Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

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.

Workforce 2030 Podcast is on a Roll Thanks to Partner SilkRoad!

The Workforce 2030 podcast sponsored by SilkRoad is off and running, with several episodes now online. Please check these out and let us know what you think!

Episode 1: Disruption in the Changing Workforce

In this episode of Workforce 2030, Robert Dvorak, Chief Executive Officer and President of SilkRoad, joins Alexandra Levit to discuss disruptive changes affecting the workforce, today and in the future, as well as the importance of agility and continuous learning in this time of change. Dvorak brings more than 30 years of experience in executive leadership positions in strategic sales and marketing.

Episode 2: Mergers & Acquisitions and its effect on the Workforce

In this episode of Workforce 2030, Jennifer Fondrevay, Founder and Chief Humanity Officer of Day1 Ready™, joins Alexandra Levit to explore Mergers & Acquisitions and its effect on the Workforce. Jennifer works with forward-thinking business leaders, owners and executives to pre-plan their people strategy through the phases of M&A so their employees can contribute from Day 1.

Episode 3: How, When, and Where to Apply Automation in the Workplace

In this episode of Workforce 2030, Ravin Jesuthasan, Managing Director and Global Practice Leader at Willis Towers Watson, joins Alexandra Levit to discuss applying automation and AI to jobs and how organizations can optimize human-automation combinations. Ravin is a global thought leader on the future of work, automation and human capital. He has been recognized as one of the top 25 most influential consultants in the world by Consulting Magazine, one of the top 8 future of work influencers by Tech News and one of the top 100 HR influencers by HR Executive.

Episode 4: Agility and Adapting to Change: How to Future-Proof Your Career

In this episode of Workforce 2030, Marti Konstant, best-selling author of Activate Your Agile Career, joins Alexandra Levit to discuss agility and how to future-proof and take control of your career by adapting and responding to change. Marti has an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and is a former technology executive who has worked in Silicon Valley. She now works as a workplace futurist, keynote speaker, top-career influencer, best-selling author and expert in applying agile principles to workforce development.

Agility Strategies to Keep You Sane

In today’s rapidly changing business world, an agile business is a successful business. But how do you know when the best thing for the project  is to change the plan, and how can you execute and communicate changes without destroying team motivation and momentum? The following strategies may prove helpful.

Any major strategic initiative should involve the upfront establishment of goals, milestones, and success metrics. But, as Tim Berry pointed out in his article for the Small Business Administration website, assumptions should also be considered in your initial planning. “Tracking your results, you want to be able to compare them to what you had planned or expected to see,” he said.

“Get your team members together once a month to review your plan and its results. “Take a hard look at your underlying assumptions and assess whether or not they’ve changed. If they have, there’s no virtue whatsoever in sticking to the plan you built on top of them.”

Berry suggested you look at the difference between what you planned and what actually happened. Some results will be better than planned, and some will be worse. “For each key difference you discover, and all of them combined, use your best judgment to determine whether the differences were caused by false expectations or unexpected good or bad execution.”

“Also, consider external and internal factors that may have influenced the results. Maybe your expectations were too conservative, or too optimistic. In that case, you revise your plan,” he said.

Common sense, remarked Berry, is critical.  Although the project may be close to your heart, you want to remain pragmatic: for example, asking yourself if you were you wrong about the whole thing, or just about the timing? You also want to consider if something else has occurred in the market to change your assumptions.

For more where this came from, check out the full piece on HR.com.

 

 

 

The New and Improved Performance Review

What good is performance feedback if it occurs in isolation? It's just like the saying: "If a tree falls in the woods..."

“This is where it’s important to have a system that enables a company to join up performance feedback simply and in one place, where they can get a quick view of everything,” says Cheryl Johnson, chief human resources offer at payroll company Paylocity.

Paylocity uses a proprietary tool that stores multiple data points related to the performance review cycle. Employees and managers journal regularly to keep quick notes and recap conversations or meetings, and feedback is consolidated in periodic reviews so employees always know where they stand. “We also maintain performance goals and recognition awards within this same system, so when we sit down to look at the holistic perspective of someone’s performance, we have all data points in the employee’s profile,” explains Johnson.

Johnson is quick to point out that certain data points carry more weight than others, so both leaders and employees need to understand how points are weighted in the overall context of performance.

Paylocity’s Johnson has mastered the notion that different departments have different feedback needs. “Many of our departments leverage the journaling function, which makes giving and receiving continuous feedback informal, yet documented in a place where it’s easy to access when the time comes for formal conversations. Some departments have these formal conversations monthly or quarterly; others have them annually. The cadence aligns with when individual departments can collect insights that improve performance,” she says. And over time, Paylocity has adjusted its continuous feedback approach so it doesn’t require overthinking, is less cumbersome, and is more focused on input that matters – as opposed to providing feedback for its own sake.

Have you improved your performance management system recently? What did your changes entail?

Announcing Workforce 2030: A New Podcast About Our Most Critical Workplace Disruptions

Today marks a very special occasion. Alongside my partner of 10 years, SilkRoad Technology, a global leader in strategic onboarding for workforce transformation, I am releasing a new podcast: Workforce 2030. The show features discussions with leading talent management experts, business leaders and industry disrupters on topics about the future of work and how the workforce will transform to meet the needs of 2030 and beyond.

In my tenure as a workforce futurist, I’ve spent a great deal of time on the microphone with fabulous hosts, and now the tables have been turned! The inaugural episode of Workforce 2030 features Robert Dvorak, CEO and President of SilkRoad. Bob was incredibly fun to talk to because he’s been working in the technology field for 30 years and as you can imagine, has witnessed an incredible amount of growth and change.

In our lively, 30-minute conversation, Bob and I addressed what makes a successful brand a successful employer, why establishing strong employee relationships must be a combination of high tech and high touch approaches, why there’s one human managerial skill that’s essential for effective onboarding, and how tech-based systems facilitate assimilation and prevent quit quits. You’ll also hear why Bob and I are against the word “retention” and why it’s now everyone’s job to be in continuous learning mode.

Whether you’re leading an organization or a team, whether you seek the secret sauce for your own successful career in the mid-21^st century workforce, or whether you read Humanity Works and are looking for a bit more guidance, this is the show for you. Our next several guests include Jennifer Fondrevay, Chief Humanity Officer, Day1 Ready™ M&A consultancy, Grant Zallis, CEO, Founder IAR Consulting, and Ravin Jesuthasan, Managing Director, Willis Towers Watson. If you have a question you’d like me to ask these knowledgeable experts, please send it along!

Tune in to the first episode or access the whole series.

Key Questions to Ask Your New Hires

Designing an effective onboarding experience requires some trial and error, and you can hone your approach by asking new hires some specific questions at each phase of the onboarding journey. Although new hires are usually ramped up to productivity quickly, taking time out to address these questions will provide valuable information, a sense of investment and caring, and the perception that continuous feedback is respected and rewarded.

Recruitment success doesn’t automatically ensure onboarding success, but if you don’t recruit well, the best onboarding strategies in the world can’t help you. Ask your new hires these questions to learn what’s working in your recruitment process – and what isn’t.

• Did our recruitment process teach you what you needed to know about coming to work here?
• Did our recruitment process present a clear vision of our company’s purpose and goals?
• Was anything about our recruitment process frustrating? If so, what?
• Why did you ultimately choose our company?

The next set of questions should be asked – either by an HR representative or the hiring manager – at the conclusion of the first week of employment. At this point, you are checking for assimilation or the degree to which the new hire has been integrated into your environment.

• Do you feel welcome here?
• Do you have a solid understanding of your role and your place in the organization?
• Have we provided the right level of access – to people, processes, technology, and other resources – that you will need to perform your job to the best of your ability?
• What could we have done to make your first week less stressful and more enjoyable?
• Going forward, what aspects of your job are you most looking forward to? What aspects concern you?

By the end of the second week, new hires should be well ensconced in their jobs. You still want to ensure that onboarding is proceeding smoothly, though, and can do so via the following questions.

• Does your job match the expectations set about it during the recruitment process?
• Do you now feel adequately prepared to perform your job responsibilities?
• Have you met a sufficient number of people to have an overall understanding of how our company operates and who you can tap for assistance?
• Are there any surprises that you wish you’d known about prior to starting the job?

The next questions can be addressed both at the one month and three month marks. At these junctures, you are assessing whether the new hire is satisfied and engaged, and whether he/she felt the onboarding process was successful.

• Is there additional training or knowledge you’d like to receive to become even more proficient at your job?
• Do you understand your near-term goals as they relate to this position? Are you motivated to achieve them?
• As of today, would you recommend our firm to a friend?
• Do you see yourself working here for a long time? Why or why not?
• What did you like best about our onboarding process? Least?

As you’ve no doubt gathered, at some point new hire interviews become stay interviews and the goal shifts from onboarding to retention. By orienting your new employees to a continuous feedback approach early, they will be accustomed to participating in a two-way dialogue throughout the course of their tenure with the organization.

How Digital Automation Can Help Make Your Life Easier

While many fear digital automation, more software arrives every day that saves business owners a great deal of money year by lowering costs and increasing productivity and efficiency.

Let's look at a few business-related areas in which digital automation can help make your life easier.

Recruitment

Need to hire staff? Predictive analytics is transforming recruitment.

Predictive analytics is deriving business insights from data to uncover patterns and illustrate potential outcomes, and it can tell you how well your efforts are resonating with your desired candidates.

A variety of platforms, including LinkedIn, leverage data mining and digital automation to show the number of candidates in a specialty and/or geographic area based on the number of job listings in each city.

Unconscious bias is a huge problem in recruiting that keeps business owners up at night. If often keeps us from seeing recruits' true abilities and negatively affects hiring for diversity.

Consider exploring software that use “augmented writing" to allow owners to phrase job descriptions with neutral language, and, using digital automation, removes names from resumes so evaluators don't make assumptions about gender, race or ethnicity.

Paperwork

Most business owners are still mired in paperwork. And when you rely on paperwork, you risk misplacing important documents.

In the era of digital automation, you can leverage applications to simplify note-taking and document storage. There are digital note-taking tools that can help save your ideas, snippets you hear and things you see throughout the day as clipped notes. Some can also scan your paperwork papers directly to the cloud and/or your mobile device and computer of choice. If you're worried about security, some even has encryption features for sensitive documents.

As for all those business cards you constantly have in your briefcase or jacket pocket, try address book management app. These can help manage your address book so you're alerted when people change jobs or roles.

For the rest of the piece, check out the American Express Business site.

Business Innovations of the Future

As a futurist, I often get asked to predict the business trends that organizations can afford to ignore, because, while they generate a lot of buzz, they are also likely to fizzle out. On the other hand, we must also pay attention to business innovations that are gathering such rapid strength that adoption is now essential. Let's look at a few.

Blockchain

A blockchain is a data structure that builds a digital ledger of transactions and shares it among a distributed network of computers. Using cryptography, each participant interacts with the ledger in a secure way without the need for a central authority. Bitcoin was the first app built using the platform in 2008, with a premise of sending digital payments between any two parties without the help of a financial institution. Bitcoin has now been joined by hundreds of other cryptocurrencies, and the model has moved out of financial services: organizations, employees, and customers are using it for all types of transactions.

Deep Learning

Deep learning (programming machines to mimic the actions of the human brain), is driving a whole new set of business innovations. It's the process of training computers to recognize patterns in data and then classify and categorize them as a human brain could. Together with complex algorithms, deep learning is already helping machines to participate in defining project scope, analyzing risks, developing budgets and allocating resources. It's catching on because it has massive implications. 

For the rest, have a look at the American Express Business site.

Key Findings from the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Survey (Part II)

Last week, I shared some compelling results from the World Economic Forum’s 2018 Future of Jobs Survey. To recap, this research set out to represent the current strategies, projections and estimates of global business, with a focus on large multinational companies and more localized companies of significance due to their employee or revenue size.

Let’s examine some additional highlights from the report:

• Emerging in-demand roles: Among the range of established roles that are set to experience increasing demand in the period up to 2022 are Data Analysts and Scientists, Software and Applications Developers, and Ecommerce and Social Media Specialists, roles that are significantly based on and enhanced by the use of technology. Also expected to grow are roles that leverage distinctively ‘human' skills, such as Customer Service Workers, Sales and Marketing Professionals, Training and Development, People and Culture, and Organizational Development Specialists. There will also be a variety of roles related to understanding and leveraging the latest emerging technologies: AI and Machine Learning Specialists, Big Data Specialists, Process Automation Experts, Information Security Analysts, User Experience and Human-Machine Interaction Designers, Robotics Engineers, and Blockchain.

• Growing skills instability: Given the wave of new technologies and trends disrupting business models and the changing division of labor between workers and machines transforming current job profiles, the vast majority of employers surveyed for this report expect that, by 2022, the skills required to perform most jobs will have shifted Global average skills stability—the proportion of core skills required to perform a job that will remain the same—is expected to be about 58%, meaning an average shift of 42% in required workforce skills over the 2018–2022 period.
• A reskilling imperative: By 2022, no less than 54% of all employees will require significant re- and upskilling. Of these, about 35% are expected to require additional training of up to six months, 9% will require reskilling lasting six to 12 months, while 10% will require additional skills training of more than a year. Skills continuing to grow in prominence by 2022 include analytical thinking and innovation as well as active learning and learning strategies. Sharply increasing importance of skills such as technology design and programming highlights the growing demand for various forms of technology competency identified by employers surveyed for this report. Proficiency in new technologies is only one part of the 2022 skills equation, however, as ‘human’ skills such as creativity, originality and initiative, critical thinking, persuasion and negotiation will likewise retain or increase their value, as will attention to detail, resilience, flexibility and complex problem-solving.
• Current strategies for addressing skills gaps: Companies highlight three future strategies to manage the skills gaps widened by the adoption of new technologies. They expect to hire wholly new permanent staff already possessing skills relevant to new technologies; seek to automate the work tasks concerned completely; and retrain existing employees. The likelihood of hiring new permanent staff with relevant skills is nearly twice the likelihood of strategic redundancies of staff lagging behind in new skills adoption. However, nearly a quarter of companies are undecided or unlikely to pursue the retraining of existing employees, and two-thirds expect workers to adapt and pick up skills in the course of their changing jobs. Between one-half and two-thirds are likely to turn to external contractors, temporary staff and freelancers to address their skills gaps.
• Insufficient reskilling and upskilling: Employers indicate that they are set to prioritize and focus their re- and upskilling efforts on employees currently performing high-value roles as a way of strengthening their enterprise’s strategic capacity, with 54% and 53% of companies, respectively, stating they intend to target employees in key roles and in frontline roles which will be using relevant new technologies. In addition, 41% of employers are set to focus their reskilling provision on high-performing employees while a much smaller proportion of 33% stated that they would prioritize at-risk employees in roles expected to be most affected by technological disruption.

Overall, said the World Economic Forum, the report’s findings suggest the need for a comprehensive ‘augmentation strategy’, an approach where businesses look to utilize the automation of some job tasks to complement and enhance their human workforces’ comparative strengths and ultimately to enable and empower employees to extend to their full potential. However, to unlock this positive vision, workers will need to have the appropriate skills enabling them to thrive in the workplace of the future and the ability to continue to retrain throughout their lives. Crafting a sound in-company lifelong learning system, investing in human capital and collaborating with other stakeholders on workforce strategy should thus be key business imperatives.  A mindset of agile learning will also be needed on the part of workers as they shift from the routines and limits of today’s jobs to new, previously unimagined futures.

Want to learn more about how you can prepare for the future of work? Check out the new book, Humanity Works: Merging Technologies and People for the Workforce of the Future.

 

Key Findings from the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Survey (Part I)

What is the future of jobs? The answer to that question depends on who you ask, and in what context. The World Economic Forum has its point of view, which it explored in The 2018 Future of Jobs Survey. This original research set out to represent the current strategies, projections and estimates of global business, with a focus on large multinational companies and more localized companies of significance due to their employee or revenue size.

The survey was distributed to relevant companies through extensive collaboration between the World Economic Forum and its constituents, amplified by regional survey partners. The survey collection process was conducted via an online questionnaire, with data collection spanning a nine-month period in 2018. In total, the report’s data set contains 313 unique responses by global companies, collectively representing more than 15 million employees in 12 industry clusters and 20 economies. This makes it one of the broadest reaching studies of its kind.

Some of the more compelling findings included:

• Drivers of change: Four specific technological advances—ubiquitous high-speed mobile internet; artificial intelligence; widespread adoption of big data analytics; and cloud technology—are set to dominate the 2018–2022 period as drivers positively affecting business growth. They are flanked by a range of socio-economic trends driving business opportunities in tandem with the spread of new technologies, such as national economic growth trajectories; expansion of education and the middle classes, in particular in developing economies; and the move towards a greener global economy through advances in new energy technologies.
• Accelerated technology adoption: By 2022, according to the stated investment intentions of companies surveyed for this report, 85% of respondents are likely or very likely to have expanded their adoption of user and entity big data analytics. Similarly, large proportions of companies are likely or very likely to have expanded their adoption of technologies such as the internet of things and app- and web-enabled markets, and to make extensive use of cloud computing. Machine learning and augmented and virtual reality are poised to likewise receive considerable business investment.
• Trends in robotization: While estimated use cases for humanoid robots appear to remain somewhat more limited over the 2018–2022 period under consideration in this report, collectively, a broader range of recent robotics technologies at or near commercialization—including stationary robots, non-humanoid land robots and fully automated aerial drones, in addition to machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence—are attracting significant business interest in adoption. Robot adoption rates diverge significantly across sectors, with 37% to 23% of companies planning this investment, depending on industry
• Changing geography of production, distribution and value chains: By 2022, 59% of employers surveyed for this report expect that they will have significantly modified how they produce and distribute by changing the composition of their value chain and nearly half expect to have modified their geographical base of operations. When determining job location decisions, companies overwhelmingly prioritize the availability of skilled local talent as their foremost consideration, with 74% of respondents providing this factor as their key consideration.
• Changing employment types: Nearly 50% of companies expect that automation will lead to some reduction in their full-time workforce by 2022, based on the job profiles of their employee base today. However, 38% of businesses surveyed expect to extend their workforce to new productivity-enhancing roles, and more than a quarter expect automation to lead to the creation of new roles in their In addition, businesses are set to expand their use of contractors doing task-specialized work, with many respondents highlighting their intention to engage workers in a more flexible manner, utilizing remote staffing beyond physical offices and decentralization of operations.
• A new human-machine frontier within existing tasks: Companies expect a significant shift on the frontier between humans and machines when it comes to existing work tasks between 2018 and In 2018, an average of 71% of total task hours across the 12 industries covered in the report are performed by humans, compared to 29% by machines. By 2022 this average is expected to have shifted to 58% task hours performed by humans and 42% by machines. In 2018, in terms of total working hours, no work task was yet estimated to be predominantly performed by a machine or an algorithm.
• A net positive outlook for jobs: About half of today’s core jobs—making up the bulk of employment across industries—will remain stable in the period up to One set of estimates indicates that 75 million jobs may be displaced by a shift in the division of labor between humans and machines, while 133 million new roles may emerge that are more adapted to the new division of labor between humans, machines and algorithms. These estimates represent two parallel and interconnected fronts of change in workforce transformations: 1) large-scale decline in some roles as tasks within these roles become automated or redundant, and 2) large-scale growth in new products and services—and associated new tasks and jobs— generated by the adoption of new technologies and other socio-economic developments such as the rise of middle classes in emerging economies and demographic shifts.

Stay tuned for more highlights next week. In the meantime, want to learn more about how you can prepare for the future of work? Check out the new book, Humanity Works: Merging Technologies and People for the Workforce of the Future.