This ongoing change has sparked an urgent need to create cultures that encourage collaboration, feedback, and openness, supported by technology and leadership. With less time in-person, people need a new way to connect and share feedback.

To meet the needs of today’s hybrid workforce, Doosan has created a new employee experience called “Delightful Digital Workplace.” The project, which is the result of a co-innovation project between SAP, Microsoft, and Doosan, was . Delightful Digital Workplace integrates  and Microsoft Teams to provide managers and employees with a collaborative application to share ongoing feedback – right in the flow of work.

Encouraging Continuous Feedback to Drive Culture Change

Here’s how it works: Delightful Digital WorkplaceĚýľ±˛ÔłŮ±đ˛µ°ů˛ąłŮ±đ˛őĚýłŮłó±đĚýcontinuous performance management functionality of ,Ěý, and Microsoft Teams, so employees and managers can share feedback in the flow of work. For example, after a meeting, employees can provide and request feedback through Teams on the topics discussed. Co-creation of a seamless user experience means employees don’t have to switch applications or interfaces. Instead of waiting for a check-in or missing an opportunity altogether, feedback becomes timely and contextualized. This helps employees improve their performance and increase productivity, and helps managers make timely and informed decisions around employees’ development.

Working in a hybrid environment requires a shift in culture. With Delightful Digital Workplace, the company is able to drive this culture change by opening the lines of communication among its people. It’s creating new ways for employees to engage with each other. With more frequent feedback and increased collaboration, it helps to remove barriers and give employees a voice – even when they are remote. It also helps companies understand their people – what they need, where they’re headed, and how to make work better.

Robert Oh, executive vice president, Doosan Corporation, shared: “The major intent of doing this first was improving the overall efficiencies, but more importantly improving our employee experience.”

“Hybrid work enables next-generation experiences whether at home or in a traditional office setting,” said Mala Anand, corporate vice president of Customer Experience & Success at Microsoft. “It requires organizations to reimagine the employee experience. With Microsoft Teams and Viva, we empower employees to achieve incredible results through increased collaboration and productivity.”

Using Co-Innovation to Improve the Employee Experience 

Doosan’s Delightful Workplace is an example of what’s possible when you bring together different technologies to create a single experience for employees. We all learn from it and benefit from it.

“Doosan sets a high bar for using collaborative apps to foster employee experience with the Delightful Digital Workplace, and through our longstanding and trusted collaboration, Microsoft and 51·çÁ÷play a key role providing innovations and insights underpinning the program,” said Anand.

Oh shared the benefits of the co-innovation as well. Through Delightful Digital Workplace, Doosan has had the opportunity to interact with global teams at Microsoft and SAP, and gain confidence working on a global project. And it demonstrated the power of having “committed and capable global partners to not only think about co-innovation ideas, but to execute them and make them happen.”

51·çÁ÷plans to continue innovating with Doosan and Microsoft to optimize Delightful Digital Workplace and explore new cases with 51·çÁ÷Business Technology Platform and Microsoft Teams.

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Jill Popelka is 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors president.

In these constantly changing circumstances, leaders need to rely on more than gut instinct or intuition. They need to be able to forecast the impact of their business decisions and have real-time insights across the enterprise that they can trust to make fast, informed decisions that allow both their business and their people to thrive.

Business leaders make thousands of decisions, from setting top-level strategy to organizational changes to recruiting decisions, and each of these decisions has a direct impact on their workforce. Given the scale of workforce disruption that enterprises faced last year — and will continue to face as workplaces evolve — we are pleased to introduce new capabilities that integrate people data from 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors software into .

With the vast amount of data available across the enterprise, the challenge businesses face is making sense of the various data sources to derive actionable and trusted insights. As part of SAP’s vision to across our solutions and power real-time, insight-driven planning and analysis, the new operational workforce planning and analytics capability delivers pre-built content to integrate and visualize data from 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors solutions and via 51·çÁ÷Analytics Cloud. Announced today at SAPPHIRE NOW, the new capability is expected to be available in the third quarter of 2021.

