The Future Of Work Is Now- Jason Averbook [Interview]

Jason is a leading analyst, thought leader, leading consultant for more than 25 years in Human Capital Management, Consulting and co-founder and CEO of Leapgen, is the author of the book The Ultimate Guide to a digital Workforce Experience Lead for a Purpose. His current interests lie in expanding the employee experience at organizations of all sizes, the future of work and the impact of technology to the future of organizations.

Just a quick Intro of peopleHum.PeopleHum is an end to end one view Integrated Human Capital Management automation platform, the winner of the 2019 Global Codie award for HCM, that is specifically built for crafted employee experiences in the future of work. We run the peopleHum blog and video channel, which receives upwards of 15,000 visitors a month and publish around two interviews with well known names globally every month.

Aishwarya

Welcome Jason and thank you so much for your time today.

So the first question I had for you, Jason was, what is the core philosophy of Leapgen according to you?

Jason

When we think about Leapgen, it was formed three years ago to help organizations truly think about the future of work. And one of the things that we've seen over the last three years is that the future of work is now.

Every single day that a different part of that future of work that's important to look at and what we try to do is we try to help organizations realize that it's 2020 outside of work.

What year is it inside of work? And many organizations, it's 2020 outside, but inside it feels like 2000 in order to get things done and that causes a huge problem. This causes a huge, huge problem. So the core philosophy of Leapgen is how do we help organizations bridge that gap or close that chasm.

"It's 2020 outside, but inside it feels like 2000 in order to get things done and that causes a huge problem."

The other component that's important to understand about the name Leapgen, is that the leap component of Leapgen L-E-A-P stands for love, energy, audacity, and proof.

So helping people love what they do and helping them educate them to love what they do to free energy, which they need the energy to do the audacious and then prove the value that they're doing. So love, energy, audacity, proof, love what you do to generate energy, to do the audacious, and to continue to prove value. All the things that we need in today's world in order to drive this profession forward towards the now of work”

Aishwarya

Thanks, Jason, that's wonderful to know

We wanted to know about your thoughts on how the future of work will now change, given the current scenario of the Coronavirus.

Jason

I think about this every single hour of his day. This is what the whole world is thinking about, the way that I've been talking about it is that we've moved into a now of work scenario, whether we like it or not.

We've been planning for the future of work. We've been planning for what this looks like, but guess what? You know, we've been forced into a now of work with people working from home with people looking for answers, with people unsure about what's next, with employees not knowing if they're gonna have a job with employees not knowing how to interact with their managers when all of a sudden they're not in the same physical place as their managers.

So these are all things that we've been working on for decades for the last two decades. But all of a sudden, we've been put into the position where the future of work has now become the now of work and organizations are scared to death. Both the organizations are scared and the employees are scared, and I have to say that they're not as scared about the virus as they are scared about what it means to work.

Once again, are they gonna have a job? What are the things that HR needs to do to be responsive and reactive to the situation at hand, which changes almost every day?

"One of the oldest professions in the world HR, we're in a position now where the now of work requires us to move fast, and that's a different pace and tempo for all of us to think through.”

Aishwarya

So in your belief, why is creating the right employee experience so important for our employees of today?

Jason

When you think about the experience, it's all about feeling, and it's all about how do I feel? How do I feel as an employee of an organization and you're in a world where we as employees, care more about the attention and how people make us feel than we actually do about money or we actually feel about benefits at the time.

You know, I want to be able to push content to them about how to keep their families safe or now, you know, in the United States, where basically school is gone for kids, for probably 2 to 3 months, every place, every single home people are working and their kids are in the next room.

Not really understanding what this means. How can I push content to people to help them deal with that? And I mean, that's all part of employee experience. It's so much bigger than just "Hey, here's a nice portal with the ability to answer some questions.”

Aishwarya

This is a really great explanation.

What are the things that need to be done by organizations to create a good employee experience?

Jason

I believe that my answers will tie to all situations.

The first thing is that we have to think about designing the experience for the employees and for the manager. It means I can't take a bunch of HR stuff and just push it out to people and hope that magically, they're gonna use it. Because they don't know how to speak our language.

The standard words that are in a core HR human capital management system mean nothing to an employee. So when I think about creating an experience, I have to put it in the language and the design for the person that's interacting first. Okay, we have a lot to learn in HR as the function has shifted from business to business function to business to consumer function.

"We haven’t done a great job of shifting how we actually think about what we deployed to people from an experience standpoint. And so the first thing is design for them".

The second thing is, it has to be more than transactions. What captivates us and what gets us addicted to experience is interaction.

I could sit and talk to you all night, but guess what? I couldn’t do that if I was just reading, you know, watching your face, watching you nod, watching your eyes as I talk to you. That’s interaction. It keeps me engaged. If I was just doing this via audio, I’d be a quarter of the percentage engaged. So thinking about that and thinking about how do I don’t just create transactions, the formula that I like to use is:

"Transaction plus interaction equals experience".

Okay, if we’re just transacting if I was just typing to you, that’s just part of it. The interaction and the trust that I get from looking into your eyes in a situation like this with video, that’s what ties to experience and then the third thing and I think this is so important and we’re so not good at it.

The second is that experience changes by the day. So I need to be looking at a whole new world of analytics and measures that tell me that. 32 people searched today for something that they couldn’t find the answer to. What do I do? Today or tomorrow, I fix it.

I don’t wait till the next release. I don’t wait till the next upgrade. I fix it now, so the experience is something that’s not a one-time thing, and I roll it out when I’m done with it till the next version or the next project. Experience is always on. It has to be always on because our employees and managers are “always-on”.

So if we don’t think about that, what we’re doing is we set ourselves up for failure and we don’t continue to innovate. The way that I like to talk about it is we have to treat the experience like a pet. Not like a rock. You know, I have a rock. It can sit there. It can sit there for two years without being touched, but when I think about the experience, I have to walk it every day.I have to water it every day. I have to take it out every day.

I have to pet it every day and make it feel good. It. And guess what? HR organizations don’t have the operating model in a lot of cases to think that way.”

"Experience is something that’s not a one-time thing"

Aishwarya

Beautiful examples and interesting takes.

So can you talk to us about the difference, with respect to the future of work, and the now of work?

Jason

“We've been talking about the future of work forever, and we can keep talking about the future of work and there's future of work summits and there's future of work forums. I have a book that is called “guiding the future of work”. So we've been talking about it forever. The thing that's most important to understand about the now of work is that it is now. The future is now.

We can't keep kicking the can on this and saying, Hey, guess what? We're going to get to it someday because we live in a moment where the future is right now and it's fascinating to me, one of the things that we've been doing for a long time, as we've been talking about, how do we prepare the workforce for the workplace? And I think it's backward. I think we have to say,

How do we prepare the workplace for the workforce? Hope you enjoyed reading the blog. To continue reading, find the entire blog here: https://s.peoplehum.com/1iyln