What if I told you that your employees don’t think you’re very smart? The Future Workforce Study 2016, conducted by Dell and Intel, which surveyed 4,000 full-time employees across 10 countries, found that 44% of employees worldwide feel that their workspace isn’t smart enough, and 40% of millennials surveyed are willing to quit a job that doesn’t meet their technology expectations. In our digital dog-eat-dog world employees tethered to laptops and landlines are a bit concerning, and frankly, the heat is on as almost 60% of employees worldwide expect to work in a smart office within the next five years.
Smart devices like the iPhone changed everything about how we exchange, consume, decide and engage. We are used to intuitive and simple technology that can push relevant information directly to us. Our devices can provide us with health analytics and even recommend a pair of jeans we might like from our favourite brand. We live in a world where smart watches, sensor driven washing machines, intelligent thermostats and maybe even self-driving trucks full of beer are commonplace. We have Alexa in our kitchen to help us perfectly time our pot roasts and order up new oven mitts. For less than 20 bucks we can buy Google Cardboard and be transported from our living room couch to flying a helicopter in less than five seconds.
According to the Future Workforce Study, employees today are more excited to get their hands on high tech perks such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality, than they are to consume the ho hum low tech perks of free lunch and football tables. Handing out smartphones and promoting work-from-home Wednesdays simply won’t cut it anymore.
This connected world seamlessly and effortlessly improves our lives each day, and has led to an expectation of a smarter workplace. It’s no wonder that employees are demanding cutting-edge, integrated and simple technology and workplace solutions that can keep them connected and productive wherever they are.
With cloud computing, collaborative technologies and mobile at our fingertips we are all tech resilient and can adopt and respond to technology changes quickly. Enterprises competing in a smart world have the stability required for agility to thrive, but they must work to shed the cumbersome wrapper of legacy technologies and outdated mindsets. Emerging organisations competing in a smart world have the agile attitudes needed to innovate and deliver quickly, but they must focus on providing a stable, adaptable platform of engagement. All organisations must be prepared to embrace the break-neck development speeds of today’s cloud offerings, seize powerful integration opportunities and get excited about providing immersive omnipresent experiences.
Smart, agile workplaces have an unwavering focus on providing constant unification between people, information and processes. Today’s success depends on connectedness and collaboration and that’s not new. But what have we been doing with this knowledge since then? Is it still a trend if it’s been so long? It’s time to catch up and deliver the experience that employees have been asking for: simple, smart, stretchy.
The increasingly complex demands of the marketplace, churning with cycles of interruption and disruption, and the need to be agile in responding to this environment, is creating a need for simplicity. The call for ’simple’ can be felt at the organisational, team and individual level. It shows up in every aspect of the workplace. From how we solve pressing problems and structure the organisation to get work done to the tools and processes that we provide to individual employees to support their daily work, technology enables speed and information flow. More agile companies will attract and keep the best talent, generate the most powerful innovations and learn from the iterative process, and capture the market share their competitors hunger for.
Organisations who stop with the digital buzzwords, and start with active transformation, are ringing in profitability over those who don’t. An agile workforce shows up as flexible, collaborative, innovative, information forward, competent and they come to work with a growth mindset. These attributes are nurtured by digitally proficient leaders, a learning culture rooted in development and innovation-focused HR systems.
How are you showing up? How are you differentiating and providing a smart experience that employees can’t get anywhere else? There are some dos and don’ts that could help here:
- Don’t do it all at once. Go after ‘stretchy’ cloud technology solutions that you can grow in to at the pace of your business. Ensure video, mobile and social capabilities are embedded into a collaborative platform.
- Don’t shove solutions at issues you haven’t identified clearly. Designing for employees is the key to success, and their needs may vary. Choose solutions that allow users multiple entry points to engage, communicate and collaborate with people as well as key processes.
- Don’t discount the pace of innovation. It’s time HR starts thinking like a product team. Focus on smart solutions that can snap into other smart solutions. Flexibility and integration are the keys to preparing for the unknown.
- Do consider both culture change as well as process change when crafting your smart workplace strategy. Couple needed operational changes with scalable and employee centred technology offerings.
- Do make things simple. The business of people is not a simple task, but your technology should be. Get the most out of your technology investments by focusing on solutions that invite innovation and do the heavy lifting for you. No more force fitting processes into the technology – when you move your technology should move with you.
- Do recognise that the future of work continues to evolve with interesting ideas springing up like bimodal people management, a new reliance on employee mindsets and learning cultures, and conversations about your next robo-boss.
Don’t get left behind.
To learn more about how HR can maintain a smart, agile workforce, visit here.
Bianca E. McCann is vice president HR of the Cloud HR Expert Network at SAP
This advertisement feature is paid for by SAP, which supports the Guardian Media & Tech Network’s Digital business hub.
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