eg2013 annual final
TRANSCRIPT
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EXECUTIVE GUIDANCE FOR 2013
Breakthrough Performancein the New Work EnvironmentIdentiying and Enabling the New High Perormer
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Companies Get More rom Employees
Trends in Key Productivity Measures, 1993 to Present2
Indexed to 1993
Revenue per FTE
2.0
0.6
1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011
0.8
1.0
1.2
1.4
1.6
1.8
CAGR = 3.23%
CAGR = 0.16%
CAGR = (0.61%)
1 Based on median gures.
2 Data includes 8,625 companies rom 93 countries with annual revenue greater than US$500 million.
Driving corporate growth in a low-growth environment is a consistent theme
in boardrooms today. As CEB research shows, many companies are (or
should be) pursuing Intelligent Growthsimultaneous growth in top-line
revenue and bottom-line protability. Companies that successully managethe costgrowth trade-o signicantly outperorm their peers and reward
shareholders. Unortunately, achieving Intelligent Growth is hard and getting
harderonly 3 out o 10 companies in the S&P 500 have been able to grow and
keep costs at bay since the global nancial crisis.
For many rms, managing the costgrowth trade-o comes down to increasing
workorce productivity. To date, business perormance gains have come rom
better labor eciency, and companies have been getting more and more romtheir investment in employees. Since 1993, revenue per ull-time equivalent
(FTE) has grown at a 3.23% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) compared
to no growth in revenue per cost o goods sold (COGS; CAGR = 0.16%) and a
0.61% in revenue per invested capital.1
Revenue per COGS Revenue per Invested Cap
Source: Compustat; CEB, CEB Finance Leadership Council.
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Needing Even More from Employees
Simply put, the corporate bottom line depends on getting more eciency out
o the workorceand signs suggest companies will continue to need more
rom employees going orward. Companies are clearly striving or protable
growth. The majority o executives surveyed by CEB believe their revenues
will increase in the coming year (59%), but they also anticipate continued
pressure to lower costs (67%). Protable growth will continue to put pressure
on employees to be more ecientonly 32% o executives plan to increase
head count despite optimism around revenue growth.
Source: CEB, Business Barometer Quarterly Report; CEB, CEB Finance Leadership Council.
The Challenge: Growth Without Sta Investments
Percentage o Executive Expectations
Q3 2012
Increase Stay the Same Decrease
Expected Revenue Cost Pressures Head Count
26%
15%
59%
16%
17%
67%
35%
33%
32%
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Moreover, ambitious protable growth goals at many rms have executives
demanding a discontinuous jump in workorce perormance and
productivity. On average, global executives believe they will need a 20%
improvement in perormance over and above current levels in order to meet
their business objectives.
Executives Need More rom Employees to Meet Current Goals
Percentage o Improvement Needed to Achieve Business Goals
n = 2,046.
Source: CEB, CLC Human Resources High Perormance Survey.
On average, global executivesbelieve they will need a 20%
improvement in performance
over and above current levels.
0% 110% 1120% 2130% More Than30%
5%
39%
27%
15%14%
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Employees Are Working Harder and Longer
Percentage o Employees Who Have Experienced an Increase in
Workload in the Past Three Years
n = 23,339.
Are Productivity Expectations
Unrealistic?
Achieving a dramatic jump in workorce productivity may be harder than
business leaders anticipate. CEB has been tracking employee eort and
perormance levels since 1998, and the labor productivity gains realized over
the past two decades may well be reaching their limit. The discretionary eort
employees put into their work rebounded ater the global nancial crisis but
has remained relatively fat over the past year and a hal.3
Employees surveyed by CEB report that their jobs are getting harder, with
more than two-thirds reporting more complexity and 80% seeing their
workloads increase. Rapid shits in the global economy and availability o
technology and inormation have resulted in dramatic changes to corporate
organizational structures and the way work is done. Most observers agree
that work has become much more global and more dependent on inormation
and technology and requires more collaboration across a geographically
dispersed workorce. Increasingly complex work is taking its toll: more than
one-hal o surveyed employees indicate the stress o their jobs is on the rise.
