Brandon Hall Group Chief Strategy Officer and Principal Officer Michael Rochelle, Senior Vice President and Principal Analyst Claude Werder and I recently presented “How to Thrive in 2024 with GenAI, Talent Retention and more” to share our insights and predictions and what’s really on the mind of business leaders:

HCM leaders, buckle up! The future of work is hurtling toward us, fueled by AI, reshaping talent management and demanding a new breed of leadership. This blog dives into the key takeaways from a recent roundtable discussion with industry experts, exploring the trends that will define our HR landscape.

AI: The Revolution in Our Midst

The discussion kicked off with a clear message: AI is not just a buzzword; it’s a revolution waiting to happen. While organizations are still figuring out how to harness its power, one thing is certain — it will fundamentally change the way we do business. And there’s a crucial role for HR to play: We need to take the lead in shaping how AI is used, ensuring it empowers — not replaces — our workforce.

The Future of Work: Human-Centric and Tech-Enabled

Employee experience is taking center stage. Tools that empower frontline workers, not overwhelm them, will be key. Think intuitive interfaces, voice-powered assistants and data-driven insights that make their jobs easier. And look out for the return of apprenticeships, reimagined for the digital age and the rise of the gig economy, offering flexibility and diverse career paths.

Leadership Development: Learning is the New Normal

In this ever-evolving landscape, learning is no longer a luxury, it’s a job requirement. Leaders need to be comfortable navigating the human-digital divide, effectively communicating across cultures and languages. Immersive experiences, like VR and AR simulations, will become essential for practicing critical skills and reverse mentoring, where junior colleagues teach senior leaders, unlocking fresh perspectives.

Talent Management: From Onboarding to Lifelong Development

Career development and succession planning are moving to the top of the agenda. Onboarding is expanding its scope, going beyond paperwork to include cultural integration and mentorship. Skills intelligence, the ability to identify and nurture talent within your organization, will be a key differentiator.

Learning & Development: Upskilling with AI in Mind

Upskilling and reskilling are no longer optional. To make them truly effective, we need skills intelligence, powered by AI, to personalize learning journeys and identify emerging skill gaps. Get ready for learning developers to embrace AI engineering, building the tools that power future-proof learning experiences.

Core HR Functions: Wellbeing and the Rise of HR/IT Convergence

Investing in employee wellbeing is no longer just a nice-to-have, it’s a strategic differentiator. Companies that prioritize mental and physical health will attract and retain top talent. And keep an eye on the convergence of HR and IT, as data and technology become increasingly intertwined in core HR functions like time and attendance management.

DEI: From Compliance to Leveraging Diversity

Finally, the discussion shifted focus from compliance-driven DEI initiatives to leveraging diverse perspectives as a competitive advantage. Ally networks, where employees can connect and support each other across differences, will accelerate progress towards a truly inclusive workplace.

The message is clear: The future of HR is about being human-centric in a tech-driven world. We need to embrace AI, nurture a culture of continuous learning and prioritize the well-being and development of our people. By doing so, we can not only navigate the coming changes but thrive in the revolution to come.

To learn more about how GenAI and HCM are coming together to improve everything from learning to talent retention, register for the Brandon Hall Group Human Capital Management Excellence Conference, Feb. 13-15, at the Hilton in West Palm Beach, Fla. We’ll have plenty of panelists who will discuss how HR must be future-ready, especially when it comes to breaking technology like generative AI.

So, HCM leaders, are you ready to take the leap? Let’s shape the future of work, together.

P.S. Don’t forget to share your thoughts and predictions in the comments below!

The post How to Thrive in 2024 with GenAI,</ br> Talent Retention and More appeared first on BrandonHallGroup.

It’s difficult to get near-unanimous agreement about anything these days. The importance of employee experience (EX) in driving talent retention and business results is a notable exception.

96% of organizations said EX is important in realizing business objectives and success, according to the Brandon Hall Group study, How HR Can Collaborate on Employee Experience. And 76% of respondents overall said EX is critical.

But there is a catch. HR organizations sometimes look at EX through a different lens than employees, particularly frontline employees and deskless workers who often don’t have the same access to information and digital tools available to them as traditional office workers.

While 56% of organizations surveyed by Brandon Hall Group said they invested in employee training to improve EX and more than 40% cited improved leadership development, wellness, recognition and onboarding programs, only 26% said they improved digital workplace tools to address work efficiency.

That is a sizable gap that deserves attention. Digital workplace technologies are not always top of mind for HR leaders as a driver of employee experience, and only 47% of HR organizations surveyed said there is a strong level of collaboration between HR and IT on digital tools aimed at improving employee experience.

That’s why Brandon Hall Group and Kyndryl, a leading provider of digital workplace services, collaborated on the webinar, Better Together: HR and IT Collaborating to Improve Employee Experience, which is now available for on-demand viewing.

Dennis Perpetua, Kyndryl Vice President and Global Chief Technology Officer for Digital Workplace Services, joined me on that webinar.

“In my experience, the best collaboration generates the best outcomes,” Perpetua told me. “When you are trying to optimize something — like digital tools to help employees — bringing more points of view to the table is critical. When you look at Brandon Hall Group surveys that say 41% of employees don’t feel like they have the optimal tools to do their job, that’s a situation where IT should be at the table collaborating with HR on that.”

It’s important that HR and IT align on the overall goals for employee experience and how technology can support those goals. HR understands employee needs and the human aspects of work. IT understands available technologies and implementation considerations. Collaborating allows each group to lend their expertise.

“You can’t expect IT to understand everything employees go through and you can’t expect HR to be experts on 5G networks, generative AI, Microsoft Copilot and all these different tools that are available. But if you bring the two of us together regularly, that cross-domain collaboration ensures that we can actually optimize the employee experience,” Perpetua said.

It’s not that HR and IT do not work together now. They do. The most common types of collaboration, according to our research is:

• Establishing consistent touchpoints between HR and IT to align on EX goals and strategy.
• Partnering with IT to streamline and modernize HR systems and processes to remove administrative headaches for employees.

