Employees make use of social media and other digital tools when they are at home. By allowing the use of these at the workplace, companies can use them to drive a cultural change in the organisation, says Erik Muinck Keizer, Country Manager Benelux and Robert-Jan van Berckel, Senior HR Business Partner at Google.
The main idea behind Google is that they work as they live, “We can help you to work the way you live by extending the features and options and create the environment you need to be productive, innovative and successful. “Google said in an introductory text on the website.
Together with Deloitte, the company has investigated the possibilities of this “digital collaborative tools” at the workplace. In the end, more than 3,500 employees, including 380 Dutch European companies were interviewed.
The research shows that there is still so much to improve, says Muinck Keizer : "Many people feel that they do not have the digital tools to be productive and happy. It is suboptimal. The research also strongly suggests that workers feel that employers are not always willing to contribute to the innovation battle."
Cultural change
This mentioned tools can generate a cultural change within a company, said Muinck Keize . "People who come see that we work in a totally different way . Comparing to another organization, we work from home, we are a group of people who works online together. That old slogan from Martini " Anyplace, anytime, anywhere ' is really going on and that brings a big change with it. "
The development of Google products for the business market also arose questions from its own employees, says Muinck Keizer: "We found in our own company that people were increasingly in need to make use of all the services that they had at their disposal in their own time. Everyone worked from home with Google Maps , Google Search and Gmail , and the question arose as why we are so well off private, while sometimes it is a chaotic puzzle at the workplace . From the ambition to offer our services optimally within the workplace as well, we established nine years ago, Google Enterprise. "
HR role
The repercussions of such a cultural change in HR are known very well by Robert - Jan van Berckel , Senior HR Business Partner : "At the beginning, HR must be aware of the impact of technology within the company. It is not just about IT and finance issues, but about all. From that reflexion, HR should initiate the change and create the conditions. HR is no longer a police officer, which acted only in exceptional situations. Another big change is that we have so much data at our disposal so we can really work with HR Analytics. This produces large profits, because when we implement new measures, they are based on facts and research. We know experimentally whether something works or not.
Source: hrpraktijk.nl