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Chapter 1
Digital Employee Experience Engagement Paradox: Futureproofing
Retention Practice
John Ludike
Independent Management Consultant, London, jludike@hotmail.com
Abstract:
The digital disruption of everything technology, society, business models is impacting the
future of work inclusive of the evolution of the role of both the generalist and specialist human
capital practitioner. Futureproofing the employee experience through design thinking, robust
workplace people analytics and agile transformation ways of working is the new normal for
evidence based human resource practitioners. This chapter explores how specifically digital
disruption is impacting future of work and what work in the future is likely to look like. Possible
answers to which digital capabilities, competencies and business culture might enable not a
race and battle against the smart machines but rather a constructive collaborative augmentation.
Which of these future digital technology work processes or digital workforce contexts will
enable sustainability despite massive automation and deskilling of knowledge work? The
chapter makes recommendations for futureproofing retention and engagement via the (re)
design of next generation employee experience.
Key words
Digital disruption, employee experience, design thinking, workforce analytics, agile
transformation, engagement, retention.
The human spirit must prevail over technology. - Albert Einstein
Introduction
The digital transformation of work and or the future of work and with it the workplace and its
workforce have been enormously contemporary if not popular themes amongst futurists,
technologists, human capital practitioners of all makes and descriptions as well as corporate
executives. Amongst several others this digital transformation has been described as a
renaissance by Miller & Marsh (2016) a digital tsunami Bhaduri (2016) and Brynjolfsson and
McAfee (2012) describe it as a race against the machine. Kaplan (2016) even argues rather
apocalyptically that humans need not apply only to be cheekily contradicted by Davenport &
Kirby (2016) concretely stating that there are winners and losers in the age of smart machines
and that actually only humans need apply.
It is well known that business models and contexts are rapidly being ravished by wide array of
not just exponentially evolving technologies but highly disruptive technologies that will
according to a recent McKinsey Global Institute report literally “transform life, business and
the global economy”. These include but are not limited to artificial machine intelligence,
cognitive and quantum computing, as well as stellar advances in automation, robotics and,
block chain and the so called internet of things. Social, mobile, analytics and cloud computing
are already considered passé. These all ambiguously impact the future of work, the workplace
context and future digital workforce.
This chapter will explore how specifically digital disruption is impacting future of work and
what work in the future is likely to look like. Possible answers to which digital capabilities,
competencies and business culture might enable not a race and battle against the smart
machines but rather a constructive collaborative augmentation. Which of these future digital
technology work processes or digital workforce contexts will enable sustainability despite
massive automation and deskilling of knowledge work? Where possible examples to illustrate
these will be provided.
Human resource practitioners of every ilk be it scientifically inspired occupational
psychologists or generalist HR Practitioners are all scrambling around for an elixir or alchemy
of agile methodologies and or human centered design thinking which will revitalize what is
now popularly and poignantly emerging as the employee experience. The practical implications
of these given future digital work and workforce will further be elaborated on in this chapter
and accordingly contextualized.
As the overall focus of this publication centres on the 21st century industrial psychologist and
HR practitioner need to continually psychologically struggle with enigma of how best to define,
frame, focus, mobilise and sustain employee engagement and retention in measureable and
tangible terms, importantly however for this chapter albeit digitally so.
The digital disruption of everything
Two recent stories of major even iconic businesses and their leaders having not mastered the
disruptive transformational realities of new digital economy namely Nokia and General
Electric aptly demonstrates Brynjolfson & McAfee’s (2014) and Surdak ‘s(2014) notions that
digital technological advances have engendered the greatest changes in human history and has
not just generated change on a par with the Industrial Revolution but that exponentially
speaking most of the changes being wrought by digital technologies have yet to appear
Following on they further argue that given the ever increasing pervasive connectedness, and
data enablement of digital context for example of Smartphones and their apps – 25 billion apps
have been downloaded from Apple alone machines will produce the majority of mobile data
traffic, not humans. Workforces create and consume vast amounts of data.
In the future they believe social media’s revolution in communications will define society’s
evolution.
We all recall some of us even fondly how Nokia was dominant leading player and game
changer in the cellular market given how it innovated and introduced countless revolutionary
models. Ironically its leadership didn’t have foresight like Apple of a platform based hand held
device like the iPhone and like the Sony Walkman before it was less responsive to its customers
and more importantly ignorant of exponentially evolving digital communications ecosystem
(mobile, music, photo’s camera, messaging, and video). The final result being that Nokia was
sold to Microsoft by the then CEO, Stephen Elop, who at the press conference announcing the
acquisition commented “We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost,”
Similarly General Electric (GE) recently announced that Jeffrey Immelt has resigned from this
iconic conglomerate following 16 years as director and CEO having famously succeeded the
legendary Jack Welch after not being able to engender and sustain investors’ confidence
specifically related to speed and impact of its digital transformation efforts. Accordingly
Digital business researchers Raskino and Waller (2015) report that the latest seminal wave of
innovation in social, mobile, data analytics and cloud as well as machine learning technology
further erodes the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds and more importantly
that it is advisable keeping in mind that all enterprise’s now are digital companies as technology
keeps opening opportunities.
