VR, Robots and AI to push companies in favor of agile workforce

Inventors contributed 658 patents to help IBM break the US patent record with 8,088 patents in 2016, marking the 24th consecutive year of the computer hardware giant's innovation leadership. IBM’s 2016 patent output covers a diverse range of inventions in artificial intelligence and cognitive computing, cognitive health, cloud, cyber security and other strategic growth areas for the company.In an exclusive chat with BW People’s Himani Chandna IBM’s Deb Bubb, HR Vice President, Chief Leadership and Learning Officer, IBM shared the insights on the recent explosion of digital technology which is transforming the employees continuously. Edited Excerpts

1.    How is the role of HR leaders evolving globally? Any instances to show that HR is becoming a larger function? 

Over the last decade, the role of HR as a function has transformed radically. The HR leaders of today are leading the way by adopting technology and building digital highways to enable organizations to interpret sentiment, influence engagement and impact business results. The growing importance of areas like skills, talent management, employee engagement, leadership development and the increased focus and investment in these areas are good examples of the larger role HR will play and continue to play in the near future.

2.    How HR technology is being effected by booming millennial in the workforce?

Clearly, the accessibility of technology, long-term demographics, millennial generation becoming a majority of the working population, the need for multidimensional job roles flexibility and expectations on VR, Robots and AI are tipping the companies in favor of an agile workforce strategy.

3.     What are the best ways to fight talent shortage?

It could be a combination to grow organically or to acquire more skill sets. In large organizations like IBM, we also leverage and cross learn different skill sets from our colleagues in other parts of the world. Our focus is all around building an agile workforce. In our agile work environment, there is more change, more spontaneous teaming, more feedback and iteration.

4.    How is IBM transforming learning and development internally?

In the rapidly changing business landscape, it is more important than ever to continuously invest in and modernize the skills of our co-workers. It is key to advance their knowledge and skills as markets and technologies swiftly evolve. IBM solved the challenge by creating a program called ‘Your Learning’, a powerful suite of technologies that can accelerate the knowledge and skills development curve. The Your Learning platform helps every employee to learn smarter and learn quicker. It helps them to stay agile, grow their careers and meet our client needs.

The recent explosion of digital technology is transforming the number of choices employees have available to them. Employees are continuously seeking ways to evolve new skills – through social media, smaller micro-sized bits of online learning, and video lectures.

We also put a lot of focus on the design of learning. IBM leverages neuroscience, curates content, and reuses digital patterns in order to enrich the end-to-end learning experience from initial contact with the learner through post-learning follow-up and measurement. Digital patterns create insight and innovation – they stir up attention, emotion, and curiosity from the learner which again motivates our learners to increase their engagement.

5.    What else IBM has invested in?

IBM invested in the reinvention of the workplace and learning locations by building agile workspaces, learning hubs and IBM Design studios. Our focus is on the sweet spot/intersection of digital and physical integration to provide the best personalized learning experience for all our co-workers.

In order to manage this dynamic landscape, our roles of as learning professional are also evolving as new skills are required to meet the fast-changing need of business. Moving away from the traditional instructional design to the science of the experience and the learner journey to create this flawless transition from the physical and digital world is essential.

Having an agile approach, working with squads with multi-dimensional players with a growth mind-set will enable the organization to meet their business needs. New players are required.

6.     What are the other tools that IBM uses to sharpen the skills of its workforce?

Ensuring a culture of feedback is essential. While most organizations require employees to use formal channels to give each other feedback, we provide an easy-to-use app that makes it easy for employees to give and track in-the-moment feedback during work through their ACE app. The ACE app offers alerts to app users to remind them to give feedback or alert them that they have received feedback, keeping feedback top of mind for employees while they work.

Besides the Your Learning marketplace program, we also build an accessible coaching marketplace. Rather than relying on the manager’s network to create coaching connections, we leverage the wealth of skills across the entire organization, by creating an easy-to-use enterprise-wide coaching connections platform called CoachMe.

7.    Coaching is an essential requirement at workplace. How the program CoachMe does work?

TheCoachME interface is intuitive, making it easy for employees to search for coaches using the criteria that matters most to them. Employees at IBM are able to determine the occasion and cadence for coaching, rather than follow a prescribed set of coaching relationship guidelines. IBM ensures that all volunteer coaches are able to coach in the places they are best positioned by tagging relevant skills and training them on how to coach effectively.

8.     What were the learnings that pushed you to innovate the learning programs for your clients?

Based on the feedback from our users, user behaviour and emerging technology, the platform undergoes iterative improvements. IBM applies cognitive computing and augmented intelligence to connect wide-ranging data sources – and we deliver these cognitive computing capabilities on a unified digital learning platform as a service for talent organizations, employees, and business stakeholders. We are using Watson cognitive computing to shift and disrupt how we develop our talent and augmented intelligence to help drive business strategy –by addressing skill gaps and creating new development opportunities. These new features and functions improve the user experience through better recommendations, improved search and live chat advisor.

9.     What are your recommendations for companies looking to build an agile workforce?

To build an agile workforce, companies have to think differently about their traditional ways of approaching work.  Leaders have to start with outcomes in mind, and form teams that are empowered to work flexibly and independently to deliver those outcomes. This means less focus on process control and tops-down management and more focus on small, nimble teams making rapid progress. 

In an agile work environment, there is more change, more spontaneous teaming, more feedback and iteration.  This requires a different level of leadership and managerial skill, as well as a culture of feedback and learning.