1. Talent Management Meets the
Science of Human Behavior
By Colin Sloman, Janice Simmons and Susan M. Cantrell
2. 2 | Accenture Strategy
As new insights into brain science and human
behavior are now being made at unprecedented levels
by scientists worldwide—and as analytics finally
enable organizations to test hypotheses and form
conclusions by analyzing a newly available treasure
trove of big data—HR will begin to arm itself with
the tools and insights of a scientist to drive significantly
better performance from their workforces and improved
business outcomes.
3. 3 | Accenture Strategy
For years, companies have tried their
best to make talent decisions based on
judgment, common sense, and good faith
regarding what is in the best interest of
employees, leaders, and the company as a
whole. But how do we know these decisions
have been effective or are indeed the best
decisions, based on solid factual evidence?
The emerging field of analytics is now
revealing that many such long-standing
talent management practices commonly
used by organizations may indeed be
flawed. A newly available treasure trove
of data is now creating the unprecedented
opportunity for organizations to create
data-based insights to optimize workforce
performance and determine which
particular practices may have the most
significant impact on the business.
This data comes from everywhere: cell
phone GPS signals, posts to social media
sites, employee e-mail and electronic
communications, or employee information
like learning records, employee promotion
and transfer histories, or performance
management data to name a few. This
data is Big Data, and if organizations
manage to master the scientific discipline
of mining this data to test hypotheses and
create meaningful fact-based insights and
conclusions, they will have the ability to
crunch their way to victory.
At the same time, new insights into brain
science and human behavior are rapidly
emerging from scientists worldwide.
Scientists are developing break-through
insights into everything from how we
learn to what motivates us to how
we regulate our emotions, revealing a
fundamental mismatch between what
science knows and what business often
does. Many of these insights—such as
the finding that most people are not best
motivated to perform by carrot and stick
reward systems (e.g., rewards like bonuses
and threats like being let go)—are far from
common sense and at first glance may
even seem counter-intuitive. Applied to
the workforce, they have the potential to
radically reshape the way we manage talent
to optimize performance.
Never before has science had such
potential to transform the way we manage
our people to achieve business results.
Advances in multiple fields—including
mathematical modeling and analytics,
neuroscience, the science of physical health
and well-being, anthropology, sociology,
psychology, and even engineering—have
the potential to help organizations boost
the performance of their people and
organizations like they’ve never been
able to before.
As analytics and scientific fields such as
brain science advance, we are looking at a
veritable sea change as HR becomes ready
to adopt a new model of managing people
to suit a new era. In fact, HR professionals
now face a great challenge over the next
decade: nothing less than to arm itself
with the tools and insights of a scientist
to make decisions based on facts rather
than faith in order to drive significantly
better performance from their workforces
and improved business outcomes.
Advances in Science and Analytics Aim
to Help Organizations Boost Performance
4. 4 | Accenture Strategy
Consider just a small sampling of some
of the insights scientists are currently
making in multiple different fields that
may impact the way organizations manage
their people for performance (for specific
types of insights that can now be made by
organizations using data and analytics,
see sidebar: The Emerging Science of
HR Analytics):
Neuroscience: Neuroscience, the study
of the physiological functioning of the
brain, has been applied to everything from
improving the self (where psychiatrist and
author Daniel Amen use brain scans to
reveal how people can be happier, more
innovative, or less stressed1
) to economics
(where economists use brain scans to
explore economic decisions) to marketing
(where marketers study how our brains
respond to advertisements to craft more
effective messages).
So it should be no surprise that a whole
field is now currently emerging around
applying neuroscience to human behavior
in the workplace as well. Two vocal and
well-known proponents in the field of
applying neuroscience to the workplace—
David Rock, founder of the Neuroleadership
Institute and author of Your Brain at
Work2
, and frequent collaborator Jeffrey
M. Schwartz, a research psychiatrist at
University of California at Los Angeles, have
used neuroscience to reveal insights into
facilitating change, decision making and
problem solving, emotional regulation, and
collaboration in the workplace. One of their
main ideas? Mindful, focused attention on
new management practices, rather than on
old habits, can actually rewire the physical
brain.3
Although creating insights into
organizational behavior based on brain
research is currently still controversial,
the field has the potential to yield a
plethora of insightful information into
human performance as it develops.4
In particular, newly emerging neural
measurement devices that are now
affordable, portable, and wireless promise
to help scientists collect ever more data
on people’s brains, thereby lending greater
validity to their findings.5
Psychology: During the last two decades,
scientists have gained a far more accurate
view of human nature—especially as the
increasing body of work in psychology
that studies how the mind thinks, feels,
acts, and perceives is married with other
disciplines such as neuroscience and
biology. For example, in the book Switch:
How to Change Things When Change is
Hard, authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath
draw on new insights from biopsychology
that reveal that our minds are ruled by
two different systems—the rational mind
and the emotional mind—that compete for
control. The rational mind wants to change
something at work; the emotional mind
loves the comfort of the existing routine.
If the tension is overcome, change can
occur more easily and quickly.6
Daniel H.
