Learning and development leaders face a stubborn paradox: They must focus on individualized development paths, but most work happens in teams. Employees take courses, complete assessments, and build skills in isolation, but then must apply them collaboratively. Training programs measure individual progress while teams often struggle with dysfunction or suboptimal performance. 

Brandon Hall Group recently connected with Darrin Murriner, CEO and Co-founder of Cloverleaf, to understand how they’re addressing this gap. Based in Cincinnati and serving over 45,000 teams globally, Cloverleaf has achieved impressive growth — landing on the Inc. 5000 list for three consecutive years with 450%+ growth rates and securing $7.3 million in Series A extension funding earlier this year. Their approach centers on a premise most competitors miss: team development requires fundamentally different tools than individual development. 

This briefing reinforced patterns we’re observing across the AI coaching landscape through our Institute and the technology evaluation and selection work with corporate clients. The market has shifted from education to evaluation, and buyers are now running structured selection processes with specific feature requirements. 

Where AI Coaching Stands Today 

The AI coaching market has matured rapidly over the past year. What began as a category requiring extensive buyer education has evolved into a recognized solution space, with L&D and talent management leaders actively seeking specific features like role-playing and real-time feedback capabilities. Our research shows that half of organizations remain uncertain about AI adoption and progression, creating both pressure and opportunity for coaching providers. 

Through our ongoing analyst briefings with solution providers, we’ve mapped the competitive landscape, which reveals a divide in how providers approach the problem. 

• BetterUp pioneered digital coaching over a decade ago and launched its AI offering, BetterUp Grow, in January 2025. The platform focuses primarily on individual development with role-specific guidance. 

• CoachHub AIMY launched in early 2025 and now serves 60+ global enterprise clients. The platform, which began with a European focus, provides 24/7 multilingual support across 80+ languages and was built specifically to complement their human coaching network of 3,500+ certified coaches. 

• Valence entered the market in early 2023 and raised $50M in Series B funding in September 2025. Their AI coach, Nadia, customizes deployments to company culture and leadership frameworks and focuses on manager effectiveness, but remains individually oriented in coaching approach. 

Each competitor brings meaningful innovation to AI coaching. The common thread? All three architect their solutions around the individual employee as the primary unit of development. They’ve digitized and scaled traditional one-on-one coaching models — making them faster, cheaper, and more accessible. But they haven’t fundamentally reimagined how coaching works in team-based environments. 

What Makes Cloverleaf Different 

Cloverleaf launched their AI coach in 2018, calling it “Automated Coaching” before the term “AI coaching” existed as a recognized category. Seven years of iteration have produced three distinctive capabilities: 

Assessment integration as a competitive moat. Rather than building proprietary assessments, Cloverleaf partners with established providers — Gallup CliftonStrengths, DISC, Enneagram, 16 Types, and others. This creates two advantages: 

• Organizations leverage existing assessment investments and language, turning what competitors see as net-new budget into an extension of current spending. 

• Coaching guidance grounds itself in validated behavioral science rather than generic AI outputs. 

• HR teams consolidate multiple vendor relationships into a single platform. 

Proactive coaching, not reactive chatbots. Most AI coaches require users to initiate conversations. Cloverleaf pushes contextual coaching moments automatically into Slack, Microsoft Teams, email, and calendars: 

• Pre-briefs before 1:1 meetings based on personality dynamics. 

• Message rewrites that adapt communication style to recipient preferences. 

• Feedback scripts informed by both giver and receiver profiles. 

• Meeting debriefs highlighting collaboration patterns and friction points. 

The distinction matters because managers don’t have time to remember to use coaching tools. Cloverleaf meets them in their workflow at precisely the moment coaching adds value. 

Team-aware intelligence, not individual isolation. This represents Cloverleaf’s most significant departure from competitors. The platform maps relationships, communication style conflicts, and team dynamics: 

• Identifies potential friction before it escalates based on assessment data across team members. 

• Provides managers with team dashboards showing strengths, gaps, and collaboration risks. 

• Delivers coaching that accounts for group context, not just individual challenges. 

• Enables role-playing scenarios informed by actual teammate profiles and interaction patterns. 

Organizations using Cloverleaf report a 33% increase in high-quality teamwork and 31% improvement in overall communication, metrics that reflect systemic change rather than individual skill gains. 

Who Benefits Most from This Approach 

Cloverleaf targets mid-market to enterprise organizations with complex, distributed workforces. Their sweet spot includes: 

Professional services firms (consulting, accounting, engineering, architecture) where: 

• Teams form and reform around client engagements. 

• Communication effectiveness directly impacts billable hours and client satisfaction. 

• Remote collaboration creates opportunities for misunderstanding. 

• Assessment-driven insights accelerate trust-building in new team configurations. 

Consumer products companies managing cross-functional product development teams that: 

• Bring together marketing, operations, supply chain, and sales perspectives. 

• Navigate competing priorities and communication styles. 

• Require coordination across departments with different organizational cultures. 

• Benefit from shared language around behavioral preferences. 

Government agencies with distributed teams facing: 

• Limited traditional coaching budgets. 

• Diverse workforce demographics requiring inclusive development approaches. 

• Cross-agency collaboration challenges. 

• Need for scalable solutions that work across geographic locations. 

Technology companies experiencing rapid growth where: 

• Engineering teams struggle with feedback culture and manager effectiveness. 

• Hybrid work models strain team cohesion. 

• Assessment familiarity already exists (many tech companies use CliftonStrengths, DISC, or similar tools). 

• Manager enablement at scale determines organizational success. 

Organizations already using talent assessments represent the highest-value prospects. If an organization has invested in behavioral assessment infrastructure and built organizational language around those frameworks, Cloverleaf accelerates ROI rather than competing for budget. 

Why This Matters Now 

Most L&D organizations measure completion rates, knowledge retention, and individual skill development. They miss the crucial question: Can people apply these skills collaboratively? When managers take feedback training individually, they learn frameworks. When they practice feedback within their actual team context, with coaching that accounts for their team members’ communication preferences, they change behavior. 

Cloverleaf’s focus on learning effectiveness, not just learning delivery, positions them uniquely. While competitors chase enterprise accounts by matching feature checklists and pricing models, Cloverleaf asks a different question: How do we make development sustainable in the actual environment where work happens? 

For organizations evaluating AI coaching solutions, Brandon Hall Group’s Enterprise Institute membership provides access to our research on AI adoption, benchmarking against peers, and advisory support for technology selection decisions. Our analyst team regularly briefs members on emerging providers and market trends to inform evaluation processes. 

The Road Ahead 

As AI coaching moves from early adopters to mainstream buyers, Cloverleaf faces both opportunity and challenge. The opportunity: Organizations are finally educated on AI coaching value and actively running selection processes. The challenge: Increased competition from well-funded players and the ongoing need to differentiate team-focused capabilities from individual coaching solutions. 

Three strategic advantages should sustain Cloverleaf’s momentum: 

First, their seven-year head start created product sophistication that competitors can’t replicate quickly. Building team-aware AI coaching requires more than adding collaboration features to individual coaching bots; it demands a fundamentally different architecture. 

