We’ve grown used to hearing about the value of data. The digitisation of the world has generated so much of it, leading to insights that we previously couldn’t even imagine – from surprising correlations to the seeds of scientific breakthroughs.
When it comes to businesses, the digitisation of processes can provide data that hasn’t existed before and can be used for the good of employees – helping managers identify what does and doesn’t work for people. One positive way of utilising data and analytics is to think about a business’s workflows – the processes a piece of work passes through from initiation to completion.
For instance, imagine if thousands of actions and processes could be automatically analysed and optimised to be more effective. Bottlenecks could be identified, with training organised to fill gaps in skill sets; investment could be seamlessly allocated to growth areas; and repetitive tasks could be automated so employees can focus more on creative, high-value work.
“That was never possible before but it’s becoming part of how organisations make decisions through workflow analytics,” says Vijay Kotu, vice president of analytics at ServiceNow, a leading digital workflow company. “We’re beginning to have a much better understanding of how entire companies run; what happened, what is happening and what could happen.”
These kinds of insights and analytics are particularly useful in times of great change, such as the widespread shift to hybrid working practices as a result of Covid-19. While the pandemic caused disruption for businesses that had to adopt remote working on an unprecedented scale, it also provided opportunities to embrace digital technology in new ways.
Management consultant McKinsey estimates that the crisis has accelerated the digitisation of customer interactions, for example, by several years. Employees utilised video conferencing and digital collaboration tools, assembled home offices overnight, and got used to a world without the daily commute. It’s a change that’s expected to stick, with many organisations saying they intend to offer a hybrid option to staff that combines office and remote work. Other research has found that almost eight in 10 employees are in favour of more flexibility around how and where they work.
With this kind of drastic upheaval and the past year’s mass global experiment in remote working, it can be all too easy for managers to make assessments on the basis of anecdotes or assumptions about what works and doesn’t work, rather than on the basis of facts. This makes data gleaned from digital workflows invaluable.
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Challenges in adjusting to the new ways of working have arisen. For instance, it’s not possible to catch a colleague’s eye to ask how to solve a problem. This makes it necessary to formalise business processes and practices into workflows. “If there’s a particularly complex problem, there are always people in the team who know what to do. They have a mental playbook,” says Kotu. “They are the heroes. But how about codifying the ‘playbook’ into a workflow with the actions someone needs to take so everyone can be a hero? The organisation is much more effective when that information is shared. [Catching a colleague’s eye] is not scalable and it’s not consistent.”
Digital workflows can therefore help make collaborative working more achievable: “Workflow analytics essentially answers the question: what are all the processes that need to come together to solve a problem?” says Kotu.
However, the use of analytics in the workplace, particularly where it relates to employees, has not been without controversy. Managers’ concerns around maintaining productivity while teams work remotely have led to a boom in apps promising to help us maximise our output. In 2020, Microsoft was criticised for its “productivity score” metrics that allow managers to use Microsoft 365 to track employees’ activity at an individual level. That includes whether they participate in group chat conversations, send fewer emails or fail to collaborate on shared documents. Technology company Sneek, which has a tool that takes photos of workers through their laptop as often as every minute, says it’s seen a five-fold increase in its number of users during lockdown. Other companies are using software to track workers’ hours, keystrokes, mouse movements and websites visited.
“People have told me they just move the mouse every few minutes so they look like they’re working,” says Caroline Roberts, head of HR at the Confederation of British Industry. “With hybrid working in particular, we really need to focus on outcomes. Productivity can all too easily get confused with activity. And activity doesn’t necessarily lead to outcomes.” Research by Adecco found 74% of UK respondents think employee contracts should focus more on meeting the needs of the role and less on the number of hours worked in the future, with 85% citing trust in staff as the most important quality for management to show.
“It’s important to make them part of the conversation and be really clear about why you’re doing it and what you’re looking to achieve [when introducing analytical tools],” Roberts adds. “We’ve got technology to measure more than we ever did before, but you’ve got to use it judiciously and appropriately.”
Kotu agrees there is the potential for more intrusive technologies to verge on surveillance if used inappropriately. “First of all, being transparent about what data we’re collecting is important,” he says. “And I think every use case needs an ethical filter – ‘is this who we are as a company? Is it within the bounds of our values’?”
At a workflow level, digitising these processes has provided new data that can be used to identify what does and doesn’t work and where employee preferences lie, he adds. Now is the time to utilise those insights to create more efficient, resilient and empowered organisations.
“We started recording data millennia ago, but the availability of that data is increasing,” he says. “By digitising workflows we can focus our talent on more creative work and invest in the areas that increase the value we’re providing to customers. For us to make better decisions, we need to bring it all together.”
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