Pink reveals in his book Drive: The Surprising
Truth About What Motivates Us, research
from the field of psychology has found that
high performance and satisfaction at work
is most strongly related to the ability to
direct our own lives, to learn and create
new things, and to do better by ourselves
and our world.7
The field of psychology has
many domains in addition to the science of
change and motivation that can be mined
by organizations to improve performance,
such as the following:
• Positive psychology (or the study of
what makes a flourishing life, popularized
by psychologist Martin Seligman8
).
• Mindfulness (or the study of how paying
attention can improve performance,
popularized by Jon Kabat-Zinn
and Harvard research psychologist
Ellen Langer9
).
• Creativity (popularized for business by
Harvard researcher and psychologist
Teresa Amabilie10
and Ken Robinson11
).
• Emotional intelligence (or the ability to
identify, assess, and control the emotions
of oneself and others, popularized by
psychologist Daniel Goleman12
).
Overview of Scientific Fields
Producing Actionable Insights
Organizations Can Use
5. 5 | Accenture Strategy
Sociology and Anthropology: Sociology,
the scientific study of human social
behavior, and anthropology, the study
of humanity primarily through systemic
observation and cross-cultural comparison,
are also yielding some surprisingly useful
insights for organizations. In the age of
collaboration and social networks like
Facebook and LinkedIn, tools and insights
from sociology like social network analysis,
can reveal insights regarding connections
between employees to reveal information
bottlenecks, underutilized employees, or
communication gaps that can be closed to
boost productivity.13
Social network analysis
may also help managers create a real-time,
accurate representation of who interacts
with whom to supplement information
from organizational charts, or even help
shape the physical design of a workspace
like seating charts that can be based on a
person’s communication type.
And as globalization forces organizations to
deal with a wide diversity of cultures, and
as organizations seek to create the optimal
overall corporate culture for business
success, so too can findings from social and
cultural anthropology regarding cultures,
roles played within groups, and personal
and collective values in an organization
become insightful to improving
organizational performance. Organizations
from Intel to IDEO, LLC are already using
methods and insights from anthropology for
example, to develop innovative new product
features.14
And the emerging field of digital
anthropology is helping companies like
Microsoft understand how subcultures like
teenagers interact online;15
it may only be
a matter of time until companies decide
to study their own employees using the
tools and insights from anthropology to
optimize performance. Although corporate
anthropology has gained little recognition
as a field, pioneers like Marietta Baba at
Michigan State are recognizing business
applications of anthropology and training
graduate students in the field.16
Companies
like Cisco Systems have used cultural
anthropologists—as well as specialists
in psychology, design, sociology, IT, HR,
and workplace resources—to help design
workspaces to improve productivity and
increase employee satisfaction.17
Likewise,
business relevant applications based on
anthropology are now emerging, such as
CultureGPS, a smart phone app based on
research on national cultures that enables
users to analyze visible behavior differences
in intercultural encounters and to predict
to a certain degree which interactions
evolve when people from different
nationalities meet.
Physical Health and Well-being: It is
often said by executives that energy—
not time—is the true currency of high-
performance. Researchers at the Human
Performance Institute have conducted
science-based research into the unique
behaviors of elite performers to provide
insights into how to prepare executives
to achieve at unprecedented performance
levels. Based on the theory that “the
body is business relevant, from muscle
to mind,” the Institute provides fact-
based recommendations in its “corporate
athlete program” regarding how people
can strengthen and align energy across
four dimensions: body, heart, mind, and
spirit to become physically energized,
emotionally connected, mentally focused,
and aligned with whatever mission is most
important to them.18
As advances in science
continue to reveal the interconnectedness
of mind and body and how it can impact
people’s performance at work, we expect
new insights to be created regarding how
everything from nutrition to managing
stress to exercise can be optimized to
improve workforce performance.
Devices Engineered to Improve
Performance: Scientists are also hard at
work developing technologies and methods
to improve brain function—ranging from
biological techniques that boost memory
to devices that promise to help improve
concentration or other mental processes.19
A whole new field of “neurofitness”
is emerging, with devices designed to
stimulate the brain to augment our physical
and mental fitness.20
Accenture recently
developed a prototype cell phone that
can monitor behaviors like frequency of
negative vs. positive remarks, for example,21
and pedometers have been around for
years. Devices are also being developed to
take advantage of the fact that scientists
have observed that certain sound waves
(like binaural beats, or tones of different
frequencies that are presented separately,
one to each of a subject’s ears using stereo
headphones) can influence brain waves
and lead to benefits like enhanced learning
ability and improved long-term retention of
information.22
6. 6 | Accenture Strategy
Forming scientific hypotheses, and testing
them through data, can help organizations
create fact-based insights into improving
human and business performance. Here
are just a few of some of the many new
dimensions in HR and talent analytics that
show promise for the future:
Using Predictive Analytics to Answer
“What’s Next”?
Instead of looking backward to analyze
“what happened?”, predictive analytics
helps executives answer “what’s next?”
and “what should we do about it?” It
analyzes current and historical facts to
make predictions about future events.
