Digital Transformation is a key issue that all businesses will need to address in the next few years. It is likely to have a fundamental effect on HR and Recruiting and I really surprised that there are still such low levels of awareness round the concept among HR and Recruiting professionals.
My guest for this episode is Douglas Shirlaw Chief Digital Officer of The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities or (COSLA). Douglas has many years of front line experience in digital transformation and leads COSLA’s initiatives to digitise public sector recruitment in Scotland.
COSLA’s platform myjobscotland is hugely successful and continues to develop to keep pace with evolving technologies and increasing user expectations. The site is a multiple award winning venture recently picking up the public sector award at the Scottish Digital Business Awards and has also previously won the best shared service award at the UK Public Sector Digital Awards
• In the interview we discuss:
• The challenges involved in developing myjobscotland
• The implications of having over 50% of the site’s audience accessing from mobiles and tablets
• The rise and importance of “customer experience first” thinking
• The ongoing clash between user expectations and current recruitment process realities
• The benefits of digital transformation and a workable model to implement it
Douglas also talks about changing attitudes to privacy and gives us his vision for the future of recruitment platforms
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Wreckfest. In the summer of 2016, as the eyes of the world turn to rio de Janeiro, RecFest brings its own style of street carnival to the recruitment industry, taking over Borough market in London. Now in its third year, RecFest is a one day celebration of all things in house recruitment and resourcing. With an emphasis on the power of sharing, RecFest creates one of the largest conversations of in house recruitment professionals in the world. To get a discount on your ticket, head to www.thisisrecfest.com and use the code PODCAST16.
Matt Alder [00:00:59]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 43 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Digital transformation is a key issue all businesses will need to address in the next few years and it’s something I feel we should be discussing much more as HR and recruitment professionals. My guest this week is Douglas Shirlaw. Douglas is Chief Digital Officer for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, or COSLA as it’s better known. He has years of frontline digital transformation experience and he’s leading kosla’s initiative to digitize public sector recruitment in Scotland. COSLA’s job platform. My Job Scotland is hugely successful and continues to develop in line with ever changing technologies and ever changing user expectations. Hi, Dougie, welcome to the podcast.
Douglas Shirlaw [00:01:52]:
Hi.
Matt Alder [00:01:54]:
So we’re here this morning on a.
Matt Alder [00:01:56]:
Wet, grey Monday morning in the west end of Edinburgh. If that building wasn’t in the way, I think I could probably just about see Murrayfield from here. And we’re in COSLA’s offices. Could you introduce yourself and tell us what you do and what COSLA do?
Douglas Shirlaw [00:02:11]:
Yeah, my name is Douglas Shirlaw. I’m Chief Digital Officer here at kosla. COSLA are the to give them the full title is the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. We represent, represent 28 out of the 32 Scottish local authorities and predominantly the organisation itself is a political lobbying organisation. However, luckily my job title means that I don’t really have to get involved with the politics of the country. And what I do is I work within the digital team here, making sure that the transformation exercises that we’ve sought to undertake over the last four or five years are kind of continued and modified and improved.
Matt Alder [00:03:05]:
So tell us about your role.
Douglas Shirlaw [00:03:07]:
More specifically, I kind of fell into the role. The organization I worked for previously had built this website or had written the specification and actually built the website before it was handed over to COSLA. We wanted to create a recruitment brand. I think we wanted something that was seen by councils across the land as somewhere you could just find a job. And really that’s what we’ve been doing since July 2008, and that’s really been the biggest part of my job since then, within the first six years of operation. So from 2008 up until 2014, we had 1.6 million accounts on the system. Now, if you consider 1.6 million accounts, that’s an awful lot of people. And obviously, if you then look at the kind of population of Scotland, the working population of Scotland is in region of 3 million. So to have nearly half of the population registered on the website, it’s quite an achievement. The site itself was put in place to save money and predominantly that’s £16 million. The amount spent on the site is a fraction of that, but it has brought so much more to the transformation within councils, not only within departments, but how candidates interact with councils as well. We’ve had over 182,000 positions advertised on the site. And in the first six years of operation, we had 3.1 million applications as well. So that’s around 14 completed applications for every job posted. Now, some jobs attract 350 applications, some only attract 5. So you can see 14 is a kind of decent size when you consider the amount of different jobs that we have, from cleaners to zookeepers to chief execs to admin assistants, it’s a very broad range of jobs that we support.