80% 78%
56%
YourWorkload
Your TeamsWorkload
Hours Workedper Week
Source: CEB, CLC Human Resources High Perormance Survey.
3 CEB, CLC Human Resources, Quarterly Global Workorce Insight Report, Q3 2012.
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Employees Struggle to Handle the Stress o Their Jobs
Percentage o Employees Agreeing with the Statement,
I Cannot Handle the Stress o My Job or Much Longer
n = 23,339.
Source: CEB, CLC Human Resources High Perormance Survey.
55%
Agree
45%
Neutral
or Disagree
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Most Executives Think Employees Could Substantially Improve
Percentage o Executives
n = 641.
Herein lies the problem: employee trends suggest employees are reaching
a limit to their workload, but executives need a 20% lit in workorce
productivity. Many business leaders believe employees can be more
productive. On average, executives think that only about 29% o their
employees are operating at peak productivity. Moreover, or every executive
that believes his or her sta is ully productive, seven believe their sta could
substantially improve.
SubstantialRoom to Improve
Substantial Room to
Improve = 1 to 33%
o workorce perorming
at highest possible level
Moderate Room to
Improve = 34 to 66% o
workorce perorming at
highest possible level
Little to No Room to
Improve = 67 to 100% o
workorce perorming at
highest possible level
ModerateRoom to Improve
Little to NoRoom to Improve
68%
20%
12%
Source: CEB, 2012 CEB Senior Executive Survey.
Note: HR executives answered or the entire workorce, while other executives answered or theirunction or department.
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Understand the New Work
Environment and Its Implications
It is a well-known act that the economy and underlying work environment
are changing. The press and business literature are replete with mega trends
and micro trends all believed to be driving more fuidity and complexity in
the business environment. The global economy is less stable, technology is
evolving at breakneck pace, and inormation and communication channels
have become ubiquitous. But which o these trends really matter, and what
are the important subsequent changes within corporations?
Through a survey o more than 1,500 senior executives, CEB identied
10 important trends that all into three broad, but distinct, categories:
Frequent organizational change
More interdependent work
An increase in knowledge work
These trends meaningully impact how work is structured, managed, andconducted, and they reveal new realities in the workplace that undamentally
change how work gets done and what drives employee perormance.
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KNOWLEDGE WORK
31%
18%
16%
14%
27%
21%
15%
27%
17%
15%
Frequent Change, More Interdependence, and Knowledge Work Dene
the New Work Environment
Percentage o Executives Indicating Trend in Their Top Three4
n = 1,630.
Cross-Function or Departmental Work Groups
Matrixed Reporting Relationships
More Frequent Organizational Change
Greater Financial Uncertainty
Geographically Dispersed Workorce
Organizational Downsizing
Team-Based Work
New Inormation Technology
More Nonroutine Work
Greater Inormation Availability
INTERDEPENDENT WORK
Source: CEB, 2012 CEB Senior Executive Survey.
4 HR executives answered or the entire workorce, while other executives answered or their unction
CHANGE (ECONOMIC AND ORGANIZATIONAL)
or department.
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A persistent and common aspect o the new work environment is requent,
signicant organizational change, both broadly dened (e.g., strategic
objectives, markets) and narrowly dened (e.g., work teams, reporting
relationships). Shiting economic power, regulatory uncertainty, and rapid
technological changes cause requent adjustment in business objectives and
strategies and lead to real changes in organizational structures, reporting
relationships, and work teams and processes. Over the past three years,
63% o employees report experiencing requent changes in organizational
objectives. Structural changes in the work environment are just as common
and persistent. In 2009, 81% o employees experienced a signicant
organizational change, and every year since, more than 50% o employees
have reported signicant changes.
