Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / Digital Adoption at (Immense) Scale w/ Anthony Firmin 😎🔥

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Digital Adoption at (Immense) Scale w/ Anthony Firmin 😎🔥 · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome it, change makers to the Deck Show with Tim
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Flower and Tom McGraw. Let's get into it.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Hello everybody, welcome back to the Deck Show. I'm Tom McGrath.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: I'm joined as ever by my men man, Tim Flower.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: How are you doing, Tom?
• 0:17
  Speaker 3: I'm good. Hey. We always had a in my previous roles,
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: we always had a question, how long into the new year?
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: Is it acceptable to continue to say Happy New Year?
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Okay? Okay, So it's really burst the foot fourth War, right,
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: because I was given this some thought before we were recorded,
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: and I was like, wait, when is this episode going live.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: To the listeners, it's February. It's way too late to
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: be about twenty twenty five in the beginning of But
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: to us, of course, we're recording this on January of
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: the seventh, okay, just to reveal it all to everybody.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: And so it is a pretty fresh, pretty fresh new year.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: I think it's I think it's acceptable to you, and
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: I don't know if we should stay going into any depth?
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Is my suggestion?
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: Happy to.
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: Us?
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: To us, to the listeners, they're like, my god, it's February.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Shut up about of course. Let's crack on, gentlemen, what
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: are we doing. What are we doing? So you've already
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: heard from him, listeners. Our fantastic guest today is a
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: digital experience director and employee experience evangelist, Anthony Ferman. Anthony,
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the show.
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: Lovely to have you on, Thanks very much, Tom and Tim.
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: Great to be here.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Excellent, excellent. You know, we have to sort of be
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: a little bit, a little bit sort of imprecise about
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: your career, right, but it's really really distinguished, you know,
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: amazing experience at multiple world leading brands, and you were
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: focused on digital adoption and change at scale at one
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: of what we will call the Big four consultancy firms.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Is that right?
• 1:50
  Speaker 5: Absolutely right? Yeah, very very much, very very much on point. Tom,
• 1:56
  Speaker 5: So I guess quick intro you know. So, Yeah, I'm
• 2:00
  Speaker 5: Anthony Ferirman. I've spent over a wow twenty years now
• 2:03
  Speaker 5: driving transformational change in global organizations with a deep focus,
• 2:07
  Speaker 5: as you say, on digital adoption and on employee experience
• 2:11
  Speaker 5: at scale. And you know, most recently I led global
• 2:15
  Speaker 5: digital adoption and technology experience programs, as you say, Big
• 2:20
  Speaker 5: four firm, enabling four hundred and fifty thousand employees across
• 2:24
  Speaker 5: one hundred and fifty countries, so some serious scale. And
• 2:28
  Speaker 5: you know, my passion really lies in blending data led
• 2:31
  Speaker 5: insights with human centered design to create scalable people for
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: solutions that I guess not only improve productivity but also
• 2:38
  Speaker 5: make technology a seamless enabler of a great employee experience.
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: And I guess to.
• 2:45
  Speaker 5: Round off, I now freelance, I'm providing consulting and staff
• 2:49
  Speaker 5: augmentation services around employee experience, digital adoption and transformation.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Well, it's no accident we wanted you have a share.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: I really feel that he's a These are despite your
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: regardless of your incredible experience there, these are huge themes
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: for us, I think, and for the entire sort of
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: deck sector in twenty twenty five, I think the option
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: digital transformation are going to be massive preoccupations for many
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: professionals who listen to the show, and on the show
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: itself you'll hear a lot about it. So let's let's
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: get right into it, Anthony, What do you see is
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: the core principles for successfully driving digital adoption across an
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: organization as large as the one you've just described.
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: Wow, you're not just easing me in here.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: This is how the questions came to it. I'm sorry, yeah, absolute, you.
• 3:38
  Speaker 5: Know, it's a huge topic. I guess we could. We
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: could probably talk for hours, days and weeks about it.