Second, the assessment partnership strategy creates switching costs. Organizations invested in CliftonStrengths or DISC don’t want to abandon that investment. Cloverleaf makes existing tools more valuable rather than replacing them. 

Third, the learning effectiveness positioning resonates with a persistent pain point. Every L&D leader struggles to demonstrate impact beyond activity metrics. Coaching that improves team performance, not just individual knowledge, provides clearer ROI stories, the kind of measurable results we highlight through our HCM Excellence Awards® program. 

The AI coaching category will continue maturing rapidly. Buyers will become more sophisticated, demanding integration depth, outcome measurement and demonstrated impact. Cloverleaf’s bet on team development as the differentiator appears well-timed. As hybrid work persists and cross-functional collaboration intensifies, the organizations that crack team effectiveness — not just individual capability — will win the talent war. 

For L&D and talent leaders evaluating AI coaching solutions, the question isn’t whether to adopt this technology but which approach aligns with how work actually happens in your organization. If your success depends on effective teams rather than brilliant individuals working in isolation, that answer should guide your selection process. 

The post Cloverleaf: An AI Coaching Platform Built for Teams appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

The platform economy has transformed how we work, shop, and communicate, but HR technology remains stubbornly stuck in the point solution era—creating workflow chaos instead of eliminating it.

This disconnect became crystal clear during my recent conversation with Poornima Farrar, Chief Product Officer at Rival HR, for a comprehensive product walkthrough that challenged my assumptions about talent management technology. In my analyst work, I get to try everything I want (except for pie—I try pie on the weekends), and I’ve grown accustomed to vendors showcasing incremental improvements wrapped in flashy interfaces. Rival HR takes a fundamentally different approach—they’ve rebuilt their legacy Silk Road platform from the ground up to solve the orchestration problem that plagues modern HR departments. Their core promise is low-key revolutionary: “We make work flow.”

The conversation revealed a solution provider that’s moved beyond the typical point solution mentality to create what they call an “orchestration layer”—technology that makes existing HR investments work together intelligently while introducing genuine innovation where manual processes create bottlenecks. For organizations drowning in workflow complexity despite substantial technology investments, Rival HR offers a compelling alternative to the rip-and-replace mentality that dominates enterprise software decisions.

The Modern HR Integration Challenge

The talent management landscape has evolved into a patchwork of disconnected solutions, each promising agility but delivering fragmentation instead. Organizations today manage recruiting through one system, onboarding through another, employee development through a third platform, and performance management through yet another tool. This approach creates what industry practitioners call “workflow whiplash”—the jarring experience of jumping between disconnected systems throughout a single business process.

The fundamental issue isn’t the quality of individual tools, but rather the absence of orchestration between them. Consider the typical new hire journey: a candidate is sourced in one system, moved to an ATS for evaluation, transferred to an HRIS for offer management, then handed off to an onboarding platform, and finally deposited into an LMS for initial training. Each handoff introduces delays, data inconsistencies, and opportunities for candidates or employees to fall through the cracks.

Instead of contributing to the point solution proliferation, Rival HR has positioned itself as the unifying force across disparate HR technologies. They’ve positioned themselves as the conductor of an organization’s talent management orchestra, ensuring every instrument plays in harmony regardless of the underlying technology stack.

Revolutionary Technology That Actually Solves Problems

AI-Powered Outbound Sourcing at Scale

Rival’s most compelling innovation addresses the fundamental inefficiency of traditional recruiting: the reactive approach of posting jobs and hoping quality candidates apply. Their platform includes access to a 750+ million passive candidate database combined with AI-assisted sourcing and outreach capabilities. The differentiator isn’t database size—several vendors offer large candidate pools—but rather the intelligent orchestration that allows recruiters to identify, engage, and nurture candidates while seamlessly integrating with existing ATS platforms.

The system operates as either a standalone recruiting platform or layers on top of your existing systems like Workday or Greenhouse, providing modern sourcing capabilities without requiring complete system displacement. This modularity can be transformational for organizations that can’t afford the disruption of replacing core HR systems but desperately need better recruiting outcomes.

Conversational Intelligence Through ROSI

Perhaps their boldest innovation is ROSI (Rival OS Intelligence), their conversational AI agent designed to eliminate the constant interruptions that plague HR teams. Rather than building static dashboards that create more questions than answers, ROSI provides dynamic, context-aware responses to both HR practitioners and employees.

For HR teams, ROSI can summarize candidate profiles, track task progress, identify bottlenecks, and provide insights that would typically require manual report generation. For employees, it eliminates the “when is my first paycheck?” and “what are my benefits options?” questions that consume valuable HR time. The system maintains geographical and role-based data segmentation, ensuring employees in Portugal receive different information than those in Spain, all while maintaining compliance requirements.

Self-Service Workflow Architecture

The third major differentiator is Rival’s approach to workflow management. Unlike traditional systems that require extensive IT involvement for configuration changes, Rival provides self-service capabilities for HR teams to build, modify, and optimize workflows in real-time. This addresses one of the most frustrating aspects of enterprise HR technology: the inability to adapt quickly to changing business needs without going through lengthy IT request processes.

Competitive Landscape Analysis

• BambooHR: Popular integrated HRIS and ATS solution designed for small to mid-market companies. Offers solid ease of use and includes recruiting functionality at no additional cost, making it economical for organizations with straightforward hiring needs.
• SmartRecruiters: Comprehensive talent acquisition platform with strong mobile optimization and collaborative hiring tools. Betting heavily on AI and configurability. Offers an intuitive user experience and extensive marketplace integrations, particularly effective for organizations prioritizing candidate experience.
• Greenhouse: Leading recruiting platform known for structured hiring processes, advanced automation, and robust analytics. Excels in providing detailed candidate evaluation tools and customizable workflows for complex hiring needs.
• iCIMS: Established talent acquisition platform with comprehensive recruiting capabilities and strong compliance features, particularly favored by large enterprises with complex hiring requirements.

Who Should Consider Rival HR

Mid-Market Companies (500-5,000 employees) experiencing rapid growth and struggling with manual processes that don’t scale. These organizations typically have invested in core HR systems but lack the workflow orchestration needed for efficiency.

Organizations with Complex Compliance Requirements such as financial services, healthcare, or government contractors in need of robust audit trails and automated compliance workflows that most point solutions can’t provide.

Companies with Global Operations require sophisticated geographical and regulatory segmentation capabilities, especially those managing employees across different countries with varying labor laws and benefits structures.

Technology-Forward HR Teams that want to leverage AI and automation but lack the resources to build custom solutions or integrate multiple vendors into a cohesive experience.

Organizations Undergoing Digital Transformation that need to modernize HR processes without completely displacing existing technology investments.

Why Rival HR Deserves Your Attention

To my mind, Rival HR stands out for actually solving the integration/orchestration problem that so many employees, managers, and HR staff struggle with. Their approach acknowledges a fundamental truth that many vendors ignore: organizations don’t want to replace functional systems—they want those systems to work together intelligently. That last nugget is paraphrased from Poornima.

