The
Workforce 4.0™ Transformation
Panel Discussion – Tata Consultancy Services and Oracle
When Director, HR Transformation for Europe Jessica Molina joined TCS in June 2019, she had a bold and ambitious task to understand and align the technological advances of the company’s patented Business 4.0 agenda with its Workforce 4.0 agenda – defining workforce management for the post digital world.
Drawing upon the success of an Award-Winning Digital HR transformation with a multinational corporation and the wisdom of TCS’ Digital Sales Leader & Cloud Evangelist, Arunava A. Chakrabarty and Ruud Geensen, Senior Sales Director HCM for Oracle, she was able to map key insights.
The Thought Leaders gathered in a dialogue led by Remco Mostertman, HR evangelist and founder of HRcommunity. This contribution sets out the key priorities that Jessica, Arunava and Ruud identified, and the opportunities for CHRO’s to drive the future of work for their enterprises.
Key priorities
According to Jessica, the key insight necessary for Workforce 4.0’s success is to understand the connection between people, culture and technology.
Jessica says, “I see companies struggle with the potential of new technologies within HR, how to deal with their people, wondering what kind of capabilities they need for their future, asking which culture fits, what kind of experience to give, and so on. So, I thought it would be great to get close to the fire and join TCS, the Consulting & Technology giant and integrate my HR expertise with the technology transformation.”
Jessica continued: “We expect an increase of HR organizations to have a digital transformation strategy in place in the next 2-3 years.
We urge HR departments to embrace the unknown, to leverage the ecosystem and to explore together how Digital HCM can support people experiences and the business.”
HR of the Future
Arunava’s experience as the SaaS Business Development Leader for Tata Consultancy Services in the UK and Europe region served as a good starting point for Jessica’s journey of discovery.
According to Arunava, the buy-in from TCS’ Customers of Workforce 4.0, is every bit as important as the buy-in for its Business 4.0 technologies.
He explained that Business 4.0 drives the adoption of four specific behaviors to deliver better business outcomes by implementation of digital technologies.
Organizations that master these behaviors are best positioned to thrive in the waves of disruption and change created by agile, intelligent, automation and on the cloud.
This also asks organizations to embrace the Workforce 4.0 philosophy, which is based on four essential pillars: empowered, connected, diverse and talent.
In its way, TCS encourages its customers to embrace the business and workforce model and use technology to augment experiences in multiple ways.
Arunava highlighted that the key challenge for the CHROs in today’s world is to establish the future of work for their enterprises. Arunava explained that future of work can only be achieved when an outstanding employee experience leads to a state-of-the-art customer experience.
The future of work powered by Workforce 4.0 is the key mantra for enterprises to stay relevant and grow in today’s disruptive ecosystem.
Arunava emphasizes that Workforce 4.0 is about unleashing the human potential fueled by AI, Automation and emerging technology. Moreover, it is all about making work more meaningful, smarter, simpler and more agile.
According to Arunava, the essence of Workforce 4.0 is to help CHROs tap the potential of the next generation workforce enabling them to attract and retain the right talent to establish the enterprises of the future.
"Humanizing technology and using it intelligently energizes business"
- Jessica Molina
Executive board engagement with the product partner ensures successful holistic transformations
TCS and Oracle’s long-term partnership, which started 30+ years ago proved the point that the HR Transformation principles applied in a strong collaboration can help TCS partner successfully with customers to establish the HR of the future powered by Oracle’s HCM Cloud solution.
According to Arunava, one of the key takeaways of doing Consulting as a Digital Advisor is the increasing depth of engagement needed with all members of the executive board of a product partner organization. At a time when digitization is changing the way in which companies operate at a fundamental level, the success of a HR Transformation Journey needs to be ensured with the strategic collaboration between the Consulting Partner, the Product Partner and the Customer.
Humanizing technology and using it intelligently energizes business
Jessica confirms this notion: “We carry out the four pillars of the Workforce 4.0 model in the technology transformations. It is a lot about mass personalization, agility, and working together.” Jessica’s philosophy of humanizing technology and using it intelligently to increase adoption and engagement is, she believes, also a good fit for the digitally savvy Generation Z employees entering the workforce:
“I believe that generations nowadays find it important to feel the connection between the purpose of a company and their own purpose in life. If I really want to be part of creating cool innovative solutions, I want to work at a company who is frontrunner in that. I also think that we want employees to focus on the things that matter right now – also to staying relevant for the future.”
“The questions we need to ask are: do we facilitate people to develop the right capabilities and are people capable to meet new expectations? How well do we know our future workforce and how to guide them in the digital transformation?” she continued, adding: If we want to make business flourish powered by a digital transformation, then we need to embrace the people topic in our discussions, not forgetting the transformation of the HR model itself. This model needs to change towards a workforce model elevating user and client experiences, supported by new technologies, simplification and user intuitiveness.”