Matt Alder [00:05:24]:
That must have been a really complex and difficult kind of undertaking. What were the sort of main barriers you came up against when you were sort of creating the platform?
Douglas Shirlaw [00:05:34]:
Well, so just before I started it course, I was working as a consultant. I’d previously worked maybe seven, eight years in digital agencies up until that point. So I was asked to join a small company to create a specification for this brand new recruitment portal. I hate the word portal, but let’s face it, that’s probably the best way to describe it. Initially, there was a conflict of, well, what are we actually trying to build here? Are we trying to build something that. Where all our job adverts just appear? So are we just going to replicate what the papers do at the moment? And I think, first of all, replicating what the papers do, obviously, the papers in a kind of continual shift away from the traditional format of newspapers to a more digital approach as well. Newspapers circulation certainly have been falling, certainly for the last 10 years, and they continue to fall. And I think the Main thing was to build something that would garner enough traffic that when people came onto it, they were able to find what they were looking for. So with 32 local authorities putting their jobs on one side, you create that traffic, you create that audience, and at the same time you are improving the ability for that audience to find jobs either within their area or neighbouring area.
Matt Alder [00:07:22]:
And how does that. Because all of this is obviously an ongoing journey and in terms of how you’re talking about digital transformation, it’s not a project, it’s a continuing, continuing process. So how are things continuing to develop and transform as mobile, social and other forces are sort of changing the Internet, the foundations on which the platform is built?
Douglas Shirlaw [00:07:49]:
It’s interesting that you say it’s a journey, it’ll continue to be a journey, it will never stop. It’s never going to. I’m never going to look at a plan, say, right, in the next 18 months, I want to do this and seek out to do that. Because I think within the next six months there’ll be new technology that comes around that we need to look at, and we need to look at incorporating into our service. But I think it originally used to be mobile first. I think it’s now going to go to customer experience first. I think only once we get to that customer experience part of it, can we actually say, right, we have created some meaningful transformation in this and that will continue throughout the whole life cycle of this project. So for the next wee while, okay, let me think about the next six months. I think we need to look at the way people interact with us. We have found, certainly in the last 30 days, that we are now hitting that tipping point where the amount of users to our website are now approaching the mobile tablet divide rather than the previous desktop. So I think we’re kind of 0.5%, 0.5% into that, 50%, 0.5 into the mobile part of it. So, yes, that is going to be key, but we can’t take an eye off the other bits of technology that we have out there. And as I said, there are disruptors out there, there is more and more cloud services out there. People are uploading CVs to their cloud services and using that as a way to apply for jobs. And I’ve not yet seen one which will fit our needs. Our needs are very, very different from large private sector organizations where all you need is a CV and a cover letter. We ask specific questions. So I don’t think our formatting of our application process is going to change very much. We ask Specific questions that relate directly to the job which require to be answered. So until either a we try and tell councils that, okay, maybe we should look at the CV apply option, or there are other ways to hold information together that can be used easier within the application process. I think one of the things we sought to achieve from the project from the very start was the ability to apply for a job in a council and thereafter any future applications that you made. The majority of the information, 80, 90% of the information, was already stored against your account. So you weren’t having to fill in the same information over and over again. You were only changing the responses to questions, for example, being asked the particular job. So if you tie all that up, where do we go next? That’s a good question. I don’t think we’re using WhatsApp, I don’t think we’ll be using Snapchat, I don’t think we’ll be using Instagram, you know, to sell our jobs. I think it’s going to be more a blend of better formatting or better copywriting within job adverts. And I think that’s something that we need to do as a sector, sector wide. The application process itself is quite, it’s quite a stilted one from our perspective at the moment. Generally our applications are in four stages. Your personal information, your qualifications and your history, the application questions and your diversity form. So these are four distinct sections and I think the ATS that we use is very much based on compartmentalizing your application processes. What I’ve seen in the new ATS system is a one stage application process. So rather than having four different screens to go through, you have one screen, all the information is within there. And I think from a mobile perspective and a tablet perspective, that’s going to be very important. We’ll still have the save and continue option, which is extremely important. I’ve made sure that the ATS provider have that in place before we can use it, because there’s an awful lot of information in there that could potentially be lost if there’s no saving resume function.
