Back to Top
One of the greatest challenges facing today’s workforce is the rapid rate of change in technologies. It is this rate of change which is expected to impact business productivity for those companies that do not adapt and embrace them. You might be thinking ‘Wait, isn’t technology meant to make us more productive?
Well, yes. However, according to Deloitte’s 2017 Global Human Capital Trends Report, there is a gap in business potential as organizations try to keep up with the pace of change in technology.
Essentially, technology is changing faster than businesses and their people can adapt.
The report also states that 88% of respondents view ‘developing their organization for the future’ as ‘important’ or ‘very important’ to them.
While this graph may look like there is tough road ahead for businesses to catch up, there is the opportunity for business leaders to bridge this gap. Devising strategies to organize, manage, align and develop their people at work ensure that business remains agile in the process.
So, how do you do that with the limited resources you already have to work with? By leveraging your intranet to achieve your business objectives, and create an agile environment for your organization to succeed in this time of fast-paced technological change. Aligning your business, technology and human capital strategies to the short and long-term objectives of your organization. Let’s see how…
Currently you may be using your company intranet in a basic fashion with an internal network for communications, social information and housing static forms for employees to access. You may find that engagement levels are not where you’d like them to be, but recognize that delivering the right content on your intranet is a great place to start seeing improvements in engagement.
There is a direct correlation between engagement and productivity equating to the profitability of an organization.
For an intranet to close the gap between productivity and technology there must be a process of agile change. This includes delivering a modern intranet that is organized for learning with access to training and knowledge experts. This empowers employees and teams to collaborate and communicate fostering innovation, and an online space your staff can go and access information to deliver better customer service.
Your intranet should champion your business: Who you are, what you do, and why you do it. In the bigger scheme of things - the core values of your organization, your mission - should be directly aligned on your intranet. For all parts of your organization to be clear, they are working towards the same goals and values.
Your intranet should communicate these values and then deliver a place for your employees to do their job – connecting people to the tools they need.
When thinking of the intranet as a lever to use in achieving the goals of the business, it is important to work with all the critical business units to create alignment and look at the unique needs of each area.
You must understand how technology may or may not facilitate the strategic objectives of the business. From here it’s important to work with the resources you have (human and software) to build a roadmap which is adaptable to change and focused on the long and short term objectives. This will require working with IT on a regular basis to ensure that the technology strategy in your organization fits within both HR and business goals. It is also important to understand how your employees work on a day-to-day basis and how the intranet solution can be leveraged to support them.
A business has much to gain through an intranet leveraged to their objectives. Facilitating the move from a transactional space to enabling transformation across the business.
The automation of HR and business processes is a good first step. Looking at the processes in the organization: What can be automated? If it can’t be fully automated, can it be improved, or removed entirely?
GreenOrbit's online forms functionality supports the automation of these tasks to make it easier for Operations and HR professionals to transition from the task of being administrators to becoming strategic partners in leading the transformation of their business.
If the information above has you thinking about how you can leverage your intranet to better align with your business goals, you may be wondering how to start making this change.
One of the best tools for doing this is by creating a business case. This is where you can describe the current state of play and the inefficiencies that you have identified these may be items such as: Time spent finding information, understanding the correct process, locating the right expertise people.
Once these have been identified you can address how the intranet is going to help you: Through centralizing information, automating process and the expected outcomes in a tangible and measurable way: Reducing admin time, increasing productivity, freeing up resources that can be reinvested elsewhere.
Fortunately, these days, with the access to information that we all have literally at our finger tips, creating the business case is as easier as it's ever been.
With this business case and your business objectives in hand you’ll be on you way to start the journey to a more productive and agile intranet – delivering increased engagement and productivity.
For a deeper dive into leveraging your intranet to bridge the performance gap, check out our eBook:
