效率工具
Let tech handle the menial so people can fast-track the meaningful
As a country that prides itself on a strong work-life balance, it goes without saying that Australians work hard to achieve this balance. It does however beg the question: Are we working smarter or harder?We are a nation of hard workers, and like everywhere else in the world, work expects more of us – and we expect more from work.I shared my views with the Australian Financial Review recently on how technology will transform work. The key takeaway for leaders: If you’re not already talking to the Board and your teams about how technology will improve the employee experience, it’s time to start now!With more access to technology in the workplace than ever before, leaders have the opportunity to make work better for people. But recent declines in Australia’s productivity growth tells us that Australians are falling behind global peers in embracing disruptive technologies that help them reverse this trend.Technology has the power to free our teams from tedious work, to fix things that are broken and give people autonomy to focus on the innovative work—the best possible products and services to deliver the best consumer experience.Earlier this year, LIKE.TG conducted research to see just how much Australians value meaningful work and in light-hearted fashion, we explored what people would give up to avoid administrative busywork.We found that people want the same seamless and intuitive digital experiences they enjoy at home through mobile devices, smart speakers and other tools. In fact, 60% of Australian millennials say they would forego a pay raise if they could get rid of the low-level tasks at work and be freed up to do more meaningful work.Business leaders need to address the fears around automation and enable employees to capitalize on business investments in technology. Digital workflows give people time back in their day to focus on the work that will make a difference.One case in point is the team at TAFE NSW, Australia’s leading vocational education and training organization. TAFE is creating a workplace driven by mobile processes. TAFE’s employees now have access to easy-to-use portals and workflow apps for their field services and IT teams. Teams can self-serve the menial chores and fast-track the meaningful work.As TAFE NSW has demonstrated firsthand, the future of work is now, it’s built around people, where organizations and technologies meet to deliver human benefits.My challenge to all business leaders is to look at the steps you’re taking to enable the talent in your business to succeed. Help them to get rid of the menial and frustrating tasks and work with them to act on how they can make work, work better. This is something I’m incredibly passionate about and I encourage you to reach out to discuss how LIKE.TG are seeing people achieve meaning at work—I’d be happy to share some local and global best practices with you.
5 reasons your HR transformation has left employees wanting more
CIOs and CHROs are collaborating on talent strategies, but they are largely missing out on opportunities to improve employees’ experiences through workflow digitization.While 72% of CIOs say they are collaborating with CHROs on setting talent strategies, just 8% are implementing technology solutions together, according to new research published in Workflow Quarterly.Leaders should recognize that the employee experience is about far more than individual moments, whether big or small.This gap could result in key missed opportunities in your organization.In fact, the data shows that CIOs who lead the most digitized organizations report higher rates of organizational efficiency and productivity, as well as employee performance, collaboration, and innovation. New data set to be published in Quarterly next month also reveals that CIOs farther ahead in digitizing workflows with peers also report increased effectiveness in multiple functions, including IT and HR/talent.
Employee Workflow: Q&A with Blake McConnell
How LIKE.TG delivers great experiences for employeesEmployees have many moments that matter during their journey with a company. Some moments are more significant than others, but they all require support from different systems and departments across the enterprise.Digital workflows remove the friction and inefficiencies of the tasks connected to these moments, so that employees can focus on more strategic, meaningful work. We recently sat down with Blake McConnell, Senior Vice President of Employee Workflow Products, to learn how companies use LIKE.TG to improve the employee experience.What makes LIKE.TG’s employee workflows unique?When employees need to resolve issues related to their jobs, their inquiries can go to many different places on the back end, such as facilities or finance. These inquiries relate to what we call “moments that matter” in the employee work lifecycle. They include everything from navigating maternity and paternity leaves—the major moments—to everyday requests like, “I need a new monitor,” or “What’s for lunch at the cafeteria today?”LIKE.TG provides technology that dramatically improves all of these experiences, whether they’re major events or everyday requests. We help customers get to a place where moments that matter are increasingly self-service, no matter how employees want to find answers: via browser, mobile, chat or voice. This way, the organization functions more efficiently and employees can get back to doing the jobs they love.The enterprise IT market is pretty crowded. What differentiates LIKE.TG?It’s the Now Platform. Our single platform approach is unique to ServiceNow. To deliver a seamless and unified experience for any moment that matters, you need a platform that spans the organization and cuts across multiple departments. That’s how you eliminate the friction and disconnectedness that occurs when you haven’t digitized and unified all those workflows.It’s not easy to break down corporate siloes. Often, that’s not a technology issue so much as a people and change management issue. But when someone like a CEO decides that she wants to create better experiences for employees—and stands up and says that this is important— we can help make it happen.Many legacy systems were designed for one specific purpose and can degrade the employee experience because they weren’t designed with the employee in mind. By contrast, the employee experience is always top of mind for ServiceNow. Increasingly, we’re building out our single platform with an employee-first mindset.How are you evolving the Now Platform? What can we expect in the future?Employees need one place where they can easily get service from HR, IT and other departments in the organization. That’s why we built Employee Service Center, which provides a single, brandable center for employees to find user‑specific content, receive targeted communications with step‑by‑step guidance, and submit and track cases or requests when they need help.We’re also investing in native mobile capabilities that allow employees to access services using the native capabilities of their smartphones, including push notifications, camera, swipes, facial recognition and so on. Employees enjoy consumer-style service experiences, while departments benefit from lower costs and fewer inquiries.[RM1]How does the Now Platform help deliver great employee experiences?Think of something as simple as changing a home address. Historically, that process has often required employees to use separate applications maintained by departments like finance and HR. Employees want and expect that to be easy to do. Why are things like this still so much harder at work than in our personal lives?Onboarding is a great example. There are many steps to bringing an employee on board. Some relate to HR, others to IT, finance and facilities. With LIKE.TG, these processes all get kicked off at the same time, automatically. IT provisions the right applications for that person’s job. HR handles background checks. Facilities finds a place for the new employee to sit.LIKE.TG manages all these processes in one digital workflow, as opposed to emails being sent to a shared services inbox. The goal is for every new employee to be Day 1 ready when Day 1 arrives.Ultimately, this is about collapsing the time to productivity for a new employee. Great experiences and productivity are two sides of the same coin. When the new employee has a great experience, the company reaps the benefit of their productivity that much faster.Everyone in our industry talks about digital transformation. Can you share an example of a customer that has used LIKE.TG to transform employee workflows?A great example is Asurion, a provider of electronic device insurance that’s presenting at Knowledge 2019. The company transformed its onboarding process using ServiceNow. Their recruiters used to handle most onboarding tasks, which tended to involve multiple systems, departments and processes. You needed one process to request a computer, another process to get a parking pass, and so on.IT and HR leaders from Asurion attended Knowledge 2018 and asked themselves, “Why isn’t our employee experience as good as our customer experience?”Using LIKE.TG, Asurion went live with new automated processes in only two months. Now, as soon you hire someone and create a new employee record, there are simple checklists for everything that employee needs. It’s working so well that 86% of new hires say they’re satisfied with the onboarding experience.
Gen Z are here – and they’re swiping, tapping and snapping Australian workplaces into a new era
Let’s assume that the average Australian university graduate enters the workforce somewhere between the ages of 21 and 24, bringing with them a qualification (or two, or three), a fierce determination to establish a secure career, and a finely-tuned radar for what’s authentic and what’s fake news.With the oldest Gen Zs turning 25 this year, Australian organisations already have several years’ exposure to working with the first digitally-native employee group and understand what engages and motivates the newest workplace generation to succeed.Right?Or perhaps the more likely scenario is that while we’re aware Gen Z will represent around 20% of the workforce by 2025 and nearly 35% by 2030, we’re only just starting to understand their behaviour, outlook and how differently they work from their millennial predecessors.Harnessing the Gen Z talent pool is a strategic business imperative. And that presents an urgent question for leadership teams: how will today’s companies attract, retain and transform for tomorrow’s workforce, if we’ve only just met?We know Gen Z have grown up with the world in their pocket – they were no more than 12 years old when the first iPhone launched. They’ve never lived without social media or ubiquitous internet access. Gen Z are self-serve learners and consume information as fast as they can access it with their fingertips. Because of this hunger for learning and growth, Gen Z also seek continuous feedback from their employers. We also know Gen Z will retire at a later age and seek work that fits around – and enriches - their lives.Take a look around the office, can you see the growing influence of your youngest employees? Leaders can learn a lot about the future of work from engaging with future leaders. In just a few years, Gen Z will be our people managers, our emerging executive leaders and the cultural barometers of our workplaces.LIKE.TG recently canvassed over 1,000 Gen Zers across Australia about their career aspirations and expectations at work. Our research reveals that Gen Z’s values and perspectives are already placing entirely new demands on workplaces. The study also cements growing industry research that the employee experience is as critical as the customer experience.So, what does Gen Z care about at work? Spoiler alert: while social responsibility is a priority for this generation who’ve grown up participating in global communities and amplifying their political voice through likes and shares, it’s not the first driver when they’re choosing a company to work for.The research shows that Gen Z places most value on a great work environment.Defining the future of work61% of Gen Z say that flexible work hours are important when they’re looking to join a company.For Gen Z, a great work environment uses technology to deliver a truly flexible employee experience and more control over how and where they get their work done. Flexibility necessitates mobile platforms, digital workflows, intelligent automation and intuitive systems and processes – all of which will evolve our perception of the work/life divide.For Gen Z, at the heart of a great workplace is flexibility. While remuneration, culture and career path matter,On the surface, this may seem like a relatively logical step along the flexibility continuum: progressive Australian workplaces have embraced flexi arrangements in recent years and watched employee engagement and performance measures track north as a result. It stands to reason that Gen Z have observed their parents and see flexibility as a right, not a benefit. In fact, nearly half say ‘it’s important I’m in control of my work/life balance, not my employer’.In optimising the work/life balance, they say flexibility is not necessarily about more ‘home life’ but about the quality of ‘work life’. And they rank this above pay and career progression.That’s an insight every leader should be exploring in 2020, because 42% of Gen Z say they would leave a company if they were spending too much time on administrative tasks (think: navigating clunky finance systems, completing timesheets, fulfilling repetitive HR and IT forms) rather than doing their actual job.Gen Z are telling us that workplace technology is not simply about streamlining or efficiencies: it’s about the impact technology has on their broader work experience and its ability to minimise the menial so they can focus on the meaningful.They expect work life to be more like real life: the simple, convenient, elegant apps and services we enjoy as consumers. If we can swipe to order dinner while standing in a bus queue, why can’t we swipe to approve a new team hire?An obvious difference between generations is in ‘technology tolerance’. Most of the working generation are impressed by the intuitiveness of Netflix and Spotify knowing precisely what we’re looking for before we make a decision or splitting an Uber fare three ways with just one tap. For Gen Z, this just how life is - they have zero tolerance for tech that adds complexity instead of removing it.Gen Z won’t adapt to enterprise tools; they assume workplace technology will have the same intelligence as the platforms they’ve grown up on. It’s a generational trait that will unlock the next wave of collaboration, innovation and productivity.
Ok, Boomer: Gen Z is listeningThe next decade will see increasing pressure on Australian workplaces to accommodate employees choosing to work well into their 60’s. Today, our workforce comprises Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z. With Gen Z hitting their 30’s in 2025 and organisations embedding diversity at all levels, inclusive leadership teams will soon benefit from representation from across four generations.One of the most surprising findings from LIKE.TG’s research is that 79% of Gen Z think they work well together with older employees. That’s to say, Gen Z understand each generation have their own strengths to offer and believe there’s more to gain from peers with career and industry experience.This is a particularly revealing insight from a cohort who are often generalised in the media as entitled and dismissive of the generations that precede them. In fact, we’re welcoming a new employee group into our workplaces who navigate change like they scroll their news feed and express a strong desire to work hard, learn from every generation and make a real impact.Technology is the catalyst of change for the future of work in AustraliaOrganisations that acknowledge how fundamental technology is to Gen Z’s entire work/life ecosystem, will be ready to harness the enormous opportunity this brings.There’s no question the employee experience is a key differentiator in the battle for talent and engagement, and that experience will be deeply influenced by an employees’ interaction with technology. It’s because of this, investment in great work foundations is essential.Let’s enable employees in every role to get things done faster, more easily and more intuitively so they can focus on meaningful work and deliver the best possible business outcomes.Technology is undoubtedly going to transform not just the way we work over the next decade, but the nature of work itself.
Mapping the future of work
Work will never be the same after COVID-19, according to LIKE.TG CIO Chris Bedi and Chief Talent Officer Pat Wadors who recently discussed the future of work in a joint appearance at our Knowledge 2020 digital event.In this three-part blog series, “Mapping the future of work,” we present their thinking on what a new paradigm for work might look like.Part Two: The “Next Normal”In Bedi’s estimation, we’re about to enter chapter two of the journey, in which it’s no longer “work from home,” but “work from anywhere.” This opens the door to opportunities for more collaboration and innovation, as well as access to new talent pipelines.Said Wadors, “The pre-COVID workplace no longer exists. I know for many of my peers and for us, we will undergo dramatic shifts to make sure we are safe, healthy, productive and adaptable in our new workplaces.”C-suite leaders across industries are facing significant challenges. A CFO might be concerned about cash-flow forecasting, while a CHRO focuses on keeping people engaged and happy, and a COO worries about the supply chain.“The CIO is interacting with every C-suite member to figure out how to navigate the‘next normal’ using technology and workflows,” said Bedi.
CIOs are insisting that digitization efforts accelerate, Bedi added. Around the world, customers who are furthest along on their digital transformation journey are better equipped to manage and emerge from this crisis. Bedi sees three focus areas for digitization:· Protecting revenue,· Pursuing productivity· Prioritizing business continuityBedi and Wadors agreed on the importance of monitoring employee sentiment about coming back into the traditional workplace, which could be impacted by geography, type of job, and in some cases, age.In the “next normal,” the “office” will become a more fluid destination and there will be new policies in place to protect the health and safety of workers, including where and when to work in shared spaces.There’s a great debate happening now around whether to shrink the physical size of the office or maintain existing footprints to allow for social distancing. Leaders are also thinking about everything from office sanitization to ensuring a safe commute.In the “next normal,” we’ll see a wave of technological innovation. Biometric tech will become more commonplace in the office. Translation tools will also become ubiquitous, enabling diversity in how people learn and speak.Similarly, technology will facilitate collaboration, regardless of location. Teams will be able to hire without worrying about geographic location, as they can do everything – onboard, train, manage – in a remote setting. This will open the door to a more diverse and distributed workforce.As companies plan their eventual return to the workplace, Wadors offered some advice to HR organizations. “Employees love choice,” she said. “It helps reduce anxiety. And if you don’t know exactly what your return to the office will be like, make sure that employees know they are at the center of your universe.”Learn more about how work will change in part three of our “Mapping the future of work” series: Long-term changes in the workplace.Series: Mapping the future of workPart 1 - Mapping the future of workPart 2 - What the “next normal” workplace will look likePart 3 - Long-term changes in the workplace
Building a more seamless onboarding experience
Onboarding frequently offers a disjointed, slow and frustrating experience for new employees.
Automating the experience can help onboarding stakeholders to streamline the process.
From onboarding on day one to everyday tasks, employees can work faster – and focus on work they enjoy.
Settling into any new job can be exhausting, and in the environment we suddenly find ourselves living in, onboarding remotely can seem more daunting than ever. New remote faces, new computer, new… everything. On top of that, there are forms to fill in and return to multiple onboarding stakeholders, passwords to create, HR policies to read.In the midst of a new working environment, the process of getting up to speed on the admin front — waiting for tech set-up to be completed and multiple layers of access to be granted — can leave new arrivals feeling a little spent by the end of the first week.Fortunately, automation technology is giving enterprises the opportunity to break down siloed onboarding processes and build new, more efficient connections right across the business.IT can drive the onboarding journey, streamlining processes relating to security access, firewall set-up, passports, employment history and more, so new employees can get to work sooner, and the business can deliver an outstanding onboarding experience with less effort.
Streamlining the onboarding journeyWith LIKE.TG, IT can easily configure digital workflows that manage employee lifecycle events across multiple departments. This allows much of the onboarding process to be streamlined and automated. Other service requests can be handled in a similar way, whether they relate to the day-to-day employee experience in the office, on the go or away from work.Automated onboarding boosts productivityAutomating the process of onboarding and other transitions can improve enterprisewide productivity. From day one, employees experience a fast, consumerstyle service that makes them feel ‘at home’ at work.Employees will be able to get started in their new role quickly, and receive the ongoing support they need, whenever they need it. On top of that, IT and HR, plus other related business operations including facilities and finance, can save time that can be devoted to higher-value tasks and projects.From onboarding to beyond, automation enables your enterprise to:
Simplify employee access to services
Gain complete end-to-end visibility of business processes
Optimise employee service delivery, with a clear view of all requests
LIKE.TG® can also provide you with the analytics to measure and track ROI – providing data-driven insights to identify the areas where automation stands to deliver the greatest benefits to your business.Workflows can be orchestrated across departmentsWhen enterprises set out to automate processes such as onboarding, they’re often left dealing with disparate tools and a lack of coordination between teams.By taking an enterprise-wide approach to automation, businesses can enable the more efficient management of day-to-day operations for the onboarding journey and beyond.Repetitive tasks can be powered by digital workflows, not people, and be easily configured to cut out the aspects of work that drain time and energy across the business. Ultimately, employees are freed up to focus on more interesting, high-value work, which boosts productivity and innovation for the business.Visit our automation page to learn more about how the right technology can help to transform the employee experience – at every stage of the journey.
The enterprise is ripe for mobile disruption
Business leaders are always looking for ways to leverage technology so that employees can do their best work and meet evolving customer demands. While we settle into the new normal of remote work, mobile technology is taking on a new role in the enterprise, as employees adapt to an increased blending of their professional and personal lives.At LIKE.TG, we recently conducted new research to understand how employees are taking advantage of mobile services offered by their organizations. We looked at gaps between what employees currently do on smartphones and what they want to do. Our goal was to uncover how we can leverage mobile to redefine employee service delivery.We found that mobile is a burgeoning opportunity for enterprises across industries to boost employee productivity and build better employee experiences.Basic mobile apps have become ubiquitous in the enterpriseAn overwhelming majority of enterprises are already using mobile to support their employees. We found that 90% of organizations use at least one app to increase productivity. Half of the companies in our survey provide productivity, document-sharing, and communication apps.Now more than ever, employees require flexibility to get work done from anywhere. However, it has been an uphill battle for enterprises to provide a simple, easy, and intuitive mobile experience that enables efficiency.Businesses need to offer higher-level tasks on mobileCurrently, many employees use mobile apps to help with basic needs such as accessing the corporate intranet, consuming company news, looking up organizational policies and procedures, or figuring out how to resolve an issue themselves.However, the mobile experience for complex tasks, like mandatory trainings and submitting expenses, had the lowest satisfaction rates in our survey. Additionally, we found that the user satisfaction rate for such activities is less than 70%.While it may seem counterintuitive, enabling a one-stop shop for all employee inquiries on mobile devices can also help reduce distractions. By allowing workers to tackle activities like IT help or break-fix requests, or getting answers to HR policy questions, or doing approvals on their smartphones, they can continue with day-to-day responsibilities on their workstation uninterrupted.
Enterprise apps should work as well as consumer appsWe also found that current enterprise apps are not living up to high consumer expectations, with 86% of respondents noting a wide variety of frustrations while working on a smart phone, from frequent glitches to unintuitive mobile interfaces. All of this presents a massive opportunity to start making consumer-grade enterprise mobile apps.At LIKE.TG, we believe that organizations should provide their employees with the right digital experiences from anywhere. Mobile apps that provide simple, intuitive, enterprise-grade experiences are crucial to delivering amazing employee experiences.We are in the early stages of mobile in the enterprise. We see tremendous opportunity to expand mobile capabilities so that employees can access important information and get work done where and how they want. Now that’s a smarter way to workflow.In coming years, new mobile experiences will greatly improve our efficiency and job satisfaction. LIKE.TG is committed to delivering mobile innovation every step of the way.LIKE.TG conducted this mobile research to examine how individuals at work use mobile. It was conducted from November – December 2019 via a 15-minute online survey. A total of 691 general population full-time employees responded to the survey from the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan. These respondents work for a company with at least 1,001 employees and use a smartphone for work.
New Employee Workflows will support opening of company workplaces while supporting safety of employees and customers for a new world of work
COVID-19 is changing how people want to work and how companies engage and communicate with their employees. As the curve flattens and organizations consider how to safely return employees to company workplaces, they need flexible solutions that allow them to balance employee preferences with health, regulatory and safety requirements and the demands of the business.Companies need modern, agile workflows to meet employees where they are. That’s true whether they work in an office, a home office, a coffee shop, a lab, a warehouse, a call center or a manufacturing plant.That’s why LIKE.TG will expand its Employee Workflow capabilities into enterprise workplace services and legal departments. These capabilities will help customers enhance productivity and manage return to company workplace efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are also expanding our Employee Workflow Content Packs to help organizations return employees to company workplaces.“The COVID-19 pandemic is today’s ‘moment that matters,’and it shows the need for companies to break down silos between departments focused on safety of their employees and customers,” said Chirantan Desai, chief product officer at ServiceNow. “IT, HR, risk, workplace services and legal departments must collaborate more than ever before to safely bring employees back to company workplaces and to support new ways of work in the future. The Now Platform powers this collaboration with intelligent digital workflows.”
Support return to company workplace efforts with Workplace Services DeliveryToday we announced that LIKE.TG signed an agreement to acquire the 4Facility assets of App4Mation, a LIKE.TG application and implementation services partner, that will strengthen our workplace services capabilities. 4Facility’s capabilities, paired with LIKE.TG’s workflow and mobile capabilities, will serve as the foundation for the new Workplace Service Delivery product that will allow organizations to prioritize services based on rapidly changing business demands. Companies will be able to plan and implement a phased return to company workplaces, starting with careful trials for critical workers and eventually opening workplaces up more broadly as conditions improve.Employees will be able to reserve desks, offices and parking spots, leaving ample space for physical distancing. Working closely with IT, HR, risk and legal departments, workplace services leaders will be able to communicate easily with employees, automatically kickoff workplace maintenance and cleaning workflows, quickly respond to safety concerns and optimize real estate spending over time by monitoring usage – from a desktop or mobile device.We expect to complete the acquisition by the end of Q2 2020. Workplace Service Delivery will be available for early adopters in Q3 2020.Enable company workplace readiness with Employee Workflow productsLIKE.TG introduced out-of-the-box Content Packs to support organizations as they navigate COVID-19 and bring employees safely back into the office. Content Packs include templates and configurations for customers to get started with various lifecycle events and content campaigns, including:· Health Alert: Helps companies and governments implement critical workflows and communications for emergency response as they manage through COVID-19.· Return to Workplace: Will provide a playbook for organizations as they coordinate return to office activities and communications.LIKE.TG will continue to release more Content Packs that will help organizations manage their return to office effort.This follows our March 16 release of four no-charge emergency response apps to support customers in their fight against the pandemic.Scale legal operations to meet the needs of a digital businessAs organizations embrace new, digital business models, legal teams must remain agile to support the changing needs of the organization. In response, LIKE.TG is introducing a new Legal Service Delivery product to automate the capture, routing and delivery of legal requests.Legal Service Delivery, which is tailored for enterprise legal operations, will create great employee experiences by enabling teams with self-service options and simple, mobile-ready entry forms for employees to make and track common legal requests like patent applications, help with business contracts and conflict of interest disclosures. Teams will be able to minimize manual work, intelligently prioritize requests and increase the speed of service delivery to the business. Legal Service Delivery will help work get done efficiently and provide visibility into the legal team’s workload.As organizations navigate the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, Legal Service Delivery will also help legal teams collaborate easily with HR and workplace services teams to maximize both employee safety and regulatory compliance. Legal Service Delivery is now available to early adopters and expected to be generally available in 2021.LIKE.TG’s Employee Workflow products simplify employee service delivery and offer a single place for employees to get answers to questions and make requests across departments, all from their preferred interface.With LIKE.TG Employee Workflow products, employees have flexible, agile, modern workflows to do their jobs when, where and how they need to. This is the future of work.Forward-Looking StatementsThis blog contains forward–looking statements about the expectations, beliefs, plans, intentions and strategies, including, without limitation, those relating to LIKE.TG’s acquisition of 4Facility and the timing of product availability. Such forward–looking statements include statements regarding future product capabilities and offerings and expected benefits to ServiceNow. These statements reflect the current beliefs of LIKE.TG and are based on current information available to LIKE.TG as of the date hereof. LIKE.TG does not assume any obligation to update the forward–looking statements provided to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made. The forward–looking statements in this blog are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially and adversely from those expressed in such forward–looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, the inability to re-factor the 4Facility technology into our platform; the inability to retain employees of App4Mation as contractors after the transaction closes; unanticipated expenses related to the acquired technology; disruption to our business and diversion of management attention and other resources; potential unknown liabilities associated with the 4Facility business; global economic uncertainty leading to delays and unexpected difficulties and expenses in making available or generally available Workplace Service Delivery, Legal Service Delivery and additional Content Packs; and uncertainty whether sales of such products will justify these investments.
How to keep the humanity in #WFH
Tips on how employees and their managers can navigate the realities of a COVID-19 quarantine.I have two big dogs that have gotten used to having me home. Sometimes they even block the exit from my home office! And, from what I’ve seen on social media over the past week, not only are lots of dogs happy to hang out on video calls, but plenty of cats are more than willing to warm up their humans’ keyboards.But what about the human element? How are we all doing in these times of uncertainty, and how can we be sure to care for ourselves, our families, and our communities? (While practicing all the safe social distancing and other health guidelines, of course.)I encourage fellow leaders to lead with empathy, solidarity, kindness, and courtesy as we work together through these uncertain times. Let’s be flexible with colleagues who may be working alternate schedules or need a different kind of partnership than usual. Let’s also normalize working from home and acknowledge that it can be messy. In many ways, it’s a glimpse into the personal side of our co-workers. Laugh when the cat jumps into the frame during your call with C-staff, and wave when someone's child does the same. Or politely ignore my dogs barking in the background!Empathy means being kind to ourselves, as well. For those on us on work-from-home duty, that means:
Hydrate. It’s easy to get busy and forget the simple things that make a huge difference.
Fuel up. Make sure you eat. Block time on your calendar and eat healthy to stay energized!
Move! Now more than ever is the time to stay active. Step outside for some fresh air. Even taking three deep breaths can have a huge impact. Take that meeting on the phone – while walking around the block!
Connect. Make time to connect with your colleagues. Organize a virtual yoga class, a digital happy hour, or just spend 15 minutes on a Zoom chatting about the best #WFH meme you’ve seen.
Embrace technology. For leaders, ensure your remote workforce has the full support of technology behind them in this new era. For employees, communicate what you need to stay productive.
Those are the relatively easy things to help manage the day to day. I know there are bigger-picture challenges we also need to navigate. So, what can we all do to show our appreciation for each other, even when we’re not face to face?Communicate early and oftenIf you’re facing any kind of obstacle, if you need to adjust your working approach, no matter what’s coming up for you, keep an open line of communication with your manager and your colleagues. Communication is a two-way street.Get creative: Assume everyone is in the same boat…because we arePeople managers model the behaviors they want their teams to live, too. They can encourage team members to take mental wellness time, particularly for those juggling caregiver responsibilities or less-than-ideal work-from-home infrastructure. Share your own struggles – be vulnerable. We are all learning and adapting.I also encourage employees to work with their managers on coverage plans and encourage managers in turn to lead with a strong sense of flexibility and creativity to accommodate many unique and unprecedented situations.Empower your team to flex their leadership musclesThis is a pivotal moment in our lifetimes. I remember where I was for tragedies like the Challenger disaster and 9/11. In the same way, I think this pandemic will shape our lives, our work, how we travel, and more for years to come. In times like these, leaders will emerge in unlikely ways. Be brave. Encourage everyone to think a little differently. This helps develop everyone's leadership capabilities, even in challenging times.Re-up on your appreciation for a stellar talent poolUncertain, anxious times aren't often a "buyers' market" when it comes to talent acquisition. Far from putting talent appreciation efforts on the back burner, however, it is even more essential to engage employees in the values that define great companies. Find new ways to encourage and inspire your workforce as a whole.At LIKE.TG, I’m proud of our teams across the globe that have stood up for what they believe in to create new services and solutions that accelerate crisis response for our customers. That same spirit will see us through, as we continue the essential work of ensuring success for our employees, their families, our customers, our partners, and communities.Purpose-driven, value-led companies, people, and even pets. We’re all in this together. We will emerge stronger and more “human” as a community. Let’s keep “checking in” with each other, sharing our ideas, our best practices, and our humanity. We’ll all be better for it.
LIKE.TG welcomes former Gartner analyst Melanie Lougee
The need for a unified employee experience is more important than ever.Today’s employers have realized the power of a single employee experience platform, one that hides the complexity of embedded corporate services. These streamlined interfaces have fundamentally altered the nature of work, keeping employee experiences consistent, whenever and wherever they may be.As LIKE.TG continues its journey of building intelligent workflows, we are thrilled to welcome Melanie Lougee to oversee the strategy for LIKE.TG’s Employee Workflow business unit. In this newly created role, Melanie is reporting directly into Blake McConnell, SVP of Employee workflows.We recently got a chance to meet with Melanie to learn more about her and why she’s excited to join ServiceNow.First, can you tell us a bit about yourself?Melanie: Most recently, I spent four years at Gartner as a Vice President where I researched, published, and presented to global audiences on Human Capital Management (HCM) technology, identifying key trends in the world of HR and authoring two magic quadrants.Prior to Gartner, I held various strategy positions at Oracle (and, formerly PeopleSoft) and enterprise software provider, Infor. I’ve also worked on implementations as a consultant, managed HR systems internally and spent time in go-to-market strategy for Logitech . The broad experiences give me a fairly rounded point of view on enterprise technology.On the personal front, I’m a Bay Area native currently living in San Jose with my eight-year-old daughter Simone and our two rescued dogs Bella and Bandito. My daughter and I love to ski, bike, hike, create art and entertain a house full of friends. I also volunteer for an organization that rescues dogs US from Taiwan and Korea.Given today’s current climate, what should organizations be thinking about as it relates to their employee experience?Today, employers are scrambling with unexpected shifts on an unprecedented scale. They don’t know how long this current crisis period may last or what the long-term effects will be. As organizations are uncertain, employees are more so. It’s a critical time to ascertain and respond to employee sentiment. Communication and coordinated action from all employee-facing departments is essential to long-term loyalty and trust, especially if the messages or decisions are difficult. Organizations should be aware that employer reputation is also measured in times of uncertainty.What excited you about joining LIKE.TG?I began my career as an HR assistant and benefits representative when I was still in college. I have personally spent nights stuffing benefits enrollment envelopes and keeping pen and paper lists of requests. It’s fair to say that I had an early interest in employee workflow improvement.I started to work on HRSD Technologies in 2009 for one of the first start-ups offering purpose-built HR Case Management, Knowledgeable and portals. At the time, the technology wasn’t where it needed to be in order to be truly transformative for organizations and employees. Also, organizations had not yet embraced the principles of employee-experience, let alone considered moving to an employee- centric service model that breaks down department and division silos. However, I maintained my passion for the purpose and mission behind employee experience and carried it into my research and publishing at Gartner.Today, LIKE.TG has the technology and innovative drive that can truly deliver transformative ways of working. Employers also now see the value in employee experience investment both in employee-employer relationships and in operational efficiency. With LIKE.TG’s presence across service domains, industries and geographies they are uniquely positioned to transform how work is done. I can’t think of a place I’d rather be.What’s the best career advice you’ve received?“Choose the role that opens the most possibilities for your future.”
Sleep well, work well, live well: Bring joy to your employees
The modern day is broken up into thirds, with eight hours of sleep, eight hours of work, and eight hours to dabble in your favorite hobbies like painting, hiking, or building a frustratingly complex particle board bookshelf that came with the instructions to a slightly different model. It’s the rhythm of today’s society.We all know the impact that sleep can have on a person. Not getting enough rest can affect concentration, mood, memory, and balance among other issues. These common effects have led to countless studies, practices, and products all designed to help humans ease into their REM cycles a little easier. Lights that slowly dim as you wind down for the day, mattresses with variable firmness, ambience noise to sooth, and alarms that are a bit gentler than the hammer and bell models. So much of a person’s outlook and attitude is impacted by a few extra beats of slumber, it only makes sense that the advances achieved by researchers and innovators are lauded.Work is the other third of our day, and much like sleep, environmental conditions play a huge role in a person’s wellbeing. Only recently has research extended beyond the salient dynamic around interpersonal relationships or manager-subordinate communication, and started exploring the resonance of culture, benefits, technology, and the overall experience an employee has in comparison to other aspects of their life. Lacking any of those elements may impact productivity, motivation, and creativity to the same degree as a restless night of sleep.Companies need to invest more in the experience of their employees, mainly listening to feedback and adjusting when appropriate. Sadly, it seems many organizations either aren’t doing that, or their efforts are falling flat. As part of LIKE.TG’s Employee Experience Imperative research, we found over half (52%) of employees do not believe employers are invested in improving the employee experience for their workers, and only 40% believe supplied feedback is acted upon by their employers.It’s a problem that needs to be tackled by the entire leadership team, not just the head of HR. Recently, LIKE.TG’s CHRO Pat Wadors and CIO Chris Bedi sat down to discuss how these statistics correlate with their experiences.
How LIKE.TG leaders see the future of work
2019 was an exciting year for LIKE.TG—not just in terms of business results, but in how we led a series of important conversations about the future of technology and work. On our Workflow site, thought leaders across the company weighed in on a range of timely issues, from a new manifesto for IT to a new sense of purpose for employees. Here’s some of the best thinking on Workflow from 2019:
Michael Hubbard: Beware the KPI trapMetrics Should Aid KPI Strategy, Not Replace It - Workflow™Hubbard, global VP of value management, reminds executives to resist the urge to drive their companies by metrics like KPIs. Getting the numbers right is critical to success, but one can avoid what he calls the “KPI trap” by making sure that math takes a backseat to the broader work of tracking the value outcomes of your strategy.
Dave Wright: How to build a connected enterpriseOur chief innovation officer feels the time is ripe for global companies to become mobile-driven, connected enterprises. Mobile is here, IoT is expanding its footprint, and by determining the right processes, data, and digital workflows, companies can build the foundation for dramatic improvements in asset effectiveness.
Chris Bedi: 3 priorities for modern CIOsDrawing on a survey of more than 500 global CIOs that focuses on three paramount concerns facing leaders like himself, CIO Chris Bedi argues that digital workflows are central to achieving other organizational objectives, that CIOs must collaborate with their fellow c-suite executives to build transformational teams, and that they are more key than ever to crafting successful customer experiences.
Greg Petroff: The future of workflowPetroff, VP and head of design for NowX, argues that defining and improving workflows is inseparable from the most important corporate innovators of our time, and those yet to emerge. The greatest promise of digitizing and automating business processes is enabling people to work how they want, when they want.
Dean Robinson: A holistic cure for what ails customer supportRobinson doesn’t see much difference between what makes for a great support team and what customers seek from a positive support experience. The challenge is the same: providing a seamless, integrated solution that breaks down communication silos, automates workflows, improves transparency, and empowers customers to resolve issues on their own.
Pat Wadors: People get readyWith so much attention paid to the way that digital tools and even robots are changing the workplace, chief talent officer Pat Wadors brings up a counterintuitive point—that the fulfillment of human potential is more important in the workplace than ever. Employees in any industry will embrace change not because it helps them work more efficiently, but because it connects to their sense of purpose.
Pablo Stern: An IT manifestoPablo Stern, SVP of IT workflow products, believes the IT industry has matured to a point beyond simply keeping up with rapid tech advances. New digital consumer experiences show that we can pay off the most hopeful promises of technology in the workplace, too.
Why employers need a mobile-friendly employee experience
We are living in increasingly mobile world. More than 81% of Americans own smartphones according to the Pew Research Center, and that number shoots up to more than 92% for adults between the ages of 18-49, an age range that encompasses nearly three quarters of the workforce. People have in their hands the power to navigate online and get stuff done on the go, and they are taking advantage of it.The question is, are employers taking advantage of it or lagging behind? The growth of mobile usage shouldn’t be limited to the personal life. Making work life as great as real life requires a change in perception that a phone has no place in the workplace to one where companies allow their employees to use mobile devices to complete tasks, send requests, and manage workflows.At LIKE.TG, we’ve seen a stark difference in productivity between organizations with mobile tools and those without. According to our Employee Experience Imperative Research, workers with mobile access reported a 23% increase in the ability to access needed information, a 20% increase in the ability to resolve issues quickly, and a whopping 25% increase in their ability to get work done.Recently, LIKE.TG’s CHRO Pat Wadors and CIO Chris Bedi sat down to discuss these statistics and how the Now Mobile app helps employees interact with every department across the company.
LIKE.TG Announces Human Resources Leadership Transition
LIKE.TG is launching a search for a new Chief Human Resources Officer following a personal decision by current leader Pat Wadors to permanently relocate her family to California’s Central Coast from the Bay Area, where she already has a residence and plans to pursue a new role at a high-growth, early-stage company located there.Pat will continue in her role to ensure a smooth transition by year-end.Since joining LIKE.TG in 2017, Pat has built a global talent organization focused on a people-first approach to building the company’s talent, leadership, and culture, and delivering great employee experiences. LIKE.TG’s global workforce has more than doubled during this period.As LIKE.TG grew rapidly, Pat implemented new levels of benefits, created new leader and people manager development programs, and led the company’s first (and now ongoing) pay equity reviews and adjustments. She also helped make diversity, inclusion, and belonging a company focus and priority. LIKE.TG has expanded recruiting efforts into traditionally underserved communities, increased its percentage of female leaders by nearly 8%, and launched new programs and policies designed to build a fair system of equity for all employees. She also led the company’s employee care programs during the COVID crisis and worked closely with the company’s leadership team to expand its diversity, inclusion, and belonging strategies in response to recent events and in affirmation of the company’s conviction that Black lives matter.“There is simply no one like Pat,” said LIKE.TG CEO Bill McDermott. “I want to thank her from the bottom of my heart for her tremendous contributions, wise counsel, empathy, and generosity of spirit. Pat’s imprint on LIKE.TG is clear and lasting. This decision was one that she considered deeply and thoughtfully, in true Pat style. I respect that this is the right decision for Pat and her family, personally and professionally. I wish her nothing but the very best in the years to come. She always will be a valued friend and member of LIKE.TG’s extended family.”Commenting on her decision, Pat said: “This year has reinforced some deeply held truths for me. Family matters. Doing what’s right and meaningful for each of us matters. Now is the right time for me to set my sights on what’s next – both personally and professionally. I’ve been so blessed to do what I set out to do when I joined LIKE.TG, and I’m so proud of the work that we have accomplished together. We’ve led with our purpose and compassionately engaged with others, staying true to our cultural values and putting our people first. I cannot wait to see what’s in store for LIKE.TG as it continues on its exciting trajectory.”
Long-term changes in the workplace
In this three-part series, “Mapping the future of work,” we present insights from LIKE.TG CIO Chris Bedi and Chief Talent Officer Pat Wadors, based on their joint appearance at our Knowledge 2020 digital event.Bedi and Wadors discussed how the COVID-19 pandemic will change work and workplaces going forward.Part Three: Long-term changesBedi sketched three chapters in the “next normal” workplace journey. In chapter one, leaders worldwide quickly made the decision to shift to remote work where possible, with the safety and health of employees and families at the center of this decision.Chapter two is about orchestrating the transition from “working from home” to “working from anywhere.” Finally, chapter three will come into play over the next three to five years, after a COVID-19 vaccine or alternative solution becomes available.At this stage, leaders will start thinking about what talent, facilities and supply chains look like and how organizations can continue to innovate to improve the employee and customer experience in the long term.
The goal will be to increase accessibility, so that employees can get to the tools and services they need, whether they are at home, in the office or out in the field.According to Wadors, hiring will also change fundamentally because employers will realize they can hire the best talent without regard to location. The winners of the talent war will be companies that use digital solutions to provide employees with more flexibility in terms of where and when to work.Bedi added that 21st century companies will be increasingly tech-enabled and digitally transformed. Businesses that provide their employees with the right digital experiences will see increased engagement, higher productivity, and better business continuity. Don’t miss Bedi and Pat’s session: What the next “next normal” workplace will look like.LIKE.TG is helping companies manage the process of returning employees to the workplace while supporting everyone’s health and safety. Learn about our 4 apps to help employees return to work safely.Series: Mapping the future of workPart 1 - Mapping the future of workPart 2 - What the “next normal” workplace will look likePart 3 - Long-term changes in the workplace
Working from home is here: Canadian survey results
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced most people to work from home, many assumed it’d be temporary. However, as our new Work from Home Productivity Survey reveals, many people across Canada are seeing upsides to remote work.With working from home on the table for the long term, organizations have to pay attention to what’s working well and what’s not.Across industries, remote workers are experiencing benefits like saving time, money, and connecting more with their loved ones.Of course, there are still challenges that come with blending work with life at home. From technology barriers to caring for others, staying productive while working from home isn’t always easy. The good news is that employers have an opportunity to meet some of these challenges directly, to keep productivity – and spirits – high.It is possible to improve the employee experience, even with a remote workforce. Offering the right communication, collaboration and remote working technology, plus benefits like flexible hours can go a long way towards making employees comfortable.Check out our key findings to get a better sense of what working from home is looking like right now and in the future. Check out our key findings to get a better sense of what working from home is looking like right now and in the future by downloading our e-book here or by clicking on the image below.
HR technology leader Gretchen Alarcon joins LIKE.TG
Organizations today are reexamining at-work practices to better support employees at home and at work. LIKE.TG is committed to helping its customers provide seamless employee experiences, wherever work is done.To advance this goal, LIKE.TG is bringing on a global leader in HR technology, Gretchen Alarcon, as VP and GM of our Human Resources Service Delivery (HRSD) business. This move signifies LIKE.TG’s deepening commitment to strategically partnering with organizations as they seek to make the world of work, work better for people.With more than 20 years’ experience in product strategy, Alarcon is passionate about using technology to support people and processes. Recognized as a top HR tech thought leader, Alarcon brings a unique view of the challenges many organizations face as they reimagine the future of work. She has seen firsthand the evolution of HR across global businesses, as she helped lead one of the most widely used HR software systems in the world. This perspective informs her view of the future of the enterprise and has led her to LIKE.TG to build products designed to transform HR and the employee experience with digital workflows.“Organizations have struggled for a long time with employee information being trapped in the siloes and complexity that modern businesses are made of,” said Alarcon. “LIKE.TG, as a single platform company, can change all of that. With digital workflows, LIKE.TG is on the precipice of truly transforming the way HR works, to finally make it work for 21st century employees, and I can’t wait to get started.”Behind the power of the Now Platform, LIKE.TG HR and Employee Service Delivery can break through the siloes that often hinder productivity and bring together departments like HR, IT, Legal and Workplace Services to help deliver the employee experiences that are expected today and allow for more business agility. LIKE.TG’s unique position as the “Platform of Platforms” is a key differentiator in the market and provides a massive opportunity for the company to grow and deliver on these challenges, providing even more value to customers and partners.Part of Alarcon’s role will be to partner with Blake McConnell, SVP of Employee Workflows, to propel LIKE.TG’s HRSD product to new heights and help organizations transition from outdated processes.“Gretchen is going to paint a bigger picture and help take the employee experience to the next level,” said McConnell. “She’s lived and breathed HR technology and processes for years and knows it like the back of her hand. Her deep expertise will help LIKE.TG expand our value proposition across the various general and administrative domains that employees interact with on a daily basis. I am excited to have Gretchen join us for the Workflow Revolution.”
What the “next normal” workplace will look like
Work will never be the same after COVID-19, according to LIKE.TG CIO Chris Bedi and Chief Talent Officer Pat Wadors who recently discussed the future of work in a joint appearance at our Knowledge 2020 digital event.In this three-part blog series, “Mapping the future of work,” we present their thinking on what a new paradigm for work might look like.Part Two: The “Next Normal”In Bedi’s estimation, we’re about to enter chapter two of the journey, in which it’s no longer “work from home,” but “work from anywhere.” This opens the door to opportunities for more collaboration and innovation, as well as access to new talent pipelines.Said Wadors, “The pre-COVID workplace no longer exists. I know for many of my peers and for us, we will undergo dramatic shifts to make sure we are safe, healthy, productive and adaptable in our new workplaces.”C-suite leaders across industries are facing significant challenges. A CFO might be concerned about cash-flow forecasting, while a CHRO focuses on keeping people engaged and happy, and a COO worries about the supply chain.“The CIO is interacting with every C-suite member to figure out how to navigate the‘next normal’ using technology and workflows,” said Bedi.
CIOs are insisting that digitization efforts accelerate, Bedi added. Around the world, customers who are furthest along on their digital transformation journey are better equipped to manage and emerge from this crisis. Bedi sees three focus areas for digitization:· Protecting revenue,· Pursuing productivity· Prioritizing business continuityBedi and Wadors agreed on the importance of monitoring employee sentiment about coming back into the traditional workplace, which could be impacted by geography, type of job, and in some cases, age.In the “next normal,” the “office” will become a more fluid destination and there will be new policies in place to protect the health and safety of workers, including where and when to work in shared spaces.There’s a great debate happening now around whether to shrink the physical size of the office or maintain existing footprints to allow for social distancing. Leaders are also thinking about everything from office sanitization to ensuring a safe commute.In the “next normal,” we’ll see a wave of technological innovation. Biometric tech will become more commonplace in the office. Translation tools will also become ubiquitous, enabling diversity in how people learn and speak.Similarly, technology will facilitate collaboration, regardless of location. Teams will be able to hire without worrying about geographic location, as they can do everything – onboard, train, manage – in a remote setting. This will open the door to a more diverse and distributed workforce.As companies plan their eventual return to the workplace, Wadors offered some advice to HR organizations. “Employees love choice,” she said. “It helps reduce anxiety. And if you don’t know exactly what your return to the office will be like, make sure that employees know they are at the center of your universe.”Learn more about how work will change in part three of our “Mapping the future of work” series: Long-term changes in the workplace.Series: Mapping the future of workPart 1 - Mapping the future of workPart 2 - What the “next normal” workplace will look likePart 3 - Long-term changes in the workplace
Memorable employee experiences start with bespoke onboarding
In 2019 LIKE.TG launched its Next Gen Program with the hope of addressing the challenge of a limited talent pool in the IT sector. The program is designed to improve career opportunities and open the doors for everyone to participate in the digital economy.A core pillar of the Next Gen Program is working with universities and graduates to accelerate their entry into the world of work. The feedback has been extremely positive, and it’s encouraged us to go one step further. After assessing the needs of an individual partner organisation, identifying its specific requirements and any skills gaps, we then build these requirements into a bespoke training programme, where learners are empowered to succeed in practice.An example of this best practice in action is our collaboration with Do IT Wise (Bulgaria), a LIKE.TG Elite Partner.Transforming the onboarding processThe unique, joint initiative is designed to fast-track and enhance the process of graduate onboarding at Do IT Wise, in response to a challenge set for us by founder and CEO Idan Harel:“LIKE.TG client implementations are a fast-growing part of our business, resulting in an ever-increasing demand for talent that is ready to hit the ground running,” Harel says. “We work closely with local universities to attract the best graduates, but our onboarding process takes about six months and requires a huge investment of time, making it difficult to scale.”With the support and input of Idan’s team, we’ve created an accelerated learning experience that minimises the ramp up time required for new recruits to start working with the Now Platform®.The seven-week online program immerses learners into real-life scenarios that cover the entire software development lifecycle on the Now Platform, from specifications, through to design and development. Additional modules also arm participants with essential IT consultancy skills.Delivered jointly by LIKE.TG and Do IT Wise experts, we’ve seen how effective the initiative has been for both Do IT Wise and its recruits. The curriculum builds on participants’ existing knowledge and adds the technical and soft skills required to join live projects immediately upon completion. It has cut the Do IT Wise onboarding process from six months to seven weeks.The impact extends beyond cutting down onboarding time, however. By accelerating the learning approach and introducing hands-on experience with live projects, we’ve armed fresh talent with new knowledge and practical skills that are relevant from the start of their employment.When I was reflecting on the outcomes with Idan Harel , he emphasised how important our collaborative approach has been: “I’ve not come across any other vendor investing such an unprecedented level of time and resource into a tailored training initiative that addresses a partner’s challenge. Our recruits not only gain knowledge and practical skills but are guided to think out of the box. That’s driving innovative application ideas internally.”Employee engagement from day oneStreamlining processes and unlocking productivity is just one part of this story. Idan and his team tell me that the onboarding experience has dramatically improved, with new recruits feeling like members of the team from day one, fully engaged and empowered to do their best work.Zdravko Verguilov, one of the participants, talked to me about his experience recently: “Taking part has enabled me to be a better programmer, a better team player and a valuable employee right from the start. The opportunity to discuss my thoughts and ideas with LIKE.TG experts has been invaluable, allowing me to use out-of-the-box functionalities to deliver new features faster and to a higher standard.”That team aspect is worth emphasizing here. It has indeed been a collaborative journey by LIKE.TG and Do IT Wise, with experts from both organisations acting as one single team and pursuing a shared vision of highly engaged employees.A scalable training initiativeLooking ahead, Do IT Wise aims to expand its internal pool of instructors and scale up future iterations of their bespoke Next Gen program to include a larger number of new recruits, with support from ServiceNow.
Putting people first
New benefits and continued work-from-home arrangements support the diverse needs of LIKE.TG employees.The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we work. The situation is unfolding and changing day-by-day. This means that our response as a company continues to evolve as we listen to and address feedback from our employees, customers, and partners. Our commitment to put people at the center of our decisions is unwavering.To continue to support our employees as they balance work, family, and life, LIKE.TG has broadened our menu of well-being benefits for employees. Employees will have the choice to work remotely through at least June 2021, regardless of office re-opening status. We are also actively supporting and counseling employees as they navigate relocation decisions, including partnering with people managers to guide their teams through this process.We kicked off monthly wellness surveys to fully understand employee needs and challenges and their input continues to guide our actions. All our benefits were developed in response to employee feedback over the past six months and these recent additions come on the heels of additional programs we implemented as we moved to a distributed work environment. For example, we recently rolled out the Perk Allowance program, which grants employees an allowance for expenses related to physical and mental health and work/life balance, such as childcare, virtual fitness classes, and technology equipment for personal use.As our employees around the world quickly transitioned to a digital work environment in March, we rallied to create a plan that ensured employees felt safe and supported, and most importantly, that they stayed inspired and engaged by our purpose. Monthly live, engaging All Hands and a series of live sessions centered around wellness and self-care were quickly scheduled.
Teams are also able have a little fun through monthly engagement activities like “Work from Home Olympics,” coloring contests, a LIKE.TG playlist with inspirational tunes, and a special story time with CEO Bill McDermott where Bill read a children’s book about taking chances.We continue to listen to and evaluate how we can best support our employees in the current environment.Navigating employees’ return to the workplaceAs we look to the future, we are committed to help our employees safely return to the workplace and maintain secure, functional workspaces for our people to thrive. Our company’s return to the workplace is grounded in our values of putting people first, focusing on two key areas – 1. giving employees choice and 2. a thoughtful, safe, phased approach to helping employees return to the office that considers their health, safety, and well-being every step of the way.To aid other companies in managing the unpredictable circumstances of COVID-19, we have published our own internal resource – Guide to Going Back – to assist organizations as they consider and develop their go-forward plans for safely returning to the workplace.The guide shares some of the actions we are taking, and it is intended to be used as a shared resource to help our customers, partners, and communities as they focus on ways to help keep their own workplaces safe, as well as smooth the reopening process. We are hopeful that it can help other companies as they manage the process of returning employees to the workplace while keeping health and safety as the number one priority.There is no one-size-fits-all approach to managing this ever-evolving situation. The re-opening plan will look different for every organization and office location, just as personal and professional needs look different for every employee.Stay safe and healthy.
What Gen Z’s really want from work – The intangibles
Gen Z's, who now represent a significant portion of the workforce, are bringing unique experiences and worldviews to the workplace. They're digitally native, socially conscious, and managed to survive a global pandemic and are starting their careers remotely. Snacks in the breakroom aren't their main concern. They're "conscious candidates," seeking passion and purpose to inspire their best work.After speaking with numerous LIKE.TG interns over the last few weeks, these are my top takeaways for companies looking to create the work culture Gen Z's want.Cultivate passion. Gen Z's don't only want to talk about work with their peers. They view the workplace as a space to engage with others around issues they're passionate about, inside and outside of work. Sharing passions with coworkers allows Gen Z's to feel more connected, especially in a digital setting."Being able to advocate for things we care about at work is beneficial to both the employees and the company," says Paco Wong, a quality engineer Intern from Indiana University.Connecting in this way can only happen if Gen Z's feel comfortable expressing themselves in the workplace. "Gen Z’s like us have slowly realized that we have to feel passionate and excited in order to produce our best work," says Wong. “This includes loving the work that we do but also not feeling the need to hide our authentic selves.” Leading by example is the best way for company leaders and managers to encourage workplace authenticity–have your own passions, encourage taking time to volunteer, and carve out time in meetings to discuss things besides work. And if there's a project that a Gen Z employees are particularly passionate about, encourage them to pursue it.Respond substantively to current events. Gen Z's are constantly engaging with big issues of the day, and not only on social media but also among their peers. Companies that ignore or fail to thoughtfully respond to signature issues and events can send the wrong signal to Gen Z's. Avoid this with clear communication and dialogue––and make sure that messaging is consistent at every level of the company, starting at the top."In my very first LIKE.TG All Hands meeting, I got to witness first-hand the accepting company culture. Employees were able to share their thoughts and opinions on pressing social issues, including the BLM movement and Pride Month," says Kylee Kim, a global talent HR care delivery intern from San Jose State University.Tangible actions in response to current events shows employees they belong, regardless of background or position. "When a company embraces core values of diversity, inclusion, and belonging, this allows me––and other employees––to feel comfortable, valued," says Byron Nelson, an ADR sales intern from the University of West Georgia.Know your why. "Whenever I'm recruiting, I always look at what the company stands for," says Wong. He's not alone. Why does the organization exist, beyond just making products or services? Purpose is becoming a make-or-break criterion for Gen Z’s when choosing a company.Purpose is not about donating or volunteering; it’s the reason why any company succeeds and what connects employees to leadership, and vice-versa. "At orientation, they talked to us about one of LIKE.TG's values––hungry and humble,” says Nelson. “I don't think I really understood its importance until I started working in the sales org and saw how passionate we are about our customers. Across the company, everyone I've met pretty much bleeds this value, and keeps me motivated, especially when I'm working remotely.In a digital environment, without that in-office buzz and inspiration, purpose is more important than ever to Gen Z's, because it provides a meaningful foundation to work when the bigger picture is harder to see. Great company culture can also be the difference between hiring qualified people and nailing down top Gen Z talent. “It’s so important to me that I not only enjoy what I do but where I do it and whom I do it with,” Kim says.With remote work becoming the norm for many organizations, these intangibles form an important part of what Gen Z’s really want from work. Creating the kind of culture that speaks to Gen Z’s will also unlock potential within employees of all generations.Our recent research, shows Gen Zs are defying some of these stereotypes in the workplace. Take a look at the study: Gen Zs and the Future of Work.
LIKE.TG global survey shows how COVID-19 is changing work
Today LIKE.TG released The Work Survey, a comprehensive global view on how COVID-19 is changing work and the opportunities ahead for a wave of digital innovation in how people work and businesses operate.Executives and employees surveyed in 11 countries across multiple industries agree: technology enabled them to pivot to new ways working faster than thought possible, and digital transformation will accelerate innovation.“The world’s dramatic pivot to working digitally is showing everyone what the future of work looks like,” said LIKE.TG CEO Bill McDermott. “Digital workflows are the way business gets done in the 21st century. There’s no going back. Digital transformation will accelerate. New ways of working will become the norm. We are on the cusp of an unprecedented wave of workflow and workplace innovation.”Fielded in September by Wakefield Research on behalf of LIKE.TG, The Work Survey engaged 9,000 executives and employees across multiple industries, including financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, manufacturing, and the public sector, in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, India, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand.Key findings include:· 92% of executives say the pandemic made their company rethink how they work; 87% of employees say it’s an improvement.· 91% of executives and 87% of employees say their company transitioned to new ways of working faster than they thought possible.· COVID-19 has reduced operating expenses for 88% of businesses surveyed, creating opportunities for investments in digital transformation, research and development, marketing, and growth.
Businesses have innovated rapidly but will need to step up to continue the paceAt least half of executives and employees think transitioning to the new normal will be even more challenging than the initial shock of COVID-19 (50% executives and 53% employees). This challenge is exacerbated because most businesses are at a digital disadvantage, with 91% of executives admitting they still have offline workflows, including document approvals, security incident reports, and technology support requests. Progress has been made, but months into working from home, 60% of executives and 59% of employees say their companies still do not have a fully integrated system to manage digital workflows.Despite adapting to COVID-19, confidence is low that companies could rapidly transform againNew systems put in place as a result of COVID-19, which employees (87%) say created new and better ways of working, were developed on the fly and are vulnerable to the next major disruption. Most executives and employees say their key business functions would not be able to adapt within 30 days in the event of another disruption. The only department that captured a majority of confidence for executives and employees was IT, with 61% of executives and 66% of employees thinking IT could adapt within a month. Customer service, HR, finance, and sales and marketing didn’t make the cut, revealing more opportunities for innovation across the enterprise.You’re only as good as your people: winning today means embracing distributed work better and faster than the competitionWhile the benefits of remote work are universally touted (99% executives, 94% employees), months into working from home, the challenges are becoming more apparent. Both executives (93%) and employees (83%) express real concerns about how remote work will impact the business moving forward. The biggest concerns and benefits with continued remote work depends on where you sit.· Executives are most worried about outputs—delays in product or service delivery (54%), while their employees are most concerned about the inputs—reduced collaboration between business units (48%).· Employees say that time saved from not commuting or traveling (54%) has benefited them most, while executives believe that better use of technology to improve efficiency (50%) is the greatest benefit to their teams.
