Companies must personalise the employee experience

Staffers can be empowered by fostering a data-driven culture and building a learning environment

By IBM
Updated: Apr 30, 2015 07:57:18 AM UTC
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Empowered employees have an increased sense of ownership and responsibility. But how does one truly empower employees? Recent debates on workforce empowerment always veer towards a palette of technologies that orbit data. Data is the new natural resource that is redefining the new business order. And this is positively changing the workplace as well. Businesses are actively seeking to drive a culture of data to win in today’s dynamic marketplace.

The business environment is undergoing positive, transformative changes and people are establishing more connections through social media and mobile phones. What this means is that an employee has as much information as the employer with easy access to multiple channel points for data. It becomes business-critical then that businesses are able to feed off this collective intelligence and leverage them for growth. But this is easier said than done and comes back to the point of creating an open, data-driven culture.

Just as enterprises have taken individual client experience to the next level, they need to personalise the employee experience. The availability of data at an employee’s disposal becomes exciting and stimulating at the same time. This will not only help build trust but also motivate them to right-skill themselves while they work and add greater value to the business.

The Economist Intelligence Unit released a survey showing that organisations that prioritise data collection and analysis were also likely to report better performance than competitors. Fifty percent of those surveyed at above-average companies stated that their organisations cultivated a data-driven company culture by the promotion of data sharing. Fifty-seven percent of the respondents believe that data-driven company culture was driven by top-down mandates from the highest level. It is the ‘democratisation of data’ that will speak loudly for the organisation.

Despite the inherent benefits, one of the big challenges in fostering a data-driven culture is the need for a shift in thinking, and in business practices. Such a shift may explain why data-driven company cultures are best cultivated when there is a top-down company mandate – a unified company policy that makes changes easier to implement. The pace of the transition is defined by the organisation’s will and agility. A strong foundation of comfort with the new culture can be built by consistently encouraging the staff to access and utilise data resources. The focus on training, therefore, becomes important as it will enable increasing levels of familiarity and help address issues regarding past practices, thereby ensuring faster and better adaptability.

Organisations can advance employee empowerment only by understanding it. Focus on your data, open it up for your employees, create a culture of learning and innovation and harness technologies to build next-generation solutions that enhance business value. Collaborative experiences and outcomes are the new companies. The faster we internalise and activate those data-driven mindsets, the more efficient we all become. The eternal sunshine is just a block away.

- By Dilpreet Singh - Vice President & HR Head – IBM India / South Asia

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.

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