The Power of Self-Management Technology

One of the most difficult challenges people face is changing our own behavior, even when we know exactly what we want to change and why it is important. The core issue is that we can’t actually see our own behavior. As a result, we are often unaware of mistakes we are making or opportunities we may be missing. This is why I’m excited about the rapid development of a new category of HR technology that I call self-management technology.

What Is Self-Management Technology?

Self-management technology makes people aware of their current behaviors and provides guidance on what to start, stop or continue doing to be more successful in achieving their goals. These solutions are based on two psychological concepts called self-regulation and choice architecture. Self-regulation is about making people aware of how their actions are helping or hindering their success. For example, smart watches that make us aware of how much sleep we are getting or how often we are walking instead of sitting.

Choice architecture is about giving people verbal nudges, visual cues or other reminders that encourage short-term actions that help us achieve our long-term goals. My physician spouse refers to these as “healthy choices.” One example is keeping healthy snack foods like fruit on the counter and putting less nutritious choices like cookies in the closet. Simply making fruit visible influences our choices about what to eat when we are hungry.

In the Workplace

The following are some common types of self-management technology for the workplace:

Pulse Surveys. These solutions ask an employee’s co-workers to answer questions that provide employees with feedback to guide their development efforts. “360 surveys” have been around for decades, but their complexity, flexibility and effectiveness has increased with the development of experience measurement technology. Automation has made them far easier to use and embedded analytics enables faster interpretation of the results while still keeping survey responses anonymous. For example, a team leader could send a short pulse survey to team members to gather feedback on things they can do to improve team effectiveness.
Electronic Communication Analytics. These solutions analyze patterns in the frequency and content of email, text messages, calendars and other electronic communication to provide people with feedback on how they are interacting with others. For example, they can make managers aware of how much time they spend with some team members compared to others, how responsive they are to different individuals’ questions and requests, or provide information on how the tone of their language may influence people’s perceptions (e.g., using too many critical words or rarely providing complements).
Event and project feedback. These solutions are used to collect feedback during or after a presentation, project or other activity. This is usually done by sending customers or coworkers a short set of questions during or after the event or project. Another method is to use data that shows if people are actively involved in a project or event based on how frequently they attend meetings, contribute ideas or actively pay attention to a presentation. For example, some online meeting and presentation solutions can track whether audience members left a session early. Care does need to be taken when using these sorts of passive tracking tools lest people feel that they are being “spied upon”.
Triggered Nudges. These provide employees with targeted suggestions triggered by things in the employee’s environment. For example, an employee could set their calendar to send them a nudge to take a micro-learning course on “how to make a good first impression” shortly before an important customer meeting. These nudges can be thought of as proactive coaching in preparation for an upcoming action or decision.

Self-management solutions represent a major step forward in the use of technology to apply psychological principles to improve the world of work. This technology is advancing rapidly because it addresses a critical component for learning and development. I suspect in the near future, these solutions will become as common in the workplace as the smart watches we use to track and improve our health.

Lastly, while I am excited to see how this new category of technology solutions develops, it should not be viewed as a replacement for talking to others. Being successful at work depends on having good relationships, and the strength of relationships will always be driven more by quality discussions than by looking at an app on your phone. It is not coincidental that many self-regulation solutions are designed to help us have more effective conversations with others.

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