The company’s focus on efficiency/effectiveness over features reflects a mature understanding of what modern HR departments actually need. Rather than building another feature-rich platform that requires extensive training and change management, they’ve created an orchestration layer that makes existing investments more valuable while introducing genuine innovation where it matters most.

Most importantly, Rival HR has positioned itself as the answer to the question every CHRO asks: “How do I deliver better results with the same resources?” In an era of budget constraints and elevated expectations, that’s not just a nice-to-have capability—it’s a competitive necessity.

The true test of any HR technology isn’t what it can do in isolation, but how seamlessly it integrates into an organization’s existing ecosystem while delivering measurable improvements. Rival HR passes this test with distinction, making it a solution provider worth serious consideration for organizations ready to move beyond fragmented point solutions toward true talent management orchestration.

The post Rival HR: Orchestrating Efficiency in a Fragmented Talent Management Landscape appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

The way companies match candidates to jobs is long overdue for a revolution. For decades, hiring has relied primarily on resumes, interviews and gut feelings to make important people decisions. But as the world of work rapidly evolves, this approach is no longer sufficient.

Brandon Hall Group Chief Strategy Officer and Principal Analyst Michael Rochelle and I had a thorough analyst briefing with Caitlin McGregor, Plum’s Chief Executive Officer and co-founder, and Michelle Meehan, VP of Marketing at Plum, the innovative Canadian start-up paving the way in next-generation psychometric assessment. Founded by experienced entrepreneurs who are passionate about helping employers make informed decisions about job candidates, Plum is leveraging recent technological advancements to create an efficient, comprehensive solution that takes candidate selection into the future.

“I created Plum to democratize access to psychometric data so that no one would have to rely on luck for someone to realize their superpower,” McGregor states on the company’s website. “Everyone deserves the same opportunity to do great things, and that’s exactly what Plum gives them.”

Through modern machine learning algorithms, Plum helps employers provide detailed data-driven insights into each potential hire, with key indicators including cognitive abilities, personality attributes and technical skills — allowing companies to find their ideal match faster than ever before.

Plum then uses this data to power its matching algorithms. Through an automated 8-minute job analysis, the platform understands the behavioral indicators required for success in any given role. It can then evaluate millions of profiles to identify top matches between people and opportunities.

Plum measures personality, problem-solving skills and social intelligence in every applicant with one 25-minute online assessment, allowing organizations to quantify job fit by comparing individual profiles against the needs of the job.

Early adopters like Manulife, Citibank and Whirlpool are already seeing significant benefits. Plum consistently delivers a 90% quality-of-hire rating from managers and increases retention by up to 77%. HR shouldn’t be a cost center — and Plum can prove it.

Plum also improves diversity hiring by screening overlooked candidates. Plum Talents encapsulate the thoughts, feelings and behaviors that drive candidates. These Talents help uncover what drives — and drains — them and where they’ll find the most success in their careers. Plum realizes that talents live on a spectrum and being high or low in a talent is not a measure of good versus bad. Instead, Plum Talents surface what innate behaviors energize you and which ones deplete you. Understanding the difference means you can advocate for your needs at work and focus on growth over survival.

Perhaps most impressively, Plum has managed to achieve this at scale. Where traditional assessments can take over 100 hours per role, Plum streamlines the process while maintaining a predictive accuracy that is 4x better than resume screening alone. That’s why it’s used in 144 countries and across 20 languages.

As the future of work brings more change and uncertainty, having the right talent in place will be critical for business success. Plum is paving the way for a new paradigm — one where companies can truly understand and optimize their human capital. It’s a revolution that can’t come soon enough.

The post Using Psychometrics and AI to Revolutionize</ br> Talent Assessment appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

 By J S Manoj Koundinya

Senior Vice President — Talent Management, Organization Development, Culture & Wellbeing at DBS India

and Matt Pittman

Principal Analyst, Brandon Hall Group

As an employee, it’s easy to think of company culture as something that’s entirely out of your control. After all, it’s the leaders and managers who set the tone, right? While it’s true that leadership plays a significant role in shaping organizational culture, it’s not entirely up to them.

Recent empirical analysis suggests that substantive, enduring cultural evolution often germinates from grassroots micro-behaviors. Herein lies the potency of individual agency. The confluence of individual agency and organizational ethos is a crucible where the very spirit of a company is forged.

Organizational culture refers to the shared values, beliefs, attitudes and practices that shape how work gets done within a company. Every employee, from the most junior team member to the most senior executive, has a role to play in building and nurturing a healthy organizational culture.

Recent Brandon Hall Group research confirms this. In the 2023 study, Culture Eats Strategy: Is Your Employee Experience What You Intended?, 82% of respondents indicated that a collaborative and supportive culture was “Important” or “Very Important” to the employee experience. Interestingly, 48% of respondents indicated that there is room for improvement in understanding what employees want from their employment experience.

That is why these five salient habits that any employee, irrespective of position or tenure, can cultivate to amplify and scale their company’s cultural tapestry are so important.

1. Radical Candor: The Dual Prong of Care and Directness

Coined by Kim Scott, the concept of “Radical Candor” is what happens when you show someone that you care personally while you challenge directly, without being aggressive or insincere.

When employees imbue their interactions with a blend of genuine care and unambiguous directness, they actively foster an environment where transparency is celebrated, and feedback becomes a constructive tool rather than a source of apprehension. This reinforces those feedback loops, both formal and informal, not just between colleagues but also between the workforce and the leadership of the organization, a key ingredient to a healthy culture.

In fact, Brandon Hall Group’s Retaining Talent 2023 survey revealed this as a “Very Important” step in increasing company understanding. Instead of fostering silos of politeness or zones of blunt, unfeeling criticism, a culture steeped in Radical Candor encourages its members to communicate openly, with the intention of collective growth at its core. When individuals habitually demonstrate this approach, it paves the way for an organizational culture that is both supportive and candid, propelling not just individual but institutional evolution.

2. Cultivating Intellectual Curiosity: The Odyssey of Continuous Learning

“Cultivating intellectual curiosity” stands as a beacon for progressive organizational cultures, signaling a commitment to endless exploration and the ceaseless quest for understanding. Within the organizational microcosm, when employees habitually demonstrate a thirst for knowledge, it germinates a culture that values questions as much as answers. This habit of intellectual pursuit — whether through continuous reading, attending seminars, seeking mentorship, or simply challenging the status quo with a “why” or a “what if” — transforms the workplace into a vibrant hub of ideas and innovation.

When intellectual curiosity becomes ingrained in an employee’s daily ethos, it not only enriches their individual capacity but also radiates outward, encouraging peers to embark on their own journeys of discovery. In a culture where employees ardently champion curiosity and inherently foster adaptability and resilience with forward momentum, they lay the foundation for an organization that is adaptable, forward-thinking and perpetually evolving in its pursuit of excellence.

3. Solution-Oriented Mindset: Transcending the Problem Space

In the intricate dance of organizational dynamics, adopting a “solution-oriented mindset” emerges as a transformative habit that employees can embrace to fortify and elevate the collective culture. Creative problem-solving is the third-most added new skill to current jobs, according to the Hiring for New Skills and New Roles survey conducted by Brandon Hall Group.

This mindset is not merely about troubleshooting; it is a deliberate pivot from the often-stagnating realm of problems to the expansive horizon of possibilities and solutions. Employees who habitually approach challenges by asking “How might we overcome this?” rather than lingering on the impediments, infuse a proactive and optimistic energy into the workplace. When embedded in daily interactions and strategic discussions, this habit shifts the organizational narrative from one of hurdles to one of opportunities. It engenders a culture of resilience and creativity, where obstacles are not endpoints but catalysts that spur innovation and collaborative endeavors. Such a cultural paradigm ensures that the organization remains agile, adaptive and ever-evolving, consistently transcending the immediate problem space in pursuit of broader horizons and greater achievements.

4. Empathetic Engagement: Beyond Transactional Interactions

Empathy, though often relegated to the periphery of soft skills, emerges as a linchpin in contemporary organizational culture. It is the fourth-most added new skill, just behind creative problem-solving from Hiring for New Skills and New Roles survey. Empathetic engagement encapsulates a profound shift in the way employees can approach and enrich organizational culture.

At its essence, this ethos underscores the transformative power of seeing beyond mere tasks and transactions and delving into the human narrative intertwined in every professional exchange. Employees who cultivate a habit of engaging with colleagues, stakeholders or clients with genuine empathy foster a culture where interactions are not just about immediate outcomes but about understanding, connection and mutual growth. This moves from transactional to relational exchanges and creates an environment where individuals feel seen, heard and valued — not just for their professional contributions but for their holistic selves.

By consistently demonstrating this depth of engagement, employees lay the groundwork for a culture of trust, collaboration and meaningful relationships, where the organization’s success is interwoven with the well-being and fulfillment of its members. Such a culture not only enhances productivity and innovation but also anchors the organization in a profound sense of purpose and interconnectedness.

5. Championing Inclusivity: Celebrating Diversity in Thought and Deed

In the multifaceted ecosystem of organizational culture, the “inclusivity” mantra beckons a paradigm shift that transcends mere policy or rhetoric. When employees consistently demonstrate a habit of valuing diverse perspectives, actively seeking out underrepresented voices and creating spaces where differences are not just tolerated but celebrated, they seed an environment that thrives on varied experiences and insights.

This is not just about ethnic, gender, or age diversity; it encompasses the full spectrum of human experience, including cognitive diversity, educational backgrounds, life experiences and more. Employees who take it upon themselves to ensure that discussions are inclusive, that decisions account for varied perspectives and that the organizational narrative is one of collective authorship, sculpt a culture where innovation flourishes and barriers diminish. Through such intentional and consistent actions, an organization is propelled toward a future where its strength is derived and where inclusivity is not an initiative, but an intrinsic value.

As global HR leaders architect and recalibrate organizational strategies, recognizing the pivotal role of employees in building culture is non-negotiable — and company culture isn’t the exclusive purview of the C-Suite or designated HR professionals. As insights show, it’s the cumulative effect of individual habits that foment cultural evolution. A healthy, positive organizational culture helps to create a positive working experience. That positive working experience is directly linked to an individual’s willingness to contribute at the highest level and thus impacting overall business performance. By imbibing and championing habits like radical candor, intellectual curiosity, a solution-oriented mindset, empathetic engagement and inclusivity, any employee can become a pivotal catalyst in the transcendent journey of cultural evolution.

J S Manoj Koundinya is a Senior Vice President — Talent Management, Organization Development, Culture & Wellbeing at DBS India. Manoj is a HR leader with 18+ years of diverse experience across industries globally in Learning, Talent & Organization Development. He is passionate about delivering business strategy through people practices by strengthening leadership, driving performance and institutionalizing culture. He has driven large-scale transformation through M&As, Ramp-Up, Restructure and Leadership Transition. He is a certified practitioner of psychometric assessments, PROSCI Change Management and Executive Coaching. 

Matt Pittman is Principal Analyst at Brandon Hall Group. Matt brings nearly 30 years of experience developing people and teams in a variety of settings and organizations. As an HR Practitioner, he has sat in nearly every HR seat. A significant part of those roles involved building out functions in organizations and driving large-scale change efforts. As a Principal Analyst at Brandon Hall Group, Matt leverages this in-depth experience and expertise to provide clients and providers with breakthrough insights and ideas to drive their business forward.

The post Five Habits Any Employee Can Develop to Scale Company Culture: An Exploration of Micro-Behaviors with Macro Impact appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

Onboarding is an employer’s first chance to confirm for new hires that they made the right choice.

A compelling, personalized onboarding process is a critical first step to ensure employees find themselves welcomed, supported and believing they are in a position to succeed. A poor onboarding process can severely impact employee retention and result in significant downstream costs to recruit and train replacements.

Technology is critical to onboarding — especially in an era of remote and hybrid work and widely dispersed workforces. Unfortunately, Brandon Hall Group research shows that most companies are in the early stages of developing high-impact onboarding. Only 9% said they offer a fully integrated set of onboarding resources and technologies.

While focusing on training and culture is important and a primary focus for HR teams, the quality and sophistication of technology can be the difference between onboarding success and failure in a hyper-connected world.

“A lot of pieces must come together for onboarding to be strong,” said Chris Kirkpatrick, Director of Offering Management in the Digital Workplace global practice at Kyndryl. “There can be 15 different things  — or more — that must come together before an employee begins the first day. Digital workplace technologies can make it all seamless, integrate HR and IT workflows, and measure the whole experience from start to finish through Experience Level Agreements (XLAs). This can cut the business processes for a new employee from days down to hours.”

More than ever in a hybrid environment, onboarding should be engaging because it sets a tone. “It’s important for employees to be clear on their roles, how they contribute to the organization, and how to work across their various teams. We must consider that many employees are working from their home. That changes the reality of work culture. Employees need to know where they fit and how they can contribute. Then they need to be supported,” Kirkpatrick said.

Technology with a Human Touch

Even though many onboarding experiences are now virtual and must be digitized, Kirkpatrick focuses heavily on the human touch — and especially personalization.

“We must understand the context of the employee,” he said. “The big thing is timeliness. The business needs employees functional as soon as possible, and there can be a tendency to overload them with too much information.”

“We should consider, ‘How can we avoid doing that?’ ‘How can we explain to employees what is to come so they understand where they are in the onboarding process and what they will experience the first week, the second week, etc.?’ We want to make sure the onboarding experience is personalized to the role and intuitive, and considers how the employee will balance work with onboarding,” Kirkpatrick said.

After that, HR leaders must ensure new employees feel connected and supported; effective use and deployment of digital tools help, but the foundation is sensitivity to human needs.

“Remote working, with the right tools, can actually drive a more inclusive and diverse culture,” Kirkpatrick said. “But remote work can lead to increased isolation for some types of personalities. Hybrid work gives businesses access to a bigger pool of talent, but you also have to address isolation considerations. But culturally, if done right, it can drive sustainability.”

