What is ‘HX’? – How Human Experience Brings Context to GRC

Business leaders are faced with the challenge of assuring consistent results, yet things rarely go to plan. They are tasked with driving business growth, yet the larger the organisation becomes, the more potential for confusion and disorganisation. In these circumstances, it can be easy for important data to slip through the cracks, leading to ambiguity, uncertainty and a lack of control.   

This is why Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) management is essential for any business. The need for effective GRC management has precipitated the rise in powerful AI-driven software solutions, allowing organisations to automate, streamline and speed up their data processing.

Anticipating and contending with every eventuality is impossible, as organisations are complex unpredictable systems with a multitude of moving parts and scenarios. Without some kind of software to do the heavy lifting, personnel would be tasked with managing vast amounts of information, increasing the likelihood of human errors. This approach is woefully inefficient for most modern, large-scale operations.

However, this advancement in technology could make organisations drastically reduce or remove the human element from GRC management entirely, which presents its own set of moral and ethical problems.

Escaping the Machine

Data itself lacks meaning and sentiment and doesn’t provide an indication of the consequences based on a given situation. In an entirely AI-reliant GRC framework, there may be a wider net to catch important information and reliable systems for processing data quickly, but without someone to provide context to this data, this offers nothing more than an automated sorting machine.

The truth of GRC, and management as a whole, is that a human element will always be required.

Humans contextualise data to create meaning, forming the basis of organisational decision making. People are the intelligence core of the business; however, we often dismiss human insight, considering it subjective and preferring to overly rely on machines.

The challenge comes when those interpreting data and making decisions are remote from the actual situation, making assumptions to fill the gaps in knowledge and awareness. So, for a GRC framework to operate effectively, machines are still required for the raw data processing and humans to provide situational awareness sense-making.

An effective GRC system must therefore be designed with humans in mind. While a key component of design theory is User Experience (UX), in this context, we at HAELO like to think of this as the Human Experience (HX).

The Human Touch

When designing for HX, we believe that systems should provide the tools for intuitive interaction with data, allowing the people closest to a particular situation to point out issues and identify how things may play out. This benefits the awareness of the wider team, but crucially it provides actionable decision-making insight for managers and leaders within the organisation.

GRC personnel should be able to use HX-centric systems to make sense of complex or ambiguous situations. This can allow for early warning of potential threats and opportunities, rapid responses and access to sufficient information to make informed decisions based upon ground truth.

At HAELO, our philosophy is tied very closely to HX and the essential role of human interaction when it comes to GRC. Offering consultancy, software, and a hybrid of both, we specialise in putting humans ‘back in the data loop’. This is with the aim of helping organisations to better detect and respond to emergent threats and opportunities and allow leaders to be laser-focused on results and what enables them.

The HAELO Solution

HAELO has developed a GRC framework entitled Organisational Meshing®, supported by a cloud-based software entitled IO® which stands for Insightful Organisation. Both are designed for the sole purpose of keeping leaders’ attention and effort where it really matters and providing them with an alert when things change.

Organisational Meshing® helps organisations identify and assemble all the elements of the enterprise that are critical to the delivery of results. This framework is all about being clear on what you want to achieve and why and forms the solid foundation on which an enterprise can be built.

IO® on the other hand is an intuitive GRC architecture for communication and collaboration that declutters entangled data, and creates connected awareness, bridging the gap between data and decision making, enabling insight driven organisations to overcome uncertainty, achieve results, and act with integrity.

Utilising a 4-colour coded visual management system named BRAG® to organise data, IO® provides a secure, cloud-based platform that does the heavy lifting typical of AI-driven software while interconnecting humans and meshing their situational awareness. This provides a clear, concise and coherent data structure that shows a 360-degree view of the business at a glance and allows for quick, actionable insight. 

This isn’t artificial intelligence; it’s people-powered intelligence.

Context is Everything

The most important aspect of GRC will always be the human element within an organisation. People will often be intimately involved and emotionally invested in situations and can provide the context necessary to identify and explain critical uncertainties, making sense of complex data ethically and with empathy.

This enables business leaders to make the right decisions and put their focus where it matters most.

If there is a problem within an organisation, the people closest to the situation will likely know the reason why and know a possible solution. By combining the raw processing power of software with human-curated insight, HX-focused solutions like HAELO IO® will allow GRC personnel to provide contextual, actionable, decision worthy information for the benefit of their organisation, ‘with a human touch’.