 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021, brought to you by IBM. Hello everyone and welcome back to IBM Think 2021, the virtual edition of theCUBE's continuous coverage and we're excited to talk about people. How do you align people and technology? And of course there's a lot of process in between. Those are the hard things. Technology is sometimes easy. Amy Wright is here. She's managing partner of talent transformation at IBM. Amy, great to see you. Thanks, great to be here Dave. Yeah, you know, we love to talk tech and sometimes we kind of sweep the really hard stuff under the rug and we talk about transformation. I mean, it's ongoing. I mean, you think about the pandemic last year was sort of this forced march to digital. We had to transform overnight. You know, the vast majority of leaders, I think that figures like close to 95, 96% say that they've accelerated their digital transformation by half a decade. And of course that was a lot of, it was like I say, it's a forced march, so it wasn't really planned full but now they've got time to plan about a digital first approach and how to deal with remote workers. I wonder if you could talk about the role that people play in that digital transformation. Right, thanks Dave. And happy to, you know, a lot of people think of digital transformation about being technology oriented. It's a total shift in tech and it is, but it really can't be successful with just tech. So you're right, what the pandemic has done for digital transformation is it really, it pushed us to these technology extremes more than anyone could have anticipated, particularly with our ways of working being remote. It also pushed us to extremes and highlighted the role that humanity played place. We'll continue to play. So we've been pushed to reimagine jobs, pushed to reimagine workplaces, pushed to reimagine how technology can deliver this connected enterprise, you know, through virtuality. And virtual working wasn't really something that was accepted before, but now we've been, you know, forced to accept it, which is really great for the digital transformation because it accelerated that. So the connected enterprise though isn't really just working virtually, it's these new levels of productivity and decision-making that are enabled by intelligent workflows and cloud and data. And so technology is absolutely critically important, but automation doesn't have empathy. So it takes people to turn these insights that are brought to us through technology and automation. It takes people to turn them into action. And it's that human technology partnership that's required for the digital transformation to get to that desired impact. So when you think about, when you think about people and the role they play and, you know, the pivotal role they play, it's really multi-part, it's kind of three parts. One is people are the ones that build the tech and so they influence whether or not the automation's gonna work, whether it meets the needs of the enterprise, if it takes advantage of the latest thinking and if it's, you know, it is irresistible, if you will. The second is the people use the technology to gain this meaningful insight and turn it into action. And then the third is the people are the ones that embed this tech change into culture so that it's actually sustainable. So to be able to drive this sustainable digital transformation, the people, it requires the people to make it happen. So if you look at healthcare, Dave, think about the dramatic shift in healthcare in the past year, where doctors have shifted to telemedicine, nurses have shifted to using iPads as caregivers with their patients. That not only required a shift in the tech, but an adoption of caregivers of a new way of working that, again, couldn't have been successful unless they adopted and embedded, and you know, embedded a different way of working and a different culture in everything that they do. You know, what you said is really important. Especially, we talk a lot about what machines can do that people can't, what people can do that machines can't and you just nailed it with empathy. And when you think about too, the remote work, I think prior to the pandemic, it was probably around 15, 16% of workers were remote. And when we do surveys with a partner, ETR out of New York, and they project based on these surveys that that's going to double somewhere between 33, 35%. But people don't really know. When you talk to people, they kind of like working at home. Other people say, I can't wait to get back to the office. So people are obviously a critical part of the digital transformation. But how do you think about creating those meaningful experiences at work, whether that's remote, part-time remote, you know, full-time back at work? So this is a really great question because I think our point of view on this has changed. So first of all, most enterprises we talk to, we'll move back to some hybrid kind of environment. We're never going to be everybody back in the office. Again, that's not who we will be moving forward. But the expectations of employees have changed. We all know that, you know, think about your consumer lives and how we experience that personalization when we go to buy something online. That's now bled over into the workplace. So the employees expect that exact same personalized experience at work, but it's now so much more than that. Now it's not only personalization, which, you know, obviously tech enables quite dramatically, but the experience is broader to look at a holistic relationship between the employer and the employee. That's a little bit less, it's less transactional. Like I do my job and my company pays me for doing this set of activities, but it's more supportive and integrated with their personal selves. So, you know, we did a recent study in which we looked at consumers and employees and their highest priority areas for the expectations that they now have for their employers is career and skill advancement opportunities with speed. Second is work-life balances that might take the form of what hours they work, their ability to, you know, manage with what they're doing in their home with their families and children, you know, their ability to be camera ready or not at all times of day and night and actually where they work from. So people are now working not only at home, but they're moving to different cities and want that flexibility. And then third, a high area of priority now is ethics and values. So not only diversity, equity, inclusion, obviously critically important, but ways of working and meaningful and purposeful work. So when you look at all of those together, the employee experience has grown to be not only that of personalization like we have in our consumer world that is critically important, but now it's all of these other things as well. As a matter of fact, they become so important, Dave, that in our recent research, it shows that one in four employees will change employers in 2021, one in four. One in four will also change professions in 2021. And while about 75% of employers, companies, believe that they are doing a good job of meeting the needs, these expanded needs of their employees, less than half of employees feel the same way. So there's a lot of work to be done. So you asked the question, why is this people experience so important? It's important because it's required for the digital transformation and it's so much broader than what we used to think that it's now a competitive differentiator for employers as they try to not only achieve their digital transformation, but as their organization is disrupt over and over again, it's a requirement in order to meet their enterprises objectives. So those are great stats, Amy, you just put out there. I mean, the career advancement, I feel like it's always been there, but it's now much more front and center, employees are more vocal about it. The work-like life balance, same thing. I mean, you're seeing some organizations, 100-hour weeks, we're revolting. And then the ethics and values piece to me is one of the most interesting. I often joke, Milton Friedman is rolling over in his grave because he was the economist. I said, oh, it's just about shareholder value, that's it. And that's not anymore. In fact, there's clearly a relationship between shareholder value and ESG and ethics and young people are very, very concerned about it. So here's the question. Who's accountable for making sure that you have a positive employee experiences occur? Yeah, really, really, really good question. And the thing is, this is what makes it so hard, there's not one group or one person. It's actually all of us. And I know that answer sounds like a little bit like a cop-up, but this is why it makes it so hard. Every leader is responsible for the employee experience. Every manager is responsible for the employee experience. Every employee is actually now responsible for the experience of their teammates and actually speaking up if the experience isn't using inclusiveness as an example. If it's not inclusive, every employee has the responsibility to speak up. So some companies actually have employee experience leaders. Some companies have digital transformation leaders that embodies that, that includes that employee experience. But most actually start this journey through the partnership between IT and HR. So IT is responsible for this technology architecture, the cloud strategy, the data strategy, architectural framework, all those pieces that put together the foundation and the building blocks and the security that help to modernize this employee experience. And by the way, they're doing this at the same time where they're modernizing their entire way in which the IT function operates. So you've got IT that's kind of setting the stage and the foundation for what's possible. And then you have HR who's operating as the steward of the employee experience, that those people experiences, and putting them in place in a consistent and a positive way across the entire enterprise. So things like design thinking that puts the employee at the center of the way we architect and create these experiences using rapid iterative design principles with, again, with the employee at the center. Making that the cultural norm across the enterprise is a really big deal. So HR is usually in the lead on making that happen. But again, this is a cultural shift, not just I have a project, I kind of have a project plan and here's what I'm going to execute on. Leadership roles. So HR is the steward of leadership. And those characteristics of leaders now are changing very dramatically to be more, even in a big enterprise, large global enterprise, entrepreneurial, transparent, co-creation really at the core of everything. So being transparent with your teams and be able to co-create for the future. So data and AI, we can use data and AI now to actually predict the impact that the workforce and the cultural will have on business results. Predict attrition. Predict what different workforce design scenarios will look like to the supply chain. Predict the speed of hiring and how that will impact a literally bottom line business result. So you said it right when you talked about shareholder value. The people is at the center of shareholder value now. So our functions need to be modernized, but it's really this partnership between HR and IT that's going to be able to make it happen in a big way. It's interesting, I'm just thinking that AI as well can be a canary in a coal mine when there's potential problems. And I love this transparency, that's critical co-creation. So okay, so tech is a key part of that, especially in terms of when you go from analog to digital, taking friction out of the system, shows the employees that we're investing in your experience, but it's more than that. You're saying it's cultural and makes it so kind of fuzzy. Cultural, it takes a village, so that's part of what makes it so hard. How do you think about the journey? Where do you start and how do you keep iterating? You're never done in this world, are you? Yeah, that's a question everybody's asking now is where do I start? So as you said, this is very hard and it's hard. One of the reasons it's hard is it's because it revolves culture. It's not only about technology, they are hard, technologies are harder in their own right. It's not just about data, that's harder in its own right. But once you involve technology, it makes it even harder. And of course the people aspect unless done very proactively and meaningfully, it can be kind of a wild card, right? On who's going to adopt what? So where do you start? So the way we like to think about giving advice to enterprises regarding where we've seen this work well is to pick a business problem. So what's a business problem that if you solved, you can actually make an impact not only for your people but for your people, but for the enterprise. So if you could pick a business problem and actually fix it using data, using cloud, using people experiences, using a cultural shift, then you'll get that buy-in. You'll get the buy-in that yes, we can do this. This is very doable. We can repeat it, it's repeatable over and over again and it has an impact on our culture. That's a great place to start. Okay, so then you say if that's a place to start, how do we actually, there's gotta be foundational things that have to be in place to make that work. So one of them is a consistency in data and the use of AI and the ability to make insights meaningful, that come through data and AI. And the other part that's really important once you pick your business problem is the shift in the way of working. The shift so that it can impact cultural change, a shift so that there's co-creation with your people and there's transparency. So each one of these business problems and the way companies pick to fix them, they won't all work. And the way you get that trust and transparency with your people is as scary as it is to share with them what you're attempting to do and share with them how you're doing along the journey. And if it fails, okay, it fails. Pick yourself back up and start again. That trust and transparency with your people, that's the way we all make this cultural impact. So kind of the net of this is to be, to make sustainable change, we can all make short-term change, we can do projects, but to make sustainable change, the humanity aspect has to come to life in these digital transformations. And that only comes to life with this cultural shift. Amy, right, you've thought about this a lot. Deep expertise in the area. I really appreciate you sharing it with our audience. And thanks for coming on theCUBE. Dave, my pleasure. All right, keep it right there. But this is Dave Vellante. You're watching IBM Think 2021, the virtual edition from theCUBE.