Voya Financial [NYSE: VOYA]

Using Tech Advancements to Improve Employees’ Environment and how they Work

Change is inevitable. Over the past decade, technology has greatly impacted the way we work—from enhancing the way we communicate and receive information, to improving efficiencies by helping to streamline mundane processes. These improvements continue to make us more thoughtful and productive in how we strive to attain certain business objectives.

As technology continues to evolve the workplace, how companies adopt data analytics, information management, and automation will be great points of distinction in whether they just survive or prosper in the future. As such, it is important to be deliberate in our approach when considering different types of technology and how it should be implemented, or if it should be implemented at all. For HR professionals, there are three areas where technology can impact your culture.

Work environment: Use technology to help you understand your work environment, including your most important stakeholders— your employees and drivers of their work. What motivates your employees? How can you strengthen your workplace culture? What can enable your employees to perform better? Understanding the answers to these questions can drastically improve or enhance a work environment. They can provide leadership with direction on the different types of programs and policies that should be implemented that will make employees happy and enable them to perform better.

Survey technology can be used to collect data to help employers understand drivers of performance. For example, at Voya Financial, we strategically administer surveys that measure Voya’s cultural elements and help pinpoint areas of strength and opportunities for improvement. Based on the survey results, we launch initiatives to improve the health of the company, as well as those that help to drive our high-performing and engaging culture that supports the company’s strategy.

 Businesses need to ensure they are enabling employees to remain relevant, by equipping them with the right skills, including the ability to learn and adapt to an advancing technological landscape that leverages data in decision-making  

While the use of technology is beneficial to the overall success of our work environment, it is especially crucial in two key areas.

1. Talent: Utilizing technology to help you understand and manage workforce planning. Setting strategic direction, analyzing the demographics of your workforce, and identifying gaps is essential to maintaining a workplace that is committed to continuous improvement.

We no longer manage a homogeneous workforce; companies now have access to a new and broader pool of talent. With five generations in the workforce, the competition for talent is intense, so companies need to be agile and understand where they are missing diverse perspectives. Since we are facing the highest competition for talent with relatively scarce resources, data can help provide insights around skills, demographics, succession plans, competency plans, talent management and more to ensure employees are being cultivated to reach their fullest potential, and thus provide the best possible outcome for businesses.

For example, at Voya, we use our data to look for the right fit for the right role at the right time, while also thinking about our employees’ transferrable skills for long-term investments in their professional growth.

2. Customer service: Leveraging technology to understand the needs, reactions, and questions of external stakeholders. Automation is used to collect data that helps companies understand the most pressing needs of its customers and other external stakeholders. It provides insight into what stakeholders’ desire, as well as patterns into their behaviors. While technologies, such as automation, can help to enhance the stakeholder experience, it is, however, still important to not entirely neglect human interaction—there should be a balance.

At Voya, we use our data to relentlessly focus on our stakeholders, identifying and driving opportunities to enhance profitability through simplicity, removing complexities, which then brings us closer to our customers and ensures we can effectively grow, compete and win.

Technology is changing the way we work Technology, data, and automation now underpin all jobs in some way. As a result of this, companies’ approaches to technology must be strategic, purposeful, and aligned to the needs of the future. Businesses need to ensure they are enabling employees to remain relevant, by equipping them with the right skills, including the ability to learn and adapt to an advancing technological landscape that leverages data in decision-making.

Since HR professional has no control over the rapidness of technological advancements, considering which developments work best for your company now and in the future is fundamental to its future success.