The accelerated digital transformation of 2020 is driving significant additional adoption of recruiting and HR technology. But is technology making us more productive and how might things develop as we move in 2021?
My guest this week is Tim Ringo, a highly experienced HR and technology consultant and author of the new book The Productivity Puzzle. In our conversation, Tim shares some highly knowledgeable insights into the relationship between humans, technology and productivity.
In the interview, we discuss:
• The evolution of the productivity paradox
• Investing and aligning people with technology
• How is the pandemic changing productivity?
• Turbocharging humans with smart technology
• Changing the slow speed of adoption in recruiting and HR tech
• Making technology human-centric
• Advice to Talent Acquisition and HR leaders on what to focus on
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Transcription:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast is provided by shl. From talent acquisition to talent management, SHL has the people insight to help you build a talent strategy that achieves outcomes like increased productivity, internal mobility, engagement and leadership diversity. SHL brings transparent AI technology, decades of trustworthy data science and objectivity to help companies attract, develop and grow the workforce you need to succeed in the digital era. Visit shl.com to learn how you can unlock the full potential of your greatest asset, your people.
Matt Alder [00:01:01]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 298 of the Recruiting Future podcast. The accelerated Digital transformation of 2020 is driving significant additional adoption of recruiting and HR technology. But is technology making us more productive? And how might things develop as we move into 2021? My guest this week is Tim Ringo, a highly experienced HR and technology consultant and author of the new book the Productivity Puzzle. In our conversation, Tim shares some highly knowledgeable insights into the relationship between humans, technology and productivity.
Matt Alder [00:01:48]:
Hi Tim and welcome to the podcast.
Tim Ringo [00:01:50]:
Thank you very much. Glad to be here Matt.
Tim Ringo [00:01:51]:
Thank you.
Matt Alder [00:01:52]:
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show.
Matt Alder [00:01:54]:
Could introduce yourself and tell everyone a.
Matt Alder [00:01:57]:
Bit about what you do.
Tim Ringo [00:01:59]:
Sure.
Tim Ringo [00:01:59]:
Tim Ringo Originally from the States, I’ve been living in the UK for about 25 years now. I originally joined Anderson Consulting back in the day, back in 1990, mainly because.
Tim Ringo [00:02:11]:
I didn’t know what I wanted to.
Tim Ringo [00:02:12]:
Do when I got out of university and progressed through Anderson to what became Accenture. And I was a senior executive in Accenture, recruited to IBM to lead IBM’s global human capital consulting practice based in in the UK, but it was a global role, so senior executive in IBM for quite a few years and then.
Tim Ringo [00:02:34]:
I moved over to the software side.
Tim Ringo [00:02:35]:
After 25 years of consulting and I.
Tim Ringo [00:02:39]:
Most recently was at SAP SuccessFactors.
Tim Ringo [00:02:42]:
SuccessFactors is obviously one of the bigger, more successful human capital platforms. And then in April, right at the beginning of lockdown I retired or what.
Tim Ringo [00:02:52]:
I call Protire because I’m still doing things like writing books and podcasts, things like that. So things that I enjoy. So yeah, I pro tired in April.
Tim Ringo [00:03:03]:
So that’s about me.
Tim Ringo [00:03:04]:
But essentially I’ve been in HR consulting.
Tim Ringo [00:03:07]:
For 25 years and then HR software for the past five and then I write books. So I wrote Calculating Success on Harvard Business Review, co wrote that and then I just released a few weeks ago my latest book Solving the Productivity Puzzle.
Tim Ringo [00:03:22]:
Which is On Kogan Page was released on August 13th.
Tim Ringo [00:03:26]:
So yeah, spending a lot of time on that at the moment.
Matt Alder [00:03:29]:
It would be great to sort of.
Matt Alder [00:03:30]:
Find out more about that latest book.
Matt Alder [00:03:33]:
Talk us through. What’s the book about?
Matt Alder [00:03:34]:
How did it and how did it come about?
Tim Ringo [00:03:36]:
Yeah, you know, it was in 2018 and I came upon a paper by.
