With increasing headwinds and uncertainty across businesses, it’s easy for leaders to feel paralyzed. But HR leaders can give themselves an edge by implementing what Jenny Shiers, chief people officer at UK-based intranet platform provider Unily, calls “organizational velocity.”
“When the workforce can quickly find what matters to them, understand the company strategy and see how they contribute, employee satisfaction increases and in turn, impacts productivity positively,” she says in an interview with StrategicCHRO360.
This isn’t a business strategy overhaul, Shiers stresses. It’s more about adopting a different mindset. Here are the key steps to get started.
What does organizational velocity look like and how does it give companies a competitive edge in a changing market?
Organizational velocity is the ability to adapt, align and execute quickly at scale by removing noise and friction for employees so they can get their work done, fast. Being in an era of extreme and unprecedented change, companies who strive for a frictionless organization can connect and enable their employees to adapt and pivot and turn uncertainty into competitive advantage.
High-performing organizations don’t communicate in a “one-size-fits-all” approach across their employee base. When the workforce can quickly find what matters to them, understand the company strategy and see how they contribute, employee satisfaction increases and in turn, impacts productivity positively.
The real competitive edge today is organizational velocity: removing friction, connecting people to what they need and turning information into action fast.
Do you have any recommendations or best practices for companies to implement velocity-building strategies into their business functions?
Improving velocity isn’t necessarily about a big transformation project—it’s about implementing a new mindset. Below are a few ways companies can start.
Make enterprise-wide alignment a strategic priority, not just HR’s responsibility. At Unily, our employees translate business priorities into their own operational plans which are published on our internal employee experience platform. They don’t gather dust, they drive regular conversations with managers, are updated when required and support career growth conversations.
Build deep engagement between managers and employees so they’re aligned with what is required. Employees will naturally move faster when they understand what they’re doing.
Introduce and audit digital tools that are proven to be useful, and make sure they are being leveraged. Today’s employees are drowning in a wave of digital noise. This distraction and constant context switching is a huge productivity drain, negatively affecting performance.
Finding ways to streamline communication and critical information flow can ensure operations can move faster and with reduced friction. This means onboarding teams to the tech the company is using, getting their feedback, and making sure that teams understand the use case and benefit of any tools so they feel empowered by them, rather than intimidated.
At Unily, we have a fast-growing enablement function that ensures all employees are up to speed with training and information that impacts their roles. Our L&D department proactively works across the business to support career growth with training opportunities at a time and in a format that suits the individual.
Regularly communicate with employees across the business and gather feedback from the people that are responsible for executing company strategy. This means that leaders and individual contributors should have transparent communication. Having processes that reach every layer of the business that are timely and targeted—from senior leadership to manager to employee to frontline worker— ensures clarity for all.
At Unily, we have the ability to streamline and personalize all our employee internal communications. This significantly cuts down on the noise and ensures we’re focused on building impactful employee experiences so our teams can focus on serving our customers.
How can companies support a shared culture across both desk and deskless workers?
The key to supporting a shared culture across both desk and deskless workers is to use technology to bridge the gap. An employee experience platform used by all team members can act as a single source of truth, centralizing all the tools employees use and ensuring they have easy access to the information they need.
Rather than having to hunt across multiple systems for answers, they can self-serve or solve problems fast, ultimately increasing the speed of execution. It’s also important to enable two-way communication and provide simple channels for feedback, ideas, pulse surveys, and quick sentiment checks.
Creating a culture of psychological safety is absolutely imperative, as well. It’s the role of HR to ensure the company’s workforce is resilient and capable of thriving. This starts at the top with C-Suite leadership communicating openly, building trust by normalizing failure, and asking for input.
When this happens authentically, employees learn it is safe to take measured risks, which drives innovation and can help employees to unlock new solutions in their everyday work.
What is your take on AI as it relates to company brand image, skills needed in the workplace and the impact it can have on the employee experience?
AI has become a key factor in perception by both current employees and potential future talent. AI can transform employer brand strategy from guesswork to precision.
For instance, AI can identify patterns in what current employees say about the organization, revealing brand strengths to amplify and weaknesses to address. It can also be used to help measure employee sentiment, quality of hires, time to productivity and retention.
AI literacy has become treated as the end goal, when in reality it’s only the starting point. What organizations will really be looking for are people who can translate AI’s potential into meaningful business outcomes. This means having leaders who can hold human judgement with digital capability, evaluate where AI creates longer-term value, and guide colleagues through the transition.
These will be the skills that create transformation at scale. Overall, AI is transforming the employee experience by making it more data-informed and performance-driven while enhancing engagement and development.
