Achieving Social Sustainability through Workforce Modernization
Unlock social sustainability through workforce modernization for business success and employee well-being.
Discover the key role of workforce modernization in achieving social sustainability for businesses. Naresh Duddu, AVP and global head of modernization at Infosys sheds light on vital strategies and their impact.
For enterprises, social sustainability means identifying and managing their business’s good and not-so-good impacts on people. Unthoughtful pursuit of business growth can lead to burnout, physical and mental health issues, or lower quality of life among employees, causing attrition and eventually affecting organizational performance. By tackling this situation in reverse, that is, by taking care of employee interests – improving social sustainability in the process – organizations can increase retention to drive the business forward: in our new report, The Future of Work 2023, based on a survey of 2,500 respondents from 12 industries in 6 countries, organizations that had improved employee retention over the previous two years were almost 20 percent more likely to have increased revenue and profit than the organizations that couldn’t hold on to their workers.
Hybrid is now the new normal, but traditional benefits of working together human connection, mentoring, and a sense of belonging for junior employees- are still relevant and must be included in any planning.
Employee retention is, therefore, good for business and social sustainability. While a myriad of factors impact social sustainability, this article focuses on employee interest and retention, and the key role of workforce modernization in it all.
Workforce Modernization in Service of Employee Expectations
The new generation of employees have clear expectations from their work and workplace, including remote/hybrid working, concern for their wellness, learning opportunities, and automation of digital tools; in our survey, all these factors (among others) were important for employee retention. As the traditional work model makes way for these new requirements, organizations need to get ready for the future world of work by embracing workforce modernization to achieve the following:
1. Strengthen a hybrid work culture
It is nearly two years since the pandemic started to wane, but some of its effects are lasting. Hybrid work is possibly at the top of the list, with employees across industries and geographies, including those in senior roles, preferring to work flexibly and remotely for at least part of the work week. Hence, to attract and retain the best talent, enterprises must create an environment that supports employees to work wherever they choose while creating avenues for human connection, mentoring, and the ability to socialize. One important lever that can be used is to provide work facilities closer to the employee’s current location. These spaces allow employees to meet co-workers in person while reducing the friction created by the need to relocate to larger facilities that may be far away.
2. Provide training and upskilling
In the survey, 43 percent said reskilling helped improve employee retention, and companies increasing remote hiring were particularly focused on digital skilling. Moreover, three out of four respondents (77 percent) said training was the most effective tool for driving digital adoption, which is imperative for workforce transformation. Digital learning platforms allow employees uninterrupted access to immersive learning so all employees, whether working in the office or from their homes, can learn anytime, on any device, at a pace and manner of their choosing. This makes them a powerful tool of social sustainability. Another creative option is offering internal gig opportunities. Employees can work on areas of interest in their spare time to explore and gain valuable new skills while carrying out their day-to-day responsibilities.
See More: The Future of Work: Upskilling and Meeting Talent Needs
3. Improve employee productivity and collaboration
Productive employees drive the business bottom line and are happier and more engaged. Besides an employee-centric culture and organizational policies, enterprises must include digital tools in their workforce modernization agenda. These tools ease working life by providing information for an array of day-to-day tasks on demand, allowing distributed teams to exchange ideas and collaborate on projects, facilitating access to institutionalized knowledge, and enabling employees to connect with subject experts, mentors and other colleagues with routine tasks taking less time and effort, employees can focus their energies on higher-end pursuits, such as creative thinking, new skills, or building customer relationships, all of which help their personal growth and development.
However, the above is contingent on employers providing the right self-service tools to employees – simple-to-learn and use solutions that are resilient, reliable, and accessible on all types of mobile devices. A few years ago, self-service most likely meant an intranet portal through which employees could navigate and access the organization’s systems, tools, and data, with different employee support functions – HR, IT, finance, procurement, etc. – maintaining their solutions, employees had to connect with multiple touchpoints to get routine jobs done. Imagine how much more time and effort that would take today, given the proliferation of systems and applications. Thankfully, the availability of unified engagement platforms, with a user experience layer spanning enterprise systems and tools such as chatbots and enterprise social platforms, allows employees to perform tasks and receive services seamlessly from a single window.
See More: 4 Tools That Will Enhance Productivity in Your Organization
4. Improve employee engagement
The hybrid work culture, training and upskilling, and employee productivity and collaboration feed into employee experience and engagement. Since digital technology enables all of the above, it is naturally a huge factor in improving employee engagement: think of how “yesterday” a workplace would be without virtual meetings, collaboration tools, instant messaging, self-service portals, mobile apps for just about everything, and now, generative AI.
However, employers also need to track and measure the impact of workforce transformation initiatives on employee experience and engagement. Talking and listening to employees is important, but for formalized, wide-ranging insights, organizations should consider using an employee engagement platform to gather and analyze feedback over time and understand the changes they need to make. Further, talent acquisition and performance management solutions can help shape the work experience for employees, even before they come on board.
5. Measure to manage
Through intuition, observation, or experience, and enterprises gather what kind of impact their business is making on employees; however, social sustainability is notoriously hard to quantify, not least because its expansive scope makes standardized measurement very difficult. Employers are addressing this to a limited extent by measuring a few diversity, equity, and inclusion parameters, such as gender parity and employment of ethnic minorities. But they have a long way to go, and one of the goals of workforce modernization should be to bring focus, transparency, and measurability to how socially sustainable organizations are in the employee context.
Organizations that achieve social sustainability are more likely to find and retain the best talent, securing better business outcomes. Workforce modernization is a significant enabler of this agenda that helps to create an environment where employees find it easy to function in hybrid mode, receive training and reskilling, work productively and collaboratively, and engage deeply with their work and workplace.
How can workforce modernization shape your business’s social sustainability? Why is employee retention crucial for lasting success? Let us know on Facebook, X, and LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from you!
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