Google, for example, developed a formula
that predicts the probability that each
employee will leave.23
So too did Accenture,
which analyzes indicators of overall
well-being for some employees, such as
number of vacation days an individual has
taken, length of time on the same project,
or whether an employee didn’t receive a
promotion he or she was working toward.
The company may then alert a manager
about employees who may be at risk for
leaving the company or for stress-related
issues such as health problems or job
dissatisfaction.24
Mining the Digital Data Stream:
In the future, companies will integrate
traditional business and talent data
with social and mobile data—tweets,
blog posts, RSS feeds, GPS coordinates,
customer service feedback, and more—to
get a complete picture of their workforce’s
abilities, wants and needs. For example,
employee e-mails and social media
sites can now be analyzed to determine
employee sentiment, thereby providing an
alternative to traditional employee surveys
that may promise to give more accurate,
real-time visibility into the workforce.
Big Data to See the Big Picture: Talent
management processes and programs often
focus on the individual; we have individual
development plans, for example, or we pick
individuals for succession plans. Analytics
promises to help HR see the big picture
from a population point of view, addressing
questions like: Where do I have talent gaps,
how might they change based on predicted
changes in customer demand, and in
which geographic regions should I build vs.
buy vs. borrow talent to close these gaps?
Or: What are the most effective levers I
can pull to improve the overall quality of
my workforce?
Big Data for the Individual: Although
there is a lot of talk about how big data
will help big business, a new trend in
analytics is the use of data to transform the
everyday lives of individuals, boosting each
individual’s performance in order to boost
overall business performance. For example,
intelligent systems are being developed
that help HR professionals achieve a
bottom-up, data-based understanding of
each individual employee’s evolving work,
learning, or behavior patterns—thereby
enabling highly personalized coaching,
learning opportunities, rewards, and more.
Systems, for example, could monitor the
preferred work patterns of individuals,
enabling highly sophisticated scheduling
based on the ebbs and flows of an
individual’s personal energy level and how
it matches the workday’s rhythms.
Brain-and Behavior-based Analytics:
Data can now be collected on people’s
actual behaviors and responses to events,
opening up exciting new opportunities.
Responses of employees to organizational
changes or programs such as a downsizing
announcement, for example, can be
collected and analyzed to understand how
the change is being perceived and then to
test messages that leaders are delivering so
that they can be crafted in optimal ways.
The Emerging Science of HR and Talent Analytics
7. 7 | Accenture Strategy
Talent Profile Analytics: As new data
becomes available on workers, HR will
be able to mine data to more effectively
match talent to task, thereby optimizing
performance and enabling HR to take
on the new and invaluable role of talent
broker. Instead of merely analyzing a
worker’s skill and experience profiles
typically found on a resume and then
relying on interviews to make sourcing
decisions, much more highly predictive
data will be able to be mined on both
employees and potential employees alike.
Firms like Evolv are now working with
companies to crunch Big Data to determine
the best predictors of performance. Evolv
has also found counter-intuitive insights,
like the fact that for many jobs there is no
correlation between criminal background
and work performance, or that call center
workers who had job hopped in the past
were no more likely to quit quickly than
those who had not.25
Just a few of the
many variables that could be mined in the
future include:
• An individual’s social
collaboration patterns.
• Performance on key indicators from
previous assignments.
• Feedback, reviews, recommendations
and referrals.
• Cultural fit, competency, and
skill assessments.
• Willingness to work in particular
geographies.
• Test scores in massively open
online courses.
• Samples of previous work performed.
• Personality types (e.g., research
has been found that you can
mine Facebook and other social media
sites to determine statistically
valid personality profiles of
each individual26
).
• Individual work preferences (type
of work, hours willing to work, location,
etc.) as well as interests and strengths.
• Expertise and knowledge as indicated in
people’s journal entries, blog postings
and social media contributions.
8. 8 | Accenture Strategy
Currently, there is a fundamental
mismatch between what businesses do
and what science reveals we should do
to make the most of our people. The
statistics concerning the performance and
engagement of our people, as well as the
effectiveness of traditional practices, are
less than stellar. Despite a whole cadre of
experts, books, and an industry developed
to help companies improve the performance
of their people, there still hasn’t been much
improvement on this front. Consider just a
few alarming statistics:
• According to some studies, nearly
two–thirds of U.S. employees are not
fully engaged in their work and are less
productive as a result.27
• In one Accenture study of 674
global executives, only 16 percent
of respondents described the overall
skill level of their workforce as
industry leading.28
• About 70 percent of change efforts
fail, and this number hasn’t changed
over time.29
• A meta-analysis of 24 longitudinal
studies showed that improvement in
multisource feedback ratings (360-degree
feedback) over time is generally small.
• The Society for Human Resources
Management concluded that over
90 percent of performance appraisal
systems are a failure30
; only 8 percent
agreed that performance management
contributes to individual performance in
a study by Human Resource Institute.31
Why the mismatch between science
and business? First, many talent
management and business processes used
by organizations today were developed
well before recent advances in fields like
neuroscience. One recent Forbes article
provocatively ran with the headline, for
example, “(Almost) Everything We Know
About Employee Engagement is Wrong.”32
It illustrates in stark detail the difference
between what organizations tend to think
promotes engagement (e.g., the frequency
of employee/manager lunches, performance
reviews, volunteer program outings and
team-building exercises) and what rigorous
science reveals really promotes it (e.g. trust,
values and a purpose-driven mission).33
And although common-sense practices like
creating a positive emotional environment
for employees might have been around for
a long time, organizations often didn’t act
on such insights. Sometimes, the failure
to act was because organizations didn’t
trust such insights without the facts to
legitimize them. Other times, executives
chose to make decisions based on psuedo-
facts that weren’t built on statistical
analysis to promote other practices they
“thought” were deemed to be effective.
