Managing HR data to create value for all
The default owner of data generated by human resources management systems of all kinds should be the individual. Not the company the individual works for. Not the platform through which the data is collected.
Given today’s work practices, this will maximize the value of the data for all concerned: the individual of course, but also for past, present and future employers. People today work at many different companies over the course of their career, and engage in many other educational, volunteer and contract projects that build their skills and networks. Continuity is at the level of the individual and not at the level of the company. HR data should remain connected with the individual over the course of their working life and not get trapped inside corporate silos.
As the decision on data ownership will rest with the current employer, let’s focus why corporate HR should change its approach. Why is sharing data ownership in the interest of the current employer?
Sharing ownership is the best way to get employees to volunteer data. Will people do this? A quick look at LinkedIn suggests yes. LinkedIn claims that the individual user owns the data on its system and ,for virtually all companies, LinkedIn has more information about career history, project work, skills and interests than virtually any internal HR or talent management system.
Sharing ownership means data from past employers will flow forward to the current employer. How do you capture data on employee’s experiences at their previous employer? Are résumés and certifications (the conventional approach) adequate?
Sharing ownership means data about side projects and volunteer activities will flow into the system. Why should a company care about this? Because we bring all of our skills and passions to our work, or we should, and understanding what a person does and learns and demonstrates outside of work is relevant to what they do at work.
The value proposition for companies to share data ownership is compelling, so what is preventing this?
One reason is that some companies have a legitimate need to protect this information. They may have obligations to third parties. Many consulting companies are prevented from revealing the nature of the projects they take on or to even say whom their clients are (even though a dedicated data sleuth can generally ferret this information out of LinkedIn and other open source data).
Another is selfishness, ‘it is my data, I pay to collect and maintain it, and I am not going to share it.’ This is shortsighted and the companies that take this approach will lose out over time.
And then there is the dead hand of convention. This is how we have always done it. Why change? Especially when there may be unknown risks to change and the benefits are not proven. Here we have the standard opposition to any new technology. And there are by now well-known approaches to introducing new ideas into the market (see for example work on the technology adoption lifecycle).
Some people frame this as a ‘data privacy issue.’ Individuals are concerned that their companies are collecting too much personal data and will violate their privacy rights. Companies are concerned about their obligation to their employees to protect their privacy rights. These are both valid concerns. But I think they largely go away if individuals are given rights to their own data and the tools to effectively manage these rights.
‘Effectively manage their rights.’ There is the sticking point. Both individuals and companies need to be able to effectively exercise their ownership rights and fulfill their obligations. This is where social media platforms including LinkedIn fail. LinkedIn tells its users that they own their own data, but this is an empty gesture unless they provide users with the tools they need to exercise that ownership.
So how we handle this on TeamFit? We begin with how we design our data model. Our data model assumes shared ownership and that there will be different rights associated with different users.
As we said in an earlier post “Ownership of data in a collaborative age: Three unworkable approaches and a way forward” there are several different rights associated with data ownership and these all need to be defined in the data model and tools provided so that people can exercise those rights.
The right to delete data – this right can only be exercised if it does NOT violate other people’s rights who share ownership of the data
The right to edit or modify data – this right depends on agreement between the people who created the data, the best way to manage this is the wiki approach where each version is stored, edits can be rolled back, or versions can be branched
The right to add to or comment on data – this generally establishes some level of ownership over the data concerned (this is the surprising conclusion)
The right to control who can view the data – other than the people who have established a right
The right to view data – but not to modify or comment on it or even to share it
The basic data structures in TeamFit are Project Records, Project Requirements and Individual Records. All three of these are connected by skills. A skill is a tag that an individual or group uses as a pointer to a combination of knowledge, behavior and relations that makes it possible for a person to contribute to work.
All of these things (Project Records, Project Requirements, Individual Records and Skills) are potentially the products of collaboration. As such, ownership is shared. The various ownership rights are set out in our legal agreements with individuals and companies and the software supports the exercise of these rights.
As an example, anyone who contributes to the creation of a project record establishes a right of continued access to that record. If the project is not associated with a company, the people who created the record decide if it is to be public or not. And if it is public, they decide what information is to be made public.
If a company owns the project, the company can enforce certain view controls.
Regardless of the status of the project record, whether it is public or not, the skills that a person has demonstrated on a project contribute to an individual’s skill profile.
We should all have the right to claim the skills we have demonstrated during work, and use the projects we have worked on to validate these skills, even if the company we worked for decides that the details of the project need to remain private.
By capturing a record of our skills in the context of the projects we have worked on, we are building value for ourselves, the people we work with, have worked with and will work with. And this is critical to success in a fluid economy where we will work for many companies in many different relationships (employee, contractor, advisor, investor, client and customer). So keep a record of your projects and claim your skills. Suggest skills to the people you work with. All this creates a virtual circle that creates value for our colleagues, our companies, and ourselves.