By combining people, financial, and operational data in one place so that leaders can discover, visualize, plan, predict, and ultimately make unbiased and data-driven decisions, the new capability allows leaders to:

• Combine finance data and predictive forecasts to explore areas of high sales and adjust hiring accordingly
• Align employee skills with the needs of the business by assessing growth opportunities based on pipeline and market opportunities
• Combine experience data with performance and trends to glean insights into projected levels of employee attrition and simulate the business impact

With this capability, leaders can better understand what makes employees thrive, spot risks, and create a workforce strategy that is reflective of employee needs and supports ongoing business transformation.

The need to put people first has never been more important. Embracing a data-driven approach will help businesses as they face multifaceted challenges, such as hiring, reskilling and retaining talent, improving diversity, equity and inclusion, and driving cultural change to support ongoing transformation.

Employees have to be at the center of every business decision because people are what drives innovation, creativity, and the success of the business. With advanced and comprehensive workforce planning and analytics, organizations can improve their agility and adaptability while delivering the human-centric experiences needed for sustainable long-term success.

Irfan Khan is president of SAP HANA Database and Analytics at SAP.
Jill Popelka is president of 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors.

More than ever, organizations need modern technology in the cloud that can support and adapt to the rapidly changing needs of people and the business. Because regardless of the transformation at hand, ±č±đ´Ç±č±ô±đĚýare the most important factor.

When employees are in the center of a transformation effort, there is a 70% higher transformation success rate than when they are not,Ěý. People don’t just need to buy into the vision,Ěýthey need to understand how they will get there. A culture of learning, frequent and transparent communication, and data-driven decision making are critical to transformation success.

Announced at SAPPHIRE NOW,Ěý is a new offering that helps organizations drive the cultural change needed for ongoing digital transformation. It combines RISE with SAP and HXM solutions to provide the choice and flexibility organizations need to move their  operations to the cloud.

At SAP, we are committed to making the transition to the cloud easy, flexible, and on our customers’ terms. We know there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to their needs or their timelines. To ease the transition from on-premise solutions to the cloud, we are making significant investments to our born-in-the-cloud core HR solutions, such as the launch of , improved configurability and localization for , and accelerated cloud payroll innovation, as well as streamlined data integration between on-premise and cloud solutions. We have also launched new solutions like  to help our customers meet the changing needs of their people,Ěýespecially with the permanent adoption of flexible and remote work.

RISE with 51·çÁ÷for HXM builds on these technological investments with a simplified commercial offering so organizations can accelerate their path to tangible outcomes. It delivers business transformation as a service, bringing together the solutions, services, and flexibility to drive change in the way that works best.

Moving HR to the cloud, in tandem with solutions such as 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA, helps organizations establish the technological foundation to create the flexible, engaged workforce they need to succeed in the future of work. HXM empowers employees with relevant experiences that increase productivity and engagement, and provide targeted upskilling and reskilling that align with business goals. At the same time, leaders can break down silos and integrate data to make faster and more informed decisions.

Depending on an organization’s needs,Ěýwe have developed three offerings:

• Structure for success builds a foundation to connect people data with financial data to measure profitability, plan and forecast accurately, and manage compliance.
• Reskill to innovate helps reskill project and technical teams with the training required to support ongoing transformation, drive adoption of new technology, and increase the speed of innovation.
• Operationally transform improves operations and planning with easy access to people and finance data, and simple, intuitive experiences for payroll and time tracking.

We are committed to helping our customers implement these solutions on the timeline and with the partner that works best for their business and their workforce.

Bob Park, global 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors leader at Deloitte Consulting LLP, shared: “Deloitte is eager to work with our clients to unleash the full power of RISE with 51·çÁ÷for HXM to help elevate their workforce experience and increase the value of their digital transformation. Through our focus on the cloud-enabled Kinetic Workforce, we are more than prepared to join 51·çÁ÷on the journey of business transformation as a service, and we’re very excited for the opportunity to help our clients using 51·çÁ÷solutions create more human-centric organizations and innovate with impact.”

