technology

Our technology is making us dumb

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Stand on any street corner and watch people going about their business and you’ll see a curious sight, so many people looking down. Locked in to their personal experience with technology. There was a time when it used to frustrate and annoy me as I made my way to work; the people stopping, walking aimlessly, unaware of their surroundings.

But now, more than ever, it not only annoys, it fundamentally scares me.

Technology was supposed to be the great emancipator, the leveller, it was supposed to open the doors to new horizons and new opportunities. But the reality is not one of bright new dawns, but closing doors. We are narrowing our experiences and polarising our attitudes at a time when we need to be more thoughtful, more explorative, more inclusive than ever.

Our social networks through their definition are based on people “like us”, we share news and comment that we agree with, with people that agree with us. Anyone who wants anything to the contrary can be muted, unfollowed, exiled in from our social existence. The opinions reinforcing our views and the assurance that “we” are “right”.

We “choose” our media, the things that we watch, listen to, read from an increasingly reduced selection of “things we might like”. Losing the ability to have the serendipitous discovery, the accidental opportunity. Instead allowing algorithms to serve up our future, based on what we once consumed, reducing our experience to predictable similarity.

And we close ourselves off from the world, plugging our ears with preselected sound, looking down to view limited content, basing our existence on the screen, not the world. We eschew the chance conversation, the momentary eye contact and smile, the haphazard interaction. We close off the sounds of life, anaesthetising ourselves from reality.

In a world that feels increasingly polarised, where the signs of social isolation and abandonment are becoming central drivers of our political and economic existence. In a world where we talk about the need to be more inclusive, more open, more tolerant and understanding. We are instead shutting ourselves away in closed systems of ignorance.

It would be asking too much to change, to reverse and renew. But perhaps if we were all a little more aware of our choice to have no choice, of our willingness to give away freedom, then we could recognise the limitations of our existence and challenge ourselves to step outside more. To break out of our circles of similarity, to experience difference and to venture more in to the unknown.

The HR Tech bubble is ready to burst

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I’ve just come back from the HR Technology Conference and Expo in Chicago. It was a brilliantly organised and put together conference, pulling a range of suppliers and practitioners from all over the globe, the big, the small and the start-up. I was particularly keen to go as a long-standing champion of good HR technology. We’ve been lucky to partner with people like HireVue, Crowdoscope and Thompsons to deliver exciting solutions and I wanted to figure out what was next.

Everywhere I went there was talking of the disruptive influence of technology in HR, with people writing and commenting on the power that this is having on the profession. I was curious to understand exactly what this might be. Sadly, after spending three days looking for it, I came away empty-handed.

Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of good technology platforms out there (I particularly like CareerBuilder, HROnboard & CultureAmp amongst others), but I struggled to find anything I’d call disruptive. The vast majority are in the talent acquisition space where, as far as I can see, the aim has always been to find, select and hire a person. They help, support, systemise and facilitate this process, but I’m not entirely sure that falls into disruption.

Then there are the HRIS suppliers and we know disrupting paying people is only going to end in a world of pain. A group of platforms which term themselves “engagement” – which means anything from recognition, through communication to wellbeing. And finally analytics solutions – the new holy grail.

That’s all well and good. But disruptive? No.

The biggest disconnect I saw was between the problems practitioners need help with and the solutions being offered by the tech providers. One offering particularly stuck out for me, a service called InvestiPro, helping standardise and systemise the HR investigation process – something that would have been amazing during my time in retail, but also answered a real challenge that practitioners face.

Far too often, however, I was being told about a problem I needed to solve that I never realised I had. Maybe I’m just dumb and haven’t realised the multiple challenges yet to face me – or maybe they just don’t exist. In the same way we are constantly told we need to be fitter, healthier and more beautiful, the HR tech industry is trying to tell us that buying their own special serum will help solve all our HR woes.