Tim Ringo [00:03:39]:
The OECD which was really shocking because.
Tim Ringo [00:03:41]:
It said essentially, you know, human productivity is in kind of terminal decline, which.
Tim Ringo [00:03:47]:
Is going to lead to downward pressure.
Tim Ringo [00:03:49]:
On GDP and then GDP per capita.
Tim Ringo [00:03:51]:
Going out to 20.
Tim Ringo [00:03:53]:
So essentially the view was quite grim that we’re going to see not as.
Tim Ringo [00:03:57]:
Good a living standards as we have.
Tim Ringo [00:03:59]:
Today, not as much prosperity, et cetera. And it put two thirds of the.
Tim Ringo [00:04:04]:
Picture, 2/3 of the pie was on.
Tim Ringo [00:04:07]:
The human productivity piece and I was.
Tim Ringo [00:04:10]:
Shocked, but also I didn’t agree with what they were saying, which essentially is.
Tim Ringo [00:04:14]:
That organizations are not going to invest.
Tim Ringo [00:04:18]:
In aligning people to technology. Second, they’re not going to change their processes and business models to line to technology effectively. And then third, they’re not going to change their organization structures to take advantage of digital technology.
Tim Ringo [00:04:32]:
And. And you know, having been in consulting.
Tim Ringo [00:04:34]:
For many, many years and been in.
Tim Ringo [00:04:35]:
You know, done some very big HR programs, it just didn’t match mesh with what I was seeing a couple years.
Tim Ringo [00:04:42]:
Ago and even more so today, which.
Tim Ringo [00:04:43]:
Is that organizations are doing those things. They are finally getting back to investing.
Tim Ringo [00:04:49]:
And aligning people to technology.
Tim Ringo [00:04:50]:
They are changing their processes and business models and they are starting to restructure. So I think the OECD is missing a trick there and I sort of.
Tim Ringo [00:04:59]:
Put them in the pessimist camp and I sit in the optimist camp and.
Tim Ringo [00:05:02]:
Says, well actually I think because of those things plus turbocharging humans with smart.
Tim Ringo [00:05:10]:
Technology, I think we’re going to see.
Tim Ringo [00:05:11]:
The greatest uplifts in productivity we’ve ever seen. So I come at it from a.
Tim Ringo [00:05:17]:
Very different perspective and see something clearly quite different than they see.
Matt Alder [00:05:21]:
Fantastic. And there’s so many things I want to ask you more about there. Before we do though, something that you sort of talk about at the beginning of the book, which I think is probably important in terms of background to all of this, is the productivity paradox.
Tim Ringo [00:05:37]:
Yeah, it’s been around for a long time really.
Tim Ringo [00:05:39]:
It sort of appeared in the 1970s.
Tim Ringo [00:05:41]:
When after, you know, a phase from.
Tim Ringo [00:05:44]:
The end of the war until about.
Tim Ringo [00:05:45]:
1970, there had been, you know, massive leaps in technology and you know, process re engineering and we had seen some.
Tim Ringo [00:05:54]:
Productivity uplift from that pretty dramatically.
Tim Ringo [00:05:57]:
But then similar to today, we saw productivity drop off. And even as more technology came in.
Tim Ringo [00:06:02]:
The 70s, the 80s and the 90s to the beginning of the 1990s, we saw this kind of divergence which we’re seeing today, which is that people productivity.
Tim Ringo [00:06:11]:
Is not sort of keeping up with.
Tim Ringo [00:06:12]:
Where you would think it would be with all this fantastic technology. Then the 1990s came along and the.
Tim Ringo [00:06:17]:
Internet came along and we saw prolonged and expansive improvement in people productivity because.
Tim Ringo [00:06:25]:
There was massive attention on the Internet.
Tim Ringo [00:06:27]:
And the possibilities of the Internet and.
Tim Ringo [00:06:29]:
A lot of money put into aligning people to. And I was there, I was working in Anders Consulting in the change management practice in the 1990s.
Tim Ringo [00:06:37]:
And you know, it was a, it.