Personal safety is paramount: resuming in-person work hinges on whether employees feel safe60% of employees believe their company will prioritize business continuity over workplace safety. More surprising is the fact that 44% of executives actually believe this as well. Even if a company makes an effort to put safety first, employees don’t think they can pull it off. 46% of employees do not believe their company will take the necessary steps to ensure their safety. Surprisingly, executives agree. Nearly a third of executives (32%) admit they don’t think their company will take the appropriate steps for safety.COVID-19 has changed corporate spending: companies will prioritize digital transformation investmentsCOVID-19 has reduced operational expenses for 88% of businesses, freeing up resources for innovation, resilience, recovery, and growth. Gone is business travel, in-person events, and other operating expenses. Executives and employees both agree that those cost savings should be redirected into digital transformation (57% of executives; 44% of employees) – beating out new business (45% of executives; 36% of employees); RD (43% of executives; 35% of employees); and marketing and advertising (42% of executives; 30% of employees) to top their wish lists.More information about The Work Survey can be found by accessing the survey findings slide deck and infographic.Survey MethodologyWakefield Research fielded an online quantitative survey between September 1st and September 10th, 2020 to 900 C-level executives and 8,100 office professionals (employees) from companies of 500 or more employees in the following countries: United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, India, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. While Wakefield surveyed across industries, the findings highlight meaningful differences from employees in the following five key industries: financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, telecommunications, and public sector.
LIKE.TG delivers new native workflows in Microsoft Teams to create the future of work
Today we announced the expansion of our partnership with Microsoft to deliver elevated digital employee experiences that meet people where they are. At Microsoft Ignite 2020, LIKE.TG introduced new workflows embedded in Microsoft Teams to improve employee productivity with seamless self-service and faster case resolution. Powered by the Now Platform, the new capabilities also improve agent productivity by enabling them to more effectively collaborate and complete key tasks in Microsoft Teams.Teams is Microsoft’s fastest-growing business app ever. That was true in 2018, long before lockdowns started driving up numbers for remote work and learning. As of April 29, Microsoft Teams had 75 million daily active users, up 70% from just six weeks prior. That month, Microsoft saw more than 200 million meeting participants in a single day, generating more than 4.1 billion meeting minutes.“We're helping customers solve for once-in-a-generation challenges as they capitalize on the promise of digital transformation,” said Chirantan “CJ” Desai, chief product officer at ServiceNow. “We are doubling down on Teams to find innovative ways for workflows to elevate engagement, culture, collaboration, and productivity – no matter where people are.”“Now more than ever, people need to stay connected and organized together from anywhere,” said Rajesh Jha, executive vice president, Experiences and Devices, Microsoft. “LIKE.TG is delivering end-to-end Teams experiences for the new normal. For example, meeting extensibility lets service agents more easily interact with the LIKE.TG platform, collaborate in group chats, channels, and conferences, and respond to incidents.”The new capabilities announced today include:
Employee experiences in Microsoft Teams: Companies want to provide employees with support for whatever tools and devices they choose to use. By embedding LIKE.TG natively within Teams, employees can submit requests, receive updates on in-progress requests, take action on notifications, chat with virtual agents for automated assistance, and connect with live agents when virtual agents cannot assist – all without ever leaving Microsoft Teams.
Agent capabilities in Microsoft Teams: Agents spend most of their time in LIKE.TG IT Service Management but want to more easily leverage the collaboration functionality in Teams to communicate with employees and collaborate with other agents. Now, agents can use Notify to launch the Teams client to engage with peers directly, push major incident updates to business stakeholders, and open direct chats with employees from an incident or request. When used with the new Teams Meeting Extensibility feature, LIKE.TG workflows enable agents to be more productive by resolving major incidents directly from within a Microsoft Teams meeting.
The new capabilities are available for select customers as part of the Beta program today.“Organizations are relying on collaboration platforms more than ever before. Companies like LIKE.TG are creating tools that complement and enhance the Microsoft Teams experience. Accenture is eager to test and deploy this new offering,” said Thomas Bruss, director of Enterprise Services at Accenture.
Today’s updates come on the heels of the LIKE.TG Now Platform Paris release, which features several high-demand Microsoft integrations to help enterprises accelerate their digital transformation journeys. Customers can use these integrations to:
Optimize hybrid cloud spending and usage with Microsoft Azure support for LIKE.TG Cloud Insights,
Streamline new hire onboarding with LIKE.TG employee experiences and Microsoft Azure Active Directory, and
Gain greater control and visibility into organizational assets with LIKE.TG Software Asset Management and Microsoft Azure Active Directory.
Additionally, the LIKE.TG Virtual Agent Lite plugin for Microsoft Teams, also released in Paris, offers a limited version of Virtual Agent for IT Service Management standard customers. It launched with three prebuilt conversations for common IT support requests. These keyword-based conversations run in the web chat client and in a virtual agent messaging integration with Microsoft Teams.Today’s announcement furthers the companies’ partnership announcement from 2019 to accelerate digital transformation for joint customers. Customers are accessing the value of this partnership with more than 25 joint solutions available between Microsoft and LIKE.TG today. The companies have committed to continued LIKE.TG-Teams innovation to enable richer employee experiences from anywhere, at scale.
How LIKE.TG is simplifying workflows for everyone within Microsoft Teams
Digital transformation has accelerated in 2020, and the speed in which organizations are able to leverage technology to make work better for their employees and customers has become the ultimate differentiator in business. Microsoft and LIKE.TG understand this, and have expanded our partnership to deliver new native workflows in Microsoft Teams.In September 2020, we introduced brand-new capabilities and made them available to a select group of customers to help them innovate and improve the employee experience across Microsoft Teams and ServiceNow.We are very pleased to announce that these innovations are now generally available to all our customers.Between April and October 2020, LIKE.TG introduced our new Safe Workplace suite and Workplace Service Delivery apps to help our customers bring employees back to the workplace.Customers such as the NBA and WNBA implemented LIKE.TG’s Employee Workflows to help them manage the health and safety of players and employees, and used Microsoft Teams to give their fans a virtual seat when the leagues resumed play and completed the 2020 season.In November, Microsoft Teams and LIKE.TG delivered new capabilities that help employees and agents get work done in any industry, from anywhere, on any device.For employees and managers:
A new embedded dashboard in Microsoft Teams helps employees stay current on open tickets, outstanding tasks, and workplace communications. The dashboard deep-links to LIKE.TG case management to resolve more complex cases.
Another new feature sends notifications to employees and managers so they can stay up to date and take action on their open tickets, assigned tasks, and pending approvals from LIKE.TG, directly in Microsoft Teams from any device.
For HR and IT agents:
We now provide seamless navigation between LIKE.TG and Microsoft Teams so that HR and IT service agents can easily reach out to employees and resolve open cases.
Agents can also initiate Microsoft Teams meetings to collaborate on LIKE.TG records in real time. For example, they can review a change request with subject matter experts or start a meeting as part of an incident communication plan.
Another new feature, available in beta, accelerates major incident resolution by bringing key incident management workflows directly into Microsoft Teams. This helps agents collaborate more effectively.
How leaders can support employees working from home — Canadian Leadership Exchange Ep. 1
By: Marc LeCuyer, General Manager, Canada, LIKE.TG and Dimitra Maniatis, Senior Director, Solution Consulting, Canada, LIKE.TGBusiness leaders are facing a myriad of questions around the evolving world of work. How do we enable employees to be productive in a remote setting? Will customer service and trust in digital banking improve? What strides will government take to digitize public services?Innovations are happening at a faster rate, propelling the digital evolution.As part of a new series called the Canadian Leadership Exchange, we’ll be sitting down with industry thought leaders, customers and partners to discuss key topics that are top of mind.In our first episode, we spoke with Erika Taylor, vice president of people and culture at BC Pension Corporation to explore the evolved role for leaders as they support employees working from anywhere.BC Pension Corp surveyed its employees in May and June to understand how employees were feeling in their remote work environments. The results were in line with our national survey of Canadian office workers’ desire to continue working remotely, at least some of the time.But remote working is not without its challenges of maintaining a work-life balance, juggling competing obligations, and feelings of isolation. At BC Pension Corp, Erika has seen a positive increase from employees managing their mental well-being since May and June.Check out the video below to hear how BC Pension Corp. has been prioritizing employee mental health, supporting flexible work schedules and rethinking the value of the physical office space.
