In today’s pandemic-led work environment, the onus is on employers to create a psychologically and physically safe environment where employee well-being is a top priority.

Organisations navigating this ‘new normal’ are at the same time grappling with an evolved set of expectations from their workforce. Across many industries the readiness or need to return to an office is varied. Data consistently shows more than 33% of employees don’t want to return to the office, another third do want to return, and the remaining third want a hybrid mix where they spend some time in the office and some at home.

The pandemic has made many workers rethink their careers and examine a different approach to work/life integration. Behind the mask of productivity is an exhausted, burnt out workforce still dealing with the social and emotional upheaval of the last 18 months. This environment is driving a wave of resignations in the US, and it’s likely the ‘Great Resignation’ trend will impact Australia and the Pacific region too.

To retain and attract talent, organisations must change the way they approach mental health – looking beyond ad-hoc wellbeing initiatives to provide real practical tools and support.

Adding another level of complexity for HR is implementing the many legal and compliance processes to protect employees’ health and wellbeing. This can range from communicating a vaccine strategy to the implementation of updated safe workplace policies.

For large organisations, establishing a system to manage vaccination status is crucial for employees to feel safe returning to the physical workplace. Prior to implementing any kind of management solution, it’s important to establish the right approaches and build around them.

Ensuring employees are informed about new vaccination verification policies and potential solutions will help to establish buy-in and reduce friction. Employees will feel more empowered to be involved and provide feedback if they feel like they have agency over the process.

Research by��shows that organisations with clearer communication (including post COVID-19 working arrangements) are seeing increases in employee well-being and productivity. Workers who feel included in more detailed, relevant communication are nearly five times more likely to report increased productivity.

While today’s complex HR and health hurdles are incredibly difficult to navigate, they can be successfully managed with technology.

enables organisations to remain compliant with mandates while supporting employee wellbeing and empowering them to be a part of the conversation.

Designed to support a fast and safe return to the office, the Qualtrics Vaccination & Testing Manager automates confirmation of employees’ vaccination status, ongoing test results, and even screening for COVID-19 symptoms – all in one single platform. Employers can access real-time dashboards that provide a confidential employee vaccination status, negative tests, exemptions, and more—enabling leaders to make informed decisions on how to return to work and what guidelines to implement.

Solution Stack

Whatever your vaccine management solution, what COVID-19 has taught us is that changes happen fast and unexpectedly. Over the next few years, it’s highly likely that vaccination requirements, mandates, and even certifications will change — especially as the virus evolves. A flexible solution with plug-and-play capability can help organisations and governments to respond at the speed required to keep pace with these changes.

This moment is both a challenge and an opportunity for businesses to shift their organisational cultures towards greater empathy and mutual understanding.

Human experience management is truly at the forefront of where we are today in the workplace because employees expect more, and we need to deliver an incredible experience.

A culture of psychological safety is no longer a ‘nice to have’, it’s crucial in the post-pandemic workplace.

The post Why Protecting the Mental Health of Your People Has Never Been More Important appeared first on 51����India News Center.

A fireside chat brought together a panel of talent leaders, moderated by Pallavi Kapoor, Head HR- APAC, Coforge; and including Madhu Srivastava, Group CHRO, Vedanta Resources Plc, and Prashant Deo Singh, Head HR, InterGlobe Technology Quotient.

Acknowledging the pandemic’s impact on digital transformation, the panel shed light on how companies have been forced to rethink their operating models and accelerate investments in cloud technologies, AI, and automation. And reflected upon how CHROs can become the ultimate partners to accelerate digital transformation for a better EX and continuous organizational growth.

Moving Forward: HR Technology in 2021

Kicking off the discussion, Pallavi Kapoor discussed the pandemic’s massive impact on the adoption and role of HR automation across industries. And how with almost 99% of employees working from home, there has been an increased focus on the potential of HR technologies to better engage and support a virtual workforce.

“A recent ISG survey worldwide found 46% companies are now using an -x`as-a-Service (SaaS) platform. A 20% rise from what it was just two years ago. Looking to the future, the survey also found 57% of organizations expect to be using a subscription-based SaaS by 2023.”, she said.

She added, “Digital transformation is the clear mandate for organizations. It has accelerated the kind of growth that was envisaged as a 5-year journey and compressed it into a 3-month time frame.”

Making HR Agile: The Digital Transformation Journey

Detailing the digital transformation journey Vedanta Resources – one of the world’s leading diversified natural resource companies, took on during the past 2 years, Madhu Srivastava explained, “Digital transformation has been a top priority for us even before the pandemic began. But given the circumstances, we have definitely stepped on the pedal to increase the speed at which we are bringing in this transformation.”

She emphasized the rising need for digital transformation by asserting, “We strongly believe digital is the true differentiator between any two companies, in any sector. Only an organization that is going digital can enhance its productivity, increase volumes and reduce costs. It is the only way to thrive in the current scenario.”

Listing a few of the initiatives her organization took to keep up with the times, she revealed, “We started by hiring ‘Chief Digital Officers’, not only at a group but at business levels. We also formed a ‘Digital Management Committee’ for each of our businesses. These committees were assigned to continuously review the kind of transformations that can be brought into the business. Not just in terms of digital technology, but data, analytics, AI, and the whole gamut.”

“Next, we set up a “Digital Advisory Board” where we had the best of global technology experts come in and interact with our teams – to train, share knowledge and work on outcome-oriented projects with them.” She added, “We want to be known as a technology-driven company and encourage everyone, including employees, contractors, and business partners, to have tech-enabled processes.”

Speaking on how technology is being driven as the top priority on the HR front, she said, “We have already deployed technology in bits and pieces. Now, we are planning to move our end-to-end HR services online soon. Ensuring data is available for us to make decisions based on analytics.”

Touching on InterGlobe Technology’s transformation journey, Prashant Singh added, “One and a half years ago, we as a company took up digital transformation as a strategy across. Not just HR, but every function within the organization moved towards it. When the pandemic struck, this transformation was fast-forwarded.”

