Last Friday we had the opportunity to record the 120th episode of DisrupTV, and with we I mean usual host Vala Afshar, and yours truly stepping in for the always on the move Ray R Wang. The show focus was on the Future of Work / HCM research area, so I doubled as moderator and as guest.
Here are the top 3 takeaways from the guests of episode #120 (it can be found here).
Radical Transparency fosters Engagement with David Ossip
Ceridian Chairman and CEO David Ossip shared the transformation journey that the vendor has undergone – from a managed payroll provider using mainframe technology to a cloud-based SaaS vendor. Here are the top 3 takeaways:
Culture needs a Purpose. Ossip shared that culture cannot be an empty shell, needs to be tangible, needs to be lived. He shared two examples on how obviously wrong and suboptimal processes got changed, as part of a regular location visit schedule. The purpose is key to galvanize a cross-generational workforce on what ultimately matters, customer success.
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| David Ossip talks transformation on DisruptTV |
Engagement Surveys are key. The tool of choice to understand where an enterprise stands are engagement surveys. Ceridian runs them twice a year and shares the top results openly across the employee base. Each topic in the Top 5 gets worked on with an action plan, often a project and more to drive to closure… sharing results as they are, with no sugar coating is what 21st century employees (who provided the data in the first place) deserve.
Radical Transparency and Honest Action are nonnegotiable. Ceridian shares the engagement scores openly across managers. It is better for people and the enterprise to understand if a manager is better an individual contributor – sooner than later. But work and improvement need to happen constantly to keep employs engaged and make the trust their leadership.
Learning goes Micro with Carol Leaman
Next up was Carol Leaman, CEO of Axonify, a Learning vendor that focusses on micro-learning. Carol shared her startup's days and how she turned down a lucrative offer from Google and why (watch the recording for that).
Learning needs to be engaging. Learning systems have way too long lived in the past, often with the same handbooks handed out to existing and new employees for multiple decades. Smartphones are the new platform to provided engaging learning experiences, with substantial successes – both from a pure learning as well as a commercial perspective.
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| Laughs all around with Carol, Vala & Holger |
Micro Learning suites all generations in the workforce. All generations in the workforce are tired to attend even more tired classroom-based trainings. Content needs to be diced and sliced based on relevance and interest. Small learning content portions need to be able to be consumed at a minute's notice, when time and / or relevance present themselves. Micro Learning is the key approach to slice, dice and serve learning content to the workforce.
Gamification remains a powerful motivator. While the heydays of gamification are certainly over, gamification still remains a powerful tool to motivate people to do work, including taking training course and consume training content. What makes gamification so powerful is that it works across the generational boundaries – from iGen to the Baby Boomers.
CxOs need to understand Enterprise Acceleration with Holger Mueller
Last but not least it was yours truly turn to talk about recent research, Enterprise Acceleration. Here are the key takeaways:Financial Indices prove Acceleration. The financial indices are a neutral measurement on how fast a public market in a country move. It is highly representative for the state of an economy since almost all large companies are publicly traded. For instance, the age of a company becoming part of the S&P 500 in 2004 was 25 years… in 2013 it was... 10 years. Indices in London, Frankfurt, Paris and Tokyo show a same picture, in distinct colors. So, enterprises need to find ways to accelerate, and that's what Enterprise Acceleration is all about.
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| If you wonder why Vala looks sceptical - watch the show! |
Compliance, Payroll and 9 Acceleration Strategies. Before CxOs can tackle the 9 enterprise acceleration strategies (watch the show for all of them), they need to take care of the basics – being compliance and a well working payroll. These are key preparatory steps, as any enterprise transformation project stops when compliance penalties come in or people are not being paid correctly.
Let's highlight one of the nine strategies here, Transboarding. Created as a combination of Transferring and Onboarding it asks CxOs to pay more attention to the productivity of employees that are transferring and to use modern learning tools across the whole transfer, starting quarters before the transfer happens, and ending only quarters later.
People Leader need to be technology savvy. Gone are the days when technology decisions affecting people were able to be delegated to the CIO and other technical roles, and excellent question from Vala. This does not mean that CHROs have to become technologists, surrounding themselves with the right team is more important than ever… and basic technology concepts like BigData and Machine Learning / AI need to be understood well enough to grasp their implication on the enterprise and / or on people.
Curious who is next on DisrupTV every Friday at 11 AM PST? Check here.