Often, the failure to act was due to the
fact that organizations might have been
so ensconced in traditional practices that
it might have seemed too monumental
of a task to try to change them. But most
such practices were developed in the age
of industrial production, and designed to
suit organizations that didn’t fully depend
on their people’s performance at work to
gain a competitive advantage. In today’s
knowledge-based, fast-changing economy
where agility, change, and employee
performance can spell the difference
between competitive success and failure,
it is time we adapt our practices based
on scientific insights so that people can
perform at their best.
Impact on
the Business:
9. 9 | Accenture Strategy
As scientific insights start to permeate
business, they promise to fundamentally
reshape our talent and business practices
(for examples of specific insights gained
from science, and the implications for
how they might reshape our talent and
business practices, see table on page
10: How Science May Reshape Talent
and Business Practices). Already, some
companies are jumping on board and taking
note. Ameriprise Financial—a US$7 billion
company that is the leading source of
financial advice in the United States—drew
on findings from brain science when it
revamped its training programs for financial
advisors with the goal of helping them
make better financial decisions.34
American
International Group drew on scientific
principles to train managers, using insights
such as focusing on just three goals since
the brain can hold only a few ideas at a
time in its working memory.35
Long a believer that energy is the currency
of high performance, P&G has been a
long-time advocate of the Corporate
Athlete Program, a program based on
scientific principles that promotes employee
health and well-being. The company
found that of the 8,500 people who have
completed the program, 61 percent who've
taken part say they're more focused at
work, and 51 percent indicate that they've
made gains in their physical energy.36
Likewise, Sony Pictures Entertainment
coached senior leaders and managers on
how to improve their energy levels based
on scientific principles distilled by Tony
Schwartz’s Energy Project; as a result,
93 percent of participants reported that
as a result of the work, they began bringing
higher levels of energy to work and 98
percent felt more focused and productive.37
Google in particular has been on the
forefront of applying fact-based analytic
insights into their workforce and mining
the principles of science and applying
them to their HR programs and processes.
Kathryn Dekas, a manager in Google’s
“people analytics”38
team, claims “All people
decisions at Google are based on data and
analytics.” Google’s PiLab, which plays the
role of conducting applied research and
development within People Operations
(Google’s version of Human Resources)
even has a collection of industrial and
organizational psychologists, decision
scientists, and organizational sociologists
whose mission is to conduct innovative
research that transforms organizational
practice within Google and beyond.39
As
more companies start to apply scientific
findings to their talent and management
practices, significant performance
improvements are likely to ensue.
10. 10 | Accenture Strategy
How Science May Reshape Business and Talent Practices
High performance and satisfaction at work
is most strongly related to the feeling
that we can direct our own lives, learn
and create new things, and do better by
ourselves and our world.40
Define the goals of jobs, but provide more
autonomy for workers to define how to
achieve these goals. Help workers feel
a sense of purpose in the work they are
doing, and give them plenty of opportunity
to grow and develop.
Engagement
Practice Sample Scientific Insight Actionable Implications
Most people don’t have the motivation
to change with only an intellectual
understanding; the emotional side of
people must also be engaged.41
Focusing on the positive can be more
motivating than focusing on the negative
or fear.42
Too much choice can be paralyzing and a
limit to change.43
The brain hard-wires patterns of thinking.44
A distressing mental state arises when
people find that their beliefs are
inconsistent with their actions—something
called cognitive dissonance.45
Tap into people’s emotional side. Cultivate
a positive mindset, inspiring people
emotionally. Break change down into
smaller pieces so that fear is reduced.46
Focus on what Dan Heath calls “bright
spots,” or examples of best moments that
have worked tremendously well and try to
clone them.47
Simplify processes and make them easier to
free up the creativity needed for change.48
Make flexibility and change a habit by
integrating it into everyday business.49
Align the overall purpose of the
organization to an individual’s own life
purposes so that they are more inclined to
change their individual behaviors.
Change Management
Enhancing Innovation People are most likely to be creative
(a quality that contributes to innovation)
when they’re intrinsically motivated by
the interest, enjoyment, satisfaction, and
challenge of the work itself, as well as
when they feel a sense of autonomy and
that their ideas are respected.50
Help managers learn how to provide
optimally challenging work assignments for
employees, help them learn how to provide
clear direction on the strategic goal, but
lots of leeway in how to achieve it.51
11. 11 | Accenture Strategy
Practice Sample Scientific Insight Actionable Implications
We often learn the most from action and
from multiple senses in our body rather
than from simply thinking analytically.52
The neurobiology of learning reveals that
individuals learn best in different ways;53
every human brain is wired differently.54
Breaking learning time up into twenty-
minute segments that are spaced over time
can help people learn more than massing
all that same study time together into one
long stretch.55
Help employees and leaders reflect on their
experiences and feedback from multiple
sources and senses.
