In the 92nd episode of Burning Platform, we host Meg Bear, President and Chief Product Officer for SAP SuccessFactors and Trish Steed, co-founder of H3HR Advisors, both longtime influencers of the world of work and workplaces
My team recently helped two SAP executives explore the impact of 4 major shocks – COVID, Ukraine crisis, climate change urgency and massive digital transformations on several industries and the resulting vertical “edge” applications which have emerged. The results were presented in a book titled “Business as Unusual with SAP” – the badge on left links to the Amazon page.
Did we naively believe the shocks would slow down or that the HCM function would be exempt from them?
Meg, Trish and I explore 2 macro trends - back to office mandates and re-balancing of employee, investor, consumer, other stakeholder voices and 2 exciting new technologies - Generative AI and Apple Vision Pro and their impact in the workplace.
We start with a discussion of work locations. Work from home, celebrated at the start of COVID is now being litigated in just about every workplace. Trish holds out hope we will not swing the pendulum all the way back. She quotes Pew Research which estimated in early 2020 at the start of COVID about 23% of people worked remotely. By October 2020, the number was up to 71%. In January of 2022, it was down to about 59. Will we go all the way back to 23% or settle at around 50%?
We then talk about Generative AI. Meg nicely summarizes we are going through an overabundance of both enthusiasm and fear and uncertainty. She talks about SAP’s announcements at Sapphire last month (see my commentary about the event here). Meg comments “AI is really about augmentation of what we as humans can do. It will change how we spend our days, that creates real opportunities for each of us to kind of re-imagine how we bring value to work, and how work brings value to us.”
We next talk about Apple’s recent release of its mixed-reality Vision Pro headset. We discuss fun uses in our personal lives and likely work use cases. We also discuss how it will play in a world where we are pondering the appropriate mix of remote v office work. We pause to wonder about eye fatigue most of us experienced over the last couple of years.
Next, we discuss the seesaw where HCM is pivoting toward focus on worker productivity and less on DEI and other topics which got more focus in recent years. Meg and Trish both comment that DEI needs continued maturation with the reality check that the voice of the shareholder, and especially of the consumer is as important as that of the employee.
No easy answers but continued change for HCM executives. It will be good for them to also adopt the “Business as Unusual” mindset. Meg and Trish do a great job covering a lot of ground in 35 minutes. We will have them back for more - we just scratched the surface!
