Events

DEIB Tech: Its Time Has Come

Global pandemic. Protests. Elections. Riots. (And whatever else happens between when we publish this article and you read it.) Needless to say, the last year has been rough. It laid bare our differences in stark relief. Shown how events impact diverse people differently. Perhaps it caused you some measure of disgust, despair, or even depression. At a minimum, it likely contributed to exhaustion.

But, at the same time, the last year has also revealed our underlying humanity. The extent to which we care about other people. The depth at which we hold our beliefs about our country. The potential we have when we work together (hello, COVID-19 vaccine!).

Given all this, there has never been a greater need for a focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) – both in our society and in our organizations. We have a need to understand each other and to work together, more than ever before.

Organizations throughout the world have recognized this, from top leaders to DEIB leaders to managers and employees. It’s for this reason companies are talking about DEIB more in their earnings reports than ever before and why the number of DEIB job openings has skyrocketed. The thing is this: organizations cannot just talk about DEIB and hire people to lead it. That is a good start, but it’s not enough. Organizations need to change their systems, practices, and behaviors. The change cannot just rely on individuals – it has to be baked into how the organization operates.

This is where DEIB technology can help, as it has the potential to build in practices, behaviors, insights, and recommendations that address bias. It can also provide insights about what is actually happening with people (versus relying on anecdote-based understanding) at the moment of critical decision-making about talent.

Tripping down memory lane

When we first began studying the D&I tech market in 2018, the #MeToo movement had thrust diversity and inclusion in the workspace under a spotlight. Stories and accounts of workplace discrimination, harassment, and unethical behaviors toward women in the workplace led numerous businesses to pledge to change their policies and take action.¹ As a result, organizations began to feel a greater need for systemwide solutions.

In 2018, we launched our first research study on this topic, and we published a comprehensive report, Diversity & Inclusion Technology: The Rise of a Transformative Market, in February 2019. The study included a list of all the D&I vendors we identified and was accompanied by a detailed vendor landscape tool (with 2 updates since). As we shared in our initial report, tech can play a transformative role.

Fast forward to today

We (still) find ourselves in the midst of health, social, and economic crises. 2020 was not an easy year for anyone, but it especially impacted diverse people in many significant ways, including:

• Women left the workforce in record numbers
• Lower-income earners saw their jobs evaporate
• The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others disproportionately impacted the Black community

Many companies have responded by making pledges or promises in support of the #BLM movement.² A large number of them have focused on increasing diversity levels within the companies, both at the employee and leadership levels (for examples of such corporate pledges, see Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging: Creating a Holistic Approach for 2021).

As the pressure to follow through on these promises increases, leaders must develop strategies to achieve them––and we believe that DEIB tech represents one of the critical components of the process (see Figure 2 further down). Sophisticated tech––such as artificial intelligence (AI), deep machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and organizational network analysis (ONA)––can help leaders manage DEIB better and more easily and are increasingly becoming more accepted as essential tools for people practices.³

Through this report, we aim to achieve 4 things:

1. Help leaders understand the role of DEIB tech
2. Provide insights on the state of the DEIB tech market
3. Highlight the talent areas focused by vendors
4. Guide leaders who may be looking to make tech investments

Key Findings

The study covers three major areas and how they have changed since 2019: the DEIB tech market, talent areas vendors focus on, and what buyers should consider before investing. We also address what we see coming next. Some of the key findings from the study include the following:

1. Three major shifts punctuate the current DEIB tech market
   • In previous years, leaders were especially focused on gender; in 2020-21, the emphasis has evolved to include a focus on race and ethnicity.
   • Social justice movements and conversations around discriminatory workplace practices and behaviors have led to greater attention to inclusion than ever before.
   • The role of AI in mitigating bias to enhance DEIB has come front and center, and more approaches have been introduced to address this issue.
2. The DEIB tech market is hotter than ever
   • The global market size is estimated to be $313 million and growing, up from $100 million in 2019.
   • The number of HR tech vendors offering features or functionalities that cater to DEIB as part of their solutions has increased by 136% since 2019.
   • The total number of DEIB tech vendors increased by 87%, with a total of 196 vendors in the market for 2021, compared with 105 in 2019.
3. People analytics for DEIB has arrived
   • Lack of analytics and insights on DEIB is the primary challenge the majority of vendors help their customers solve, hence the growing number of solutions. providing DEIB analytics in 2021 compared to 2019 (28% vs 26%, respectively).
4. Small-sized organizations and knowledge industries remain the main customers of DEIB tech
   • The largest customer category is small-sized organizations (those with less than 1000 employees), who represent almost 30% of all DEIB vendor customers.
   • However, these small organizations represent a smaller percentage of DEIB vendor customers in 2021 than in 2019, and there was an increase in the percentage of customer organizations in the 10,000-50,000 range.
   • The industries most likely to be DEIB tech customers are concentrated in knowledge industries, namely technology, financial, banking, and insurance.

Check Out the Full Study and Tool

The full study (available to members) has lots more information than what we’ve detailed here, including many more details on the market, customer quotes and feedback, and checklists for leaders interested in DEIB tech.

In addition, we encourage you to check out the brand new, fully redesigned DEIB Tech tool, which is available both to members and non-members. You can look at the 196 vendors in each of the four talent areas and their relevant sub-categories. RedThread members can click through and see details on individual vendors.

 

 

RedThread members can see the areas of talent vendors focus on, the top industries served, vendor capabilities, strengths, challenges addressed, and customer feedback (see Figure 3). We provide the maximum amount of information we can, based on what vendors shared with us or what we were able to find publicly available. This tool is designed to be evergreen, so it will be updated continuously as we conduct briefings throughout the year.

 

A Thank You

This study involves a significant time investment from everyone who participated in its development. We want to thank all of the vendors and customers who gave their time, energy, and expertise to make this such a robust study and tool.

If you have any questions about this research or about becoming a RedThread member, please contact us at [email protected].

 

 

DEIB Tech: Its Time Has Come

Global pandemic. Protests. Elections. Riots. (And whatever else happens between when we publish this article and you read it.) Needless to say, the last year has been rough. It laid bare our differences in stark relief. Shown how events impact diverse people differently. Perhaps it caused you some measure of disgust, despair, or even depression. At a minimum, it likely contributed to exhaustion.

But, at the same time, the last year has also revealed our underlying humanity. The extent to which we care about other people. The depth at which we hold our beliefs about our country. The potential we have when we work together (hello, COVID-19 vaccine!).

Given all this, there has never been a greater need for a focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) – both in our society and in our organizations. We have a need to understand each other and to work together, more than ever before.

Organizations throughout the world have recognized this, from top leaders to DEIB leaders to managers and employees. It’s for this reason companies are talking about DEIB more in their earnings reports than ever before and why the number of DEIB job openings has skyrocketed. The thing is this: organizations cannot just talk about DEIB and hire people to lead it. That is a good start, but it’s not enough. Organizations need to change their systems, practices, and behaviors. The change cannot just rely on individuals – it has to be baked into how the organization operates.

This is where DEIB technology can help, as it has the potential to build in practices, behaviors, insights, and recommendations that address bias. It can also provide insights about what is actually happening with people (versus relying on anecdote-based understanding) at the moment of critical decision-making about talent.

Tripping down memory lane

When we first began studying the D&I tech market in 2018, the #MeToo movement had thrust diversity and inclusion in the workspace under a spotlight. Stories and accounts of workplace discrimination, harassment, and unethical behaviors toward women in the workplace led numerous businesses to pledge to change their policies and take action.¹ As a result, organizations began to feel a greater need for systemwide solutions.

In 2018, we launched our first research study on this topic, and we published a comprehensive report, Diversity & Inclusion Technology: The Rise of a Transformative Market, in February 2019. The study included a list of all the D&I vendors we identified and was accompanied by a detailed vendor landscape tool (with 2 updates since). As we shared in our initial report, tech can play a transformative role.

Fast forward to today

We (still) find ourselves in the midst of health, social, and economic crises. 2020 was not an easy year for anyone, but it especially impacted diverse people in many significant ways, including:

• Women left the workforce in record numbers
• Lower-income earners saw their jobs evaporate
• The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others disproportionately impacted the Black community

Many companies have responded by making pledges or promises in support of the #BLM movement.² A large number of them have focused on increasing diversity levels within the companies, both at the employee and leadership levels (for examples of such corporate pledges, see Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging: Creating a Holistic Approach for 2021).

As the pressure to follow through on these promises increases, leaders must develop strategies to achieve them––and we believe that DEIB tech represents one of the critical components of the process (see Figure 2 further down). Sophisticated tech––such as artificial intelligence (AI), deep machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and organizational network analysis (ONA)––can help leaders manage DEIB better and more easily and are increasingly becoming more accepted as essential tools for people practices.³

Through this report, we aim to achieve 4 things:

1. Help leaders understand the role of DEIB tech
2. Provide insights on the state of the DEIB tech market
3. Highlight the talent areas focused by vendors
4. Guide leaders who may be looking to make tech investments

Key Findings

The study covers three major areas and how they have changed since 2019: the DEIB tech market, talent areas vendors focus on, and what buyers should consider before investing. We also address what we see coming next. Some of the key findings from the study include the following:

1. Three major shifts punctuate the current DEIB tech market
   • In previous years, leaders were especially focused on gender; in 2020-21, the emphasis has evolved to include a focus on race and ethnicity.
   • Social justice movements and conversations around discriminatory workplace practices and behaviors have led to greater attention to inclusion than ever before.
   • The role of AI in mitigating bias to enhance DEIB has come front and center, and more approaches have been introduced to address this issue.
2. The DEIB tech market is hotter than ever
   • The global market size is estimated to be $313 million and growing, up from $100 million in 2019.
   • The number of HR tech vendors offering features or functionalities that cater to DEIB as part of their solutions has increased by 136% since 2019.
   • The total number of DEIB tech vendors increased by 87%, with a total of 196 vendors in the market for 2021, compared with 105 in 2019.
3. People analytics for DEIB has arrived
   • Lack of analytics and insights on DEIB is the primary challenge the majority of vendors help their customers solve, hence the growing number of solutions. providing DEIB analytics in 2021 compared to 2019 (28% vs 26%, respectively).
4. Small-sized organizations and knowledge industries remain the main customers of DEIB tech
   • The largest customer category is small-sized organizations (those with less than 1000 employees), who represent almost 30% of all DEIB vendor customers.
   • However, these small organizations represent a smaller percentage of DEIB vendor customers in 2021 than in 2019, and there was an increase in the percentage of customer organizations in the 10,000-50,000 range.
   • The industries most likely to be DEIB tech customers are concentrated in knowledge industries, namely technology, financial, banking, and insurance.

Check Out the Full Study and Tool

The full study (available to members) has lots more information than what we’ve detailed here, including many more details on the market, customer quotes and feedback, and checklists for leaders interested in DEIB tech.

In addition, we encourage you to check out the brand new, fully redesigned DEIB Tech tool, which is available both to members and non-members. You can look at the 196 vendors in each of the four talent areas and their relevant sub-categories. RedThread members can click through and see details on individual vendors.

 

 

RedThread members can see the areas of talent vendors focus on, the top industries served, vendor capabilities, strengths, challenges addressed, and customer feedback (see Figure 3). We provide the maximum amount of information we can, based on what vendors shared with us or what we were able to find publicly available. This tool is designed to be evergreen, so it will be updated continuously as we conduct briefings throughout the year.

 

A Thank You

This study involves a significant time investment from everyone who participated in its development. We want to thank all of the vendors and customers who gave their time, energy, and expertise to make this such a robust study and tool.

If you have any questions about this research or about becoming a RedThread member, please contact us at [email protected].

 

 

Lately, we've witnessed the people analytics (PA) community come together rapidly to support organizations as they navigate their way through the COVID-19 crisis. Through this blog, we share the resources and tools currently being offered by the vendors to help individuals, leaders, and organizations.

While we've done our best to provide the most current updates, we know that things are moving at a very fast pace. We're all learning every day (hour?!) of new needs, so expect vendors’ approaches to evolve rapidly. We'll do our best to keep this list updated, but the best source will always be the vendors themselves.

People analytics & their resources for the pandemic

We cover the PA vendors and the resources they offer based on the categories in our 2×2 people analytics technology framework:

• Employee coaching
• Employee engagement / experience
• Multisource analysis platforms
• Organizational network analysis (ONA)
• Learning analytics
• Text analytics
• Labor market analysis

At the end of this discussion, we include a corresponding text chart for each of the 7 PA tech categories to let you know Who is doing What, plus any pertinent Additional Details (see Appendix 1).

Employee coaching: Understanding what’s changed since COVID-19

Some of the themes and focus areas in this category include employee behaviors, work life balance, and empathy. We were particularly impressed by the resources being offered by Cultivate for individuals to become more self-aware. Self-awareness can be a critical strength when navigating work from home and conducting digital communications exclusively with colleagues for the first time.

Employee engagement / experience: Determining what to prioritize during the crisis

One of the major priorities for organizations during this crisis has been keeping their remote workforce engaged and ensuring a positive employee experience. Vendors have stepped up to help provide tools and resources that focus on employee listening, communications, well-being, transparency, collaboration, and productivity.

There are 3 things that stood out to us in this category:

1. Resources and tools to help managers. As a bridge between senior leadership and employees, managers are playing critical roles in guiding, communicating, and motivating their teams during the crisis. Several vendors such as 15Five, Peakon, Glint, Limeade, Perceptyx, and Betterworks Engage (formerly Hyphen) are offering such resources.
2. Crowdsourcing ideas. Going beyond the senior management to include the voices from employees and encourage them to share their ideas can not only drive engagement but can also help improve communications and make employees feel that they are all in this together. One of the vendors doing this actively is Medallia.
3. Preparing to return to the workplace. Vendors such as Qualtrics and Perceptyx are offering surveys that allow organizations to understand how and when employees should return to work by assessing their confidence levels and their sentiments.

Multisource analytics platforms: Understanding the impacts of COVID-19

Vendors in this category are helping organizations integrate and manage the new data they are collecting to track the crisis, and its effect on the workforce, and to conduct advanced analyses such as “what-if” analysis and scenario planning.

Two things that stood out to us from this category were:

1. Integrating new data and conducting advanced analytics. Overall, vendors such as CruncHR, One Model, Vemo Workforce, and PeopleInsight are working as thought partners to help businesses strengthen their data infrastructure and management, and to identify the analysis needed to support the business.
2. Combining workforce data with COVID-19 data for holistic analysis and surfacing future projections. Visier is offering its customers the ability to compare workforce data with publicly available COVID-19 data all within their solution giving them the ability to see different peaks and future projections for the pandemic for different geographies.

Organizational network analysis (ONA): Identifying & leveraging connections during the crisis

Even before the pandemic, fostering a culture of teamwork and collaboration was among the top challenges and concerns for employers. The crisis brought on by COVID-19 has only made this challenge more pressing as organizations transitioned to remote working. Vendors whom we heard from are focused on helping organizations with issues of connectivity, isolation and overall organizational health during the crisis.

The 2 things we wanted to highlight in this category are:

1. Combating isolation during remote work. Vendors such as Polinode are working to help their customers collect data and identify individuals through ONA that are at most risk of isolation and those that are well connected and can be leveraged for proactive outreach.
2. Identifying the changing drivers for productivity. Vendors such as Innovisor are offering resources that can help customers understand the change in key drivers that affect productivity.

Learning analytics: Providing resources to learn during the crisis

Areas of focus under this category include providing organizations and individuals with online learning resources such as videos, guides, and activities to help them understand mental health, and cope with anxiety and isolation.

One interesting resource that we wanted to highlight in this category is the partnerships leveraged by MLevel which can make critical learning resources on well-being accessible to a wider community.

Text analytics: Understanding what employees need during COVID-19

Advanced text analytics such as multi-language semantic text understanding can be especially crucial in times of crisis to really understand the challenges employees are facing and share ideas on new ways of working. Since traditional text classification models are not enough to capture employee engagement during times of unprecedented crisis, vendor OrganizationView is working with customers to build new text classification models.

Labor market analysis: Developing a plan for the new normal

While on one hand the crisis has been particularly hard for individuals who have been let go from their roles as organizations cut back, on the other hand, are institutes and businesses who found themselves on the frontline helping with the crisis and needing to hire quickly to meet the growing need for extra work.

Labor market data has been crucial in bridging the gap between the two. Vendors such as Eightfold AI and EMSI have been leveraging this data to match people to the jobs in companies that are hiring, helping them highlight the crucial skills, and sharing the labor market data broadly to help businesses plan and prepare.

Looking ahead

As some parts of the world are starting to look toward reopening and retuning workers to the workplace, people analytics tech providers are beginning to support “return to workplace” efforts through surveys and insights to measure the level of readiness and sentiment of the workforce. Beyond technology providers, we are also hearing from consulting providers who are creating support kits and helping customers think through their new strategies.

For example, Aon recently launched a tool, the Talent Impact Modeler, that aims to help companies plan for various impacts on their talent and including furloughs, compensation planning, shift planning, and attrition and retirement. As more and more areas recover from the pandemic, we foresee a shift as people analytics technology will move from being used to help organizations react and respond to plan for and adjust to the new normal.

Thinking about the future, issues such as trust, transparency, and well-being, which have risen to the top during the crisis, will assume a more permanent place among the top objectives for organizations if they want to be better prepared in the future to face similar crises.

Additionally, the crisis forced organizations to shift their focus to identify work and tasks that are essential to keeping the business going and the skills required to get that work done. This will affect and bring about a significant shift in the thinking and how organizations approach work moving forward. We foresee organizations giving greater attention to growth and development of skills needed for work essential to the business.

People analytics is well positioned to not just support but take a lead in helping businesses achieve these objectives. Given how the vendor community has risen and come together in this time of need during the crisis, we think they will be well positioned to continue playing a crucial role in providing the necessary capabilities and tools needed to help leaders in the future.

Appendix 1: PA tech providers by category

Employee Coaching

Employee Engagement / Experience

Multi-Source Analysis Platforms

Organizational Network Analysis

Learning Analytics

Text Analytics

Labor Market Analysis

Who	What	Additional Details
	A remote working guide for managers A self-awareness quiz and a work from home quiz for individuals “Work From Home” Reports	The vendor recently launched a new feature for auto-sending emails to avoid emails after work hours. It works as a Google Chrome extension and allows users to schedule after-hours messages to the recipient’s next available workday and time. The vendor has also started offering “Work From Home Reports” that provide the users with a summary of their digital behaviors and how it may have changed since they started remote work, including communication patterns, frequency, and volume.

^{Figure 1: Employee Coaching | Source: RedThread Research, 2020.}

Employee engagement / experience

Who	What	Additional Details
	Free use of all their tools through June to help employers new to managing remote workers Remote work guides and webinars	The vendor offers technology as well as learning resources on its platform such as courses, certificates, and lessons for leaders and managers to help with the transition to remote work.
	A free Employee Listening platform Survey templates for HR and senior management
	A free emergency response survey template A collection of crowdsourced ideas and information on the website Virtual workshops and trainings for customers on facilitating remote meetings	The resources are categorized on the website under themes such as supporting teams, working remotely, health information, and crowdsourced ideas to allow for quick reference based on specific needs.
	A LinkedIn group called the People Success Forum: Navigating Challenging Times Together for people leaders and HR practitioners to share best practices and resources A resource center called Resources to Support Your People During COVID-19	The resource center is updated on an ongoing basis and is comprised of blogs, webinars, articles, toolkits, and guides.
	Free remote work nudges for individuals A Crisis Resilience Solution for leaders	The nudges contain short suggestions to help people better work from home and navigate uncertainty. Additionally, through the Crisis Resilience Solution, the vendor aims to help leaders identify what their people are struggling with during COVID-19, boost team cohesion and trust, and offer personalized support to every employee.
	Using their KeenCorp Index to help customers identify “at-risk” employee groups	The vendor is working to help its customers increase communication, preventing turnover and declines in performance due to anxiety.
	A free version of their product for a limited time Resources such as blogs, write ups, videos, and webinars on the website	The product is working on helping organizations improve communications. The vendor is also offering tips and advice through their blogs that can be helpful for organizations working on transparency, trust, and well-being,
	Employee Pulse Surveys that leverage both text and video feedback A collaboration platform called “Crowdcity” that allows companies to crowdsource ideas from the employees Text analytics to turn employee feedback into insights	The vendor is offering a number of their tools free for a 60-day trial. In addition, the vendor is also offering blogs and webinars that share best practices and advice around employee experience.
	A set of COVID-19 specific survey questions Three months of free access to Peakon A Peakon Support Hub with advice, articles, webinars, and insights	The survey questions aim to help organizations understand the overall well-being of their employees. Insights from global data collected by the vendor reveal that while in mid-March 1.5% of all weekly employee comments globally were about the virus, a month later, 3.5% of weekly comments were about the virus. It also shows that the proportion of global employee comments related to well-being was 51% higher in March than it was in February. Additionally, manager response and acknowledgement rates to COVID-19 related comments were far higher than average, at 7% and 15% respectively, reflecting higher engagement from managers in March.
	A series of online webinars to facilitate information sharing A COVID-19 survey to assess corporate responses free for customers A ‘Managing Remote Teams’ survey to support and manage remote teams free for customers A survey to support people managers A healthcare survey A retail survey A “Return to work” survey	The vendor has made the recordings of all their webinars publicly available on their website. In addition to the several surveys, the vendor is also offering action planning guides to be used once the surveys are completed.
	A remote work pulse survey A healthcare workforce pulse survey A return to work pulse survey	The vendor is currently offering all of its solutions free for all organizations. In addition to these, the vendor is also offering additional resources such as blogs, articles, and advice on their website on how to build a positive employee experience during the crisis.
	A series of resources, blogs, articles, and best practices for the healthcare community A caregiver collaborative on a weekly basis to discuss emerging and adaptive practices implemented by physicians and nurses	Press Ganey, a health-care company, acquired the employee engagement vendor SMD in December 2019. The company has numerous resources that are freely available on its website.
	A Work from Home analysis	The vendor has been working with their customers to leverage anonymous data from productivity tools such as Slack, Office 365, and G suite to assess the impact of change on their workforce and support them. The data provides insights into the levels of employee engagement, productivity, and collaboration at the macro level.

^{Figure 2: Employee Engagement / Experience | Source: RedThread Research, 2020.}

Multisource analysis platforms

Who	What	Additional Details
	Launched a survey and an Open Research Initiative A ‘Covid19 Fair Share Index’ for customers to see how many hypothetical active cases they have by country over time	The research, which is based on the findings from the survey, is aimed at providing insights on what employers can do to keep employee productivity and engagement up. By end of April, the research had received almost 700 respondents. Some early insights revealed that on average, 66.8% of home workers are (very) worried about the economic situation: millennials (64.8%) less than older employees (71.9%) – and women (70.7%) more than men (64.7%). Additionally, personalized interventions to help employees, instead of a one-size fits all approach, are more effective.
	A free easy-to-use tool to track COVID-19 impacts on the organization Two blog posts highlighting the critical questions around workforce that need answers	The vendor is working with customers to help them integrate new data sets containing COVID-19 tracking data, employee survey results, and work from home data in a few hours to allow reporting in a quick manner. They have created employee level dashboards to assist employees and managers in reducing leave balance hotspots.
	Helping customers manage and maintain up-to-date data for talent acquisition analysis, turnover analysis, retention analysis and workforce health
	Reaching out to customers to share ideas and support them to use planning and analytics for good	The vendor has seen their customers increasingly leverage their scenario planning tools to conduct what-if analysis to answer questions around forecasting attrition, retirements changing, and hiring volumes. The tool is also being used by customers to understand if they have business areas that are constrained by COVID-19, how and where can they manage this by managing external and internal attrition, instead of workforce reductions, and whether they should launch any voluntary reduction of hours or leave programs. They are also working with some customers to make sure they are coding leaves of absences and voluntary turnover by COVID-19 change reasons.
	New capabilities to compare employee data with public COVID-19 pandemic information and make future projections Weekly forums featuring people analytics practitioners, vendors, and thought leaders to share stories, ideas, and advice	The vendor is offering a whole suite of crisis management resources that include guides, demos on how to leverage their solutions during COVID-19, and alerts and advisories. It is also extending a managed COVID-19 data set for open use via GitHub which is refreshed daily to assist with employee safety, crisis management, and workforce planning scenarios.

^{Figure 3: Multisource Analysis Platforms | Source: RedThread Research, 2020.}

Organizational network analysis / ONA

Who	What	Additional Details
	Published several white papers and publications on their website	The vendor is focused on helping customers understand the effects of COVID-19 on the overall organizational health.
	A “COVID-19 Pulse Tracker” tool to help managers keep their teams connected and productive	The insights from the tracker have revealed that “team connectivity” is a key driver for productivity. The data includes responses from teams in over 20 countries based out of North America, Europe, and the Middle East and include Professional Services, IT, NGO/IGO’s, and HigherEd to Pharma and Manufacturing industries.
	Working with leaders at medium to large companies to understand how to optimize their existing spans and layers to run an efficient organization while delivering strong cost savings Helping companies manage their blindsides on issues related to diversity during layoffs and prevent any risk of employment lawsuits
	Using ONA to ensure the well-being of staff and preventing isolation Addressing communication challenges, especially collaboration outside of immediate teams and with external parties	While the vendor has currently been working with active data to help discover insights for customers, they can also leverage passive data to examine similar questions, measure well-being, and analyze collaboration levels.
	Measuring changes in collaboration and inclusive leadership (across teams/timeframes) in the new distributed workplace Identifying employees at risk of ‘collaboration overload’ (employee wellbeing) Network insights for strategic workforce planning in the ‘return to work’ context	The vendor is focused on ‘operationalizing’ real time passive ONA signals to help customers measure/ analyze team collaboration, inclusiveness, and customer engagement.

^{Figure 4: Organizational Network Analysis / ONA | Source: RedThread Research, 2020.}

Learning analytics

Who	What	Additional Details
	Partnership with the online learning platform, Disasterready.org Partnership with Microsoft teams to offer introduction modules on how it can be used as an educational tool New course series focused on health and well-being	In addition to the partnerships and learning courses, the vendor is also providing video guides on how organizations can utilize MLevel with tools such as Slack, Teams, Skype, Zoom, and OneNote among others.

^{Figure 5: Learning Analytics | Source: RedThread Research, 2020.}

Text analytics

Who	What
	New text classification models to help customers ask their employees more efficiently about their challenges and needs Virtual presentations and trainings focused on advanced text analytics techniques such as word embeddings

^{Figure 6: Text Analytics | Source: RedThread Research, 2020.}

Labor market analysis

Who	What	Additional Details
	A Talent Exchange platform to help workers impacted by COVID-19 connect with the jobs	The platform, supported by McKinsey & Company, is being offered free of charge during COVID-19. The platform can also be used by organizations who have had to furlough their employees to communicate with them so they can rejoin when things are back to normal.
	A resume optimizer to help out-of-work individuals highlight crucial skills Two job posting data dashboards for U.S and Canada Free webinars, research and tools focused on labor market data, job postings, and skills

^{Figure 7: Labor Market Analysis | Source: RedThread Research, 2020.}

So, things have changed

Not to overstate it, but within the space of three weeks, our entire reality has changed – personally and professionally. We are now social distancing, homeschooling our children, and hoarding toilet paper (you know who you are). But, as people leaders, we’re also trying to figure out how to enable entire workforces to work virtually, understand markets that have changed ridiculously fast, and deal with the financial repercussions of “doing the right thing.” It’s hard. And it’s a little bit scary.

The good news (if there is good news) is that many of the professional changes we're seeing were likely inevitable: changes in technology, the global nature of business, and evolving customer and employee needs had already set us down this path. Before the crisis, some organizations had begun to peer around the corner to the future, putting in place the strategy, infrastructure, and practices to respond to changing environments quickly.

So many others, though, kept talking about the need to respond to these things in the future, expecting that they’d have time to adjust. However, thanks to COVID-19, the future is here. And it's evenly distributed¹

Some organizations are recognizing the opportunity before us. In a recent webinar, HFS Research shared that 22% of their sample of 279 major enterprises indicated they were seeing emerging opportunities as a result of the crisis and are making appropriate investments (or actively responding to the situation). Only 16% said that they were hunkering down and planning to roll out cost-saving measures, and exactly 0% said that their business was in grave danger and that they were considering drastic immediate options to survive this.²

Figure 1: Changes to Business Decision-Making from COVID-19 | Source: HFS Research, 2020.

So how do you move toward a position of taking advantage of emerging opportunities? The first step is to understand what an organization that can respond quickly to change looks like.

For the last 6 months, we have been studying the idea of organizational responsiveness – or what makes organizations able to respond more quickly to their market and employees’ needs than others.

This research was originally due to publish in May 2020. However, as we've looked at the incredible efforts of organizations to respond to this new reality, we recognize that our model and some of our findings could create some coherence and provide some guidance for leaders trying to help employees right now.

What the research says

Six months of research, lots of literature reviewed, and several conversations with really smart people have provided a sound overview of what a responsive organization is, what characteristics they have, and how organizations should become more responsive. The following discussion is led by the following 4 questions.

• What is a responsive organization?
• What characteristics do responsive organizations have?
• A model for responsiveness: How do I prioritize as I build a responsive organization?
• How can I participate in the roundtables?

What is a responsive organization?

One of the most difficult parts of this study has been trying to understand and clearly articulate what a responsive organization is – defining the undefinable qualities that separate those organizations who can respond to their environments from the ones that are at their mercy. After scouring the literature and conducting a lot of interviews, we landed on the following definition for a responsive organization:

An organization that determines trends in their environment and responds to them in ways that turn possible disruption into a distinct organizational advantage.

Responsive organizations are not just those who are able to keep up with the market; they are defined by their ability to understand and use trends to move ahead of the market. Four quick examples from recent history:

• General Motors³ – For getting rid of unprofitable parts of the business so that they can focus on mobility – not just automobiles – broadening both their market and their innovation. (An example of this responsiveness on display at this moment is their quick turn to manufacturing ventilators within their electric vehicle manufacturing plant⁴.)
• Target⁵ – For recognizing and understanding the trend toward boutiques and creating cult brands inhouse to fight the big box store image and remain competitive.
• Netflix⁶ – For continuously pivoting as they recognized trends in the marketplace – from mailed DVDSs, to streaming movies, to partnerships with networks to stream content, and ultimately to becoming an award-winning studio of their own.
• Amazon⁷ – For seeing the potential in delivering items directly to one’s door versus leaving the house for them, and then creating large-scale efficiency by doing so.

In the cases of each of these organizations, they weren’t just lucky moves – they didn’t just happen into the right answer. They were able to recognize trends in the marketplace and capitalize on them. And in order to do that, they needed a people structure and philosophy that supported it.

What characteristics does a responsive organization have?

During our initial research, we searched, not just for good examples of responsive organizations, but also what those organizations have in common – the characteristics that they share. Through extensive literature reviews and many interviews, a set of characteristics emerged. Figure 2 outlines these characteristics and provides a company example of each.

Characteristic	Explanation	Example Company
Decentralized structure	Decentralized structures allow the organization’s various divisions and business units to react to the environments in which they find themselves instead of relying on central control to react to ‘average’ environments.	W.L. Gore has long been held up as an example of decentralized structure. Traditional org charts found in most organizations are not found at Gore. Everyone has the right to talk to everyone else, providing the freedom the organization has needed to innovate in areas ranging from Gore-Tex to aerospace cable wiring assemblies.8
Team-based organization	Responsive organizations tend to leverage teams – both formal and informal – to react to internal and external conditions, and to share knowledge across the organization. Teams come together to solve problems, and then often dissolve and reform so that employees are constantly sharing what they know and applying that knowledge to solve new problems.	Cisco talks of making teams the source of insight and inquiry. Cisco allows teams to self-identify – recognizing both the formal and informal teams, and then offers team leaders development resources and information about how their team is working.9
Continuous learning & development	Responsive organizations tend to prioritize (read: invest) in continuous learning and development so that their workforces can gain needed knowledge and skills for a constantly changing environment. It often moves far beyond traditional learning events and instead embraces a culture of teaching each other, exploring beyond the walls of the organization, and trying new ideas.	Unilever takes continuous learning & development seriously, most recently introducing the idea of a talent network. Employees are asked to create “purpose statements” and share their skills (and desired skills) broadly. Using an ecosystem of learning, work, and people management technologies, employees become a part of the talent network – a system that finds projects that align to development goals as well as already developed skills.10
Openly shares information and data	Responsive organizations tend to be freer with information – meaning that not only do they intend to share information throughout the organization, but that they also put mechanisms into place in order to ensure that it happens.	Zendesk has a policy of radical candor amongst its employees, and regularly conducts root cause analysis to help their teams dig into problems. This practice is used in the moment of error. Instead of simply identifying and commenting on incorrect code or bring it up later (after it’s been fixed, the team stops, discusses why the code is incorrect, and how it happened in the first place. This practice creates a culture of sharing and openness and allows the organization to learn and respond together.11
Dispersed decision-making authority	Responsive organizations tend to be less hierarchical in their decision-making – allowing them to be made at lower levels, which speeds up work and helps organizations move more quickly.	Ritz Carlton empowers all of their Ladies and Gentlemen (what they call their employees) to solve guest problems to the tune of $2,000, per guest, per incident.12 This move disperses decision-making authority throughout the organization, making it more able to meet the needs and desires of their guests.
Tools to help employees do their best work	Responsive organizations tend to be early intelligent experimenters of technologies that help employees excel. Some of the more recent of these technologies includes AI, natural language processing, and blockchain.	Some of the experiments and implementations leaders we have spoken with are trying include: AI – for surfacing the best information for learning a specific thing Analytics – offering insights into personal behavior Natural language processing – using tech to “listen” in meetings and provide insights to leaders to make them more effective Nudges – offering timely, insightful data to improve personal interactions

Figure 2: Characteristics of Responsive Organizations | Source: RedThread Research, 2020.

We think it interesting that these 6 characteristics repeatedly surfaced in our discussions and in the literature. Much has been written about them individually; however, in our work, we see them as part of a holistic system that works together.

These patterns formed the basis of the survey questions we asked. From these 6 characteristics (which, again, were based on significant qualitative research), we formed a Responsivity Index that was then used to determine which actions taken by organizations contribute significantly to their ability to be responsive.

What's the model? How do I build a responsive organization?

Once we understood what a responsive organization was and the characteristics it had, we used the data to create a model of responsiveness, as shown in Figure 3. This model represents 4 layers that build on each other to create responsive organizations.

Figure 3: A Model for Responsiveness | Source: RedThread Research, 2020.

Why layers instead of levels? Good question, with two answers. First, as the model shows, the layers are transparent. Organizations, looking down through the top of the model, can see the impact of the lower layers on the higher layers. For example, it is difficult for an organization to be responsive at all without baseline respect. Respect is on the bottom of this model and affects all four layers.

Second, organizations that have made it to Layer 2 still have to focus on Layer 1. While our conversations with leaders indicated that there was a good deal of “systematization” that could occur to enable lower layers, people leaders still need to pay attention to those lower layers.

Interestingly, the data shows it's difficult, if not impossible, to jump layers. For example, most organizations aspire to be the type of organization its employees and the market trusts. However, to do so, the organization must also espouse respect, distribute authority, and have a culture of transparency and growth.

As with other models of this type, the more responsive an organization is (i.e., the higher the layer it has achieved), the more likely it is to:

Figure 4: Met or Exceeded Business Goals | Source: RedThread Research, 2020.

Figure 5: Very Highly Engaged Employees | Source: RedThread Research, 2020.

Figure 6: Responds Quickly to Changes in the Marketplace to a Very Great Extent | Source: RedThread Research, 2020.

Figure 7: Innovates Faster Than Competitors to a Very Great Extent | Source: RedThread Research, 2020.

Let’s briefly review each layer.

Layer 1: Respect

Interestingly, our data and interviews suggest that good old-fashioned respect is the foundation for all organization responsiveness. While this shouldn’t be surprising, it's a bit surprising how often respect is sidelined, particularly during times of crises. We are seeing this real-time with COVID-19. As organizations pivot in-office work arrangements to work-at-home arrangements, we’ve heard horror stories about organizations (and managers) who insist on detailed schedules and task lists at the start of each day, theoretically to ensure that employees are “on task” and not wasting company time.

This is not a new problem. In a Georgetown University survey of nearly 20,000 employees worldwide, respect was rated the most important leadership behavior. At the same time, though, employees report more disrespectful and uncivil behavior each year.¹³

Organizations looking to be more responsive to their market absolutely need to be an organization that espouses respect: from the organization to employee, from employee to employee, and importantly, from manager to employee.

Layer 2: Distributed authority

Layer 2 happens when organizations begin to change the way their authority structures work. During the first industrial revolution (and since, actually), there was a propensity toward efficiency. It's undoubtedly more efficient to make decisions centrally and have them roll throughout the organization flawlessly.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t work anymore. With diversified portfolios, different clients, and varying needs in business units, organizations need more flexibility. Like it or not, it's often quite inefficient to wait for a central authority to make a decision on something happening around the edges of the organization.

What’s more, this centralization likely stifles both agility and innovation. In her great book, Seeing Around Corners, Rita McGrath talks about innovation happening at the “edges of the organization.” In order to react to those changes at the edge of the organization and take advantage of opportunities there, organizations necessarily need to distribute authority much more widely than most of them currently do. According to our data, distributed authority at all levels helps with collaboration, and helps to eliminate busywork or nonvalue work.

Layer 3: Transparency & growth

Layer 3 describes the way organizations share information and encourage growth. A lot has been written lately on the importance of continuous learning & development, and it's become a buzzword in the employee development space. This has been enhanced with the ever-growing reskilling discussion: at least 54% of the population will need upskilling by 2022 (WEF), and 50% of them have concrete plans in order to do so (KPMG).

And, once again, this problem has been exacerbated by the current COVID-19 situation. Organizations, who frankly should have been looking at this all along, are suddenly faced with making sure leaders can lead, employees can work remotely, they are communicating as needed, and that employees are continuing to develop new skills – all in what was once considered “nontraditional” environments (they very well may become our new traditional environments).

Responsive organizations embrace the idea of growth. Particularly, they embrace the idea of growth outside of traditional channels. These organizations do not rely on classes and elearning courses to upskill their workforce; rather, they empower them to learn by doing, to fail safely, to understand which skills may be useful to them and to the organization in the future, and to give them honest data on how they’re performing.

The propensity for growth goes hand in hand with the dedication to transparency. Lack of information is basically ignorance. If employees need the best information to make the best decisions for your company – especially if you have distributed authority, ensuring transparency is crucial to responsiveness.

Layer 4: Trust

Layer 4 is Trust. Organizations with Layer 4 responsiveness have a community mindset. They have ceased to think in terms of “us” (management) and “them” (employees) and instead begin to focus on a “we’re all in this together” attitude – one that helps employees learn from their mistakes and invests in solving problems and learning together.

Obviously, a culture of trust can only exist with the three bottom layers in place. But a culture of trust goes beyond this and encompasses a sense of community. It is no longer enough to have a traditional employee value proposition – one where employees are paid and employers are paternal. At Layer 4, organizations move into an area where purpose and meaning take on more significance.

Responsive organizations – those that espouse purpose, and meaning, and community – work as a unit – an organism that responds along the edges and communicates back to the center. All employees are aware of the mission, vision, and purpose, and all trust that the organization – and other employees – are working together for that good.

With the all the recent talk on challenges organizations face when it comes to their frontline workforce (i.e., turnover, reskilling, and empowerment), how organizations manage those on the frontlines and their performance has become a critical issue. You may encounter these frontline people directly at coffee shops, a customer service help line, or indirectly through the products you currently buy or use. So, their performance matters.

Culture Is Key for Frontline Workers

In our recent report, Frontline Workers: Creating a Performance-Driven Culture, we explored the nuances of performance management (PM) for frontline workers and examined the specific practices that organizations use to help them perform better.

This research is a continuation of our recent study, The Makings of Modern Performance Management. We conducted a thorough lit review of roughly 40 academic and business articles, reports, and book chapters, along with a quantitative survey of 623 respondents (more than half being frontline workers). From all of this, we found some interesting insights on culture and frontline workers’ performance:

• Frontline workers are generally more satisfied with their PM experience, as compared with other workers, especially when it comes to having clear goals and expectations
• Frontline workers feel they have less autonomy, and don't feel that their managers enable the same degree of autonomy as their desk and knowledge worker counterparts
• Of the 3 levers that organizations can use to drive employee engagement and organizational performance, culture provides the greatest opportunity

Overall, we found culture to be a key performance lever for frontline workers, particularly because having a strong culture helps organizations address some of their biggest challenges with this segment of the workforce.

In fact, a study of blue-collar workers showed that those in supportive organizational cultures – which promote people’s strengths, capabilities, and functioning – performed 27% better than those in unsupportive cultures.¹ They were also 89% more innovative and 79% more committed to the organization. This means that organizations can use culture as a lever to better performance, greater innovation, and stronger commitment.

Specifically, an organization’s focus on providing a fair and consistent evaluation process, its ability to provide a broad range of feedback, and its focus on developing skills that'll serve individuals and help the business strategy in the future, all help to mitigate some of the challenges which organizations often face.

Learn More

For more information on each of these practices in high-performing organizations and examples of companies that create a performance-driven culture, we encourage you to download and read the full report.

Earlier this year, we began to explore the concept of employee experience. Since then, we talked to more than 20 organizations to understand their approach to employee experience and identify leading practices. Now, this is the 3rd in a series of 4 articles highlighting our findings.

Throughout our research, we identified 4 levers of employee experience to create sustainable results. This article focuses on one of the employee experience levers – articulated accountability – and is just an excerpt from the main report, The Four Levers of Employee Experience to Create Sustainable Results.

Who's Responsible for Employee Experience?

We wanted to find out, once and for all: Who's responsible for employee experience? Is it HR, marketing, operations, or technology?

In our quest to understand who’s accountable, we found a wide variety of opinions. Some people think HR is responsible because it concerns people. Others think it’s a coordinated effort across organizational functions.

Even though organizations hold differing opinions as to who is responsible for employee experience, one thing is true in progressive organizations: HR still holds many of the cards when it comes to employee experience.

Hands down, most of the people we talked to believe that, because HR is already privy to employee feedback and talent management practices, it should serve as the hub for employee experience. This means that, as a hub, it serves as a speaker of the house of representatives, like in government. And as an employee experience speaker of the house, it acts as a leader: It upholds standards, coordinates efforts, maintains order, and tracks progress.

So, this isn't much of a surprise, given that HR has historically taken on the people-advocate role. But what’s interesting is that, in progressive organizations, accountability doesn’t just begin and end with HR. Instead, they define accountability as being either distributed across functions or centralized to a specific manager or team – and they further define what that means for the employee experience.

“As a company, we have 6 company level objectives. And one of them is around employees and enabling them to do their best work every day. Our goal is to ensure that at least 85% of our employees are having a level 4 or 5 employee experience.”

Greg Pryor, VP of People and Performance Evangelist, Workday

Distributed accountability: Leaders are responsible for strategy & large-scale issues

In distributed accountability, leaders are responsible for the employee experience strategy and vision. This is a plan of action designed to achieve the best and most appropriate experience for the organization. It also includes organizationwide interventions, which are often necessary to address employee feedback.

In progressive organizations, we often found that senior leaders in HR, and especially those in executive positions, play a key role in tackling these macrolevel aspects of employee experience.

Leaders in HR – working closely with leaders across functions – hold a powerful role in developing a strategic vision for employee experience. They are responsible for understanding the big picture of employee experience and developing a coherent strategy at the upper echelons of the organization. This isn't to say that they operate in a top-down manner. If you recall the speaker of the house example, these senior leaders uphold standards, coordinate efforts, maintain order, and track progress. They also play a key role in conveying the strategy’s value to the organization and setting the overall tone.

Senior leaders, especially those in VP positions or higher from a wide variety of functions (not just HR), are also responsible for addressing large-scale issues quickly and effectively (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Distributed Accountability for Large-Scale Employee Experience Issues | Source: RedThread Research, 2019.

To do so, senior leaders uphold the employee experience strategy while seeking to understand employee and customer feedback. They collaborate with other leaders across functions to successfully address large-scale employee experience issues. They also establish and communicate clear escalation procedures for employee and customer feedback.

In progressive organizations, cross-functional senior leaders hold a special place in employee experience because they have the power to successfully address any organizationwide issues pertaining to their areas of expertise. Thus, having clear escalation procedures – in which people know which issues to escalate, how to communicate them, and to whom – for any organizational issues that arise at the local level is crucial.

“It’s important to detail the business rules to make your VOC program actionable and impactful. For example, if you get a detractor, how fast do you need to respond? Who needs to respond? When does it get escalated? Addressing a detractor quickly – while you still have a chance to fix the situation – is very important.”

Chris Hummel, Chief Marketing Officer, United Rentals

Centralized accountability: Individual contributors & direct managers are responsible for feedback

In centralized accountability, individual contributors and junior leaders – more specifically frontline or direct managers – play a significant role in sharing and responding to feedback (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Centralized Accountability for Experience Feedback | Source: RedThread Research, 2019.

For experience efforts to work, individual contributors, especially those on the frontlines, must share meaningful feedback. In fact, individual contributors in progressive organizations share feedback frequently and effectively in a variety of ways (e.g., surveys, team huddles, one-on-one conversations). They also serve as mediators of information between what they hear from customers and the organization. They shed light on what truly matters to customers and to them as employees.

“The relationship between frontline facing employees and customers is so important. I call it contagious: how they feel and how they show up translates to the customer experience.”

Chris Albertson, SVP Client Feedback and Experience, LPL Financial

We also found that feedback (from both employees and customers) plays a key role in experience if direct managers do something about it. Thus, direct managers are also accountable at the local level. In progressive organizations, they're highly responsive to both employee and customer feedback. Responsive managers actively seek to understand feedback, and react quickly and effectively to it. They enjoy ample decision-making rights to address issues as they come up. They also have the authority to rally employees and make decisions.

For more on this and other levers of employee experience – and examples of how companies have brought them to life – we encourage you to download and read the full report by clicking the image below.

Earlier this year, we began to explore the concept of employee experience. Since then, we talked to more than 20 organizations to understand their approach to employee experience and identify leading practices. Now, this is the 2nd in a series of 4 articles highlighting our findings.

However, we wanted to uncover the nuances of what a supportive culture means for employee experience, and in our pursuit, we identified 2 components. Supportive cultures that have values, beliefs, and assumptions anchored in employee experience drive core behaviors throughout the organization.

“We have open door policies. Our CEO and I don’t have secretaries. You can dial us directly and we’re extremely approachable. We care about what our employees have to say and love to hear their feedback. They make us better every day and are critical to our success. It’s about having a transparent and collaborative conversation.”

Vivian Maza, Chief Culture Officer, Ultimate Software

We mentioned that a supportive culture is anchored in employee experience. But what does that mean exactly? In practice, progressive organizations have people – up and down the ranks – who accept the value of employee experience and model behaviors that reinforce it. Organizational climate, internal policies, and leadership – all constructs of organizational culture – contribute significantly to employee experience.⁴

“We have a very collaborative culture. So for us, it was very important that we bring people together to talk about the desired employee experience, then make recommendations and decisions.”

Kate Miller, Director of Employee Experience, Robert Half

Supportive culture anchored to employee experience: Values, beliefs & assumptions

A supportive organization weaves employee experience into its cultural fabric: It does so by clearly anchoring its values, beliefs, and assumptions to experience and accepting it as fundamental to success. Figure 1 shows what progressive organizations with a culture anchored in employee experience value, believe, and assume.

Figure 1: Values, Beliefs & Assumptions of a Supportive Culture | Source: RedThread Research, 2019.

“Our first belief, and we think about our values in that order, is that happy employees enable happy customers. Happy customers want to innovate with us. The ability to have great innovation allows us to attract happy employees and do really interesting work, and that creates a virtuous cycle.”

Greg Pryor, VP of People and Performance Evangelist, Workday

5 essential behaviors of a supportive organizational culture

A supportive organizational culture also fosters an experience mentality that encourages people to adopt, at a minimum, 5 essential behaviors:

• Collaboration
• Transparency
• Psychological safety
• Alignment
• Feedback-sharing

While there may be other relevant ones in a supportive culture, we found that these 5 behaviors are tablestakes. We heard them mentioned over and over in our various conversations with organizational leaders. They also underscore the importance of employee experience as a fundamental priority to the wider organization.

In a culture that supports employee experience, everyone – from senior leaders and direct managers to individual contributors – plays a key role. Although the 5 essential behaviors may apply to everyone across levels, we found that, in highly supportive cultures, senior leaders and direct managers often demonstrate collaboration, transparency, psychological safety, and alignment. Individual contributors are also adamant about sharing meaningful feedback. Essentially, how leaders behave paves the way for employees to frequently share meaningful feedback about themselves and about customers. This creates a supportive and reciprocal environment rooted in employee experience.

“Autodesk has figured out how employee behavior and practices align to the culture we care to cultivate. The business and senior leadership fully support The Culture Code we’ve developed and encourage healthy behavior within our system of business practices. The CEO’s consistent reinforcement of The Code has reinforced the work our team does and helped us maintain the momentum for our most recent, successful business transformation.”

Andrea Robb, VP Talent, Culture, and Diversity, Autodesk

For more on this and other levers of employee experience – and examples of how companies have brought them to life – we encourage you to download and read the full report by clicking the image below.

Ten years ago, the most complex questions learning leaders faced about their learning technology was which LMS they were going to use and how much it was going to cost. That isn’t true today. Now, learning leaders are faced with both higher expectations and unprecedented choice when it comes to creating a learning environment. Why?

Expectations have increased

Expectations of L&D functions have increased. Whereas they were once only responsible for creating and disseminating training, organizations and individuals now expect more.

Organizations need results.

Industries are constantly being disrupted, causing organizations to rethink both their products and their business models in order to properly compete. This has affected not only how organizations compete, but if they compete at all: nearly 9 of 10 Fortune 500 companies in 1955 are gone, merged, or contracted, demonstrating the market disruption and churning in the last 6 decades.¹

Likewise, organizations face changes internally. They have flatter structures, greater connectivity, increased collaboration, and thinner organization walls (e.g., gig economy workers). More work is done in teams, roles are increasingly more flexible, and there are fewer concrete career paths. As structures and job requirements change to help the organization compete, L&D is forced to rethink development  solutions – customizing them to specific challenges and ways of doing things their organizations face.

As structures and job requirements change to help the organization compete, L&D is forced to rethink development solutions.

The good news is that the C-Suite seems to be doing what they can to enable the L&D function. As of 2019, only 27% of L&D leaders state “limited budget” as a top challenge. Additionally, 82% of L&D leaders report that their leadership actively supports learning programs.²

It’s getting easier: In 2019, only 27% of L&D leaders state “limited budget” as a top challenge, and 82% of L&D leaders report that their leadership actively supports learning programs.

Employees want better experiences.

We have talked to nary a learning leader or vendor that is not aware of the expectations employees have of their organizations for learning and growth. According to LinkedIn’s 2019 Workforce Learning Report³,

• 68% of employees prefer to learn at work
• 58% of employees prefer to learn at their own pace
• 49% of employees prefer to lear at the point of need

Whereas the organization and L&D function used to have more control over who was taught what when, today, employees have essentially taken the reins. They want more control over how, what, and when they learn, and technology has enabled them to do so.

Organizations have a lot of choice.

Learning leaders also have more choices than ever before. Gone are the days when L&D functions vetted and chose one LMS to serve the entire organization. They are now choosing from a wide variety of technological solutions, and the many vendors that offer those solutions.

How much choice do they have? We keep a fairly close eye on the learning technology landscape. Ten years ago, there were roughly 60 players in the market (that still exist today). Today, we have a vetted list of over 200 vendors, with another 40 on our list to talk to. That’s a lot of choice.

To make it even more complicated, it’s more difficult to put vendors in boxes. Whereas offerings used to fall neatly in the LMS or Microlearning or Coaching categories, new technologies span many categories, making it harder for learning leaders to ensure the right solution without doubling up unnecessarily.

These expectations and choice have resulted in a sort of panic when it comes to the technology that enables employees to learn. Many leaders go after the new and shiny; many shy away from choices for fear of making the wrong ones; and many have failed to acknowledge the changes at all, instead opting for the traditional one-platform system with little deviation or addition.

For this research, we interviewed over 30 very thoughtful learning leaders about their learning tech ecosystems. They were incredibly generous with their time and candor, helping us to understand not only the challenges they face in choosing and implementing technologies, but their best ideas for doing it better.

What did we do with that information? We wrote a report. In it, we outline the findings of those 30+ interview and provide examples of real-life learning tech ecosystems and get their thoughts on how they should think about ecosystems, including their  philosophy, structure, sustainability, and evolution.

To access the report, click here.

The term “employee experience” is hot – in a global 2018 study of five hundred CHROs, 83% of organizational leaders emphasized a positive employee experience as crucial to organizational success.¹ There is also evidence that organizations with a strong employee experience have twice the innovation and customer satisfaction and higher profits than organizations with a weaker employee experience.²

However, despite this enthusiasm, there is not a lot of clarity on what the term means and what exactly organizations should do to improve it. We, therefore, began a study of this topic earlier this year. In this new report, The Four Levers of Employee Experience to Create Sustainable Results, sponsored by Medallia, we focused on one primary question:

How should organizations create a compelling, delighting, and sustainable employee experience that results in high-performing, satisfied employees and loyal customers?

Some of the Myths and Realities We Uncovered

Over the course of our investigation, we encountered some very strong perspectives on employee experience. Some of the “myths” we identified early on in the research are below – as well as the counter-balancing reality we discovered through our reading and interviews (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Myths and Realities of Employee Experience | Source: RedThread Research, 2019.

So, given the realities of employee experience, what should organizations do? Our research identified some very actionable steps organizations can take.

The Four Levers of Employee Experience

After analyzing the breadth of what we learned, we identified four critical levers of employee experience: a clear philosophy, a supportive culture, articulated accountability, and an aligned measurement approach (see Figure 2). When combined together, these four levers can have a powerful impact on employee experience.

Figure 2: The Four Levers of Employee Experience | Source: RedThread Research, 2019.

 

• A clear philosophy: Identifies a target audience and clearly defines employee experience and its relationship to employee engagement.
• A supportive culture: Anchors employee experience to the culture via employee-centric values, beliefs, and assumptions that reinforce five essential behaviors: collaboration, transparency, psychological safety, alignment, and feedback-sharing.
• Articulated accountability: Distributes responsibility for employee experience strategy and large-scale issues among senior leaders. It also centralizes responsibility among individual contributors for sharing meaningful feedback and among mid-level leaders for effectively responding to it.
• An aligned measurement approach: Takes into consideration an organization’s data analytics maturity and a clear data analytics strategy aligned to key business metrics.

The most progressive organizations we interviewed were able to use these four levers effectively to create a clear and compelling employee experience.

Within the report, we provide details on how organizations can approach each lever and provide numerous quotes and examples of organizations who have done each one well. While interviewed organizations’ outcomes varied based on what they were trying to influence, the below quote from Greg Pryor at Workday sums up nicely many of the themes we heard:

“Our first belief, and we think about our values in that order, is that happy employees enable happy customers. Happy customers want to innovate with us. The ability to have great innovation allows us to attract happy employees and do really interesting work, and that creates a virtuous cycle.”

Greg Pryor, senior VP of people and performance evangelist at Workday

For more on each lever – and examples of how companies have brought them to life – we encourage you to download and read the full report. You can also join us at Workday Rising, where we will share the full results of this research for the first time.

More and more companies are adopting software technology to help them tackle diversity and inclusion challenges. In our recent study with Mercer, we explored the emerging market for D&I technology. We looked at the challenges that were driving the adoption of technology, and we examined the landscape itself. We also evaluated the inherent risks and benefits of adoption and what companies were expecting to achieve by using D&I tech.

One other question we were curious to understand is how companies are measuring the success of their D&I software to help them achieve their goals.

Here is an excerpt from that report which looks more closely at this question, and our recommendations for companies just setting out:

When we transition to looking at the primary success measures of D&I technologies, we see slightly different success measures compared to the problems vendors are trying to solve.

Figure 1: Primary Success Measures of D&I Technologies | Source: RedThread D&I Technology Survey, 2018

While there is clear alignment between most of the problems vendors are trying to solve and the top success measures for their products, there is one anomaly: the top success measure for D&I products is employee engagement, but most D&I technology solutions are not designed to directly influence engagement.

Though decreasing unconscious bias or increasing the diversity of talent pipelines can certainly influence engagement, they are not the sole drivers of it. Establishing employee engagement as the primary measure for D&I technologies could be setting D&I tech vendors up for failure.

Further, most D&I technology vendors don’t measure engagement, so it is hard for them to prove success. We therefore suggest that vendors and customers alike reconsider the primary success metric for D&I technologies and quantify the impact it has on the specific talent area it is influencing.