HR’s Role in Boosting Organizational Energy and Innovation

HR’s Role in Boosting Organizational Energy and Innovation

Host: Mervyn Dinnen

Guest: Perry Timms, Founder and Chief Energy Officer: People & Transformational HR Ltd

In this podcast interview Mervyn talks with Perry Timms, published author who is consistently ranked as one of HR’s most influential thinkers, about the evolving nature of work, and some of the latest thinking and practice around organisational energy, skills based working, and innovation.

During the conversation they discuss : 

– HR’s Role in Navigating Emerging Technologies

– Building internal skills inventories

– Balancing the benefits of automation with the need for employees to engage in imaginative and creative tasks

– Increasing organizational energy by providing stimulation, variety, exploration, and a sense of achievement

– Replacing performance management with a more narrative-based and descriptive approach to employee evaluation

– Re-evaluating the employer/employee relationship

Thanks for listening! Remember to subscribe to all of the HR Happy Hour Media Network shows on your favorite podcast app!

Transcript follows:

Mervyn Dinnen 0:17
Welcome to the HR Means Business podcast, which is part of the HR Happy Hour Network. I’m your host, Mervyn Dinnen. Today I’m going to be talking to an old friend and HR sparring partner, Mr. Perry Timms, the Chief Energy Officer of People and Transformation HR, who’s one of the leading lights and one of the leading people in the UK HR space. And we’re going to be talking about some of his most recent research and around particularly areas like skills based working and skills based hiring, and some of the things that his organization are working on at the moment. Perry, Welcome to HR Means Business. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Perry Timms 0:58
Thank you, Mervyn, it’s good to be back. And yes, sparring partner is a nice way to frame it, because we go back a fair few years. But yes, so founder and chief energy Officer of people and transformational HR, so we spend a lot of time helping organizations in org, design, talent and performance. We’re a certified B Corporation, and we’re a kind of 100% remote outfit as well. So thanks.

Mervyn Dinnen 1:21
And you have been from the start, haven’t you?

Perry Timms 1:23
Yeah, it was a very deliberate thing that we wanted to make sure that we were accessible to people who had skill but, like, couldn’t necessarily travel to a destination all the time. And so we thought, why do we need a place to be? And in fact, we’ve made remote work in something that’s really strong. And so I say to a lot of people that you know, you might worry about culture, you might worry about learning and careers. We seem to have cracked all that by working very openly, very fluidly and very responsively to people’s lives. So yeah, it’s worked out a treat. Thank you.

Mervyn Dinnen 1:53
Good, good. And it was quite groundbreaking at the time, I know. So I suppose the first thing actually, I should ask you, given that, I don’t think an hour goes by on any day where digital platforms and sites like like LinkedIn, Facebook and whatever, are people debating, arguing, talking about remote, flexible, hybrid, asynchronous, working as somebody who’s been doing it from the start. I mean, what are your thoughts on the current kind of, I suppose, research, the current thinking, the current debate.

Perry Timms 2:25
Yeah, I get a little bit jaded by some of it, because it does feel very retrograde, and I think it’s all driven by the amount of financial capital invested in buildings, rather than the well being and the goodness of people coming together to do great things. So I think the motives behind it are a little bit, you know, shrouded. But what I do recognize is that after a while of being forced to work remotely and then sort of working to try and get a rhythm and a balance, we haven’t quite settled on a an archetypal principle. And I’m almost thinking, I don’t know whether we ever would have done so. I still like declarations like Spotify recent Declaration, which is like, our people aren’t children. We’re still going to have a degree of remote and flexible working. And most people have settled on a kind of two or three day thing with no absolute forced swiping in type nature, coffee badging and all those other things you hear about. So I think some people are making more of a fuss of it than they need to when really they ought to go. Are you? Are you able to get your work done in a way that’s really good for you, and are you feeling connected to what we’re all about? If the answer to that is not quite then work something out. But if the answer is yes, keep it going. So I think we’re over complicating it now.

Mervyn Dinnen 3:36
Okay, interesting. You mentioned coffee. There I was. I was only enlightened earlier today to the expression coffee squatting, oh, which is basically it seems to be people who are working remotely, but not from home, who go into a cafe and kind of spend hours and hours and hours with just one coffee, but use it using the Wi Fi and facilities.

