Stefan Ries, chief human resources officer for SAP, took center stage at the MGM Park Theater to inspire HR professionals to dare to be different. Attendees at the SAP SuccessConnect annual gathering in September listened as Ries boasted of how the punk rock movement shoved aside conventional wisdom and dared its fans to be bold pioneers.
"The heart of the human revolution is us," Ries says. "The old days of HR are over. Today onward we need to revolutionize and the best people who can do this are HR punks."
A crucial step to becoming an HR punk is to embrace technology and to fully leverage it to supercharge HR's capabilities, says Ries, who oversees an 1,000-plus HR team for his firm's 95,000 employees worldwide.
"The big takeaway is that all of this great technology leaves more time for creative work," Ries says. "I don't need to do headcounts every single day, I simply push the system on my mobile phone, on the digital boardroom on any other device and I have that information available at my fingertips. It allows us as HR professionals to focus on the really important aspects of people."