The rapid evolution of technology comes with great opportunities for change. On the business level, the nature of workforces across all industries is part of that change, with availability, preference, and approach shifting the new status quo.
Organizations with their sights on change at the workforce level stand to gain new opportunities to grow. On the other hand, companies that elect to wait or work past workforce transformation will find it increasingly difficult to source, engage, and retain highly qualified talent, simply because of their inability to adapt, potentially leaving a negative impact on how their brand is perceived by future candidates.
It’s imperative for C-level executives and the Human Resources department to collaborate in order to put together an exceptional workforce experience to rival that of customers and partners. The impact of such a change can eventually be seen in the rise of productivity, employee satisfaction, and increased revenue. According to PWC’s research, Nearly 73% of surveyed subjects cite revenue growth as a top benefit of their digital initiatives.
Transforming the workforce
The world isn’t the same place it was a few years ago. The relationship between employees and the company they work for is influenced by technology, social media, and competitive pressure to name a few. It’s no wonder that a large number of modern employees feel overworked, as though they’re nearing their limit.
This shouldn’t come as a shock. The evolution of technology brings with it a need to adapt, a need to produce better, stronger solutions, and meet the changes of technology halfway. With that in mind, the workforce has a need to not only cater to change at the company level but also conduct time-consuming tasks and processes that might just be too outdated.
In this regard, the HR department is the most in need of total change. Administrative tasks are simply far too much of a time-consuming exercise, one that could potentially be simplified or streamlined through the use of the right software.
HR-focused, not HR-led
HR remains, however, the centre of potential for the company. With the right approach, the Human Resources department can orient the organization’s transformation towards a more Agile model. And yet, HR is unable to perform this workforce transformation on its own.
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In fact, the entire workforce needs to have an active hand in making this happen, with the CIO and C-level executives leading the charge. According to research conducted by PWC, technology has become a CEO-level concern with 68% of surveyed employees saying their CEO is a champion for digital change, a percentage that has seen a significant rise from just 33% in 2007. This isn’t an HR problem. This is a company-wide issue that requires the C-suite to design, implement, and guide the workforce’s transformation.
Where should you start?
A thorough examination of the company’s processes is a good place to start. Prioritizing the company’s service delivery and the experience behind it can be very efficient, Not only on the customer-facing aspect but internally as well. This refers to the relationship between the workforce and the HR department first, and the relationship between the workforce and technology second.
Internal services and support must be designed to not only cater to the workforce’s needs but to also anticipate them and be prepared to meet them. It’s about taking that support from a reactive state to a well-prepared scenario-specific model. There’s no more room for the traditional HR approach.
The priority has been passed to a model that focuses on the workforce and actively attempts to provide them with more opportunities to contribute to the business. Think of it as taking the relationship between the workforce and HR from a “need and ask” module instigated by the workforce, to a foundation of “asking what they need” led by the HR department.
Benchmarking workforce transformation
Identifying real-life examples of the optimal model that your workforce transformation is aiming to reach is a crucial step. Benchmarking provides the C-level executives with a clearly defined vision of the end result.
Once the end result is identified, and the nature of the processes is somewhat mimicked, the focus can be redirected to the very scenarios and instances of workforce needs. This is the first step towards designing change for these employee experiences. With the top touch-points in mind, the company can then begin defining technology requirements and launch the acquisition step.
Technology’s impact on the workforce
There’s a variety of ways that technology can influence the company as a unit. From the employee’s perspective, this impact materializes in the services that the workforce requires and how those services impact the connection between the workforce and other figures in the organization. Not only that, but its impact dictates how the workforce perceives these services, and how optimized the user experience can be from their perspective.
Creating an ecosystem for internal needs
Implementing these technology-driven changes can lead to the use of multiple software solutions at the same time. Companies can create their own internal ecosystem that caters specifically to the workforce’s needs. For example, solutions that allow for API integration are able to communicate with one another and make data much more accessible on multiple platforms.
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Such change delivers optimized experiences that centre the workforce’s needs around the HR department’s implemented solutions and revolutionized model. In fact, as the changes become the new norm, the experiences affected transcend the workforce to similarly improve customer and partner experiences. It’s a revolutionary change that makes data and service delivery much more efficient.
How Technology drives workforce transformation
Benchmarking
Companies always want to know where they stand in comparison to competitors. Just as that is valid for success factors and productivity, it also goes for workforce transformation. Being able to objectively examine a competitor’s internal service model allows organizations to set milestones for their own growth and maintain a positive pace towards success.
AI
There’s a lot of disambiguation surrounding AI. But in recent years, artificial intelligence has become a must-have component for the modern world. Businesses not only rely on bots to answer queries or retrieve data, but it also becomes a deep-rooted contributor to the workforce’s experience, especially in communicating with multiple departments. AI is capable of providing an overly simplified and guided experience that uproots the traditional internal service model and allows HR to deliver higher-quality results.
Analytics
To review past performance data is to pinpoint key workforce elements that are either in need of optimization or focus. The very point of analytics is to make the most of existing data and decide how to best leverage the workforce in a way that is mutually beneficial. This is designed to improve productivity, employee engagement, and efficiency. Making decisions based on data is important to an agile organization.
Process
This is perhaps the most obvious impact, seeing as most technology solutions aim to automate certain work processes across all levels of the company. With Tech doing most of the heavy lifting in this regard, the company can focus on deploying change in more sensitive areas of focus, build an internal ecosystem, and change the relationship between HR and the workforce.
Though workforce transformation is a beast of an undertaking, it’s definitely worth the hassle. Revolutionizing the workforce through dedicated benchmarking, department overhaul (Tools and software) and the onboarding of specific talent, can drive future success. It’s a seamless way to push employees towards learning new valuable skills and gaining experience from new colleagues. Companies that embrace the technological change and set the tone for its impact on their customers stand to thrive in the new world, digitally and beyond.
The article was contributed by Hachem Ramki from Manatal
About the author
Hachem is a content writer and digital marketer who’s passionate about addressing the challenges and opportunities in recruitment, HR Technology, and talent management. Hachem is currently the content writer at Manatal.