“Our focus has been to integrate our HR system. Previously we have had disparate vendors and modules for various systems. But we felt that integrating systems onto one single unified platform is critical for the sake of employee experience.” Elaborating on the importance of finding the right partner, he said, “Rather than jumping onto a partner and implementing ad hoc modules, it is better to spend more time researching and identifying a partner who can take care of all your business needs.”

Decoding a few key elements that can help navigate this journey successfully, Prashant summarized, “Having filters while choosing the right solution for your organization can be quite useful. During the process of getting our tech in place, we looked at viability, functionality, features, support services, and finally the cost of the solution.”

“You should also be ready as an organization before deploying the software.” He explained, “At our organization, we refreshed all our HR policies and SOPs to get the best-in-class outcomes from the solution before deploying it. It is critical in this journey to involve people from across functions and teams, and for everyone to learn and be part of the experience.”

Listing some of the challenges faced during this journey, he added, “We had a lot of legal entities which faced separate challenges. Data handling became a major concern for us there. There were also many issues relating to access rights that needed to be addressed across the organization. Finally, the pandemic itself effectively delayed our project by putting people from our team and our vendors out of action. Despite all this, our resilience and resolve helped us push forward to our ultimate goal of getting a great .”

Success Partners: Changing CHRO & CEO Dynamics

Throwing light on the increasing importance of the CHRO as a partner to the CEO, Madhu explained, “As I see it, the CFO and CHRO work as two hands to the CEO. And all three roles are critical in driving the business towards the right direction.”

“As CHRO, our role is to think of ourselves as partners to the CEO. Not just for executing but also as part of the strategic decision making and enabling the CEO to make those decisions. Starting from the business plan to organizational design, the CHRO has to partner with the CEO to translate the vision for the company into a roadmap that can be executed to deliver expected outcomes.”

On the rising role technology plays in this evolution, she said, “The CEO looks up to the CHRO for advice while making critical decisions. CHROs now have the added responsibility to ensure they are enabled and equipped – in terms of data, analytics, knowledge of trends, etc.”

Adding a key perspective to the discussion, Pallavi mentioned, “Human experience is a complete experience that a person has with a brand, both digitally and physically.” She emphasized, “Most organizations and customers are undergoing digital transformation, and it is important that the entire element is viewed together, integrated across, and then taken forward to create people experiences that take them to the next level. HR must be agile and make faster decisions. And technology is taking the front seat in bringing all of it together to ensure a seamless employee experience.”

Commenting on how technology has taken center stage even in job descriptions, Prashant added, “Even when hiring for HR, we look for people who have experience in implementing HRMO solutions. Work-from-home has been institutionalized. People are moving out of office spaces, and technology is taking up a major role in integrating employees and consumers. HR is having dialogues with CEOs & CXOs on roles can be permanently moved out of the office and technologies that can enable employees and customers.”

Elaborating further on the critical role data and analytics plays in business success, he observed, “Today everyone in the c-suite is looking for visual analytics in real-time. We can’t have HR spending precious hours creating excel sheets and presentations for reviews. We would rather take them directly to a system visual analytics, where they can view realistic data directly. That’s the kind of absolute visibility into predictive analytics that c-level executives expect, and that’s what the digital platform delivers.”

Amplifying Employee Experience: What does the future hold

Talking about the future course of their transformation journey, panel members agreed that to unlock true value in this digital journey, it is important to ensure that it is adopted across functions within the organizations.

Sharing plans, Madhu mentioned, “In terms of HR, Vedanta is ready to launch its 1^st phase in October this year, and by next year, we will be 100% online. What is important to us and we will continue with, is bringing in external partners- to not just help us get the system in place, but to guide us as we adopt technology for a better employee experience. We also keep the internal communication that helps us communicate the value and benefits technology brings into the lives of our people.”

“We definitely want to live in a digital world where everything is available online, so we can stop making excel sheets and PowerPoint slides. Instead, we can just walk into a meeting and log into a system where all data is available and reviews can be conducted directly on the system.”

Recounting the takeaways from the past 2 years, Prashant added, “With technology taking center-stage, boundaries have all but disappeared. One should keep in mind that while the beauty of an integrated tech platform is extremely important, instead of having a bolt-on system we should integrate APIs wherever possible.” Ending with some critical advice, he said “In this entire technology race, we should not lose the human touch.”

Pallavi summed it up perfectly when she said, ” The human touch can’t be taken away, whether it’s the people, HR leaders or the HR platform, the guiding principle is that we remain agile and flexible, and that will be the future forward for all of us.”

Check out more posts:

Evolving Employee Experience from HCM to HXM in Hybrid 2.0 – 51����India News Center

CEO’s Perspectives on the Changing People Paradigm���� – 51����India News Center

Meeting Business Priorities in a Hybrid World – 51����India News Center

Thriving in the Vaccine Economy Through Human Experience – 51����India News Center

The post Code to Cracking the Talent, Technology & Cost Trifecta appeared first on 51����India News Center.

The event brought together talent leaders for a Power Panel Discussion to shine the spotlight on the ongoing shift from HCM to in the vaccine economy. Moderated by Cindy Scholts, Virtual Learning and Development Manager, People Matters, the panel included – Shuchika Sahay, Global Chief Human Resources Officer, Firstsource; Nitinchandra Shende, Head – People Operations and Corporate Initiatives and Ashish Mittal, Head of People Function, Aviva India.

While reflecting on the current work scenario, the panel answered some critical questions on how human experience management principles will occupy center stage as tools to engage employees and how they are redefining EX to align business outcomes for a hybrid world.

The shift from HCM to HXM

Amit Mittal: The shift was already happening, especially in Indian organizations. What these last 18 months have done is put this shift on steroids and fast-rolled it across sectors. Identifying employee needs and managing them is an essential part of staying competitive in the market.

It is said, “people share a good experience with a friend, but a bad one with the whole world”. As an organization, this has driven us to focus on people who are leaving to ensure that they have a good experience because we see them as our employee champions.

