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Investing in people, not just technology

ARTICLE | March 04, 2024 | VOICES 

Investing in people, not just technology

A company’s greatest resource is its employees, who should be invested in even during tough times 
By Julia Martensen and Ed Soo Hoo, Workflow contributors

The former “great resignation” and the current “great layoff” reveal the grim fact that employers and employees increasingly see each other as dispensable. This is a recipe for organizational instability and long-term harm.  

We call for a mindset shift on the part of employers. Instead of seeing a company's workforce as a cost center to be cut in hard times, it should be seen as the crown jewel of an organization. Leadership should value and invest in people during good times and bad.  

It may seem surprising and regressive for two self-proclaimed futurists who work for cutting-edge technology companies to write an opinion piece arguing on behalf of the most conventional business component of all: labor. In this emerging AI age, as the news media continues to publish content about AI replacing workers, employees remain the most integral part of any organization. As such, if leaders want to reimagine their companies, they will see the greatest transformation not from the newest tech tools, but from investing in people. 

Previously, organizations tried to support workers by offering free snacks, chic office spaces, and game rooms, which can be alluring and exciting at first, but do not contribute to building a foundation for employees to stay and maximize their potential. Workers want to be connected to their organization and their colleagues, and they want to contribute to the company’s mission and feel that their work matters. Creating this sense of meaning in the workplace can’t be achieved through free massages or napping pods. Doing so won’t be easy, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible—and technology can help.  

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Well-functioning teams bring together diverse viewpoints and skillsets that result in more innovative work. To achieve this, technology can be harnessed to strengthen teams’ connections and effectiveness. Skills matching, leveraging AI and other technologies can create teams from across an organization—not just within silos—that best fit the project or task at hand. This tech can also be used to identify employees’ working styles and their strengths and weaknesses. Teams can then be built not only based on hard skills, but also by matching soft skills such as grouping personalities that will work well together, ensuring that a team is balanced and potentially eliminating blind spots.  

Focusing on people doesn’t mean ignoring technology. Intelligent deployment of tech can promote cohesion and collaboration within teams. During the pandemic, we saw how technology facilitated coordination when team members were not physically together. While we have come a long way with virtual collaboration and presence, it does make a difference if you are talking to a 2D face on a screen or, in the not-so-distant future, a 3D, life-size holographic version of your meeting partner, where you can see their full body, register their physical movements and gestures, and see whom they are actually looking at. 

Other collaborative technologies are already facilitating—and even enhancing—group work regardless of location, helping teams solve problems. Multi-user virtual white boards, for example, mimic the in-person experience of standing around a table and trying to solve challenges as a team, which creates more cohesive and “sticky” teams. Companies such as Movius are leveraging technology to provide participant sentiment during virtual meetings through a comprehensive capture of voice, video, and text to improve person-to-person engagement. LetzChat is using AI to provide real-time translation during video chats via subtitles, dubbing, and even audio syncing of video with translated voice. It may not be far off in the future that people in a video chat won’t know if they are speaking to someone in their native tongue or an AI-powered translation. 

Rethinking how office space is used is another way to support the workforce. An office should no longer be just a place where workers sit in front of monitors. Instead, it should be a setting where workers find purpose and connection. 

A hybrid office space, which can transform from a more traditional workspace to various new configurations is one solution. A hybrid space could become a café for workers to socialize and brainstorm—a location where employees across departments can connect, discuss problems they are struggling with, generate solutions, and conceive new ideas. In the future, these spaces could incorporate technology that anticipates worker needs. For example, a room that is scheduled for a presentation followed by a working group could automatically reconfigure itself. A room might even know the preferences of a person who reserved a conference room, changing the temperature and lighting according to their needs. 

Companies should support creative uses of office space to accommodate both in-person and remote workers in order to foster the connections that keep employees rooted to an organization, which in turn leads to higher-quality work, more satisfied workers, and better performance. 

Finally, organizations should invest in their employees and commit to their long-term development. As leaders, we need to give employees the latitude and support to grow and take on their next challenge, whether that’s in a different group or even another company. 

The same technology that can provide skills matching when forming teams can also help individual employees identify what skills they need to reach their full potential in their current role and the skills necessary to advance into future roles. Technology can identify both gaps and opportunities for workers to grow. These skills-building tools can help workers meet an organization’s changing needs while also providing motivation and meaning in support of their short- and long-term goals. 

These are just a few of the ways organizations can begin investing in people and how enterprise technology can facilitate this effort. But it is important to remember that just as you can’t throw free snacks at the problem, you can’t simply apply technology either. Technology must always serve humanity, not the other way around. If technology isn’t helping workers feel more connected to each other and to the overall purpose of the company, then it isn’t doing its job. The essence of what workers want is meaning, belonging, recognition, and purpose in the workplace, not more and newer technology. 


What we are saying is very different from the rhetoric coming from many tech companies, which are focused on cost cutting and have been laying off workers. This is short-sighted and a surefire way to disaster. Employee churn creates low morale and instability for those that remain. Long-term stability—to say nothing of future growth and innovation—comes from workers who are committed to each other and to the mission of their organization. Leaders should think of their investments in people the same way they think of compounding interest in a bank. The more incremental investments they make, the more compound returns their companies will receive.  

Our recommendation to leaders: Invest incrementally, consistently, as well as broadly across your organization. When you invest in your employees, they will invest in you, and everyone will reap the dividends. 

 

We call for a mindset shift on the part of employers. Instead of seeing their workforce as a cost center to be cut in hard times, it should be seen as the crown jewel of an organization.

 

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Author

Julia Martensen is a ServiceNow field innovation officer.

Julia Martensen is a ServiceNow field innovation officer. Before joining the company’s Chief Innovation Office, she held a variety of leadership positions at DB Schenker, a leading global logistics provider, including head of global HR strategy and innovation.

Articles by Julia Martensen

Author

Ed Soo Hoo is the business alliances lead for Lenovo’s Field C-suite team.
Ed Soo Hoo is the business alliances lead for Lenovo’s Field C-suite team. He is also an industry fellow at the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at UC Berkeley. He is an advisor to startup companies and early-stage venture capital on business and market development focused on big data, analytics, and internet of things (IoT). 
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