Joanna Vinacour, a qualified Career Coach and an experienced HR professional, joins Nick Day on the HR L&D Podcast to explain exactly how clients & candidates can make better career-related decisions. We also discuss exactly how employers can improve their abilities to not just recruit top talent but also retain it.
I am joined by on the HR L&D Podcast hot-seat by Josh Schneider, author of “5 Days to Your Best Work Yet: A Human Like Approach to Better Work”. Josh is a sought-after keynote speaker and author and we sit down and discuss how businesses and HR departments can go about successfully unlocking performance to achieve better employee engagement and employee happiness at the same time! Discover the strategies we can all use to help us find meaning in our daily lives while at the same time unlocking new levels of performance
The HR Algorithmic Leader: 10 Principles for Leadership Success. In this episode of the HR L&D Podcast, Nick Day from JGA HR Recruitment. is joined by Futurist and global nomad Mike Walsh who has synthesized years of research and interviews with some of the world’s top business leaders, AI pioneers and data scientists into a set of “10 principles about what it takes to succeed in the algorithmic age”.
Disruptive HR for Progressive Transformation was recorded with Coreyne Woodman-Holoubek, a strategically focused GLOBAL HR LEADER and HR ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT professional and President of Disrupt Milwaukee & Disrupt Madison; Co-Founder of Contracted Leadership and the Creator behind the hugely popular Progressive HR blog! With over is 17 years of global business and human resource leadership expertise gained living and working in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain, Coreyne was listed as one of the BRAVA 2018 “Woman to Watch” and she is particularly passionate progressive disruptive HR business professional who believes that “It’s time we progressed HR and L&D processes through digital disruption and transformation”.
Today I am joined on the L&D Podcast, by Celia Delaney – a keynote speaker and comedian who boasts a brilliant track record in both HR Management and L&D but who offers a totally new approach to Learning. Celia has developed an online course called iPersuade which is focused on the principle that “When you Laugh you Learn”
Holistic Learning with Open Source Technology for L&D and HR Professionals”. In this episode of the HR L&D Podcast, we sit down with Lars Hyland – Chief Learning Officer at Totara Learning to explore his deep knowledge of learning technology in all its forms to learn more about how L&D Professionals can harness this technology to deliver effective and engaging learning experiences, both in the workplace and in education.
In this episode “Talent Management & the Power of Conversations” of the HR L&D Podcast, I sit down with Hesketh Emden – a multi-award-winning talent management professional to discuss his experience in developing employee cultures, his passion for promoting and training the power of conversations and of course, to understand more about his learning and development design and strategy implementation expertise.
In this “Content Curation for L&D Professionals” episode of the HR L&D Podcast, we take a deep-dive into Stephen’s 20-plus years in learning technology and communications to discover how learning and development practitioners can achieve a culture of continuous learning and content curation its workforce
This is article 3 of 10 forming the third part of a series of articles dedicated to my attempt at helping Payroll & HR professionals understand the potential impact that Blockchain and Cryptocurrency could have on the future of Payroll & HR.
To view the earlier article in the series – click here:
Also, check out the latest episode of The Payroll Podcast with Anita Lettink, SVP of Global Alliances at NGA HR which discusses ‘Blockchain and the Future of Payroll & HR‘
Today, I would like to discuss how I think Blockchain may affect Human Resources in relation to recruitment-related administration and storing personal data…
How will blockchain affect HR Recruitment Processes?
A large proportion of time in the life of an HR professional is spent repeating the same actions over and over again. This is especially true with recruitment, vetting and onboarding.
Now, if I was to say that we could automate some of these repeated actions: chasing down references, checking work histories, verifying credentials etc., etc., I am sure you would be very interested in understanding how. Not only would this save time, but it would also save money, and it would allow HR professionals to spend more time on strategy and less time on repetitive HR administrative tasks!
You will soon begin to hear many firms peddling their technological wares claiming
“Blockchain is the answer”.
You will discover how blockchain technology could speed up the hiring and recruitment process, by removing the need to contact third parties to confirm information.
Right now, there are even pilot programs automating such repetitive tasks already. For example, in this group of Greek universities [link], they are experimenting with ways to add student diplomas to a blockchain database.
However, the truth is that despite these pilot projects existing, industry-wide adoption remains a problem for blockchain-based technologies.
There are various reasons for this.
Let’s explore…
Using Blockchain in Recruitment
There are two major strands of how blockchain systems could affect recruitment. Each relates to a different kind of blockchain: the first is private and permissioned, and the second is public and permissionless. We go into more detail about this in the latest episode of The Payroll Podcast.
However, for now, let’s consider the analogy IBM use of the internet (public) vs intranet (private) to help describe the differences between these two types of blockchains.
So how does this affect recruitment for Employers?
Firstly, companies who want to be seen as being ‘ahead of the curve’ and ‘technologically advanced’ they may consider employing some form of blockchain solution to help with their recruitment and HR systems.
Why? Because right now it is likely that those who do decide to implement these new types of systems will use it in their marketing in an attempt to attract forward-thinking, technologically-curious applicants to the business. It could also appeal to companies desperate to attract ‘millennials’ to their brands.
