Provoke: Inhuman resources: How digital workplaces can create the right ecosystem for talent retention
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
1 like•759 views
Jonathan Seal, Strategy Director at Mando, describes five key lessons across the workplace that combine to create the right environment for talent retention.
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (8)
Similar to Provoke: Inhuman resources: How digital workplaces can create the right ecosystem for talent retention
Similar to Provoke: Inhuman resources: How digital workplaces can create the right ecosystem for talent retention (20)
More from Mando
More from Mando (12)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Provoke: Inhuman resources: How digital workplaces can create the right ecosystem for talent retention
- 1. Inhuman resources How digital workplaces can create the right ecosystem for talent retention @jay_seal
- 3. Email Intranet Phone bookSearch CRM News Collaboration spaces Blogging & micro-blogging HR systems IM Unified comms Mobile devices Integrated sensors and IOT Workflows Wearables Enterprise social Line of business apps Location & presence services BI Universal search
- 4. “The digital workplace is the experience of work delivered through the collective use of connected devices, software and interfaces.”
- 7. KEY TAKEAWAY #1 Virtual drains still stink…
- 8. EMPOWERED TRUSTED INVOLVED VALUED Engagement driving retention
- 9. Empowered • Streamlining workflows • In-context awareness & support • Surfacing insights via dashboards
- 10. Empowered
- 11. KEY TAKEAWAY #2 Fight for flow…
- 12. Trusted • Authentication • BYOD / WYOD • Self-serve
- 13. Trusted
- 14. Trusted
- 15. KEY TAKEAWAY #3 We are all cyborgs…
- 16. Involved • Co-authoring • Expertise location • Connections and serendipity
- 17. Involved
- 18. KEY TAKEAWAY #4 Disconnected = evil
- 19. Valued and appreciated • Kudos systems • Rewards, perks, and fun!
- 23. KEY TAKEAWAY #5 It’s a mindset, not a project…
- 24. Five takeaways recap 1. Virtual drains still stink 2. Fight for flow 3. We’re all cyborgs 4. Disconnected = evil 5. It’s a mindset, not a project
Editor's Notes
- [Hello] [Strategy Director for Mando] means I get to go into all kinds of organisations and help them understand what’s possible with digital. Today I’m looking at 5 key takeaways on how digital workplaces can give you a competitive edge for talent retention. Before I start let me say that talent acquisition is great. I’m a big fan of finding the best talent out there. If you don’t find and convert brilliant people into your businesses then you won’t need to retain them. But to me, engagement and retention is key. If someone comes in and then leaves we have: Lost all the time and money invested in that talent Lost all the opportunity value that talent might have created in your business Lost brand reputation from other talent connected to that individual in the marketplace
- So for practical purposes, although acquisition and retention are two sides of the same coin, it’s the retention side that I’d like to focus on in this session. Because sometimes one side of the coin is pretty special and is worth more than just the face value. [people have paid £600] If your retention sucks then you have to factor additional costs for hiring, onboarding, lost productivity, new hire errors, training and softer aspects such as the knock-on drop in other employees engagement retention. Retention is a big topic – why are we talking about digital workplace in connection with retention? Well as our work becomes more and more driven by digital the impact this has on employee engagement and retention is bigger. This is especially key now that digital actually amplifies churn: It’s easier than ever to find new opportunities through social media and apps The pace of digital culture means there’s no longer any stigma to seeking new opportunities regularly The transparency possible in a connected world means expectations of work have escalated (leads to salary and conditions arms race)
- In this context of talent retention, we need to be aware that the workplace they are experiencing has changed significantly too… What started as just an intranet has become an incredibly complex ecosystem of interconnected systems.
- When we talk about a digital workplace there are lots of potential definitions. I like this one. This make it clear we’re not just talking about an intranet, or any other system for that matter. It’s the entire connected experience. Just like earlier we heard about the whole candidate experience through to onboarding. In fact the way that many organisations limit their thinking to Intranets is actually harming their businesses, because it acts as a barrier preventing them from undergoing the kind of transformation they need to attract and retain talent.
- So… often the digital workplace experience for a candidate and new employee is something like this… The outside view looks good, but once you cross the threshold you’re aware that it’s not what you expected and massively limiting. DW are generally poor, both in comparison to the rest of the business employees experience AND in comparison to other digital systems they encounter everyday as consumers. Why is this such a big deal?
- If we dig into this a little more, we can see why. You’ll all be familiar with Maslow’s HON. [Bottom to top]. Now, talking about a poor experience of work through digital could be perceived this as being trivial, or just one of those normal gripes that go along with working, but actually it’s a violation of something far deeper. Talented individuals will have nailed the first 4 levels, and are looking for self-actualisation. Nothing saps the ability to live at your highest potential than having to constantly compromise yourself and fit to the crippling constraints of a system that isn’t even human. The thing that’s even worse is that from an esteem perspective it’s clearly positioning you as subordinate to the machine. You need to operate on its terms. The danger for organisations that don’t get this is that they don’t realise they are already missing out on their best resources operating at their highest potential. Unsurprisingly, studies repeatedly back up the obvious conclusion that disengaged employees are way more likely to have a plan to leave their company, and more than 10 times as likely to be actively looking elsewhere than and engaged employee (3% vs 31%)
- So my first key takeaway… Virtual drains still stink. Don’t think that your digital workplace is somehow less noticeable than your physical one. If you had problems with the drains in your office you’d get it dealt with, partly because the smell just permeates everywhere. It’s the same with a digital workplace. If there are problems they seep into everything and it’s corrosive to employee satisfaction and retention. Your digital environment is as important as the physical, and as we move into the future and your physical location becomes less and less relevant it’s likely to become even more so. in the future. It needs investment not just as business critical, but also increasingly as an extension of your brand.
- So if we flip this and ask ourselves… “What are the key factors that keeps people engaged in their job?”. Well, lots of factors at play here, and if I asked each of you I’d get 70 different answers, but I’m going to pick up on a few examples here and look at how a genuine digital workplace can amplify these and be your competitive weapon in retaining great talent…
- If we’re empowering talent we’re enabling it to operate as effectively as possible at the top of Maslow’s pyramid. As well as this being good for our business it’s also great for engagement. So how can a digital workplace support this? Well if done well it can strip out everything that’s unnecessary and allow our people to focus on the real value they add. Example of this are… Streamlining workflows – simplifying the experience, enabling on mobile devices, autopopulating from information we should already know, joining up the dots into other systems. These all keep people focused on what’s important rather than admin for the sake of admin. In-context awareness and support – When I get in my car at the end of the day, I turn out of the car park and my phone tells me how long my commute home is likely to take. It’s sorcery, and I don’t care how it works.. It just does! If we want to empower our people then our digital workplaces need to provide that same ‘magical’ insight to power experiences Surfacing insights – another way we empower people is by equipping them with the relevant information for them to make good decisions. Visualising data effectively, notifications at the right time, and dashboards of relevant tools are all great ways to empower.
- One example of this we’ve been involved with was with the aerospace teams at Rolls Royce. They had a challenge in performing quality inspections of aircraft engines on-wing. The existing process was that an engineer performed a visual inspection, noting down information on carbon copy paper…you know CC. That thing old people like me used to use before the invention of email and the CC field to send them a carbon copy of your email. The copy paper was literally impaled onto a spike, where it got typed up by someone in a typing pool and sent electronically to India, where the text was copied and pasted into the relevant fields of a database that was then able to be surfaced in SharePoint. We created a tablet app that improved and streamlined the experience of capturing the data (including annotating directly onto an image of the engine), and this automatically delivered the right data into SharePoint without any other human involvement. Not only more efficient but massively quicker. Result = engineers focused on tasks that use their optimal skills and streamline the rest. That elevates that individual because we’re reinforcing that we value their time and skills more than just asking them to fill in dull forms.
- So the second takeaway is this. Every company in the history of companies says that people are their greatest asset. However if that’s true then allow talent to be talent and don’t force it into constraints that were designed only for the industrial age. Take a hard look at how much you’re expecting people to compromise their potential to work with you. The companies that create great workplaces (physical and digital) experiences demonstrate that they esteem talent and they attract and retain it accordingly.
- Another driver for engagement is trust. Security in most organisations is a clear priority, but again sometimes we don’t look hard enough at how we can reduce the burden on our people to prove who they are multiple times per day, and we demonstrate our lack of trust by not opening up our systems to work effectively for our people.
- For example, in a survey last year, more than 2/3 businesses in the UK currently have employees with wearable technology, and nearly all (91%) expect that to rise. One driver for this is that employees and employers have seen benefits (In a month-long trial at a marketing firm, productivity jumped 8.5% and job satisfaction climbed 3.5%). One interesting example relates to using a smart wristband or a watch to control access of employees to both laptops and physical spaces. The app identifies the wearer by the unique rhythm of his or her pulse. This means I can get on with my day and the workplace implicitly ‘knows’ me rather than me constantly having to assert who I am to get anything done.
- Another example around trust is an app we’ve developed for Pets At Home. It’s a store rota app. It replaced a paper system pinned in the kitchen at the back of stores and enabled it to be something that was distributed out to allow easy management via their in store “pet pads”. It also allowed colleagues to swap their slots with other team members, putting them in control of their working patterns. There’s even a smartphone responsive view for colleagues to check when they’re working when offsite.
- My third takeaway is that we’re all cyborgs. [If you’re quite squeamish, then look away now] Now not all of us will go to the extreme of implanting an Oystercard chip in our arm to streamline our travel, but we’re still all cyborgs. We all outsource our sense of navigation to Google maps, and our phones have become an extension of our memories. If you haven’t got a flexible and positive BYOD and WYOD policy then get get over it and sort it out. Our teams bring additional value to bear through their personal ecosystem of devices and digital preferences. If you embrace it and enable your DW to work with their devices and personalised preferences then you’ll reap the benefits. If you fight against it they will subvert it anyway but it will impact engagement and retention. This is happening. Don’t be like those that were on the side of history that tried to fight against the mechanised plough.