Tailor learning to the individual, and offer
multiple modes of learning to employees.
Software may help tailor educational
approaches to individual brain patterns
to improve skill acquisition as well as
creative thinking.56
Provide bite-sized learning chunks at the
point of need.
Learning
Forced ranking (including terminating the
bottom five percentage or 10 percentage)
results in an impressive 16 percentage
productivity improvement—but only for the
first couple of years. After that, the gains
drop off, from six percentage climbs in the
third and fourth years to basically zero by
year 10. Scientists hypothesize that this
is due in part by the fact that over time,
people focus on competing with each other
rather than collaborating.57
Most people aren’t best motivated by the
carrot (e.g., rewards like bonuses) and
stick (e.g., threats like being let go) reward
system or extrinsic motivators.58
Focusing on the positive can be more
motivating than focusing on the negative;
celebration or praise can lead to better
thinking; the brain is wired to resist what
is commonly termed constructive feedback
but which is usually negative.59
Consider using forced rankings only if a
company is in trouble and for only one or
two years. Otherwise, consider alternatives
like comparing employees’ performance
to an absolute standard rather than to
each other, and doing away performance
labels altogether so that reviews can focus
more on meaningful insights and less on
explaining away a grade.
Motivate people primarily through intrinsic
motivation;60
give people discretion and
freedom in the way they do their jobs,61
communicate purpose in the organization
rather than merely profits.62
Focus on the positive first in performance
reviews; provide lots of positive feedback
and praise when possible. Make sure to
have short-term celebration immediately
after success, and long-term celebration
tied to major milestones. Encourage
managers to engage in a Socratic dialogue
with employees, asking questions so that
the employees set their own goals and
self-evaluate.
Performance Management
12. 12 | Accenture Strategy
Practice Sample Scientific Insight Actionable Implications
Hiring and
Selection
People’s performance is best when they are
performing work that is at the intersection
of three elements—what they’re good at,
what they like, and what adds value to the
organization or world.63
When hiring people into new roles, align
their strengths with the work for which
they are best suited.64
Physical Health and Well-being One of the linchpins of employee wellbeing
and performance is physical health.65
Exercise boosts brain power.66
Eating the wrong kinds of food and
not drinking enough water lowers
workers’ ability to sustain energy and to
think creatively.67
Unmanaged stress at work can lead to
negative behaviors such as impatience,
uncooperativeness, defensiveness,
hyper criticality and pessimism—all of
which negatively affect teams and
decrease individual and collective ability
to perform.68
Provide education and support for
employees regarding physical health;
identify and support employees at risk
of burn-out.
Encourage people to hold walking
meetings; offer the option of
standing desks.69
Offer low glycemic, nutrious snacks and
plenty of water.
Support work-life balance initiatives;
train managers to observe and detect
stress-related behaviors and how to
support their employees when they observe
them; help foster optimal workloads, the
ability for people to make choices and
decisions, and a sense of fairness and
community at work—all of which have been
shown to reduce stress.70
13. 13 | Accenture Strategy
Practice Sample Scientific Insight Actionable Implications
In one study, managers weighing ethical
dilemmas were found to use the part of
their brain associated with early memories,
which could mean moral thinking is formed
early in life.71
Focus on careful selection of employees,
including assessing their values and ethics.72
Instilling Ethics and Values in
the Workforce
Fostering Productivity and
Peak Performance
Positive, emotional connection (or feeling
positively connected to others and the
organizational mission, with little negative
emotions in the workplace) is a key
ingredient to peak performance.73
The sense of play at work, or imaginative
engagement, produces new ideas, boosts
morale, reduces anxiety, improves focus
and performance, and makes a heavy load
seem lighter.74
Status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness,
and fairness have been found to optimize
the performance of the brain at work.75
Foster and facilitate community and
relationships, make sure to foster a
positive, upbeat culture.
Create a culture that encourages
free play of the mind through having
managers ask employees open-ended
questions; rewarding new ideas and
innovation; encouraging people to
question, brainstorm, and experiment
with and evaluate new ideas; use gaming
applications to encourage play.76
Help facilitate a company culture where
employees are frequently recognized
for their contributions; the threat of
uncertainty is reduced by providing ample
information to employees; people can
exercise autonomy and decision-making
power; and there is a sense of community,
connection, and fairness.77
14. 14 | Accenture Strategy
HR, talent, and organization change
will be completely redefined. Nearly every
HR and talent management process and
program will need to be rethought in light
of scientific-based evidence. Traditional
training processes like yearly performance
reviews, lecture based training events, and
centrally-driven change programs will need
to be revamped so they are in alignment
with what science how knows to be most
effective. (For some examples of how some
processes or practices may change in light
of scientific findings, see table on page 10:
How Science May Reshape Business and
Talent Practices).