Perry Timms 3:58
I know what you mean. I mean there are co working spaces that are set up for that. And I found, actually, frustratingly, most coffee shops now too noisy for you to get your work done. Yeah, I would agree. I’m not one of those people anymore, and I do like having a bit of sanctuary and a bit of space. And so, you know, places like common and Liverpool Street are great because you can just book on demand, get a quiet room, and it’s all good. So I think perhaps there are a few people abusing that, but I just don’t think it’s a conducive work environment. It’s good to meet and chat, but I don’t think it’s good to do calls and try and do some deep thinking.

Mervyn Dinnen 4:31
Now you are, of course, one of HR, most influential thinkers in the UK. So I will start by asking you, what what are you most interested in? At the moment, I did at the beginning mention skills based. But what’s the focus of your kind of research and writing at the moment?

Perry Timms 4:47
Yeah, it is. It is a lot about that actually merge. Because I think I’m now starting to see something which I’ve perhaps been willing into existence for probably the last decade or more. And you will know some of this from my backstory about organ. Organizations that are flat, non hierarchical, very decentralized and very self managed, are organizations that don’t seem to have all of those constraints and restrictions about people doing quality work, progressing their careers, and choosing who and how and when they work. I’m seeing it reframed not as radical outliers who are self managed, but more that the organization is a bit concerned that the box that we put people in as a job is a little bit of a constraint on them fully utilizing talent. But I think the other thing that’s really interesting, and you’ll know this, because I know you play a lot in this space, is looking at some of the trends about emerging skills and what we are going to likely have less of through some form of automation and AI technology is giving people the chance to go so what do we need then, if we’re losing some low level administration and some repetitive routine things, What? What? What are we then going to do? What can we do with those people? And the short answer is, it’s force them to look at their I suppose you’d say awareness of their skills, and go, we don’t really know. We don’t really capture enough outside of job descriptions what we’ve actually got in our organization that we could determine as skills and proficiencies. And so I’m seeing a lot of companies now getting vexed by that, going, I need to know more about what I’ve got and what I need and what the gap is, and how I close it.

Mervyn Dinnen 6:24
So I’m seeing a lot of that, okay, and from from what you’ve seen so far, would you say that some of the skills and competencies that are being uncovered are things which organizations probably didn’t know their people had, but the people themselves maybe hadn’t really identified it, because it’s not a particular skill or competency that they’ve been asked to use.

Perry Timms 6:48
I think you’re right. I think if we look at the way work is largely, I guess, kind of packaged at the moment, I don’t know many people that would say I’ve got loads of capacity. Please give me some more work. Everybody seems to be really, really stuck in a space where there’s too much to do, and I think some of that is because they are doing things that are perhaps repetitive and and time consuming, and they’re not getting to flex some of the things like critical thinking, like creativity. And so I can see why people are a little bit under informed about their own ability in those kind of areas because they’re just cluttered, and I think that’s starting to come into question. So I’ll give an example where this has come from, actually, to validate it. So a consulting firm that I know have been using Microsoft’s co pilot for the best part of about a year, and they’ve plugged it into meetings, they’ve helped it with scheduling. They’ve given it documents to synthesize and summarize, and they have now reckoned on saving anything up to 20 to 40 hours per person per week, which is a huge amount of time. Yeah, and they’re now saying we can do other value add stuff for our clients as a result of it. And they’re then saying to people, so what else could you do for them? And they’re now getting to explore that because they’re less cluttered. So that’s a good example where people need the liberation first in order to then assess where they could add some more value, and then kind of test themselves out about whether they can help with digital transformation, whether they can help with a bit more organization design, or whatever it might be. So there’s an example where I think we’re at the beginning of the beginning of working out what we are under utilizing in order to then start thinking where that could create value. It’s quite exciting. But there’s a it feels like there’s a lot to do.

Mervyn Dinnen 8:35
And what role would you say the Human Resources team has to play in this?

Perry Timms 8:41
Crucial is the only word I would use, but probably not quite recognized everywhere across the business spectrum, right? I think some of that is because the way we’ve serviced the jobs market is I’ve lost one of those. Can I have a replacement for one of those talent acquisition find me somebody who can do that job? Now I think we’re starting to see people get a little bit more imaginative in it, and kind of go well actually. And I know a company that are doing this, as somebody leaves, they interrogate that role before they even think about replacing it, going, what could we automate in that work? And so they’re almost automating by a form of attrition, and only when they decide how much of that role is uniquely professional, qualified, or series of competencies, will they then go out to market to recruit to it, but they will look at that as an opportunity to see, can we deploy more tech so they gradually building up their automation agenda through that. And I quite like it, because it feels quite organic and quite normal to do that.