The realities of these so termed platform (Parker, Van Alstyne , Choudary , 2017) and gig
economy (McGovern,2017) type enterprises are often further described by mentioning that
Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most
contemporary media owner, creates little if any content and Amazon the most valuable retailer,
noticeably has no inventory and further that the world’s largest accommodation provider,
Airbnb owns no property.
New sources of value innovation and progressive business models and players are radically
transforming entire industries true to the notion that software and artificial intelligence is eating
the world given its central role in creating so much lower cost based service value innovation
and distinctive customer experiences we thrive on. It is there for unashamedly vital for human
resource and other more scientifically driven practitioners to acknowledge that both the speed
and nature of business and technology evolution is
Accelerating and maintaining the status quo is not an option.
Notoriously Kurzweil (2005) in explaining his law of accelerating returns he predicts an
exponential increase in technologies like computers, genetics, nanotechnology, robotics and
artificial intelligence further famously pronouncing that machine intelligence will be infinitely
more powerful than all human intelligence combined. Maybe not such a profound proposition
given that already, artificial intelligence is all around us, from self-driving cars and drones
delivering Amazon package’s and fertilising crops to virtual assistants and software enabled
chatbots that translate, invest and even control lighting of premises remotely, all voice activated
off course. Regrettably business as usual as Kodak discovered is no longer a feasible option
and many a well known organisation will not see the light of day over next decade. Digital
innovation is driving new generation of agile innovative organisations eg. As mentioned the
likes of Netflix, Instagram, Amazon, Airbnb, and Uber have used exponential technologies to
completely disrupt the entertainment, photography, publishing, retail, hotel, and transportation
industries. Organizations intuitively sense and know that to remain relevant in the new
economy they need to be more innovative, more often.
Needless to say Raskino and Waller (2015) further maintain that in addition this unsurmounted
technological innovation will in addition lead to a supply-side economic gains with further
long-term improvements in both efficiency and productivity. Consequently transportation and
communication costs will drop, with logistics and global supply chains becoming more
effective, impacting the cost of trade progressively liberating new markets which propel
economic growth.
Although while all this might well be true and exponentially evolving so to speak the current
contradiction is that there remains a significant chasm between radical new technology(ies)
and the slower pace of both human skill and organisation development. The increasing effect
of digitization on society and the economy however is not to be underestimated.
Quintessentially in addition to being the custodians of human cooperation, compassion and
creativity the optimum rather grand challenge of our time for all human capital practitioners is
inventing effective organisations worthy of the human spirit and equally if not more so the
boundary less potential of the human species.
The transformative effects of digitalization have upended entire industries – publishing,
music, movies, retail, gaming, and others. Sensors, artificial intelligence, micropayments,
driverless vehicles, and tools such as virtual reality and 4D printing are changing every
dimension of business. Evolving as an exponential organization as termed by Ismael, Malone
and van Geest (2014) is as much a necessity as it is a choice. They believe that countless
industries will digitize and that the so called digital revolution so far is just the tip of
the iceberg given that every company is or will evolve into an information-based entity and
thrive on abundance, not scarcity as they have propensity to rather than owning assets,
exponential driven organisations borrow or lease them at little or no cost – like Uber,
Airbnb and Google, remaining agile, through renting employees and leveraging cloud
computing.
In order to rise to this challenge and the pivotal leadership role of practitioners we need to focus
on how digital disruption is impacting the future of work and work of the future with its
workforce capabilities inclusive of culture and context. Thereafter we can well proceed to
reflect on implications of all and how practitioner’s might go about futureproofing their
organisations meaning move faster or face oblivion.
Future of work and work of the future
Given this exponentially networked, digital platform based and gig experience driven economy
it is necessary for us to proceed to further briefly explore some of the realities of the future of
work and the future workforce. Many practitioners can well find this unnerving especially if
they have not transitioned to what Prensky (2012) terms either a digital native or digital
immigrant needing to familiarise themselves with how everyday devices becoming smarter and
smarter and constantly connected to and via internet of things eg. Wearable Fitbit, Garmin and
or Netflix, Showmax, U Tube mobile and screen based downloads in data, knowledge rich
world. Meister and Willyerd (2010) in describing the Workplace of 2020 elaborate on various
changes relating to the future of work and work of the future as follows:
1. Employees, will be hired and promoted based upon their individual reputation or personal
brand capital hence for employees to advance, workers will need extensive, high-quality
social networks, strong personal brands and demonstrated expertise and accomplishments.
