Tech drives talent retention in the hybrid age

Although the trend of ‘nomadic work’, where employ­ees can work from any­where, had been slow­ly ris­ing for the best part of a decade, the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic dras­ti­cal­ly accel­er­at­ed its trac­tion. Out of sheer neces­si­ty and sur­vival, com­pa­nies had to imme­di­ate­ly find ways to enable their employ­ees to work as pro­duc­tive­ly as pos­si­ble from home every day.

With vac­cines pro­vid­ing a wel­come exit route from the Covid-19 cri­sis, organ­i­sa­tions are now con­sid­er­ing what work mod­el they will adopt post-pan­dem­ic. Rather than return­ing to their old ways of work­ing, most are plan­ning a hybrid mod­el that empow­ers employ­ees to find the bal­ance that works for them. That could be vis­it­ing the office for col­lab­o­ra­tion and brain­storm­ing, while work­ing a few days a week from home. Some will use the office much more, some less.

The key to exe­cut­ing the hybrid mod­el effec­tive­ly is to pro­vide the right tech­nol­o­gy tools to help peo­ple be suc­cess­ful wher­ev­er they choose to be. While com­pa­nies may see this as some­thing most­ly need­ed to appease the expec­ta­tions of mil­len­ni­al work­ers, that is no longer the case, accord­ing to research by Adobe Work­front and The Cen­ter for Gen­er­a­tional Kinet­ics. Run­ning the same sur­vey before the pan­dem­ic, in Feb­ru­ary 2020, and again eight months lat­er, revealed a stark lev­el­ling of any gen­er­a­tional dig­i­tal divide.

When asked before the pan­dem­ic if they would con­sid­er leav­ing their job due to a lack of new tech­nol­o­gy, 24% of Gen X and 37% of Mil­len­ni­als said they would. Yet eight months into the great glob­al work­ing from home exper­i­ment and the research showed this had leapt to 48% of Gen X and 50% of Mil­len­ni­als – hard­ly any dif­fer­ence between the two cohorts and a very con­cern­ing stat for busi­ness lead­ers fight­ing to retain their best tal­ent.

“In trends research, we gen­er­al­ly see change hap­pen incre­men­tal­ly unless there is a sig­nif­i­cant exter­nal event,” says Jason Dorsey, pres­i­dent and co-founder of The Cen­ter for Gen­er­a­tional Kinet­ics. “With just eight months between the two stud­ies, a change of three to five per­cent­age points is sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant and worth not­ing. The fact that in some of the answers we see changes of five points, 10 points, even more, is remark­able and reflects the unusu­al speed at which the pan­dem­ic is chang­ing work, cul­tur­al and per­son­al norms.”

There’s no hid­ing from the vital­ly impor­tant role of tech­nol­o­gy in a hybrid work­force. A poor dig­i­tal strat­e­gy will quick­ly lead to an inad­e­quate employ­ee expe­ri­ence, as already demon­strat­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Despite the best inten­tions of organ­i­sa­tions to adapt to remote work­ing, the pan­ic-induced soft­ware pur­chas­ing spree trig­gered in March last year has left many with stand­alone tools and appli­ca­tions that do not con­nect with their oth­er sys­tems or data.

Recog­nis­ing the need for good tech­nol­o­gy in order to be suc­cess­ful, employ­ees are will­ing to take action if their work­place tech­nol­o­gy is lack­ing. A shock­ing per­cent­age of the UK work­force — almost half — would go as far as leav­ing their job due to frus­tra­tions with tech­nol­o­gy, Adobe Workfront’s State of Work research found. The num­ber of UK dig­i­tal work­ers who see tech­nol­o­gy as ‘very impor­tant’ to man­ag­ing their role increased by 24 points from Feb­ru­ary to Octo­ber 2020, while those who attribute it to their abil­i­ty to do their best work rose by 18 points.

“Dig­i­tal work­ers know how tech­nol­o­gy should work, and they know that it’s crit­i­cal to their abil­i­ty to be suc­cess­ful,” says Eliz­a­beth Voli­ni, exec­u­tive direc­tor, ePMO lead and PPM plat­form own­er at com­mer­cial real estate com­pa­ny JLL and con­trib­u­tor to the State of Work report. “When their employ­ers pro­vide them with sub­par tools, it’s more than an incon­ve­nience. It demon­strates that the com­pa­ny isn’t very con­cerned with either the qual­i­ty of work or the peo­ple doing the work.”

The abil­i­ty to attract and retain top tal­ent rests on the qual­i­ty of tech­nol­o­gy in an organ­i­sa­tion.
Busi­ness­es need to cre­ate col­lab­o­ra­tive, dig­i­tal work expe­ri­ences that reflect the way that work and the peo­ple doing the work are chang­ing. The right tech­nolo­gies and cul­ture are the engine for the dig­i­tal work expe­ri­ence, con­nect­ing dis­trib­uted teams and empow­er­ing them to do their best work, from any­where, using their favourite tools.

And it is not a one-size-fits-all solu­tion; cre­at­ing a per­son­alised dig­i­tal work expe­ri­ence must also become a busi­ness imper­a­tive, ensur­ing all indi­vid­u­als are enabled with the right tools to keep them engaged and con­nect­ed.

“While we’re begin­ning to emerge from the pan­dem­ic, we can expect to be in a state of per­pet­u­al change for the fore­see­able future,” says Paige Erick­son, man­ag­ing direc­tor inter­na­tion­al at Adobe Work­front, the leader in enter­prise work man­age­ment.

“Adapt­ing to this requires busi­ness lead­ers to build a dig­i­tal­ly resilient work­place where work between depart­ments and across the busi­ness is opti­mised so teams can work remote­ly and at speed. This requires a cen­tral solu­tion that gives work­ers full vis­i­bil­i­ty across the organisation’s strat­e­gy. Only then can they make informed data-dri­ven deci­sions to reach that strat­e­gy.”

In the hybrid mod­el, busi­ness­es need to reject silos and com­mit to inte­grat­ed tech­nolo­gies that con­nect peo­ple, process and data. A work man­age­ment appli­ca­tion like Adobe Work­front serves as the con­nec­tive tis­sue between the count­less tools across an enter­prise, link­ing and pre­sent­ing data and insights from var­i­ous dif­fer­ent sys­tems to the right peo­ple at the right time, allow­ing busi­ness­es to quick­ly adapt to new ways of work­ing when need­ed.

Adobe Work­front brings enter­pris­es a ‘sys­tem of record’ that con­nects and auto­mates the essen­tial data, process­es, appli­ca­tions and resources required to effec­tive­ly run and scale the busi­ness. Its capa­bil­i­ties and inte­gra­tion tools deliv­er a sin­gle source of truth that cen­tralis­es work, ensur­ing dis­persed and cross-func­tion­al teams can exe­cute the right work from any­where.

“All employ­ees, regard­less of age, are bring­ing high­er expec­ta­tions to work because of their per­son­al dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences,” Erick­son adds. “The younger, dig­i­tal-native work­force cohorts will inevitably be the ear­ly adopters of all new tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tions, but our research shows oth­er dig­i­tal immi­grants soon fol­low.

“The pan­dem­ic has proved it’s not where we work but how we work, and the out­come of that work, that’s crit­i­cal. Present and future work requires com­pa­nies to meet employ­ees where they are, with the right process­es and tech­nolo­gies to sup­port them in becom­ing and stay­ing engaged with each oth­er and on work aligned to strate­gic objec­tives, in order to stay com­pet­i­tive and thrive in this new dig­i­tal econ­o­my.”

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it workfront.com

Pro­mot­ed by Adobe Work­front