Perry Timms 9:41
So that’s where HR could play a big role. Because then it goes, Okay, have we got the right automation technology with the right kind of consistency and certainty, and then what are we re pitching that role to? Then now, what else do you want them to do? So they’re having to recraft the hiring specification. Yeah, and so on and so forth. So that’s great. And I think the addition to that then is HR, then is needing to and starting to leverage tech more to get the information in, to construct the, I suppose, go to market strategy for that, to then recruit to it, and then, almost like, use that as a way of building a skills inventory that they can then start to categorize, utilize, and so on. So again, I think people are doing a lot of things gradually. I did see a lovely couple of examples a few weeks ago where companies at scale have invested the best part of a year and a half or two years to do a big sweep of skills, to do lots of analyzing, to then understanding how that creates value in their business, to then start thinking about how they realign people. So a lot of people are quite active in this, and HR needs to have the tech, and then the guidance, I suppose, about how to recalibrate jobs, roles, remuneration, the lot. Yeah. So the answer is critical, and a lot to do.

Mervyn Dinnen 11:01
One of the things when I have conversations around AI, and the kind of stuff that AI will take over doing is that some of the things that AI is obviously set up to do are things that people actually enjoy. Sometimes they’re a bit creative. Sometimes it might be one of those things you think, well, people don’t need to waste time on that. The AI can do that, but people actually quite like wasting time on that. Knocks. They want to waste time, but they actually find it a bit rewarding and fulfilling. Do you think there’s danger that I’ve asked this a number of times in different interviews, that AI could turn out to be a employee? Employee enjoyment, not employee employee experience killer, as opposed to employee experience supporter?

Perry Timms 11:49
Well, absolutely is the again, the short answer to it that if we’re not careful, we’ll strip away things that people are like you said, enamored by, and take satisfaction and fulfillment from. So I think there’s a careful balance, I suppose, of those that are looking at the job architecture and those that are actually doing the job and thinking about where they can create value and what they want to do, people will have to face into I’ve got to let that go, because I can’t stand in the way of progress. However, what is it calling me to do in addition to that? Right? So I think it’s almost like if I enjoy it, but I have an automated partner with it. What does that enable me to do differently? On top of that process that I perhaps could never have imagined, and Deloitte Human Capital Research from 2024 talks a lot more about imagination being a really strong play in where people could then start to unleash a little bit of the talent that’s suppressed by sheer busyness. And I don’t think there are many people, even if they like doing things, that would withdraw from imaginative things to do when there’s discovery creativity experiments. So that’s the counter trade. I think MERV is that people have to, I guess, kind of look at themselves and go, Well, I enjoyed that, but what can I do on top of that? Now that’s an enhancement of that, and perhaps an evolution of that. That’s quite luring, but that needs to be done in synchronicity with job architecture and job design and so on. So it’s never done in isolation, and you probably wouldn’t be able to compute it if you were the job holder. So you do need HR to act as a bit of a broker and a bit of a catalyst for that. But I think that’s a very positive thing, because you can then start plotting new value chains.

Mervyn Dinnen 13:25
Now one of the big, I suppose, topics that you often talked about, you call yourself the chief energy officer, and so energy is something that I wanted to ask you about within organizations. How, I suppose, in the one case, how would you define energy? But again, what’s because most of the people listening to this podcast will be involved in HR in one way or another. What could HR do to kind of, I suppose, increase organizational energy, map it out, actually identify and bring it to the attention, maybe, of other leaders who don’t understand?

Perry Timms 14:03
That’s a lovely question, because I think it’s happening a lot, and we’re not always noticing it. For a start, we might call it morale, we might tag it to engagement scores and criteria, but I genuinely think it is almost like the verb, the kind of real push, and almost like the panache that you’ve got to do, the work that you’ve got to do. And it’s not exclusive to people in high ranking positions or in very specialist, professional areas. It’s anybody and everybody. Really. It’s almost like, what, what kick do I get out of the work I do that’s sort of the most street wise version perhaps I could put it into but I think it’s a it’s an equation. So energy is often enhanced when you’ve got a really good system where things work smoothly, there’s good predictability, but there’s also good variety. And the system, if it provides that, I think, lifts energy and is kind of buoyed by energy. But if it does the opposite, if it’s frustrating, clunky to. Rules absolutely the same, day in, day out. You know, energy just goes so systems has a really strong impact on energy. And when I’m working with clients, one of the things I’m I’m looking for is almost like, does your organizational design actually channel that energy and use it, or is it choking it and constraining it? Because if it is the latter, that’s that’s likely to only be on a downward kind of curve.