Another shift that has happened within organizations is – instead of thinking of our employees as a captive population, we have started looking at our employees like our customers. Previously, we used segmentation sparsely, e.g., as part of the dashboard building process, but now we are refocusing on segmentation to find different ways to improve employee experiences.

It’s become abundantly clear that one size doesn’t fit all. And it is essential to get in touch with the ground reality for each employee to understand their needs and take up initiatives and interventions that support them individually.

Nitinchandra Shende: From an HCM point of view, during the pre-pandemic era, we all had standard operating procedures (SOP’s) in place for processes and, everything was documented in a pre-determined manner. The pandemic shattered all boundaries within which we previously operated, creating chaos in terms of how we live through each of these events/experiences.

When the first lockdown was announced, the primary priority was to ensure the safety of every employee and enable their contributions. As the scenario evolved, we experienced more and more life events that we could not have imagined in the past. None of these events/experiences were a part of our SOP’s till March 2020. But we had to start looking at them from an organizational perspective. This brought about the shift from procedural to experience-focused aspects and made it essential for us to start looking for solutions and processes that are more individualistic and relevant to the current needs.

Shuchika Sahay: There are a lot of interesting shifts that have been accelerated – not just because of the pandemic but due to a lot of other aspects as well. Technology, for example, has been accelerating a lot of things in the societal space. Digitization has simplified even the most basic of processes. So now, when it comes to organizational processes, we look for the same kind of convenience.

Another critical shift has been the “rise of the state”. To control the pandemic’s spread and manage its wide-ranging impacts the state has demonstrated a critical role in shaping responses, strategies, and approaches in tackling problems at a more individual level. When states act on account of employees, we see a shift in terms of employee behavior itself. And this brings with it some level of pressure on HR and company leaders to take a closer look at the nuances and need for personalization.

Thirdly, the pandemic has also exposed some glaring gaps in organizational offerings. E.g., DNI has been a critical aspect of the organizational construct for the past two decades. But it is only during the pandemic, that organizations have realized that most of their female employees are the primary caregivers, and they hardly have any infrastructure in place to support them or their needs. Organizations are slowly but surely making an effort to step back and find new ways to tackle problems that previously flew under the radar.

HR is no longer an internal function. Social media has given everyone an outlet for a new kind of employee activism and feedback. Adding to the pressure on HR to shift focus on creating better employee experiences. They no longer have the luxury to design processes from a single perspective and should take into account the end-user perspective.

Key areas of focus for redesigning EX

Nitin: In the pre-pandemic world, we could generalize a lot of things and could easily divide employee lifecycles into various phases – recruitment, onboarding, etc. And simply build experiences around these certain events. As we live through the pandemic things have changed. From an HR perspective there are 3 things that we need to look at in particular:

• Listening to our employees – Every employee is going through a different life experience and the more we listen, the more we will understand what this experience means to them.
• Creating a culture of trust – With the current “work-from-anywhere” scenario, it is all about written communication. This causes a certain level of limitation in understanding expectations. We need a culture of trust so we don’t end up creating perception-driven behaviors but work together as a team.
• Making HR processes agile – While we have little to no experience and SOP’s for most scenarios we are experiencing today. We need to have 1 rule book that guides our response to every scenario in an unbiased manner while recognizing the need for agility in work processes.

Amit: ��While we all talk about change, but as companies, we are the worst at making changes when we have a set of processes in place for each experience. While trying to redesign for the last 18 months we focused on listening to the needs of our people and quickly adapting initiatives that help them. E.g., to help our employees through the grief and chaos of the second wave, we quickly put together what we called a “Happiness Campaign”. Instead of focusing on productivity and sales, this campaign brought to employees practical scientific ways to address their state of mind, helping them bring back their happier selves to work.

Listening without action does not help anyone. It is the actions taken with the right intent that truly bring about the shift needed in the organization and its people.

Technology’s role in redesigning EX

Shuchika: To think about it we can’t even imagine a life without technology anymore. Technology today holds the key to creating a global workforce, to human interactions and connections. Technology has proved to be a very capable enabler for every process you need to design to scale, hyper-personalize, and deliver on time.

Our organization has defined its cloud strategy, and one of the things HR is doing is leading by embracing that’s cloud-led. It is important to access well-defined, benchmarked processes that you can drive within, to help your organization move forward and be more people-centric. The biggest benefit of technology has been its ability to define experiences and scale them across the organization.

Another key benefit has to be the kind of data analytics that is now possible due to technology. Today it is possible to analyze data and get answers from it almost immediately. This is a great boon to CEOs and decision-makers and gives organizations a competitive edge they didn’t have before.

The pandemic has also increased our digital muscle like never before and pushed our talent strategy beyond physical boundaries. Today we are no longer wedded to a location, we can hire talent from anywhere in the world.

Leveraging EX to thrive in a vaccine economy

Nitin: Even before the vaccine economy, HR’s focus on business outcomes never entirely shifted and it never will. On the contrary, HR’s role in enabling business outcomes has become even more important than it ever was. E.g., during the first wave through March 2020, we had a lot of new joinees in a dilemma about the validity of their joining contract and if they will even be honored. We resolved this by revamping our complete onboarding process. What was traditionally a once-a-week event has now turned into an anytime-anywhere onboarding system that simplifies and eases these anxieties.

As an HR function in the vaccine economy, we should not get mixed up in whether our actions should focus on ‘customers-first or employees first. Within our organization, we use a phrase – “customers first, but employees always”. We use this frequently to navigate any ambiguity we have during any type of conflict resolution and while aligning all processes and practices around it.

1 best tip to thrive in the vaccine economy

Amit: Be empathetic to people and understand what they are saying.

Shuchika: Co-create! HR longer has the luxury to be a function that designs alone. Instead, we need to build communities across the organization to deliver experiences.

Nitin: Empathy is the key to surviving and thriving in these uncertain times.

Check out more posts:

Evolving Employee Experience from HCM to HXM in Hybrid 2.0 – 51����India News Center

CEO’s Perspectives on the Changing People Paradigm���� – 51����India News Center

Meeting Business Priorities in a Hybrid World – 51����India News Center

The post Thriving in the Vaccine Economy Through Human Experience appeared first on 51����India News Center.

2020 ushered us into a new way of working. Organizations are now moving to investing and setting up infrastructures to provide a superior work experience to their people– Hybrid 2.0. 51����organized the 51����HR Connect 2021 to throw some much-needed light on how we can design employee experiences for the hybrid 2.0 world that are holistic, progressive, agile, technology-driven, and most importantly, more human!��

Jason Averbook, CEO & Co-Founder, Leapgen, conducted a workshop��delving��into the ideal way��of carving a winning employee experience strategy. Where he provided a step-by-step guide to��planning a pandemic-proof EX strategy that��transforms��employees into growth partners��as we transition to newer work models��for our brave, evolving hybrid world of work.��

The last couple of years has changed the world of work, forever.��HR has had to greatly accelerate its pace of developing and implementing experience strategies and tools��for employee experiences��that have��become critical to driving impact for organizations.����

Getting to Hybrid 2.0��

Transformation is a word that people bring up a lot, but not many truly understand what it means. The word “trans” means radical change and “formation” means how we do things, in this case, ‘how we work’. In��the world where we have lived in��there are 2 types of “trans” – there is technology transition and there is true transformation. True transformation comes only by following three��key��steps –��Strategy, Deployment & ROI (Run, Optimize, Innovate).��

The��concept of Hybrid 2.0 needs to be attacked in a very systemic way. And that starts with developing the right Digital People Strategy. Deploying the strategy is the next step and requires a very large effort that includes programs, change, adaptation, unlearning, organizational��model��and it may also at some point involve the implementation of technology.����

Implementation is a part of the deployment. A lot of organizations are great at implementation but not deployment and that’s where a lot of strategies fall apart.����

Once the strategy has been deployed, the third step is to think about how to sustain the value we get from it. This is where ROI or RUN, OPTIMIZE, INNOVATE comes into play.����

The World��of Work��in��2021��

In the world we live in today, building strategies is��really hard.��Previously, there was a point in time where we could make 5 –��3 year��strategies/plans. But in today’s day��and age of��uncertainty, there is a much higher need for agile strategies – one’s that can shift, flex, contract based on the things happening around us.����

We are human inside of work as much as we are outside of it. In the world of HXM, this means that we need to be��listening at all times��to the signals and the people and react with our strategies intact.������

We need to respond by going to our core –��one that makes us all��human, and��think about recovery��by focusing on��being human-centered.��Because people are our most important assets and how we make them feel is what is going to allow us to get through these changing times.����

Some of the impacts we��are seeing on the NOW of work:��

• Human-centered recovery strategy��

• Need for systems and tools to drive efficacy��
• Hybrid work is not a fad and will be here forever��
• HR��to act��with agility and response-ability��
• Digital & distributed models of work��
• Concerted policy efforts��to drive systemic change��

• Optimism��and��uncertainty��at the same time��
• Attracting and retaining labor now looks vastly different��

Right now, HR has the largest opportunity that it has ever had – to shape the NOW of work.����

Digital��Equation for Success��

Remarking on the pandemic’s effect on every aspect of work and life, Satya Nadella, CEO��of, Microsoft said, “We saw two years of digital transformation in two months”. The question that now remains is if this is also the case with the HR function?��

Digital transformation is meant to touch everything from marketing to sales to everything done in Human Resources. The shift from HCM to HXM is essentially about transformation and the need for every HR organization in the world to digitally transform.��Most people think that digital��is all about��technology, but that’s not true. Digital is not��just technology, rather��it��is a component of��it.����

It is time we rethink how to better design and deliver services. This��starts��by bringing back��the focus on understanding the purpose of our organization and how we want to serve with it.��HR leaders have put this purpose into action by digitally transforming their functions. They can do this by focusing on 4 key areas:��

1. 35% of digital success comes from ensuring��you have a clear, concise, understood��mindset��that is��aligned to the purpose��and has strong measures of success.��

1. 30%��is��designing for the audience��of NOW.��This comes from truly��knowing��your people- not just skills and qualifications but��what allows them to bring their best selves to work.��

1. 25%��comes from��designing��journeys.��Processes generate data, but journeys create feelings and connections��between people and their purpose.��

1. 10% of success comes from the technology��deployed (not just implemented) to support the people and processes.��Essentially acting��as��the��fuel needed to create journeys.��

Digital transformation is made up of each of these components. Leaving out even one of these reduces the effectiveness��of��the overall transformation.��

Ultimately when we think about HXM, what we need to do is LISTEN & ACT. Listen to the people and act on it immediately – not once a year on an engagement survey, but NOW! As organizations and HR leaders we need to do a better job at listening, to truly understand the human side of our workforce.����

Experience Needs to��be:��Shift to B to Me��

The��real goal of HXM and true transformation is the shift from a B2B focus (where the tools��used��are in place to make��the��HR��function��more efficient) to a B2Me focus. This shift will enable employees and managers with tools that make them successful – not the HR but the organization.����

B2Me means personalization, the kind that can only be achieved by truly knowing our people. We need to build workforce tools that not only connect people but build connections between the people. And we need to do this with a concept called –��Hands, Heads & Hearts.��

��

The formula that defines experience is simple:��

Transaction + Interaction = Experience��

Adding��interaction to transactions enriches it to create an experience. The interaction is where the trust is built. The Hands, Heads & Hearts concept is a simple way to think about how we need to shift work as part of the digital transformation.����

Machines are exceptional at hands work, or what is called RAD (Repeatable, Auditable & Documented) work and that is where we should leverage technology. People, on the other hand, are good at the heart’s work – at building connections. It is time we start building functions in a way where the machines are doing the transactional work, while people focus on building stories around the data provided by the machines.����

The True Value of Digital��

Digital is not about eliminating the human element, rather it enhances it.����Work no longer looks the way it used to 2 years ago, and that’s why HR can’t act the same way it did previously.��HR��needs��to become��agile in these fragile times.����

In a recent survey, Future Workforce found that if HR could double its budget, HR leaders from most organizations would like to allocate these additional funds to improve the employee experience (44%) and existing technology (37%).����

Before the pandemic, we used to have 2 types of experiences – Physical & Digital/Technical. Today, we have only one��–��the “Workforce or Human Experience”.����To achieve��this experience��to the fullest, we��have to��stop implementing technology and move to deploying human capabilities.����

Adding technology doesn’t change the HR function or its interaction with the workforce – but it��definitely helps��with it. However, we��have to��remember that technology without change is nothing.��And for people to adopt transformation, organizations will have to adapt.����

Human-Centered Design Leverages Personas��

You cannot talk about HXM, without talking about humans, and the voice of the employees/customers.��Deploying technology was��previously��done as a single spread. This��approach��doesn’t work anymore. We need to meet people where they are with an empathetic��lens to the work they do and how they do it.����

We need to create personas by listening to people who seem like the persona and study them more carefully to understand- the best ways to communicate with them, their needs and expectations, roadblocks, etc. When we understand a persona at that level, we can deploy messages in a way that meets the persona where they are and with what they need.����

Benefits of personas:��

• Companywide understanding of your workforce��

• Encourages empathy-driven design����
• Digestible workforce segments��
• Uncover workforce needs/common frustrations��
• Test, refine, and improve experiences��
• Anticipate future opportunities��

When we have this kind of insight into our workforce, we can take the “Whole Person Approach”. This approach looks at every aspect of the employee – Physical, Emotional, Social, Spiritual, and Intellectual to��design solutions that��attack��every��problem from all angles.����

COVID has given HR the passport to reset, rethink, reimagine, and realize that the next normal is probably going to be no normal that we are used��to��and that growth is coming at a very large scale. We need to plan and prepare for this by shifting focus from using technology for transition to using it for transformation.�� And embrace the fact that everything about the digital workforce & HXM is now HR’s responsibility.��

HR needs to now deliver experiences, not technology – solutions, not toolkits; enable not monitor; people capabilities, not technology features! And all of this��has to��be done while considering the measurable outcomes of the business.����

One of the most magical things about the shift from HCM to HXM is realizing that technology is the fuel that will allow us to drive to what the NOW of work is.����

Check out more posts:

CEO’s Perspectives on the Changing People Paradigm����

Meeting Business Priorities in a Hybrid World

The post Evolving Employee Experience from HCM to HXM in Hybrid 2.0 appeared first on 51����India News Center.

To get a CEO’s perspective on the evolving paradigm of the talent agenda the event held an exclusive CEO Dialogue. Chaired by Ester Martinez, CEO & Editor – in – Chief, People Matters, this esteemed panel included thought leaders from leading organizations –��Kulmeet��Bawa, President & Managing Director, 51����Indian Subcontinent,��Dilip��Shanghvi, Managing Director, Sun Pharma, and C. P.��Gurnani, CEO, Tech Mahindra.����

While discussing the COVID situation, the power-packed panel revisited the talent transformation agenda and reflected on how it has once again become the center of board room concern. They acknowledged the role of technology in helping businesses reinvent themselves to continuously realize value��as they��inch from recovery to growth.��

Following are the key��highlights of this insightful discussion:��

Revisiting��The��Talent��Agenda��Through��The��Pandemic��Lens��

Kicking off the discussion with his thoughts on COVID, C.P.��Gurnani��termed it the accelerator for one of the greatest workforce transformations of our lifetimes.��Emphasizing��the��lasting impact of recent��changes to the ways we work, exercise, shop, learn, communicate, or where we work, he stated��“HR��today means how it affects me as an individual and my 13,000 associates.��“��

Reflecting on the��initial phase of the lockdown, he mentioned “The first few months were about arranging chairs, tables, renting out hotels near workplaces and creating a secure environment.��It��was��like��mechanically responding to an emergency��–��creating war rooms to provide essentials.��But very soon we realized that transformation is essential as much for��customers, for managers��to manage a remote workforce, and as much for the workforce to balance their personal & business lives.��Technology has provided the fabric and the��answer, but��knowing what the challenges are and being able to address them is the need of the hour.”����������

Kulmeet��shared, “The world has��changed��and we are grappling with certain issues. While we miss the coffee corners, office huddles, personal connections, and travel, we��have��witnessed��a prominent��silver lining in the form of much higher levels of productivity��and a lot more time with our customers and teams, which is phenomenal to me.”����

Commenting with his perspective of the future of talent agenda, he added��“There��has been a clear emergence of a��brand-new��culture, that demands a��lot more agility and nimbleness. From a talent perspective, this means employees need to possess a lot more digital dexterity and mental resilience.��We as leaders & HR as an organization will need to be a lot more conscious of how we bring in this new talent and hone them to be successful. Secondly,��the changes we are��seeing today require a whole new paradigm in terms of leadership. We need to break away from the traditional hierarchical chain-of-command model��to cater��to the huge millennial and Gen Z workforce��that we are bringing on board��and balance their need for instant gratification.”��������

Speaking on the challenges faced by employees,��Dilip��Sanghvi added, “Another important challenge we faced was – because we have people working across different time zones, the boundaries between personal and professional time were blurry. We had to set clear expectations, otherwise, people are left with no time to work, guide recharge or relax.”����

Creating��Positive��Employee��Experiences��That��Enable��Productivity����

The more employers focus on what’s best for their people, the greater each employee’s experience will be. This means actively catering to your people’s needs and, more importantly, actually caring for them.����

On SAP’s and his personal experience��as an “on-screen leader”��over the last 13 months,��Kulmeet��said,��“Employees��today truly trust organizations that care for them.��At��51����our topmost priority has��always��been the health and safety of our employees and the broader community.��I am touched by the spirit today, where I see every 51����India employee��is��going beyond their charter by miles to deliver on the shared vision that we set up for ourselves as teams.��“����

Commenting on the need to create moments of truth that holistically support employees, C.P.��Gurnani��added, “This war has been imposed on us and has meant that��we��need to get into a wartime General mode. But you can’t be a��General who��is not concerned about an employee’s spiritual, emotional, physical, and mental health.��Today more than ever, the future of work is the future of worker well-being.”����

��

In an effort to help employees manage the stresses of��work-life integration,��Tech Mahindra��has��appointed “Wellness Officers”. Clearly communicating the company’s intention address its people’s emotional and physical requirements.��He added,��“COVID��has been a method of redefining business. My business is executed by people, they are my flag bearers and if I��can help them to redefine themselves, I will automatically be redefining my business and winning the hearts of my customers.��“��

Echoing the sentiment across the panel,��Dilip��said, “The last few quarters have been some of our best. This is the result of the significant contributions of our employees��and��helps us to look at business very differently, and��learn continuously.”����

The Role of Technology��as a Strategic Enabler����

Technology is rewriting the rules. In the hybrid workplace, it��is no longer playing a supporting role.��Instead,��it has proven itself to be the��critical��driving force enabling employees to achieve��overall operational��success.����

On technology’s increasingly important role,��Dilip��Sanghvi��said,��“The��greatest contribution��of technology in improving processes has been its ability to remove subjectivity from evaluating performances. Making it a transparent process��that rewards people based on their contributions and success in an unbiased manner.��The speed with which technology has enabled us to work in this changing environment is only going to accelerate.”����

Reflecting on��its critical role��in underpinning the talent strategic changes seen in the past year, C.P.��Gurnani��pointed out,��“The shift towards digitalization has been accelerated by a minimum of 5 -7 years.��I’m convinced that if��employees��had��not��embraced technology the way they did, some of the results we are seeing would never have been possible.��It is employees that grew, learned, and used the tools that were made available.”����

“As employers and company leaders��we��will have to continue to invest in our people��and��give them a learning environment, where they can��create a��significant��impact��not only in the short-term but also in the medium and long-term.”����

Talking about the emergence of a new mindset and its importance in the experience era,��Kulmeet��added, “While we talk about digital-first, I have witnessed that the digital-only strategy is coming up rather quickly. The questions we get asked today are no longer about the “Why”, but about the “How?” – How do we do this faster? Or holistically? How do we do this cloud-first so that we are more agile?”��

In the “experience era” of ubiquitous, personalized experiences in the online world, technology is facilitating a real-time merger between science and art, between content and data. Commenting on��the need��for a renewed focus on fostering human connection, he explained,��“While��most leadership tenets remain the same, some like the need for communication, enhanced need for empathy, and authenticity from leaders has gone up from a technology standpoint. We must humanize ourselves through various technological channels and forge the kind of bonds that��help us grow closer as people.”��

Fostering Human Connections��in��a Changing��Workplace��

“We need to nurture a culture of trust within our organizations, by rolling out trust-based models. At SAP, we are in the process of implementing an initiative called “Pledge2Flex”.�� We hope it will help us dive deep into a flexible workplace model, agnostic of geographic boundaries and time zones.��It is time we ensure that the amount of flexibility should move at the same pace as what the world is demanding.”��

Discussing the needs of a changing workforce,��Dilip��mentioned, “Managing the new millennials needs a new mindset. A transparent model that gives them freedom, respects their abilities, trusts their judgments while rewarding contributions, and gives honest feedback can be the best way��into the future of work.”��

Concluding the session with some advice on��creating��a high-performing workplace, C.P.��Gurnani��suggested, “Managers need to adopt a parental style of leadership, where you understand your employee will need some help to uphold values, his/her contributions and his/her relationship to their own family. I believe it is our job to keep the workplace happy and��I can only do this by communicating and listening.��All my advice��boils down to 3 words – Listen. Understand. Act.����

Also read about the keynote address at HR Connect 2021��

The post CEO’s Perspectives on the Changing People Paradigm���� appeared first on 51����India News Center.

However, the rules of engagement and employee experience have changed drastically in the new normal. A����states that��employee engagement decreased by 2 points, from 22% in 2019 to 20% in 2020. And lack of engagement cost the global economy US$8.1 trillion in lost productivity each year, according to Gallup.

So, how can human resource teams understand EX challenges and anticipate trends in an increasingly unpredictable work climate? How do organizations prepare themselves at a time when competition for talent is high and employee turnover is a huge risk? What does 2022 have in store for CHROs and HR managers as they seek to ensure EX that caters to these massive shifts in workplace and workforce dynamics? Let’s take a look: ​

1. Enhancing employee engagement in the remote/hybrid workplace

A ��that organizations that offer exceptional employee experiences also witness motivated employees who do their best work resulting in:

• 17% higher productivity
• 21% higher profitability
• 81% higher customer satisfaction

Higher engagement is related to lower attrition rates, and the ability to retain and drive top performers. And while eliciting feedback, reporting, and surveys is difficult in the physical office environment, it becomes even more complicated in the remote/hybrid model.

What organizations need is a more individualized, data-led approach to create meaningful and holistic experiences that understand how people learn, what motivates them, and what they need to be their best.

In this new experience-led paradigm, HR and employee experience play an even more significant role. The overarching HR strategy must not only support company goals but also align employee’s wants, needs, and expectations with these goals.

This is where technology can enable HR. SAP’s����transforms traditional HR functions into opportunities to drive engagement and productivity by helping HR leaders understand the key drivers of employee engagement.

2. Improving productivity and aligning IT to EX and business goals

From security patches to inadequate tech support, poor IT experiences can be frustrating for employees. IT teams invest millions of dollars in technology and services to boost employee productivity and work enablement, but it’s equally important to assess whether IT resources and services are aligned to employee needs.

Improving digital employee experiences is key to a more engaged and productive workforce. Organizations can gain visibility and insight into digital experience gaps by leveraging data and transactional feedback loops to gauge the effectiveness of tech implementations.

Leveraging solutions such as����for IT enables CHROs with customized data exports, real-time dashboards, AI-powered text analytics, and digital intercepts to ensure that technology investments and services meet the needs of employees. These insights help plan future projects and also mitigate implementation risks for future technology investments.

3. Managing employee lifecycles in the remote, geo-distributed workplace

Maintaining visibility and transparency across the employee lifecycle – right from onboarding to exit – needs feedback and insights at key touchpoints so that leaders can act in real time to drive improvement.

This is even more crucial in the remote, geo-distributed workplace. Using critical inflection points across each stage of the employee lifecycle can help businesses optimize their onboarding process, reduce attrition, and help create the next set of leaders.

The pandemic’s impact on the economy and workplace has led to a shift in the HR lifecycle to meet the evolving organizational needs. HR will need to increasingly find ways to support the business vision. The solution lies in a holistic employee lifecycle management that provides leaders with onboarding and exit insights, and metrics on ramp-up time and productivity. Using these insights, HR leaders can gain actionable feedback on the root cause of attrition and design action plans to improve EX and retain top performers.

��offers breakthrough tools that provide continuous feedback so that HR leaders can listen to employees in real time. With features such as immersive onboarding, socialization and acculturation, and a richer ongoing engagement, CHROs can design a culture that’s required to set up teams for success.

4. Comprehensive Performance Analysis

In recent years, there has been a marked focus on helping employees grow, and understand their own strengths and weaknesses, to visualize their career road map. Accurate and well-rounded performance analysis considers the big picture with multi-rater assessment and 360-degree feedback that helps both employees and managers with rich, qualitative data.

Performance analysis remains one of the key challenges for Human Resource Business Partners (HRBPs). Poor implementation of performance analysis tools or lack of 360-degree feedback leads to unwanted attrition, employee dissatisfaction, and loss of motivation and productivity.

360-degree feedback is not just an assessment tool, it is a development handbook that helps with career planning, promotions, and succession processes. But not all 360-degree feedback methodologies are equal. CHROs and HRBPs need a data-driven approach to drive individual performance and implement talent management reliably.

Navigating today’s complex and increasingly unpredictable business climate requires more personalized touchpoints and promotion of the ‘feedback’ culture. With individualized reports, rich qualitative feedback, and gap analysis, CHROs and managers can design the right career road��map and assess performance effectively.

5. Understanding Employee Expectations and Satisfaction

Benefits and rewards are an important part of the employee experience equation. Yet, navigating employee demands becomes complex as their expectations and perception of benefits evolve over time. What was considered a perk (for instance office transport and cafeteria) a couple of years ago, is now merely an essential.

Do the benefits you offer actually improve the EX? How do you design the optimal benefits package driven by data and analytics?

Traditional approaches in designing employee benefits packages are neither scalable nor scientific. What HR leaders need is an effective tool that designs the package based on employee feedback, and automated conjoint analysis. For instance, Google, which has been consistently voted ‘The Best Place to Work’, found that employee satisfaction rose by 37% with the help of employee support initiatives that go beyond financial rewards.

A fair compensation system that uses technology to reward performance based on merit helps in employee retention and motivating underperforming employees. Managers and CHROs need a system that links employee feedback and expectations to operational data if they are to design an accurate, cutting-edge compensation system.

��is a result of years of research into how employees work, what makes them happy, and what they need from their managers and employers to be fully engaged. It enables HR leaders to capture the finer nuances of employee information and performance so that managers can make data-led, fact-based decisions.

Clearly, the seismic shift in how we work and where we work presents business leaders with an opportunity to rethink employee experience. With advancements in people analytics, behavioral science, and AI-driven insights, CHROs can now handle employee experience in a more personalized and dynamic way. The future may seem uncertain, but a technology- and data-led approach to employee experience can enhance workforce productivity and enable predictability to navigate uncertainty and ambiguity.

The post 5 Employee Experience Challenges in 2022 You Must Prep for Now appeared first on 51����India News Center.

According to research from��, sponsored by SAP, 35% of midsize businesses across India plan to stagger the number of employees in their workplace at once for the foreseeable future. However, the study suggests growing concern over the need for investment and more aggressive adoption of specific technologies to remain competitive with their peers and larger competitors.

For companies with limited resources, capital, and time, this gap in the employee experience can feel overwhelming. Short-term needs for dramatic change often take precedence over long-term talent strategies. Meanwhile, little mindshare and money are left to invest in advanced applications – such as guided decision-making and process automation – that provide the fast, informed, and human-centric flow of their everyday work that their workforce wants.

So how can growing businesses provide employees with the tools they’re ready to adopt in a financially viable manner? By incrementally modernizing the work experience with cloud solutions as needs arise.

Incremental modernization drives employee success

One prime example of midsize businesses adopting this line of thinking in my local region is��, based in Gurgaon. Having grown more than 30% within a year after a major acquisition, the company had a rapidly expanding workforce and needed to integrate many inherited systems and a different organizational culture.

To standardize processes, increase transparency, and enhance the employee experience, PI Industries integrated its HR processes on a common, cloud-based HR platform. This decision replaced disparate on-premise systems and manual processes and provided a central repository for all employee data, a single source of truth, and enhanced reporting capabilities.

Going from little to no control over recruiting, onboarding, and other HR activities to a fast, paperless, unified, and highly transparent experience, PI Industries is better equipped to address gaps in its HR processes. The company can identify skills gaps, roll out targeted training to strengthen competency in critical areas, and develop talent in meaningful ways. Additionally, reviews are completed on schedule, and approximately 50 new hires are onboarded each month – even during India’s government-mandated COVID-19 lockdown restrictions.

This cloud-based approach empowers growing companies like PI Industries to commit to an ongoing transformation strategy that places the needs of their people front and center – which is a considerable asset and competitive differentiator. And no, this doesn’t mean that they need to implement 200 new functionalities and tools and 15 different ways to customize their user experience like a large enterprise does.

While new ways of working demand new skills and digital capabilities, employees still desire more streamlined, flexible, and productive approaches to getting work done – no matter their location, job type, and personal situation. A complete solution is needed, but it needs to scale as business needs change, growth expands, and requirements shift to handle fluctuating bandwidth, evolving constraints, and increasing limitations.

Then, with the guidance of a partner, organizations can determine the capabilities and solutions needed and the optimal timing of their adoption to seize opportunities and mitigate risk in meaningful ways. For example, partners can craft a digital transformation road map and help ensure stable and scalable solutions to meet the business’s strategic objectives. Furthermore, they can support process standardization and simplification across the organization’s operations while harmonizing and digitalizing end-to-end processes across all functional areas.

Gradual digital maturity fuels continuous growth

Most companies may be complacent with their current technology and ability to navigate a changing work environment. Still, the daunting task of recovering from a pandemic in the months and years ahead requires much more. And for most midsize businesses, this challenge means overcoming a digital divide created by deploying applications used by competitors and addressing one-off, short-term needs.

Looking at their digital transformation with a long-term view and the inclusion of cloud technology, companies can build a foundation that adapts as needs change, stabilizes operations, and limits disruption. Then, over time, the work experience that employees want and need is delivered at their pace – everywhere and anywhere they need it.

and written by James Thomas, Vice President of 51����SuccessFactors – India

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A recent Oxford Economics report, “,” revealed that 47% of medium-sized companies that reported strong revenue growth over the past year prioritize the employee experience. The research suggests that creating employee experiences based on what people need to stay inspired and do their best ultimately supports the workforce agility and business resiliency needed to weather hard times.

Creating an engaged and highly productive workforce that enhances business continuity requires a profound shift in HR focus – one that moves away from simply facilitating HR-driven processes and toward delivering meaningful experiences that focus on the human factor. And it’s the practice of human experience management (HXM) that empowers such a move.

What is human experience management?

Employees are more than just assets to be managed. Employees are individuals with specific and ever-changing needs, motivations, challenges, and goals that they expect to be understood. This mindset takes shape as early as the first interaction a candidate has with an organization and continues to evolve every day after that.

The practice of HXM acknowledges this incredibly human aspect of people and work. It enables HR leaders and their teams to adopt a more agile approach by listening to employees, embracing their feedback and sentiments, and delivering programs in an iterative manner to continue to improve results.

Take, for example, the recruitment of top talent. All too often, recruiters are stuck with tasks that are highly manual, paper-intensive, and slow. Whenever they think the perfect candidate is found, a competing employer may have already hired that person with a competitive salary and benefits package.

How do recruiters effectively nurture and engage candidates in ways that build strong connections and relationships from day one? This task can be especially challenging when working tirelessly to fill 30 job openings needed to strategically move the business forward. Furthermore, they must continue to revamp their candidate experience by understanding perceptions of what’s working and what’s not.

To deliver HXM, HR leaders need to understand that they must provide intuitive tools that are more accessible and user friendly to make things more efficient, to automate tasks that were cumbersome and time-consuming in the past, and to help drive the behavioral changes and agility that businesses need today.

Why legacy HR systems cannot support HXM

If you think about it, traditional HR systems were designed for HR leaders engaged in human capital management (HCM) and responsible for acquiring, developing, and retaining top talent. This focus has led to a range of must-have capabilities that support top-down, HR-led activities, such as hiring, onboarding, development, compensation, benefits, payroll, and succession planning.

Traditional HR systems weren’t designed with the end user in mind – the employee, manager, candidate or new hire – and the capabilities needed to boost their confidence, productivity, and engagement. Since they are fundamentally transaction-focused, the technology was never optimized to capture, evaluate, or act on employee experiences or expectations.

In contrast, HXM is a different way to approach HR – where creating great experiences for people is at the center of everything.

Which technologies drive the benefits of HXM

The practice of HXM requires a dramatic shift in the design of HR software with a focus on engaging people in entirely new ways. Experiences should be redesigned to make work simpler and more seamless, as well as highly personalized and relevant.

For example, reimagined learning and development can create opportunities for every employee’s growth. Employees may be supported by conversational chatbots and machine learning-based recommendations that deliver contextual insights, suggestions, and guidance toward the right actions. By providing the tools to continuously listen to employees, medium-sized businesses can base their workforce decisions on real-time insight into where gaps exist and which steps should be taken to improve everyday employee experiences.

Technologies that enable this level of agility are transformational for medium-sized companies. Barriers that typically impede employee experience improvements – such as generational differences, difficulty scaling for growth, and obstacles hindering the evolution of organizational culture – can be removed. Doing so allows HR leaders to become more flexible as they adapt policies and programs to meet the ever-evolving needs of the workforce and the overall business.

Let’s come back to my earlier example of the recruiter with an extraordinary caseload. The entire process of posting job openings, searching for applicants, and finding, interviewing, and hiring the right candidate can be shortened to 45 days, instead of the expected 95 days. The reason is simple: technology is designed to increase recruiter efficiency by eliminating complexity while making it easy for recruiters to deliver meaningful candidates experiences at scale.

The changing role of HR and how it must continue to evolve

In recent years, HR��has undergone dynamic shifts in its��roles, functions, and overall impact in shaping organizations. Now more than ever with the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s clear that the future of HR has arrived and the time to embrace the practice of HXM is now.

Today, HR leaders are in a unique position to pave the way for a new world of work as the reigning innovator and champion of the employee experience. Just imagine the possibilities when HXM redefines employee experiences from every angle to improve adaptability, embrace change, and address human factors genuinely. Suddenly, HR technology has a new purpose: to make life at work better – for everyone.

To learn more about how to transform your operations around new technologies and human experiences that are critical to your business resilience and growth, download the Oxford Economics report, ““.

This article was original featured on , Forbes.

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