Matt Alder [00:13:18]:
I think it’s interesting because I think you highlight a lot of issues there that I think are quite systemic in recruitment as a whole. The users are mobile, the users want a fantastic experience. And it’s not really even just the recruitment software that’s not catching up with that. It’s actually recruitment in terms of the information that’s demanded and all that sort of stuff. And there are obviously very valid reasons for that. And it’s not something that’s going to change overnight, but I think it’s something that lots of organizations are going to be struggling with for quite some time to come in terms of providing the best possible user experience, when there’s that kind of contradiction actually sort of embedded within recruitment. In terms of digital transformation, lots of organizations of all kinds are now having to do this, whether it’s a government or public sector addressing the needs of their users, or private corporations who are long established private corporations who are being disrupted by startups in the market. So looking out the window, we’re in Edinburgh, you can see countless financial institutions that have been here for sometimes hundreds of years who are, who are being disrupted by new and innovative startups all the time. So digital transformation is something that’s on everyone’s agenda. What role do you think HR and recruitment need to sort of play in that, in sort of wider organizations?
Douglas Shirlaw [00:15:05]:
Well, I think in terms of hr, HR is one department within an organization. I think with any digital transformation process, you need to look at the company as a whole, what its vision is and make it a more modern, humanized version of what it needs to be. And you can only do that by looking at who your customers are and how your customers are accessing your business’s products and services. So in terms of where HR come into, I think HR need to work with the powers that be, if you like to kind of look at changing the culture within the organization. Any kind of transformation can only happen once the whole business has been reformed into, you know, something that cultivates innovation. For example, I talked about being born digital people who, within the 18 to 25 age group, they will probably be at the bottom end of the workforce if you like, but they know a lot about using digital. They’ve used it for many, many years. Whereas the people at the top end hear the word digital and they think about numbers, ones and zeros, don’t really know what it is. So there needs to be an education happening within organisations and maybe HR can play a part within bringing all the departments together and, you know, finding these change agents that will deliver this transformation throughout the organization. Because we can’t operate in silos, digital cannot work across silos.
Matt Alder [00:17:09]:
So we talked about what digital transformation is, the digital transformation that you’ve been involved in, how HR can play its part in it, but it’s really something for the, for the whole organization. What are the benefits of digital transformation?
Douglas Shirlaw [00:17:27]:
Okay, I think we touched a little bit upon the ability to re envisage what the company vision actually is. So that’s Obviously one thing, the ability to look within your organization, to look at these born digital natives, or digital natives, in fact, and look at how they see themselves interacting with the business that they currently work for. So it’s a creation of a culture of innovation, the improved customer journey. I think you need to have a look at that because every step of the journey where you can create better conversion and outcomes is very important. But on the back of that there is a big journey mapping process that needs to be undertaken. And that is something which is huge. Yes, you can start that journey mapping process, but you may find through doing that that there’s other elements of products and services that you’ve not actually even looked further into. So there’s opportunities there by doing that. I think it also gives you a better competitive advantage over competitors. And then if you have an organization where you have collaboration across the organization, you have a much better workforce. I think giving people the ability to suggest ideas as to how to develop the business throughout the business is a great way of engaging with not only your customers, but also your workforce. And just through being able to empower those employees through education, I think, you know, you will get the executives at the top who don’t know much about it. You get people at the bottom who know quite a bit about it. So it’s really about sharing that information. And I think, you know, sharing any type of information is great. Yeah, knowledge is power and all that. But I think you need to look at the whole organization and how you can benefit from the power of your employees. I think with making decisions as well, if you can make decisions easier based on the realities of the customer journey, the customer journey mapping, I think that makes the efficiencies within departments even better as well. And obviously through any kind of digital transformation, there’s an awful lot of data that comes out of that. And I think being able to understand where the data is, how the data is currently being used, and is there other data sets that can be used to improve services through that. And again, I think if you create that better customer experience, you’re going to get a better conversion and also hopefully improve the customer loyalty at the end of the day.
Matt Alder [00:20:43]:
And I suppose the big question to kind of finish off with is, how do you do this? How should an organization go about doing this? Whether it’s the whole organization or even someone within HR and recruitment trying to do a kind of a mini digital transformation, what are the elements of actually going forward and doing this?
