Re-imaging great leadership with HR Tech & AI

Middle managers. The poor beleaguered middle managers. They get a hard time sometimes.

Across the HR industry there is always a lot of conversation about the role of managers or leaders or coaches (as companies like Canva are now calling them).

And it makes sense. A recent study by Mackenzie and Co found that the top quartile of leaders drove a 43% increase in shareholder value for their companies. Wow!

We don’t need to get into the traditional conversation around middle managers - that important layer of people leaders who are so critical to business outcomes. We know that the challenges leaders face go two ways – both from a personal/internal place and from a structural/organisational space - capacity, training, experience, values, culture, intentions and so much more.

I think it’s more interesting to focus on the fact that good leaders recognise there’s always more to learn - there is always an opportunity to build a stronger connection with the people.

And as we discussed last week, their people are demanding more and more that leaders see and understand them for who they are and lead them in a way that respects this.

In conversations with people leaders and HR industry professionals and experts over the last 18 months, a major theme that repeatedly comes up with is… –

“How can technology - and especially AI - help leaders to evolve, to be stronger, to make more impact, without hitting them on the head with more and more demands!”

Over the past 18 months, TALY has been out talking to talent teams, HR professionals and industry experts to understand how the people landscape is changing – informing how HR technology can make more of an impact.

Over the next 4 weeks, we’ll be sharing the key trends we’ve uncovered. Today, we start with the role of HR Tech in driving great leader outcomes.

Get in touch to find out more about how you can use TALY profiling to give you the insights you need to build great teams - from recruitment onwards! Or Book a Demo today to see how easy it is to start using TALY in your business.

What is the connection between technology and leadership?

I took part in a panel at the AHRI conference last month talking all things people, HR technology, and AI.

One of the things we talked about was the difference between digital transition and digital transformation.

• Transition is just taking what you used to do and creating a digital version.

• Transformation is reimagining the way things could be better.

In recent years, with the explosion of HR tech, the focus really has been leveraging technology to automate processes and to drive efficiency. This has led to some great outcomes, especially around workloads, process, transparency, consistency and more.

But it can also be a trap. Sometimes the efficiency and technology become the focus. In talent acquisition, for example, you focus on how you can work through more applications for a role using technology – which means you build tech that absorbs more and more. Water always finds the cracks.

What if you flipped this, focused on the right applications and how to get less applications, but more that are close to the target? This is transformation – flipping the discussion and re-imagining how it could be.

(and yes, obviously some great companies are already doing this – but many aren’t)

When we talk about transformation, what we’re talking about is a strategic review of the outcomes that we’re looking for. Forget what you’ve done in the past and forget the barriers that you have in your mind because today we can really start again and reimagine the way it should be.

Assess Current HR Practices

• Review key areas like recruitment, performance management, and retention. Analyze HR metrics (e.g., turnover rates, employee satisfaction).

Engage Stakeholders

• Gather feedback through surveys or interviews to identify strengths and areas for improvement.

Benchmark Against Industry Standards

• Research industry trends and best practices, highlighting areas where your HR can improve or innovate.

Set Clear Objectives

• Establish measurable goals that align HR improvements with broader business strategy.

Create an Action Plan

• Develop a phased action plan with clear timelines and ownership. Track progress through KPIs and adjust as needed.

If this sounds pretty complicated, just ask GPT to do it for you 🙃

I would add one more important step to this process – get creative. Once you’ve worked out what the data is saying and where you want to go, ignore everything you’ve known before and simply start with “How might we…”

What leaders need, when they need it.

When it comes to the evolution of technology in HR, there is a real sense that the industry has learned a lot in recent years.

Today, there is consolidation, with HR and people leaders having a cold, hard look at the technology they have brought into the business – and the impact and outcomes this technology is having.

In this trend of consolidation, the focus is on how can we combine processes and systems to create and more streamlined user experience, and to reduce the burden and context-switching for leaders.

Another key trend is platform-resistance. There is a learning curve with any new technology, and whatever is brought in needs to be implemented, trained and managed – all which adds to the time pressures for leaders, rather than creating space for them to connect with their people better.

One other trend is risk avoidance. As technology moved into the HR space over the last 15-20 years, there has been a lot of promise, but a lot of things still feel the same. New technology is met with a healthy level of scepticism – will this really make an impact, is it worth my time, or is it more of the same?

The strategic review is an essential part of this – drawing a thread from the outcome we are looking for to the technology to make sure it is going to actually solve the right problem.

Beyond this though, AI and rapidly evolving systems give us the opportunity to re-imagine workflows so solutions can meet leaders with the information and guidance they need, when and where they need it.

Evolving how you use technology to help your leaders today.

As always start with why.

We talk about this a lot, but the technology you bring in needs to be aligned to the purpose of the outcomes leaders are looking for - it can’t be just another tool with no clear reason for learning it.

Evaluate the flow of work and the bottlenecks for leaders, and explore creatively how technology and AI can resolve some of these issues to help leaders connect with their people better? It’s not about the technology itself.

Don’t forget to look within HR first. If HR teams can use technology and AI to streamline HR processes, HR professionals will have more capacity to work with their leaders, and to support them in meaningful human ways. Less time on systems and processes. More time on outcomes.

Focus on data. AI, data, people analytics and technology coming together have the capacity to create new ways of seeing understand each other that we just haven’t had the mental power or computing power to work through in the past. Obviously at TALY, I think this is where great people insights like the TALY profiling can come in but I don’t want to talk too much about that.

Wherever you start, taking a step back and re-imagining how to drive stronger outcomes can be fun - and AI and technology are evolving everyday to make it possible for what you imagine to come true.

The TALY approach to personality profiling brings together a unique mix of Five Factor and Emotional Intelligence profiling to help organisations, hiring managers and teams to make better decisions about recruitment and teams.

Get in touch to find out more… we love talking about this stuff! Or Book a Demo today to see how easy it is to start using TALY in your business.