Tech Transformations: Driving Productivity, Collaboration & Employee Experiences
11 min read 24 Mar 2023, 03:59 PM ISTTo discuss the complexities of the modern working ecosystem and to understand all the possible solutions that innovative leaders are adopting to flourish in this environment, an insightful discussion was organized, Mint Tech Transformations: Do More With Less, in association with Microsoft.
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The present state of our global business ecosystem is one of extreme volatility and disruption. After COVID-19, organizations have shifted their workforces firmly toward hybrid models, which appears to have permanently altered how we work. Changes are coming thick and fast, from the exponential rise in technological adoption to the rapid change in skills required to flourish in our new working environment.
These changing times, and the subsequently changing requirements have been a source of immense challenge for leaders across the globe. Finding effective and inclusive ways to hold meetings, figuring out how to effectively coordinate workforces, and creating a culture of productivity and collaboration have emerged as significant obstacles. Similarly, maintaining critical aspects of a healthy work culture such as inclusivity, continuous learning, equal opportunities, and meaningful relationships has also become extremely difficult to achieve.
Under these circumstances, business executives have looked to technological transformation as the undeniable solution to address these challenges. We can see that three fundamental pillars have emerged as areas of focus for seamless tech-driven transformations: productivity, collaboration, and employee experience. How leaders accomplish the three pillars while reducing operational costs and maximizing profits is crucial to success in our new environment.
To discuss the complexities of the modern working ecosystem and to understand all the possible solutions that innovative leaders are adopting to flourish in this environment, an insightful discussion was organized, Mint Tech Transformations: Do More With Less, in association with Microsoft. Leaders and decision-makers from various industries shared their invaluable insights into our changing ecosystem, the fundamental aspects that have remained the same, and how technology has played a pivotal role.
Let’s dive in and take a closer look at all that was discussed.
Achieving Productivity Through Exceptional Experiences
"I think this whole idea of doing more with less is very powerful because I think we all want to do more all the time, but obviously resources—people resources and infrastructural resources—are diminishing rapidly. The one thing that we learned clearly during the COVID period and even now is that the "people agenda" has become more important than ever before."
Bhaskar Basu, Country Head - Modern Work Solutions, Microsoft India
The idea of achieving productivity in our ever-changing environment was widely discussed during the roundtable. Bhaskar Basu, Country Head - Modern Work Solutions, Microsoft India talked in detail about the necessity of adopting a “people agenda" to ensure your workforce is willfully committed to the organization, thus resulting in much greater productivity. He said, “In today’s tech industry, there is a period of intense economic challenge around us. People are still at the front and center of what we’re trying to do but instead of having to work with attrition we’re looking at how we engage and ensure people are still willfully committed to the organization."
By keeping people at the center of all organizational efforts, companies can ensure that the workforce is constantly satisfied and fulfilled with their working environment. Creating exceptional employee experiences by understanding their demands, exploring their requirements to grow and learn, and constantly checking up on their well-being is critical to achieving productivity and overall collaboration.
This is where technology can play a monumental role in keeping up with employee expectations and health. For example, at Microsoft, a survey is taken every six months, called the work trend index, to gain much-needed insight into the lives of all associates. Essential questions such as "Why do you like to come to the office? Why would you want to come to the office? What’s engaging you? What does your manager say? Why would you leave? How long would you stay if you did?" are asked and answered to draw meaningful conclusions and personalize approaches.
Gaining a clearer understanding of an employee’s mindset can allow a company to create the correct experiences to keep each individual constantly engaged and satisfied. If an associate truly finds purpose and belonging in an organization, they can successfully collaborate with teams and become highly productive members of the company. Bhaskar Basu went on to add, “During COVID times, the word mental well-being became almost synonymous to employee experience, but when we peeled the onion we realized, employee experience is far more. It’s about well-being, it’s about insight to understand what an employee is feeling, it’s about learning, it’s about the clarity of goals, it’s about skilling, it’s about purpose, and engagement."
Working Together Across Boundaries
“Despite how much technology evolves, the fundamentals will remain the same, and we have to strengthen our processes. When you have strong processes, you can make the right technology decisions."
Vishwajeet Singh, Director IT, Axtria India Pvt Ltd
With the growth of our global hybrid work cultures, technology now plays a highly influential role in ensuring teams can work seamlessly across geographical divides and timezones. In the course of this discussion, Vishwajeet Singh, Director IT, Axtria India Pvt Ltd talked about the vital necessity of establishing the correct processes across your organization to enable effortless collaboration. Without adopting the necessary processes, no amount of technological transformation can truly be fruitful.
He went on to add, “To do the right collaboration you need to build a process such that your developer and tester can work together from the very beginning of the project. This helps us do more collaboration." A process in which testers and developers work in unison from the very beginning can prove to be immensely beneficial when trying to promote collaboration and productivity. This type of working model has grown in prominence to incorporate greater collaboration and efficiency amongst teams in our current tech landscape.
Similarly, when discussing the tools and technologies that businesses should look to adopt, Vishwajeet Singh mentioned open source tools such as Github to allow associates from different locations to work simultaneously. Likewise, Microsoft Visual Studio team services, Jira, and Bitbucket are other incredible tools that companies can use to boost collaboration.
Solving Challenges in Healthcare With Innovation
“If I deploy a tool where the requirement is not there, it will not help the process. How can you do more with less? That is the agenda. IT and the cross-functional team will not work until IT becomes the enabler. We need to understand that IT will really become the backbone of our business."