• 3:43
  Speaker 5: But I think of a boil it down, firstly to
• 3:46
  Speaker 5: to one big theme. It's it's really about putting users
• 3:48
  Speaker 5: at the center of everything you do. And on the
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: face of it, I think that sounds kind of stupidly obvious,
• 3:56
  Speaker 5: but when you're seeking to do so at scale, how
• 3:59
  Speaker 5: on earth do you get human centered? And I think
• 4:03
  Speaker 5: to bring that enormous topic down, to boil it down
• 4:07
  Speaker 5: to perhaps three three keeper In supports. The first would
• 4:12
  Speaker 5: be harness the power of data when operating at scale.
• 4:15
  Speaker 5: You know, it's your most powerful Ally, leverage telemetry, sentiment analysis,
• 4:21
  Speaker 5: uses sorry, usage analysis, God Colin speak, usage analysis, analytics sorry,
• 4:27
  Speaker 5: to understand your audience, understand what your employees need, how
• 4:31
  Speaker 5: they work, you know, and what gets in their way.
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: And you know, data is also critical in managing stakeholders.
• 4:38
  Speaker 5: You know, objective insights rather than assumptions, build credibility whilst
• 4:43
  Speaker 5: diminishing the effects of emotion and ego in decision making.
• 4:47
  Speaker 5: So my advice there is, let the data speak, make
• 4:51
  Speaker 5: everything measurable, and you know, use data as a shield
• 4:55
  Speaker 5: and a sword, and obviously use data to measure success
• 4:59
  Speaker 5: through well defined KPIs, but also to adapt your campaign
• 5:03
  Speaker 5: in real time. You know, for example, to identify under
• 5:07
  Speaker 5: use features or pain points in a given process, and
• 5:10
  Speaker 5: then you know tailor your interventions to course correct. So
• 5:13
  Speaker 5: that's really principle or sub principle number one. Secondly, one
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: size does not fit all. You know, employees operate in
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: different roles in diverse contexts, with unique needs and preferences.
• 5:30
  Speaker 5: So segment users based on their needs, design tailored ent
• 5:35
  Speaker 5: interventions and messages per segment, and also recognize the adoption
• 5:42
  Speaker 5: curve within each segment, right from innovators through to laggards.
• 5:46
  Speaker 5: When devising your communication strategies, define what each adopted type
• 5:52
  Speaker 5: should no feel, and do it each stage of the campaign,
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: because sending the same message to all essentially will be ineffective.
• 5:58
  Speaker 5: And I think many shire away from segmentation is it
• 6:01
  Speaker 5: seen as too complex or or maybe seen to be
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: injecting delay into the schedule. But from my experience, the
• 6:09
  Speaker 5: reality is if you invest time and effort in designing
• 6:12
  Speaker 5: that segmentation approach up front, you'll inject rocket fuel into
• 6:15
  Speaker 5: the adoption timeframe. And you'll know you'll reach the finish
• 6:18
  Speaker 5: line faster.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: I got to ask you, I got to ask you,
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: so jampion against him, really interested in what you said
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: about one size fits or. We've had some conversations and
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: next think recently about a term we're calling her digital adoption.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: You know, okay, obviously you've been successful at implementing a
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: more tailored approach to digital adoption. But it's a two
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: part question. Do you feel that the limits on that
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: tailored approach just starting to evaporate a bit? More like
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: were you were you constrained, say, three four years ago,
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: more than you would be now to necessarily basically do
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: it en mass? Second part of that, do you feel
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: that with the wave of AI technology that's coming in,
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: that approach becomes particularly outmoded.
• 7:13
  Speaker 5: To answer the first question, we were absolutely our hands,
• 7:17
  Speaker 5: if you like, were tied three or four years ago,
• 7:21
  Speaker 5: significantly more than they would be today. With the advent
• 7:24
  Speaker 5: of digital adoption platforms and so on and so forth,
• 7:28
  Speaker 5: and you know, the technology is moving so fast, which
• 7:33
  Speaker 5: takes us into an inter question around AI. Do I
• 7:37
  Speaker 5: think it's do I think that? Essentially asking do we
• 7:43
  Speaker 5: think the whole segmentation piece will disappear because of hyper
• 7:46
  Speaker 5: personalization via AI. I think there's I could be wrong,
• 7:53
  Speaker 5: but segmentations I think will always be necessary to a
• 7:57
  Speaker 5: degree in order to tailor your communications. Right, It's all
• 8:03
  Speaker 5: very well having AI, you know, essentially deliver hyper personalization
• 8:09
  Speaker 5: in a given platform or in a given product, but
• 8:13
  Speaker 5: you still have to drive messaging, you know, this sort
• 8:15
  Speaker 5: of messaging wrapper around any particular change. And I think
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: that the need to segment messaging will always be there.
• 8:23
  Speaker 5: Yet to see whether or how long it takes AI
• 8:26
  Speaker 5: to get us to a point where you know, segmentation
• 8:29
  Speaker 5: for I guess from a training perspective or for other
• 8:34
  Speaker 5: change management interventions, whether it kind of takes over and
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: removes the need to segment. But I always see it
• 8:41
  Speaker 5: being there for the messaging side of a change.
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: And even Gartner says, AI in and of itself needs
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: to be segmented. Right. A rookie knowledge worker will look
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: at an AI output and not be able to determine
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: good from bad. Where a very seasoned knowledge work or
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: who's been in their role for decades we'll use AI
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: and immediately know if they need to modify something or
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: if it's good content. So even adopting AI in itself
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: requires us to look at our subjects a little bit differently. Anthony,
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: I looked online and I wanted to grab a couple
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: of different definitions of digital adoption. It's two words. It
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: can be interpreted many different ways. It boils down to
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: the act of incorporating new digital tools and systems to
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: improve work processes and achieve objectives. So use new things,
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: do new things to achieve what you want to do.
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: But I think it misses a key point in that process,
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: which is the process of actually incorporating the change. You
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: can roll out on new technology. You can tell people
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: to do something different, but until you really teach people
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: and incorporate those changes into their DNA, it's not.
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: Going to work.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: So it really it requires employees to learn something new
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: and use it to its fullest capability. You've emphasized that
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: digital adoption is a business issue and not just a
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: technology issue. We tend to focus on the easy part.
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: The tech is the easy part. That people are hard
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: elaborate on the distinction and why that business side of
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: adoption is so important.
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, sure, absolutely.
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: I mean I guess the core of this is that
• 10:24
  Speaker 5: technology is only as valuable as its adoption. You know,
• 10:28
  Speaker 5: you can have the best tools in the world, but
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: if employees aren't using them effectively, they're just expensive shelfware.
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: And you know it organizations they can't get away with
• 10:39
  Speaker 5: you know that sort of build it and they will
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: become mentality that leeds a hefty technology bill on the.
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: Table with low value delivered.
• 10:47
  Speaker 5: You know, you have to step up and help the
• 10:48
  Speaker 5: business to see the ROI And I think you know,
• 10:52
  Speaker 5: viewing digital adoption as a business issue means aligning it
• 10:56
  Speaker 5: with strategic goals, right, measuring success in terms of business outcomes,
• 11:00
  Speaker 5: and ensuring that you know, leaders across both functions and
• 11:05
  Speaker 5: giography is champion the change. And you know, this perspective
• 11:08
  Speaker 5: allows for a more holistic outcome of an approach, you know,
• 11:11
  Speaker 5: rather than treating adoption as an afterthought to implementation. And
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: I think another kind of connected element to this tim
• 11:19
  Speaker 5: is that, you know, people say that change is the
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: only constant, and I think that these days it's more
• 11:25
  Speaker 5: appropriate to say that the acceleration of change is the
• 11:28
  Speaker 5: only constant. It will never be as slow as yesterday,
• 11:32
  Speaker 5: and the need for delivering change at both scale and
• 11:37
  Speaker 5: that velocity is growing. And if an organization has been
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: used to delivering major technology change over say a two
• 11:44
  Speaker 5: year program life cycle. Don't expect that to be considered
• 11:47
  Speaker 5: success tomorrow. So you know, I guess my message would
• 11:50
  Speaker 5: be find out how to manage adoption at scale and velocity,
• 11:55
  Speaker 5: because by the time you finish one deployment, you'll probably
• 11:57
  Speaker 5: going to be starting the effort to replace it.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: And maybe a similar part b to that question is
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: the lens that we look at adoption through. We usually
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: look at it through the lens of it. I tested
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: a piece of software that's going to be beneficial to
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: the business. I rolled it out successfully. There's no errors,
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: there's no failures, there weren't as many costs to the
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: help desk, but it may still not being be used
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: appropriately on the business side. How does the business lens
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: change the approach that it takes to technology adoption?
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: Okay, let me answer that with quite a pragmatic response.
• 12:42
  Speaker 5: I think you know, if you're leaving it to the
• 12:44
  Speaker 5: temporary project and program structures to drive adoption, you will
• 12:48
  Speaker 5: probably not be efficient. You'll certainly not accelerate your ability
• 12:52
  Speaker 5: to successfully drive change, and your adoption outcomes will likely
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: be suboptimal. My advice would be build an operational digital
• 13:02
  Speaker 5: adoption capability that you know learns and adapts, rather than
• 13:06
  Speaker 5: projects starting with a blank page each time and then
• 13:09
  Speaker 5: going through their own learning curve. So for me, a
• 13:12
  Speaker 5: persistent capability enables multiple advantages. Firstly, you can build organizational
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: intelligence right stakeholder understanding which enables you to build better
• 13:25
  Speaker 5: better stakeholder relationships. Business intelligence right including cost sensitivity of
• 13:30
  Speaker 5: different parts of the organization. You know what keeps leaders
• 13:33
  Speaker 5: awake at night. Cultural intelligence, so understanding key cultural elements
• 13:38
  Speaker 5: that need to be accounted for in your messaging and.
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: Change campaigns. Understand you know which.
• 13:47
  Speaker 5: Parts of the business have more of an innovative stance,
• 13:49
  Speaker 5: will welcome being early adopters of new technology versus those
• 13:53
  Speaker 5: that are more conservative. Building change management intelligence, so which
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: interventions and community styles work and don't work right, Understanding
• 14:04
  Speaker 5: the internal policies and ways of working that either block
• 14:07
  Speaker 5: or support change efforts. Having a and building a line
• 14:11
  Speaker 5: of sight across all major change can the business fallow
• 14:15
  Speaker 5: it all? You know other opportunities to remove duplication or
• 14:18
  Speaker 5: find synergies and combine change efforts. But also you know
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: repeatability and efficiency, so if you want to scale if
• 14:27
  Speaker 5: you want to do things faster, you have to build
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: repeatable methods, processes, tools, templates, and also leverage the volume
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: of change that the team handles to negotiate better terms
• 14:41
  Speaker 5: for internal approvals or to influence those policies that get
• 14:45
  Speaker 5: in the way. And I think the final element is
• 14:48
  Speaker 5: really around what I call data muscles. So ensure that
• 14:52
  Speaker 5: capability has access to data and data analytics capabilities or
• 14:58
  Speaker 5: you know that I either have them under their control
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: or fully accessible. And I think something that takes time
• 15:06
  Speaker 5: but yields immense value is getting smart at applying a
• 15:10
  Speaker 5: business lens to data right, so you can quickly separate
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: signals from the noise. So by by industrializing that the
• 15:19
  Speaker 5: digital adoption and change capability there, you know you can scale,
• 15:23
  Speaker 5: increase velocity, continuously find ways to increase value and decrease
• 15:27
  Speaker 5: cost and therefore improve unit rates. And by doing so,
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: you know you'll generate greater ROI and drive better business outcomes.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: I think the concept of perpetual adoption perpetual enablement. I
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: want to highlight that with something that you said in there.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: Not relying on the temporary project to enable your people
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: to do the work. That project has a specific goal,
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: which is to get the role out done and then
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: they move on to the next one. So you've got
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: to have some way of ongoing training. Our process was,
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: if it was complicated enough, send the entire department down
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: to the learning lab and train them kind of a
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: one time training. Here's how you use it, and I'll
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: go back to your desk. Not only is it not effective,
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: but it's not it's not efficient or sustainable to send
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: thousands of people down to training and get them out
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: of their role for a day or more to go
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: learn something that's not going to stick. And especially compound that,
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: now with the rate of change, you're gonna be in
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: training all the time. So you've got to find a
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: different way to adopt all of this change without disrupting
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: the business.
