The endless parade of technologies to improve workforce collaboration has certainly led to the shrinking of time and distance, but has it actually let to a long-term increase in engagement and business performance? What should enterprises do today?
In the process of applying technology, we can’t forget that workforce engagement, the measure of whether an employee merely does the minimum required of them, versus proactively driving innovation and new value for the organization, is the ultimate objective here. Thus, engagement can only ever be partially accounted for by deploying the latest new collaborative technology, and probably significantly less than many of its proponents would have you believe.
From telephone and e-mail in the 20th century to unified communication and enterprise social networks in the 21st, businesses have long applied the latest technology in the hopes of improving efficiency and productivity. When this happens successfully, the investment turns in sufficient business impact to justify the cost. When it doesn’t, businesses eventually try something else.
Why would enterprises continue to do this decade after decade, when many of these experiments fail or times inevitably change? It’s because interaction and collaboration amongst employees is the very lifeblood of the typical businesses. Data consistently shows that good collaboration can have dramatic consequences in terms of business results, from minor efficiencies that might enable the delivery of cheaper products to market, all the way up to the creation of game-changing new advances that can remake an entire industry. The question then, is how to best lay down a long-term strategy that will continually engage employees through the inevitable changes, innovations, and disruptions in the marketplace.
Read the full article by Dion Hinchcliffe here.
About Dion Hinchcliffe
Dion Hinchcliffe is an expert in information technology, business strategy, and next-generation enterprises.
