The growth in adoption of Recruiting Technology is continuing to speed up exponentially. There is always a lot of focus on the types of software companies should be buying but often not as much focus on the amount of internal change management involved to make the technology work within the organization. So what how should companies be thinking about this, and what kind of strategies should they be building?
My guest this week is someone who helps to design change management and adoption strategies on a daily basis. Jen Wilks is VP of Professional Services at Eightfold Ai and has a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience to share on what makes technology implementations successful.
In the interview, we discuss:
▪ Why change management is so important in software implementation
▪ Achieving executive buy-in
▪ Pilots and early wins
▪ Common pitfalls and mistakes
▪ Communication strategies
▪ Adoption Planning
▪ Gamification
▪ Outcomes and success criteria
Listen to this podcast in Apple Podcasts.
Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Eightfold AI. Eightfold AI delivers the talent intelligence platform, the most effective way for companies to retain top performers, upskill and reskill the workforce, recruit top talent efficiently, and reach diversity goals. Eightfold AI’s deep learning artificial intelligence platform empowers enterprises to turn talent management into into a competitive advantage.
Matt Alder [00:00:47]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 347 of the Recruiting Future podcast. The growth in adoption of recruiting and HR technology is continuing to speed up exponentially. There’s always a lot of focus on the types of software companies should be buying, but often not as much focus on the amount of internal change management involved to make technology work within an organization. So how should companies be thinking about this and what kind of strategies should they be building? My guest this week is someone who helps to design change management and adoption strategies on a daily basis. Jen Wilks is VP of Professional Services at Eightfold AI and has a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience to share on what makes technology implementations successful. Hi, Jen and welcome to the podcast.
Jen Wilks [00:01:45]:
Hey Matt, how are you doing?
Matt Alder [00:01:47]:
Absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
Jen Wilks [00:01:52]:
Absolutely. And firstly, thank you for having me. Excited to be here. I’m forward to chatting with you. So my name is Jen Wilks and I run the post sales organization here@Eightfold AI. That means I’m responsible for our customer success team, our support team, and our professional services organization, which ultimately means that my objective is ensuring our customers are successful in achieving their business outcomes with regards to their talent strategy.
Matt Alder [00:02:19]:
It’s such a fascinating topic because as technology gets bigger and more sophisticated, it’s obviously consuming more business objectives and becoming more strategic and more sort of complex to implement. Talk to us a bit about change management as part of that kind of implementation process. Why is it so important?
Jen Wilks [00:02:40]:
Absolutely. And you kind of hit the nail on the head. If I think back 10 years, in 10 years ago in my career, you know, if we were implementing technology, it was just that you went in and you, you ran an implementation and you walked away. And we’ve changed, you know, the whole world has changed. We’re now not focused on buying a product, we’re focused on buying outcomes, you know, and achieving, you know, what, achieving business outcomes. So this is kind of what makes change management, in my opinion, so important because it helps us understand all the elements that go into transforming your Business and achieving those outcomes around like consuming around that, that implementation. And you know, when a company is setting an objective for a talent strategy for the next one year, three years or five years, it’s just that, you know, it’s an objective or a goal. And to now achieve those objectives, companies need to plan on for how they’re going to get there. Kind of change management has evolved into the art and the science of that plan, which is kind of what makes it in my opinion the most important piece.
Matt Alder [00:03:36]:
Now to begin at the beginning, what should employers be thinking about and doing strategically with change management in mind before they even go out to buy any talent technology?
Jen Wilks [00:03:49]:
So absolutely I think I like to think of technology or especially with our platform as the enabler of or like the catalyst to achieving your technology strategy. So the first thing I recommend any of our prospects or our customers do is actually define that strategy. We really need to understand what that strategy is and that’s kind of step one in the change management program. An example of this is when I think about our platform, we have many use cases we can solve for, whether it’s time to hire on the TA side or helping us upskill your talent with mentorships, cross company projects, LMS integrations. So there’s so much we can do. So the first thing is to understand, you know, what are we trying to achieve? What do you as a customer want to achieve? What is that strategy? So I think before you even think about, you know, the tech and how, what you’re going to use to get you there, it’s understanding what it is, what’s the larger outcome you’re trying to achieve.
