In our newly created book excerpt pillar, we are pleased to provide readings that evoke ideas and strategies for leaders on how to elevate the workplace or business to the next level.

We start with an excerpt from the book, "Work Made Easy," co-authored by Parthajeet Sarma, John Hoffmire, and Raj Krishnamurthy, and published by Westland Books. This book explores the challenges and opportunities in today's workplace, addressing the hybrid work model and AI integration. It emphasizes creating adaptable work environments that cater to diverse generations, focusing on personalized experiences to resonate with employees. The book advocates a data-centric approach to workplace transformation, leveraging insights to design intuitive experiences. The authors present a five-point action plan for true workplace transformation, guiding organizations through seamless adaptation to the hybrid world and leveraging AI collaboratively. Ultimately, "Work Made Easy" offers a comprehensive framework that empowers organizations to foster productivity, collaboration, and employee satisfaction in the modern digital age.

Shift the Focus from Motivation

Workplace journeys for most knowledge workers include a lot of new processes, all of which take up brain space. In general, learning new tasks at work is stressful. Today’s workplace journey comprises digital and physical touchpoints that are not in sync with each other, which may cause stress. Stress leads to work inefficiencies.

Many leaders understand that stress makes the workplace less productive and try to adjust by attempting to keep employees motivated. The focus is on motivation, supported by constant prompts and reminders. A lot of workers we speak with say that motivational interventions do little to alleviate stress. These workers are frustrated and see motivational interventions as being counterproductive—they don’t like the preaching. In some cases, they do not appreciate the material bribes they are given and, for the most part, they would prefer that management address the root causes of stress.

It is about time leaders shifted the focus to making things easier. When the question changes from ‘How do we motivate people?’ to ‘How do we make things easier?’, the universe of options in a change rollout initiative alters.

The HR managers in a 2,000-employee office of a mid-sized corporation were struggling to get their employees back to work in offices in early 2022. They decided to offer free food as one of several lures to attract people back to headquarters. This had a marginal impact on in-office attendance. A pulse survey conducted after three months of lukewarm response showed that employees felt the food served was high in fat and sugar content, with very limited choice. Based on this and other feedback received about other material bribes, the team went back to the drawing board. 103 This time, it was not HR alone making the decisions. IT got involved and so did FM. A change management consultant was hired. What emerged were significantly different plans.

The collective efforts by the team of HR, IT, FM and external consultants make for an effective case study. To make the long story short, they relaunched the food programme but with healthier food. They then went a step further. They redesigned and retrofitted the office cafeteria and converted it to a food court, allowing food chains to open food stalls and sell at discounted prices. The free-food section remained, but the number of options went up, including healthy ones. Furthermore, the team had their employee app redesigned from being a seat-booking app to one that included food and transport choices. Employees could now use their app to browse through options, buy food of their choice or choose from the list of free food on offer. They could get food directly from the counter as well. They could book seats, like before, but now they could also fgure out transport options for the ride home.

Interestingly, the app also allowed them to order food from a selection of chains when they worked from home. The AI based app remembered employees’ choices from the past and recommended food choices daily, based on the choices available.

Employees loved the choice and flexibility. They could get the kind of food they preferred. The situation improved for employees as they began to receive novelty, familiarity and ease of use. Ease of use, particularly, was a result of reducing the physical and mental efforts required to eat thanks to the redesigned app.

A pulse survey conducted in early 2023 showed that in-office attendance had significantly increased. This was partly attributed to the slew of new features in the employee app. Interestingly, more employees were buying food of their choice than choosing the free meal option.

This example goes to show the clear achievement of objectives when the focus shifted towards making things easier for employees rather than attempting to motivate them to behave in a certain way.

Head Towards Simplicity

Sometimes, when you find a good source of information, it is better to simply give credit where it is due. A website called Simplicable.com has a wonderful collection of ideas that help describe steps that go beyond our just cited case study. Each of these themes, which we paraphrase from their website, gives new meaning to making the workplace easier for employees to navigate.

Accessibility:

When giving choices to employees, the management must ensure that these options are available to everyone in the organisation. Think inclusivity. Think about different genders and the disabled. Ease of use involves designing things to the edges instead of relying on designing for the average crowd. Accessibility requires that an employer consider every touchpoint in the workplace journey and, if possible, make it easy for all categories of employees to access each benefit and advantage of the workplace.

Productivity:

Employees should feel empowered by their physical surroundings and technology blending seamlessly with them. For example, every employee should be able to attend a virtual meeting in a conference room looking at a big screen but also be able to seamlessly pick up a smartphone interface and walk away from the meeting room.

Learnability:

Things that are easy to learn for employees, like an employee app, can be intuitively adopted by most users.

Information:

Employees need access to their files and the files of their teams, no matter where they are located. For example, the ability to access project-related information seamlessly while working from home, without the need to be in office, is incredibly important.

Ease of undo:

Think of how difficult it has become to get a refund for something like a train or an airplane ticket in some cases. At times, undoing an electronic reservation at work can be just as much of a problem. Great care should be taken when using technology at work to make it easy to undo any action.

Convenience:

Everyone wants systems to work for them. Many employees appreciate the ability to use the self-checkout option at the office cafeteria. This makes paying for a dessert faster than having to stand in a queue.

Maintenance:

Everyone wants systems to work for them. Many employees appreciate the ability to use the self-checkout option at the office cafeteria. This makes paying for a dessert faster than having to stand in a queue.

Extensibility:

Easy expansion of rooms is helpful. For instance, many employers can right-size a training room by using soundproof sliding dividers.

Compatibility:

Who hasn’t had problems with this type of issue? Employees love it when their gadgets work effortlessly with, for example, devices like a printer or a scanner. When a smartphone can print a document without having to download apps, it is a heavenly day.

Reliability:

Clients and employees appreciate endurance and durability in workplace products. A remote server that is always up or an internet router that does not fail are two products that can make all the difference.

Think Inside the Box:

Making things easier means ‘thinking inside the box’ sometimes, instead of pushing employees to always think outside the box. A focus on making things easier often means looking at what exists through a new pair of lenses. It underscores the importance of re- evaluation and adaptation, challenging the notion that good will come largely by venturing beyond established boundaries. However, one must tread with caution and not look at making things easy in isolation. It is important to recognise that people are different—while some employees actually prefer work to not be simple, others do not want work to be simple all the time.

For example, not everyone wants work tools to be elementary. As an analogy, most smartphones offer the ease of point-and-shoot capabilities, with results that may not be easily distinguishable from those of an average DSLR camera. Although a large majority today prefer the ease of a smartphone camera, DSLR fans have not disappeared. Similarly, at work, each employee will define their own smartphone camera needs and fit into a user category. While some employees may thrive in open, collaborative areas, others find their productivity in quieter designated zones. ‘Thinking inside the box’ in the workplace translates to tailoring spaces and tools to diverse preferences, acknowledging that the pursuit of simplicity can coexist with individualised approaches.

The key is a balanced approach that leverages existing structures and encourages innovation. By adopting a fresh perspective on established processes, organisations can navigate the delicate balance between making work easier and respecting individual preferences, fostering a harmonious and productive work environment for all.