Employees Create the Digital Future

How you manage the digital future always comes back to how you care for and about your people.

Staying connected with employees and the communities during an unconnected time. (Source: Shutterstock)

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an urgency that is accelerating the digital revolution. Artificial intelligence, cloud-based computing and services, Zoom connections and ever-increasing cybersecurity considerations are infusing business with new organizational opportunities and new employee challenges. This health emergency has forced leaders who were previously resistant to greater use of digital approaches to now trust and embrace them. They must plan to increasingly deploy digital tools to improve the member and employee experience, and to promote organizational efficiency. Many changes will remain long after the pandemic is brought under control.

Yet, in an increasingly digital world, it’s still the human element that matters. How you manage the digital future always comes back to how you care for and about your people. For employees to best contribute, they must feel safe, both physically and economically. When there is less reason to worry, employees free up cognitive energy that can be directed to learn new technical and operational skills and improve existing ones. The concept of a “learning organization,” popularized by Peter Senge, is more relevant now than ever as companies become immersed in today’s digital world. Learning organizations continuously transform themselves, growing and enhancing the capabilities of their people, providing the organization every chance for success. When the workforce is continuously learning, feels safe and knows that management has their backs, they are more engaged, more motivated and more prepared to handle rapid change. Leadership creates change most effectively when people know the company is committed to them, and digital transformation is no exception.

Everyone is hopeful that there is a light at the end of the pandemic tunnel with advances on an effective vaccine and a reinvigorated focus on personal responsibility to avoid COVID-19 infection. Individuals and employers are collectively endeavoring to return to some of the previous normalcy in work and leisure. With recent increases in COVID-19 cases, however, the timeline for a return to normalcy appears to be extended yet again. Accordingly, even with optimism around a vaccine, employees are still quite concerned with workplace health risks until the pandemic is fully brought under control. Any disconnect with management on health-related safety diminishes a learning organization.

Employees rank health-related well-being as among their very highest workplace priorities. Unfortunately, the IBM Institute for Business Value recently reported there is a gap between employees’ perceptions about their company’s commitment to their health and well-being and management’s view. About 80% of executives felt their organizations were supporting the physical and emotional health of the employees. However, less than half of the surveyed employees agreed. Although these data are not credit union specific, any leader must be cautious of numbers like these in this environment.

Learning organizations are founded on a culture that has a core value of continually increasing employee proficiency and skill building. A fluid environment for the use of technology calls for more specialized upskilling. Nevertheless, IBM provides another word of caution to leadership. Only 38% of employees believe the organization is “helping staff learn the skills needed to work in a new way” while about 75% of managers felt they were doing so. It’s important that management gets this right as enterprise agility and organizational resilience require a skilled staff to create innovative solutions to new and existing problems, including digital approaches to member service, crisis management, risk management and cybersecurity.

For a learning culture to flourish, leadership needs an insightful read on the employee sentiment, situation and whether the right level of skill building is occurring. Effective strategic communication around workforce care and learning, importantly, must include feedback systems that give leadership quality information about the overall employee perception and experience. Your people will appreciate knowing that management is doing the best they can to support the employees’ health and assuring they have the needed skills to absorb and adopt an increasingly digital future. People will remember the credit union’s efforts to see them through this tough time, thereby earning their loyalty and desire to stay with the organization, even after conditions improve and talent again becomes scarcer.

IBM and others studying these transformative challenges tell us that management must do a better job. In an environment with many simultaneously moving parts, your messaging and strategies must create alignment between leadership and employees about the perception and reality of safety, security and learning, not the divergence that is seen at too many companies. A focus on employee care and capability gives you a head start. When your credit union embodies the right values and a culture of a learning organization, you will be best prepared to tackle this challenging changing world.

Stuart Levine

Stuart R. Levine is Chairman and CEO for Stuart Levine & Associates and EduLeader LLC in Miami Beach, Fla.