Matt Alder [00:04:42]:
So executive buy in is, is a very big part of this process and I know it’s something that a lot of TA leaders find to be a challenge. How do you get executive buy in for, for something like this?
Jen Wilks [00:04:54]:
So the first thing we look at like right up front is both the quantitative and the qual benefits of deploying a talent intelligence platform. And we’ve proven success across multiple industries, countries and we have these proof points which are critical in showing the value that kind of gains that executive trust. So a good example of this is like we can show real examples where our platform has increased diversity of hire by 30% for a company whilst reducing their time to hire by 55%. And when you kind of do the math and you show the associated cost savings with this, this really helps with executive buy. And what we’ve actually found is of equal importance when you’re thinking about this with regards to change management and adoption of the platform is actually gaining that buy in from middle management as well. So when we think of like the change management program, we spend a lot of time on educating and helping hiring managers think about talent in a different way. For example, a lot of middle managers or hiring managers, they automatically think of they don’t want to lose their talents. So we have to overcome talent hoarding. Managers don’t want to lose people to other parts of the organization because they’re worrying about their own objectives and their own KPIs. So we try and think of it in a different way and educate managers in a different way to think about. As example, our Project Marketplace. How do you roll out Project Marketplace and what’s the benefit for you as a hiring manager if people on your team are actually taking part in other projects around the company? Another way to kind of think of that same thing is like, you know, side projects happen. They happen in every large company. And we’re gaining buy in from executives and hiring managers. Now by rolling out Project Marketplace, you know, historically you’d get a side project from somebody you knew or somebody who liked you and it wasn’t equal opportunity. Whereas by rolling out Project Marketplace we’re leveling the field. You know, it gives equal and transparent opportunity to everybody within a company within the company, which helps support your DE and I strategy. So it’s, it’s just another example of, you know, by showing the transparency we provide, like right up front with these kind of use cases, you know, the execs buy into that because it’s supporting the strategy. Hiring managers buy into it because they can see the skills that their, their team members are gaining and bringing back to their team.
Matt Alder [00:07:17]:
Break down the process for us a little bit. What are the key stages of a successful change management?
Jen Wilks [00:07:25]:
So I like to think of it in three main areas. One we kind of already touched on, which is that executive buy in, you know, making sure you’re aligning with the leadership on outcomes and timeline of when those outcomes will be realized. So that’s kind of step one to me. The second piece is thinking about how you break this into pilot program or like a phased program and then, you know, how you rolled it out globally is kind of the third piece. So when I say a pilot program, we always recommend to our customers that you pick a tier team, a group, a country or a region that you feel is going to be excited about rolling this out, you know, are the more tech savvy within the company, you know, and once you think are going to be successful in doing this and you roll them out first. What you’re trying to achieve is, is an early win and creating early success to position you for like, you know, that full adoption and realization across the company. You when everybody’s seen something go and be successful, everybody wants to be part of it, right? So they want to join in the celebration and they want to be, you know, be part of that momentum. So we do that pilot program in our phased approach first and then we look at rolling that out globally as kind of the final phase. And when we think about rolling it out globally again, we look at how do we want to roll this out, Is it by region, country function, business unit, language? Now we can kind of pick and choose the different areas and we kind of want to get to a repeatable process post pilot completion and then just start looking at regional considerations, whether it be, you know, different kind of tracking in different countries, local laws we have to take into into consideration is there any kind of siloed or cross cross company projects we want to think about. And kind of underpinning all of that is really tracking the successes and celebrating them. The more momentum you can build around success and celebration, the more likely you are to be successful. So that might make one of key three areas.
Matt Alder [00:09:22]:
What are the sort of the common challenges, the mistakes that people make, the pitfalls, what do you see when do things fall down?
Jen Wilks [00:09:29]:
So things tend to fall down again. Like if you don’t have that buy in from the top, you know, if you’re working with a small group and only the managers bought in, but the execs don’t buy in, that definitely tends to not help with momentum. We definitely, if we don’t spend time upfront training on machine learning and AI, that’s when we see further down the road issues appear as well. People think machine learning or AI is scary or it’s magic and it’s not. And taking the time up front to actually educate and train everybody in the business of how this works and how it’s going to get better over time and how it’s going to learn the more you use it, it really helps stop you getting to the last, getting to go live and then nobody wants to adopt it because they don’t understand it. So I think that’s kind of a critical piece. Definitely having planning. If you don’t plan up front and you don’t understand when outcomes are going to come to fruition, then you’re setting yourself up for failure as well. And we look at different elements of planning around stakeholder training and adoption planning, looking at the implementations, as I mentioned before, which elements are going to be successful, how do we roll this out and really take the time to understand a global rollout? If we don’t identify outcomes and success criteria upfront, we have nothing to measure success to. So that’s definitely a pitfall. If customers just go into this without understanding what they’re trying to achieve and then tracking to those, those successes and outcomes and actually measuring it along the way. Excuse me, I’m losing my voice now. Communication is, is always, always one of the most critical things. If we don’t have a solid communication plan up front, then we’re looking at failure. And your communication can be on multiple fronts. We need again, executives communicating, kicking off the project, talking about how this is going to be transformative for the business, making sure we’re having regular communications going out to every stakeholder that’s tailored just for them. We like to look at not just email, but how can we get creative with our communication? Can we do short videos of super users, users or leaders on updates? Can we have dedicated office hours where people can jump in with questions and find out what’s going on? So definitely not having communication plans and executing to them is a pitfall. I’d say not understanding or not planning for the individual, what is the benefit for me, kind of conversation upfront is definitely something that, that can cause us to fail as well. And, and what I mean by that is, you know, everybody at the end of the day, they’re doing their day job and they want to understand, you know, what’s this new technology and why should I use it. So if you can kind of find, you matrix out and find out who are all the stakeholders and how’s this going to benefit them. Whether it’s, you know, a hiring manager who’s going to be able to increase their time to hire, or whether it’s, you know, a manager who’s got a small team and they want to leverage the rest of the organization to help them with some projects. You know, we kind of get creative there. And I think if you don’t do that, then again, people don’t adopt because they don’t see the benefit to them, which is critically important to everybody. And then I say celebration and gamification. If, if you don’t celebrate the successes and you don’t recognize the super users, you know, you don’t raise their profile within the company and you don’t celebrate people, again, they don’t adopt. So there’s definitely some of the pitfalls.
Matt Alder [00:13:00]:
Can we sort of zero in a bit on adoption planning there? Because I think one of the common things, the mistakes that I’ve seen made with implementing HR software, recruiting software, is there’s such a big focus on implementing it and getting it right and configuring everything in a way that works and it’s going to meet the objectives of why it was bought in the first place. But often not very much attention is actually paid to adoption and ultimately the product fails or doesn’t do its job. What can people do to make sure that they’re planning for successful adoption?
Jen Wilks [00:13:40]:
Yeah, absolutely. Adoption is the most critical part in my mind, right as a company we can build the most beautiful products and we can have a sales team that sells it fabulously and then we can do the best implementation. If we walk away and every recruiter isn’t excited to use it, or every hiring manager or internal manager or even every employee within the company is an excited to get in there and start planning their own career, in my opinion, we failed. So I put such a huge focus on adoption and it has to start right at the beginning of the discovery phase and when we start talking to a customer. So we again it goes back to let’s have executive buy in right up front. Let’s have executives talk about how this is going to help you. We think about adoption all the way through the implementation. So good example. End users, recruiters. We want them recruiters as part of our user testing. We want them as part of our, you know, our Uber user group like right up front as we’re doing requirements gathering, understanding what their pain points are and then showing them how the platform is going to help, help that, help them do their day to day job better and faster and more effectively and more efficiently. And I think the more you get people involved in the journey, the easier it is for them to understand it, to have some kind of say in how it’s configured to, you know, to actually make their life better and then them hands on. As part of the testing group we love to do what we call the super user celebration. So we’ll get five or six or 20 recruiters into UAT and then we do like Brad boards, you know, who’s opened the most positions, who’s moved the most people through the recruitment process, who’s filled the most positions within the first three months and we work with our customers through the kind of, kind of hyper care period for adoption which is like that critical first 90 days, then through the six months and through the year and we keep going back with these, you know, breadboards and celebrations of like, hey, these are your top five recruiters. Let’s celebrate them, let’s send them a, send them a prize, let’s get this notified around the company. So everybody sees the kind of excitement and, and how successful they’re being. And again, we do that as well on the talent mobility side. Right. So if we’re launching our career hub to, to one of our customers, it’s like, hey, let’s gamify which region or country or business unit can have all of your employees get in and update their profile and kind of make it fun and celebratory. That really helps drive adoption.
Matt Alder [00:16:09]:
So you’ve obviously worked with a lot of employers with these kind of processes. What do the best ones do to ensure that they’re going to be successful?
Jen Wilks [00:16:19]:
I guess they do, I’d say everything we’ve talked about, they definitely, they spend the time and the investment planning up front. They have those KPIs and they have a realistic expectation of when those outcomes are going to come to fruition. So a good example would be we know when we turn on our platform and we pull in all the customers data, we can automatically see their diversity mix. So it’s understanding where they are today and where they want to be and having a plan to get there and having realistic goals to move through that. I’d say another key element to success is involving everybody. It’s making everybody feel part of the journey. You can’t just, you know, dictate to everybody in a company. This is what we’re going to use. It’s, you know, it’s getting those user groups involved to help shape it and help make it something that works for the culture of that company.
Matt Alder [00:17:11]:
As a final question and kind of by way of summary, because obviously your answer to this will be lots of things that we’ve, that we’ve already talked about. Just summarize by giving your, your key advice to, to employers approaching all of this from a change management perspective.
Jen Wilks [00:17:25]:
Okay, yeah, I’d love to. So I think of it as discovery considerations. If you’re going into this, what are the things, the main buckets you want to think about to make this successful? So number one, do have that executive sponsorship and champion managing the change from the top and then pulling that hiring managers on middle management layer and have them driving it too. Definitely do upfront time for training on machine learning and AI if that’s critical so we don’t overcome any obstacles right at the last minute. There’s stakeholder training and adoption planning. Definitely something to spend time on upfront setting up the implementation to success. So that was the conversation we had around picking someone to go first, a group, a team to go first that will be successful and then building on that momentum, outcome and success criteria for long term planning and then how that materializes along your journey. So knowing what you’re going to achieve and what outcomes you’re going to achieve when stakeholder communication, planning and execution, you’re knowing all your stakeholders, how often you’re going to communicate to them, how you’re going to communicate to them and making sure you do it. Understanding from the internal mobility side, what’s the benefit to me? How does everybody in your organization benefit? Why should they care about making this a success? And then I’ll throw in a shameless plug. Lastly, join the Eightfold community. You know, we’re there, we have people talking about what’s working for them, what isn’t working for them, how they’ve overcome it. And just, you know, having all of that community come together and share lessons learned and best practices is super powerful.
Matt Alder [00:19:02]:
Jen, thank you very much for talking to me.
Jen Wilks [00:19:04]:
Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
Matt Alder [00:19:06]:
My thanks to Jen Wilkes. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts on Spotify or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram. You can find us by searching for Recruiting Future. You can search all the past episodes@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.