In today’s world, the companies that thrive are those that adapt quickly and keep their people at the core of every decision they make. They have the culture and technology that helps align, engage, and properly skill their workforce. By accelerating people transformations with , organizations can establish the foundation they need to keep up with the rapidly changing needs of the workforce and to future-proof their business.

Jill Popelka is president of 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors.

This human-centered mindset has been put to the test this year, at a time when organizations and individuals alike have been forced to work and live in an ever-changing, unpredictable environment. The organizations that have survived and even thrived during these challenging months are those that have quickly pivoted to new business models, products, and services. But their resilience did not happen with the flip of a switch. It was made possible by the passion, commitment, and agility of their workforce.

People ultimately determine whether businesses succeed or fail. So the experiences we deliver and how we address the moments that matter for every individual – from the birth of a child to a leadership change to planning for retirement – impact business growth and how quickly an organization can adapt to change.

The recently published Thrive XM Index validates this connection between employee experience and business results. Between 2019 and 2020, organizations that scored in the top 20 for experience grew revenue on average by 16% year-over-year. The study also reveals that companies with higher experience ratings have 37% less perceived stress, 35% more engagement, and 34% increased retention among employees.

Put simply, experience wins.

It’s with this in mind that HXM remains our North Star. It guides how we develop our solutions today, and it is our vision for a future of work that is more productive, purposeful, and personal. And our momentum in the HXM market demonstrates that it is resonating. Earlier this month, we topped 4,000 customers using the 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors Employee Central solution. As the pace of change seems only to accelerate, leaders need a balance of technology, thoughtfulness, and ingenuity to prepare their workforces for what is next.

Empowering HR Leaders to Take Charge of Change

With HXM guiding our product strategy, we’ hae made it our mission to make technology work better for people, not the other way around. In recent months, when workforces were forced into unprecedented situations, we helped our customers leverage technology to streamline the flow of work and provide the data needed to make fast, intelligent decisions. Human resources (HR) leaders have taken on increasingly strategic roles to redeploy and re-skill their people while reinforcing business continuity.

Earlier this month, we announced a new service offering that is helping customers return their employees safely to the workplace while at the same time allowing them to build resilient workforces for the future.

Making the Digital Workplace Experience Personal

We know there is not a one-size-fits-all solution to tackle today’s challenges. It’s why HXM abandons the notion of pushing top-down, HR-driven processes and focuses on building technology that serves the individual. Our newly designed home page is a dynamic tool where immediate tasks, actions, and content are organized specifically for and by the individual.

We continue to embed experience management capabilities across so individuals can share their feedback and business leaders can listen and make informed changes. From design modifications to new features, continue to put the experience of the employee first so they can bring their best self to work.

Accelerating Employee Experience with the Intelligent Enterprise

Employee experience extends beyond the tools offered by HR, but encompasses every touch point across a business, including IT, finance, and operations, as well as the many other services and applications that cover everything in between. The Intelligent Enterprise enables organizations to understand how the entire end-to-end experience for an individual can impact morale, productivity, and business results. 51·çÁ÷Work Zone for HR helps companies on their journey to becoming intelligent enterprises by providing a personalized, intuitive, digital workplace experience that seamlessly extends beyond HR solutions, connecting to other 51·çÁ÷technologies as well as third-party and partner applications.

With more than 250 partner apps in to help organizations address employee well-being, diversity, equity and inclusion, recruiting, talent management, and more, we are building a pipeline of innovation that applies the latest technologies to tomorrow’s most pressing workforce challenges. Recently, we announced six early-stage HR technology startups that have joined the latest cohort focused on the future of work.

A Vision for the Future of Work Begins with Learning

Together with our customers and partners, 51·çÁ÷strives every day to deliver the ideal workplace experience that brings out the best in employees. As we look to a future with continuous change, building and supporting a culture of learning will be a cornerstone to how work is done. The skills needed today might not be sufficient in a year. Learning helps employees better understand their role and address compliance needs, and demonstrates that an organization is investing in their development.

True to our HXM vision, learning programs must be reimagined to deliver ongoing, dynamic, and individualized experiences. They need to be adaptable to how each person wants to consume information, regardless of format, source, context, or device. By supporting every individual to achieve their development goals, businesses can be more agile, more innovative, and ultimately, more impactful.

When we reflect on our momentum and envision the future of work, change is the only constant. Human connection remains vital to success. Prioritizing individuals — whether it is in the way technology is designed or the way they are personally cared for — is what will build a workforce that is equipped to excel today and tackle tomorrow’s challenges.

Because if people win, business wins.

Jill Popelka is president of 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors

From worker safety to well-being, it is the human experience at work that is essential to business continuity.

The new shows definitively that companies that prioritized the employee experience not only performed better once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, but many of them actually grew. Put simply, people determine whether companies succeed or fail. And investing in people is what makes the difference.

In good times, employee-experience efforts are drivers of sustained growth; in turbulent times, they are key to an organization’s resilience and adaptability. Happy, cared-for employees are more driven, dedicated, and innovative – especially in times of crisis. In other words, companies that seek better business outcomes can achieve them by focusing on employee experiences that directly touch the moments that matter the most to individuals — both personal well-being and work lives.

Better Experience, Better Business Results

In 2019, 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors partnered with Qualtrics, Thrive Global, and Fortune to better understand how 20,000 employees from more than 900 companies felt about their organizations’ support of, and influence over, life moments – including things like career development, the birth of a child, or the loss of a loved one. Six months into the pandemic, that data was compared to the mid-2020 financial results of the participating Fortune 500 companies.

Organizations that scored in the top 20 for experience grew revenue on average by 16 percent year-over-year. Companies that scored in the top 10 in the Thrive XM Index improved their rank by 11 places in the Fortune 500, year-over-year. These scores also translate directly to dollars. Every Thrive XM point equates to an added US$53 per employee in revenue.

The study used a unique scoring algorithm that assessed companies in three distinct-yet-equal categories:

• Experiences, or the company’s impact on broad life categories, such as time and finances
• Moments, such as parenthood, onboarding, flexibility, and more
• Well-Being, or feelings of organizational trust, belongingness, and more

Inspiring and Motivating Employees to Give Their Best

How can companies do a better job of supporting employees through the moments that matter? The short answer is technology, but it is also about leading with empathy and care for a person’s whole self. Technology provides people the tools to do their work fast and efficiently, giving them the time to be creative, innovative, and thoughtful. And when employees feel valued and fulfilled, they work better and smarter. As leaders, we should all be thinking about how to provide an enhanced experience, whether by selecting the right tools and technologies to simplify the flow of work or by giving the support individuals need to prioritize personal well-being. Here are some examples:

• Career Growth: The Thrive XM study found that professional development is especially important to new employees, Gen Z and millennial workers, as well as employees who identify as ethnic or racial minorities. shows employees that the company is invested in their potential and future growth. Developing and nurturing talent from within bolsters retention. Appropriately, Thrive XM participants who work at the top-scoring companies reported that they are more likely to stay with their organizations.
• Health and Finances: Employees should never be left wondering what they are working for. It should be clear, at any moment of any day, . This matters equally to tenured employees of all ages, and especially to Gen Xers to boomers. Using the right tools will instill people with confidence that they are paid fairly and accurately. Employees also benefit from sound . Additionally, employees should feel heard when it comes to benefits. HR managers need the . In other words, make work more than a place to get a paycheck and healthcare – make it a relationship built on altruism and trust.
• Stress Management: Most companies will say they are concerned about employees managing stress. But those that actually work to identify and address specific types of stress build trust with employees, retain, and inspire them. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, however. One approach might be to for younger employees to help prevent burnout, and offer to working parents. Regardless, organizations must work to identify and soothe specific points of stress. This will ultimately improve output and performance.