In a high-change environment, established work processes become less
relevant and valuable as objectives and organizations change. Moreover,
process and structure changes disrupt, or even disband, long-standing
employee networks. CEB analysis estimates that a high-change environment
can reduce overall employee perormance by as much as 10%.5
Frequent Organizational Change
Is the New Normal
Implication:Change and ambiguity will derail productivity unless
managers help employees better anticipate, contextualize, prioritize, and
respond to requent change at all levelsultimately making them more
agile and accepting o change.
5 CEB, Communications Executive Council Agility Survey 2011.
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81%
56%53%
56%
High-Level Objectives Are Changing Frequently
Amount o Change in Organizational Objectives in the Past Three
Years, by Percentage o Employees
n = 23,339.
3%
Decreased
34%
Stayed the Same 63%
Increased
Source: CEB, CLC Human Resources High Perormance Survey.
Most Employees Experience Persistent Change
Percentage o Organizations That Experienced Signicant Changes
in the Previous 12 Months
2009 2010 2011 2012
Source: CEB, CLC Human Resources Quarterly Global Labor Market Survey.
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As organizations have become more matrixed, employees across theorganization share ormal responsibilities, authority, and accountability or
more work outcomes. While inormal working relationships and networks have
always been important, getting work done today requires more collaboration
among a broader and more diverse set o people who are perorming new
tasks and working across more geographic locations. Collaborating today is
harder than it was yesterday:
Sixty-seven percent o employees report an increase in work requiring
active collaboration.
One-hal o all employees indicate a signicant increase in stakeholders
needed to make a decision.
Fity-seven percent report an increase in the number o coworkers they
work with in other geographic locations.
Sixty percent o employees report working with 10 or more people on a
day-to-day basis (and one-hal o these employees report needing to work
with more than 20).6
Sixty-ve percent o employees indicate they must manage external
stakeholders (i.e., outside their company) to perorm their work.7
The new work environment requires collaboration, yet the pace o workplace
change complicates working with and through others. As previously noted,
organizational changes disrupt employee networks and work processes, making
connections hard to build and even harder to maintain. Employees must navigate
across dierent structures, cultures, and processes to perorm, but they struggle
to understand whom to work with and how to work with them.
Work Is More Interdependent
Implication: Collaboration will not occur unless organizations enable
and encourage broader employee networksconnecting employees as
needed and providing clear direction, aligned incentives, integrated
workfow, and better technology.
6, 7 CEB, CLC Human Resources High Perormance Survey.
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The introduction o big data to the workplace has coincided with
exponential growth in computing power, prolieration o business
applications, more process automation, and increased outsourcing o routine
work. As a result, most work processes are highly automated, and work in
general has become more data and inormation intensive, less routine, and
more exceptions based. Working with data and inormation has become
core to most employees jobs, with 76% o employees reporting a signicant
increase in time spent working with data and inormation. While denitions
vary, more and more employees are knowledge workersanyone who
collects, manages, uses, analyzes, and makes decisions using inormation as
a primary part o his or her day-to-day job. Almost three out o our executives
report that more than one-hal o their sta are now knowledge workers.8
Unortunately, not all employees have achieved prociency in being able
to nd inormation, analyze it, and use sound business judgment to make
decisions. CEBs Insight IQ index measures an employees decision-
making maturity. Employees with the highest Insight IQthose with the
ability to eectively analyze inormation to make sound decisionsare called
Inormed Skeptics. On average, less than 40% o employees are Inormed
Skeptics.9 The best decision makers are ound at the executive level, and the
number o employees with the right balance o skills declines rapidly at lower
levels in the organization.
Almost Everyone Is a Knowledge
Worker
Implication: Since knowledge work requires both ready access to the
right inormation and eective decision making with that inormation,
organizations need to ensure that employees have the right skills and
abilities to use advanced inormation technology eectively in their jobs.
9 CEB, Inormation Technology Insight IQ Diagnostic.
8
CEB, CLC Human Resources High Perormance Survey.
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Employees Are Doing More Knowledge Work
Change in Time Spent Finding and Reviewing Data and Inormation in
the Past Three Years, by Percentage o Employees
n = 23,339.
Source: CEB, Inormation Technology Insight IQ Diagnostic.