- Another engagement factor is involvement. People are far more likely to be engaged if they feel involved and able to contribute within and across teams effectively. Collaboration is also critical for organisations looking to improve and innovate. Some examples of how the digital workplace can help with this are features like: Coauthoring, enabling people to work simultaneously on the same digital assets and be aware of changes in realtime. With systems like O365 and Yammer you can also maintain an ongoing conversation tied specifically to a digital asset of document, meaning it’s far easier for people to come into projects later and still get context Expertise location – especially in larger organisations there is significant value in being able to know who has particular insight or skills you may need. The ability to find that expertise using digital systems is key, and in one environmental engineering client the project paid for itself in 9 days, because they were able to identify specialist expertise in-house that then allowed them to avoid paying contract costs for the duration of a major infrastructure project. Connections and serendipity - In many forward thinking companies they deliberately organise the physical space to help facilitate serendipity and accidental cross-fertilisation of ideas and teams. This is just as relevant in the digital world…
- …One example of this is within O365. They’ve introduced the Office Graph which underpins all the O365 services. It’s whole purpose is to understand you, what you are working on, who you are working with and surfaces content intelligently. I can gain significant value and satisfaction if I get to be aware of what the pulse of my organization is. If I can see those who might be relevant to me and what I’m trying to achieve.
- So my takeaway here is if you want to improve engagement and retention you need to do the hard work to ensure that your teams are seamlessly plugged into the insights, people and systems that will give them what they need. It’s got to be intuitive and available at all times and in whatever context they are in. This only happens if you take the attitude that not having systems set up to talk to one another, share data and allow insights to happen is a values violation.
- OK, finally… how can a digital workplace ensure that talent feels valued and appreciated? Well, just to highlight a couple of examples of this in action. Kudos systems – you can use online tools to share and celebrate good practise, encourage employees to interact to reward great employees and provide a record of this to feed into performance reviews. If they are integrated into the wider digital workplace it becomes far easier to give feedback and thank people in context. Rewards, perks and fun – I’m not talking here about having a social group on here for the football team (although that’s great) but what about gamification, or hooking together real and virtual systems
- However, I’d like to talk to you briefly about a very well publicised initiative we have at Mando, which is our timesheet beer fridge. Now as an agency, we need to keep track of studio time spent on projects for billing, and it’s always been difficult to get accurate and timely data when it’s reliant on people filling in timesheets (which are dull and administrative but important). So during an annual “play day”, we came up with the idea of creating an IOT solution that hooked up our timesheet system and a magnetic lock and rewarded the studio with beer on a Friday afternoon if we all complete our timesheets before the end of the week. So this has been working effectively now for about 4 years, but today I’m announcing an exclusive world-first, which is that our Mando fridge is now.. Alive! What I mean by that is we’ve now added an artificial intelligence layer to make the experience even better for our teams…
- Here’s a conversation I had with our fridge. I can ask how much of a blocker to the beer fridge unlocking I am, or anyone else is. It also works on mobile devices. In this version I’ve asked it what’s in the fridge, which is stored in a simple database that gets updated each week, meaning I can also ask for my favourite drink to be there and ready for when my timesheets are all in.
- To see how easy it would be to extend this, we took the bot framework and applied it to the Store rota app you saw earlier for Pets At Home. Not only does this allow you to get information in a really natural way, it also means you don’t have to have an app, you just message it in whatever way works for you… SMS, facebook messenger, skype, Whatsapp, … You can also link this together with related systems [*], allowing the colleague to book holidays incrementally by gathering the information and asking questions to complete a form on your behalf in the background.
- So my last takeaway is that it’s a mindset rather than a project. If we believe that talent is worth retaining then we have to keep looking for new ways to make them feel like they are special. The good news is that in the digital world there are constantly new opportunities – like bots - to take advantage of new shiny technologies and devices that can make people feel like there organisation is forward-looking and believes they are worth investing in.
- So to quickly recap on my five takeaways… Our digital workplace is an indicator to employees of how much we’ll value them. If we don’t care about it then we’re saying we don’t care about the people who will have to use it. Streamline systems and create empowering experiences that mean your talent operates at the highest levels wherever possible Embrace the challenge and the value that is brought by the connected devices and preferences your talent will bring into your organisation Work really hard to connect systems so they are more than the sum of their parts Continuously look for new opportunities. I guarantee that improving your DW is more cost-effective than poor engagement and retention
- So that’s it. I hope that was helpful. I’m going to do a quick shameless plug for the digital workplace services we offer! Digital workplace audit – looks at some of the potential blockers to engagement and retention across your digital estate Digital workplace strategy – sets up a 3 year strategy and roadmap to improve your DW to maximise ROI, employee engagement and retention Proof of concept – This is typically where you have a particular challenge of opportunity you want to explore in a design sprint, along the lines of creating a bot integrated to your annual leave booking or similar. It’s also worth saying that we also work alongside PH Creative to provide a full end to end candidate to employee attraction and retention package. Thanks!