If surveys are regularly used to collect feedback, it’s crucial to act upon the consolidated results. “Oftentimes employees have been surveyed to death and nothing ever happens or changes,” said Span. “When employees don’t see the outcome of their voices being heard in their day-to-day work, they can become hesitant to care or to give honest opinions.” According to Andrew Lloyd, Salesforce director of employee experience, Salesforce relies on a frontline “network of champions” to collect “qualitative feedback by gathering answers to questions such as ‘What are you hearing on the ground? What are employees struggling with? What are their success stories? How can we elevate and amplify these success stories while also trying to see what can be done to address less favorable feedback?’” Lloyd also pointed to the value of broadening the scope of a survey’s audience to gain greater insight into digital adoption success. “If you can obtain a meaningful sample from a cross section of different functions, even different geographies and levels of the organizations, you might discover they have different concerns,” he continued. Other metrics commonly used by leaders surveyed by HBR Analytic include employee engagement scores (49 percent), speed of new technology implementation (34 percent) and speed of adoption (32 percent). “It’s important to note that a full one-third of respondents categorized as laggards do not use any metrics to measure the impact of digital adoption efforts,” said the report. Cross Functioning Much more than any other group, IT departments appear to be carrying the burden when it comes to digital adoption agendas. Forty percent of survey respondents said their IT department is responsible for driving digital adoption at their organization. That’s higher than the percentage who said it was a shared responsibility. Not surprisingly, however, adoption leaders – those businesses that cite success in their adoption strategies – are almost as likely to say adoption efforts are a shared responsibility and do so at higher rates than the “followers” and “laggards” surveyed. “When you put one department in charge, it’s easy for other people to abdicate responsibility,” argued Brown. “Companies need to make sure that responsibility transitions across the rest of the organization so that it doesn’t become siloed.” “It’s a disadvantage to have just one department drive adoption,” Span agreed. “It often means having only one agenda or one point of view. Views and the voices of other impacted stakeholder groups are left out.” Cases have been made for oversite starting in the C-suite with a type of “chief adoption officer,” but Shari Chernack, a client partner and transformation leader at organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry, argued that creating this new role and position “may feel a little precarious to people.” While Chernack agreed there should be somebody from the executive level who sponsors new tools and promotes adoption, “I prefer the idea of a director or senior manager who makes sure that implementation and adoption are smooth and successful.” Lloyd agrees, citing Salesforces “network of champions,” whose job is to “translate and apply functionspecific guidance” so that employees make better use of a technology’s key features and functionality. High-level executives, he argued, “are never going to know well enough how different departments in the organization work to tell employees exactly how they should be using a particular tool.” Whether or not there is a need for a chief adoption executive, IT departments alone can only do so much to drive and monitor employee behavior. “Establishing a clear purpose for driving adoption, determining business outcomes, shaping employee experience and eliminating age-old applications involve making tough decisions,” said the HBR Analytic Services report. “Deciding who should be responsible for making these decisions is even tougher.” J 31 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com
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