Anuroop Sehgal, Cluster IT Lead, Fortis Healthcare
As a plethora of industries across our business world continue to exponentially embrace digital transformation and innovative tools, the healthcare industry is no different. By leveraging IT solutions across every facet of the healthcare organization, ever-changing employee and customer needs can be constantly met.
Anuroop Sehgal, Cluster IT Lead, Fortis Healthcare, shared his insights and experiences into the world of hospitals. He explained a real-world issue that doctors currently face and how technology was used to provide a solution through his interaction with one of the doctors at Fortis Healthcare: “I come to work at 9; the patient comes at 11. What should I do? I said we have a tool available where you can see your online appointment. We made a functionality for him, a major collaboration."
Similarly, technology is currently being used to design a system that informs when a patient is about to be discharged, when a new patient can be taken in, when the pharmacy bill will be ready, and so on. By making all of this available on a single platform and viewable at a single glance, healthcare services can be made more efficient, and healthcare teams can become more productive.
Technology to Ensure Inclusive Employee Experiences
“Today we have a lot of tools that employees can use to see how they’re performing, such as their own net promoter score, so employees know where they need to improve."
Nikhil Anand, HR - HEAD, Dr. Lal Path Labs
The healthcare industry was one of the few sectors that did not transition to hybrid workforces. Despite remote work not being one of the changes, other aspects of work continue to evolve on a regular basis. Nikhil Anand, HR - HEAD, Dr. Lal Path Labs added to this conversation: “The whole consumer demand is shifting; the way they demand services and the way they expect front-line employees to behave today is changing. Employees are also coming up with different options for how they want to work. So today we have a large workforce that does not work on a salary basis; they work on a revenue shift basis. These are some of the changes happening, and how do you give the same experiences to all front-line workers? It's a challenge. Some of the things that have happened with time are that tools are helping you to enable them to work better. So technology is always there."
The use of technology in this sector allows unprecedented visibility into the performance of each employee. This can help increase productivity while also giving employees better opportunities to develop themselves and their skills. This tech-driven visibility also allows companies to provide training sessions based on individual requirements that can drive overall productivity by reskilling wherever necessary.
Later, when discussing the possibility of any gaps in the platform, Nikhil Anand said, “I think the technology of today is so agile that you can have different experiences for different sets of people, and that’s what has enabled us. For our learning platform, it is not only for our on-role employees; it is for our off-role employees and even partner employees. But the way they visualize it and experience it is different." The immense scalability and personalization of current learning platforms can ensure every associate gets exactly what they need to learn and grow.
The Role of AI in Driving Engagement
“AI and automation have huge potential to significantly improve customer experience and employee productivity."
Piyush Aggarwal, Director, Digital Innovation and Enterprise Architecture, Nagarro
In our tech-driven world, AI and automation can play pivotal roles in ensuring collaboration and productivity in a hybrid work environment. While discussing this topic, Piyush Aggarwal, Director, Digital Innovation and Enterprise Architecture, Nagarro, weighed in and said, “In hybrid models where people are joining organizations but have never been to the office, at some point they feel they are not connected with the company or they are not getting the information they need to feel connected. They might feel demotivated or stressed out. In such a case, you can keep them engaged with AI and automation. One way of working can be to leverage AI to send nudges to employees whenever that occurs. This could be based on the preference of the employee or the strengths and weaknesses of the employee."
The capabilities of MS Teams were also discussed in driving engagement among employees. Associates can create apps and enable bots to ensure greater collaboration and productivity within the workforce.
Mastering Safety and Efficiency in Real-Time Work
“I am in a very risky business. You name any hazard—falling from great heights, electrocution—and most of our people work on live lines. What can you do to make sure of their safety? For safety, what we do is have a very comprehensive system where any kind of anomaly that is noted in the system, whether it is a consumer or our own people, is put on a platform."
Santadyuti Samanta, Chief D & IT (Transmission & Distribution), Tata Power
Technology plays a critical role in ensuring the safety and efficiency of employees working in the power industry. The entire process of maintaining live lines and providing power across massive geographical regions can come with numerous safety hazards.
Santadyuti Samanta discussed how Tata Powers leverages technology to ensure the safety of all its employees: “Every job needs a job safety analysis. First, the employee will learn what I already know about the risks on the site. If the risk is beyond a certain threshold, our platform will not allow them to work until and unless a shutdown is taken. The shutdown unique number is verified online from our power control system."
By utilizing innovative new technologies, companies can determine whether or not a shutdown, which can hamper the power supply of entire cities, is actually necessary. If the job is truly as risky as it seems, then the necessary steps must be taken before any work is done. Such safety measures are integral to the overall employee experience, as they give employees a massive sense of security and drive productivity.
Key Takeaways
If there’s anything we can learn from this discussion, it’s that there is truly no turning back from technology. Technology is a fundamental enabler of business growth that helps companies create a productive and collaborative ecosystem while simultaneously focusing on employee well-being and experiences. The secret to thriving in our current volatile ecosystem lies in embracing the capabilities of modern innovation to support employees on their professional journeys, giving them platforms to grow, and ensuring they feel a sense of belonging in the company.
The shift towards hybrid models has permanently altered how we work, creating challenges for leaders across the globe. To address these challenges, business executives have turned to technological transformation as the key solution. The three pillars of productivity, collaboration, and employee experience have emerged as crucial areas of focus for successful tech-driven transformations. To succeed in this new environment, leaders must find ways to accomplish these pillars while reducing operational costs and maximizing profits.