What is less common — but would make a big difference in improving outcomes, Perpetua believes — are:

• Cross-functional HR-IT teams working together to manage major EX initiatives from design through change management.
• Working together to pilot changes in technology before full implementation.

Brandon Hall Group’s research also showed that most CHROs — or the executives within HR who are responsible for HR technology — are not often deeply involved in technology decisions impacting employee experience. This means HR is in the position of being largely reactive to technology situations rather than advocating for what workers really need.

The data shows that only 15% of HR executives are deeply involved in EX technology decisions, while 24% of organizations have little or no involvement.

Perpetua said digital tools are critical across the employee lifecycle. “The entire technology experience lays the foundation for how employees generally look at how they are part of corporate culture and how they’re valued, how they’re being enabled to do their jobs,” he said.

Deanna Jones, CHRO of the energy technology company Baker Hughes, concurs. “The employee experience around technology is important and it’s important that everyone who works for us knows it is important to us. Tech needs to be easy, speedy, and useful with a great human interface.”

While HR and IT sometimes appear to be talking different languages — for example, connection and belonging for HR compared to data and security for IT — their missions are actually very similar.

HR, for example, knows that the onboarding experience can make or break the employer-employee relationship. The technology that enables employees to complete their employment paperwork, register for benefits, communicate technology preferences, obtain their employee ID,  and connect with mentors or onboarding buddies, can define the quality of the experience.

It only makes sense that HR and IT work closely together to ensure that the technology is closely matched to the onboarding objectives. “The employee onboarding process is a ripe issue for everybody,” Perpetua said. “There’s not a single customer I have ever spoken to that has said, ‘I’m not interested in that.’”

Another critical area is access to technology applications and resources. At its core, access to technology is an inclusion issue. Perpetua said HR and IT must be aligned on the criteria for access.

“How is access actually structured? Is it by persona? How does access flow into job roles? What level of security is required for different types of employees and technology tools? We have to ensure that we have the right controls around data and that everyone has the right access to tools they need to do their jobs,” he said.

“This is not just procedural. We need to make sure that employees feel as though they have contribution equity into the work products and the outcomes that the company wants. This ranges from the very basic things to having screen readers for how people with certain disabilities are enabled to collaborate and how they can find resources within the company. We need to make sure that the technology access provides equity that is instilled across the organization.”

In the webinar, Perpetua shared customer success stories and I shared data from the EX study, including information on how involved HR is in forging a generative AI strategy and the barriers to maximizing the use of data and analytics to improve employee experience. View it — and get the slides from the webinar as well — here. If you’d like to talk to a Kyndryl Digital Workplace Expert you can schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation today.

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Fresh off a recent call, I will share insights from my discussion with Kevin Haehnlein, head of product marketing, from Haiilo, a leading provider of employee experience platforms. We explored how Haiilo brings together internal communications and communities, and impacts measurement capabilities.

Kevin demonstrated the Haiilo platform and shared strategies for growth, particularly expanding in the US market. My takeaways highlight opportunities for Haiilo to strengthen its value proposition as the centralized hub for all employee needs.

Haiilo was formed through mergers of companies focused on intranets, advocacy and surveys. Kevin showcased the platform’s capabilities, including top-down communications, community building and analytics. With a client roster including Deutsche Bahn, Deutsche Telekom and Coca-Cola, Haiilo has a strong reputation serving large enterprises. Its goal is to achieve a 50/50 revenue split between Europe and North America.

How Haiilo Works

Haiilo is a cloud-based platform that is easy to use and can be accessed from any device. Employees can use Haiilo to:

• Share news and updates from the company,
• Connect with colleagues in other departments,
• Get involved in company events and activities, and
• Access company resources.

Benefits of Haiilo for Big Companies

Haiilo can provide a number of benefits to big companies, including:

• Increased employee engagement,
• Improved communication and collaboration,
• Stronger company culture, and
• Increased productivity.

Here are some specific examples of how Haiilo can be used to improve employee engagement:

• Haiilo can be used to send targeted messages to employees based on their interests and location.
• Haiilo can be used to create employee-generated content, such as videos and photos.
• Haiilo can be used to gamify employee engagement, such as by awarding points for completing tasks.

Haiilo can also be used to improve communication and collaboration. It can be used to:

• Create private groups for teams or departments,
• Share files and documents, and
• Schedule meetings and events.

We discussed how Haiilo differentiates from knowledge management and collaboration point solutions. While integrating with these tools, Haiilo’s goal is to become the single destination where employees learn, connect and have their voices heard. This centralized approach streamlines the employee experience compared to using disjointed best-of-breed products for each function.

Opportunity for Expanded Value Proposition

Haiilo could strengthen its message by embracing a broader vision as the centralized hub for the entire employee lifecycle. This means integrating capabilities like learning, surveys, feedback and more. Analytics is another area of interest but underutilized — Haiilo can prove its platform drives business impact by measuring outcomes like productivity, engagement and retention over competitors.

Platform Demonstration and Client Successes

Kevin provided a live demo of Haiilo’s customizable and mobile-friendly interface. Key capabilities showcased included targeted communications, community features, and cross-channel publishing. He also highlighted success stories such as improving trainee retention rates at L’Oreal and generating 50% of web traffic organically for Salesforce through advocacy. These real-world impacts demonstrate Haiilo’s value.

Haiilo has built a strong foundation but can expand its vision to fully own the employee experience category. With enhanced messaging around integrated capabilities and proven business impact, it is well-positioned to become the go-to platform in a market increasingly demanding a centralized solution. Events, advisory services and demand generation can further support its growth goals.

By strengthening its value proposition as a single source of truth, Haiilo can better compete against potential moves by large vendors into this space.

The post How Haiilo is Positioning to Become the Single Source of Truth for Employee Experience appeared first on BrandonHallGroup.

The way companies match candidates to jobs is long overdue for a revolution. For decades, hiring has relied primarily on resumes, interviews and gut feelings to make important people decisions. But as the world of work rapidly evolves, this approach is no longer sufficient.

