Chocolate Bars, Netflixware, and Workforce Change

The time is now and your transformation potential is real

The cyclical words of January, “a new year, a new you,” have now begun to fade, but there is still time to avoid them becoming a distant memory.   Scratching off (or potentially rolling forward) last year’s goals seemed to make sense before life (and wintery weather) got in the way.

With aspirations to tackle health challenges by trying limit chocolate bars, prioritising sleep, and focusing on your overall wellbeing maybe’s it time to get serious and plan. Better yet, inspired by recent events including the London Marathon, you’ve decided this is your chance to put some miles on the trainers that to-date have taken you as far as the corner shop, the joggers that have affectionately become “Netflixware,” and the plethora of wearable gadgets ingesting your health data daily yet only called upon to tell the time.

Many in this position will turn to the gym seeking a ‘quick fix’ and immediate results making a financial investment in a membership but neglecting to realise that change and transformation do not happen over night or as a direct result of simply turning on the right equipment.

The same problem lies within many organisations that for years have been attempting various quick fix methods to improve organisational health and workforce behaviours prioritising investment in tech and gadgets over people and change. Declaring yourself “digitally transformed” after purchasing the latest and greatest tools or a semi-baked consulting strategy promising to deliver “value” overnight is no different than buying that gym membership fitness app and declaring on social media you are now a health and wellness guru.

Both personal and organisational health improvement require discipline, focus, and most of all consistency to make a difference over time with behavioural and habitual change.  If you’re struggling to find that workforce mojo here are a few tips for you and your organisation to get fighting fit.

Define a clear, tangible, and data-centric goal to become people smart

Don’t be intimidated or afraid of data. There is an amazing amount of information you already understand about your workforce without holding a doctorate in data science. The key to enhancing your own workforce intelligence is to first define a simple set of objectives to measure or hypotheses to prove through the information already at your fingertips.  From there ask common sense questions to narrow the focus on the outcomes you’re aiming to achieve and deliver the answers needed to make smarter decisions. Where there are gaps in data or opportunities to enhance your overall findings, you now have a clear reason to collect additional data from your colleagues.

Reduce the clutter and noise across your system

So many times, do we see in organisations the left foot not follow the right and generally expect after a multitude of investments they will run faster and farther than others in the market.

In the post-Covid era we are facing a technological pandemic with organisations addicted to investing in the latest and greatest shiny object before promised benefits or value can be realised from the last. As a result, spiderwebs of workforce-related platforms once promising simplicity and utopian colleague experiences appear have in fact increased complexity and confusion for both the business to manage and colleagues to interact. Within your 2024 improvement goals, get back to the basics, clear out the clutter, and leverage tech only where there is a clear gap or deficiency in your current architecture.

Prioritise adoption over disruption

Change is not easy and in fact often seems to be everyone’s number one priority to underinvest in. The abundance of change currently impacting the everyday colleague is immense and artificially imposing more on your workforce can likely have an adverse effect than the intended.

In defining your organisation’s change journey whether at a persona level or across the workforce, if the colleague is impacted the story needs to be clear as to why change is occurring, the value or opportunity they will gain through adoption, and the business measures taken to support them along the way. We are all naturally resistant to change, and the last thing we need is to have to figure out a new system or complete ambiguous data requests whilst we are struggling to keep up with our day jobs.

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JCURV helps our clients directly link people-related decisions to overarching business strategies, capabilities, and journey-led outcomes.  A continuous focus on your workforce will enable your people to use information to think smarter, focus on what matters most, and evolve at the pace required today in an increasingly uncertain world.  To learn more about how we help organisations like yours…