Empower Knowledge Workers
4 Target Technology Investments to the Evolving Needs of Knowledge
Work and Collaborative Teams
Maintaining and improving productivity levels will require organizations to retool the work environment to better support collaborative, knowledge- intensive work. While corporate IT organizations have done a very good job providing foundational, enterprise-level solutions to support standard work processes and needs, senior leaders should reevaluate their technology needs to ensure current platforms are accelerating performance, not hindering it. While 99% of employees use some form of technology on the job,15 less than 40% feel they have the technology needed to be productive. As work has become less routine and more exceptions based, standard enterprise solutions are simply not as effective. End-user surveys show that employees want easy-to-use technology that will help them collaborate, make decisions, and get their work done. Unless organizations can better link technology to the work needs of employees, inadequate or misapplied technology will likely be a major barrier to knowledge worker productivity, not to mention bottom-line profitability.
Employees Lack Sufficient Technology to Work Effectively Percentage of Respondents, by Level of Enablement on CEB’s Technology-Enabled Productivity Barometer
n = 983.
Source: CEB, CEB Technology-Enabled Productivity Survey.
61%
Not Technology Enabled
39%
Employees Want Easy-to-Use Technology to Get Work Done Preference Ranking of Technology Attributes at Work
n = 9,900 global employees.
Source: CEB, Infrastructure Executive Council Employee Technology Value Survey 2011.
Device and Applications Should Be as Easy to Use and Intuitive as Possible
Information Should Be “Seamless,” Meaning I Can Access and Use It Across Applications and Devices
Technical Support and Training Should Be Available by Request with Minimal Delay
I Need to Be Able to Customize Devices and Applications to My Individual Needs
Least Important Most Important
(7%) 38% (9%) 16% (9%) 16% (20%) 5% (33%) 7% 7% 9% 9% 20% 33%
I Need to Be Able to Accomplish Both Personal and Work-Related Tasks with the Same Devices and Applications
How can executives ensure employees have easy-to-use technology that will help them make decisions, collaborate, and complete their work? Firms that get more enterprise contribution from their employees invest in improving mobility, data usability, collaboration platforms, and customized applications by doing the following:
■ Build back from employee needs, not just broad business needs.
Do not over-standardize technology and tools at the enterprise or divisional level. Encourage corporate IT to move beyond legacy needs assessment methods to processes that are more customer friendly, that is, focused on observing end users in specific workflows (e.g., work groups and major collaboration projects) rather than broad business or functional groups.
■ Identify and use “prosumers” to redefine technology needs.
Every group has its prosumers, the early adopters who discover, test, and adopt the most appropriate (if not always approved and supported) technologies to do their work. Use your prosumers to help establish team needs, identify promising technologies, and drive utilization.
■ Encourage and embrace mobile technology trial and error.
Employees will use and adopt the technology they need to get their work done. More than 60% of employees use their own mobile devices at work—not for convenience, but because they are useful in getting work done.16 A simple, but big, step in many organizations is to embrace the use of personal devices by employees. Leaders should avoid zero tolerance, overly restrictive, or one-device-fits-all policies for mobile devices and customized applications.
■ Fix data accessibility and usability. While employees can access
data readily, too much data is unusable or too hard to find; more than 50%of employees say information is in formats they cannot use.17 As a result, two-thirds of employees report spending time on unproductive analyses.18 Business leaders and their IT organization need to conduct regular assessments of the company’s core data needs and assets— identifying causes of less usable data and creating a defined structure for collecting, defining, prioritizing, storing, and disseminating better information.
■ Create collaboration platforms to make immediate, in-the-moment
interactions easy. Unfortunately, most collaboration platforms are
centered on document sharing and project management when they should be supporting knowledge work—allowing employees to work together quickly, seamlessly, and on demand. Organizations need to develop improved capabilities for broad idea sharing; concurrent, joint, and iterative work; and on-demand communication (including easy-to- use, low-cost messaging, web conferencing, and video/voice systems).
■ Provide a wider array of analytic applications. New technologies
and devices (tablets, smartphones, etc.) allow employees to readily access data in and outside the office. The bigger challenge is providing employees access to the analytical applications necessary to be
productive with enterprise information outside the office; one in three employees are using applications they have found themselves.19 Managers should work with their IT group to identify and innovate the applications employees find most useful for work outside the office. Avoid overly restrictive policies that limit the use of cloud-based apps or over-prioritizing scalable applications that are less customized to specific employee needs.
Corporations today are focused on growth—not at any cost but at less cost. Achieving simultaneous growth in top-line revenue and bottom-line profitability has come, and likely will continue to come, through greater workforce productivity. While organizations have achieved impressive levels of workforce efficiency in recent years, they require more—to stay competitive and grow, CEOs and leadership teams look for breakthrough performance and productivity gains from their employees. To achieve these gains, organizations need to understand the dramatic shifts underway in the work environment and refocus on enabling higher levels of workforce performance.
Today’s work environment is in constant flux. Change is the new normal for employees—changes in target markets, products, business objectives, organization structure, work location, work teams, job role, or manager alignments have become common. In part as a response to a more fluid business environment and a result of ubiquitous information and rapid technological advances, the predominant work of employees has become much more collaborative and knowledge based. While firms may be tempted to hire an all-new employee—better able to perform in a collaborative, knowledge-based work environment—their needs are much more immediate, and the new skills required are best developed through on-the-job experience. Improving—or simply maintaining—workforce productivity requires firms to accept the work environment has changed, and their underlying approaches to employee development, work roles, management, and technology must also change.
Improving workforce performance and staff productivity is a central focus of CEB and SHL. In 2013, we will continue to refine our understanding of the changing work environment, evolving skills requirements, and talent management challenges essential to improving employee performance and productivity. To learn more about how other organizations are improving employee productivity, to participate in our work, or to network with your peers, please visit us at www.executiveboard.com/executive-guidance. Members can reach their Executive Advisor® at 1-866-913-2632 or contact CEB at [email protected].