Perry Timms 15:24
And so some of the ways we’ve looked at energizing people more is about their career choice, about the variety in the work they do. So we might bring in some project spaces that people can opt into as a temporary distraction, perhaps from a boring job, and just see what they’re capable of. And that, in itself, creates energy. So if HR people are looking for, how do I measure the energy? What’s the dipstick in the engine type thing? It literally is, Are people having stimulation, variety, exploration and also a sense of achievement? And if they are, energy is likely to be going up. But if it’s kind of grinding, a bit not very repetitive, it’s all repetitive and not very varied, the likelihood is the energy is just a home, and it might even dip down. So it’s about stimulus, I think, what what stimulates people? And if you can look at those points again across a value chain, that’s really helpful for you to know where perhaps to intervene, offer a bit of learnings and change and variety and some choice, and organizations I see that do that are ironically also quite near the skills based agenda. They literally go, what have you got? What might you want to test out? What could we further use? And that’s quite an exciting invitation that, in itself, is quite energetic.

Mervyn Dinnen 16:40
But what role would you say innovation plays? HR, H, HR is often, uh, kind of, I think, incorrectly, uh, characterized as maybe not being that innovative and things. And I think that’s people who don’t fully understand what the really is for HR and what the possibilities are, which, which you across your two books and stuff have done a lot to point out. Thank you. I suppose the endless possibilities that HR can bring commercially to a business, but innovation, what do you think is? What do you think holds us back? Where do you think we can innovate?

Perry Timms 17:19
So I think its reputation is, perhaps you’re right, a little bit misunderstood, because quite often I’ll see people experimenting with values based recruitment as an example, and that’s quite an innovative way to see if you can get more diverse candidates and decouple from obsession with qualifications. But we might not see it as innovative. We might just see it as common sense actually is quite innovative compared to the tradition. So I think there’s a almost like a perspective on it that we probably could do with a little bit more awareness raising and amplification of that. I do think HR catches itself a little bit in the Yeah. But what would the lawyers say? Do you know, I mean, if it’s going to even dance near to an edge of an employment law frame, we might be in trouble, so they might kind of back off a little bit. And I’m not demonizing lawyers here. They’re there for a reason, right to keep everything safe and legally compliant. So I think we can perhaps talk ourselves out of some things that we otherwise might be able to be more adventurous in. However, there is a lot of opportunity working with business leaders in their space to be innovative on their terms, and we can hold the sanctuary space of compliance and legality, so we’re not holding it back. We’re just making sure it’s not dangerous, and that could give us more of a innovative kind of Hallmark, because we’re playing in the space, but we’re making sure they don’t go wild. So I think it’s don’t necessarily think you’ve got your experiment in your own space, in HR, do it in the businesses domain, see what your scope is, guide it, and then perhaps you’ll learn from it too, and show that we are not innovation devoid. We are compliant and innovative, and that paradox can be managed. So, yeah, that’s what I’d say. We probably need to see a bit more of it.

Mervyn Dinnen 19:07
What excites you about business at the moment?

Perry Timms 19:14
Well, I think it does actually come back to that skills based approach, actually, Mervyn, because I’ve sort of predicted that jobs in themselves are a little bit constraining, and that actually job descriptions I’d rather not see anymore, and I’m seeing skills based as an absolutely bona fide, ratified way of departing from that, so that people can go I’ve got a professional recognition. I’m an accountant, let’s say, and I work in a finance team, but actually my skills are also helpful in data modeling and analytics and casting ahead and so on, but I don’t get to play with that, and if you can break me out of my constraint, I’ll show you what are the value I can add and what joy I can derive from the work. So I. Actually the reduction of job constraints into much more of a skills based, capability pool, Project exploration, whatever. That excites me a lot, because I think people would suddenly feel a sense of, wow, I’ve got some opportunities back now. I’ve got some choice and some things I can play with in order to find out what else I could really do. And I think that’s a good offset to potential concerns and worries about AI and automation making people feel like they’ve got no future at all because their job is completely mechanized. I think that’s a very hopeful glimmer of a future they can play a part in. So that genuinely excites me.

Mervyn Dinnen 20:41
Okay, and if you could, if I granted you, I suppose one wish and said, there is something, there is something on the HR agenda, there is something on the work agenda that we do every day, that we can just do away with and there’ll be no negative impact from doing away with it. What would you say it was?