Good Decision Makers Are Rare Lower in the Organization
Percentage o Inormed Skeptics (Mature Decision Makers), by Level
n = 4,941 knowledge workers.
Executive Leadership
Senior Managers
Mid-Level Managers
Individual Contributors
18%
Stayed the Same
6%
Decreased
76%
Increased
69%
50%
41%
32%
Source: CEB, CLC Human Resources High Perormance Survey.
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The work environment has changed dramatically, and work is now
done through a web o collaborating knowledge workers. Employees
in this environment have more ambiguous objectives, and their work is
interconnected with a growing, more dispersed network. Employees are
making more business decisions much lower in the organization. They need
more high-quality inormation and tools to make those decisions. But most o
all, they need the experience and skills to apply sound judgment in decision
making. Bottom lineorganizations will need a dierent kind o employee,
one that is immune to the paralyzing complexities o change, willing to
collaborate with a broad range o individuals, and able to apply judgment in
an increasingly knowledge-based role.
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Who are the high-perorming employees in this new work environment?
What skills and behaviors will dierentiate the most productive employees?
Most managers and perormance management models assume that strong
business acumen, task and process mastery, and technical know-how explain
the majority o an employees job perormance. Unortunately, the prevalence
o outdated assumptions about the most valuable skills and abilities leads
to the misidentication (or under-identication) o the organizations next
generation o high perormers. Using existing methods, organizations will
likely ail to identiy 65% o their new high perormers.10
Building the next generation o employees requires ocusing on a new set
o skills. CEB analyzed the drivers o perormance or more than 23,000
managers and employees across more than 40 organizations globally and
ound the 10 employee competencies that dierentiate those best able to
perorm in the new work environment:
1. Prioritization
2. Teamwork
3. Organizational awareness
4. Problem solving
5. Sel-awareness
6. Proactivity
7. Infuence
8. Decision making
9. Learning agility
10. Technical expertise
Identify and Build New Skills
10 CEB, CLC Human Resources High Perormance Survey.
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Based on these dierentiating competencies, the new high perormer
is someone who can:
Adapt to ChangeHigh perormers use their knowledge o the
organization and their role to quickly adjust to work environment
changes. Adaptive employees are also proactive; they are not paralyzed
by change, and they are willing to take action and move projects and
priorities orward.
Work CollaborativelyHigh perormers are good collaborators,
working well with and through others. They have the teamwork skills
necessary to work with a wide range o people across the organization.
They use their technical expertise to infuence stakeholders and
contribute to collaborative projects.
Apply JudgmentHigh perormers use strong analytic skills to
prioritize their work, assess problems, and make decisions. They rely on
their expertise, experience, and knowledge o the organization to apply
judgment to their decisions and in their work.
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The New High Perormer Adapts to Change, Works Collaboratively,
and Applies Judgment
Top 10 Out o 32 Competencies Driving Employee Perormance
n = 23,339.
Organizational Awareness
Teamwork
Proactivity
Technical Expertise
Problem Solving
Sel-Awareness
Inuence
Learning Agility
Prioritization
Decision Making
Adapt to
Change
Work
Collaboratively
Apply
Judgment
Source: CEB, CLC Human Resources High Perormance Survey.
11%
9%
9%
7%
12%
9%
7%
13%
11%
9%
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New High-Perormer Skill Sets Are Rare
Presence o Key Competencies, by Industry Sector Globally
Percentage of Population
Unortunately, employees with the right combination o skillsthose who
adapt to change, work collaboratively, and apply judgmentare relatively
rare. SHL, a global leader in talent measurement and a CEB subsidiary,
tracks a global benchmark constructed rom competencies core to the newhigh-perormer prole. On average, about 5% o assessed employees have
a strong combination o the core skills and competencies essential to high
perormance in the new work environment; in addition, some industries
have more new high perormers than others. While technology (6.4%) and
proessional services (6.2%) sectors have relatively more capable employees
than the travel and leisure (4.1%), oil and gas (4.2%), engineering (4.2%), and
utilities (4.3%) sectors, the new high perormer is in a clear minority.
