Dialogue with UFIDA: Breaking the “cage” of human resource management

Author | Yang Li

In recent years, UFIDA's battle in the field of digital human resource management has become increasingly fierce.

The business continues to be implemented around the four core products: target performance management, human inventory and succession management, workforce analysis and planning, and shared services.

Previously, UFIDA has built digital solutions related to talent management for a large number of group companies, including Dongfeng Motor, Shougang Group, China Southern Airlines, Northeast Pharmaceutical, Shanghai Pharmaceutical, Western Mining, and Hainan Agricultural Reclamation.

A wave of digitalization that affects organizational and talent development seems to be approaching.

Not long ago, UFIDA learned from a conversation with the CHRO of a state-owned pharmaceutical group that "all central enterprises are now in the stage of 'mixed reform', pursuing efficiency first."

As one of the pilot projects for mixed ownership reform of state-owned enterprises, the group is continuously receiving research and attention from the outside world due to its fruitful reforms.

"At this time, we will find that, on the one hand, from within the company, the decision-makers are beginning to undergo the process of transformation into professional managers; on the other hand, with the continuous friction in Sino-US trade, the pressure and risks presented in market competition have made the uncertainty of the entire situation become increasingly intense, and companies' desire for talent is becoming extremely urgent." UFIDA told Leifeng.com.

This somewhat describes the situation and anxiety of today's central and state-owned enterprises during the "mixed reform" process.

In fact, the reason why the pharmaceutical group chose UFIDA is not an isolated case. In recent times, UFIDA has been communicating with customers and friendly companies and has found that customers are increasingly demanding replacement of domestic software.

You should know that before this, many leading companies would generally choose SAP and Oracle's products and services in addition to self-research or outsourcing.

"In addition to the external environment, another important factor that influences customers' choice of domestic software is that foreign software has not changed accordingly with the development demands of domestic corporate organizations."

This lag in service has given a shot in the arm to domestic human resource management software.

Let’s first take a look at what Zhang Yueqiang, vice president of UFIDA Network, once said about the digitalization of UFIDA’s human resources:

"The digitalization of human resources first requires high or strong employee participation. In the past, HR management did not involve employee participation in the minds of the HR department and management. Now, social interaction, coordination and collaboration are the most typical representatives of employee participation in management."

"The second is goal orientation, focusing on the continuous performance of personal development. In the past, when there was no digital transformation, setting performance goals was just a process of information transmission from top to bottom. Now, our performance goal setting is the result of continuous collaboration, communication, and confirmation between employees and organizations, teams, and managers. This goal includes both the responsibilities assigned by the organization and the goals of personal growth, which requires the support of a digital platform."

There are usually the following roles within an enterprise: decision makers, HR, and business teams (including employees). Once an enterprise begins to introduce relevant mechanisms and IT tools/platforms for human resource management, these roles focus on different value dimensions: decision makers focus on return on investment and strategic implementation, HR is concerned with processes and decision support, and employees focus on experience and growth.

Today's human resource management seems to be moving beyond the simple value points of performance and salary, and is gradually turning its attention to the effectiveness of enterprises, organizations, and individuals.

This is also why in the past, no matter whether the company had hundreds or tens of thousands of employees, it was difficult to fully implement human resources digitalization, even with the best management methods, tools, or ideas.

"The most basic problem that human resources digitalization solves is 'connection'. The most direct way is to 'connect' through mobile terminals."

For example, one of the tasks of HR when an employee joins the company is to enter information. Although this task seems simple, it is actually very tedious, especially when it involves entering a large amount of information. Through mobile tools and technologies, this action can be moved forward to the time when the offer is issued, which is of great help in improving recruitment efficiency and will ultimately lead to a flatter organization.

Looking back at the development of the domestic human resource management software market over the past few decades, the software has roughly gone through several stages: information recording, process-driven, intelligent management and control, and full-staff empowerment. In each stage, user needs are changing, and the software itself is constantly iterating and upgrading.

"The original service boundary of the human resources system may be a core human resource function. Now, customer demands have changed, and the services we provide are also changing."

It is reported that before 2015, within UFIDA, the human resources management system actually played the role of a "human resources information system" in a greater sense, mainly improving HR management efficiency through process control.

Since 2016, UFIDA has begun to define the value proposition of digital human resources as "empowering employees and activating organizations."

“We hope to stimulate the initiative of our employees through intelligent services, full coverage of employees, and extensive system support, thereby driving the improvement of the effectiveness of the entire organization.”

For example, talent maps and talent inventory, UFIDA's product logic is:

• First, extract the original data of user business, rather than the cleaned data, to ensure its authenticity and diversity;

• The second is to label the collected data. There are two main ways: manual labeling through expert experience; and automatic labeling through machine learning technology;

• The third is to provide a business analysis model, the purpose of which is to enable HR to understand, including employees’ performance, ability evaluation, potential, past experience, etc.;

• Fourth, provide data analysis models, mainly using big data analysis tools to derive correlations and common features for analysis and prediction.

It is worth mentioning that UFIDA believes that the transition from business analysis to data analysis is not simply based on "description" of data.

“Whether it is a BI analysis tool or an existing talent map/talent portrait, sometimes there is only a cool data chart but it cannot explain the logical relationship behind it. Such products are often questioned by HR.”

Overall, the tool that UFIDA uses to "connect" employees and organizations - the digital talent management platform, is based on the large enterprise cloud-native architecture that UFIDA is trying to build. It shares a set of data middle platform, artificial intelligence and big data components, and then derives corresponding product suites around the six aspects involved in talent and organizational development, including target performance, portrait inventory, talent succession, recruitment optimization, career development, and organizational empowerment.

However, when companies access digital human resources services, they usually start from a functional module such as recruitment, salary, and assessment.

UFIDA’s philosophy is to “lead by example”. First, through continuous interaction with senior customer executives, we understand the company’s overall talent development strategy, future goals and plans, etc. Then, on this basis, we couple it with the business from a human resources perspective and further refine it to specific application points. What is ultimately formed is actually a systematic set of solutions.

For example, although UFIDA first solved services such as employee travel, points-based settlement, physical examinations, and health management for the pharmaceutical group mentioned above, the latter's core demand was still to build an integrated digital human resources management platform.

From this perspective, the user market, which has taken the lead in embracing digital tools, actually has a long-term and clear value judgment on the ultimate goal of reform.

In addition to the aforementioned pharmaceutical group that is in the deep water of "mixed reform", there is another force - old customers that UFIDA has served for more than ten years, such as CNOOC, China Telecom, and Hengan Group. In the past, traditional software rather than cloud methods have always been used. If you want to transform existing applications, you will need to adopt a dual-mode IT strategy for a long time to ensure the stability of the core system.

"The human resources business changes slightly every year, changes significantly every three years, and turns upside down every five years. If we don't iterate and upgrade, it will be difficult for users to use the system."

Perhaps, no matter whether it is an old IT company like UFIDA or an emerging HR SaaS vendor, no one can change the corporate users' views on digital human resources except themselves.