, in the main, what we tend to find, is that, most employees are very happy with digital interactions for things like, payroll, for your scheduling leave, for benefits, checking information, certainly for the whole hiring process, receiving offers, signing it digitally online, and things like that. They’re fairly happy for digital interactions for most things.
But where it becomes a bit personal so I supposed for performance management, for example. It’s still about half are happy to do a lot of that digitally. But I supposed you will have more who prefer to obviously have the human interaction there.
Lucinda Carney: And that’s why is it about having the balance between the two, about being digital and the people?
Mervyn Dinnen: It is. It is. Yeah, I supposed, automating what makes sense to automate. I think there’s a… I use a quote from Brian Kopp, who is VP of Gartner. Something he said. They launched their Executive Priorities Report a couple of months ago. His quote was about how employees want their 9 to 5 to resemble their 5 to 9. Anyway, I don’t think…
Lucinda Carney: I really like that quote.
Mervyn Dinnen: Yeah, I don’t think he’s the first person to ever say that. But it’s kind of, yeah, the 5 to 9 is full of kind of seamless digital interactions, prompts, notifications that you don’t have to think about things. You know, Gmail auto-completes their emails for them.
Whereas, they go to work, and they are kind of faced with systems that are not that intuitive, and not that seamless. And it’s kind of getting to the point, where it is one kind of seamless life, I supposed.
Lucinda Carney: But we do expect to have technology levels. Our expectations are high, because what you’re used to on your mobile for things like that. Actually, for HR, technology in particular, that is quite a stretch to what’s already catch up with that experience. I think that’s probably why.
Mervyn Dinnen: Oh yeah, I mean, given the example of expenses and stuff, I mean quite often, where you hear these, it’s because the process that was there before wasn’t very good. And all you’ve done, is, digitise or automate, and not very good process, and not very good digital experience.
Lucinda Carney: Yeah, absolutely. So, the other thing that your book, both of your books are about talent with various elements on them, and then you’ve got a lot of expertise in sort of talent acquisition for improvement. You’ve mentioned in the talk I heard, it’s about talent onboarding in that being in there. Do you think perhaps it’s the next natural stage to digitise? Do you want to talk a bit about that?
Mervyn Dinnen: Yeah, I’m not so much about the next natural stage. I think it’s hugely important. And I think it is the HR, I hate the word process, because process sounds very mechanical. So, HR activity, which needs investment. Particularly, it’s the hiring processes now speeded up.
I gave the example this morning, that making an offer to having everything signed and sealed, it’s like, half an hour now. Because the offer goes digitally. It’s accepted. The contract goes over. It’s electronically signed immediately. And that’s done. No 2 weeks of having to put it in the post yet. Did we use the right postage, and all that?
So, that means that actually from that moment like, almost half an hour possibly, having after received the offer and accepted it, you need to start the process, by which somebody joins your business. And I think that historically, onboarding started on your first day.
So, you turn up for a job, you might have met the person you’re working for and a couple of colleagues, and that’s it. You might have been sent a brochure or something to read through. But then you started being inducted.
But most people nowadays, expect information. So, they want to join in day one, is actually, their first day of working. Onboarding, I know some people find it very clunky expression. And it sounds quite mechanical. But actually, it’s the journey by which you’ve taken an interested candidate, and develop them into a productive employee. Whether that’s over a period of one month, 3 months, 6 months, that’s the way you do it.
If you look at the main reasons why people leave jobs in the first 3 to 6 months, it’s always, the job isn’t what they expected it to be. They hadn’t really met their team, and don’t feel they get on with their colleagues or their manager. They don’t feel like, they’re not comfortable in the culture of the organisation. Or, they can’t see any room to grow and develop.
Now, quite often, this is because of very overzealous Hiring Manager, who’s seen what they see as the perfect candidate, and over-sold the job, and brushed over the fact that the job being offered is one that the candidate has already done before, and fills it with lots of opportunities for future progression that don’t really exist.
But onboarding deals away with that. There are no shocks on day one. No surprises. Information, it can be passed digitally. I mean a lot of this and that are app-based. The new employee can access lots of information like, videos of Senior Directors talking about the legacy of the business, where they come from, describing their first day.
You can be socially connected to your new team, and start understanding what their hobbies and their interests are, and forming relationships. You can interact with other new starters. So, you’ve got a kind of little cliché group there who are going through the same thing together.
Yeah, I mean it just makes it a lot easier. You don’t need to sit someone in the classroom on day one, and go through health and safety. Here’s the contract to sign. It should be the beginning of the working relationship. And providing you cover what the role is in that space, then there will be no shocks.
Lucinda Carney: Is that the candidate experienced magical term that you’re talking about there, you know, another one of these HR jargons that the candidate experience? Is that part of the experience, therefore?
Mervyn Dinnen: Well, it’s kind of, I mean, it is one experience. Yes, they’re not. I mean, the first book was called, Exceptional Talent. That was based around the concept of the new talent journey.
So, the new talent journey is really that all the stages that used to be things, HR did to people. Have a vacancy. Advertise it. Interview people. Make an offer. Start them. Review them after 3 months’ probation. Performance managed them after a year. After 2 years, promote them. And then release them.
It used to be a series of different processes. It’s actually one ongoing journey. To the employee, it’s just one ongoing journey that technology underpin. They don’t see the break. They don’t see the joint.
And so, really this onboarding just flows seamlessly from there. I mean, can the experience, is the experience of the candidate gets applying to join your company, and being taken through the interview process? And onboarding is the start of the, if you’re an employee experience, which I supposed what most people talk about in HR now.
Because it is the differential, it’s the reason people join you, the reason they stay. As you saw in my session this morning, only one in 5 employees think that the way the company describes what they’re like as the employee actually matches up with the experience of working there.
And so, the onboarding to make it seamless…
Lucinda Carney: Only one in 5, many of the percent don’t.
Mervyn Dinnen: Yeah, don’t. I mean I don’t think it’s bad. But it’s just they think that the company maybe, overstates in a lot of cases, what the employee experiences. But this gets checked out. I mean, there’s plenty of research that shows. I’ve been involved with some. That shows that candidates who are applying for a job, are already checking you out, before they apply. They’re looking at review sites. They’re going on Google. They try to get an idea of what you’re like to work there.
And candidates who drop out of an interview process, where you’re taken through to the second, third interview, and they drop out. Then the Number 1 reason, is, it’s taken too long, and they’ve already got an offer from somewhere else. No. 2 reason, is, they have heard, or they’ve read something about the company, and they’ve changed their mind.
Lucinda Carney: And actually, that some, I know you’ve said, sometimes, it’s signed, sealed and delivered in that short period of time. But I know it’s sort of financial services industry, it can take 3 months to get the FCA checks through. So, actually, people got time to go off the boil in that period of time to find something. You think you’ve got a little perfect candidate, but you’ve lost them. So, it’s being be able to keep their interest.
Mervyn Dinnen: Yeah, the reference checking and security checking stuff obviously, there’s an issue. I know there are companies who seamlessly doing this in the background, and who make it as quickly as possible. But there are some industries, where clearly you can’t shortcut this. But for most of the roles, probably the listeners are recruiting, it probably can be done relatively. I don’t mean you make a quick decision.
Lucinda Carney: No.
Mervyn Dinnen: But the process can move with pace.
Lucinda Carney: Quite often, and I know being guilty about it ourselves, you make decision. You’ve got the candidate. Right now, I can go back to the day job. But actually, you’ve got that 6 weeks, 3 months, whatever that period is, where if you are doing something in that period of time, you can see how you can accelerate their productivity.
I mean, I always think it’s kind of crazy to spend all these money on onboarding, and then you kind of don’t necessarily do anything, if they’re really doing it. That is managing is about taking them to the next stage, sitting next to somebody, listen to what it is that they’re doing, and shadow them for 2 weeks. Therefore, sense that’s a…
Mervyn Dinnen: Yeah, I mean part of that, is because recruitment teams obviously have their metrics. The majority of them are targeted on cost per hire and time per hire. Loosely, they are supposed to be rewarded on quality of hire. But there’s no obvious single measure of quality of hire.
Quality of hire can be down to an individual Manager. It can be down to an individual Director. You can have somebody who stays with you a long time, without ever pulling up any trees or anything. You might think, well, that’s quality hire. They’ve been here for 3 years. We might find somebody comes in, does fantastic things in a year, and then moves on. Some people would say that a poor hire, because they’re gone within a year. Others would say, but look at what they’ve achieved.
So, because quality of hire is something that’s a little bit difficult to measure and quantify, each company will look at it in a different way. The pressure isn’t on to get people productive straightaway.
Whereas, if there was a measure for quality of hire, which was linked to productivity, output and the speed, I supposed, with which people, I hate the expression, hit the ground running, but I mean that’s the obvious one. Then a lot more would be invested in this area.
Lucinda Carney: So, I mean, I haven’t actually thought of that before. But actually, again, take me to this learning point so we could do in the business. So, really, what you were saying, is that, there’s no strategic link between the recruitment team’s KPIs and let’s say, there’s regular generic, you know, in the onboarding, because people induction, which might be in learning and development. Then regular teaching when it’s actually that’s the next hiring experience.
From the company’s point of view, the cost of that hire, that cost of how long people stay, you know, there lies a difference. So, just thinking that’s not joined up. So, from an HR point of view, there would be a benefit in joining that up the cost of bringing people in. But actually, taking that journey and investing in that journey beyond it. Do you think…?
Mervyn Dinnen: Yes, it is assumed that, if it’s not a poor hire, but if something goes wrong, and they leave within a few months or something, it’s a recruitment problem.
Lucinda Carney: Which you’ve just said it isn’t.
Mervyn Dinnen: Well, it can be. But I mean, it’s more likely to be down to the onboarding, or at least, if there is a recruitment process are at fault, maybe, identified the wrong person, that’s a whole another podcast…
Lucinda Carney: Yes.
Mervyn Dinnen: About how we select. But if it is, then onboarding will probably iron that out, because before the person starts, he’s going to say, hold on a minute. This isn’t what I thought I’ve signed up for.
Lucinda Carney: You can still get your money back from the recruitment agency at that point.
Mervyn Dinnen: Yeah, well, you haven’t paid, if you haven’t started.
Lucinda Carney: That’s a point.
Mervyn Dinnen: If you’ve started earlier, they wouldn’t have paid. But I mean, I’m not thinking so many stages. I’m thinking of kind of an in-house recruitment team or talent acquisition team.
Again, it’s a grey hole. It’s this big gap between the talent acquisition team and the HR team. Talent acquisition thinks HR is responsible for onboarding. HR kind of think talent acquisition is responsible for keeping in touch with the candidate, before they start, and making sure that they’ve got everything they need. In a lot of organisations, I’m sure lots of listeners will say, we’re not like that.
But in the research, I’ve done over the years, a lot of organisations will admit that. That is one of those big grey areas.
Lucinda Carney: Overall, it’s very easy to get siloed. It’s kind of a good takeaway to have this, trying to avoid that in those areas. Just briefly, because obviously, we’re going to move on from this room shortly. In terms of the research you’ve done, have you got… I remember years ago, when I did my MSc I think, they were saying about the numbers of people that left after a poor onboarding induction it’s called, a process that actually, you think you experience in the first 6 weeks directly linked to how long you stay with the organisation? What are the kinds of rates of turnover or attrition? Did you come up with any stats on that? I put you on the spot.
Mervyn Dinnen: You are putting me on the spot.
Lucinda Carney: You can tell me later, if there isn’t…
Mervyn Dinnen: Yeah, on the top of my head, I can’t really think of one. But I’ve got lots of stats in my head at the moment around this area. I mean the fairly standard, however, you slice and dice, is, one in 4 people will leave in the first 6 months of starting a new job.
It’s also relatively high for senior hires as well. And that’s again, another whole different set of reasons, but linked to onboarding. A lot of people don’t bother to onboard senior hires. Because they think, well, you’re a Manager, you’ll pick it up.
Lucinda Carney: Instead of coming in at the ground and running, and change the world.
Mervyn Dinnen: Yes, but the Number 1 reason why Managers don’t stay more than 6 months, is that they didn’t really understand the business model of the business they were joining. They didn’t understand what their remit was going to be. If you think how can you bring in a Manager at that kind of package, who has been through the whole process selection from Directors, who don’t actually understand what your business model is, and what is expected of them in their team.
Lucinda Carney: Wow, interesting. Okay. Well, I know we can talk and talk. I am also very interested in what could be a different podcast. As you said, the whole set of analysing. I was told someone literally yesterday said about that, how do you identify someone as being fit? And maybe that is something we can do in another podcast.