Putting Employees first
Ruud agrees that putting employees first is a good policy for creating the kind of workforce that delivers strong performance: “I would say, two things; make sure you have the highest employee experience. That is where it starts. I think technology makes it possible to work on the highest level of user experience.
At the same time, you need to have the insights on the Customer’s business model and make sure you are working in collaboration with a Consulting and Advisory Partner like TCS.”
Arunava emphasizes the point when he states, “The HR Transformation Pyramid, starts with Employee Experience (EX) first, that leads to Customer Experience (CX) and that leads to growth. It is all related. When the EX and CX are at the highest level, the business benefits will be at their peak and that is when you realize that you have embraced the future of work for your enterprise.”
Going deeper, Ruud believes that personalizing the work experience and using data to make better and more informed decisions in hiring will be the norm for the enterprises of the future. Inclusion as per the diversity principle of Workforce 4.0 is particularly important:
“You do not need only the smartest people. The best teams have a balance. They have a balance - whether it is gender, the smart people, culturally different people, the more practical or creative people. I think that is why companies are also looking for inclusion. It is like feeling at home at work.”
Jessica agrees and boils it down to a simpler equation: “What people need to feel inclusive also depends on the stage in life, but in the end it is all about happiness. People are looking for happiness and work life integration.”
All agree that as the fourth industrial revolution proceeds, the working world is under greater pressure than ever: generational shift in attitudes to work, the introduction of robots and automation and an increased need for cultural sensitivity all predict the need for Workforce 4.0 as the essential part of any company’s strategic mission.
Ruud continues: “When you start to use technology for an organization, and you have the ability to use it in a different way than before, you have to re-think your HR strategy. It is not a lift and shift from the old technology to the new cloud, but it is all faster innovation on a quarterly basis and daily basis. You really need to re-think ’what do I need to achieve?' and, ‘what are my strategic goals?’, because there is so much more possible at this moment.”
Arunava and Jessica reach the same conclusion: “If you want to stay relevant in today’s world, you have to invest in the workforce and that you can only do by embracing the culture of the future of work powered by the employee experience and customer experience.
The four pillars of Workforce 4.0 - Empowered, Connected, Diverse and Talent help enterprises to embrace that. Besides that, you have to have a high happiness index because that drives the success of an organization. CHROs need to team up with their HR Business and HR IT stakeholders in order to define the Digital HCM Strategy for their Enterprises.
This would help the HR organizations to create a plan and map the same to the capabilities needed from the future workforce. This is the start of the HR Transformation Journey.”
Arunava A. Chakrabarty
"The HR transformation pyramid, starts with Employee Experience (EX) first, that leads to Customer Experience (CX) and that leads to growth. It is all related."
Jessica Molina
We urge HR departments to embrace the unknown, to leverage the ecosystem and to explore together how Digital HCM can support people experiences and the business.”
Ruud Geensen
"Putting employees first is a good policy for creating the kind of workforce that delivers strong performance. Make sure you have the highest employee experience."
What is Workforce 4.0?
The fundamental principle behind Business 4.0™, lies in a patented framework of business behaviors that optimize the digital advantage to create customer value. TCS has identified four business behaviors of digital leaders that help them monetize digital technologies. More information can be found at: Business 4.0 report and the white paper Talent Management in the Business 4.0 Era.
“Talent” is one of the basic building blocks of business growth recognized by Business 4.0. Workforce 4.0™ aligns managing and developing the workforce with the business using artificial intelligence, analytics, and automation. Key objectives are to align skills with digital age requirements, gain real-time talent insights and optimize employee engagement. The business case for Digital Human Capital Management (HCM) is a fundamental starting point for managing the workforce.
A Workforce 4.0 Success Story
In 2019, TCS helped a large multinational customer to design and adopt modern HR practices leveraging Oracle HCM Cloud. This big ticket HR transformation program was delivered successfully in a very focused timeframe with strong customer satisfaction ratings. This resulted in a Marquee Award for TCS as the Oracle HCM Cloud Partner of the Year in The Netherlands.
TCS was selected by the Customer as the Strategic Partner for the HR Transformation Program, driven by the Chief HR Officer. TCS’ consultants designed and implemented a workforce solution using Oracle’s HCM Cloud across the Customer’s HR ecosystem, which spans 28 countries, 19,000 employees and 19 languages.
Since its launch in January 2019, the new solution has helped the client significantly to increase the effectiveness of its HR operations across the network.
“TCS is an Oracle Cloud Elite Partner known for being the trusted advisor for the global companies in shaping their digital transformation strategies,” said Ruud Geensen, Senior Sales Director, HCM, Oracle Benelux. “TCS is helping the business leaders to achieve their transformation objectives in today’s world of experience economy powered by agility, adaptive intelligence, automation and the speed of innovation driven by the best-in-class Oracle Cloud Applications.”
“TCS is partnering with CHROs to design and adopt the latest technologies in Human Capital Management to drive business agility, superior employee experience, and alignment with business strategy,” said Josu Devasia, Country Head, TCS Netherlands.