In this HRchat, we talk about the impact of AI on the HR function, the evolution of employee engagement, UNLEASH, and a whole bunch more.
Bill Banham's returning guest is Mervyn Dinnen a talent analyst, advising recruitment and HR technology businesses on the emerging trends impacting hiring, retention, and engagement. He is a writer and international speaker on recruitment and HR trends and an award-winning recruitment blogger. Before this, he spent 20 years as a recruitment and HR practitioner.
Mervyn is a top HR influencer and the author of Exceptional Talent: How to Attract, Acquire and Retain the Very Best Employees and the upcoming book, Digital Talent. He's also the host of the popular HR Means Business podcast.
Questions for Mervyn include:
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In this HRchat, we talk about the impact of AI on the HR function, the evolution of employee engagement, UNLEASH, and a whole bunch more.
Bill Banham's returning guest is Mervyn Dinnen a talent analyst, advising recruitment and HR technology businesses on the emerging trends impacting hiring, retention, and engagement. He is a writer and international speaker on recruitment and HR trends and an award-winning recruitment blogger. Before this, he spent 20 years as a recruitment and HR practitioner.
Mervyn is a top HR influencer and the author of Exceptional Talent: How to Attract, Acquire and Retain the Very Best Employees and the upcoming book, Digital Talent. He's also the host of the popular HR Means Business podcast.
Questions for Mervyn include:
Feature Your Brand on the HRchat Podcast
The HRchat show has had 100,000s of downloads and is frequently listed as one of the most popular global podcasts for HR pros, Talent execs and leaders. It is ranked in the top ten in the world based on traffic, social media followers, domain authority & freshness. The podcast is also ranked as the Best Canadian HR Podcast by FeedSpot and one of the top 10% most popular shows by Listen Score.
Want to share the story of how your business is helping to shape the world of work? We offer sponsored episodes, audio adverts, email campaigns, and a host of other options. Check out packages here.
Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom. And visit hrgazettecom.
Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. Hello, this is your host today, bill Bannam, and in this episode we're going to talk about the impact of AI on the HR function, the evolution of employee engagement, unleash that awesome series Unleash and a whole bunch more. And my returning guest today is Mervyn Dillon, a talent analyst advising recruitment and HR tech businesses on the emerging trends impacting hiring, retention and engagement. Mervyn, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Bill. It's a pleasure to be here again.
Speaker 2:It was a little while ago that we recorded an episode together. For those people who didn't listen to that episode, who perhaps shock horror are not familiar with you I can't believe there are folks out there like that, but just in case, why don't you take a minute or two and reintroduce yourself?
Speaker 3:I will do. My name is Mervyn Dinan. As you've said, I'm an analyst, author, writer, speaker. I have a podcast called HR Means Business, which is nowhere near as many episodes as yours. It's only been going for about a year or so and, yeah, most of my time I spend researching, writing about the ongoing trends in the world of work and working with HR and recruitment technology businesses in understanding the latest trends and kind of doing research-based reports and things like that. A fellow podcast host.
Speaker 2:What's the best thing you like about that part of your job?
Speaker 3:Speaking to different people, getting different people's kind of views and aspects, and it's always interesting, particularly if you're talking to someone about research they've done or an organization is digging behind that and finding, I suppose, some of the trends that you can bring out and highlight, and I think, yeah, no, it's, it's, it's, it's a good way. It's a good way, I think, to learn, and I can see why, over the last few years, podcasts have become so much, so popular, shall we say, because it's a great way to listen and absorb um, kind of learnings and kind of new trends folks are listening on their device of choice at the moment, their medium of choice, whether it be spotify, apple or whatever.
Speaker 2:Uh, it'd be pretty easy for them right now, mervin, to skip over and check out one of your episodes. If they had to listen to one episode, which one should it be to get going with? Well they're all brilliant, I suppose.
Speaker 3:I suppose it's been a couple, yeah, no, I would say the most recent one, I spoke to somebody called Nikki Hoyland, who's CEO of a company called Hula, and that was about kind of employee engagement, about understanding the moments that matter, and very much, I think, on trend with some of the main trends, if you like, of this year regarding engagement and retention. So that's that's a good one to start with okay, there we go, check it out everyone.
