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Why Employ a Digital Workforce Experience Layer?

 

Every organization’s business strategy and priorities have shifted and, in some cases, have caused significant turmoil, grinding many businesses to a halt or forcing them to make rash decisions with unforeseen consequences. Dynamic business planning helps organizations take immediate and effective action to support their workforce and create business value.

 

Successful business planning is not an exercise in perfection. It is an exercise to gain extreme clarity around what desired outcomes you want to achieve and define the requirements to achieve those outcomes. Business leaders face a vast array of competing initiatives vying for budget approval. Leading organizations create a workforce experience strategy, placing people at the center of their desired results, balancing business priorities through a blend of stability and agility while fostering positive experiences for their employees, customers, and culture.

 

Digital Workforce Experience Layer Business Case Foundation 

In Leapgen’s 2020 HR Delivery Practices Study, over 90% of respondents claimed that developing a workforce experience strategy was very important to their overall business strategy and desired outcomes. 

 

90% of respondents are developing a workforce experience strategy.  

 

Workforce experience strategy data

Source:  Leapgen’s 2020 HR Delivery Practices Study

 

Developing a sound business case is a critical step when making a strategic business solution a reality. Workforce technology investments require thorough analysis and due diligence into their value and alignment to a company’s overall strategy. Value-centric business case creation lies at the intersection of desirability, feasibility, and viability, the trifecta for a frictionless workforce experience, which we will explore below. 

 

Ultimately, to create a value-centric business case, the key is to start by answering a few straightforward questions, not necessarily focused on the technology investment. Instead, define the desired outcomes for your business, more specifically, your workforce, while balancing the anticipated outcomes of desirability, feasibility, and viability. 

 

Using a Workforce Experience Platform to Meet Business Needs

In the NOW of Work, some universal business needs have bubbled to the top of priority lists. In the Leapgen 2020 HR Service Delivery Study, we identified the key functionality expected to be delivered in a workforce experience platform to meet pressing business needs. As you evaluate your immediate and long term workforce strategy, do any of these requirements ring true for your organization?

 

Figure 7: Key functionality used by global organizations the workforce experience platform  

 

HR delivery practice study

Source:  Leapgen’s 2020 HR Delivery Practices Study

 

 

Driving and Measuring Results

 

An approved employee experience business case does not indicate your organization is ready to successfully deliver on the value of what a workforce experience platform can provide. Often overlooked, is the preparation and planning required to prepare and reimagine the type of workforce experience your business hopes to foster. The starting point for building an employee experience framework that authentically represents your organization is straightforward. Simply ask your people what makes a good experience at work. Start by asking your workforce to weigh in on what elements are most important to them and what changes they'd like to see. 

 

Essentially the foundation of design thinking for the NOW of Work puts the worker at the center of the value chain. Specifics for this practice are detailed in the section below. Worker centered design is also the defining design principles of a next-generation digital workforce experience platform. The theme of “workforce-first” should be interwoven into the fabric of your business operations and technology infrastructure.

 

Stating that we must measure outcomes and quantify value is easy. Putting them into practice can be tricky – but it doesn’t have to be. You need to consider the entire spectrum of what you can measure and tie that back to your desired outcomes and the business value. You can leverage key metrics like – improve HR efficiencies across business processes, reduce cycle time, enhance manager and employee productivity and engagement, and enable business agility and bench-strength – to help communicate the value of building a strong workforce experience. 

 

Figure 8: Sample Business Case: Enhance Manager and Employee Productivity through Digital Experience

 

Productivity opportunities with employee experience layer

 

Conclusion

 

The digital workforce experience platform is technology made for the NOW of Work. The demands of the Now of Work push organizations beyond an isolated digital workforce strategy. The digital workforce strategy must now become the overarching business strategy, bringing together departments that continue to deliver business continuity and drive employee productivity from anywhere. With a new mindset for success, incorporating human-centered design principles, and orchestrating experience hubs to drive valued-outcomes, agile organizations can quickly respond and adapt to new business challenges and employee experiences as they emerge.  The digital workforce experience platform is the enabler that brings it all together.

 

In summary, when embarking on a new digital workforce Experience Platform initiative apply the following crucial steps:

 

Measure workforce use and favorability for the platform. Look at criteria like access, types of activities or transactions, types of questions or requests, time to complete tasks, touchpoints eliminated by single platform experience, easy integration, streamlined workflows, best-practice templates, no-code/low-code infrastructure, and more.

 

Identify metrics for behavior changes and employee well-being. Determine “hard” and “soft” metrics like workforce productivity, efficiency, engagement, and inclusion. Consider allowing employees to self-report on things like physical, emotional, health, and financial well-being. 

 

Track business performance improvements. Measure success against profit and revenue metrics, industry-specific performance enhancements, customer satisfaction, business growth rate, and attainment of company goals.

 

 

Authors

Jim Holincheck has more than 25 years of experience in the HCM technology industry and is the Vice President of Advisory Services at Leapgen. Before joining Leapgen, Jim gained experience as a vendor (Workday - Services Strategy and Product Management), an industry analyst (Gartner and Forrester/Giga), and a consultant (Accenture). He has spent his entire career working with customers to strategize, select, implement, support, and optimize their usage of enterprise applications. Helping customers successfully get the most out of their enterprise software investments is something he is very passionate about. Jim graduated from Washington University with a BS in Electrical Engineering and an MBA in 1988.

 

Jim Scully is a recognized industry expert in the design and optimization of HR service operations. With nearly 25 years of related professional experience, both as a consultant and practitioner, plus extensive practice research as founder of the HR Shared Services Institute, Jim has unparalleled expertise in the field of HR shared services and service operations. In addition, Jim brings operational excellence background, including TQM, Lean, Six Sigma, and Theory of Constraints (TOC) to the realm of HR service delivery to go beyond mere consolidation to create what he calls the “Delivery Center of Excellence.”

 

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Published October 2, 2020 / by Applaud