Imagine how the HR or People and Culture functions across the employee life cycle would be represented in a science fiction movie.

Most of us already think we are in a badly written sci-fi movie with the outbreak of COVID-19. Hats off to all those practitioners who have helped guide their people through a pandemic.

But let us think a little and ask ourselves some questions around the current employee experience.

1. How would you make initial contact with a candidate through the recruitment process?

The current recruitment process on the whole has remained the same for decades – the employee sends a resume with a cover letter and then waits for said company to make contact and hopefully book an interview – worst case scenario you get an automated email thanking you for your time but you are not given any reason or feedback as to why you were unsuccessful.

Surely this must change! Imagine clicking a button and a hologram of the potential candidate pops up on your desk explaining why they are suitable for the role you have vacant. Yes… this is kind of like Princess Leah and R2D2 in the original Star Wars movie but soft skills are a key differentiator – how many of us have seen the perfect resume and convinced this is the right candidate, only to be let down in person?     

The Return on Investment must be better for both employee and employer: although not quite a hologram – look through our own Career Support platform:

This contains a video upload capability to help employees stand out from the crowd, and employers minimise the risk of a cultural misalignment.

2. The Interview process is a 3-5 stage affair with various people across the organisation.

Again – how much time does this take? Is this really the best way to engage and assess fit?

Imagine the interview process being done by humanoids/cyborgs or gynoids.

There would be no subjectivity: just picking the best person for the job – no racism, ageism, sexism…

Hanson Robotics has developed such a thing and Sophia is the first global AI citizen.

Imagine assessment being completed by said bots, who have been programmed with algorithms to identify if the potential employee is exaggerating on their resume or a video link that spits out a report identifying if you have lied when answering a question and will report on your interest level, motivations EQ and EI…

3. Now let us talk about Onboarding.

Probably the most critical piece of the employee experience. This is the time when things have more chance to go wrong, but this process is seriously underinvested in the majority of organisations.

We give a checklist of learnings to the new employee to go through and tick off once they have completed a task… after all the time taken to ensure you have the right person for the job, and culture, many organisations just do not on-board well.

Imagine an onboarding process where everything is in Virtual or Augmented Reality – you click on a screen and you interact with the Health and Safety manual, walk around the office, meet people in a virtual world… you can do this from anywhere, even before you start your new employment.

In a business context, this is the real opportunity – finding out who is who in the zoo, where is the business intelligence stored – who do I talk to…?

Imagine when you are onboard connecting with a robot and accessing the combined knowledge of the organisation, contacts through a connected ‘mind cloud’ so you can gain more information quicker, and start allocating tasks to bots to do.

Does this sound futuristic and 50 years away?

Well – we are closer than you think.

Check out the following link:

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are used to train employees in a real, yet safe way.

So, as you head into the workplace after Covid restrictions, as you look at next years budget and move from reactive mode to operational again, HR leaders have the opportunity to change the employee experience.

If you are in the people business and you are not reviewing your Talent process or thinking about how tech can help and influence – I hate to say it, you are already behind…

Let us all use this crisis as an opportunity – there may not be another crisis!

If you are keen to review your talent process, please make contact!

Stephen Cushion
General Manager – Consulting

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