Speaker 2:Uh, so, mervyn and I, we met up at unleash, the unleash conference and expo, back in october in beautiful paris. Merv, it was my first time in Paris. Believe it or not, I've been to France lots of times, but never Paris. What an amazing place. What is it about Unleashed that you think is special or different to other events in space, and what other events are you hoping to attend in 2024?
Speaker 3:I think what Unleashed does well is to showcase a lot of current thinking, a lot of current research. A lot of the conversations they have on stage are from people you know who are doing the job, who are understanding. I facilitated a chat regarding candidate experience and kind of the emerging, the younger, the Gen Z workforce, if you like, and their views on kind of experience, and it was a very good panel with people who head up TA in some multinational organizations and I think there is a lot of knowledge sharing and I think it's quite open. Wherever you go, you see people doing podcasts, see um the exhibitors, um the vendors, uh. You know holding sessions, uh as well to educate, and I think that that there's a good mix of you know business and what's happening in tech with you know some other things as well. There they often have um uh keynote speakers who come from a world of sport, world of entertainment, world of you know it's it's got a really good buzz and a feel about it in terms of others.
Speaker 3:You did ask me about other events, um, so I will be going to unleash in paris and hopefully uh in vegas, um I'll be at the hr tech, the hr technology conference and expo um in uh, las vegas in october uh, although I know I think September this year and there's one in Europe, their first European one early May. I'm there, I'm doing a couple of sessions there. In terms of vendor conferences, I usually go to WorkHuman. I'm not going to WorkHuman this time because of a diary clash. I'll be going to Influence Greatness in September and, I think, well, in London in a couple of weeks' time because of a diary clash, I'll be going to Influence Greatness in September and I think well, in London in a couple of weeks time there's a HR and Learning Technologies show which is in its second year and I'll be popping along to that. So at the moment I've got a few to go to, and you know CIPD over in the UK, obviously, their Festival of work and their annual conference and exhibition. So it'll be another busy year.
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Speaker 2:I want to switch focus a little bit now. You recently gave a presentation called Is Retention the New Recruitment. Can you take a couple of minutes now to tell our listeners a bit about that talk and what were some of the hoped for learning outcomes?
Speaker 3:Sure, I think that was certainly over the last six to 12 months. Last six to 12 months. Most of the conversations I've had, most of the research I've seen, a lot of the stuff coming out, is about engagement, retention. Possibly I don't know if it's post-COVID thing, where there's been an accent on talent acquisition and hiring and needing to hire, and the whole of the AI conversation last year was know how to get people in quickly and and well matched. And I think that the, the, the, the, the shifts that I perceive and certainly when you look at uh, in jan feb, when most of the um large tech organizations were putting out their, their research for the year, a lot of it was around this kind of employee-employer relationship, building trust, retaining this kind of support and enablement. I think you and I have spoken before about this Employees now wanting a bit more. You know they want support in what they need to know how they need to know it. They want tools at their disposal to be able to do their work. And what I was looking at was, I suppose, because it was through, a recruitment audience was looking at, I suppose, talent acquisition and kind of if it's all about retention, is retention the new recruitment. So, as we're, I suppose, moving through the cycle, the business cycle, rather than going externally constantly to find the next person, the next skill set Is it that it's actually bringing people in and it's retention how we support them, how we give them access to the knowledge that they need to know as and when they need it and, if so, how do we treat them? What's the kind of experience we give them? What are the moments that matter in the hiring process?
Speaker 3:I was having a conversation, uh late last year with the head of ta um who was saying to me about the concept talent acquisition, as the concierge in a hotel, this kind of you know, welcoming people in setting them up for a well in a hotel, for a very good stay, telling them everything they need to know.
Speaker 3:This is what you know, do this, you can eat here, you can and the TA may be doing the same thing, bringing people in, and it's they who can set up the career by. You know. There's a model out there that I've seen in one or two places where it's kind of the employee saying you know, attract me, welcome me, support me, support me, um, and and and that kind of thing I think is it's a possibly a mindset shift, uh, but it's a way of welcoming people in uh for a long-term view, as opposed to you know, we need a hire now to do this and it's kind of you know, we've got the right hire and there's maybe not a longer term plan behind it. So I think if, if we are going to have an accent on retention and improved engagement, it has to start at the beginning. It starts with recruitment.
Speaker 2:OK, love that. Thank you very much. Now, as I often do, I invited you ahead of this chat today to throw over any suggestions you had for things that you wanted to discuss, and you mentioned you'd quite like to talk a little bit about employee engagement and how that's evolving. So I'd like you to do that now, but I'm going to challenge you what are your predictions for the evolution of employee engagement over the next few years? Can you give me some ideas in 90 seconds or less?
Speaker 3:go, uh, oh right, okay, um, unprepared, I will throw them at you. Um, the um, I think a lot of it is around learning. A lot of it is around learning. A lot of it is around the concept of career experience. I've recently written a piece about this, uh, and I'm speaking about it at the HR tech in Amsterdam in a few weeks time.
Speaker 3:Um, about, uh, actually for an organization to not just, I suppose, bring somebody in, say here are the tools, here's what you're doing, but it's managed, the whole almost holistic career experience, what the potential is, where they can go, it's their well-being, it's their intellectual well-being as well as their mental, their health well-being, financial.
Speaker 3:It's a much more holistic approach to the employee life cycle and this, I think, is what people my research shows is what people want.
Speaker 3:Quite a bit of the conversation around remote, flexible, asynchronous, hybrid working is around people being able to maybe set themselves up in a way of working that suits them and their lives and enables them to give, I suppose, the best version of themselves at work as well as outside of work.
Speaker 3:And I think that we are going to see I hate using the word holistic again, but this much more holistic approach to what I said earlier, the moments that matter. What does it mean to be a good employer? What support are you giving people, how are you enabling them, how are you helping them fit work alongside their other priorities in life? And I think this is a key thing, and I think that organizations along the way I've interviewed two or three people who have job titles like head of career experience and things like that and I think it's very important that we do have people and it maybe is is outside of HR, because it's people who can look holistically across a number of different things. You know, the actual, the acquisition of talent, how we upskill, how we enable, how we support, how we onboard, how we retain somebody to maybe take that overview. So that, I would say, is how I see it evolving, and I'm sorry that's a lot longer than 90 seconds.
Speaker 2:It is, but that's okay, cause it was a good answer and I might pick your brains a bit more. At HR tech Europe, I have registered as far as I've got. I registered ages ago for that one, so maybe I should make it happen and book somewhere to stay and come on, and I think it would be a good event. It's great to see it in europe. Um, you've written about the need for organizations to adopt a total talent thinking approach. This is an interesting term. What do you mean by this?
Speaker 3:total talent thinking is looking, I suppose, across the whole spectrum of um, kind of how we, how we, yeah, I suppose, how we bring in the skills, the knowledge, uh, to the organization we need. So it's total talent, isn't just you know, the permanent employee base, it's the, it's the contract, it's the fractional, it's the bringing people in to do, you know, part of maybe a project who might have no connection with the organization, but they're just somebody who is able to do that. It's thinking much more holistically about, I suppose, talent as not. So I recently had a chat with Upwork on a podcast because I did a simulation that they ran through the Wikistrat platform last year and there were about 30 of us who were inputting lots of ideas about this kind of approach of kind of you know, the future of job, future of talent, and a lot was coming up about maybe a very different kind of work frame.
Speaker 3:You know, particularly I hate to say age, because it doesn't have to be age, but normally we'd say younger, rootless, stateless, you know, can work from anywhere, can input into a project you know, a thousand miles away, doesn't need that kind of, I suppose, support around it of an organization, um, and the different ways people want to do that, and I think that the total talent thinking is just this much more almost global, not global as in the world, but global as in overview of the organization and what it does and the services it offers and the people it serves and how people can input into all the different parts that produce the output, whether it's, you know, as I say, it's permanent, it's contract, maybe it's somebody who comes in on a regular basis, it's fractional, and maybe it's actually going outside to somebody totally unconnected with the organization who can do a part of a project. Uh, you know that much better or much more specifically than people within.