There seems to be a huge amount of money and investment washing around the HR tech market, probably too much. The result is an over-supply of similar products, relying on brand to differentiate and a dearth of creative, innovative solutions that genuinely add value to employees, line managers or practitioners. Investors aren’t stupid, or known for their patience or sentimentality. On that basis, it can only be a matter of time before this particular bubble bursts.

And THAT will probably be the most disruptive thing to happen in HR Tech.

Is this liberation?

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My daughter told me this week about a conversation with one of her friends. The subject was whether it was possible to complete your homework without access to the internet. Before we all start to roll our eyes and talk about generations, it was a thoughtful conversation about whether the sources of data that were available to them offline would be sufficient versus the wealth of data available online.

I’ve been known to say that my children think they know everything, because they have Google. The smartphone and the search capability provide them with a surrogate brain and borrowed knowledge. Maybe there is something wrong with that, maybe there isn’t.

What I do question, is whether we are effectively outsourcing our decision making capability to technology and therefore losing the skills and experience to help us effectively and quickly work things out.

When I worked in a bar as a student, the landlord refused to have an electronic till. Instead we had one of the old push button ones with a cash drawer that pinged open with delight and the very real risk of losing a kidney. As a student of economics and accounting at the time, my maths was never stronger than when I was running mental totals of drinks orders for customers who would invariably use it as a chance to question your answer.

In the modern workplace, we rarely calculate anything ourselves. Walk around the streets of any town or city and you’ll see people looking at their phones to show them the direction. We are more likely to look at an app, than out of the window, to know the weather.

In some ways, if we’re using the liberation from the mundane to focus our minds on higher matter, the more complicated and meaningful topics, then you have to argue that this is a huge step forward. If the systemisation of the transactional allows us to learn, to be curious and thoughtful; to read, to think, to share, to talk and grow.

But if we are being led down the path of unconscious disempowerment and the destruction of creativity, problem solving and reduction of our innate ability to guesstimate, approximate and divine, then we need to think again.

If our liberation merely allows us the ability to take photos of our food and share them with people we have never met, to find out where we need to be, without knowing where we are, to be given an answer, without understanding the question. If our liberation does nothing more than reduce the sum of our parts, we have to question whether that is liberation at all. When we are beholden on something or someone else to allow us to fulfil our lives, we are more likely to find ourselves trapped, rather than free.

The future of work is human

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If I had to list four things that bring out my inner geek, they’d be:

Work
Technology
Psychology
Education

I can’t remember the dates of any historical events, my knowledge of sports and sporting prowess is limited and if you want to know what stocks and shares to invest in…..buy the ones I’ve just sold. But give me any of these four topics and I’ll talk, ignorantly but passionately, for hours.

Each in its own right is a things that stirs the proverbial loins, but what about the point where all four intersect? Is there a relationship between them?

We know that technology is changing the way in which our children interact with the world. It is also starting to change the way in which they learn and work at school. So what is going to be the impact on the world of work when these young people get to employable age? Is technology changing the way our brains work and function and what do we need to think about in how we design work, teams and organisations?

Are we already starting to see the impact of the way that we use technology on our behaviour in the workplace? Our choices, decision-making, attention, concentration, speed of communication?

Late last year the CIPD started a piece of work to explore the future of work from a variety of different angles. The aim being to move the debate on from the normal, often predictable themes and to take a different approach. There are a number of work streams and groups exploring all sorts of angles, you can read more about it here.

As part of this, I want to look at these questions. To go beyond the “robotisation” arguments and look at the relationship between human performance and technology from a psychological and behavioural perspective, the good, bad and indifferent.

And this is where I need your help.

If you’d like to be part of this work, or if you know someone who you think might be, then I’d love to hear from you. Ideally I’d like to pull together a group of people from a range of backgrounds to exchange ideas, thoughts and theories with the view to presenting the findings at a “Big Tent” event in October.

There is no specified time commitment, geography is unimportant and I haven’t even worked out the process (yet). I just want to bring together curious, passionate, thoughtful people to help explore the themes and ideas. So if that sounds like you, if this piques your interest, then get in contact and lets see where the conversation takes us.