Article: HR Leaders must apply the digital mindset to work processes to support productivity and growth: MyShubhLife’s Monish Anand

Learning & Development

HR Leaders must apply the digital mindset to work processes to support productivity and growth: MyShubhLife’s Monish Anand

“Organisations must focus on creating agility, empathy and integration at every stage of the employee journey. Digital tools help us do that,” shared Monish Anand, CEO & Founder, MyShubhLife
HR Leaders must apply the digital mindset to work processes to support productivity and growth: MyShubhLife’s Monish Anand

Monish Anand, Founder and CEO of MyShubhLife, has held vital positions in renowned national and international organisations such as Citigroup, Standard Chartered Bank, Infosys and British Telecom. He gained substantial insights into consumer lending and banking technologies during his prominent roles within such organisations. Monish’s effort to bring the underserved and unserved segment of consumers into the formal lending infrastructure was recognised in 2017 when he was felicitated as an Ashoka Fellow. Today, his sights are set on bringing millions of people into the formal banking system. 

In an exclusive conversation with People Matters, Monish shares his take on the intersection of technology at every stage of the employee journey and the urgency of leading future-ready skilling initiatives while strengthening a culture of belonging in the digital workplace. 

What are some emerging digital trends that will impact HR strategy today?

The metaverse is here already, and it's evolving. As a result, it will affect how businesses operate. Given this scenario, we have to reimagine the HR basis the way the future of work will evolve with virtual and augmented reality tools. 

Generation Z makes up approximately 60% of users in the metaverse. As the future of work will involve Gen Z and Alpha generations, HR strategy should consider how we design jobs, organise work and plan for future growth to master a new mindset. With the changing concept of work, there will be more gamification, creativity and designing of these virtual spaces. 

HR teams embracing and augmenting virtual content and experiences within their organisations can make things more fulfilling and make people feel more connected, happy and productive. 

How can businesses retain the human touch and strengthen work culture in a digital workplace?

In addition to leveraging digital tools and ensuring that the employee experience is seamless, businesses should ensure that they focus on creating belongingness - a fundamental human need.

To nurture a culture of belonging, organisations should create a caring culture, valuing employees' voices and helping people bring their authentic selves to work. This will help create both the path and purpose at a workplace, given that individuals spend over 40% of their lives working. In addition, the traits required for success need to be identified at work; E.g., we need to evaluate caring and empathy as a trait for customer-facing roles.

Considering the short attention spans of today’s young employees where they do things on autopilot or get distracted, one needs to train the mind to be more focused. This can be achieved simply by taking short breaks and any such activities. Creativity is another crucial aspect that helps the employees focus better on essential things such that they can make reflective rather than reactive choices.

Mindfulness allows workers to implement boundaries that help them focus on what's most important - balancing technology use with their human needs.

What are the key components of building a strong and sustainable work tech model?

Organisations must focus on creating agility, empathy and integration at every stage of the employee journey. Digital tools help us do that. That could mean introducing machine learning and AI-powered systems that diagnose problems in advance, enabling quick intervention and problem resolution. It could involve the combination of historical data, data analytics and key algorithms to detect anomalies and quickly notify the relevant people. It enables businesses to reduce costs by resolving any inefficiencies in the process and staying compliant. 

HR Leaders must apply the digital mindset to work processes to support productivity and growth. Or else they risk becoming obsolete. For example, technology should be an enabler in creating diverse teams by bringing together various experiences for better and faster decision-making.

What is the role of L&D in empowering a digitally ready workforce?

Skilling is important to maintain a competitive edge and future-proof the organisation. Closing the skill gap is a business imperative. L&D plays a significant role in helping anticipate the change and offering upskilling or reskilling courses across levels regardless of function. Upskilling and reskilling help employees stay relevant and advance internally.

In an economy characterised by disruption, being able to adapt is a must, and L&D helps with ensuring that they identify the skill gap and ensure that there are tailored courses based on needs and not follow a one size fits all approach. This enables the organisation to be resilient and adapt to the changing needs.

By prioritising knowledge management and overseeing it in the organisation, you help your employees focus on what’s significant, eliminate information overload, reduce stress, and improve their well-being and business health.

Adapting the metaverse could revolutionise training and skills development, drastically compressing the time needed to develop and acquire new skills and making it easy to become productive faster.

What words of advice would you like to share with the HR community for thriving in the future of work? 

Technology is entrenched in today’s workplace. So, there is no escaping that. Therefore, there should be a top-down approach to skill development and upgrades related to every individual function. In our industry, every aspect of work is touched by multiple technology platforms - chatbots for customer engagements, data analytics across functions, cloud telephony for customer-facing activities, AI-driven communications, and machine learning models for risk management - they are ever evolving on the technology front. Technology also helps individuals scale their activities and hence helps the business grow.  Some key takeaways are:

  • As business requirements change and the shelf life of skills reduces, the war for talent becomes intense. As a result, we need to shift our mindset to focus on reinvention. 
  • Technology enables us to relinquish control and yet track employees’ productivity. So, onboarding new tools and processes is imperative for businesses to scale.
  • Creating a culture of learning - focus on skill development vs role development. 
  • Having flatter organisational structures creates collaborative environments where every employee can contribute to solving business problems.
  • Build a strategy around resilience focusing on overlapping skills and prioritise employee wellbeing to help maintain mental, physical and financial wellness.
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Topics: Learning & Development, Leadership, Skilling, Culture, #WorkTech, #HRTech

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