We live in changing times, while there is a bigger and bigger focus on employee experience and certainly in the UK and US there is a battle for talent. So often, we are told that artificial intelligence will take our jobs away.
It's clear that using 1990 techniques in the 2020s just won't make the cut.
Look at how the world of business has changed in terms of diversity, the amount of tech that is "table stakes" to actually function. Being able to use Powerpoint, Word, Email, Slack, social media. The need to understand our own roles and responsibilities in terms of leadership, how we work with other people and respect them.
Some of the people I've worked with in the past and their behaviours of what they thought "good behaviour" looked like, they would soon now end up under discipline, be fired or end up a tribuneral. So how can we make sure we are using the technology we have to make our employee efficiency the most effective and efficient? How can we make sure we get getting the most from the assets we have?
For all employees have a sense of purpose must be the number one motivation?
Doing something that you believe in and working with people that help drive that passion.
The best thing to support this, isn't a new cloud system, Blockchain, IOT, data analytics or whatever the tech suppliers are selling this week. It's a culture of collaboration and a set of processes that support each employee, but also supports our fellow employee.
There are issues in the workforce that can be sorted now. How do we get our teams to work together in a frictionless way?
How do we increase the employee experience? How do we reduce cost at the same time?
How do we support all employees?
How do we get the best talent and before the competition?
How do we retain the talent we have?
This can all be enhanced using social media. What do I mean?
Like Health and Safety, Diversity and Inclusion, Sexual Harassment, etc, Human Resource Leaders can no longer hide from the fact that employees use social media and a business now needs to recognize this and rather hide from it and pretend it does not exist, they have to embrace it and proactively support it.
If we look at Simon Kemp's Q4 Digital Snapshot
https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2019-q4-global-digital-statshot
There are 3.75 Billion people in the world active on social media. Your staff are on it, your alumni are on it and your future employees are on it.
So here's a thing.
Why don't we start using social? Why don't empower people to use it and use it for our own advantage?
How do I mean?
We can use social to support maternity returners, make them feel welcome and get them contributing quicker. In fact we can use social to enhance the employee experience across the business, supporting new starters enabling them to contribute faster. We can also use it to get salespeople to contribute faster. This, often is a game changer and the business case for this change in business.
Empowering your staff on social will also enable you to get access to the talent faster. It will probably even reduce the amount you spend on recruiters and job adverts. It might even make you the employer of choice in your industry. This again is often a business case, based on the savings.
But emphasizing the employee experience, social is often a driver to help retain employees and impacting on the recruitment process.
Finally we would expect a 25% increase in employee efficiency in using social. That's 25% more employees for free! Again, another business case.
As a new CHRO you could increase efficiency, reduce costs, reduce the cost of recruitment, increase retention and increase the general well being of employees.
The big picture: Workers' lives in the future won't look like that. Already, new technologies and the gig economy are breaking down those very forces of stability that defined jobs over the last century — and the future of workers hangs in the balance.