These components comprise reputation capital.
2. Contract and assignment or project based jobs will be the path to permanent full-time
employment to let firms test potential employee’s capabilities before hiring them full time
but also given emphasis and preference of new generation workforce relating to agile,
flexible as well as remote and virtual working.
3. Employee’s mobile device of choice will become their office, their classroom and their
concierge as smart phones and tablets are replacing personal computers as the internet
connection devices of choice. Easy to use, superb connectivity and great versatility, these
as well as wide range of platform Apps enable employees to work anywhere, any time.
4. CEO’s job requirement’s will include need for a digital 2020 mind-set in order for them to
thrive in a networked always on world where there is pressing need to communicate,
connect and collaborate 24/7 be it via Blogging, Twitter, Instagram or Facebook all
preferred channels of the 21st century workforce and consumer. Digital fluency and social
media literacy and in many cases advanced analytics if not coding will be as basic a
requirement as reading.
5. Lifelong learning will be a business requirement and the corporate curriculum will use
video games” Alternate reality games and simulations to engage young people.
6. Corporate social responsibility programs will increasingly be designed to attract and retain
employees as employment branding becomes more prominent. New generation high
potential employees focus on the “triple bottom line: people, planet and profits.” where
diversity and gender equality will be a critical business issue rather than a human resources
issue
It seems therefor that digital technology enables real time employee engagement at scale. Video
Blogs (vlogs), Twitter and digital video are assisting pioneering leaders to connect,
communicate and more importantly collaborate with their organisations.
Enterprise social platforms further elevates progressive, open and inclusive two way
communication where employees share, collaborate and co design their respective futures in
real time. Digital technology ushers in new era in which leaders engage with employees in
unprecedented authentic manner which makes transformative change happen. As such it
empowers employees by giving them a voice to make organisation vision a reality. The digital
tools encourages conversation and provides all opportunity to participate in sculpting of
organisations destiny.
In digital economy’s parlance employees are crowdsourced to co create and co design and as
such accelerate creation of and adoption of agile fit for strategic purpose solutions. Culturally
it embeds transparency and reduces potential for digital divide.
The Workforce of the Future Index which is published by the Economist. Intelligence Unit
quantifies the technological aptitude of national workforces in 56 countries, across the
following six dimension’s which can easily be integrated into future digital workforce planning
and most importantly deployment efforts:
1. Technology and connectivity infrastructure which focuses measures relating to access
toreliable electricity and high-speed Internet inclusive of the number of secure Internet
servers as well as quality of information and communication technology (ICT) .
Interestingly the top-ranking nations include South Korea, the Netherlands and
Switzerland.
2. Technology and society similarly this element measures the prevalence of technology
in the everyday lives of a nation’s citizens, including affordability, number of active
Internetusers, e-commerce sales and local hosting of web content. The top-ranking
nations are the United States, the United Kingdom and Norway.
3. Labour markets education and technology skills as can be expected this dimensions
focus and evaluates the prevalence of skilled workers and the quality of their skills.
Factors affecting this category include the general state of education (including tertiary
education), students’ math and programming skills, and prevalence of the Internet in
schools. The top-ranking nations are the United States, the United Kingdom and
Germany.
4. Government environment Regulations and legislation laws contribute to the
accessibility of technology. Indicators here include a nation’s cyber laws, protection of
intellectual property, online services and general commitment to both privacy and
security of ICT related information . Not surprisingly top-ranking nations in this
category are France, the United States and the Netherlands.
5. Business environment – equally important is measurement of a market’s ability to adopt
new technologies, and the quality of the political and economic environment in a
country which enables and scrutinises countries local start-up culture. The top-ranking
nations are the United States, Germany and United Kingdom.
It must therefore follow that a so called digital workforce constitutes more than the merging of
technology and business it’s about the cultivation and optimisation even leveraging of entire
new generation of digital mind-set employee all who can to explore, connect, socialize, and in
turn sculpt differentiating consumer experiences. Ingham (2017) argues that by organizations
optimising on delivering capabilities of innovation, talent, change, and collaboration they shift
their focus from developing individuals to enabling networks and relationships between
employees. Accordingly, at work it would seem that, good relationships correlate to higher
engagement and productivity. It further enables employees to cope with the rapid pace of
change. People are the core differentiator today, and to enable people, organizations must
empower them digitally with the necessary resources and support a mind-set shift given that
an inherent curiosity combined with social driven learning and collaboration capabilities are
definitive digital competencies of the future workforce. In an increasingly digital world, said
digital transformation is not just about more and better, faster as well as different technologies.
It entails what is known as digital congruence — aligning your company’s culture, people,
structure, and tasks. That’s why it’s crucial to embrace the diversity of generations and
technological advances, and to realise that improving leadership skills and fostering an
environment of continuous learning is paramount. Both agility and collaboration are going to
be ever prevalent and inherent job requirement’s whilst organization’s will continuously need
to create type of environments to optimise and leverage workforce and people’s capacity for
growth, learning and innovation.
Essential that practitioners understand, appreciate and value the complex relationship between
meaning people attach to their work experiences as its integral component of their personal and
social identity. In many ways the drastic impact of ecosystem of cognitive, social, cloud and
analytic chatbots, virtual assistants etc. is not fully apparent yet however more than plausible
to argue that it could represent gigantic socio cultural workplace transformation.
Fortuitously McKinsey during time of writing has published a report on the impact of
automation on jobs and estimate 400-800 million workers will be displaced due to the
emergence of robots and automation by the year 2030. The 400 million figure is a midpoint;
dependent on the pace of adoption of the technology, there could be 800 million people who
could be displaced. Fortunately, technology will also lead to the creation of jobs that would
offset the job loss. The caveat here being that organizations and countries will have to be adept
at ensuring the smooth transition of the displaced workers towards the sectors and areas of
strong job creation.
The report also states that around 75-375 million people would have to switch occupation by
2030. Here too, 75 million is the midpoint, while 375 million is when the adoption of
technology will be fastest.
It mentions that the impact of automation will also vary:
• By the country’s income level
• Demographics
• Industry structure
Mancini (2015) in his interpretation of collaborative work spaces states that the gap is widening
between individual workers making use of new collaborative technologies and organizations’
ability to control these tools. He argues compellingly that work culture and traditional
hierarchies are evolving in response to collaborative technology, however emphasises that
organizational structures must facilitate this evolution if businesses wish to take full advantage
of technical innovations and people’s ability to use its advantages to augment productivity.
Ingram’s (2017) views that the organization of the future will need to be social and connected,
and postulates further that the technologies and structures to facilitate this will be increasingly
important.
According to previous mentioned McKinsey report, the following factors will serve as a
catalyst in the creation of work for both the developed and the developing economies:
• Rising incomes and consumption, especially in emerging economies: The report
estimates that global consumption would grow $23 trillion between 2015 and 2030. And
as income will rise, the consumption pattern will also change with consumers spending
more on all categories. The sectors which will be affected by the same leading to greater
job creation are as follows: consumer durables, leisure activities, financial and
telecommunication sector, housing, healthcare, and education.
• Healthcare of aging population: The report estimates that there will be an addition of 300
million to the population above 65 years of age as compared to 2014. This will lead to
increased spending on healthcare and personal services. Potentially, this could result in the
creation of 80 million jobs globally in the healthcare and related sector.
• Investment in infrastructure and building: The report estimates on an average $3.3
trillion per year will need to be invested per year to fill the infrastructure gap. This could
lead to the creation of 80-200 million jobs by 2030.
• Investment in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and climate adaption: In case of a
step scenario, which is organizations and nations proactively working towards meeting the
commitment of the Paris climate accord, there could be a potential creation of 10 million
jobs in manufacturing, construction, and installation.
• Technology development: The report estimates that investment in technology will
increase by more than 50 percent between 2015 and 2030. The investment would be largely
focused on technology services and technology consultation. The resultant would be the
rise in jobs related to the developing and deploying technology. The jobs which will be
impacted would include the following profile: computer scientists, IT administrators, and
engineers. Approx., 25-50 million jobs will be created globally.
• Marketization for previously unpaid work: As per the report, 75% of the unpaid work
falls in women’s domain there could well be a shift with individual households either
investing in paid work, or the government providing universal childcare and other services.
The shift could lead to the marketization of 50-90 million unpaid jobs by 2030 which would
be constructive.
So in summary sixty percent of occupations could have up to 30% of their activities automated
including radiologists, design engineers, market researchers and well wide array of HR
professionals including occupational psychologist given mammoth rate of automation and
cognitive (AI) technologies impacting entire human resource value chain of attraction,
assessment, development engagement and deployment. They are being replaced by big data
analysts, social media experts, cloud builders, app developers, and other types of information
specialists. Software engineering jobs will grow at a rate of 18.8% by 2024 which is triple the
rate of overall job growth rate.
As challenging and profound as to comprehend Davenport & Kirby (2016) further
convincingly elaborate on the use of smart machines and how it encroaches on knowledge
work and threatens professionals, including lawyers, doctors, accountants, professors, pilots,
and more. They do however argue that it is possible and necessary to prepare employees to
augment machines given that machines streamline tasks and people supplement that work with
variable, complex thought. Machines and humans produce better results than either could
alone. Augmentation finds ways for humans and machines to form partnerships. They argue in
order for humans to remain relevant and make meaningful impact people in organisations need
to adopt following approaches or steps:
• Step up – Humans have “big-picture” perspectives. They can focus on more
generalized and large-scale strategic thinking to remain relevant. Automation does not
excel in that area.
• Step aside – Personal interaction is important but beyond the scope of computers.
For example, salespeople, motivational coaches and therapists perform work that may
benefit from machine analyses but requires human engagement.
• Step in – Companies must have a few people who can “understand, monitor, and
improve” the functionality of computers and information systems.
• Step narrowly – Jobs with a limited purview may not be worth automating. Finding
these niche fields is a path for career growth.
• Step forward”– Those who understand computer systems will have jobs in modifying
and designing technology to meet the changing needs of businesses and industries.
Amidst this general malaise relating to the digital workplace and it’s even more digitally
enhanced, augmented and or deskilled workforce it increasingly will be about practitioners and
the wider human resources community’s employees’ ability to re envision, reimagine if not
reposition and reinvigorate their roles. Given the apparent lower levels of trust and engagement
in and with leadership practitioner’s emphasis is increasingly going to center on futureproofing
via collaborating, communicating, and connecting with the wider human network of things.
Burning questions which remain after reflecting on how digital disruption is impacting future
of work, the workforce and organisational culture are:
• How to define, frame, focus, mobilise and sustain, meaning future proof employee
engagement and retention in measureable terms?
• How relevant are either of these (engagement & retention) given increasing temporary
and transient nature of digital work context e.g. Half-life of knowledge and skills and
average tenure of C Suite Executive down to less than 4 years with organisations now
around 15 years before obsolescence ?
• Which processes, methodologies and practices e.g. Design thinking, agile
organisational design, talent analytics etc. will optimise employee experience to ensure
human potential fully leveraged throughout individual and organisation lifecycle?
• How is organisations and work to be redesigned to leverage the digital workforce and
sculpt breakthrough employee experience?
• How must practitioners reinvent themselves and HR evolve to ensure relevance and
meaningful impact on optimum productivity and retention of employees on one hand
and competitive innovative driven organisation culture on the other?
Futureproofing retention and engagement via the (re) design of next generation employee
experience
Amidst this sea change in digital workplace context, with its rapid continuing technological
advancement with unprecedented volatility and tormenting ubiquity. Both Adams (2017) and
Morgan (2017) argue for radical change meaning to either disrupt or be disrupted. They
implicitly imply in their work that only true certainty is need for humanising the workplace
employee experience. Their respective yet mutually reinforcing positions are that by treating
employees as adults not children as well as handling employees as consumers or customers
(not a one-size-fits-all approach) and more importantly by valuing employees as humans,
practitioners can contribute to the creation of a workplace context in which employees are able
to invest more of their whole selves into the workplace.
They remain perplexed by the fact that given fact that we can buy online with one click from
Amazon, Taka a lot make video calls with Skype and What’s App connect to our social
networks via Facebook, Instagram etc. and share knowledge and ideas through Twitter and
Pinterest it is hard to comprehend why our corporate procurement systems, teleconferencing,
directory and collaborative workgroup services, and corporate communications platforms are
at times lagging and so incredibly cumbersome by comparison, leading to sense of
disillusionment and disenfranchisement and this all amidst what Pine & Gillmore (2011)
termed an experience economy.
Morgan (2017) through his research into 17 attributes of the Employee Experience
Index (EEI) focusing on technology, physical spaces and organisational culture argues that
organisations which progressively invest and devote resources to sculpting work place
experiences are:
• included 11.5 times as often in Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work
• listed 4.4 times as often in LinkedIn’s list of North America’s Most In-Demand
Employers
• 28 times more often listed among Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies
• listed 2.1 times as often on the Forbes list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies
• twice as often found in the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
•
In addition what these cutting-edge companies like General Electric, Cisco, IBM and Marriott
International were found doing to create environments that are helpful and stimulating, instead
of taxing and draining lead them to having more than 4 times the average profit and more than
2 times the average revenue. They were also almost 25 percent smaller, which suggests higher
levels of productivity and innovation. As such these findings would suggest the need for clear
conceptualization of the employee experience as the new frontier of competitive value
innovation.
For retention purposes, the employee experience needs to be clearly differentiated and
Patterson, Wride and Maylett (2017) are adamant that it encapsulates the entire relationship
and journey that an employee
experiences while interacting with an organization and as such human capital practitioners
would be well advised to:
• Make the employee experience a core part strategy
• Understand employee expectations and bridge the “Expectation Gap”
• Establish rock-solid Brand, Transactional, and Psychological Contracts that breed trust
and confidence
• Build an employee-employer partnership in creating something extraordinary
• Leverage employee engagement into to propel customer satisfaction, loyalty, profit,
and growth.
It is therefore clear that employee experience is total sum of everything an employee
experiences throughout his or her connection to the organization — every employee
interaction, from the first contact as a potential recruit to the last interaction after the end of
employment. It is as such further distinguishable from:
• New and automated or “transformed HR “— While human resource and occupational
psychologist practitioners shape and transform some of the most critical processes
within (recruiting, assessment and selection, on-boarding, performance reviews and
talent management planning), employee experience involves so much more. It needs to
be considered as the intersection of employee expectations, needs, and wants and the
organizational design of those expectations, needs, and wants
• Employee engagement —often used interchangeably with employee experience
represents an employees’ commitment to a company and its jobs and is the end goal
while actual realized employee experience is considered the means to that end. The now
momentous battle for hearts and minds of employees however is played out daily and
constitutes far more than the results from annual employee engagement survey. In many
ways these once off isolated engagement initiatives serve more to impact leader’s
credibility and further erode trust as organizations and their leadership are perceived by
new generation workforce as inept and even clumsy as they not proactively designing
and leading meaningful employee experiences to produce measureable employee
retention and engagement.
• Employer or employment branding — Again far to regularly in order to improve
rankings in various Best or most admired and innovative Places to Work type surveys
and under the guise of competing in the war for talent, many companies try to develop
an external reputation to help improve their digital, high potential talent attraction and
retention efforts. Many of these however are “paid to participate’ type surveys and
employees increasingly growing weary of them as doesn’t truthfully reflect and or
ultimately represent human – experience of for example either belonging as feeling part
of a team, group or organization or purpose meaning understanding why one’s work
matters. Practitioners are often asked to work with Marketing, Communications and
Corporate Affairs functions to develop a brand. Many organisations e.g. KFC, Mc
Donald’s, Pizza Hut as example notorious for positioning iconic external brands yet
internally employee experiences lack any happiness or vigour which IBM describes
respectively as the pleasant feeling arising in and around work as well as the presence
of energy, enthusiasm and excitement at work. All which are valuable attributes to
consider for employee retention and sculpting experience which drives it.
• Benefits, compensation or events - Normally shortly following one of many surveys
already mentioned be it culture, engagement, retention, trust on annual basis people
practitioners of every description called upon to assist with wish list of what benefits,
compensation, parties and events can be arranged to better ensure retention and
engagement . The more scientific and evidence orientated practitioners have even
termed these the EVP or employee value proposition. Although practitioners might
include such tactics which as with previously mentioned employee branding is then
normally cascaded throughout organization as means to pacify response and or rectify
results from various surveys and although the EVP could in part impact an employee’s
decision to join, stay, remain etc. it’s not synonymous therewith. Employee experience
design goes well beyond making employment more fun and enjoyable it involves
designing and delivering distinctive experiences for employees that are strategically
aligned with and fosters increasing digital capable organizational culture.
True to Patterson, Wride and Maylett (2017) definition practitioners in their quest to address
the psychology of employee retention and engagement need to deeply scrutinize and appreciate
that the the Employee Experience is the sum of the various perceptions employees have about
their interactions with the organization in which they work throughout their employment
journey. Morgan (2017) suggest practitioners continue to focus their abilities on technology,
physical spaces and organisational culture as accordingly the experiences organizations design
are ultimately what shape the actions that employees take and the relationships or associations
that they want to have with a specific organization. It is easy for practitioners to be lulled into
sense of comfort that themes related to digital future of work is decades away however Meister
and Willyerd (2010) already proposed that by 2020 employees will expect the following five
principles to resonate strongly in their workplaces:
• “Collaboration” – This calls for interwoven work, internally and externally.
• “Authenticity”– Core values and transparency demonstrate genuineness.
• “Personalization” – Employees want tailor-made personalised career paths.
• “Innovation” – In a changing world, new thinking enables sustainability.
• “Social connection” – Workplaces will be based on sharing and forming a
community.
Continuing Meister and Willyerd (2010), further argued that by 2020, HR teams would grow
and/or evolve to include new specialists such as the following:
• ‘Capability planners’ – they ensure that the company develops much-needed skills;
• ‘Chief technologists’ who serve as HR’s IT experts;
• ‘Community gardeners’ who help to create and nurture online communities;
• ‘Futurists’ who work with companies to anticipate their future needs;
• ‘People capability planners’ who map out employees’ career path and/or route for
development;
• ‘Place planners’ who ensure that site-specific features work well at presentations
and at ‘virtual and collaboration sites’, professional career paths and/or routes of
development;
• ‘Social connectors’ who provide expertise in using social networks and social media;
• ‘Talent scouts’ who spot emerging talent and approach experienced professionals
for hiring;
• ‘Talent development agents’ who help to plan and create accelerated as well as
enriched learning experiences, if not widened opportunities for employees.
