30 Human Resource Executive®
BY STEVE BOESE
Employee engagement, data and analytics,
and recruiting and talent management
will be major themes at the upcoming HR
Tech Conference, which celebrates its 20th
anniversary this fall.
events and conferences provides
me with a valuable, interesting and,
I think, unique perspective on the
most pressing HR, HR technology
and workforce challenges facing
organizations today.
Looking back on my five years
working on the conference, and a little
bit further back to the conference’s
founding 20 years ago, I can’t help
but notice the incredible change and
innovation that’s taken place. The
power and promise of HR technology
have never been greater.
I’ve written before that we have
entered the “Golden Age” of HR
technology, with the capability,
availability and affordability of HR
technology solutions advancing in
unison. Innovative start-ups, large
enterprise providers continuing to
improve their technologies, and the
pressures of increased competition
have all combined to create new and
better tools for HR and organizational
leaders. Nowhere is this “Golden Age”
As I write this article, I’m in the process of putting the finishing touches on the program for the 20th Annual HR Technology Conference & Exposition®, which will be held from Oct. 10 through Oct. 13, 2017 at the Venetian Las Vegas. Creating the
program for the HR Tech Conference
is always a challenging but rewarding
process, as working through literally
hundreds of speaking proposals,
participating in dozens of phone
calls, and attending numerous
more completely on display than at the
HR Tech Conference.
Specifically, I’d like to focus here on
three important HR technology areas
and how they will be addressed at this
year’s event.
Employee Engagement
Consistently, or perhaps
persistently, aggregate employee-engagement levels or scores have
hovered at around “30 percent
engaged” for years. The stubbornness
of the engagement problem is
surprising, given the time spent and
investments made (largely in the
form of annual employee surveys and
subsequent analysis of survey results)
to better understand and successfully
address the employee-engagement
problem. Despite these investments, it
seems as if HR often falls short of the
mark. Something has to give.
Fortunately, in the past several
years, two things have happened in
concert that offer renewed promise
that the employee-engagement
conundrum can actually be cracked.
The first is that progressive HR
leaders have begun to think about the
engagement challenge more broadly,
moving past singular scores or levels
on an engagement survey and framing
the conversation around the overall
employee experience.
The employee experience
encompasses all the interactions
between the employee and the
organization. By assessing and
evaluating the touchpoints of the
employee experience (including those
occurring in recruiting, onboarding,
training, benefits and compensation),
HR leaders can identify targeted
opportunities for improvement, and
make sure that HR interventions and
investments can actually positively
impact the employee experience—
eventually driving greater engagement.
Naturally, when HR and
organizational leaders identify a new
area of focus, such as the employee
experience, new and innovative
technologies are developed to help.
Many of these, of course, will be
showcased at this year’s HR Tech
Conference.
The employee experience will
be explored at the conference in
several ways. First, there will be
a panel, moderated by employee-engagement expert Jason Lauritsen,
featuring executives from some of the
leading solution providers in diverse
areas such as wellness/well-being,
performance and talent management,
total compensation and rewards, and
employee feedback and recognition.
They will address the fundamental
question, “Can HR technology drive
improved employee engagement?”
This conversation will be an important
one, as it will set the stage for
Golden Opportunity
HR Tech Conference Preview