Aligning Workplace Efficiency with Human-Centred Values for Organisational Transformation

Corporate Culture and Organisational Values are phrases regularly thrown around nowadays, but how important are these when the priority is surely a more efficient and effective workplace? 

At a time when we’re concerned about rising costs and relying on legacy systems while technology changes around us, we’re also employing individuals from different generations with different priorities, whose working and communication styles can sometimes seem at odds. This is why your organisational culture and human-centred values are key. 

While organisational leadership will almost always focus on growth, workplace efficiency and employee engagement are both integral to achieving your goals, which is why we talk about both such a lot. 

Cultural Transformation for Your People and Your Success

I recently came across this article by McKinsey, Five bold moves to quickly transform your organisation’s culture. It reflects this same message, that companies need to focus on their culture to deliver on other key objectives. 

What struck me in this piece was the overarching emphasis on ensuring buy-in from your team. I’m not saying this is surprising; far from it, our own focus is, after all, ‘positive employee experiences.’ 

The McKinsey article suggests that leaders:

• Need to be seen to be demonstrating change and best practice

• Shouldn’t dictate roles but allow individuals to find their way in

• Be prepared to change everything, reviewing and refining roles, processes and practices across the board

• Recognise the influencers within teams and listen to what they have to say

• Understand that change can be difficult and personal, recognise these challenges and show how cultural transformation will benefit employees. 

It struck me that we’ve written a number of articles to help with exactly these concerns. With that in mind, I’ve pulled some of them together to show how focusing on human-centred values will support your workplace efficiencies and build success.

Transforming Your Digital Experience

Our article, See how digital employee experience can cut costs and improve productivity, reflects that transforming your digital experience (DEX) supports both employees' needs and those of the organisation as a whole. When your focus is on cultural change, DEX may not seem like the obvious place to start, but in this article, we explore how digital transformation offers opportunities to rethink everything - as the McKinsey article suggested - and to put your people first.

Your employees are looking for a culture that values them, looks after their personal wellbeing, and supports their communities. They also want empowerment to work effectively and independently, taking control over their future.

Alongside this, your organisational goals are likely to include employee engagement and retention, alongside productivity improvements and the cost reductions these enable. 

Developing your digital experience supports all these needs, providing flexible work environments, enhanced learning opportunities, and improvements in productivity and work processes, among other things. 

We explore your DEX transformation further in this post, How a strong DEX strategy boosts productivity. Specifically, we identify key considerations for your investment in DEX:

• User-centric design

• Security and privacy

• Integration and collaboration

• Training and support

In this post, we discussed the need for your DEX strategy to be aligned with your organisational goals. You can see that the considerations above support our drive to focus on values and people for success. 

Developing Your DEX in Three Steps

How you’ll progress such transformation is something we explored in this post, Strengthen your workspace strategy.

I’ve helped many organisations through these steps: Discovery, Definition, Recommendation. Ensuring we explore the needs of your people and understand what your technology is telling us, we research, consult, and consider, then establish a strategy for transformation that helps you achieve your goals. 

Putting your people at the heart of your DEX strategy will help ensure it reflects the human-centred values and culture you want.

AI is helping organisations in each of these steps - understanding what people need or want, where current systems are letting them down, and creating new systems and environments that support employees better. Used well, AI will help empower your people and improve your processes - key to supporting transformational change in your organisation. In this post, we explored the use of AI in this context.

For Your People

Let’s go back to the focus the McKinsey article put on ensuring your employees’ buy-in to your transformation. How will your digital experience help with this?

As we’ve been saying all along, research tells us that employees are looking for engagement and empowerment, fostering and flexibility.

With transformation centred around your people, you’ll get the workplace efficiencies you want as well as a strong, values-based culture. On a practical level, improved DEX supports your people with improved training and development options, giving them better opportunities for their future and personalised learning, something we explored in our article here. 

Another important factor, key to many employees, is the physical workspace and the flexibility of hybrid working. Again, we explored this further area in this post.

The McKinsey article states:

“Cultural improvements focused on employees’ well-being will require time and commitment. But the good news is that there are many paths that senior leaders can take to help their workforces thrive. In fact, McKinsey Health Institute research suggests that there are significant benefits for both employers and employees alike when companies help to address six specific aspects of employee well-being: economic security, mindsets and beliefs, productive activity, sleep, social interaction, and stress.”

With human-centred values supported by effective DEX, your organisation will not only improve efficiencies but become stronger as you help your people thrive.  

---

About the Author

I'm Terry Chana. I am an innovation strategist that connects customer, employee and brand experiences. My passion lies in building ecosystems to solve business problems by combining creativity and technology.