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: Absolutely, yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, as you say, you
• 16:35
  Speaker 5: can't do that way you have hundreds of thousands of employees.
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: And as I say, it's about this perpetual capability that
• 16:45
  Speaker 5: is constantly learning, constantly improving. And it's not to say
• 16:50
  Speaker 5: that projects or program structures can't do a good job.
• 16:54
  Speaker 5: What I'm what I'm saying is that you know, with
• 16:57
  Speaker 5: the pace of change, the acceleration of change, those temporary
• 17:01
  Speaker 5: structures just you know they are they will not in
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: the longer term, enable that enable change it at the
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: scale and velocity that the you know, the world will
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: be demanding at that point.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: So you've written about combining employee listening with data insights,
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: because it's not just the data, it's the insights we
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: get from that data, both from the collected metrics, the
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: traditional data as well as the listening analysis, the listening insights,
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: and those two combined are required for a human centered approach.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: How do the elements work together to create that effective
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: digital adoption strategy?
• 17:45
  Speaker 5: Sure, yeah, absolutely, I mean the three elements are, they're
• 17:48
  Speaker 5: deeply interconnected.
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 17:50
  Speaker 5: Employee listening tells you, you know, what people are experiencing
• 17:55
  Speaker 5: and feeling. Data insights show you how they're actually behaving
• 17:59
  Speaker 5: with the technology, and a human centered approach really ensures
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: that you design solutions that address the needs and the
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: pain points identified in the qualitative and quantitative insights. You know,
• 18:12
  Speaker 5: for example, we might see through through analytics that a
• 18:16
  Speaker 5: tool isn't being adopted, and the employee listening might tell
• 18:19
  Speaker 5: us why maybe it's I don't know, it's too complex
• 18:22
  Speaker 5: or the or it's not integrated into their workflows. Human
• 18:27
  Speaker 5: centered design ensures that the solutions are essentially built around
• 18:30
  Speaker 5: those real needs and very very importantly that you then
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: validate those solutions with real employees, right, you don't. Yeah,
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: you know, it's not built around assumptions.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: So Tom touched on it earlier in our conversation. Let's
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: let's we can't go an episode without talking about AI.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: It's everywhere, right, and AI is trying its hardest to
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: be human. How do you see AI influencing the digital
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: adoption space in the coming years, especially when we're even
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: struggling just to adopt AI efficiently.
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 19:06
  Speaker 5: Absolutely, So, you know I talked to earlier about the
• 19:09
  Speaker 5: need to move away from one size fits or I
• 19:11
  Speaker 5: guess to cut a very long story short, I think
• 19:13
  Speaker 5: AI will progressively enable hyper personalization at scale.
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: As we touched upon earlier.
• 19:19
  Speaker 5: I think moving forward, I see AI profiling an organizations
• 19:24
  Speaker 5: user base, you know, using relevant attributes to a given
• 19:27
  Speaker 5: set of technology needs, automating segmentation, offering recommendations into change
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: management strategies, and I think AI will will get better
• 19:38
  Speaker 5: at predicting adoption friction points and drop off areas before
• 19:41
  Speaker 5: they become you know, widespread issues, there by enabling proactive intervention.
• 19:48
  Speaker 5: And you know, I see II playing a bigger role
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: in adaptive learning parts, you know, delivering real time, context
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: aware guidance tailored to individual user roles, preferences, and behaviors.
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: And I think, you know, probably with everything to do
• 20:02
  Speaker 5: with AI, the key is going to be balancing AI
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: automation with the human touch right to ensure that technology
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: feels intuitive and isn't intrusive.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: The MS team is adoption project you previously led, was
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: one of the largest imaginable certainly in the world, covering
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty countries and almost half a million employees.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: What were some of the key challenges in scaling such
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: a huge initiative and how did you overcome them?
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 20:36
  Speaker 5: Again, how long have you got? You know that the
• 20:39
  Speaker 5: scale line was a huge challenge. A lining one hundred
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: and fifty countries, multiple languages, diverse cultural contexts.
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: You know, it isn't easy. I think another.
• 20:49
  Speaker 5: Challenge was balancing global consistency with local flexibility, you know,
• 20:54
  Speaker 5: ensuring that we had a unified strategy while allowing local
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: teams to adapt, you know, based on their unique needs.
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: And we tackled it by applying all of the points
• 21:06
  Speaker 5: I made earlier around you know, leveraging data, segmenting the
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: employee base and tailoring messaging and interventions to each segment,
• 21:14
  Speaker 5: as well as applying the principle of reaching employees in
• 21:17
  Speaker 5: a time and place relevant to them. Perhaps we can
• 21:21
  Speaker 5: come back to that, but additionally, we you know, we
• 21:24
  Speaker 5: built a global Champions network of about fifteen hundred employees
• 21:29
  Speaker 5: who acted as local advocates and by using really real
• 21:33
  Speaker 5: time analytics to identify adoption gaps early and dress them proactively.
• 21:38
  Speaker 5: For example, you know, users are really quick to use
• 21:41
  Speaker 5: teams chat, but there was this really low uptake of
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: channel chat in the beginning, and we quickly saw this
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: trend through telemetry data. We spun up a campaign purely
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: around the benefits of channel chat, how to get started,
• 21:55
  Speaker 5: and we primed that Champion network to really focus in
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: on channel chat from a bottom up, providing you know,
• 22:02
  Speaker 5: local guidance and collecting qualitative feedback from users and then
• 22:06
  Speaker 5: sharing it back to the program team to enable us
• 22:08
  Speaker 5: to further tailor our our communications and our interventions. And
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: I guess you know, within Roker, it was about two
• 22:15
  Speaker 5: weeks of the campaign beginning or not beginning, but being executed,
• 22:19
  Speaker 5: we saw the number of users leveraging channel chat increased
• 22:22
  Speaker 5: by over one hundred and thirty thousand.
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: So, you know a good example.
• 22:27
  Speaker 5: Of how that sort of employee listening, leveraging data and
• 22:32
  Speaker 5: then responding very proactively to it to in terms of
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: your messaging and campaign interventions really really generates you know,
• 22:40
  Speaker 5: incredibly powerful results.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: Does that answer the question around I know you're writing
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: for the Hub on extending it scope, Human centered design
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: and Voice of the Employee. Is there anything you'd add
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: to what you just said that kind of elaborates on
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: that theme a little more?
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah, So, you know, voice of Employee listening it aims
• 23:04
  Speaker 5: to understand employee experience through surveys, interviews, data analysis. You know,
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: it aims to understand their experiences there needs, their challenges,
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: and I think you know, employee experience is a sum
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: of every interaction that an employee has with their employer
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: from being a candidate through to off boarding and beyond
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: as an alum and you know, these touch points shape
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: perceptions of the organization and they place a seeding on productivity.
• 23:30
  Speaker 5: So you know, employee experience is really driven from three
• 23:33
  Speaker 5: key areas in an organization. Firstly culture, certainly the physical
• 23:39
  Speaker 5: spaces that the employees interact with, and thirdly the technology
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: that they interact with. And as you will feel through
• 23:48
  Speaker 5: through the deck space, technology is a bigger driver of
• 23:51
  Speaker 5: overall employee experience than it ever has been now and
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: you know, the culture and the physical spaces are increasingly
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: delivered or enhanced through technology. So experience gaps, I you know,
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: moments where reality fall short of expectations considiously a road
• 24:10
  Speaker 5: business value, and I think to to make things harder,
• 24:13
  Speaker 5: employee expectations are constantly increasing, you know, is consumer experience
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: elevates because consumer experience is setting the bar for enterprise experience, particularly.
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: When it comes to technology.
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: So given all of that, you know, it's it's it's
• 24:27
  Speaker 5: really my belief that it shouldn't just exist to provide
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: tools to support and enable the business. You know, it
• 24:34
  Speaker 5: has this fundamental purpose in enabling an exceptional employee experience
• 24:39
  Speaker 5: and in doing so driving you know, additional strategic business value.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Excellent any other like examples of innovation in which you've
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: you've leveraged employee feedback to kind of inform and refine
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: technology experience strategies.
• 24:55
  Speaker 5: Yeah, of course, So I think our voice of employee
• 24:58
  Speaker 5: listening was pretty innovative to start, So I'll start there
• 25:01
  Speaker 5: and then go on to an additional example. So you know,
• 25:04
  Speaker 5: my team conducted regular quantitative and qualitative research around technology
• 25:10
  Speaker 5: experience and satisfaction from all the way up from the
• 25:13
  Speaker 5: overall technology experience level down to individual products and services,
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: and we created an employee centric common data model that
• 25:23
  Speaker 5: integrated over twenty data sources including next Thing, Office three
• 25:27
  Speaker 5: sixty five, service now ticket data, you know, as well
• 25:30
  Speaker 5: as our qualitative and quantitative research data. And by bringing
• 25:34
  Speaker 5: it all together into into one place, it enabled us
• 25:38
  Speaker 5: to apply you know, really quite sophisticated analytics and to
• 25:42
  Speaker 5: correlate telemetry data with employee sentiment. And you know, that
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: really gave us gold when it came to technology experience insights,
• 25:52
  Speaker 5: and I guess you know, in terms of putting the
• 25:55
  Speaker 5: feedback to use. One one example was around optimizing devices
• 25:59
  Speaker 5: for hybrid working model, where you know, where devices included laptops, monitors,
• 26:04
  Speaker 5: audio and video devices, keyboard, mouse, et cetera, as well
• 26:07
  Speaker 5: as the acquisition and support experiences or wrapper that surround them.
• 26:13
  Speaker 5: And I guess you know the problem was that despite
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: huge investments satisfaction with devices globally was very low. The
• 26:21
  Speaker 5: global average had an MPs of around minus twelve, some
• 26:24
  Speaker 5: countries down to around minus fifty, so pretty challenging stats.
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: And you know, starting with laptop performance, when when I
• 26:37
  Speaker 5: looked at the workloads put through them, we identified that
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: about two hundred and twenty thousand machines were overspect for
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: the typical workloads, about one hundred and fifty thousand were
• 26:46
  Speaker 5: right sized, and about.
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: Eighty thousand were underspect.
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: And by targeting the right spec device to the right employee,
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: we could essentially increase overall employee satisfaction satisfaction whilst saving
• 27:00
  Speaker 5: forty million dollars per year, so not to be sniffed at.
• 27:03
  Speaker 5: And also analyzed PC performance by age. You know, we
• 27:06
  Speaker 5: had around ninety thousand machines older than the typical three
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: year asset life and interestingly, more than half of those,
• 27:14
  Speaker 5: about forty eight thousand were still performing really, really well,
• 27:19
  Speaker 5: which offered the opportunity to extend the life of those machines,
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: saving an additional eight million dollars per year. And you
• 27:26
  Speaker 5: know another thing we did we conducted extensive research globally.
• 27:30
  Speaker 5: We analyzed about twenty billion data elements to create a
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: segmentation model for devices and device needs, and we identified
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: a hierarchy of needs to each segment consisting of about
• 27:42
  Speaker 5: seven layers.
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: So we had.
• 27:45
  Speaker 5: We had laptop performance, we had connectivity, we had well being,
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: we had human interaction, we had display real estate and configuration,
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: we had mobility and brand brand stroke image. And that
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: brand stroke image had two lenses. One is really the
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: marketplace brand so facing out to clients, and the other
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: words the internal employer brand perception. And you know, this
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: enabled us to solution the devices offering per segment to
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: optimize you know, productivity and satisfaction. It took an awful
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: lot of hard work, being candid and a lot of
• 28:22
  Speaker 5: crunching of the gray matter.
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 28:23
  Speaker 5: I used to come come back with some severe headaches
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: at the end of some of these days, but we
• 28:30
  Speaker 5: we unearthed immense value. And you know, from discussions that
• 28:34
  Speaker 5: I've had with with multiple people in multiple organizations, I
• 28:38
  Speaker 5: get this sense that the the employee experience pennies dropped right,
• 28:42
  Speaker 5: It's gaining attention and momentum at senior levels. So I
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: do think we're going to see this sort of employee
• 28:50
  Speaker 5: experienced decks, you know, start to snowball in the in
• 28:54
  Speaker 5: the coming years.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: And any one word I haven't heard you use in
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: that conversation is persona?
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah that?
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: Do you think they're synonymous? Or is there an intentional
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: move away from that? Because it's gotten a bad rap
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: so many people have failed over the years. What's your
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: what's your thought on that concept of personas?
• 29:15
  Speaker 5: Sure, I'm not an expert on personas to him, but
• 29:19
  Speaker 5: what I will say my understanding is that level one
• 29:22
  Speaker 5: of segmentation. So you leverage data to to understand correlation,
• 29:28
  Speaker 5: if you like, so looking at various attributes, where are
• 29:31
  Speaker 5: there clusters of similarity between between users. You then have
• 29:37
  Speaker 5: an opportunity, having done that, to overlay persona to sort
• 29:40
  Speaker 5: of bring it to life, right, to make it more
• 29:42
  Speaker 5: digestible and perhaps more meaningful to to to others. So
• 29:47
  Speaker 5: you can take those segments, you can overlay personas that
• 29:50
  Speaker 5: and create you know, day in the life of and
• 29:52
  Speaker 5: all sorts of artifacts that really really help bring to
• 29:56
  Speaker 5: life who the you know, who these groups group are
• 30:00
  Speaker 5: and what the sort of key attributes of those groups are.
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: Does that make sense?
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah? It does, Thanks for sure.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: We've definitely went my appetite. Anthony to hear the articles
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: that are apparently heading to the decks Hub. I hope
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: they are. One is, as I mentioned, extending it scope
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: human centered design and Voice of Employee, which we've covered
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: a lot there, and the other is on via the
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: largest MS teams adoption project.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: In the world.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: Are these underway, Anthony, we need them?
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: They are?
• 30:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah, they absolutely are. They're on their way. I'd probably
• 30:32
  Speaker 5: have to turn to you to understand when, but.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: Absolutely fantastic, fantastic news. And final question, since it is
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: January of the seventh slash February, gotta ask you for
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: a New Year's prediction, probably be the last one our
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: listeners here at this point, but I think it's just
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: about earlier. Not too late for happy New Year in February,
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: but not too late for a new Year's prediction I hope.
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 30:57
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Okay, I'm going to stay away from ALI predict,
• 31:00
  Speaker 5: I think, so I kind of touch on this earlier.
• 31:05
  Speaker 5: I think and I hope that twenty twenty five is
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: poised to be the year when you know, technology and
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: HR leaders truly aligned to elevate employee experience. You know,
• 31:15
  Speaker 5: to do so as a as a shared strategic priority.
• 31:18
  Speaker 5: Because with hybrid work models, digital tools, and employee expectations
• 31:22
  Speaker 5: evolving rapidly. I think the collaboration between these two functions
• 31:26
  Speaker 5: will become essential. And you know, what's what's on the
• 31:31
  Speaker 5: table here in terms of opportunity is the ability to
• 31:35
  Speaker 5: attract and retain top talent, to boost productivity, to enhance
• 31:39
  Speaker 5: employee engagement and satisfaction, and really to drive better customer outcomes. So,
• 31:45
  Speaker 5: in short, I think you know twenty well. I hope
• 31:48
  Speaker 5: twenty twenty five could mark the beginning of employee experience
• 31:51
  Speaker 5: being viewed not just as an HR initiative, but as
• 31:54
  Speaker 5: a critical business strategy where technology and people functions unite
• 31:58
  Speaker 5: to deliver lasting impact. Because I you know, in my experience,
• 32:02
  Speaker 5: I think still today technology and HR are a two
• 32:08
  Speaker 5: siloed around this, and I think there is huge opportunity
• 32:11
  Speaker 5: if we can bring the two together.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: On Anthony, pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: so much for coming. That was a great converts sense.
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: Thank you very much, pleasure to be here.
• 32:23
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• 32:45
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