The new Thrive XM study tells us that technology is just one piece of the puzzle and should be used to facilitate more informed and productive personal connections within the company. People, and more specifically leaders, do the rest. To progress and even sustain growth through challenging times, it is essential that companies embrace the employee experience and put workers at the center of all business decisions.

The proof is in the data: investing in your people means investing in your bottom line. It’s simply the right thing to do.

To learn more, .

Jill Popelka is president of 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors.

Recent events in the United States, however, have put a much-needed spotlight on the fact that our discussions, and the efforts made to create a more diverse and inclusive workplace, have not been enough. The fact is, we continue to combat systemic racism across the globe and we need to do so much more to advance racial and gender equality, reduce economic disparities, and be active allies for those who are marginalized.

There are countless instances of racism and discrimination that take place every day in the workplace. Consider these sobering statistics: almost half of Black women say they experience discrimination most frequently in the workplace, according to a recent study from . A November 2019 inclusion study conducted by found that only 67 percent of employees say people of different backgrounds have an equal chance of being promoted and 69 percent an equal chance of being hired.

We must do better.

As the leader of an organization that centers its business around motivating and inspiring people, I continue to spend time with family, peers, and my team to get better educated on the issues, dig deep to know where I can make my own changes, and, even more importantly, identify how I can better lead my business to actively contribute to a much larger, much more impactful solution. While we can all continue to learn, grow, and change, what I do know with certainty is this: Technology – specifically human resources (HR) technology – has a leading role to play in helping organizations live and work by diversity, equity, and inclusive practices.

51·çÁ÷has been working on putting this principle into action for quite some time. When we introduced Business Beyond Bias in 2016, our intention was to help customers optimize features within their solutions to eliminate inherent biases around age, race and ethnicity, differently-abled, and LGBTQ+ communities. All of this functionality exists today:

• Customers can use the job profile builder to help ensure only job-critical information is associated with a role and to help eliminate details that could introduce bias, such as physical location.
• Managers can provide equitable and actionable feedback during performance reviews with the help of our writing assistant in 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors Performance & Goals. The calibration tool in 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors Compensation can also uncover unconscious bias in calibration and compensation decisions.
• 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors Learning can push relevant training to employees to make inclusion central to everyone’s curriculum.
• Experience Management solutions from 51·çÁ÷(Qualtrics) provide powerful listening tools to help leadership listen, understand, and act to address how employees feel about their experiences and what they believe needs to change.

Technology is just one important part to the solution. To make lasting change to discrimination in the workplace requires strong leadership with a clear and actionable point of view, a culture of learning and transparency, and a willingness to listen and discuss the issues with employees, customers, and partners, even when it’s uncomfortable. At SAP, we have taken a number of immediate steps to rethink how we are addressing DE&I, from the inside out. Here are a few:

• 51·çÁ÷is committed to double the representation of Black and African American employees in the U.S. within three years.
• We’ve established a DE&I council within the 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors organization, specifically, to ask the tough questions – both for our culture and our HR technology solutions. There’s still more work to do to advance our Business Beyond Bias initiatives across the entire employee lifecycle and for all underrepresented minorities.
• We have initialized a series of focused DE&I conversations with customers to look at how we can address not only products and technology but how we can get to the root of the problem together.

These immediate steps are only the beginning. As an HR technology leader and one that prioritizes meaningful and personal employee experiences, we understand the critical role we play to improve DE&I for our people and our customers’ people. We can and will do more, and we commit to speaking about our efforts transparently and often.

For more, watch a leadership discussion about the role technology plays in diverse, equitable, and inclusive organizations .

Jill Popelka is president of 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors.

Human resources (HR) leaders specifically have had to quickly adjust to rapidly changing conditions. They are realigning employees to fill critical roles, reinforcing business continuity by adapting programs and policies to fit evolving needs, and reskilling their workforce so they are ready for what the future may hold.

At 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors, we have been working diligently to ensure customers have the tools and support to lead their organizations through this unprecedented pace of change. At the same time, we have been developing exciting new products to ensure we are delivering that help HR leaders adapt to their current reality and lead their workforce not just in times of growth but in times of uncertainty.

“We have never been more connected and engaged with employees than at this point in time,” Chief People Officer Twselo Kodisang said. “Our priority is on ensuring our people are staying healthy – mentally, physically, emotionally, and financially – during this period and into the future. After transitioning to remote work, we recognized that roughly 500 employees were not being productive. We shifted to reskilling, with a focus on the jobs of the future rather than current jobs. enabled us to view employee data, understand where different employees are located, and create the appropriate programming, while provides a collaboration platform to keep employees engaged. As an organization, we feel that the crisis has provided us an opportunity to really make a difference to society, and we are seeing that difference being made.”

While the transition to the future of work has undoubtedly accelerated, two things remain the same: is more relevant than ever and digital technologies in the cloud that enable collaboration are essential.

In the most recent phase of its deployment, went live in the U.S. and many countries in Asia. The technology company selected 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors software, which runs on Microsoft Azure, for its cloud-first approach, global capabilities, flexibility and extensibility, and open platform strategy.

“As we continue the important work of digitally transforming our HR function to better serve our employees, we’re grateful for our relationship with 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors and its role in supporting our digital platform,” Kathleen Hogan, chief HR officer at Microsoft, said. “They’re a critical partner in helping us evolve our employee experience.”

During , we highlighted some of the latest innovations that are bringing the HXM vision to life for customers.

Reimagined Home Page and Digital Assistant

The reimagined homepage is a simple, beautiful, and individualized entry point. The mobile-first homepage leverages dynamic engagement cards prioritized by importance and urgency and colorful quick actions, such as requesting time off or scheduling a one-on-one with a manager, based on usage. The homepage also uses a digital assistant to answer questions, complete tasks, and find information. We are currently running a beta program to collect hands-on feedback from customers.

51·çÁ÷Work Zone for HR

The 51·çÁ÷Work Zone site for HR delivers an intuitive, digital workplace experience by providing easy access to relevant business applications and processes, information, and communication through a unified experience–with the employee at the center. It empowers teams and departments to effectively communicate and engage with employees without requiring IT infrastructure or support. 51·çÁ÷Work Zone for HR extends across the entire organization to streamline processes with customizable, guided experiences that integrate with disparate systems. Employees can also create communities where they can share knowledge and experiences with rich multimedia and microlearning capabilities, helping to enrich critical programs such as onboarding and training and development. 51·çÁ÷Work Zone for HR is currently available to a limited number of customers and is plannedfor general availability in the second half of 2020.

51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors People Analytics

The general availability of embedded reporting represents a paradigm in 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors People Analytics. This solution will consolidate all transactional reporting in 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors software into a single tool for reporting, insights, and dashboards. With 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors People Analytics, customers will be able to gather insights and gain a deeper understanding of what is happening across their business.

Master Data Integration

Furthering our intelligent enterprise strategy, 51·çÁ÷Cloud Platform Integration Suite now has master data integration that supports out-of-the-box integration for standard HR (or workforce) master data across 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA and 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors software.

Embedded Experience Management

One of the core pillars of HXM is the ability to listen and act on feedback. We are continuing to build integrations that enable organizations to gather feedback, get insight from the feedback, and provide intelligent actions and recommendations. For example, we have made it easier for customers to embed surveys within 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors Recruiting and 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors Performance & Goals. By gathering sentiment data to assess the candidate and employee experience, they can take the right steps to optimize those experiences.

Now more than ever, it is critical that organizations deliver experiences that inspire employees, support their physical and emotional well-being, and enable them to be engaged and productive–even when working remotely. At a time when change is constant, giving employees the right tools to do their jobs–and HR the right tools to support their people–will empower companies to be resilient, sustain momentum, and be profitable.

To learn more about these new technologies and hear how 51·çÁ÷customers are taking charge of change, .

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Jill Popelka is president of 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors.