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Organizations are working to take their functional, siloed operating models and transform them into ecosystems with increased collaboration, starting with the c-suite. “You can’t move forward if you’re siloed individually in your own organization,” said Deloitte’s Managing Director, Workforce Strategy & Insights Chip Newton at Inforum 2018 in Washington, D.C. yesterday. “For an organization to truly respond to their ecosystem effectively, they have to listen to their employees.”
Three macro trends are clearly pushing organizations to reexamine workforce management (WFM):
1. The power of the individual is growing, with millennials at the forefront. According to Deloitte research, most millennials (86 percent) agree that business success should be measured by more than just financial performance. But many organizations are missing an opportunity to better understand worker preferences and tailor a wider range of rewards to a more diverse workforce.
Can your WFM platform offer performance rewards? Many employees today respond favorably to agile compensation programs that provide raises, bonuses, or other incentives more often than the traditional once-a-year rewards system.
Have you empowered your employees’ experiences with your platform? Providing employees with opportunities to develop themselves almost certainly leads to employee goodwill.
2. There is increasing pressure on businesses to be social responsible. Stakeholders care about organizations’ impact on society, and their expectations for good corporate citizenship are rising. Employees, especially millennials, share these expectations.
“The new workforce wants to feel there’s meaning to what they’re doing,” explained Infor’s Director, Performance Management Practice Jim Perry. “That’s the one ubiquitous trait – it’s not the beanbag chair and the free snacks. It’s going to work every day and there’s that something where you know you’re working with the good guy.”
Technological change is having unforeseen impacts on society, even as it creates massive opportunities to achieve sustainable, inclusive growth. But businesses aren’t adopting technology at the pace of the individual.
Is your workforce connected by a WFM platform? Have you maximized your WFM ROI via AI, robotics and automation? Every platform offers new ways to collaborate, but have you checked to see if your platform is actually driving overall productivity?
In order to effectively listen to employees and understand how to retain them, Newton stressed the importance of a particular mindset shift: viewing software solution providers, like Infor, not as vendors but as partners. “Back in the day we had time systems. We did that because we wanted to be compliant. There were statutory rules we wanted to make sure we were in compliance with,” explained Newton. “Now there’s so much more and they have so much more data points about your organization and about your employees. It’s the most data-rich application you have.”