Brandon Hall Group Chief Strategy Officer and Principal Analyst Michael Rochelle and I had a thorough analyst briefing with Caitlin McGregor, Plum’s Chief Executive Officer and co-founder, and Michelle Meehan, VP of Marketing at Plum, the innovative Canadian start-up paving the way in next-generation psychometric assessment. Founded by experienced entrepreneurs who are passionate about helping employers make informed decisions about job candidates, Plum is leveraging recent technological advancements to create an efficient, comprehensive solution that takes candidate selection into the future.

“I created Plum to democratize access to psychometric data so that no one would have to rely on luck for someone to realize their superpower,” McGregor states on the company’s website. “Everyone deserves the same opportunity to do great things, and that’s exactly what Plum gives them.”

Through modern machine learning algorithms, Plum helps employers provide detailed data-driven insights into each potential hire, with key indicators including cognitive abilities, personality attributes and technical skills — allowing companies to find their ideal match faster than ever before.

Plum then uses this data to power its matching algorithms. Through an automated 8-minute job analysis, the platform understands the behavioral indicators required for success in any given role. It can then evaluate millions of profiles to identify top matches between people and opportunities.

Plum measures personality, problem-solving skills and social intelligence in every applicant with one 25-minute online assessment, allowing organizations to quantify job fit by comparing individual profiles against the needs of the job.

Early adopters like Manulife, Citibank and Whirlpool are already seeing significant benefits. Plum consistently delivers a 90% quality-of-hire rating from managers and increases retention by up to 77%. HR shouldn’t be a cost center — and Plum can prove it.

Plum also improves diversity hiring by screening overlooked candidates. Plum Talents encapsulate the thoughts, feelings and behaviors that drive candidates. These Talents help uncover what drives — and drains — them and where they’ll find the most success in their careers. Plum realizes that talents live on a spectrum and being high or low in a talent is not a measure of good versus bad. Instead, Plum Talents surface what innate behaviors energize you and which ones deplete you. Understanding the difference means you can advocate for your needs at work and focus on growth over survival.

Perhaps most impressively, Plum has managed to achieve this at scale. Where traditional assessments can take over 100 hours per role, Plum streamlines the process while maintaining a predictive accuracy that is 4x better than resume screening alone. That’s why it’s used in 144 countries and across 20 languages.

As the future of work brings more change and uncertainty, having the right talent in place will be critical for business success. Plum is paving the way for a new paradigm — one where companies can truly understand and optimize their human capital. It’s a revolution that can’t come soon enough.

The post Using Psychometrics and AI to Revolutionize</ br> Talent Assessment appeared first on BrandonHallGroup.

 By J S Manoj Koundinya

Senior Vice President — Talent Management, Organization Development, Culture & Wellbeing at DBS India

and Matt Pittman

Principal Analyst, Brandon Hall Group

As an employee, it’s easy to think of company culture as something that’s entirely out of your control. After all, it’s the leaders and managers who set the tone, right? While it’s true that leadership plays a significant role in shaping organizational culture, it’s not entirely up to them.

Recent empirical analysis suggests that substantive, enduring cultural evolution often germinates from grassroots micro-behaviors. Herein lies the potency of individual agency. The confluence of individual agency and organizational ethos is a crucible where the very spirit of a company is forged.

Organizational culture refers to the shared values, beliefs, attitudes and practices that shape how work gets done within a company. Every employee, from the most junior team member to the most senior executive, has a role to play in building and nurturing a healthy organizational culture.

Recent Brandon Hall Group research confirms this. In the 2023 study, Culture Eats Strategy: Is Your Employee Experience What You Intended?, 82% of respondents indicated that a collaborative and supportive culture was “Important” or “Very Important” to the employee experience. Interestingly, 48% of respondents indicated that there is room for improvement in understanding what employees want from their employment experience.

That is why these five salient habits that any employee, irrespective of position or tenure, can cultivate to amplify and scale their company’s cultural tapestry are so important.

1. Radical Candor: The Dual Prong of Care and Directness

Coined by Kim Scott, the concept of “Radical Candor” is what happens when you show someone that you care personally while you challenge directly, without being aggressive or insincere.

When employees imbue their interactions with a blend of genuine care and unambiguous directness, they actively foster an environment where transparency is celebrated, and feedback becomes a constructive tool rather than a source of apprehension. This reinforces those feedback loops, both formal and informal, not just between colleagues but also between the workforce and the leadership of the organization, a key ingredient to a healthy culture.

In fact, Brandon Hall Group’s Retaining Talent 2023 survey revealed this as a “Very Important” step in increasing company understanding. Instead of fostering silos of politeness or zones of blunt, unfeeling criticism, a culture steeped in Radical Candor encourages its members to communicate openly, with the intention of collective growth at its core. When individuals habitually demonstrate this approach, it paves the way for an organizational culture that is both supportive and candid, propelling not just individual but institutional evolution.

2. Cultivating Intellectual Curiosity: The Odyssey of Continuous Learning

“Cultivating intellectual curiosity” stands as a beacon for progressive organizational cultures, signaling a commitment to endless exploration and the ceaseless quest for understanding. Within the organizational microcosm, when employees habitually demonstrate a thirst for knowledge, it germinates a culture that values questions as much as answers. This habit of intellectual pursuit — whether through continuous reading, attending seminars, seeking mentorship, or simply challenging the status quo with a “why” or a “what if” — transforms the workplace into a vibrant hub of ideas and innovation.

When intellectual curiosity becomes ingrained in an employee’s daily ethos, it not only enriches their individual capacity but also radiates outward, encouraging peers to embark on their own journeys of discovery. In a culture where employees ardently champion curiosity and inherently foster adaptability and resilience with forward momentum, they lay the foundation for an organization that is adaptable, forward-thinking and perpetually evolving in its pursuit of excellence.

3. Solution-Oriented Mindset: Transcending the Problem Space

In the intricate dance of organizational dynamics, adopting a “solution-oriented mindset” emerges as a transformative habit that employees can embrace to fortify and elevate the collective culture. Creative problem-solving is the third-most added new skill to current jobs, according to the Hiring for New Skills and New Roles survey conducted by Brandon Hall Group.

This mindset is not merely about troubleshooting; it is a deliberate pivot from the often-stagnating realm of problems to the expansive horizon of possibilities and solutions. Employees who habitually approach challenges by asking “How might we overcome this?” rather than lingering on the impediments, infuse a proactive and optimistic energy into the workplace. When embedded in daily interactions and strategic discussions, this habit shifts the organizational narrative from one of hurdles to one of opportunities. It engenders a culture of resilience and creativity, where obstacles are not endpoints but catalysts that spur innovation and collaborative endeavors. Such a cultural paradigm ensures that the organization remains agile, adaptive and ever-evolving, consistently transcending the immediate problem space in pursuit of broader horizons and greater achievements.

4. Empathetic Engagement: Beyond Transactional Interactions

Empathy, though often relegated to the periphery of soft skills, emerges as a linchpin in contemporary organizational culture. It is the fourth-most added new skill, just behind creative problem-solving from Hiring for New Skills and New Roles survey. Empathetic engagement encapsulates a profound shift in the way employees can approach and enrich organizational culture.

At its essence, this ethos underscores the transformative power of seeing beyond mere tasks and transactions and delving into the human narrative intertwined in every professional exchange. Employees who cultivate a habit of engaging with colleagues, stakeholders or clients with genuine empathy foster a culture where interactions are not just about immediate outcomes but about understanding, connection and mutual growth. This moves from transactional to relational exchanges and creates an environment where individuals feel seen, heard and valued — not just for their professional contributions but for their holistic selves.

By consistently demonstrating this depth of engagement, employees lay the groundwork for a culture of trust, collaboration and meaningful relationships, where the organization’s success is interwoven with the well-being and fulfillment of its members. Such a culture not only enhances productivity and innovation but also anchors the organization in a profound sense of purpose and interconnectedness.

5. Championing Inclusivity: Celebrating Diversity in Thought and Deed

In the multifaceted ecosystem of organizational culture, the “inclusivity” mantra beckons a paradigm shift that transcends mere policy or rhetoric. When employees consistently demonstrate a habit of valuing diverse perspectives, actively seeking out underrepresented voices and creating spaces where differences are not just tolerated but celebrated, they seed an environment that thrives on varied experiences and insights.

This is not just about ethnic, gender, or age diversity; it encompasses the full spectrum of human experience, including cognitive diversity, educational backgrounds, life experiences and more. Employees who take it upon themselves to ensure that discussions are inclusive, that decisions account for varied perspectives and that the organizational narrative is one of collective authorship, sculpt a culture where innovation flourishes and barriers diminish. Through such intentional and consistent actions, an organization is propelled toward a future where its strength is derived and where inclusivity is not an initiative, but an intrinsic value.

As global HR leaders architect and recalibrate organizational strategies, recognizing the pivotal role of employees in building culture is non-negotiable — and company culture isn’t the exclusive purview of the C-Suite or designated HR professionals. As insights show, it’s the cumulative effect of individual habits that foment cultural evolution. A healthy, positive organizational culture helps to create a positive working experience. That positive working experience is directly linked to an individual’s willingness to contribute at the highest level and thus impacting overall business performance. By imbibing and championing habits like radical candor, intellectual curiosity, a solution-oriented mindset, empathetic engagement and inclusivity, any employee can become a pivotal catalyst in the transcendent journey of cultural evolution.

J S Manoj Koundinya is a Senior Vice President — Talent Management, Organization Development, Culture & Wellbeing at DBS India. Manoj is a HR leader with 18+ years of diverse experience across industries globally in Learning, Talent & Organization Development. He is passionate about delivering business strategy through people practices by strengthening leadership, driving performance and institutionalizing culture. He has driven large-scale transformation through M&As, Ramp-Up, Restructure and Leadership Transition. He is a certified practitioner of psychometric assessments, PROSCI Change Management and Executive Coaching. 

Matt Pittman is Principal Analyst at Brandon Hall Group. Matt brings nearly 30 years of experience developing people and teams in a variety of settings and organizations. As an HR Practitioner, he has sat in nearly every HR seat. A significant part of those roles involved building out functions in organizations and driving large-scale change efforts. As a Principal Analyst at Brandon Hall Group, Matt leverages this in-depth experience and expertise to provide clients and providers with breakthrough insights and ideas to drive their business forward.

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Onboarding is an employer’s first chance to confirm for new hires that they made the right choice.

A compelling, personalized onboarding process is a critical first step to ensure employees find themselves welcomed, supported and believing they are in a position to succeed. A poor onboarding process can severely impact employee retention and result in significant downstream costs to recruit and train replacements.

Technology is critical to onboarding — especially in an era of remote and hybrid work and widely dispersed workforces. Unfortunately, Brandon Hall Group research shows that most companies are in the early stages of developing high-impact onboarding. Only 9% said they offer a fully integrated set of onboarding resources and technologies.

While focusing on training and culture is important and a primary focus for HR teams, the quality and sophistication of technology can be the difference between onboarding success and failure in a hyper-connected world.

“A lot of pieces must come together for onboarding to be strong,” said Chris Kirkpatrick, Director of Offering Management in the Digital Workplace global practice at Kyndryl. “There can be 15 different things  — or more — that must come together before an employee begins the first day. Digital workplace technologies can make it all seamless, integrate HR and IT workflows, and measure the whole experience from start to finish through Experience Level Agreements (XLAs). This can cut the business processes for a new employee from days down to hours.”

More than ever in a hybrid environment, onboarding should be engaging because it sets a tone. “It’s important for employees to be clear on their roles, how they contribute to the organization, and how to work across their various teams. We must consider that many employees are working from their home. That changes the reality of work culture. Employees need to know where they fit and how they can contribute. Then they need to be supported,” Kirkpatrick said.

Technology with a Human Touch

Even though many onboarding experiences are now virtual and must be digitized, Kirkpatrick focuses heavily on the human touch — and especially personalization.

“We must understand the context of the employee,” he said. “The big thing is timeliness. The business needs employees functional as soon as possible, and there can be a tendency to overload them with too much information.”

“We should consider, ‘How can we avoid doing that?’ ‘How can we explain to employees what is to come so they understand where they are in the onboarding process and what they will experience the first week, the second week, etc.?’ We want to make sure the onboarding experience is personalized to the role and intuitive, and considers how the employee will balance work with onboarding,” Kirkpatrick said.

After that, HR leaders must ensure new employees feel connected and supported; effective use and deployment of digital tools help, but the foundation is sensitivity to human needs.

“Remote working, with the right tools, can actually drive a more inclusive and diverse culture,” Kirkpatrick said. “But remote work can lead to increased isolation for some types of personalities. Hybrid work gives businesses access to a bigger pool of talent, but you also have to address isolation considerations. But culturally, if done right, it can drive sustainability.”

By that, Kirkpatrick means sustainability as a human issue. He points to ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance), a framework to evaluate companies on how they manage their impact on the world. Kirkpatrick prefers using the acronym SEE, standing for Social, Economic and Environment. “We believe that organizations must focus on the social element first to drive the sustainability and impact on communities and of human life. This approach then naturally feeds into wellness, which also impacts engagement and employee experience in their day-to-day lives.

“Sustainability is huge for Kyndryl because we were spun off as a company (from IBM),” Kirkpatrick continued. “Sustainability was born into our company’s purpose and our mission. What I love about my job is being able to talk to customers every day about elevating sustainability and improving work culture through our solutions and about how that drives employee experience and makes the business sustainable by design.”

Technology, sustainability and employee experience must operate in balance and organizations need to realize the benefits of focusing on these areas. Kyndryl uses XLAs to measure that. Digital tools, including AI-driven solutions and data and analytics, enable automation of processes, reducing manual intervention and adding speed and reliability. XLAs deliver insights to help improve the employee experience — during onboarding and throughout the employee lifecycle.

“Ultimately, You can’t fix what you can’t see,” Kirkpatrick said. “HR leaders must be able to see the current employee experience and pain points. You can use journey mapping, but you need to be able to gather data and analyze it to deepen the understanding of the experience and quantify where the friction is. Some of it is technical design, but then you have to put yourself in the shoes of employees and make human-centric decisions.”

The post Kyndryl Shows Digital Onboarding Can Be Personal, Sustainable appeared first on BrandonHallGroup.

The age of the experience economy has driven many changes in how companies do business with customers, how employers treat employees and how workers engage with learning opportunities.

Simply put, how an individual experiences any aspect of your organization drives their perception and loyalty. For employers, crafting and maintaining a positive employee experience has become a business imperative.

Brandon Hall Group’s 2023 study, Culture Eats Strategy: Is Your Employee Experience What You Intended?, probed deeply into employer and employee perceptions of the employee experience. The study revealed that most (67%) respondents are likely to refer someone to work for their organization. Almost that same percentage (68%) report that they are either Satisfied or Very Satisfied with the current employee experience provided by their company. Interestingly, that number shifts dramatically outside of North America with just under half (47%) responding that they are Satisfied or Very Satisfied.

Not surprisingly, technology is a critical dimension of the employee experience, easily elevating it to great heights or disrupting it with far-reaching consequences. Organizations need engaged, motivated employees to drive innovation and business results. The workforce needs support to continue to grow and develop along with the changes in how work is being done. Because of this convergence, we know that one of the most impactful ways companies can empower a positive employee experience is through learning technology.

Effective learning technology provides on-demand development opportunities that employees can easily access. This allows workers to take control of their own learning and development to the extent possible while still maintaining company and regulatory requirements. In fact, investment in employee training and development programs to enhance skills and knowledge is the highest-rated initiative globally to improve the employee experience, outpacing the second-highest item by 11 percentage points overall. That margin jumps to 18% outside of North America. Providing easy access to learning technology shows employees that the organization values their growth.

With quality learning technology, employees can upskill quickly on topics relevant to their roles and interests. Curated content, personalized recommendations and intuitive platforms allow for self-directed learning. Employees might learn a new skill to increase productivity or take a course on management tactics before transitioning to a leadership position. The ability to quickly build capabilities empowers employees to take on new challenges and progress in their careers.

Learning technology also enables social and collaborative learning through features like discussion boards, peer coaching and mentor matching. This connects employees, allowing them to share knowledge and learn from each other. Collaborative learning fosters teamwork, relationships and a sense of community. It also reduces organizational silos. Employees feel valued when organizations provide opportunities for peer knowledge sharing and relationship building.

Data and analytics embedded in learning technology provide insights into skill gaps across the employee base. Leadership can use this data to develop training programs that target key competency gaps. Focused development empowers employees to gain the most relevant skills to advance their careers and deliver impact in their roles. Data also helps assess the effectiveness of learning programs to ensure optimal resource utilization.

Where and how work gets done has shifted. Between deskless workers in more hands-on environments to the ever-growing remote and hybrid workforce, learning technology brings development opportunities to employees wherever they are. Online learning platforms allow access to courses, videos, virtual instructor-led sessions and more. This provides flexibility for employees to learn in the flow of work. Adaptability and self-service learning resources empower employees to develop skills how and when they want.

Learning technology also enables consistent onboarding and training for new hires. Multimedia learning content engages learners and allows new employees to ramp up quickly. Onboarding learning tracks prepare employees for success in their new roles. Ongoing training empowers continued growth and development. Consistent learning opportunities lead to greater employee competencies across the organization.

To truly empower employees, organizations need learning technology platforms that are intuitive and easy to use. Complex platforms with a steep learning curve lead to frustration. User-friendly interfaces with personalized dashboards allow employees to easily navigate learning. Technology that freely allows users to search courses and content promotes utilization. Seamless mobile functionality empowers employees to learn on the go.

Technology is at once the great enabler and the great disrupter. When looking at strategies to improve your employee experience, consider all dimensions of that experience and your approach to it. Start by asking yourself the following questions.

• Does our culture encourage collaboration and provide support for growth?
• How frequently are we surveying our team members for their feedback and perspective?
• How can we better leverage our existing technology to ensure ease of use and therefore, promote utilization among our workforce?
• How can we better leverage emerging data technologies to gain greater insights into our employment experience using our existing employee data?
• Are we treating our employee experience like a key business outcome or a “nice to have” initiative?

Brandon Hall Group Bronze Smartchoice® Preferred Provider Totara Learning brings all these dimensions together with their Talent Experience Platform. Combining the core of enterprise learning management with a truly collaborative learning experience and linked to advanced performance management, Totara’s Talent Experience Platform (TXP) provides the configurability, integration capability and power needed by the business while delivering a seamless experience for the learner.

When your development technology is effective, it also supports a collaborative and supportive culture. This single element consistently ranks highest among attributes that contribute to a positive employee experience. Ensuring a culture remains collaborative and supportive requires intention on the part of all involved. It begins with clearly defining organizational expectations around a collaborative work environment — what it looks like in the specific context of your company and how it plays out in daily work.

Once you set those expectations, holding leaders accountable to behave in alignment to those expectations becomes critical. This does not necessarily need to be punitive in nature, but empowering leaders to point out in real-time when someone is acting contrary to expectations. Over time, this helps reinforce the intended culture. It might look like simply saying, “Hey — when you ask questions of the team but don’t wait from them to respond, that tends to shut down collaboration — and that’s not how we want to lead here.”

Culture change of this nature is not a 0 – 60, one-and-done proposition. It takes simple, clear intention and repetition over time. Be in it for the long haul to reap the true benefits.

Always remember that the employee experience is ultimately an outcome of many different factors. As such, it should be a filter on every decision being made in the business. “How does/will this affect our employees?” is a question leaders should be including standard in any decision-making effort.

Creating an employee experience/employee value proposition scorecard and reviewing it periodically throughout the year can help keep your leadership team honest and focused on these considerations. It is important to consider because positive employee experience is directly related to positive employee engagement, which has a documented impact on discretionary effort and subsequent business performance.

Implementing the right learning technology shows employees that their development matters. This empowers engagement, improves retention and enables a positive work experience. But technology alone is not enough — organizations should promote a continuous learning culture through manager support, learning incentives and an emphasis on development in core values. Paired with the right culture, learning technology gives employees development autonomy. This leads to an empowered, agile workforce that can drive innovation and thrive amidst ongoing change.

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Frontline workers — who account for approximately 80% of the workforce — use on average about 1% of their organization’s technology budget, according to various estimates.

Let that sink in.

Frontline workers — variously identified as “deskless,” “offline” or “essential” — regularly interact with customers, make sales, provide services and handle day-to-day operations. They are the face of the business and directly impact customer satisfaction and loyalty. But they have fewer tools and less voice than their more integrated and connected corporate peers.

“I was at an airplane manufacturing company recently and they’re still building planes using paper instructions and doing QA (quality assurance) using paper instructions,” said Ron Xavier, Technical Business Development Executive, Microsoft Global Center of Competency for Kyndryl Digital Workplace Services.

As incredible as that sounds, the situation at that airplane manufacturer is not unusual. Manufacturers struggle more than retail and hospitality, for example. But many frontline workers across all industries are stuck using outdated systems and processes that hamper productivity and negatively impact their employee experience.

In the 2023 Employee Experience Study by Brandon Hall Group, only 40% of employers said they have the right technology for their frontline workers to successfully navigate the workplace. Only half said they have tools to help employees adopt all the various technologies that are used in the workplace.

However, more employers are recognizing they must do better. Almost three-quarters (73%) of respondents to our study said it is important to use innovative technologies to support employee productivity and efficiency.

Changing the Status Quo

Frontline workers are often mobile or work out of multiple locations where it can be difficult to access devices and internet connectivity. Their jobs require specialized software and applications to access customer data, check inventory, submit orders, manage projects and more. They deal with customers face-to-face and need technologies that enable quick access to information to resolve issues on the spot.

Kyndryl, the world’s largest provider of IT infrastructure services, and Microsoft have a strategic alliance to deliver state-of-the-art solutions to help customers accelerate hybrid cloud adoption, modernize applications and processes, support mission-critical workloads and enable modern work experiences.

Kyndryl’s Xavier and Noel Pennington, Director of Partner Strategy for Microsoft Cloud for Retail, are evangelists in this space. They are passionate about the need for employers to invest in technology that empowers frontline workers to increase their connection to the business and improve their engagement, productivity and efficiency.

“I am a retail guy,” Pennington said. “Retail wants to spend $6 on technology per user per year. They don’t see the value of technology to drive all their initiatives and goals. Companies are missing the boat on the minimum tech spend they need to move the needle.”

A Microsoft Work Trend Index special report on frontline workers and technology, published last year, found that frontline workers are at an inflection point. No one felt the burden of the disruption from the pandemic more than the two billion frontline workers around the globe. They’ve kept grocery stores stocked, ensured the power grid stayed up and running, provided essential healthcare services, and made and distributed the products the world depends on — all while weathering personal risk and ongoing disruption.

The Microsoft report found that frontline workers will consider a job change for better pay and benefits, work-life balance, and flexibility. Technology plays a big role in enabling all that. Plus, 63% of frontline workers are excited about the job opportunities that technology creates and technology ranks third on the list of factors that workers say could help reduce workplace stress, the Microsoft report shows.

“I think tools like Microsoft Teams and Viva allow companies to onboard employees quickly and integrate workers very quickly,” Pennington said. “If you don’t have tools and technologies that help you do your job – whether you work at McDonald’s or Home Depot, or installing windows or whatever, it’s difficult for workers to feel connected.”

Digital Tools Have High Impact

Technology options abound — mobile apps, wearables, instant messaging, video conferencing, assistive technology, real-time data and analytics, and much more. The key is selecting the right tools for the right environment.

When frontline employees are equipped with user-friendly, mobile-enabled technologies tailored to their specific environment, roles and workflows, there are many benefits:

• Improves productivity and efficiency. Digital tools provide quick access to information and automate manual processes so workers can accomplish more in less time.
• Increases engagement and job satisfaction. Workers feel more empowered and appreciated when given modern tools that make their jobs easier.
• Enhances customer service. Workers can access customer data instantly to resolve issues faster and deliver more personalized service.
• Boosts collaboration. Digital communication and file-sharing tools keep frontline teams connected and working together.
• Provides real-time performance insights. Data and analytics give frontline workers feedback to improve their work.
• Enables omnichannel support. Workers can seamlessly move between assisting customers via phone, email, chat, in-person and more.
• Improves training. Digital learning platforms allow quick onboarding and ongoing skills development.

The Devil’s in the Details

The challenge is giving frontline workers the right tools and connectivity and providing the training and support they need to adopt the technology and use it in the way it is intended.

Kyndryl looks at digital tools through three different lenses:

• This is having the right tools in the right place, such as the cloud-powered Microsoft 365 productivity platform, device management tools such as Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Teams for collaboration, which is especially important in frontline worker environments. And it all needs to run through a strong network, supported by Kyndryl services for 5G-enabled edge networks.

“This allows you to have people walking around a factory, a warehouse or wherever else people need to be, with necessary connectivity to communicate, get the data and information they need and receive and provide real-time answers with coworkers,” Xavier said.                                                                

• Visibility. This means having an all-in-one analytics solution, like Microsoft Fabric, that can handle everything from data movement to data science, real-time analytics and business intelligence.
• Connecting legacy systems with the right type of modern devices, such as portable small mobile computers, is critical so frontline workers can access what they need when and where they need it.

“That’s going to give them the capabilities that they need to interface with a core system so they can do time tracking, request services, access reports or do whatever they need,” Xavier said. “If we want a collaboration platform, like Teams, to be the front-end system for frontline workers, we need to be able to integrate with the organization’s core technologies that they use to run the business, but it needs to be available within your collaboration platform.”

Company-Issued Device vs. BYOD

The debate about whether employers should supply devices or employees should bring their own has been raging for years. There is no easy answer.

“I think it depends on industry,” Xavier said. “Retail, for example, is very different than manufacturing or healthcare. A big furniture retailer has their people on the floor using hand-held computers, but they don’t allow employees to bring their own devices. They want computers they control because they give them more insight into the custom capabilities of the manufacturer and [the ability] to see the health of the device. You can’t monitor as closely if someone brings their own Android device.”

Work complexity is also an issue. “If it is fairly simplistic work and the employees don’t mind using their own devices, that works for everybody. But if the work is more complex where more data can be exposed and the monitoring of the devices and the data must be more granular, then the company is much more likely to purchase specialized devices suited for that environment,” Xavier said.

Solving the User Adoption Problem

No matter how devices are supplied, the key to success is properly training frontline workers to optimally use the software.

Too often, companies favor a lot of information over context and application. It’s important not only to show workers how to use the technology but why they should use it. The adoption strategy also can’t be one-size-fits-all. It should be tailored to the demographics and work environment of the organization.

“The most effective thing I’ve ever seen done with adoption is through a day-in-the-life approach,” Xavier said. “Microsoft provides day-in-the-life presentations on using various tools in your job and the impact these tools can have on how you perform your job functions.”

“Let’s say I am an older person and I am using Teams and I need to ask someone a question and I have to walk down the hallway and go up the stairs to find someone in another room to get the answer. Or I could use the push-to-talk feature on the device and simply reach out to that person to get a quick answer, or if more detail is needed, I can ask someone to come down and show me what is needed.

“This illustrative approach puts everything in perspective so the employee understands the value of using the technology,” Xavier said. “Showing people the actions they would take during a day at their job really resonates with employees for all different generations in the workforce.”

Key Takeaways

Frontline employees are a company’s most valuable asset but often are overlooked when it comes to providing digital workplace tools. By prioritizing technology investments that target the unique needs of frontline workers, companies can significantly improve productivity, employee engagement and customer satisfaction. Future business success depends on creating a positive employee experience where the frontline workforce has the digital tools needed to do their best work each day.

Here are some strategies for HR leaders to keep in mind:

• Involve frontline workers in selection. Include input from workers on which tools would deliver the most value in their day-to-day work.
• Highlight benefits. Communicate how the technology will make specific aspects of their jobs easier to build enthusiasm.
• Conduct contextualized training. Understand how your employees learn and deliver training in ways that are likely to engage them. Depending on the situation, hands-on demos, day-in-the-life scenarios, videos and in-person sessions can all be effective. Avoid long, written documents that lack context.
• Appoint ambassadors. Identify tech-savvy frontline workers who can answer peer questions and promote adoption.
• Offer ongoing support. Have help desk staff available to troubleshoot issues and provide guidance on new features.
• Track adoption metrics. Gather data on technology usage rates and challenges impacting adoption.
• Solicit feedback. Survey frontline workers or hold focus groups to collect input on their technology experience and desired improvements.

Need a Digital Workplace Expert? Schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation today.

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Addressing these challenges requires strong leadership at every level, effective communication and a focus on creating an agile and adaptable organizational culture. Large companies must establish ways to foster collaboration, streamline decision-making processes and empower employees at all levels to drive strategic implementation. Few organizations — and especially large enterprise organizations — can engineer such pervasive evolution and change without outside assistance.

How to Address Organizational Culture and Business Strategy — Start by asking yourself:

• How do we build a culture of agility, customer-centricity and accountability?
• How do we develop leaders who combine strong people skills with sophisticated business acumen to create an empowered workforce that can deliver business results?
• How do we get strategy to align with the market, customer needs and employee needs?
• How do we help employees understand and embrace how their daily work impacts business results?

Find the People Side of Strategy with BTS

Many consultancies view an organization’s culture and business strategy as separate elements. BTS stands out because they believe culture and strategy are joined at the hip and that the key to a successful strategy is the people who make it happen.

Everyone we have encountered at BTS lives that value proposition every single day. For all their many areas of expertise, BTS makes a difference for their clients because their consultants are empowered to be highly collaborative while also being willing and able to hold difficult conversations that lead clients to make the tough decisions to move the organization forward. BTS believes the answers to challenging situations lie within an organization, but that they need assistance to surface those solutions.

We also have found that consultants tend to be either technology-focused or people-focused. BTS is the rare provider that excels at technology and people in balance with one another. This unique mix allows BTS to help, for example, an organization with 30,000 people, all of whom need to learn to work differently. BTS can deliver a variety of solutions — both tech-enabled and personalized — at scale and quickly. That is a huge competitive advantage.

BTS has pioneered and excelled in the use of custom simulations to drive practical learning through organizational challenges. Consultants use interviews, observation and other personalized tools to understand clients’ culture and organizational and leadership strengths and weaknesses. They distill their findings into simulations that include decision options that depict leading practices or actions that may be doing more harm than good. BTS creates high-impact learning that can change behaviors by building recognizable situations and showing employees a new way in a real-life business situation.

BTS has built an internal culture of simulations to drive change and is now working on an approach that helps clients build a similar culture in their own organizations to accelerate the wisdom of experience through widespread practice. Through their use of AI and other innovations, BTS can build a wide range of simulations ranging from multiple days to micro-bursts that can be done in the flow of work and highly tailored to an individual’s needs. This makes BTS unique.

BTS is also experimenting with AI coaching as a supplement to live coaching that already leverages world-class technology and research to drive lasting behavioral change at all leadership levels.

The bottom line is that, based on many different levels of interaction with BTS, we have found that the company lives its “strategy made personal” marketing message. BTS offers a wide range of services they can mix and match to clients’ needs. They drive flexibility and agility through technology while driving substantive change through intensive collaboration, including everyone from the board room to assembly-line workers at a manufacturing plant.

Brandon Hall Group research shows that the three most important initiatives for businesses in 2023 are:

• Increasing leaders’ ability to manage employees more holistically and inclusively
• Improving the employee work experience while improving business results
• Redefining the culture of work to align with the changing work environment and employment models

Suppose you want a true partner to help you deliver this scope of change. In that case, BTS is the company that has mastered the art of balancing technology and personalized service to help organizations achieve breakthrough results.

Download the BTS Solution Provider Profile

Recently we sat down with BTS, a Smartchoice® Preferred Provider to learn more about their solution, value proposition, and expertise. You can download our full report here, which includes The BTS Culture and Strategy Pyramid, and BTS Point of View on Transformation.

The post Unlock Human and Business Success with BTS appeared first on BrandonHallGroup.

Hanging on to the best talent is top of mind for a vast majority (92%) of large and medium organizations according to Brandon Hall Group research, with smaller organizations still describing talent retention (76%) as their biggest concern.

Even though most organizations describe talent retention as a big risk for them right now, they also report having a strong grasp of what their workforce wants to remain engaged in work (88% overall), according to our Retaining Talent 2023 study.

A vast majority of organizations conduct engagement surveys more than just once a year, but that is simply not enough. Creating effective feedback loops is one approach that will surely add value to an organization’s retention strategy.

COMPLEXITIES

Brandon Hall Group research confirms what many of us have experienced in practice: HR and field operations are at odds with each other more often than they are aligned when it comes to managing talent. Of all the barriers, 59% of organizations say this is a concern. Without the collaboration and alignment between these two entities, leaders and employees receive mixed signals regarding the allocation of time, budget and other precious resources.

CONSEQUENCES

When information is collected using surveys, assessments, interviews, etc., it is critical that employees hear back about results, ideas and suggestions for actions. If actions are unrealistic or not feasible, circling back to share reasons as to why this is the case is vital.

CRITICAL QUESTIONS

• How do we create connections between employees that promote a sense of belonging in the digital world?
• How can we ensure our team members understand what career opportunities exist?
• What else can we do to ensure we are at once dialed into the wants and needs of our workforce and be responsive and communicative when we address those concerns?

BRANDON HALL GROUP POV

Leverage feedback and communication using a variety of channels and technologies.

Formulate a listening strategy that includes engagement surveys, but don’t stop there. Avoid depending on surveys alone. How are you actively engaging in conversation with your people? Listen, and most importantly, share what you’ll do with what they’re telling you. Find the right tool and then set the right tone. Identify a means of communication such as Slack, Yammer or Teams chat. Even use virtual huddles or stand-ups that include a curiosity question for volunteers to answer. Some employers have successfully utilized crowdsourcing groups of employees, teams or departments. Consider posing a challenge and incentivizing the problem-solving power of multiple employees. Follow through and report which solutions will be implemented. This process fosters storytelling and therefore, social cohesiveness of team members. Bear in mind the process is a loop and iterative, rather than linear. Consistency is key.

Skills development, career development and professional growth are key.

Employees want to succeed and grow professionally. Investing in that growth positively impacts retention. How can employees refine their skills? Options include stretch assignments and delegating select tasks. Teach managers how to have effective career conversations. Begin by conveying your purpose of learning and listening then set the tone for the exchange to be a dialogue. Be clear about your intentions. Ask open-ended questions about the person’s goals and aspirations and embrace a coaching demeanor. Then, listen and pair up. In what corners of work might this team member be able to stretch? Ensure that there is a way for the employee to capture the main takeaways of the conversation.

One option is creating an Individual Development Plan (IDP). Such a formal approach lends greater credibility to the process and promotes accountability for the completion of action items. Leaders are best positioned as coaches and advisors, rather than gatekeepers. Evaluate technology that empowers employees to own their career development. For example, implement a career platform so that opportunities and the relevant skills and competencies are available for all to access. Launching a career platform that describes typical career paths, competency areas and skills for jobs in the organization can help drive engagement and improve perceptions of potential career growth. Enable employees so they can forge their own career paths and grow from the inevitable lessons they’ll encounter along the way.

Focus on an aligned retention strategy and ensure HR and Operations are on the same page

Showing a united front, starting at the top, is vital. Convey a clear expectation that all parts of the organization are interdependent. As an example, one CEO we know challenged her leadership team to understand that if one location fails, the whole business fails. Alignment is about working toward the common good and the greater good. HR and the business units must search for common ground on which to stand. Be on the same page about what retention goals are and cognizant of a shared purpose for the success the organization. Tie these efforts to the values and beliefs espoused by the organization. Do the work that fosters and feeds the culture.

Effective feedback loops can serve as a powerful tool that fosters talent retention. Considering communication mechanisms that would emphasize ongoing feedback loops within an organization and convey the importance of professional growth and development can play an instrumental part of an employer’s overall retention strategy.

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