PUT PEOPLE FIRST
GIVE TALENT CHOICES
The next phase of work will be driven by human experience—which should be at the center of every decision, from your recruitment strategy to your tech design.
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For top talent, a hybrid working model that offers employees maximal flexibility is no longer a perk but an expectation. “We, as companies, have to adapt to that,” says Canney. “Hybrid puts choice in the hands of the person that you're trying to attract. If we, as leaders, don't take that seriously, we'll miss the best talent.”
Offering choice is one thing. Making talent feel they have the agency to exercise it is another—which puts a new onus on managers. “Encourage managers to create safe spaces so people can tell them what they need,” says Canney. “I often get asked: What are the skills of the future of work? And I think a manager having the ability to foster inclusion and belonging among their team is the most paramount.”
PRIORITIZE INCLUSIVE MANAGEMENT
“A digital strategy is really a people strategy,” says Canney. That concept drives ServiceNow’s Now Platform, which unifies a broad range of employee experiences in a single, simple interface. Rather than track down contacts for various needs, for example, new hires can find everything in one spot. “I think about onboarding a person: Not only how they get a laptop and get paid but also how to anticipate what they need to succeed together with their manager and team,” says Canney. “We have to make sure that person feels a deep sense of belonging from the very start.”
DESIGN A SIMPLE EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE
SEE IT IN ACTION
At Unilever, A New Employee Platform Means 47% Less Hassle
Each year, Unilever recruits around 15,000 new employees across its global workforce. The company needs an employee support platform that can keep up. But until recently, colleagues seeking support had to navigate more than 15 siloed functional help desks. So Unilever partnered with ServiceNow to build Una, a custom platform that gives employees a connected, end-to-end support experience through a single platform with omni-channel presence.
The integrated journey saves employees time and energy, says Tom Dewaele, Unilever’s global head of employee experience. “Una has reduced around 47% of time spent performing day-to-day transactional support activities such as booking time off, looking up colleagues, getting their payslip, raising a case and so much more.”
RETHINK
PHYSICAL SPACES
No longer a place you have to go, offices are being reimagined as collaboration centers where teams gather with intention.
Some workspaces will require a new look to accompany their new functions, says Canney. ServiceNow, for example, is making its offices more conducive to collaboration by mixing up standard rows of cubicles with a variety of flexible layouts, equipped with comfortable seating and interactive tools that enable communication with remote employees.
GIVE OFFICE SPACE A MAKEOVER
The next step is to make sure in-office experiences are safe for all employees. Cloud-based apps can help. ServiceNow’s Safe Workplace Suite, for example, automates contact tracing and vaccination status tracking, while its Workplace Reservation Management portal allows employees to reserve and check into workspaces, giving a trip to the office the streamlined feel of booking a restaurant reservation.
ENSURE WORKPLACE SAFETY
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SEE IT IN ACTION
How Unilever Built An Inclusive Hybrid Work Environment
Unilever sees a hybrid future of work, where people might spend a couple of days in the office and two or three days working remotely. “We also know that one size doesn’t fit all, and we want to create a framework that meets the needs of all our people,” says Dewaele. To do that, the company ensures that its offices “support flexible and hybrid work models, with the ideal mix of collaborative spaces, individual desks and ‘vitality zones,’” where employees can unwind and socialize.
Most importantly, the days of angling for a corner office are over. “These are spaces that promote diversity and an open environment where there is no perceived hierarchy and psychological divides,” Dewaele says.
CONNECT YOUR ORGANIZATION
A digital workflow platform can turn a sprawling organization into the single, flexible ecosystem that the hybrid future demands, making work portable for employees, frictionless for teams and transparent for leaders.
Cloud technology is the backbone of the hybrid organization. It makes all the elements of a company that once relied on proximity—data, workflows, tools, collaboration—accessible anytime and anywhere, turning the office into a portable ecosystem rather than a physical space. “Cloud tech ties it all together,” Canney says.
BUILD A CLOUD-BASED ORGANIZATION
Cloud platforms can also make work more enjoyable by powering consumer-level employee experiences, says Canney. “I took a rideshare here this morning. I clicked one button; the car showed up. All the things that happened in the background are not exposed to me. The same thing should happen at work, whether I want to change my address, or I want to get feedback, or I want to take training because I'm about to meet a client.”
GIVE EMPLOYEES THE CONSUMER TREATMENT
By storing data in one place, leaders can get a clean snapshot of the organization at any point in time. A cloud platform goes one step further, generating and capturing data about the workflows and processes taking place within its digital ecosystem, showing leaders how the work gets done.
MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR DATA
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SEE IT IN ACTION
At Unilever, The Cloud Closes The Feedback Loop
Una doesn’t just make work simple, intuitive and efficient for Unilever employees. It also provides valuable data that help managers evolve the platform.
“With analytics around efficiencies and productivity in one place, the Employee Experience team is continuously able to reflect and improve on end-to-end user experience,” says Dewaele. “We have a single place to go for employees but equally a single platform that gives us the data and the visibility across the whole employee journey, so we can shift from reactive to proactive and work on continuous improvement of employee experiences.”
Data on how often employees are visiting the office, for example, can help inform workspace reconfigurations, while data on IT inquiries can indicate how to fix common problems.
