A guest column from Steven ZoBell, Workfront Chief Product and Technology Officer. In his role at Workfront, Steve leads the engineering and platform hosting and operations organizations and works closely with the product and services teams to evolve the technology platform to meet customer and market needs. As the previous CPTO at ADP AdvancedMD and CTO at inContact, Steve brings more than 20 years of product development, software engineering, and business management experience to Workfront. Steve has been involved in the development of more than 25 critically acclaimed, award-winning, commercial software products.
"At Workfront, we regularly touch base with knowledge workers worldwide about the state of modern work, which is growing more complex by the day. Amid so much ongoing transformation, leaders—and their team members—often feel like they’re flying blind as they chart their course into an unknowable future. It’s hard to predict what changes in the marketplace will take hold tomorrow or next week, let alone within the next year or beyond.
But knowledge is power, and that’s why we conduct our annual State of Work report. This global survey helps us gauge conditions on the ground, provide valuable insights into how work is being done, discover opportunities for growth and improvement, and identify the things top-performing organizations are doing to gain a competitive advantage in an unpredictable environment.
As we crunched the data from this year’s report, we uncovered seven surprising findings that may change the way you think about the modern world of work.
1. Employee engagement is not a problem.
It may seem like common knowledge that employees struggle to stay engaged in their work responsibilities. After all, Gallup has reported that more than 2/3 of employees in the U.S. and 87% worldwide are either not engaged or actively disengaged at work.
But that story doesn’t hold for every sector of the job market. According to our report, most people surveyed feel proud of their work (91%) and believe their role matters (89%).
This is welcome news. But it leaves one vital question unanswered: is everybody engaged in the right work?
2. Strategic alignment is a problem.
“No” is the answer to the previous question. Enterprises today struggle mightily to keep their people engaged in the right strategic priorities. Another Gallup poll, the State of the American Workplace, revealed that 70% of employees feel disengaged as a consequence of failing to see how their work helps move their business forward.
Likewise, in our State of Work report, only a third of respondents would describe their work as “harmonious and connected,” while 15% went as far as to call their work “uncoordinated and disconnected.” And the larger and more dispersed your organization is, the more challenging strategic alignment can be.
These survey results signal the need for leaders to bridge the gap between team members’ daily activities and strategic enterprise goals. Connecting the work and the why creates outcomes-focused thinking and work that improves employee engagement, productivity, and talent retention.
3. Agility is about more than speed.
As we studied the results of our report, we determined that companies that outpace their rivals focus on agility as a core competency. And their commitment to an agile mindset goes beyond making work move faster or increasing employee productivity. Instead, they seek a more fluid, dynamic, and holistic approach to work, which embraces change, empowers new leaders, and enables them to regularly redeploy at every organizational level to drive new opportunities in the market. As McKinsey puts it: “Enterprise agility is about the distinct qualities that allow organizations to respond rapidly to changes in internal and external environments without losing momentum or vision.”
4. Employees want to be rewarded based on their contribution to results.
“There are two worldviews in leadership,” writes Workfront CEO Alex Shootman in his book Done Right. “Some leaders believe people go to work with the intent to do their best. Other leaders take the view that people’s prevailing instinct is to shirk.” Which worldview do you believe is closer to the truth? According to our State of Work data, it’s the first.
Knowledge workers aren’t there to punch a clock or pass the time. They sincerely want to contribute, and have their contributions noticed. “Everyone wants to be trusted to do the job they were hired for,” Alex continues. “Good ideas exist at every pay grade.”
5. Visibility should go in both directions.
The tools of modern work are better than ever at providing downward visibility. In other words, leaders have a greater ability to watch how work is progressing than ever before. But equally important is the employees’ ability to see upward, connect their daily tasks to the company’s greater vision, and understand how and why business decisions are made. According to our State of Work report, there’s a lot of room for improvement in this area.
6. Work itself needs to be platformed.
We’ve reached the point where enterprises of all shapes and sizes are accustomed to the idea of platforming their sales, marketing, HR, and finance activities using enterprise work management technology that streamlines processes, increases visibility, and connects the myriad digital tools we use to get work done.
But today’s top-performing organizations are realizing that they also need to platform the work itself. Without the ability to look at work strategically and cohesively, it’s not possible to adapt, evolve, and continuously improve enterprise work processes, which is increasingly vital.
7. Employee experience matters as much as customer experience.
Our final surprising finding from the State of Work report reveals that 91% of knowledge workers crave modern technology solutions. They expect the same ease and simplicity from their work tools that they find when they use Google, Instagram, or Amazon. And 87% believe their leaders are missing opportunities by not adopting more cutting-edge platforms.
While the sentiment itself is not surprising—of course digital natives expect their work tools to be user-friendly—the strength of the response is remarkable. Almost everyone agrees that workplace technology should provide seamless connection, access to information, a good user experience, and even personalization. That’s what they get from the apps they use at home. It’s only natural they’d desire similar usability from the tools they use at the office.
Empowering leaders with the insights they need to succeed
The more business leaders understand what leading companies are doing to conquer the increasing complexity of work in the modern age, and the more they can peer into the minds of their team members, the better they’ll be able to differentiate themselves, remain competitive, narrow in on what will move the needle, and keep people not just engaged at work, but engaged in the right strategic priorities."
Source of all images: Workfront 2020 State of Work Report
