Workplace of the Future™ Webinar: How Technology is Helping Companies Reshape the Employee Experience

December 6, 2016

The workplace is evolving, and work and life are becoming more integrated. To stay competitive, organizations around the world are investing in the employee experience to attract and retain top talent.

But what exactly is the employee experience and how do companies adapt? We recently tapped into Future of Work authority and best-selling author Jacob Morgan to get some insight.

According to Morgan, a simple explanation of employee experience is that it’s the difference between a workforce who has to show up, and one who wants to show up. This doesn’t necessarily involve fancy perks; instead, Morgan describes it as a combination of three unique environments that focus on:

  • The culture the company creates
  • The physical work environment (the workspace) and very importantly
  • Technology, or the tools that are available to employees in order to do their jobs.

“Technology is the central nervous system of an organization,” says Morgan. “It connects everyone and everything.”

Based on research from his upcoming book, The Employee Experience Advantage (March 2017) he expanded on the role that technology plays in employee experience in a webinar we presented as part of our Workplace of the Future initiative.  He summarizes the factors that organizations need to consider when vetting technologies with the “ACE” formula:

  • Available to everyone: New technologies and tools should be available to all employees who want to use them.
  • Consumer-grade: It should be so beautiful, easy and valuable that employees would consider using something like it in their personal lives.
  • Employee needs vs. business objectives: It’s easy to get caught up in the business needs the technology meets while ignoring how they will be utilized.  It’s important to understand how the employees will actually be able to use the tools.

 

“It’s important to think of your organization more like a lab, and less like a factory,” says Morgan. “It’s especially important when we’re thinking about technology.”

Learn more about the trends that are reshaping the Future of Work, and the role of technology in the Employee Experience by watching the replay here:

Kevin Kern
Senior Vice President, Digital Transformation and Emerging Technologies

Kevin is responsible for setting the direction and strategy to accelerate Konica Minolta’s customer adoption of digital transformation, also overseeing the software and solutions planning functions, including emerging technologies along with oversight of US R&D and Business Intelligence Services (BIS) operations. In previous roles, he drove the BIS and Product Planning organization to ensure the growth and innovation of the company’s technology, solutions, vertical markets and ECM practice, and led corporate marketing initiatives and new product planning and development for Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc.