How HR Technology Can Drive Cultural Change in 2022
An effective HR technology suite gives managers something to leverage and rely on that in return help the whole organization to drive cultural change.
There are numerous reasons to invest in technology during troubled times, but one of the most significant, and often overlooked, is the need for cultural change so that organizations can achieve inbuilt resilience. In fact, culture, more so than talent, technology, or data, is seen by executives as the single biggest challenge to digital transformation.
Research by McKinsey shows that 70% of transformations fail, and 70% of those failures are due to culture-related issues.
Technology can drive cultural change.
One such example is the recently launched Microsoft Viva Insights which allows businesses to measure the status quo, and the impact of changes as improvement plans are implemented. These data-led insights can empower managers and staff to change known limiting behaviors. Something that can be revolutionary for businesses.
Minimizing Stress Levels
In these times of hybrid working, there have been numerous collaboration challenges faced by businesses over the past 18 months. Whether the excessive number of meetings staff are being asked to attend or the fact they are forced to work from disconnected data siloes, staff are increasingly feeling stressed and disengaged. It is important, therefore, that managers can identify staff that is working excessive hours and risk burnout. That way, they can make informed decisions about where they invest in people, money, or both to deliver services and protect the wellbeing of their workers.
In industries such as policing, staff attrition can be as much as 104%, meaning forces are losing people faster than they can hire them. A big part of that is down to wellbeing. As is the case with most public sector organizations, police forces face the perfect storm of increasing (and changing) service demand and rising complexity. This is leading to unmanageable workloads for people tasked with delivering these under pressure services. Increased sick pay is an inevitable consequence, as is staff churn. This is having a real impact on team morale. Plus, hiring new people can be costly and it takes time to get them up to speed with specific working practices.
Treating Issues Objectively
Technology like Viva Insights can be used to identify capacity challenges, the potential for the team and departmental burnout, improve business agility, enable multi-channel employee engagement, and enhance decision-making. It provides a scientific approach to adjusting the behaviors that are directly associated with poor culture. Businesses can start slowly by first looking at the most serious problems and then slowly expanding from there. Once they have identified that an improvement plan is succeeding within a specific group or a small department, the business can then extend it and drill down into potentially deeper issues within the organization.
There is currently an acute need to manage staff wellbeing. Whilst there were plenty of issues before the pandemic, as we have worked through the crisis, these have intensified. There is a definite need to identify and measure where the biggest problems are and address them urgently.
If decisions and plans are based on data, there is a better chance that they are being treated objectively and managers are responding to the issues that have been identified as causing problems for the productivity and wellbeing of their people. Data takes the emotion out of the equation.
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Technology to Rely On
The great strength of solutions such as Microsoft Viva is that they bring technology and data intrinsically together for the good of the culture within organizations.
As an employee experience platform, Microsoft Viva links all parts of a successful business together. For example, it can bring the collaboration and organizational data together, analyzing it against best practice, and providing improvement plans with nudges towards good behavior, based on years of scientific studies and research.
One of the key goals of technology is to simplify processes for managers, to allow them to gain the right insights into the problems that they are facing. Yet, at the same time, it is also about improving the working day for staff by providing everything they need in one place. Whether this is in Microsoft Teams or elsewhere, it is imperative to have one go-to single version of the truth that can be easily shared with others, allowing the bridging of traditional organisational silos. There is also the need for skills development. Luckily, technologies are now on hand to help organisations deliver continuous learning, monitor that learning and provide learning pathways that are appropriate for individuals.
Effective HR technology gives managers something to leverage and rely on. It can even prompt individuals to change their behaviours, while at the same time, allowing managers to identify types of behaviours that are problematic, so that they can be changed. This is followed up by recommendations to managers so that they can apply improvement plans, which trickle back into personal insights such as reminders to book some focus time rather than being stuck in unproductive meetings all day.
Technology today can be extremely powerful. It can not only enable organisations to move forward and improve staff wellbeing and productivity but facilitate a more effective sharing of knowledge. Technology can link with data, culture, and talent to drive organizations forward.
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