Within the first five minutes of entering an office, you can tell who is working for you, and who’s just punching the clock.
The ones who are working for you are going the extra mile to drive innovation, challenge the status-quo and find new ways to improve efficiency. They’re the ones who care about the company’s success, not just their own – and they’re what we call “all-in” people.
We can’t expect every employee to be all-in through self-motivation. It’s up to us as HR professionals to join forces with the business to develop a culture of “all-in.” To do that, we need to find new ways to motivate the workforce, reward them and nurture them – in real time. It’s HR’s responsibility to enable investment in employees’ success and, in-turn, our employees will be our biggest assets to drive our success.
HR must enable investment in employee success; in-turn, employees will be the biggest assets to driving success
Today, digitalization is changing our lives. It enables us to connect and share faster, to search and consume in real-time. So why should we miss out at work on what we experience every single day in our personal lives? Technology is the foundation for a workforce that is “all-in” because it provides us with the flexibility and choice to run at our best anywhere, anytime. You can even argue it is one of the key drivers of a happy, engaged and self-empowered employee. So, let’s be honest with ourselves: Why should talents opt for a non-digital work environment when they have the choice? The answer is: They won’t!
Technology is a key driver of a happy, engaged, self-empowered workforce
But while technology is key, even more is needed to foster a vibrant and motivated workforce. From an HR perspective, it’s equally important to invest in the right areas at the right time. It’s about getting people excited to come to work and be happy rather than frustrated because it takes them half a day to get their travel expenses done.
Now, how can we in HR help to create an “all-in” environment? The answer is rather simple: Create processes that are intuitive. Make them simple and aligned to the needs of your business and your people. Leverage modern technology to make them run fast and seamlessly so employees can enjoy a great user experience at work.
HR can help create an “all-in” environment aligned to the needs of the business and its people
Here are five tips for creating and maintaining an “all-in” workforce:
1. Enable people to share and connect
Disconnected silos prevent innovation and ultimately business success. Social collaboration tools can help you to connect customers, partners and colleagues with information, systems and processes to drive results. Social collaboration is a win-win – it helps simplify business processes so customers are more satisfied, and, by the same token, it helps drive employee engagement.
2. Offer continuous growth opportunities so everyone is considered a talent
The shift to e-learning and rich media content puts pressure on companies to quickly advance the way their employees build skills. To build a “high-impact learning organization (HILO)”, cloud-based learning solutions can help standardize learning offerings and drive better analytical insights into organizational learning. It can also enable learning organizations to build a learning experience around the learner and not around whatever is available regarding content or systems.
3. Say ”goodbye” to conventional ways of managing individual performance
Organizations need to reimagine performance management. Conversations are key to building understanding, alignment and trust in today’s fast moving, digital workplace. Additionally, every conversation is an opportunity for development and growth – and we simply cannot afford to miss that. Too much company time is often wasted on administering the performance review process. Also, as more Millennials join the workforce, we see an increasing demand for continuous, meaningful feedback, and new technology can enable employees and managers to request and provide real-time feedback.
4. Put the right leaders in the right places
This means organizations need to connect the dots early so they don’t run short on leaders. Research shows that internal hires have 50% faster time to productivity. As a matter of fact, too many companies are still struggling to identify their future leaders. HR technology can help identify and develop the leaders you need to achieve your business goals.
5. Make sure HR is “all-in” too
HR needs to act as a role-model living an “all-in” culture itself. Full commitment is required to support the business and the company’s employees by providing quality HR services anywhere, anytime. Because one thing is for sure: the war for talent has just begun and “all-in” employees talk about what makes them happy. Anywhere, anytime.
To learn more about how HR can Run Live and foster a highly engaged workforce, visit here.
Join Ed Cone, Deputy Director of Thought Leadership and Technology Practice Lead at Oxford Economics, for a webinar on November 2, where he will reveal findings on leadership in the digital age from the recent Leaders 2020 study. Register here. All the insights from the Leaders 2020 study by SAP SuccessFactors and Oxford Economics, can be found here. Or join us at SuccessConnect 2016 and join the conversation live.
Top image via Shutterstock