However, one of the main issues with recruiting great employees is the fact that we know the references, job successes and credentials can easily be faked or exaggerated. CV ‘padding’ is a significant issue and candidates will often overstate levels of responsibility, inflate or even invent credentials, or use fake or inflated job titles to fill gaps on a CV.
This is a genuine problem for HR departments and recruiters alike, and it takes a lot of time (and sometimes poor hiring decisions) to establish the wheat from the chaff. Sadly, at present blockchain doesn’t really offer a solution to this problem either.
Blockchain would only really work as a solution if candidate information was all available in one place. It would be a dream if there were one place that all credentials, qualifications and career histories were stored that HR professionals could access. If this did exist then this would be the hook for blockchain-based databases. However, this reality rarely matches the dream.
One possibility for blockchain, however, can be found within educational establishments (if indeed they all decide to adopt the technology). If they started to store results on a blockchain database then these would be great, uneditable databases HR professionals could access to easily look-up a candidate’s educational qualifications to see if the results listed on a CV matched those on the block-chain database. As blockchains are uneditable, they would even exist even if the educational institution dissolved.
Interestingly, some educational institutions are already beginning to record qualifications on the blockchain. However, at present, this is far from being universally adopted. Subsequently, until this becomes the process for all educational institutions, it is hard to see how blockchain, at least in the immediate future, will improve recruitment from an HR process perspective
The reality is that vetting candidates correctly remains an extremely time-consuming task for HR professionals and recruiters and there is no “quick-fix” solution. Until an all-in-one place solution exists which keeps accurate records of all aspects of an applicant’s profile, this is unlikely to change either.
While blockchain could, in theory, allow us to check qualifications quickly and reliably, it only really works as a process if all businesses and educational establishments adopt the technology. Even if this part of the vetting process becomes a universal norm, it still won’t change the fact that HR departments and recruiters still would not have one central place to check for CV inaccuracies.
Okay, but what about blockchain databases for storing personal data on employees?
Personal Data and Blockchain
Personal data and blockchains is a tricky subject. While blockchain evangelists may see it as a natural fit, in reality, there is a rather devastating argument against their use.
Personal data on a blockchain cannot be removed. This is in the permanent nature of a blockchain and exactly how it is designed. Blockchains are uneditable.
As a result, blockchain databases containing personal data cannot comply with the UK’s Data Protection Act, nor with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (better known as GDPR). This is because the legislation explicitly states the individual’s right to require organisations – including universities and private companies – to delete the data about herself or himself unless it must be kept on record for legal reasons. This is also known as ‘Right to Erasure’ (Art. 17 of the GDPR)
Securing Personal Data
The above applies to public blockchains. Private, permissioned blockchains, however, could be used in their place.
In private blockchains, you need to depend on an individual person to manage access to the blockchain, and this person needs to be a trusted third-party who has the confidence of everyone concerned. Here, inherently lies the problem because this one person also becomes the potential point of failure.
Why would anyone want to use a blockchain-based database instead of a traditional database which already works perfectly well? It is a bit like paying your employees in bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency – why bother when we already have a perfectly useful currency (the British Pound) we can pay people with, that is both more financially stable and more universally accepted.
I love Einstein quotes (for those of you who have previously visited our website you will know this already), and here a good one comes to mind…
“We can’t solve problems using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” – Einstein.
Also, when we talk about viewing personal data on a blockchain, we are really talking about hashes (the shortened, cryptography-secured representation of that data). To access the personal data in full – in this case, presumably, degree or course certificates, a person’s full name and attendance record, or list of publications – another application outside the blockchain are needed to decode the hashes and provide this information.
I appreciate that following this can be difficult so perhaps Bart Jacobs, Professor of Software Security at Radboud University in The Netherlands who has researched this issue can put it more directly. He writes [Dutch translation: https://ibestuur.nl/weblog/reason-yourself-out-of-blockchains]
“The blockchain only plays a very limited, subordinate role in [decoding personal data]. Besides, the energy consumption of blockchains borders on madness.”
Because a blockchain is an ever-growing list of all the data entered into the database – and the cryptographic proof-of-work required to verify the information on it – the energy and electricity consumption required to maintain them become impractical for most businesses.
Jacobs adds:
“The next time a blockchain guru approaches you with promises, ask ‘Where is the really sensitive data, and how is it protected? How do you regulate how parties are authenticated? And therefore, why is the blockchain really needed?’”
However secure a blockchain-based database – and there is no question that the cryptographic standards used are pretty secure – where that technology is forced to touch down and interact with the rest of the world, there are significant security compromises to be made.
Conclusion
Organisations looking to cut back-office costs may see blockchain-based databases as a cure-all panacea for slow and costly recruitment processes and HR verifications.
In reality, I don’t believe public blockchains are really suitable for hosting personal data. Besides, while using private blockchains may address some legislative concerns, they are redundant because of the need for a trusted third party to maintain them and regulate access.
In this way, they overlap with existing, non-experimental database technologies.
Subsequently, while it is inevitable that we will see blockchain technology begin to infiltrate many business processes, I personally think that when it comes to HR and Payroll, companies should take time to understand if and how products that promise blockchain as a solution really work before jumping in to implement it.
What do you think? Please share and comment – I will try to interact with as many as possible!
Future articles in the series will include:
Look out for article 4 in the series: What is a smart contracts and how will they affect payroll and HR?
As always, whether you love payroll or love HR, love what you do, work smart and work hard – just be careful not to overdo it.
This article was written by Nick Day, CEO of JGA Recruitment – the leading Payroll, HR & Reward Recruitment Specialists.
Nick Day | CEO
JGA Recruitment Group
Payroll, HR & Reward Specialist Recruiters
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 01727 800 377
Employee engagement is not a management “fad.” It is not going to go away anytime soon. One factor that helps the recruitment industry to remain as fluid is the fact that many businesses just underestimate the importance of employee engagement.
They focus too much on attracting talent and not enough time retaining it. However, the fact of the matter is, engaged employees who want to stay at the organisation are critical to its success. This makes tracking employee engagement and retention a must for a business of any size. Companies that fail to monitor employee engagement run a lot of risks that impact on their ability to succeed and build competitive advantage.
Here are eight risks you take if you fail to track employee engagement and underestimate your investment in employee retention:
1. You will have higher costs — it costs a lot to hire and train an employee. Failing to hire the right people and then to retain them leads to both the direct costs of paying agencies, advertising and management time spent recruiting. It also leads to the indirect costs of a less productive team while a replacement is found. In Gallup’s study of organisations with engaged and disengaged employees, those in the top quarter percentile in terms of engagement had 25% lower turnover when they operated in high turnover industries, and small turnover firms had 65% lower turnover.
2. You won’t know how many people are leaving or why — failing to track employee turnover issues means that you won’t be aware of core problems that are driving people to exit your business. This means you also won’t be taking corrective action and the problem will persist. An exit interview at a minimum can help better track specific issues.
3. You will develop a reputation as a poor employer brand — companies that have a higher level of employee turnover are likely to have a harder time finding employees. When word gets out that a firm is not a great place to be, and this is evidenced by high employee attrition, the employer brand is affected. The reputation of the company as an employer will drop, and this makes it even harder to attract and retain talent. Since people are increasingly seen as key to competitive advantage, this is highly problematic. These problems have been exacerbated by the fact that there are online review sites where employees can rank and rate employers, meaning that stories of low employee engagement can spread faster than wildfire.
4. You will have higher levels of absenteeism — people that are not engaged take more sick leave. Gallup found that the organisations that were in the top quarter percentile for engagement had lower levels of absenteeism. However, a study by the CIPD also showed that those that are less engaged have lower levels of wellbeing as a result, and this may be a cause of this absenteeism — as well as the fact the employees are less involved in the first place.
5. You will have higher levels of health and safety incidents — organisations that have a lower level of engagement have much higher levels of health and safety issues. The Gallup survey found that businesses with the highest levels of engagement (in the top quartile) had 48% fewer safety issues compared to bottom quartile companies.
6. You will have lower customer satisfaction and loyalty — a lot of studies have shown that customer satisfaction is higher when employees are engaged and retained. It makes sense that employees that are happier are better able to sell to customers, and dealing with a new employee each time due to a lack of employee retention is a frustrating experience for a client.
7. You could develop a ‘toxic workforce’ — actively disengaged employees can be poisonous. They become miserable, and as a consequence, they then try to make everyone around them miserable too. They are not just watching the clock, but actively causing damage to the company. If you do not know you have an employee engagement problem, actively disengaged employees will be spreading negativity throughout the business. This means any employees that were engaged could be dragged down by them, making any issues much worse.
8. You will experience lower productivity and profitability — ultimately for all the reasons already mentioned, such as a higher level of accidents, higher absenteeism, and increased employee turnover, companies with lower levels of engagement, are naturally going to have lower productivity and ultimately profitability. Other factors also feed into this, such as the fact that companies with lower levels of participation have higher levels of quality issues and mistakes, wasting time and lowering productivity. In the end all the costs add up and profitability is impacted. This has been demonstrated over and over again in countless employee engagement and retention studies.
The bottom line is that your bottom line will suffer if you underestimate the importance of engaging your employees and retaining top talent. It can detrimentally impact your company if you fail to track employee engagement and retention and as a result, it will become harder and harder to understand if you have a problem, what the issues are or the extent of them. The question is, can you afford to not track employee engagement and retention?
At JGA Recruitment, we base our success on our placement retention statistics (currently 95.7%), that is, how many candidates we place that are still employed 12 months later. We believe this is the true measurable metric for tracking recruitment success.
Thanks for reading.
This article was submitted by Nick Day, CEO of JGA Recruitment – the leading Payroll, HR & Reward Recruitment Specialists.
Nick Day
CEO
JGA Recruitment Group
Payroll, HR & Reward Specialist Recruiters
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 01727 800 377
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Lower Luton Road
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