By that, Kirkpatrick means sustainability as a human issue. He points to ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance), a framework to evaluate companies on how they manage their impact on the world. Kirkpatrick prefers using the acronym SEE, standing for Social, Economic and Environment. “We believe that organizations must focus on the social element first to drive the sustainability and impact on communities and of human life. This approach then naturally feeds into wellness, which also impacts engagement and employee experience in their day-to-day lives.

“Sustainability is huge for Kyndryl because we were spun off as a company (from IBM),” Kirkpatrick continued. “Sustainability was born into our company’s purpose and our mission. What I love about my job is being able to talk to customers every day about elevating sustainability and improving work culture through our solutions and about how that drives employee experience and makes the business sustainable by design.”

Technology, sustainability and employee experience must operate in balance and organizations need to realize the benefits of focusing on these areas. Kyndryl uses XLAs to measure that. Digital tools, including AI-driven solutions and data and analytics, enable automation of processes, reducing manual intervention and adding speed and reliability. XLAs deliver insights to help improve the employee experience — during onboarding and throughout the employee lifecycle.

“Ultimately, You can’t fix what you can’t see,” Kirkpatrick said. “HR leaders must be able to see the current employee experience and pain points. You can use journey mapping, but you need to be able to gather data and analyze it to deepen the understanding of the experience and quantify where the friction is. Some of it is technical design, but then you have to put yourself in the shoes of employees and make human-centric decisions.”

The post Kyndryl Shows Digital Onboarding Can Be Personal, Sustainable appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

The age of the experience economy has driven many changes in how companies do business with customers, how employers treat employees and how workers engage with learning opportunities.

Simply put, how an individual experiences any aspect of your organization drives their perception and loyalty. For employers, crafting and maintaining a positive employee experience has become a business imperative.

Brandon Hall Group’s 2023 study, Culture Eats Strategy: Is Your Employee Experience What You Intended?, probed deeply into employer and employee perceptions of the employee experience. The study revealed that most (67%) respondents are likely to refer someone to work for their organization. Almost that same percentage (68%) report that they are either Satisfied or Very Satisfied with the current employee experience provided by their company. Interestingly, that number shifts dramatically outside of North America with just under half (47%) responding that they are Satisfied or Very Satisfied.

Not surprisingly, technology is a critical dimension of the employee experience, easily elevating it to great heights or disrupting it with far-reaching consequences. Organizations need engaged, motivated employees to drive innovation and business results. The workforce needs support to continue to grow and develop along with the changes in how work is being done. Because of this convergence, we know that one of the most impactful ways companies can empower a positive employee experience is through learning technology.

Effective learning technology provides on-demand development opportunities that employees can easily access. This allows workers to take control of their own learning and development to the extent possible while still maintaining company and regulatory requirements. In fact, investment in employee training and development programs to enhance skills and knowledge is the highest-rated initiative globally to improve the employee experience, outpacing the second-highest item by 11 percentage points overall. That margin jumps to 18% outside of North America. Providing easy access to learning technology shows employees that the organization values their growth.

With quality learning technology, employees can upskill quickly on topics relevant to their roles and interests. Curated content, personalized recommendations and intuitive platforms allow for self-directed learning. Employees might learn a new skill to increase productivity or take a course on management tactics before transitioning to a leadership position. The ability to quickly build capabilities empowers employees to take on new challenges and progress in their careers.

Learning technology also enables social and collaborative learning through features like discussion boards, peer coaching and mentor matching. This connects employees, allowing them to share knowledge and learn from each other. Collaborative learning fosters teamwork, relationships and a sense of community. It also reduces organizational silos. Employees feel valued when organizations provide opportunities for peer knowledge sharing and relationship building.

Data and analytics embedded in learning technology provide insights into skill gaps across the employee base. Leadership can use this data to develop training programs that target key competency gaps. Focused development empowers employees to gain the most relevant skills to advance their careers and deliver impact in their roles. Data also helps assess the effectiveness of learning programs to ensure optimal resource utilization.

Where and how work gets done has shifted. Between deskless workers in more hands-on environments to the ever-growing remote and hybrid workforce, learning technology brings development opportunities to employees wherever they are. Online learning platforms allow access to courses, videos, virtual instructor-led sessions and more. This provides flexibility for employees to learn in the flow of work. Adaptability and self-service learning resources empower employees to develop skills how and when they want.

Learning technology also enables consistent onboarding and training for new hires. Multimedia learning content engages learners and allows new employees to ramp up quickly. Onboarding learning tracks prepare employees for success in their new roles. Ongoing training empowers continued growth and development. Consistent learning opportunities lead to greater employee competencies across the organization.

To truly empower employees, organizations need learning technology platforms that are intuitive and easy to use. Complex platforms with a steep learning curve lead to frustration. User-friendly interfaces with personalized dashboards allow employees to easily navigate learning. Technology that freely allows users to search courses and content promotes utilization. Seamless mobile functionality empowers employees to learn on the go.

Technology is at once the great enabler and the great disrupter. When looking at strategies to improve your employee experience, consider all dimensions of that experience and your approach to it. Start by asking yourself the following questions.

• Does our culture encourage collaboration and provide support for growth?
• How frequently are we surveying our team members for their feedback and perspective?
• How can we better leverage our existing technology to ensure ease of use and therefore, promote utilization among our workforce?
• How can we better leverage emerging data technologies to gain greater insights into our employment experience using our existing employee data?
• Are we treating our employee experience like a key business outcome or a “nice to have” initiative?

Brandon Hall Group Bronze Smartchoice® Preferred Provider Totara Learning brings all these dimensions together with their Talent Experience Platform. Combining the core of enterprise learning management with a truly collaborative learning experience and linked to advanced performance management, Totara’s Talent Experience Platform (TXP) provides the configurability, integration capability and power needed by the business while delivering a seamless experience for the learner.

When your development technology is effective, it also supports a collaborative and supportive culture. This single element consistently ranks highest among attributes that contribute to a positive employee experience. Ensuring a culture remains collaborative and supportive requires intention on the part of all involved. It begins with clearly defining organizational expectations around a collaborative work environment — what it looks like in the specific context of your company and how it plays out in daily work.

Once you set those expectations, holding leaders accountable to behave in alignment to those expectations becomes critical. This does not necessarily need to be punitive in nature, but empowering leaders to point out in real-time when someone is acting contrary to expectations. Over time, this helps reinforce the intended culture. It might look like simply saying, “Hey — when you ask questions of the team but don’t wait from them to respond, that tends to shut down collaboration — and that’s not how we want to lead here.”

Culture change of this nature is not a 0 – 60, one-and-done proposition. It takes simple, clear intention and repetition over time. Be in it for the long haul to reap the true benefits.

Always remember that the employee experience is ultimately an outcome of many different factors. As such, it should be a filter on every decision being made in the business. “How does/will this affect our employees?” is a question leaders should be including standard in any decision-making effort.

Creating an employee experience/employee value proposition scorecard and reviewing it periodically throughout the year can help keep your leadership team honest and focused on these considerations. It is important to consider because positive employee experience is directly related to positive employee engagement, which has a documented impact on discretionary effort and subsequent business performance.

Implementing the right learning technology shows employees that their development matters. This empowers engagement, improves retention and enables a positive work experience. But technology alone is not enough — organizations should promote a continuous learning culture through manager support, learning incentives and an emphasis on development in core values. Paired with the right culture, learning technology gives employees development autonomy. This leads to an empowered, agile workforce that can drive innovation and thrive amidst ongoing change.

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Frontline workers — who account for approximately 80% of the workforce — use on average about 1% of their organization’s technology budget, according to various estimates.

Let that sink in.

Frontline workers — variously identified as “deskless,” “offline” or “essential” — regularly interact with customers, make sales, provide services and handle day-to-day operations. They are the face of the business and directly impact customer satisfaction and loyalty. But they have fewer tools and less voice than their more integrated and connected corporate peers.

“I was at an airplane manufacturing company recently and they’re still building planes using paper instructions and doing QA (quality assurance) using paper instructions,” said Ron Xavier, Technical Business Development Executive, Microsoft Global Center of Competency for Kyndryl Digital Workplace Services.

As incredible as that sounds, the situation at that airplane manufacturer is not unusual. Manufacturers struggle more than retail and hospitality, for example. But many frontline workers across all industries are stuck using outdated systems and processes that hamper productivity and negatively impact their employee experience.

In the 2023 Employee Experience Study by Brandon Hall Group, only 40% of employers said they have the right technology for their frontline workers to successfully navigate the workplace. Only half said they have tools to help employees adopt all the various technologies that are used in the workplace.

However, more employers are recognizing they must do better. Almost three-quarters (73%) of respondents to our study said it is important to use innovative technologies to support employee productivity and efficiency.

Changing the Status Quo

Frontline workers are often mobile or work out of multiple locations where it can be difficult to access devices and internet connectivity. Their jobs require specialized software and applications to access customer data, check inventory, submit orders, manage projects and more. They deal with customers face-to-face and need technologies that enable quick access to information to resolve issues on the spot.

Kyndryl, the world’s largest provider of IT infrastructure services, and Microsoft have a strategic alliance to deliver state-of-the-art solutions to help customers accelerate hybrid cloud adoption, modernize applications and processes, support mission-critical workloads and enable modern work experiences.

Kyndryl’s Xavier and Noel Pennington, Director of Partner Strategy for Microsoft Cloud for Retail, are evangelists in this space. They are passionate about the need for employers to invest in technology that empowers frontline workers to increase their connection to the business and improve their engagement, productivity and efficiency.

“I am a retail guy,” Pennington said. “Retail wants to spend $6 on technology per user per year. They don’t see the value of technology to drive all their initiatives and goals. Companies are missing the boat on the minimum tech spend they need to move the needle.”

A Microsoft Work Trend Index special report on frontline workers and technology, published last year, found that frontline workers are at an inflection point. No one felt the burden of the disruption from the pandemic more than the two billion frontline workers around the globe. They’ve kept grocery stores stocked, ensured the power grid stayed up and running, provided essential healthcare services, and made and distributed the products the world depends on — all while weathering personal risk and ongoing disruption.

The Microsoft report found that frontline workers will consider a job change for better pay and benefits, work-life balance, and flexibility. Technology plays a big role in enabling all that. Plus, 63% of frontline workers are excited about the job opportunities that technology creates and technology ranks third on the list of factors that workers say could help reduce workplace stress, the Microsoft report shows.

“I think tools like Microsoft Teams and Viva allow companies to onboard employees quickly and integrate workers very quickly,” Pennington said. “If you don’t have tools and technologies that help you do your job – whether you work at McDonald’s or Home Depot, or installing windows or whatever, it’s difficult for workers to feel connected.”

Digital Tools Have High Impact

Technology options abound — mobile apps, wearables, instant messaging, video conferencing, assistive technology, real-time data and analytics, and much more. The key is selecting the right tools for the right environment.

When frontline employees are equipped with user-friendly, mobile-enabled technologies tailored to their specific environment, roles and workflows, there are many benefits:

• Improves productivity and efficiency. Digital tools provide quick access to information and automate manual processes so workers can accomplish more in less time.
• Increases engagement and job satisfaction. Workers feel more empowered and appreciated when given modern tools that make their jobs easier.
• Enhances customer service. Workers can access customer data instantly to resolve issues faster and deliver more personalized service.
• Boosts collaboration. Digital communication and file-sharing tools keep frontline teams connected and working together.
• Provides real-time performance insights. Data and analytics give frontline workers feedback to improve their work.
• Enables omnichannel support. Workers can seamlessly move between assisting customers via phone, email, chat, in-person and more.
• Improves training. Digital learning platforms allow quick onboarding and ongoing skills development.

The Devil’s in the Details

The challenge is giving frontline workers the right tools and connectivity and providing the training and support they need to adopt the technology and use it in the way it is intended.

Kyndryl looks at digital tools through three different lenses:

• This is having the right tools in the right place, such as the cloud-powered Microsoft 365 productivity platform, device management tools such as Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Teams for collaboration, which is especially important in frontline worker environments. And it all needs to run through a strong network, supported by Kyndryl services for 5G-enabled edge networks.

“This allows you to have people walking around a factory, a warehouse or wherever else people need to be, with necessary connectivity to communicate, get the data and information they need and receive and provide real-time answers with coworkers,” Xavier said.                                                                

• Visibility. This means having an all-in-one analytics solution, like Microsoft Fabric, that can handle everything from data movement to data science, real-time analytics and business intelligence.
• Connecting legacy systems with the right type of modern devices, such as portable small mobile computers, is critical so frontline workers can access what they need when and where they need it.

“That’s going to give them the capabilities that they need to interface with a core system so they can do time tracking, request services, access reports or do whatever they need,” Xavier said. “If we want a collaboration platform, like Teams, to be the front-end system for frontline workers, we need to be able to integrate with the organization’s core technologies that they use to run the business, but it needs to be available within your collaboration platform.”

Company-Issued Device vs. BYOD

The debate about whether employers should supply devices or employees should bring their own has been raging for years. There is no easy answer.

“I think it depends on industry,” Xavier said. “Retail, for example, is very different than manufacturing or healthcare. A big furniture retailer has their people on the floor using hand-held computers, but they don’t allow employees to bring their own devices. They want computers they control because they give them more insight into the custom capabilities of the manufacturer and [the ability] to see the health of the device. You can’t monitor as closely if someone brings their own Android device.”

Work complexity is also an issue. “If it is fairly simplistic work and the employees don’t mind using their own devices, that works for everybody. But if the work is more complex where more data can be exposed and the monitoring of the devices and the data must be more granular, then the company is much more likely to purchase specialized devices suited for that environment,” Xavier said.

Solving the User Adoption Problem

No matter how devices are supplied, the key to success is properly training frontline workers to optimally use the software.

Too often, companies favor a lot of information over context and application. It’s important not only to show workers how to use the technology but why they should use it. The adoption strategy also can’t be one-size-fits-all. It should be tailored to the demographics and work environment of the organization.

“The most effective thing I’ve ever seen done with adoption is through a day-in-the-life approach,” Xavier said. “Microsoft provides day-in-the-life presentations on using various tools in your job and the impact these tools can have on how you perform your job functions.”

“Let’s say I am an older person and I am using Teams and I need to ask someone a question and I have to walk down the hallway and go up the stairs to find someone in another room to get the answer. Or I could use the push-to-talk feature on the device and simply reach out to that person to get a quick answer, or if more detail is needed, I can ask someone to come down and show me what is needed.

“This illustrative approach puts everything in perspective so the employee understands the value of using the technology,” Xavier said. “Showing people the actions they would take during a day at their job really resonates with employees for all different generations in the workforce.”

Key Takeaways

Frontline employees are a company’s most valuable asset but often are overlooked when it comes to providing digital workplace tools. By prioritizing technology investments that target the unique needs of frontline workers, companies can significantly improve productivity, employee engagement and customer satisfaction. Future business success depends on creating a positive employee experience where the frontline workforce has the digital tools needed to do their best work each day.

Here are some strategies for HR leaders to keep in mind:

• Involve frontline workers in selection. Include input from workers on which tools would deliver the most value in their day-to-day work.
• Highlight benefits. Communicate how the technology will make specific aspects of their jobs easier to build enthusiasm.
• Conduct contextualized training. Understand how your employees learn and deliver training in ways that are likely to engage them. Depending on the situation, hands-on demos, day-in-the-life scenarios, videos and in-person sessions can all be effective. Avoid long, written documents that lack context.
• Appoint ambassadors. Identify tech-savvy frontline workers who can answer peer questions and promote adoption.
• Offer ongoing support. Have help desk staff available to troubleshoot issues and provide guidance on new features.
• Track adoption metrics. Gather data on technology usage rates and challenges impacting adoption.
• Solicit feedback. Survey frontline workers or hold focus groups to collect input on their technology experience and desired improvements.

Need a Digital Workplace Expert? Schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation today.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly advancing, as seen by the explosion of chatbots developed by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and others. While AI delivers enormous productivity gains, it lacks human emotional intelligence — the ability to understand, empathize and connect on an emotional level.

As automation proliferates, emotional intelligence becomes even more critical across the workforce. A new Brandon Hall Group research brief, commissioned by EI Powered by MPS, explores the growing importance of emotional intelligence in the age of AI.

The report reveals that emotional intelligence enables collaboration, effective leadership, adaptability, better customer service and ethical decision-making. It provides solutions to potential issues arising from AI, such as job displacement and dehumanization.

With AI in the process of taking over more routine and analytical tasks, the ‘softer’ skills of emotional intelligence — empathy, communication, motivation — are crucial for managers and employees alike. Leadership training is already reflecting this shift, with 58% of organizations targeting emotional intelligence and 55% focusing on empathy, according to Brandon Hall Group research.

The research brief provides examples of how AI can improve learning, through personalized recommendations and adaptive learning platforms. However, it cautions the reader that AI lacks human creativity, emotional support and cultural awareness. This is where learning professionals must step in to address these gaps. Instructional designers and L&D leaders need heightened expertise to contextualize and humanize AI-generated learning content. Curriculum must be designed around emotional intelligence in order to fully engage today’s diverse learners.

EI Powered by MPS, a Brandon Hall Group Smartchoice® Preferred Provider, recognizes these challenges. With over 30 years of learning design experience, EI integrates emotional intelligence and AI through frameworks like their Learning and Performance Ecosystem and the LITMUS Framework. These holistic approaches ensure that learning initiatives achieve desired outcomes for individuals and businesses.

Human-centered emotional intelligence combined with the scale of AI creates a powerful learning formula. But most organizations lack the in-house resources or capabilities to execute this combination effectively. That’s where trusted partners like EI Powered by MPS come in.

Want the full picture on emotional intelligence in the age of AI? Access the exclusive research brief from Brandon Hall Group and EI Powered by MPS. Discover why emotional intelligence is moving from ‘nice-to-have’ to business necessity as AI transforms our workplaces. Get actionable insights to foster emotionally intelligent learning in your organization.

The post The Importance of Emotional Intelligence</ br>in the Age of AI appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

Brandon Hall Group research shows that the top priorities in improving performance management over the next two years include:

• Frequency and quality of manager-employee check-ins
• Linking competencies and skills to the performance management process
• Goal setting
• Building a performance culture that extends beyond individuals to all types of teams

Traditional Performance Assessments

Traditional performance assessments are often based on just a few milestones or specific projects that are not necessarily reflective of overall performance or potential. An employee’s performance is dynamic. There are highs and lows, and strengths and development areas that must be addressed regularly during check-ins, feedback and coaching sessions. Performance management technology can facilitate many aspects of performance management, but only 34% of organizations see it as helpful or very helpful, according to our research. This means their technology needs an upgrade or they are not fully using the capabilities.

To transform performance management into a process with real business impact, organizations should consider:

• How can we better link performance management with team objectives, business goals, employee career growth, succession planning and learning opportunities?
• How can we reduce the bias inherent in performance evaluations, so accuracy and value improve?
• How can technology be better leveraged to improve the business value of performance management and development?

Betterworks as the Answer

Performance management has been a drain on organizations for decades. There have been countless theories and strategies to transform it, but the real problem has always been that managers have been asked to do too much with too little. Betterworks has many strengths, but its biggest differentiator is giving managers the tools they need to collaborate with employees in ways that drive performance, engagement and business results.

The key to Betterworks’ success is understanding that managers must be effective before they can help their team members be more effective. The platform provides managers with scalable, contextual support and guidance through tips, templates and metrics to enhance coaching, build high-performing teams, identify biases, integrate learning and empower managers to excel in developing talent and driving performance.

Use of AI

Betterworks understands — better than most employers do — that managers often are overwhelmed. Many oversee teams of 10 or more employees, making it hard to give them meaningful feedback and coaching. Betterworks works with fast-growing companies, with managers being hired and promoted at a rapid pace, usually without the training and support they need. Therefore, a good portion of Betterworks’ considerable investment in AI has focused on how to help managers do better.

The company is finalizing the launch of generative AI tools to help managers save time and write more actionable and less biased feedback. The tools, which can be automatically promoted on screen, will help managers ask the right questions, set the right goals and much more. There is a detailed GenAI roadmap that is focused on specific design principles and ample beta testing. Many more innovations will be coming in the months ahead.

Performance Enablement in the Flow of Work

Another big differentiator: Customers can leverage the performance enablement functionality within their daily workflow through solutions such as Gmail, Slack and Teams. This is critical. Performance enablement can become part of the daily routine, rather than a separate process that is often seen as pulling managers and employees away from their work. This drives frequent use of the solution and the interactions feed into Betterworks’ analytics and AI functions.

The analytics have been greatly enhanced by Betterworks’ partnership with leading people analytics provider Visier. The company’s analytics engine unlocks insights from the great data Betterworks generates around goals, conversations, feedback, calibrations and reviews, enabling a new offering called Betterworks Advanced Analytics.

While Betterworks featured pretty good operational metrics before, it now can answer more strategic questions — the kind the C-Suite needs. For example: Do we have the best performers working on our most important initiatives? Are there correlations between the frequency of performance conversations or goal revisions and performance?

Exceeding Capabilities of HCM Suites

We also like Betterworks’ approach to the market. They primarily target progressive, rapidly expanding companies seeking a more advanced and agile performance enablement solution. Many of these enterprises initially explore the capability of their HCM suite to handle performance management needs. However, they often encounter limitations such as subpar user experiences, low adoption rates and challenges in customizing the platform to align with their unique performance management processes Several of Betterworks’ new customers are actually taking performance data from Betterworks and feeding it into their big suite to fuel their compensation management.

Not to be overlooked among all the other innovations is the integration with Udemy and LinkedIn Learning, which allows goals and coaching conversations to be linked to specific learning opportunities.

The bottom line: Betterworks enables progressive organizations to transform a fundamentally flawed process into a strategic asset within the flow of work. If you truly want to enable and develop performance, give this solution serious consideration.

The post Top Priorities in Improving Performance Management appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

 By J S Manoj Koundinya

Senior Vice President — Talent Management, Organization Development, Culture & Wellbeing at DBS India

and Matt Pittman

Principal Analyst, Brandon Hall Group

In a dynamic global economy, traditional job roles often do not fully cater to the multifaceted strengths and aspirations of today’s workforce. Job crafting, a term first introduced by Wrzesniewski & Dutton (2001), refers to the proactive adjustments employees make to their job tasks, relationships, and perceptions to better fit their skills and passions. As employees and organizations recognize the value of flexibility, job crafting emerges as an essential tool for career development and satisfaction. Job crafting involves employees redefining and reimagining their tasks, interactions and overall responsibilities to better align with their skills, values and aspirations. We delve into data-driven strategies for employees to effectively engage in job crafting, thereby taking charge of their professional journey.

1. Understand the Foundations:

Job crafting is not a spontaneous process; it is rooted in self-awareness and comprehension of one’s strengths and weaknesses. Analyze your skill set, identify areas of expertise and acknowledge weaknesses that could be mitigated through training. This introspective assessment sets the stage for job-crafting strategies that enhance your career. According to a survey conducted by Gallup, employees who use their strengths every day are six times more likely to be engaged on the job. This underscores the significance of aligning your role with your strengths.

As you begin to consider how to approach crafting your own role, it is important to maintain open and honest communication with your direct supervisor. Considering that your accountability in your work is to your manager, involving them in your assessment and preferences will help minimize any resistance that may come. This can easily be accomplished in the course of regular, ongoing 1-1 discussions as you gain insights and begin to consider adjustments.

The Three Dimensions of Job Crafting

• Task Crafting: Refers to altering the number, type or nature of tasks. Employees might choose to expand their roles, take on additional projects or drop certain tasks to better match their strengths. A study published in the Journal of Vocational Behavior found that when employees were given the autonomy to choose tasks within their roles, their job satisfaction increased by over 20%. The essence of job crafting lies in shaping your tasks and responsibilities to capitalize on your strengths while nurturing your passions. Identify elements within your current role that resonate with your skills and explore ways to amplify these components.
• Relational Crafting: Involves modifying the nature and extent of interactions with others. An employee might, for example, seek mentorship or establish cross-functional teams to diversify their work relationships. Job crafting extends beyond individual tasks; it involves reshaping relationships to create a more conducive work environment. Cultivate relationships with colleagues, mentors and supervisors who align with your career aspirations. Research by Harvard Business Review suggests that employees who actively build networks are more likely to receive promotions and opportunities for skill development.
• Cognitive Crafting: Focuses on changing perceptions about the job itself. Here, employees might reframe the purpose of their roles, helping them find greater meaning in what they do. A study in the Academy of Management Journal found that employees who participated in goal-setting with their supervisors reported higher job satisfaction and a stronger sense of ownership in their roles. Engaging in job crafting necessitates a dialogue with supervisors about redefining performance metrics to encompass your tailored role. Align your performance goals with the responsibilities you have reshaped to ensure that your contributions are accurately evaluated.

2. Embrace a Learning Mindset:

Job crafting is synonymous with continuous growth. Embrace opportunities to learn new skills that complement your role. Seek out training programs, workshops and certifications that enhance your capabilities.

LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report revealed that employees who spend time learning are 47% less likely to be stressed and 39% more likely to feel productive and successful.

This has tangible benefits to your employer as well. Companies who enable and support this level of personalized learning find that to a very high degree (92%) learning of this type improves employee engagement. Employee engagement is proven to improve employee retention.

3. Enhance Work-Life Integration:

A survey conducted by FlexJobs in 2022 found that 84% of respondents believed that flexible working options made them a happier person. Job crafting isn’t confined to the office; it extends to work-life balance. Negotiate flexible work arrangements that align with your crafted role, allowing for better integration of personal and professional commitments.

Brandon Hall Group research reinforces that flexible work arrangements are a key driver of employee retention. More than 50% of responding companies indicated that the introduction of remote work options has had an overwhelmingly positive impact on their ability to retain top talent. Companies that highlight the strength of their flexible work arrangements policies see a corresponding reduction in unwanted turnover.

4. Monitor and Evaluate:

Job crafting is an ongoing process. Continuously monitor your crafted strategies and evaluate their impact on your career trajectory. Stay receptive to feedback from peers and supervisors to refine your approach. Research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology indicates that employees who regularly review and adjust their goals have a greater sense of accomplishment and job satisfaction.

According to Brandon Hall Group research, truly mature and effective career development empowers individuals to take ownership of their own career paths, but most organizations are not doing it well. In fact, only 36% of companies indicate that employees are enabled to have heavy participation in career development processes. Job crafting done well offers a path to improving this outcome.

As the nature of work continues to change, job crafting serves as a potent tool for employees to proactively define their career trajectories. By recognizing the value in allowing employees to tailor their job roles, organizations can foster environments that promote engagement, satisfaction and overall performance. As for individuals, job crafting presents an opportunity to forge fulfilling careers by aligning their tasks, relationships and perceptions with personal strengths and aspirations.

J S Manoj Koundinya is a Senior Vice President — Talent Management, Organization Development, Culture & Wellbeing at DBS India. Manoj is a HR leader with 18+ years of diverse experience across industries globally in Learning, Talent & Organization Development. He is passionate about delivering business strategy through people practices by strengthening leadership, driving performance and institutionalizing culture. He has driven large-scale transformation through M&As, Ramp-Up, Restructure and Leadership Transition. He is a certified practitioner of psychometric assessments, PROSCI Change Management and Executive Coaching. 

Matt Pittman is Principal Analyst at Brandon Hall Group. Matt brings nearly 30 years of experience developing people and teams in a variety of settings and organizations. As an HR Practitioner, he has sat in nearly every HR seat. A significant part of those roles involved building out functions in organizations and driving large-scale change efforts. As a Principal Analyst at Brandon Hall Group, Matt leverages this in-depth experience and expertise to provide clients and providers with breakthrough insights and ideas to drive their business forward.

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