New roles will be created in HR and
beyond. To harness the power of scientific
and analytic-based insights, new roles may
be created in HR, including:
• The Science Ambassador. These people
would be responsible for keeping abreast
of various developments in science in
the outside world. Partnerships with
universities or scientists can help in
this regard; Google’s PiLab, for example,
gathers academic researchers each year
in a Research Summit to spark debate
and share findings.78
• The R&D Talent Scientist. These people,
often at the PhD level, would conduct
experiments, perform analytics, do
applied research and development with
respect to talent. Organizations may well
start to employ anthropologists, decision
scientists, organizational sociologists,
industrial and organization psychologists,
analytics professionals, and more to
perform first-hand research on how to
improve people’s performance in the
context of one’s specific organization.79
Google’s PiLab is on the forefront in that
it employs all of the above, but many
other organizations such as Tesco, Intel,
and P&G now have talent analytic groups
specifically in charge of mining talent
and HR data to test hypotheses and
develop actionable, fact-based insights
an organization can use.80
• The Data Jockey. These people would
support the scientists by running
inferential, statistical analysis in order to
answer hypotheses. These people are the
“quants” who just love to mine data.
• The Marketing Evangelist. These people
take the results found by The Science
Ambassador or R&D Talent Scientists,
infuse information design, and make
them digestible and understandable—
something never to be underestimated
when it comes to translating science into
actionable programs and results.
As HR begins to adopt the tools and
insights of science, it will transform the
human resources function. Here’s how:
The field of HR and talent management
will be legitimized as a data-based
discipline. As science continues to make
headway into providing fact-based
insights regarding how to improve human
performance, and as HR begins to apply
this new understanding to the workforce
and HR and talent management programs
and processes, the function could finally
become a discipline grounded in science
and facts, and gain its long-sought-
after status as a truly strategic function
imperative to business success.
Impact on HR
15. 15 | Accenture Strategy
• The Science Applier. These people would
develop HR and talent management
practices. Although not a new role,
they will need to take on the added
responsibility of applying the insights
from the Science Ambassadors and
R&D Talent Scientists into actionable,
company-specific programs and practices
for the organization.
• Behavioral Scientists. These people
would work with the business or
business teams to instill insights from
science into everyday work. For example,
they might coach a group of call center
managers on how to more effectively
manage their teams using the principles
of brain science. Or they might intervene
in an organization’s social networking
sites to help foster better and stronger
connections among people using
principles learned from sociology’s study
of social networking.
New skills and education will be required
by the HR professional. Currently, most HR
professionals have few skills or knowledge
of scientific-based disciplines that can
impact human performance, and very few
have the skills to include analytics in their
decision-making processes. People like
Charlie Bresler, Executive Vice President
at Men’s Wearhouse who has a PhD in
social pyschology and who strives to apply
the principles from the discipline to HR
practices, are rare indeed.81
Companies will
need to provide substantial internal training
to bring their HR professionals up to speed
or hire new people with analytical skills. In
addition, HR professionals may also need to
start earning more rigorous, science-based
educational degrees in order to qualify for
jobs in the field.
A fact-based culture will permeate HR.
To really harness the power of science to
improve HR and business performance,
HR will need to make sure that every HR
professional has adopted the mindset of
a scientist, and that every process and
decision in HR is designed to include the
integration of facts to drive higher levels of
performance. This is a substantial culture
change in its own right for the function,
and it will take applying the principles
of brain science with respect to change
management to make it happen.
The HR function has spent the past decade
successfully streamlining, standardizing,
and harmonizing processes to reduce
costs and improve efficiency. But in
many ways, this has taken the “human”
out of “human resources.” The next
step for HR may well be a radical shift
to focusing on driving business results
by improving the performance of every
person in the workforce using fact-based
insights from science and analytics. This
new developmental phase of HR will
fundamentally transform the function, in
terms of the practices and processes it
advocates, but also in terms of the people
and roles it comprises. It might do nothing
short of revolutionize the field of HR.
Bottom Line
16. 16 | Accenture Strategy
1. See, for example: Daniel Amen, “Change
Your Brain, Change Your Life,” presentation
at TEDxOrangeCoast, May 19, 2011 and
Making a Good Brain Great: The Amen
Clinic Program for Achieving and Sustaining
Optimal Mental Performance by Daniel H.
Amen (Three Rivers Press, 2006).
2. David Rock, Your Brain at Work:
Strategies for Overcoming Distraction,
Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All
Day Long (HarperBusiness, 2009).
3. “The Business Brain In Close-up,”
BloombergBusinessWeek, July 22, 2007.
4. Bret Hartman, “Daniel Amen: Pioneer or
profiteer?” (The Washington Post, August 9,
2012.)
5. See, for example, devices made by
NeuroSky at www.neurosky.com.
6. Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Switch:
How to Change Things When Change is
Hard (Crown Business, 2010).
7. Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising
Truth about What Motivates Us (Riverhead
Books, 2011).
8. See, for example: Flourish: A Visionary
New Understanding of Happiness and
Well-being by Martin E. P. Seligman (Free
Press, 2012).
9. “A Call for Mindful Leadership,” HBR
Blog Network/Imagining the Future of
Leadership, by Ellen Langer, April 28, 2010,
and Daniel Goleman and Jon Kabat-Zinn,
Mindfulness @ Work: A Leading with
Emotional Intelligence Conversation with
Jon Kabat-Zinn (Macmillan Audio, 2007).
10. See, for example, The Progress
Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy,
Engagement, and Creativity at Work by
Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer (Harvard
Business Review Press, 2011).
11. See, for example, Out of Our Minds:
Learning to be Creative by Ken Robinson
(Capstone second edition, 2011).
12. Working with Emotional Intelligence by
Daniel Goleman (Bantam, 2000).
13. See, for example, The Study of Social
Networks by Rob Cross at University
of Virginia.
14. Design Anthropology: Object Culture in
the 21st Century, edited by Alison J. Clarke
(Springer Vienna Architecture, 2010).
15. “Digital Anthropologist,” by Kashmir
Hill (February 28, 2011, Forbes Magazine).
16. See Marietta Baba’s work and
biography at: https://www.msu.
edu/~mbaba/biosketch.html.
17. “Office Design Case Study: How Cisco
Designed the Collaborative Connected
Workplace Environment,” a Cisco on
Cisco case study, http://www.cisco.com/
web/about/ciscoitatwork/collaboration/
connected_workplace_web.html.
18. Human Performance Institute website
at https://www.hpinstitute.com/training-
solutions/corporate-athlete.
19. Louise Lee, “Boosting Our Gray Matter”
(BusinessWeek, August 20, 2007).
20. “How Brain Science May Change
the Way We Live,” by Tim Jarvis (O, The
Oprah Magazine, November 2008), http://
www.oprah.com/health/How-Brain-
Science-May-Change-the-Way-We-
Live/5#ixzz2KQm1oh9f.
21. Workforce of One: Revolutionizing
Talent Management through Customization
by Susan M. Cantrell and David Smith
(Harvard Business Press, 2010).
22. For more information, see: http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_beats.
23. Retooling HR: Using Proven Business
Tools to Make Better Decisions About
Talent, by John Boudreau (Harvard Business
Review Press, 2010)
24. Susan M. Cantrell and David Smith,
Workforce of One: Revolutionizing Talent
Management through Customization
(Harvard Business Press, 2010).
25. “Big Data and Hiring: Robot Recruiters,”
The Economist, April 6, 2013.
26. “Social Networking Websites,
Personality Ratings, and the Organizational
Context: More Than Meets the Eye?”
Donald H. Kluemper, Peter A. Rosen, Kevin
W. Mossholder (Journal of Applied Social
Pyschology, 2012, 42, 5, pp. 1143–1172).
Sources
17. 17 | Accenture Strategy
27. How to Tackle U.S. Employees’
Stagnating Engagement,” GALLUP Business
Journal, http://businessjournal.gallup.
com/content/162953/tackle-employees-
stagnating-engagement.aspx
28. Accenture High Performance Workforce
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The_High_Performance_Workforce_
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29.T.
John P. Kotter, A Sense of Urgency
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T. See also: Senturia, L. Flees, and M.
Maceda, “Leading Change Management
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30. 2006 Performance Management Survey,
(Human Resource Institute 2006).
31. ibid.
32. “(Almost) Everything We Think About
Employee Engagement is Wrong,” by Dov
Seidman (Forbes, September 20, 2012).
33. ibid.
34. “That’s the Way We (Used to) Do
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(Bloomberg BusinessWeek, July 22, 2007).
36. “Conditioning the Corporate
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BusinessWeek, May 22, 2008).
37. Sony Pictures case study, produced by
the Energy Project, http://theenergyproject.
com/sites/default/files/docs/case-studies/
TEP_C.
38. “People analytics: How Google Does
HR By the Numbers,” by Ciara Byrne
(Venturebeat, September 20, 2011), http://
venturebeat.com/2011/09/20/people-
analytics-google-hr/#sBosh2kotS4yysRX.99.
39. “Hello Science—Meet HR,” a post on
Google’s research blog on June 6, 2012
by Jennifer Kurkoski, Ph.D., Manager,
People & Innovation Lab, http://
googleresearch.blogspot.com/2012/06/
hello-sciencemeet-hr.html#!/2012/06/
hello-sciencemeet-hr.html.
40. Edward M. Hallowell, Shine: Using
Brain Science to Get the Best from Your
People (Harvard Business Press, 2011).
41. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal
Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
(Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008)
and Edward M. Hallowell, Shine: Using
Brain Science to Get the Best from Your
People (Harvard Business Press, 2011).
42. This is the Neuroleadership Institute’s
SCARF model, as described, for example,
in “Managing with the Brain in Mind,” by
David Rock (strategy+business, issue 56,
autumn 2009).
43. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal
Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
(Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008)
and Edward M. Hallowell, Shine: Using
Brain Science to Get the Best from Your
People (Harvard Business Press, 2011).
44. This is the Neuroleadership Institute’s
SCARF model, as described, for example,
in “Managing with the Brain in Mind,” by
David Rock (strategy+business, issue 56,
autumn 2009).
45. Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising
Truth about What Motivates Us (Riverhead
Books, 2011).
46. Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Switch:
How to Change Things When Change is
Hard (Crown Business, 2010).
47. ibid.
48. ibid.
49. “The Neuroscience of Change,”
a presentation delivered by Walter
McFarland to the 2012 ACMP International
Conference, April 3, 2012.
50. “Wired for Success: How to Fulfill
Your Potential: Why Change Management
Fails in Organizations,” by Ray B. Williams
(Psychology Today, September 28, 2010).
51. Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Switch:
How to Change Things When Change is
Hard (Crown Business, 2010).
52. ibid.
53. ibid.
54. “The Neuroscience of Change,”
a presentation delivered by Walter
McFarland to the 2012 ACMP International
Conference, April 3, 2012.
18. 18 | Accenture Strategy
55. “What Doesn’t Motivate Creativity
Can Kill It,” HBR Blog Network, by Teresa
Amabile and Steve Kramer, April 25, 2012,
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/04/balancing_
the_four_factors_tha_1.html and The
Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to
Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at
Work by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer
(Harvard Business Review Press, 2011).
56. ibid.
57. Study conducted by Steve Scullen,
an associate professor of management at
Drake University in Des Moines, as cited in
“The Struggle to Measure Performance,” by
Jena McGregor, Bloomberg Businessweek,
January 8, 2006.
58. Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving
and Thriving at Work, Home, and School
by John Medina (Pear Press, 2009), James,
K. H. and S. N. Swain (2011). “Only self-
generated actions create sensori-motor
systems in the developing brain.” Dev Sci
14(4): 673-678 and as described by Srini
PIllay, CEO of NeuroBusinessGroup and
as referenced in “Organizational Agility:
Practical Perspectives from Brain Science,”
by Srini PIllay and Yaarit Silverstone.
59. “How Brain Science May Change
the Way We Live,” by Tim Jarvis, (O, The
Oprah Magazine), November 2008, http://
www.oprah.com/health/How-Brain-
Science-May-Change-the-Way-We-
Live/5#ixzz2KQm1oh9f.
60. Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving
and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by
John Medina (Pear Press, 2009).
61. Bruce Mccandliss, “Brain-Based
Education—Summary Principles of
Brain-Based Research, Critiques of Brain-
Based Education,” http://education.
stateuniversity.com/pages/1799/Brain-
Based-Education.html.
62. “How Brain Science May Change
the Way We Live,” by Tim Jarvis (O, The
Oprah Magazine), November 2008, http://
www.oprah.com/health/How-Brain-
Science-May-Change-the-Way-We-
Live/5#ixzz2KQm1oh9f.
63. This is written about often; examples
include: Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The
Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us
(Riverhead Books, 2011) and The Progress
Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy,
Engagement, and Creativity at Work by
Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer (Harvard
Business Review Press, 2011).
64. See, for example: Charles Jacobs,
Management Rewired: Why Feedback
Doesn’t Work and Other Supervisory Lessons
From The Latest Brain Science (Portfolio,
2009), Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Switch:
How to Change Things When Change
is Hard (Crown Business, 2010), a Gallup
study of praise and the brain chemical
dopamine mentioned in an article by Jena
McGregor, “The Business Brain in
Close-Up” (BusinessWeek, July 22, 2007),
and “The Neuroscience of Change,”
a presentation delivered by Walter
McFarland to the 2012 ACMP International
Conference, April 3, 2012.
65. Your Brain at Work: Strategies for
Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus,
and Working Smarter All Day Long by David
Rock (HarperBusiness, 2009).
66. Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising
Truth about What Motivates Us (Riverhead
Books, 2011).
67. Your Brain at Work: Strategies for
Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus,
and Working Smarter All Day Long by David
Rock (HarperBusiness, 2009).
68. Edward M. Hallowell, Shine: Using
Brain Science to Get the Best from Your
People (Harvard Business Press, 2011).
69. ibid.
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49(4), 316-321.
19. 19 | Accenture Strategy
71. Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving
and Thriving at Work, Home, and School
by John Medina (Pear Press, 2009). Healy,
G., Matthews, C., Dunstan, D., Winkler,
E., & Owen, N. (2011). Sedentary Time
and Cardio-Metabolic Biomarkers in US
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http://www.hpinstitute.com/sites/default/
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74. “Take a Stand on Being More
Productive,” by Lucy Kellaway (Financial
Times, January 20, 2013).
75. “A Pro-active HR Approach to
Workplace Stress Management,” a
presentation delivered by Bernie McCann,
Employee Assistance Program to a Human
Resources Committee of a local Chamber
of Commerce, February 10, 2010, Inc.,
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76. By Jena McGregor, “The Business Brain
in Close-Up” (BusinessWeek, July 22, 2007).
77. ibid.
78. “Hello Science—Meet HR,” a post
on Google’s research blog on June 6, 2012
by Jennifer Kurkoski, Ph.D., Manager,
People & Innovation Lab, http://
googleresearch.blogspot.com/2012/06/
hello-sciencemeet-hr.html#!/2012/06/
hello-sciencemeet-hr.html.
79. ibid.
80. Susan M. Cantrell and David Smith,
Workforce of One (Harvard Business
Press, 2010).
81. ibid.