Speaker 2:We're already coming towards the end of this conversation. We've only got a few more questions left for you, and the next one is one that you can't do an episode these days, can you, without talking about AI. So let's talk about AI. I love talking about AI, it's just like it's every single chat, but that's because it's so important. Do you think that the increasing usage of ai within hr will lead to a form of humanless human resources? How much of the hr function can be replaced, in your opinion, and what can't be augmented or gotten rid of by by the uh, by the generative technologies?
Speaker 3:I suppose I can give you a very short answer to this, but I'll need to expand on it a bit. I think that you probably picked up as well at some of the events last year, there was this expression about recruiterless recruiting and would AI. There were loads of podcasts in the talent acquisition world about we won't need people anymore and kind of, what's the future of a recruiterless recruiting and would ai? There were loads of podcasts in the talent acquisition world about we won't need people anymore and and kind of, what's the future of a recruiter, what's the future of a ta person? And it was this concept of recruiterless recruiting. It would just happen. Um, and for some people, if I go back to the total talent thinking thing I was just talking about, that's almost the way some people want that to be. They'll just go on to a platform, find a piece of work they can do and do it.
Speaker 3:Having said that, I think that the difference for HR because it's possible that you know, we already have the capability and the capacity to use AI to do a lot of HR's work and so the bit missing is not the humaneness, it's the humanity, and I think that the human resources role will be the humanity part, as opposed to kind of the stuff that AI can do and actually you don't need another human to be involved with. And that comes back to some of the things I was saying before about treating the people who are working within the organization, on whatever basis that relationship is with humanity, as people with their own challenges, with their own priorities, with their own interests, needing support in different areas of things like well-being of the mental health, a lot of those things, um, and it's I think that much more human understanding is is what human resources I think I believe will be doing in the future. I don't mean that's all they'll be doing, because there'll be hr directors screaming at this, saying, but we do this, we do that and the guy doesn't know he's talking about. But that's the part, the day-to-day part, that the interaction with the people within our organization, in and around it, that's the bit I think will be most important, because if we just cut everything off and make it humanless, then it's kind of you know what's the difference between you and the next one and the next one? And there needs to be that reason why people want to be attached to your business and want to be a part of it and help it achieve its goals and serve its customers.
Speaker 3:Um, and that's, that's the human. So that's what I think human resources can do. Um and uh, some of the stuff which is, you know, most of the examples with ai, you get given a like the booking leave and things like that booking courses and you don't need a person to do that. Um, and so it's. It's the things that you need a human for.
Speaker 2:That I think human resources will still do okay, so the clue is in the name, in the title. There we go, uh, mervyn. Just finally for sir, how can our listeners connect with and learn more about?
Speaker 3:you. Well, I'm at Mervyn Dinnan on I was about to say Twitter, I must say X, and on threads, although I'm not using threads that much at the moment I should do. I am the only Mervyn Dinnan, as I'm aware, on LinkedIn as well, so it's M-E-R-V-Y-N-D-I-N-N-E-N. You can find me. Hr Means Business Podcast, which is part of HR Happy Hour. You see me at various events, speaking and stuff. I've co-authored two books with a guy called Matt Older. One is called Exceptional Talent, the other one called Digital Talent, and we are about to start writing our third book. And, yeah, I one called digital talent and we are about to start writing our third book. Um, and yeah, I mean I'm at. I'm at most events in europe and increasingly, the us these days as well. So if you're going to an hr expo or an hr conference, um, um, try and look me up or message me and see if I'm there, because I would love to meet you all and he's jolly good company, as I know from a networking event in Paris.
Speaker 2:Mervyn, my friend, thank you very much for your time today. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3:It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me, Bill.
Speaker 2:And listeners as always. Until next time, happy working.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom.