RWS_Q1_22

tives believe employees consider customer relationship management systems a source of difficulty. “However, when organizations take the time to analyze how employees interact with these tools in their day-to-day activities, they can better configure those tools,” said the research report. Scott Span, a senior advisor of change management and technology adoption at consultancy Tolero Solutions, recommended that organizations solicit information from employees on their processes and workflows prior to beginning to build the technology. This places employees and their needs at the center of the experience. Span pointed to the case of a new health care technology client that struggled to drive the adoption of a new platform due to a built-in, rigorous approval process that required staff to wait for health care providers to sign off on patient information before being able to input additional data into the system. “Upon closer examination and discussion with staff, the company realized that it wasn’t the software itself that was stalling adoption but rather a cumbersome process that could be remedied by documenting processes and workflows and engaging in conversations with staff,” said researchers with HBR Analytic Services. When processes can’t be reconfigured to accommodate employee needs and/or desires, tailored training, such as personalized user onboarding, peer support and training that takes place within apps, can help bridge the gap between easeof-use and friction-inducing workflows, continued HBR Analytic researchers, and ensure a more sizable return on software investments. About half of survey respondents strongly agree that employee experience suffers in the absence of effective software training, while 70 percent of respondents say providing employees with software training has increased their digital aptitude. More than seven in 10 plan to increase investment in training during the next two years. Currently, however, only half of organizations believe they provide adequate types of training to help employees leverage the most beneficial aspects of the platforms they use. “Training needs to be customized for what employees are actually doing, delivered as standardized offthe-shelf training,” Span advised. Word from the Street When business leader measure the impact of initiatives designed to drive the adoption of employeefacing-facing solutions, they tend to utilize employee feedback as a key metric. That includes six in 10 surveyed by HBR Analytic – the same percentage that cited productivity gains or losses as a key metric. “No one knows how employees are experiencing new technologies better than employees themselves,” said the report. Yet almost 45 percent or organizations rated as “weak” their ability to collect feedback from employees on how they use their software tools. Matters are only complicated by dispersed workforces. One common problem, suggested Greg Smith, a partner at management consulting firm Arthur D. Little and leader of the company’s digital problem-solving practice in London, England, is organizations simply waiting too long to get started. “Don’t wait until you’re rolling out a solution to engage your employees,” Smith advised. “Those people who will use a solution’s capabilities should be part of the project from the outset.” Mistakes also are made when organizations attempt to “boil the proverbial ocean when seeking insight,” warned Craig Johnson, a partner at Mercer. Jonson recommended that, rather than launch “an organization-wide survey,” companies “pick a subset of the biggest stakeholder group that you want to adopt a certain technology and ask them why they’re not using it. What do you not understand? Is there something about the solution’s interface? Is it a lack of training? Asking these questions can provide a baseline understanding of why employees are not adopting a particular solution.” 30 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com

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