Source: SHL, The SHL Talent Report: Big Data Insight and Analysis o the Global Workorce.
1Technology
6.4%
2Proessional
Services
6.2%
3Food, Beverage,
and Tobacco
5.9%
5Consumer
Goods (Heavy
Goods)
5.8%
8Public
Sector
5.4%
9Consumer
Goods
(Personal and
Leisure)
5.3%
10Business
Services
4.9%
11Health Care
4.8%
12Banking
4.6%
12Telecoms
4.6%
14Utilities
4.3%
15Engineering
4.2%
15Oil and Gas
4.2%
17Travel
and Leisure4.1%
6Mining
5.6%
3Retail
5.9%
6Insurance
and Financial
Services
5.6%
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How can organizations quickly develop the new skills required or high
perormance? It is too easy (and incorrect) to assume that current employees
are incapable o developing the new competencies required. While hiring
new sta with stronger aptitude in the new core skills will help over time,there is no substitute or experience. The competencies essential to strong
perormance in the new work environment are best developed through
on-the-job experience with a single company over time. As an employee
gains organizational experience, his or her ability to adapt to change, work
collaboratively, and apply judgment in his or her job rises steadily.
Perormance Improves with Experience
Maximum Impact on Perormance o Tenure at Organization
n = 23,339.
8%
4%
0%
0 5 20 251510
Tenure in Years
Source: CEB, CLC Human Resources High Perormance Survey.
As employees gain experienceeven early
in their careerthey are:
More likely to serve as a critical resource
to others and
More likely to contribute to new ideas
for products or services.
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Leadership teams can no longer rely on old management assumptions and
paradigms. Generating the next level o breakthrough perormance and
productivity will require building essential skills, better managing new
work processes, and nding ways to enable higher productivity. To do this,
executives should do the ollowing:
1. Accelerate Skill Development Through Guided Stretch Roles
2. Adjust Employee Roles to the Demand and Supply Sides
of Collaboration
3. Reorient Managers to Guide and Empower Knowledge
Workers
4. Target Technology Investments to the Evolving Needs
of Knowledge Work and Collaborative Teams
Adjust Management Approaches
and Target Technology Investments
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Use connectors to transer network building and collaboration
skills. Identiy your best collaborators and use them to teach others
how to network, build relationships, infuence decisions, and manage
collaborative projects. Your best connectors should also document key
relationships and help transer network knowledge rom project to
project.
Use Inormed Skeptics to teach how to apply judgment in work.Identiy employees with the strongest decision-making skillsthose who
bring a critical eye to analytic tasks, analyze data, use their intuition,
and apply judgment. Use these Inormed Skeptics to model the correct
approaches to decision making on the job. Task them specically with
coaching less capable team members and rotate them across key projects.
Manage both learning and work activities on key projects. Learning
needs to be intentional and built into projects. Managers, mentors, and
coaches must emphasize learning alongside the projects core activities.
Hold managers accountable or ensuring that the ollowing steps are
taken: 1) identiy learning opportunities and goals beore a project begins,
2) assess learning during a project, and 3) refect on skill development
and next steps at the projects completion.
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Redening employee roles and managing them toward greater enterprise
contribution leads to stronger business perormance. CEBs analysis shows
that those organizations able to move beyond maximizing individual
perormance to achieve higher levels o enterprise contribution signicantly
outperorm their peers. Firms that were able to move more employees to high
levels o enterprise perormance realized a 10% improvement in protability,
compared to a 5% improvement or those who emphasized and achieved highlevels o individual perormance alone.
Managing to Enterprise Contribution Increases Perormance
Percentile Change in Prot, by Percentage o Enterprise Contributors
in Business Unit
n = 23,339.
Note: CEB used a two-stage least squares regression to estimate the causal relationship betweenbusiness unit prot change and percentage o employees achieving individual task and network
outcomes. The efects are modeled using a variety o multivariate regressions with appropriatecontrol variables.
Source: CEB, CLC Human Resources High Perormance Survey.
Percentage o Employees
15th
10th
5th
0
0% 25% 100%75%50%
High Enterprise Contribution
(High Individual Task and
Network Performance)
High Individual Task
Performance Alone
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Unortunately, 64% o employees do not eel their current role truly refects
how they do, or should, work with others to get their jobs done.12 To improve
their employees enterprise contribution, managers need to embrace
collaboration as a key element o the new work environment and take specic
steps to help employees be more productive in new, expanded roles:
Add the Three Cs o strong enterprise contribution to employee
roles. Focus employees on the importance o sub-roles that are key to
driving network perormance by setting expectations that each employee
must act as a:
ConnectorEectively enranchising essential coworkers, peers,
and others in ormal and inormal collaboration projects, specically
including others who are jointly responsible and accountable or
work outcomes and those who should be consulted and inormed.
ContributorWillingly providing input and support to the work o
others, both ormally and inormally, as required.
ConsumerActively seeking out ideas and input rom others in
the organization and incorporating them into ormal and inormal
collaboration projects as required to get work done.
Manage collaboration over discrete work tasks. Unortunately, only
40% (two in ve) o employees report their manager is able to connectthem eectively with their coworkers.13 As a result, many employees
are uncertain about whom to work with and how to do it eectively.
Managers must actively encourage their employees to collaborate more
eectivelyproviding support rom connectors, coaches, and peers.
12, 13 CEB, CLC Human Resources High Perormance Survey.
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Invest time in building complementary teams, and keep the ones
that work. On a limited number o high-impact or critical projects,
take the added step o ormally creating the initial working teams.
Evaluate the core sta available or key projects on extended teams, and
create connections that complement strengths and weaknesses. Avoid
disrupting eective teams, ensure team stability, and keep key elements
o collaborative teams intact rom project to project.
Emphasize network management alongside knowledge
management. In addition to documenting key work processes and
activities, executives should map and document key relationships within
and between working teams. Actively refecting on and documenting
connections essential to collaborative projects will help in transerring
network knowledge over time.
Encourage and enable collaboration with external partners.
With more outsourcing, critical supplier relationships, and strategic
partnerships, it is more important than ever to establish strong working
relationships with sta in external organizations. Create opportunities
or joint work, and encourage inormal communication between sta and
vendors, partners, proessional associations, and alumni networks. Use
simple rules to guide these interactions and to protect strategic projects
and proprietary inormation.
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While leaders can take specic steps to shit roles and expectations to improve
collaboration, they must also help employees perorm better at undamentally
dierent work. The challenge o managing in the new work environment is
compounded by the act that work is less supervised and, by extension, more
autonomous; there are ewer managers to do the managing since the average
span o control has grown rom 6 to 12 direct reports between 2002 and 2012.14
How can senior leaders and managers at all levels modiy their traditional
approaches to management to overcome this challenge? Even in a more
collaborative work environment, hierarchical, manager-led control serves
as a valuable check and, more importantly, a ocused means o directing
work to the best organizational outcomes. Work is undamentally more
complex and will remain so going orward. A managers role is not to ght
the trend by trying to simpliy complex work or jobs but rather to remove the
complications arising in a less routine, more ambiguous, and collaborativework environment.
3Reorient Managers to Guide and
Empower Knowledge Workers
Help Employees Do Complex JobsDontSimpliy Them
Maximum Impact on Employee Perormance, by Type o Manager
Strategy
n = 23,339.
Source: CEB, CLC Human Resources High Perormance Survey.
1%
11%
Managers Help EmployeesSimpliy Their Roles
< 1%
Managers Help EmployeesNavigate Complex Roles
14 CEB, CLC Learning and Development High Perormance Survey, 2012; CEB, CLC 2002 PerormanceManagement Survey; CEB, CLC 2008 Organizational Redesign Survey.
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Organizations eective at achieving higher perormance and more enterprise
contribution rom their employees expect their management teams to do the
ollowing:
Focusand communicateon big-picture objectives over process.
A consistent understanding o organizational objectives is essential
to employee ocus and perormance in a high-change environment.Regularly restate and conrm organizational objectives to provide
a strategic context or employees work and decision making.
Empowerand embracedecisions deeper in the organization.
Employees need greater autonomy to make decisions and manage their
work activities. Embrace this shit in decision making and enable it by
setting clearer objectives, providing access to more inormation, and
supporting more agile resourcing or key projects.
Connect employees to inormation sources rather than provide
the inormation. Managers should provide direction to and establish
context or critical inormation rather than mediate its fow to
employees. Resetting connections can be as simple as creating links
between employees and key stakeholders or as complex as changing
reporting and permission rights on key sources.
Pursue managed collaboration over broad idea generation.
Too oten, collaboration is an unettered exercise in idea exchange ueled
by online crowdsourcing and social media platorms. While the easy fow
o inormation and ideas is important, ocus on limiting the number o
approved projects and attaching them to enterprise-level goals with clear
objectives, timelines, and expectations.
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4Target Technology Investments to
the Evolving Needs of Knowledge
Work and Collaborative TeamsMaintaining and improving productivity levels will require organizations
to retool the work environment to better support collaborative, knowledge-
intensive work. While corporate IT organizations have done a very good job
providing oundational, enterprise-level solutions to support standard work
processes and needs, senior leaders should reevaluate their technology needs
to ensure current platorms are accelerating perormance, not hindering it.
While 99% o employees use some orm o technology on the job,15 less
than 40% eel they have the technology needed to be productive. As work
has become less routine and more exceptions based, standard enterprise
solutions are simply not as eective. End-user surveys show that employees
want easy-to-use technology that will help them collaborate, make decisions,
and get their work done. Unless organizations can better link technology
to the work needs o employees, inadequate or misapplied technology will
likely be a major barrier to knowledge worker productivity, not to mentionbottom-line protability.
Employees Lack Sufcient Technology to Work Eectively
Percentage o Respondents, by Level o Enablement on CEBs
Technology-Enabled Productivity Barometer
n = 983.
Source: CEB, CEB Technology-Enabled Productivity Survey.
15 CEB, Help Desk Benchmark Database, IT Perormance Benchmarking.
61%
Not Technology Enabled
39%
Technology Enabled
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Employees Want Easy-to-Use Technology to Get Work Done
Preerence Ranking o Technology Attributes at Work
n = 9,900 global employees.
Source: CEB, Inrastructure Executive Council Employee Technology Value Survey 2011.
Device and ApplicationsShould Be as Easy to Use and
Intuitive as Possible
Inormation Should Be Seamless,Meaning I Can Access and Use ItAcross Applications and Devices
Technical Support and TrainingShould Be Available by Request
with Minimal Delay
I Need to Be Able to CustomizeDevices and Applications to My
Individual Needs
Least Important Most Important
(7%) 38%
(9%) 16%
(9%) 16%
(20%) 5%
(33%) 7%
7%
9%
9%
20%
33%
I Need to Be Able to Accomplish
Both Personal and Work-RelatedTasks with the Same Devices and
Applications
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How can executives ensure employees have easy-to-use technology that will
help them make decisions, collaborate, and complete their work? Firms that
get more enterprise contribution rom their employees invest in improving
mobility, data usability, collaboration platorms, and customized applications
by doing the ollowing:
Build back rom employee needs, not just broad business needs.
Do not over-standardize technology and tools at the enterprise or
divisional level. Encourage corporate IT to move beyond legacy needs
assessment methods to processes that are more customer riendly, that
is, ocused on observing end users in specic workfows (e.g., work
groups and major collaboration projects) rather than broad business or
unctional groups.
Identiy and use prosumers to redefne technology needs.
Every group has its prosumers, the early adopters who discover, test,and adopt the most appropriate (i not always approved and supported)
technologies to do their work. Use your prosumers to help establish team
needs, identiy promising technologies, and drive utilization.
Encourage and embrace mobile technology trial and error.
Employees will use and adopt the technology they need to get their work
done. More than 60% o employees use their own mobile devices at
worknot or convenience, but because they are useul in getting work
done.16 A simple, but big, step in many organizations is to embrace the use
o personal devices by employees. Leaders should avoid zero tolerance,
overly restrictive, or one-device-ts-all policies or mobile devices and
customized applications.
16 CEB, Inrastructure Executive Council Employee Technology Value Survey 2011.
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Fix data accessibility and usability. While employees can access
data readily, too much data is unusable or too hard to nd; more than
50%o employees say inormation is in ormats they cannot use.17 As a
result, two-thirds o employees report spending time on unproductive
analyses.18 Business leaders and their IT organization need to conduct
regular assessments o the companys core data needs and assets
identiying causes o less usable data and creating a dened structure
or collecting, dening, prioritizing, storing, and disseminating better
inormation.
Create collaboration platorms to make immediate, in-the-moment
interactions easy. Unortunately, most collaboration platorms are
centered on document sharing and project management when they
should be supporting knowledge workallowing employees to work
together quickly, seamlessly, and on demand. Organizations need to
develop improved capabilities or broad idea sharing; concurrent, joint,and iterative work; and on-demand communication (including easy-to-
use, low-cost messaging, web conerencing, and video/voice systems).
Provide a wider array o analytic applications. New technologies
and devices (tablets, smartphones, etc.) allow employees to readily
access data in and outside the oce. The bigger challenge is providing
employees access to the analytical applications necessary to be
productive with enterprise inormation outside the oce; one in
three employees are using applications they have ound themselves.19
Managers should work with their IT group to identiy and innovate the
applications employees nd most useul or work outside the oce.
Avoid overly restrictive policies that limit the use o cloud-based apps or
over-prioritizing scalable applications that are less customized to specic
employee needs.
1719 CEB, Inormation Technology Insight IQ Diagnostic.
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Corporations today are ocused on growthnot at any cost but at less cost.
Achieving simultaneous growth in top-line revenue and bottom-line
protability has come, and likely will continue to come, through greater
workorce productivity. While organizations have achieved impressive
levels o workorce eciency in recent years, they require moreto stay
competitive and grow, CEOs and leadership teams look or breakthrough
perormance and productivity gains rom their employees. To achieve these
gains, organizations need to understand the dramatic shits underway in
the work environment and reocus on enabling higher levels o workorce
perormance.
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Todays work environment is in constant fux. Change is the new normal
or employeeschanges in target markets, products, business objectives,
organization structure, work location, work teams, job role, or manager
alignments have become common. In part as a response to a more fuid
business environment and a result o ubiquitous inormation and rapid
technological advances, the predominant work o employees has become
much more collaborative and knowledge based. While rms may be tempted
to hire an all-new employeebetter able to perorm in a collaborative,
knowledge-based work environmenttheir needs are much more immediate,
and the new skills required are best developed through on-the-job experience.
Improvingor simply maintainingworkorce productivity requires rms to
accept the work environment has changed, and their underlying approaches
to employee development, work roles, management, and technology must
also change.
Improving workorce perormance and sta productivity is a central ocus
o CEB and SHL. In 2013, we will continue to rene our understanding o
the changing work environment, evolving skills requirements, and talent
management challenges essential to improving employee perormance and
productivity. To learn more about how other organizations are improving
employee productivity, to participate in our work, or to network with your
peers, please visit us at www.executiveboard.com/executive-guidance.
Members can reach their Executive Advisor at 1-866-913-2632 or contact
CEB at [email protected].
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38
ABOUT CEB
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CEB is the leading member-based advisory company. By combining the best
practices o thousands o member companies with our advanced research
methodologies and human capital analytics, we equip senior leaders and
their teams with insight and actionable solutions to transorm operations.
This distinctive approach, pioneered by CEB, enables executives to harness
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inormation visit www.executiveboard.com.
2012 The Corporate Executive Board Company.
All Rights Reserved. CEB3113312SYQ4
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