Thank you Mariana. It's great
to be here and it's wonderful
to be joined with Florin for our Envision segment today.
Thank you for having me Alysa.
What great timing for
this conversation because we have really been
together on this journey as
the pandemic over the last 18 months has really
disrupted our mutual customers in
so many ways as they've had to adjust to remote work,
adjustments in supply chain, new capabilities.
Now we're at this interesting inflection point
where people are starting to return to work.
Now we're looking forward to
what does it mean to have a hybrid workplace?
Indeed. This shift from
remote work to hybrid work is a really interesting one.
On one end, 70 percent of the people quite actually
prefer and appreciate the flexibility
they've had working remotely.
But then paradoxically or seemingly paradoxically,
65 percent are also really keen on
face-to-face interactions and the personal interactions.
What we see among our clients is that
the organizations which do this right have
a really interesting way of making sure of not
mixing remote work with autonomy and flexibility.
I think people need and want both.
You're absolutely right. It's really about not having
one size fits all because we know that every industry,
every company, every culture is unique.
One of the things that we've talked a lot about in
envision is this notion of digital transformation.
We've learned that organizations have really
invested in their digital capabilities,
not only to meet the needs of what's happening right now,
but also to be future proof.
Again, every organization has
a unique capability that they're bringing to market,
which is really interesting.
We look at organizations like Telstra,
which is one of
the world's largest communications companies.
They actually were on this journey
before the pandemic of hybrid work,
and I think they had a number of days that were remote.
Learning how to set up for that,
I think was an interesting journey for them.
I think it's about process,
it's about people, and it's about places.
I think on the process side,
what we see being quite successfully is
organizations which are looking at
the signing moments which merger,
moments which merger in
an individual's professional and personal life.
Designing those moments and
those journeys with the same loving care and
attention that people have been designing
customer experiences for a number of years,
and also doing this based on
analytical insights around the moments which merger,
which have an impact to an individual,
but also to the business.
>> Absolutely. I think there's a range of
these implications across this process, people, places.
I think the process side of it is
really unique to the department as well.
We've learned that a process for a manufacturing line
versus how you do remote sales and
service look very different.
Indeed. I would dare to say
it's even down to the people that mention.
It's almost like a segment of one where
the processes are down to specific individuals.
I think we've seen more and more people around
the world getting this feeling of you only live once,
and therefore, really asking themselves
what impact do I bring to society?
What impact do I have to the world at large?
I think organizations and leadership which
are really trying to clarify
the deeper purpose of work to
individuals is so powerful
and something which really motivates people.
It's about leadership.
Absolutely. Actually, there's
this emerging framework round social capital,
and what does that mean for an organization and how does
an organization invest in their social capital?
We know that the CEO of Microsoft, Satya,
actually had a recent business leadership forum
where he talked about that,
and so we thought we take a minute and actually
share his thoughts on the social capital framework.
On the social capital side,
this is a framework that's been there at least
in tech in the way we build tools for a long time.
This two-by-two quadrant essentially tells us
how to think about
all the forms of communication and collaboration,
whether it's synchronous or asynchronous,
whether you are in the workplace or remote.
In the past, I would say if you could be
good at a few of these quadrants and
still build the social capital
required because you could
rely on that co-presence of people.
But now going forward in hybrid,
I'd claim that we need to be world-class.
Every organization will need to be
world-class across all of these four quadrants.
It's a really good point that Satya makes.
I think specifically the notion and the importance of
places is getting so much more important.
The purpose of places, and again,
what we see our clients do is to merge the
digital and the physical in
a really intelligent way where people have
seamless experiences and seamless processes
across the digital and the physical.
As a little example,
one of our clients in Europe, which is a bank,
is looking to use analytics to nudge people,
for example, when they're in
the office recognizing that, "Hey, Florin,
I noticed that you're in the office
today and you generally work with Jason'',
who is also in the office and you haven't
met Jason in quite a while.
Maybe it's a few weeks, maybe it's a few months.
''Would you like me to set up
a face-to-face meeting between you and Jason?"
This would be a gentle nudge
surfacing in Teams and I would only need to type, yes,
and that would organize a meeting between me and Jason,
maybe order us coffee,
and reserve the meeting room for us as well.
>> That's something that it does an evolution.
We've been working to
bridge the physical and the digital,
and so being able to do that in such a unique way.
It's exciting times.
There's a lot of optimism in the world.
I think it's a tremendous opportunity for
all of us to reinvent what work means,
whether you're a frontline worker in a store,
or you're working in a mine,
or you're working with R&D,
at a chemicals company,
or you're a professional services company like ourselves.
The nature of work is being re-imagined.
It's being reborn for the better.
I think organizations which are going to
master this blend of process,
people and places are going to be the ones which are
going to delight their people and
use this as a competitive advantage.
I know in that same segment
that we just heard from Satya,
he talks about how Microsoft is reinventing
our physical locations to do
just what you're talking about.
Maybe we can hear from him
again and hear what he had to say.
Let just say inside a Microsoft's own footprint,
we're finding that there's just a lot of variability.
When I look at even R&D,
what a game studio needs versus what
a Kernel Team needs
versus what a business application Teams are different.
We are finding that there is no commonality.
But the one thing that we are
dealing with is even if let's say,
there is something called optimal,
the challenge I think we are all going to have is
to change the employee expectations.
You just can't think that you're going to,
you really have to accommodate for what is
going to be the flexibility expectations.
The way we want to approach it is use
data and continuously see
if we can shape the norms
versus trying to force the norms from Day 1.
>> It's a great point that he makes about flexibility,
and I think it really underscores what you were saying
around using data analytics
to be able to do this merger of
these worlds and create new employee experiences.
But I think it also extends beyond just the individual.
It's also this notion of how do
you on-board people to
this new world and what does that look like?
I think we've one more segment
that we're going to hear from Satya on
that particular topic and how you shape the culture,
you have a completely new employee experience,
and how you could have wrapper it altogether.
We've been studying a lot of data.
I mentioned this, I think a couple
of events back as well,
we studied, for example,
the intern class last year and said,
"Okay, what was their experience like?"
The number 1 variant there was the manager because
the single manager or
mentor and their connection makes a difference,
because in the past we could rely on the campus,
them being on campus and
all of the peers and what have you,
and that doesn't exist.
Therefore, we're stressing a lot more on
how to help manager stay connected to their employees.
You could say that's basics,
but in some sense it becomes the most important thing.
Beyond that, some of the tools,
like that's why this employee experience
as a category has
suddenly gone from a nice to an important thing.
In fact, a lot of us who used to have
corporate intranets and so on,
we just said those are not
priorities anymore. Guess what?
Now they are, because you do need to
have that continuous connection between your company,
your mission, your culture, and your employees.
Bought some digital tools,
but good old fashion, great management.
I think it's terrific how Satya
emphasizes the importance of good management.
I think the importance of managers growing as leaders,
which I think is something that we've seen being
accelerated over the last few months
when every manager or a lot of managers have
had to manage teams remotely.
I think the App_Data bit here,
which I really liked and resonated very strongly with me,
is the employee experience growth as a category.
I've been in the employee experience space
for close to 20 years,
and I think it's so terrific to see employee experience
connecting and jazzing with customer experience,
and one emphasizing and strengthening the other.
We're strong believers in customer experience plus
employee experience equal ROI
for companies, ROI from businesses.
Not agree more. The background that I
have in business process and when you marry those,
when you have the right process connected to
the employee experience that
leads to a better customer experience,
it's just this amazing,
virtuous flywheel, so it's wonderful to see.
It's been great to spend time with you today.
Likewise.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me.
It's great to share this with our viewers.
I think as our companies work together to
usher our mutual customers into this next era,
it'll be an exciting time.
I'm looking forward to it Alysa.
Well, thank you. Mariana, back to you.