Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Questions To Ask Before You Jump on the Tech Bandwagon

Rapidly advancing technology offers a terrific opportunity to take your business to the next level and infuse your company's culture with an innovative spirit.

Every year unveils new software and apps with the potential to simplify processes, streamline workflow, improve communication and increase employee and partner productivity and efficiency. However, just because a solution is new and shiny, doesn't mean that it's right for your organization and culture—at this point in time or ever.

As a business owner, you don't want to introduce too many programs that don't integrate with existing systems, don't map explicitly to your strategic and operational goals or don't make sense cost-wise. You also don't want to jump on the tech bandwagon so many times that you overwhelm your employees and run into user adoption problems.

Purchasing software for your business should include a comprehensive analysis of your needs, as assessed by your fellow leaders, partners and vendors. Establish a concrete objective, detail the projects or tasks the new solution will address and determine your end users. Then, talk with stakeholders to land on an execution plan, deciding whether you'll go with a single department pilot, a phased approach or a full-scale, simultaneous rollout.

Your final step involves asking any one of the following provider-related questions before buying software.

1. What functionality does the software provide?

Study the profile of the employee who will use the software. View experiential demos to ensure the technology aligns with how you run your business and how your stakeholders prefer to engage.

Make sure the software is scalable in case your company grows quickly, and that it has strong reporting and measurement capabilities to provide you with the data you need in a useful format.

2. What are the implementation specifics?

Speak to your prospective vendor about whether your existing IT infrastructure can support the new solution. Does the new software run on compatible platforms, and if not, how difficult will it be to integrate systems with minimal downtime?

For more recommendations, head over to the AMEX Business site. 

Keep Your Business Safe During a Natural Disaster

If it seems like natural disasters are increasing, it's not your imagination. And those disasters have a very real effect on company's bottom lines.

According to a 2018 report by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, direct economic losses due to climate-related disasters have increased 150 percent over the last 20 years. During the period of 1998-2017, disaster-hit countries reported direct economic losses of $2,908 billion. The United States was hit hardest at $945 billion. As you might expect, floods and storms are the two most frequently occurring disasters.

Given these numbers, every business owner today may want to consider proactively developing disaster strategies to protect human and material assets and maintain a healthy amount of working capital should trouble strike. 

Let's examine four solutions for natural disasters you might employ to keep your business safe and increase your peace of mind.

1. Practice strong working capital management.

Working capital is the difference between a company's current assets like cash, unpaid bills and inventories of raw materials and finished goods, and its current liabilities such as payroll and taxes. Business owners use working capital to measure operational efficiency and overall financial health. 

 

Just as smart business owners build working capital reserves during anticipated slow periods, you should develop a similar strategy to cope with natural disaster-related disruption. 

Ensuring that you have enough cash and liquid assets on hand to cover sudden expenses and/or loss of income can mean the difference between your business' survival and its demise.

2. Take a second look at your insurance.

Now is the time to review your insurance policies and assess how well (or not) you'd be covered in a natural disaster. 

Sometimes it isn't intuitive. Using the hurricane scenario as an example, your run-of-the-mill business policy might cover losses from broken glass that's the result of high winds and flooding that's the result of rain. But if you want to protect your location from flooding that comes from groundwater, you may require supplementary flood insurance. 

If you live in an area prone to hurricanes, you can expect to pay higher premiums, and some carriers may not insure you at all. For more detailed information on what's generally covered and where, review the Insurance Information Institute's website.

For the rest of the piece, head over to the AMEX Business site. 

Your Workforce: Global Demographic Changes Can't Be Denied

When people talk about workforce disruptions, they’re usually referring to technology advances or evolving work structures and environments. Rarely does anyone mention demographic changes, even though these are primary drivers of who is available to work and where. Let’s look at the big ones impacting the future of work that are sweeping the globe.

The Rise and Fall of Fertility

In many western nations, the birthrate has dropped below replacement levels, meaning that each pair of adults will have fewer than two children, causing the native-born population to decrease. While population may not decrease in industrialized countries due to immigration, the resulting workforce may have different work preferences and abilities – potentially resulting in geographic skills mismatches (i.e. organizations in a given area require skills that are not readily available in their location). At the same time, fertility rates continue to increase in countries like China and India, leading these developing nations to become the leading exporters of skilled talent working in the professional gig economy by the mid-21^st century.

Boomers Exit Stage Right

The baby boomers, born roughly 1946-63, have taken longer than expected to retire from their traditional, full-time occupations. Two factors are at play here. First, many boomers lost savings in the recession and needed to work more years to support a much longer lifespan. Second, because they are healthy, many want to continue to contribute to the workforce. Rather than allowing this immense amount of institutional knowledge circle the drain, organizations would be smart to leverage boomers in part-time mentoring and consulting roles.

For more, visit the SilkRoad blog.

Agile Feedback is the New Performance Review

Many of us remember the days when we only talked about professional development during a once-a-year performance review conversation with our managers. We may have made development plans and set goals, but these were usually lost in the crush of immediate business priorities. And, by the time we got around to discussing them again, they were outdated and irrelevant.

Fortunately, many organizations have, in recent years, moved from the annual performance management model to bi-annual or even monthly models. This increase in frequently certainly benefits the process, but can we take it even further? Can we make learning and performance dialogue even more fluid and agile and therefore more useful considering the pace of change in our organizations and industries?

The Rise of Open and Continuous Dialogue

Today’s most comprehensive HRMS offer the ability for managers and employees to deliver real-time guidance and feedback as soon as an issue presents itself. This type of exchange is far more helpful for growth and engagement because it’s directly relevant to a current project or challenge. Typically, any employee can submit feedback to another regardless of level or reporting structure, so it’s an equal-opportunity endeavor that’s less biased and less restrictive.

Agile feedback systems provide an important mechanism for coaching and collaboration, and in boosting manager awareness of problems sooner rather than later, they aid in retention as well. They also alert leaders when there may be a new skills gap that needs to be addressed. For instance, if a manager sees results that indicate that a group of employees isn’t using a new technology as intended, they can get involved right away, collect more information about the disconnect, and ultimately determine if additional background or training is necessary.

For more where this came from, head over to the SilkRoad blog.

The Evolution of Recruiting from 2009-2019

In 2008, I published a book with ATD Press called Success for Hire. Since then, I’ve followed the field closely and for this article, wanted to consider some of the major recruiting changes that have taken place over the last decade.

The “Black Hole of HR” is No More

When I entered this field, I advised candidates never to blindly submit a resume to a job board or an applicant tracking system (ATS). At the time, doing so was often a guarantee that no human eyes would ever rest on your materials. Today, however, ATS are far more sophisticated in sorting and funneling resumes to the appropriate decision-makers, and whether the news is good or not, candidates are more likely to hear it. And, the job boards that still exist are no longer “boards” persay, but rather matching platforms offering a suite of helpful services to both job seekers and recruiters find one another.

Social Facilitates Passive Recruitment

Remember the days when recruitment processes happened in a very specific order – employer posts job, candidates apply, employer decides who to interview?  The rise of social media, especially sites like LinkedIn, has enabled employers and candidates to engage in a mutual selection process that often begins with the recruiter scoping out the skillsets and recommendations of and reaching out to people who aren’t looking for work. Passive candidates are also more likely to be spotted by recruiters via their participation in online communities, hosted events, and skills showcases.

Artificially Intelligent Software Mitigates Bias

Unconscious bias has always tarnished recruitment efforts. While most employers didn’t mean to discriminate against a candidate because of their gender, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, this often happened at the subconscious level. Now, though, some intelligent software programs remove resume details – such as names, photos, and education – that might lead to biased assessments. Others help recruiters word job descriptions in a certain way, and combat interview selection bias via structured conversational prompts and real-time video assessments of interviewer speech and body language.

The Total Employee Experience Starts with Candidates

Once, employers held all the cards and had all the power. If your company had a website or was in the news, you were golden. But in 2019, recruiters must work hard to convince top talent to invest their careers with an organization. To start, organizations must have a consistent, reputable, transparent, and compelling employer brand, and they then must showcase that brand through a carefully orchestrated hiring process that makes individual candidates feel respected, valued, and cared for. And – that process must transition into preboarding and onboarding experiences that make new hires feel good about their decisions prepare them to contribute right away.

If you’re interested in recruitment and didn’t catch last week’s webinar with SilkRoad client Sonepar, grab the replay here and let us know what you think!

How to Prepare for Leadership Disruption

As a futurist and the host of the Workforce 2030 podcast, I’m frequently asked the most important trait leaders need to develop to effectively govern 21^st century workforces. The answer is easy: agility. The business world’s only certainty is that the environment WILL change quickly, and the fastest way to organizational obscurity and failure is to deny that major disruptions are bound to occur and that regular strategy pivots will be essential.  These questions will help leaders navigate a climate in which an approach that worked yesterday is unlikely to work the same way tomorrow.

Is My Organization Agile Enough to Shift Direction Rapidly?

Many companies are bureaucratic and unwieldy, where one must wade through layers of hierarchy before receiving the green light to change a process. As we move toward 2030, the pace of change will demand real-time monitoring of markets and customer demands, as well as infrastructures and mechanisms to drive immediate action when an approved strategy no longer serves.

Have I Customized My Management Style?

We have moved from a workforce of many to a workforce of one. Today’s employees are more diverse than ever. They have different work arrangements, personal priorities, and career aspirations. Leaders must tailor their styles to the individual rather than insisting on a one-size-fits-all approach, and they must be willing to diligently supervise multi-generational, virtual, remote, and contract teams as well as traditional full-time, onsite ones.

For the rest of the article, check out the SilkRoad blog.

A Reskilling Plan Has Become Essential

Back when I graduated from college, one was expected to leave school with nearly all the basic skills needed to succeed in a career. Maybe your employer did a more comprehensive orientation, maybe it provided access to the occasional professional development training course, and maybe you picked up a few things passively while engaging in job responsibilities or talking with your boss or mentor. But overall, you didn’t have to go too far out of your way to learn the skills or competencies you’d need to be successful.

Today, we live in a different world. Regardless of the industry, organizations and markets are evolving quickly. The way we do things one day might not work the next. There’s no such thing as a long-term strategy. Rather, every plan must be revisited – and goals adjusted – annually to ensure they’re still relevant and applicable. And this means that individuals must keep up and master new areas for which employers are willing to pay for expertise. 

Skills Gaps Are Everywhere

It’s probably not a surprise that according to research I conducted with DeVry University’s Career Advisory Board in 2017, most managers feel that employees generally lack soft skills. At all three levels of employment – entry-level, mid-level and senior-level – managers cited soft skills and traits like integrity, problem-solving, interpersonal ability and adaptability as essential but not nearly common enough in the employee population.

Here’s where it gets interesting, though. In a follow-up study last year, we asked 500 hiring managers about the skills human employees need in a world with greater machine participation. That’s when we discovered the desire for greater applied technical skills, or the ability to understand the technology available to do run an organization or do a job more productively. Of our respondents, 75 percent said employees should know how to use technology to inform and drive business decisions, while 84 percent claimed employees who know how to use the right technology tools in their fields are more effective.

For the rest of the piece, head over to the SilkRoad blog.

Humanity Works Book Tour: Glimpses of the Future

One of the highlights of the last year was my #humanityworks tour in the UK, from which these six videos resulted. Check them out for short and sweet advice on what's to come in the workforce of 2030 and beyond.

Episode 1: Don't Worry about AI Stealing Your Job, Worry about Your Lack of Skills

Episode 2: Why You Should Develop Your Interpersonal Sensitivity Skills

Episode 3: Technology Will Create New Jobs

Episode 4: Will Technology Develop Consciousness?

Episode 5: Workplace Agility: The Crucial Skill for Your Career

Episode 6: 3 Important Technologies for HR and L&D

 

AI's Relationship to Team Collaboration

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is all the rage in business. Owners hoping for more efficient operations and better team collaboration are eager to take advantage of smart machines, but where should you start?

First described by Stanford computer scientist John McCarthy in 1956, artificial intelligence refers to computer simulation of human intelligence. Let's explore the categories of AI most businesses are implementing today, as well as the things to keep in mind when considering AI-based collaboration tools.

We can place nearly all available AI programs into two categories: narrow artificial intelligence and general artificial intelligence. Narrow AI completes simple, routine tasks and can usually do so more quickly than human counterparts. This form of AI does not possess understanding or insight—it does exactly what it's programmed for. (Most automation in manufacturing and business environments is the product of narrow AI.)

Narrow AI is transforming team collaboration by taking over administrative functions and freeing human workers to focus on more mission-critical tasks. Alexa for Business and Google Assistant, for instance, are intelligent assistants your whole team can use via a shared console. These AI assistants interact with your team's other digital systems to set up meetings, send reminders, print necessary materials and run your presentation in a conference room.

Artificial general intelligence possesses greater cognitive abilities. A system using this form can come across an unfamiliar task or situation and generate solutions, although currently not to the level of abstraction possible for human workers. Still, as computer scientists devise increasingly sophisticated machine learning applications, which actively learn from prior experience by recognizing patterns in their own data, the productivity of team collaboration skyrockets.

For the rest of the article, please head over to the AMEX Business site.

Supply Chain Strategies for Smaller Businesses

Supply chain management refers to overseeing the processes that transform a raw material into a final product and ensuring that goods and services proceed smoothly from initial manufacturing to customer delivery. Effective supply chain management involves streamlining the flow in a way that maximizes the organization's bottom line and the end customer's value.

Experts believe the future of supply chain management will include increased automation, along with a focus on analytics, sustainability practices and complex supplier relationships. And women are leading the charge—according to a 2018 survey conducted by Gartner Research, there has been "sustained strong representation of women in the senior-most ranks of supply chain organizations relative to other functions. We also find more supply chain leaders spearheading their own initiatives to attract, retain and advance women."

To that end, I asked a few women supply chain leaders what they are doing to further their careers as well as the missions of their organizations.

Smart Analytics

Collecting data from a variety of sources and using it to derive relevant insights for the business can have an positive effect on supply chain performance.

Jill Keto, CMO of Easy Metrics, a cloud-based supply chain visibility provider, has moved up in her career by developing tools that help organizations optimize their largest controllable expense—labor. 

“Using big data in warehouse environments to track labor is a strategy that has paid huge dividends," Keto says. “My customers see improved team engagement, 40 percent productivity improvement and 15 percent labor cost reduction simply by using data to capture the labor costs of every action.

“In a tight job market where labor demand is outpacing supply," she continues, "and where customer requirements like same-day shipping and small orders are the norm, distribution operators are running into challenges that didn't exist before."

Keto leverages the interplay of the Internet of Things, machine learning and big data to bring a degree of calm to the chaos.

Sustainability Focus

Before founding her company virtue + vice, which advises fashion brands on impact sourcing and sustainable supply chain management, entrepreneur Melanie DiSalvo worked in supply chain management, product development and production for major fashion brands. 

DiSalvo's intimate experience with the fashion supply chain and global market trends, particularly strategic regional sourcing and operations, provided the know-how to launch her own company.

“My in-depth understanding of how each level of the supply chain works has gotten me ahead," she says. “My time spent living and working overseas in factories and mills was invaluable because it taught me exactly what's possible and what isn't, and shapes how I solve problems for my customers every day. 

"Because I know what goes into making each component of a clothing item, I can come up with environmentally sustainable workarounds that most people would never think to try," she adds.

For more insights, check out the full piece on the AMEX Business site.