Perry Timms 21:00
I’ll go with performance management ratings. I’ll get rid of them. I’ll put them in room 101, and shut the door on that. Why I do, I do think, as human beings who care about the work we do to glorify a three or a met expectations is like, really, it’s sad here. So I think the categorization of those ratings has really stunted the celebration of success and the potential to improve, and even the, you know, where near it we need to have a conversation. You might have to go somewhere else. But I just think saying to somebody, you’re a five or you’re, you know, way below expectations. It’s almost like, what damning indictment that is. So I just don’t like the judgmental and almost like perfunctory feel of Performance Management rating. So let’s get more narrative and descriptive and real. And I’d be very happy to see that.

Mervyn Dinnen 21:56
So how would you change that by no ratings and just giving people, I suppose, helpful advice, helpful advice to to maybe, yeah, not improve, but where, where areas they could strengthen, yeah.

Perry Timms 22:10
I mean, I don’t want to introduce more bureaucracy to it, but I think there’s a potential way we could ask people to craft an impact statement, which is almost like, what impact do I have in the work that I do, and then use that as the basis to kind of go, okay, in that role, that impact is important, but it’s not the most primary impact we’re looking for. It’s this. People go, wow. So I know I’m good with my clients, but I don’t sell very much, do I? And I know that’s got to be more important. And it’s like, yes, or somebody might sell so aggressively they then lose clients long term. It’s like, you’re good at getting deal over the line, but you don’t keep them. So I think there’s a much more mature conversation to come out from an impact statement than a ranking and lots of supposed evidence. And I think that’s where we could make a more sophisticated play, perhaps, on what what people have as evidence about where their performance is and what they can do about it.

Mervyn Dinnen 23:01
We’re coming to the end of the chat, and it’s been, it’s been fascinating and enlightening, as always. Thank you. And I suppose one of the we’re recording this as we come towards the end of 2024, and so for people listening to this in two years time, this is what we were talking about then, yeah, what? Are your hopes for 2025?

Perry Timms 23:25
2025? So I guess with a new government in the UK and lots of employment legislation that’s currently occupying a lot of people’s minds about rights of work and so yeah, but I do think that’s trying to symbolize a fairer deal between people and an organization. And I think 25 is a good chance for people to go. What do we mean by a fairer deal between us and that we almost re contract quite a lot as a result of that spark that’s come through that and I don’t think that’s a, you know, a transactional thing or purely information based. I think it’s like, Is my heart in it, and do you recognize that as an organization? Because if you do, let’s talk about what that looks like, so that we sort of maybe recast the psychological and emotional contract with work, even if we don’t actually do the physical contractor work. So I think it’s time for a sort of a refresh of that.

Mervyn Dinnen 24:16
One thing I suppose I would ask you, I’ve had a couple of conversations recently on the podcast, in fact, looking at emerging generations and kind of Gen Z and things like that. What, what’s your take in terms of, I suppose, what Gen Z, Gen Zed, and the generation after that, who are now beginning to come into play? What are your hopes for them, and what kind of to use your own energy. Do you think they’re going to be able to bring to the workplace?

Perry Timms 24:45
I think they have a different energy in terms of questioning and levels of tolerance. I think there are, there are things that they don’t like about the world, and they’re willing to express them and talk about what a better version of that might look like. And. What they can do about that. So I think there’s something in that expressiveness, and we might call it voice in the employment world, yeah, that I think if we, if we aren’t careful and either try and channel it or suppress it, we’ll lose a whole generation of potential superstars. But if we can use it and show people how responsibly they can voice their concerns and get positive action out of it, that could be a whole renaissance in participation, change and so on. So I think it’s almost like let’s not suppress and and try and channel those generations into being a replica of what happened before. Let’s meet them on their terms and show them what they could be doing through work. And we’ll respond to that in keeping with strategy and need and demand, then I think we’re in a good place. But if we don’t, we’re in trouble, because, yeah, they’ve got to come in and power us for the next 30-40 years.

Mervyn Dinnen 25:51
Yes, yes. Perry, it’s been fascinating to talk, talk to you as always, full of energy, full of ideas. Am I right or wrong? You’ve written two books. Is there a third that come the way? There is, there is, I thought there might be.

Perry Timms 26:09
In August 2025 I will be writing a book about HR operating models. And my intention is to have not only the HR and people profession, but the rest of the business world actually go. Do you know what? There’s something in HR operating models I should be aware of.

Mervyn Dinnen 26:25
Okay, well, listen, good luck with the writing of that. I look forward to reading it, and once it’s published, once it’s out there, we’ll have another chat about it. Thanks for your time. Perry,

Perry Timms 26:39
Cheers, man.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai