Talent Management Meets the Science of Human …...Talent Management Meets the Science of Human Behavior By Colin Sloman, Janice Simmons and Susan M. Cantrell 2 | Accenture Strategy

Talent Management Meets the Science of Human Behavior By Colin Sloman, Janice Simmons and Susan M. Cantrell

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.


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


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


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


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


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.


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:


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.


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



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



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



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


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


• 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


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).

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28. Accenture High Performance Workforce Study 2010, http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture_The_High_Performance_Workforce_Study_2010.pdf.

29.T. John P. Kotter, A Sense of Urgency (Harvard Business School Press, 2008).

T. See also: Senturia, L. Flees, and M. Maceda, “Leading Change Management Requires Sticking to the Plot” (Bain and Company, 2008).

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 Things Around Here,” by Jeffrey Schwartz, Pablo Gaito, and Doug Lennick (Strategy + Business, Spring 2011, Issue 62).

35. “The Business Brain In Close-up” (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, July 22, 2007).

36. “Conditioning the Corporate Athlete,” by Rick Wartzman (Bloomberg 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).



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).


52. ibid.

53. ibid.

54. “The Neuroscience of Change,” a presentation delivered by Walter McFarland to the 2012 ACMP International Conference, April 3, 2012.


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).


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.

70. Voit, S. (2001). Work-site Health and Fitness Programs: Impact on the Employee and Employer. Work, 16, 273-286, and Pronk, N.P., Kottke, T.E. (2009). Physical Activity Promotion as a Strategic Corporate Priority to Improve Worker Health and Business Performance, Preventive Medicine, 49(4), 316-321.


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 Adults: NHANES 2003-06. European Heart Journal, 32(5), 590-597 15 Katzmarzyk, P., Church, T., Craig, C., & Bouchard, C. (2009). Sitting Time and Mortality from All Causes, Cardiovascular Disease, and Cancer. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 41(5), 998-1005. Specifially, Engaging in Physical Activity Can Create Brief Periods of Hyperoxygenation in the Brain, Which Has Been Shown to Produce New Brain Cells, and Enhance Energy, Mental Performance, Memory Recall, and Learning. See: Bollo, R., Williams, S., Peskin, C., & Samadani, U. (2010). When the Air Hits Your Brain: Cerebral Autoregulation of Brain Oxygenation During Aerobic Exercise Allows Transient Hyperoxygenation: Case Report. Neurosurgery, 67(2), E507-509. Colcombe, S., Kramer, A., Erickson, K., Scalf, P., McAuley, E., Cohen, N., Webb, A., Jerome, G., Marquez, D., Elavsky, S. (2004). Cardiovascular fitness, Cortical

Plasticity and Aging. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101(9), 3316-3321. Scholey AB, Moss MC, Neave N, Wesnes K. (1999) Cognitive Performance, Hyperoxia, and Heart Rate Following Oxygenadministration in Healthy Young Adults. Physiology and Behavior, 67(5), 783-789. PMID: 10604851 Accessed at http://www.ncbi.nlm. nih.gov/pubmed/10604851. Hotting, K., Reich, B., Holzschneider, K., Kauschke, K., Schmidt, T., Reer, R., Braumann, K.M., & Roder, B. (2011). Differential Cognitive Effects of Cycling Versus Stretching/Coordination Training in Middle- Aged Adults. Health Psychology, epub ahead of print. doi:10.1037/a0025371.

72. Loehr J. and Groppel, J., ed., (2008). Corporate Athlete Advantage: The Science of Deepening Engagement. Orlando, FL, Human Performance Institute.

73. “Biology of Business Performance,” by Jack L. Groppel, PhD, and Ben Wiegand, PhD, a whitepaper by Wellness & Prevention Inc, a Johnson & Johnson Company, http://www.hpinstitute.com/sites/default/files/Biology%20of%20Business%20Performance.pdf.

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., http://www.slideshare.net/mccannba/a-proactive-hr-approach-to-workplace-stress-management.

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.

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