Douglas Shirlaw [00:21:07]:
Okay, well, I spoke earlier about Brian Solis and the work he does with his Altimeter organization in San Francisco. There’s three elements that he and his colleagues have come up with, and really they are vision and leadership, the digital customer experience and the digital transformation team. So the vision leadership, you have the customer experience and the business value. You need to convene these two elements together to deliver the mutual benefits to the organization. And that’s something that leadership can understand. But as I said, leadership may not necessarily have those skills. So it’s up to the change agents to partner with executives to make the understanding of that transformation. It’s obviously important to have that executive support. And it’s up to the strategists within the organisation and those change agents to create a case and obviously make the urgency to gain support for the transformation. And obviously you have the updated vision in the organisation which helps customers and employees. So I think that’s kind of the first part, vision and leadership. The second part is the digital customer experience. I put down here it’s about their way. Now, when I say their way, it’s about customers. How do customers involve themselves with the brand? So you have your disruptive technologies that I said earlier on that people are using every day of their life. You have to take that into account and look at where they are going and how they are being used. But I think the customer experience focus, as I said, it goes beyond social. It’s down to the journey and the mapping. The internal collaboration is about that mapping process and getting different departments to work with each other, to look at their areas. So getting your marketing department working with the hr, typically they would never work together, but there are instances in this process where it would benefit.
Matt Alder [00:23:43]:
Yeah, absolutely.
Douglas Shirlaw [00:23:45]:
As I said, the innovation part of it can lead to unplanned products and services by looking at that, and it will reflect those new technologies as well. And again, it’s about having that digital first mindset. The born digital people are the ones to get involved in that so they can become your internal customers. And again, your customers experience has to include your customers. You have to speak to your customers, whether it’s through focus groups, whether it’s feedback on your website or asking for feedback at the end of a process. It’s something that we do and it’s something that we’ll continue to do, because I think we get a lot of feedback from candidates saying, actually, your process is rubbish. Yeah, it is rubbish, but it is because of our ats. It’s nothing to do with us, we’re actually doing something even better. But you just can’t see that if you were to look at the vanilla ATS that you saw, you would think it’s terrible, but there’s big organizations out there using the terrible part of that. But we spent a lot of time trying to make that much better for customers. So that’s that customer experience. Then you’ve got your digital transformation team, the transformation team itself. You need to have cross functional groups so that centre of excellence, if you like. You obviously need to look at their organizational structure. It’s not common to have digital experts all over the organisation, but they do exist. So educating those key stakeholders is very important and also very important is to have it on your side as well. IT departments in the past have been largely difficult to deal with, whether it may be down to security or probably more so, a lack of education. People in IT know how systems work, people in digital know how. How everything kind of gels together. So it’s very important you have that partnership together. So management, communication, education is very important when you’re setting up that digital transformation team.
Matt Alder [00:26:08]:
And finally, what are your sort of predictions for the future? Where’s all this going? We’ve seen the rise of mobile, the rise of social. We’re kind of on this journey in terms of customer experience. What do you expect to see over the next 12 to 18 months in terms of how this is all developing?
Douglas Shirlaw [00:26:32]:
I think there’s a lot of things that we can look towards and try and predict where things are going. I think something that we’re trying to certainly look at is essentially creating profiles. Before I started this job nearly 10 years ago now, I kind of foresaw the My Job Scotland brand being some site where you could have your profile. And your profile essentially is all your information, your CV information. Now, I know LinkedIn does that, I know we tried to do that, but I think the profile is something that could essentially be used like a digital locker. So it’s probably like a combination of the profile and login details. So in public sector at the moment, there’s something called My account. It’s currently being used by Edinburgh Council. So to use or interact with their services, you need to have an account. Now that account is actually linked to your resident account, effectively. So your customer account with within the council, so that accounts for council tax. It helps identify who you are, where you live, even your age. There’s a lot of things going on within there and I think that’s something over the next 12 months that we’ll try and not replicate, but certainly use going forward. So if people are interacting with their councils more and more, they don’t need to set up an account with us. They could use this, my account, to log in. And again, I think where we’re going is the privacy is becoming less and less of an issue. I think people understand what privacy is all about now. I think people need to understand more clearly how information is going to be used, and yet that’s why privacy policies exist. But I think people are more likely to share information if they can see a benefit from sharing that information. So as long as they know what it’s going to be used for and it’s going to be used in a way that is going to be easier for them to interact with any kind of council service, well, I think that’s a kind of win win.
Matt Alder [00:29:06]:
Absolutely. Dougie, thank you very much for talking to me.
Douglas Shirlaw [00:29:09]:
Thank you very much.
Matt Alder [00:29:11]:
My thanks to Dougie Shirlaw. You can subscribe to this podcast on itunes and on Stitcher. To listen to past episodes, get email updates and find out more about me, go to www.rfpodcast.com. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