Tim Ringo [00:06:38]:
Was a billion dollar business for us. You know, companies were spending huge amounts of money on putting these new systems.
Tim Ringo [00:06:44]:
In and making sure people were more productive. So we saw massive productivity increase. But you know, after sort of twin.
Tim Ringo [00:06:50]:
Shocks in the early 2000s, so 9.
Tim Ringo [00:06:53]:
11, and then you had the 2008 financial crisis. For whatever reason, those two things spooked.
Tim Ringo [00:06:58]:
Companies and they stopped spending money on aligning people to technology. And that’s why we’re seeing the paradox kick in again, which as we’re spending massively on technology, but we’re not seeing the uplifts really since about 2010, we’re.
Tim Ringo [00:07:09]:
In the longest period of, you know, productivity decline that’s ever been recorded, yet we have fantastic technology.
Tim Ringo [00:07:18]:
And so we’re in that paradox once again. But this is the longest and to economists, the most concerning lengthy period of productivity decline.
Tim Ringo [00:07:27]:
Therefore, though, ACD are saying, well, maybe.
Tim Ringo [00:07:29]:
We’Re in a terminal decline in productivity.
Tim Ringo [00:07:32]:
Which again, I argue the other side of that.
Matt Alder [00:07:35]:
So I suppose it’s impossible to sort of dig this, dig into this any deeper without talking about what has happened in 2020 with, with, with the pandemic that for many employers has, has really changed the way that they work with their employees. What’s your view on that? What, what have we seen this year and how does it kind of relate to what we’ve seen in the past and how might. Might shape the future?
Tim Ringo [00:07:58]:
Well, there’s two things, you know, again.
Tim Ringo [00:08:01]:
Crises knock us onto.
Tim Ringo [00:08:04]:
I think after 9 11, it knocked.
Tim Ringo [00:08:06]:
Us onto a different path, but it.
Tim Ringo [00:08:07]:
Wasn’T a good one when it comes to people and human capital inside of companies.
Tim Ringo [00:08:12]:
2008, again, another shock that knocked us.
Tim Ringo [00:08:14]:
Onto a different path. It again reduced investment in people and that sort of thing, but this one is different. So we’ve been unfortunate and that we’ve.
Tim Ringo [00:08:23]:
Had three major shocks inside of 20 years.
Tim Ringo [00:08:26]:
It’s a little bit unprecedented really. And this one has knocked us onto.
Tim Ringo [00:08:30]:
A completely different past.
Tim Ringo [00:08:32]:
But it has been a people.
Tim Ringo [00:08:34]:
It’s a human thing, right? It’s a human pandemic. It’s human health that we’re talking about.
Tim Ringo [00:08:39]:
And it couldn’t have happened at a worse time because we were struggling.
Tim Ringo [00:08:43]:
We’re starting to make headway on the.
Tim Ringo [00:08:44]:
Productivity problem, but it really has knocked.
Tim Ringo [00:08:47]:
Productivity quite substantially and you’ve seen that.
Tim Ringo [00:08:49]:
In the numbers in the uk, you see it around the world. But I actually think that this new path that we’ve been knocked on is going to actually help productivity in the coming.
Tim Ringo [00:08:58]:
It could be 18 months, it could.
Tim Ringo [00:08:59]:
Be two years, it’s going to take a little while. But I think this new path that.
Tim Ringo [00:09:02]:
We’Re on is we’re going to see.
Tim Ringo [00:09:04]:
Managers much more comfortable with workers having more autonomy, you know, working where and when they best work, when they’re most productive. I think you’re going to see the.
Tim Ringo [00:09:14]:
Emergence of more empathetic leadership.
Tim Ringo [00:09:17]:
I think you’re going to see.
Tim Ringo [00:09:18]:
And we are seeing companies are starting.
Tim Ringo [00:09:20]:
To invest even more money now in.
Tim Ringo [00:09:22]:
The human technology interface. Right. So you’re hearing a lot about, you know, the people experience, the human experience.
Tim Ringo [00:09:28]:
Inside companies and that’s really important to solving the productivity puzzle. So I think these three things, and.
Tim Ringo [00:09:33]:
I had already written about them in.
Tim Ringo [00:09:35]:
The book before the crisis, are now accelerated.
Tim Ringo [00:09:39]:
These tre.
Tim Ringo [00:09:40]:
The other thing I like is that.
Tim Ringo [00:09:41]:
We’Re going to de densify the offices.
Tim Ringo [00:09:43]:
I think that’s going to help improve.
Tim Ringo [00:09:46]:
Productivity because we were over densifying and you just couldn’t get anything done in an office.
Tim Ringo [00:09:50]:
So this is a unique one that.
Tim Ringo [00:09:52]:
I think actually is causing companies to.
Tim Ringo [00:09:54]:
Invest in people both in their health.
Tim Ringo [00:09:56]:
And well being, but the technology that.
Tim Ringo [00:09:58]:
They’Re going to need and I think.
Tim Ringo [00:09:59]:
It’S going to change managers and leadership.
Tim Ringo [00:10:02]:
Attitude towards when and where people work.
Tim Ringo [00:10:06]:
And so I’m actually quite optimistic that this time we’ve been knocked onto a.
Tim Ringo [00:10:09]:
Better path than we were on before. And although we’re have a dip in a big dip in productivity, we’re going to see, I think, a big uplift.
Tim Ringo [00:10:15]:
On the other side.
Matt Alder [00:10:16]:
We talk about a lot of HR technology on this podcast, so obviously talent acquisition software, but also stuff around talent management and L and D and other aspects of human capital software. Digging back into this paradox, talk us through some of the reasons why up to the pandemic, the speed at which companies were Adopting that technology was nowhere, has been nowhere near close to matching the speed the technology develops.
Tim Ringo [00:10:44]:
Yeah, it’s a good point.
Tim Ringo [00:10:45]:
I think the gap was being closed.
Tim Ringo [00:10:48]:
The past five years, but you’re absolutely right, it hasn’t happened fast enough. And I do think that because, you know, the workplace is going to change dramatically from this.
Tim Ringo [00:10:59]:
I think these technologies we’re going to.
Tim Ringo [00:11:01]:
See a significant uptick, particularly in medium.
Tim Ringo [00:11:03]:
Sized enterprises and smaller enterprises, and certainly more adoption in the larger enterprises.
Tim Ringo [00:11:09]:
And you know, I think these technologies are not only going to get invested in, but I think people are going.
Tim Ringo [00:11:14]:
To learn lessons from how do you implement them to make them human centric.
Tim Ringo [00:11:19]:
Versus, you know, HR process centric or.
Tim Ringo [00:11:22]:
The IT department centric. Right. So a lot of these solutions were treated as IT projects.
Tim Ringo [00:11:28]:
You know, the human experience wasn’t thought of very much.
Tim Ringo [00:11:30]:
I think that’s changing rather dramatically. You see people like SAP, SuccessFactors and.
Tim Ringo [00:11:35]:
Workday and others and you know, talking.
Tim Ringo [00:11:37]:
About human centric work and really these.
Tim Ringo [00:11:39]:
Technologies almost need to disappear into the background, I think.
Tim Ringo [00:11:43]:
And then in the near future we’re not going to hear the term HR.
Tim Ringo [00:11:46]:
System anymore because they’re going to become ubiquitous. They’re going to be something that we talk to versus type into and they’re all.
Tim Ringo [00:11:53]:
And they’re going to be really sort.
Tim Ringo [00:11:54]:
Of performance support throughout the day.
Tim Ringo [00:11:57]:
Performance support for you and your manager to make you better. And I think that’s the shift we’re going to see. And when that happens, you’ve got augmented, you know, humans augmented by technology.
Tim Ringo [00:12:07]:
That’s when you see the, the big.
Tim Ringo [00:12:09]:
Uplift in productivity and that is happening.
Tim Ringo [00:12:11]:
We’re heading in that direction and I.
Tim Ringo [00:12:13]:
Think it’s going to accelerate over the next few years.
Matt Alder [00:12:15]:
So broadening that out slightly in terms of technology augmenting humans. Again, a lot of conversation that we’ve, we’ve had on the show around the future of work has looked at sort of various different sides of the vision of what technology is going to look like and whether it will replace people’s jobs or augment people’s jobs. Whether technology can do jobs better than humans or whether humans can do better than technology. What’s your take on what’s happening and how it might develop as we move forward?
Tim Ringo [00:12:44]:
Well, at the risk of pushing a different book than mine, but a book that I read a few years ago, which I absolutely love, was called Race.
Tim Ringo [00:12:51]:
Against the Machines by Professor Benofsen and.
Tim Ringo [00:12:54]:
McAfee, both MIT economists. And it’s really a human capital book.
Tim Ringo [00:12:59]:
They even say so in it, this is to help organizations understand how technology is going to work in the future.
Tim Ringo [00:13:05]:
Obviously not time to go into at the moment, but let me summarize kind.
Tim Ringo [00:13:08]:
Of what they said and I absolutely.
Tim Ringo [00:13:09]:
Believe, I think that because technology is to become more and more, you know.
Tim Ringo [00:13:15]:
Human centric and augmenting humans, you’re going.
Tim Ringo [00:13:18]:
To, again, you’re going to see this kind of uplift.
Tim Ringo [00:13:20]:
But what’s really interesting is they absolutely.
Tim Ringo [00:13:21]:
Say in the book, and I agree.
Tim Ringo [00:13:23]:
These technology inflections are highly disruptive. People lose their jobs.
Tim Ringo [00:13:26]:
There’s no doubt you go, you know.
Tim Ringo [00:13:28]:
All the way through the Industrial revolution, whenever there was a major technology inflection.
Tim Ringo [00:13:32]:
People lose their jobs.
Tim Ringo [00:13:33]:
So let’s use an example. In the UK, London, 2012, Uber comes.
Tim Ringo [00:13:37]:
Along and, you know, really disrupted, you know, the, the sat nav app and, you know, disrupted that, that, you know.
Tim Ringo [00:13:45]:
That industry dramatically and a lot of.
Tim Ringo [00:13:47]:
People lost their jobs. But let’s fast forward. You know, even as early as next year, you’re going to have situations. We’re going to have taxis that are.
Tim Ringo [00:13:53]:
Autonomous, they drive themselves.
Tim Ringo [00:13:56]:
And you can be a taxi driver.
Tim Ringo [00:13:58]:
And you can own two taxis, one that drives itself and one that you drive.
Tim Ringo [00:14:01]:
And you can, you can double your.
Tim Ringo [00:14:03]:
Income, you can double your effectiveness.
Tim Ringo [00:14:04]:
Right. And I know it’s a bit of a wacky, you know, but this is the kind of stuff that’s coming that, you know, of technology where through one.
Tim Ringo [00:14:11]:
Big inflection, we’re now absorbing that inflection.
Tim Ringo [00:14:14]:
And we’re starting to create new jobs.
Tim Ringo [00:14:16]:
That we never thought of before or.
Tim Ringo [00:14:18]:
Completely change jobs from how they were done before. And this is just really fascinating. And that’s why they call it race.
Tim Ringo [00:14:25]:
Against the machines and, you know, the.
Tim Ringo [00:14:27]:
Humans, we are winning that race and.
Tim Ringo [00:14:29]:
We are learning how to harness these technologies to make our jobs better, more enjoyable, higher value.
Tim Ringo [00:14:35]:
And that’s kind of the, the point.
Tim Ringo [00:14:37]:
We are in the technology spectrum at the moment.
Matt Alder [00:14:39]:
What would your advice be to recruiting.
Matt Alder [00:14:43]:
Leaders, HR leaders, people who are reviewing technology at the moment and really sort of setting the strategy for their companies for the next few years in terms of how things work. What should they be thinking and what should they be focusing on?
Tim Ringo [00:14:58]:
Yeah, I write about this heavily in.
Tim Ringo [00:14:59]:
The book and I’ve written quite a few blogs you can find on my website. But for me, and it sounds somewhat, somewhat boring potentially, but it’s absolutely critical, the thing that, and this is the pandemic has made this even more important.
Tim Ringo [00:15:13]:
Companies right now should be very focused on their strategic workforce plan, right the.
Tim Ringo [00:15:18]:
Furloughs are starting to go and you’re.
Tim Ringo [00:15:19]:
Seeing, you know, massive job cuts, which.
Tim Ringo [00:15:21]:
Again happened in 2008 and in at 9, 11.
Tim Ringo [00:15:25]:
And those companies always regretted that they.
Tim Ringo [00:15:26]:
Got rid of that talent because they were.
Tim Ringo [00:15:28]:
It took years to get the talent.
Tim Ringo [00:15:30]:
Back that they needed.
Tim Ringo [00:15:31]:
And that’s what’s going to happen again in this situation. Now, luckily we’ve had the government paying.
Tim Ringo [00:15:35]:
People and that’s, I think, has been tremendously helpful to the economy and to.
Tim Ringo [00:15:40]:
People and to society.
Tim Ringo [00:15:42]:
But I am concerned now that, you.
Tim Ringo [00:15:44]:
Know, organizations are going to just start cutting, you know, 10% here, 10% there. And not having done a strategic workforce.
Tim Ringo [00:15:50]:
Plan, which is really simple, you look out 12 months, even 18 months, and.
Tim Ringo [00:15:54]:
You say, right, what are the conditions.
Tim Ringo [00:15:55]:
Like likely to be create scenarios, figure.
Tim Ringo [00:15:58]:
Out your supply and demand of talent.
Tim Ringo [00:16:00]:
And then work that back to the.
Tim Ringo [00:16:02]:
And that should give you a really.
Tim Ringo [00:16:03]:
Good picture of the skills you’re going.
Tim Ringo [00:16:05]:
To need in the very near future and the talent that you’re going to need. And you’re more likely then to say.
Tim Ringo [00:16:10]:
Hang on, we have to invest in.
Tim Ringo [00:16:11]:
Keeping these people around as demand picks.
Tim Ringo [00:16:13]:
Up rather than starting to just cut jobs.
Tim Ringo [00:16:16]:
And the good news is the technology, the human capital technologies are very advanced.
Tim Ringo [00:16:21]:
In this space now and they make it really easy, really intelligent for HR.
Tim Ringo [00:16:27]:
And operations and the CEO and the CFO to work together to say, look.
Tim Ringo [00:16:32]:
You know, this is the plan.
Tim Ringo [00:16:33]:
This is likely how things are going to play out. Let’s plan accordingly. And let’s not cut 200 jobs over.
Tim Ringo [00:16:38]:
Here or 300 over here or 3,000.
Tim Ringo [00:16:40]:
Because we’re going to need these people.
Tim Ringo [00:16:42]:
And we’re not going to be able.
Tim Ringo [00:16:42]:
To find these skills later.
Matt Alder [00:16:45]:
Final question. Where can people find out more about you and where can they buy the book?
Tim Ringo [00:16:49]:
So books available. Kogan page is my publisher, so it can be found on koganpage.com, also Amazon UK and you can also find a.
Tim Ringo [00:17:00]:
Link to that on my website, which.
Tim Ringo [00:17:02]:
Is really simpletimringo.com and you can find.
Tim Ringo [00:17:06]:
More information about my workshops that I do around the book, speeches I do.
Tim Ringo [00:17:09]:
Around the book and I post regularly videos and blogs subjects around the book.
Matt Alder [00:17:16]:
Tim, thank you very much for talking to me.
Tim Ringo [00:17:18]:
My pleasure.
Tim Ringo [00:17:18]:
Thanks very much, Matt.
Matt Alder [00:17:20]:
My thanks to Tim Ringo. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts, on Spotify or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow us on Instagram. You can find the show by searching for Recruiting Future. You can search through all the past episodes@www.recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list to get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time, and I hope you’ll join me.
