UNLEASH 2022: How to adapt to the new way of working as an organization
The key question, How can organizations sustainably recover after the Corona outbreak? was the central theme of UNLEASH 2022— the global HRIT event in Paris on Oct. 12 and 13. How do you retain employees and attract new talent while adapting to the new way of working? Balázs Székely, AMS agent at SuccessDay and an experienced remote worker, attended the conference and updates you in this blog.
For Balázs, UNLEASH was an amazing experience—meeting so many people face-to-face at the Expo de la Porte de Versailles, France’s largest exhibition venue. There were thousands of visitors. And he wasn’t the only one who felt that way. “Almost every speaker, exhibitor and visitor admitted to having missed the human touch during the past two years. HR, of course, will always be a people business.”
At UNLEASH, Balázs discovered that many organizations struggle with hybrid working. During the panel discussion on “Life-Work Balance – How to Navigate Hybrid in the Post-Pandemic World,” it emerged that the most frequently asked question during job interviews is whether the position can also be (partially) filled remotely. Recent research by PWC shows that 80% of employees who currently work hybrid or even completely remote would consider quitting their jobs if they were forced to come back to work full-time in the office. The same survey found that a whopping 87% of remote workers surveyed believe they are more effective and productive when working from home, while only 12% of their managers are convinced of that. “So training managers to trust their staff more is therefore important. Here at SuccessDay, managers trust their team members completely and let them manage their own time, as long as the customer is satisfied with the work. There is no need for micromanagement,” Balázs concludes.
On the other hand, many employees would still like to meet physically for a meeting or collaboration. But obligating this becomes difficult when 8 out of 10 hybrid employees consider quitting if they are required to come back to the office. At the same time, it becomes challenging over time for companies to maintain the emotional connection between employee and organization when working remotely. “There is no easy way to standardize policies for remote versus in-office work, as everyone has different preferences. In general, the pandemic has reinforced the concept of you only live once (YOLO): work is no longer the number one priority for people. And cloning best practices from other companies is not a perfect solution, as they may not fit your organization’s culture by a long shot,” SuccessDay’s AMS agent explains.
Increasingly distanced
At the height of the pandemic, Balázs felt a lack of connection with the organization he was working for at the time. ” This feeling started before then, but the lockdowns increased the distance even further. It was time for a change.” He used that time to think carefully about what he wanted with his career (the combination of HR and technology) and finally joined SuccessDay in Eindhoven. He has been working from Budapest since April 2022 for various SuccessDay clients around the world. Despite the physical distance, he does not feel psychologically distanced at SuccessDay. “I’m really part of the team here. Occasionally I get on a plane to meet my colleagues face-to-face and visit clients, but I mainly work from home. Thanks to the warm atmosphere at SuccessDay and the use of smart technology tools, it doesn’t really feel any different to me than it would be sitting in that building.”
Because of his good performance, SuccessDay allowed him to join the draw to travel to Paris to visit UNLEASH. He won and was delighted to be granted this opportunity. “I got to know management and my colleague Eveline van Bergen even better and saw that they really care about their company and the people who work there. The organization is not hierarchical at all and having fun is an important core value.”
Next wave of automation in HR
Another thing he noticed when he visited UNLEASH was that HR is no longer seen as a cash-burning business unit. HR’s role is expanding to include making strategic decisions for organizations. This can only happen if traditional activities are updated and automated as much as possible. “HR does need to engage in expectation management: automating business processes is more like a washing machine (it still needs input from stakeholders to get output) than a robot that completely replaces human interactions.” Especially tasks that are repetitive and time-consuming, also known as “hard to do, easy to explain” should be automated. Tasks that are easy to do, but hard to explain” (for example, teaching a chatbot to detect whether a caller is angry) are more difficult to automate.
The Hungarian also attended the session by Anat Markus, Director of Global HR Operations at AkzoNobel, titled, “Why is the big ‘Go-Live’ only the beginning?” Going live on a large HRIT implementation is often exhausting. “From Day 1, key participants in such projects are heavily involved in configuration, testing, communication and change management. After the go-live the first reactions are coming from the users of the system. Processing those requires a continuous improvement strategy.”
At AkzoNobel, they handled this as follows:
- Immediately after go-live, a center of excellence team was established with process owners who could review and simplify the design of core processes and services.
- Within 1-2 years of go-live, the scope of reviews was expanded for “smaller” processes, automation continued, and learning programs were developed for HR users.
Lessons learned at AkzoNobel
The main conclusion of this process is that all parts of the HR community had to be involved. “Especially those who did not participate in the original project—because of the fresh perspective, the questions they raised about the status quo, and the new design ideas they brought in,” Balázs says. Another conclusion is that change management is essential and that communication to stakeholders about changes and milestones must be clear. Finally, post-go-live must be managed with the same rigor and discipline as any program with scope and deadline. “This way of working fits SuccessDay’s service delivery model, where we provide that fresh perspective and sometimes challenge the status quo and deliver good quality, while respecting client deadlines.”
At UNLEASH, SuccessDay was able to network extensively and showcase itself. “There were mainly software vendors and technical implementation partners, and no parties who do what we do. We were able to explain our added value very well and there were many enthusiastic responses.”
Want to know more? In this blog, colleague Eveline van Bergen explains—based on her visit to UNLEASH—the 5 most important challenges for HR right now, and what role technology can play in meeting those challenges.
