Using Disruption As A Launching Pad To Imagine New Opportunities And Possibilities

Are you ready to offer the right tools to help your workforce thrive?

Today, we are in an exponential technology world, perhaps the first time in history, technology is evolving faster than we expect it to. We have just witnessed that technology and work have become, more than ever, inextricably intertwined. We have seen how people from different walks of life, i.e., from global corporations to the governments, academia to small businesses and elementary school kids to university students, relied solely on technology when in crisis and quickly reimagined how they could move on. 
 

Technology has carried us through the toughest challenges, but it has an even bigger role to play in our future workplace. International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts the rise of the digital platform and extended ecosystems. As per IDC, by 2025, driven by volatile global conditions, 75% of business leaders will leverage digital platforms and ecosystem capabilities. The question is: Are you ready to step up and offer the right tools to help your workforce thrive?

The pandemic has elevated the importance of the “human” aspect of the work when it turned best-laid plans upside-down. We are currently in a uniquely human era that requires an improved employee experience empowered by technology than ever before. Empathy and compassion matter even more during this time of crisis and disruption. If the past year has shown us anything, it’s that keeping “people” at the heart of an organization’s decisions really pays-off. 

Organizations have a great opportunity and responsibility to help the current and future workforce to acquire skills they need for new kinds of jobs and help them re-imagining the future of work. There is a strong need to recognize the influence of employee wellbeing and employee engagement on workforce resilience.

As per McKinsey Global Institute, the pandemic has accelerated existing trends in remote work and automation. Hybrid work, virtual interactions, deployment of automation and AI, are some of the trends that will further amplify post-crisis. But does it mean that only technology is a solution for your future needs? Not really, technology is just an enabler; you still need to navigate through your own employee journey map to fully understand the entire employee experience. It will allow you to develop a clear digital strategy around key interaction, drivers, and pain points so that you can deliver an improved employee experience to your workforce.

To succeed and thrive, we must rethink and challenge everything we know about work. We cannot change the past, but this crisis certainly can help us to prepare for a better future. Employees are looking for a consumer-grade experience at the workplace and now is the time to deliver it. 

Using disruption as a launching pad to imagine new opportunities and possibilities; we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rethink - how we work, where we work, and who we work with. Digitalization will provide you more returns on your investment as it will derive value from the integration of various stages of your Workforce journey. Are you ready to harness the technologies with a combination of AI, Automation and People?

Anadi Upadhyaya is Senior Director of Product Development at Oracle and leading global product development teams.  Follow @AnadiUpadhyaya    Connect Anadi Upadhyaya