Just to summarise in terms of this context of HR trends. If you are giving advice to HR professionals out there as to how they can be seen more strategic and can add more value as we’re all trying to do. And we’re continually tell them we’re not doing quite enough yet, is there anything you can recommend specifically from your research, or that comes to mind that we should be working on?
Mervyn Dinnen: Well, the first thing, I supposed, plays into what I was talking to you today, is that, make sure you can automate, digitise, whatever word you want to use as much as you can. HR productivity is key. You need as much time as possible to be strategic, and to keep up with the trends, and understand how this seamless journey from the candidate, to a new employee, to senior, to work.
But if you are bogged down with case manager, and you’re bogged down with people’s holiday requests, you’re bogged down with kind of coaching managers in how to give feedback at a performance review, it’s very difficult. It was interesting. I used a couple of quotes today, are, from Senior HR Directors, who said where they still use paper records for a lot of these things. And it just piles up, and up, and up, and up. It’s put to one side for the Friday afternoon filing session that never comes.
Lucinda Carney: No.
Mervyn Dinnen: Because you get to Friday afternoon, right, we’ve got some time, let’s get rid of these. And before you know it, a Manager runs in, someone has just resigned. How do we keep them? And it’s all…
Lucinda Carney: Who wants to do that, anyway?
Mervyn Dinnen: Yes.
Lucinda Carney: The interesting point there, and what you said
Mervyn Dinnen: So, it’s time.
Lucinda Carney: Sorry, in your talk. Yeah, it’s time. I think that’s a chicken and egg challenge that HR has got, because in order for them to digitise things, they’ve got to make a business case, that to the business to invest in technology towards whatever process is that they need to automate. And I’ve found times and again, that actually, if you say, oh, HR productivity at all levels is one of the key outlets, they go, they’re what? They can do the admin. I think that’s maybe being able to make a business case, is, one of the biggest challenges for all HR to get that.
Mervyn Dinnen: In the report that I’ve worked on, 2 things came out there. Some HR Directors said that the business case, the difficulty of making the business case was eased slightly by GDPR, because of the financial risks of non-compliance.
Lucinda Carney: Compliance, people won’t do it for people reasons, or engage in that kind of thing.
Mervyn Dinnen: Yes, they will do it for risk of a fine for not having done it. And the other one, is, to actually understand employee experience. Actually, understand kind of the importance of engagement, retention, development. I mean the Number 1 reason people join and stay, is, the chance to learn new skills, grow and develop as an individual. And if they stay beyond the first 6, 12 months, the reason they leave, will always be, they can’t see any room for growth.
So, for HR to be able to make the business case, they ought to show the importance of actually, investing their time in the employee experience, and giving employee the experience that is seamless.
Lucinda Carney: And again, it makes sense, if you make the connection between paying money to recruit people, and then keeping them, it definitely costs less there.
Mervyn Dinnen: Oh, without a doubt. It’s quite a few stats out there of people want to hit, either. You want it after this podcast, I can try to go directly into it. there’s a lot of research that shows the cost of a bad hire, the cost of hiring, of bringing in somebody who leaves within the first year, is, huge.
Because, yeah, it’s not just the cost of replacement, and the fact that you’ve paid someone salary, and then you’ve got to cover the role again. It’s actually what it does for the rest of the team. And people don’t really ever quantify what happens in the team if people keep coming and going, in terms of disengagement, in terms of people being unfocussed.
Lucinda Carney: It’s really hard for everyone else, because you’ve got to train them up, and they have to pick up their workload, it’s really, really…
Mervyn Dinnen: And it makes people think, what is wrong? Is it me? But, if I think it’s okay here, but everybody else that joins seems to leave.
Lucinda Carney: Yeah, that’s not good. Okay. So, unfortunately, we’ve got to cut it short. But it’s been a really, really good conversation. What I’ll say for the benefit of the podcast, is, that we do, do very comprehensive show notes. And I’ll get links from you, Mervyn to various research, and websites, and things like that. Because I know you’ve got some great… We’ll, we’ve talked about some great statistics there. So, if anybody wants to get access to that. We’ll put in the show notes links to things that they can find more information if they want it. Obviously, we’ll put your contact details in there as well.
Mervyn Dinnen: Okay, I’m happy to do that.
Lucinda Carney: Lovely, thank you so much for your time.
Mervyn Dinnen: You’re welcome.
Lucinda Carney: Thanks.