So both these principles as well as new practitioner specialisms can easily collaborate in order
to sculpt and renew and align employee experience to purpose of hyper connected exponential
organisation of the 21st century where agility and value innovation are drivers of accelerated
double digit growth and sustainability. (Ismail, Malone and van Geest, 2014).
Design thinking, robust workplace analytics and an agile mind-set are enabling
centrepieces of digital transformation roadmap.
Having reflected on digital disruption which is dramatically impacting the future of work and
work of the future as well as ubiquitous morphing of employee experience inclusive of
retention and engagement, the following reality emerges: Human capital practitioners will
often be faced with having to reinvent, reimagine and future proof impact of these digital
changes to business and operating models by answering questions from the CEO & Board like:
• What is our digital transformation roadmap for our people?
• How do we align our people culture to simultaneously enhance agility and lower cost?
• What does optimal differentiated employee experience look like across the different
stages of an employee journey for a digital ready increasingly contingent, virtual and
mobile segmented workforce?
• How do we align our people attraction, engagement and retention strategies with our
organisations ideals of being value innovators in social, mobile, analytics and cloud
space?
• How do we accelerate organisational and cultural change via data driven and predictive
analytic based decision-making?
• How do we both simplify & scale structure of HR people management function to
ensure that it delivers global solutions to managers and workforce?
New generation employees value creative jobs that enable them to make positive social impact
on their communities and society as a whole as well as have huge expectations relating to how
they experience their working lives all which were alluded to previously as it relates to
optimising and designing meaningful employee experiences on one hand and organisations
having to out innovate their competitors in order to avoid going the same way as the Dodo
hence need to articulate a digital transformation roadmap to address various challenges as
presented.
Jon Kolko (2015) eloquently stated that people need their interactions with technologies and
other complex systems to be simple, intuitive, and pleasurable. He further proposes that
empathic human cantered design enhances the user experience at every touch point, and as
such fuels the creation of products and services that deeply resonate with people be they
employees and or customers.
Adopting a human centred design thinking approach to employee experience would therefor
make huge sense in order to shift focus away from merely developing programs, processes etc.
but co creating and co designing meaningful employee experience that are compelling,
enjoyable, and simple. It as such enables human resource practitioners to transform from
process developers to experience architects. This approach to thinking could further create
empowering environment that fosters fresh, innovative ways to continuously search for new
ways to communicate, collaborate and explore new purposeful social nuances and connections
related to employee and organisational digital transformation journey. As thinking is highly
collaborative co design across disciplines and functions it is deeply engaging and as such
contributes and enables to creating a narrative which humanizes and simplifies all and as such
could accelerate change.
Brown (2009) describes the need to establish choices as it relates to innovation as a set of
principles relating to design thinking that balance the needs of individuals and of society as a
whole; new ideas that tackle the global challenges which design thinking can be applied to by
diverse people to a wide range of problems. Implying and meaning new strategies that result
in differences that matter and a sense of purpose that engages everyone affected by them which
resonates with burning need to future proof employee experience, engagement and retention
via digital roadmap which as per design thinking provides:
• Insight: learning from the lives of others go out into the world and observe the actual
experiences [of people] as they improvise their way through their working lives
• Observation: watching what people don’t do, listening to what they don’t say
• Empathy: standing in the shoes of others
The new generations of employees have huge opportunity to all become digital nomads
leveraging wide range of remote working technologies already mentioned and hence Yohn
(2016) in emphasising need for organisations to design their employee experiences as
thoughtfully as they do their customers advances notion of using design thinking to map actual
employee experience throughout employee journey fostering engagement and retention as
follows:
• sourcing and recruiting
• pre-boarding
• onboarding (orientation and initial training)
• compensation and benefits
• ongoing learning and development
• ongoing engagement, communication, and community involvement
• rewards and recognition
• performance planning, feedback, and review
• career advancement
• retirement, termination, or resignation
So each experience becomes a memorable moment of truth gaining insight and empathy as it
relates to what employee thinks, feels, believes, expects and values as well as deeply
intrinsically appreciates during each experience.
Arguably the second centrepiece of digital transformation roadmap which could have preceded
the previous element of design thinking relates to what contemporary scholars Ulrich, et al
(2017) as well as Boudreau & Ramstad (2007) and lastly Becker (1993) earlier referred to as
need for human resource practitioners to generate measurements, data and workplace analytics
in order to provide robust evidence as to outcomes of their endeavours be it assessment,
selection and or as in this case all that relates to the psychology of retention , engagement and
the employee experience within a volatile digital landscape.
Barends et al (2014) is of opinion that evidence-based practice relates specifically to making
decisions through the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of the best available evidence
from preferably secured via multiple credible sources by:
• Asking – translating a practical issue or problem into an answerable question
• Acquiring – systematically searching for and retrieving evidence
• Appraising – critically judging the trustworthiness and relevance of the evidence
• Aggregating – weighing and pulling together the evidence
• Applying – incorporating the evidence into a decision-making process
• Assessing – evaluating the outcome of the decision taken so as to increase the likelihood
of a favourable outcome.
As increasingly the case when everything nowadays is digital, and accordingly tracked,
prioritized, systemised and managed with real time, just in time data practitioners have the
opportunity, to demonstrate where and how much they directly impact strategic business goals
via robust workplace analytics.
Determining and calculating tangible benefits from improving time to market, continuous
learning, responsiveness, and collaboration resulting from initiatives could be considered.
Data and insights arising from this analytics may be considered a source of evidence that is
used in making more effective decisions especially those impacting financial business metrics
relating to cost and value of savings generated from engagement and or retention initiatives.
Here total revenue lost due to vacancy position days or improvement in revenue per employee
following improved engagement or retention of key talent instantly comes to mind versus
psychobabble relating to value of mindfulness exercise or possible improvements in
effectiveness and productivity from neuroscience.
Often various surveys, events, initiatives or interventions lack business case and or tangible
evidence in monetary sense of benefits gained and the so called return on investment lags
intervention by months if not years e.g. between annual surveys void of any cost and or revenue
returned per employee. Here various contemporary new generation platform based and
wearable digital solutions will embarrass many a practitioner for example TrustSphere which
provides online network employee relationship analytics in real time.
The final recommended centrepiece to enable digital transformation centres on need for human
resource practitioners to adopt a digital mind set as well as set of practices which doesn’t
require them to be technology experts but rather about curiosity, creativity, problem solving,
empathy, flexibility, data informed decision making and team based collaboration, cooperation
and judgment to overall improve organization’s nimbleness and overall responsiveness. It
requires embracing and leveraging technology based solutions to effectively execute on
business imperatives however equally critical is need to extend collaboration with other
departments, incorporating mobile, analytics, social media and the cloud to ease their transition
to be strategically more digitally transformative.
Gothelf (2017) shares story of large financial services concern who made every employee at
its headquarters (nearly 3,500 people) re-interview for their job to bring about customer
centricity and digital responsiveness. Staggeringly, 40% of people ended up in new positions
or parted ways with the company. It wasn’t about their skill sets. In fact, in many cases the
employees’ skill sets were still highly relevant. Rather, it was a specific mind-set that was
lacking — one that could embrace the uncertainty, volatility, ambiguity and new the learning
agility required for exponential organisation
It is increasingly becoming apparent that many organization’s which are serious about its future
sustainability and who are adopting agile mindset are amending their people practitioner hiring
approach as popularized by Laszlo Bock,(2015) former senior vice-president of people
operations at Google to what is known as three thirds’ hiring model. That means an HR
department that breaks down as one third from HR backgrounds, one third from consultancy
and business backgrounds and, crucially, one third from academic fields such as science and
mathematics (people who are inculcated with the need for analytical proof.) Keep in mind that
organisations which fail to be more digitally agile and innovative as further mentioned by Bock
(2015) half or 50% of the names of companies on the Fortune 500 have disappeared since the
year 2000. Strangely Peter Drucker (1978) shared this wisdom by stating that greatest danger
in times of turbulence isn’t the turbulence but to act with what he termed yesterday’s logic.
Conclusion
Given as practitioners we daily help organizations decode culture and grapple to understand
the behaviours that drive innovation and performance, it remains pertinent to consider how
everything is continually being disrupted digitally and is dramatically impacting future the of
work and work of the future. It is more than obvious and ever increasingly pervasive that the
current era of disengaged, transient talent impacts every aspect of the business, and the need to
reignite purpose at work has never been more urgent. This might be via organizational network
analysis or next generation engagement platform which aims to improve team effectiveness
through measuring digital engagement and identifying areas of communication bias all aimed
at futureproofing employee retention and sculpting a more meaningful employee experience.
It remains ironic though that despite the more technologies, devices, sites, apps, and other
digital touchpoints we have, the less connected we are as human beings. Practitioners remain
profoundly challenged to; via design thinking, workplace analytics and new digital mind-sets
enable a work context which provides for both individual wellbeing as well as all-inclusive
societal prosperity. This will, as decades pass, only be achieved through ensuring transparency
and clarity of the organization’s mission and core values, communicating why employees
matter and the specific behaviours that exemplify those values throughout the organization
irrespective of scale and/or maturity of the so called digital transformation.
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