Enterprise hits and misses - employee engagement versus tech layoffs, marketers versus data needs, and social media dreams die hard

Lead story - Changing the employee experience - are we getting anywhere?

When it comes to employee experience, (almost) no one gets a gold star right now. Those who advocate transformation have models for customer-driven transformations. But what would an employee-driven transformation look like? Wouldn't that have a profound impact on externals - customers and suppliers?

And yet - it seems like what counts for "good employee experience" is just not getting laid off. That's not exactly inspiring. Yet, for those looking to improve employee experience - and change the flawed relationship with IT - there are use cases to learn from. See Gary's Global food giant Mondelēz focuses in on employee experience for its 80,000 workforce. As Gary explains, Mondēlz uses Nexthink IT monitoring tech to maintain productivity through COVID-19. But "productivity" isn't necessarily a good metric for employee morale. Is there more? Gary quotes their global solutions owner:

One thing in our control is ensuring that employees are happy with their tech stack. In today’s work environment, proactive and efficient IT support and a reduction of IT desk tickets is crucial.

Lowering that stress in a hybrid work model isn't easy, but it's worth it:

It can be extremely stressful when you’re on deadline, finally distraction-free and in the flow, or just ready to have a productive day when technology fails you. That’s true whether you’re trying to do that in the office or at home.

You can't act without better visibility. Gary writes:

The solution Wright and his team eventually chose has been a huge factor in creating what he styles as a better overall Mondēlz digital employee experience. That is because, he said, because it gives him ‘visibility’ into technology interruptions by quickly surfacing for IT all software, hardware or latency issues any Mondēlz programs may be experiencing.

Phil picks up similar themes in The intranet comes full circle with Guru's take on employee engagement. How many employees truly love their old school "Intranets"? Can I see some hands? Up against hybrid work styles, those tools aren't getting it done. Phil:

That, I think, is the opportunity that Guru is playing into with this offering, which is to provide a digital mechanism for supporting that shared culture and having a better sense of people's engagement. Of course, the culture itself still needs to hit the right note — if it's a bad culture to start with, no amount of digital magic will make it any better. But the tools to actually sustain that strong cultural identity when people don't get to be together to build the shared culture in person is really crucial.

Granted, these types of projects don't come close to the employee-driven transformation model I am calling for. However,  targeted improvements build momentum - as long as the results achieve the agreed-upon metrics (e.g. reduced support tickets). As Phil points out, to get further into employee engagement, we have a silo problem to overcome:

At some point, someone is going to have to work out how to join up all of these separate silos of data about employee engagement. For now, we are still in the really early days of working all this out.

Diginomica picks - my top stories on diginomica this week

• CIOs putting the foundations in for digital leadership - Mark Chillingworth takes the CIO pulse:  "Around the world, technology leaders are climbing into the cab for the next year, heavy lifting into place new skills, increased cybersecurity and a new digital architecture that can support the organisation as it jettisons old ways of working."
• Marketing success - it comes down to connecting the right data in the end - In a must-read for marketing leaders, Barb boils it down: "The truth is, there is still a struggle in marketing to bridge the silos of their first-party data so they can stop relying on third-party data to create better customer experiences."
• WeightWatchers needs to put weight behind digital transformation as it sheds pounds (and other currencies) from the bottom line - Stuart weighs in again (yes, very tasteless punnery on my part). "While the pandemic has made many more of us health-conscious, success is not guaranteed. Hitch a downhill ride on Pelaton to check that out." Ouch!
• CCE 2022 highlight - is your organization digitally fit? Ingram Micro reveals its keys to large scale transformation - Large scale transformations are a rare breed out in the wild. Last week, I filed one of my favorite use case stories of the year ("Why would you want to automate junk?").

Vendor analysis, diginomica style. With consumer tech companies far ahead when it comes to big layoffs, what can we learn from the latest enterprise earnings? Short version: slowed growth, but not stalled out.

• Freshworks turns in strong Q3 as new President Dennis Woodside outlines the growth plan - Stuart quotes the CEO: "Like others in the tech sector, we are not immune to the slower economy. While our new business activity picked up, expansion slowed down as companies reduce their growth forecast and headcount needs. On a positive note, we saw good new business growth in North America, in the mid-market and enterprise."
• Macro-economy slows down deals, but Rimini Street CEO Seth Ravin is confident the firm is meeting enterprise needs - Stuart again: "A number of deals slipped across the line in Q3, but the need for Rimini Street's services is strong, argues Ravin."
• Why healthcare may be Oracle’s road to a more competitive CX solution - Rebecca Wetteman makes her diginomica return as an outside contributor, tying together two big CloudWorld themes.

A few more vendor picks, without the quotables:

• ServiceNow’s Chief Strategy Officer, Nick Tzitzon - ‘Let’s open the floodgates and rethink how businesses run’ - Derek
• Dynatrace’s new Grail may not be holy, but it could help simplify an ever-more complicated software world - Martin
• Taking spreadsheets out of the supply planning process at Extreme Networks - Kinaxis use case by Phil

Jon's grab bag - More nifty use cases for your perusal:

• Virgin Atlantic reaches new heights with Genesys customer experience tech - Madeline
• Prostate Cancer UK taps into low-code technology to boost its data collection activities - Mark Samuels
• LGBTQ+ social network Hornet adopts DataStax Astra - Derek

Chris took a hard look at UK data privacy in UK data protection - on the horns of many dilemmas. Neil did the same with (over)hyped foundational models in AI needs foundational models - so what can we learn from GPT-3, BERT, and DALL-E 2? Finally, Stuart updates on Captain Ahab Mark Zuckerberg and his expensive metaquest in Reverse the Metaverse? Not likely while Zuckerberg has a dream...at any cost:

"Having a vision for the future is an essential attribute for a tech entrepreneur. Having a blind vision from which you won’t deviate, less so." Indeed - with $65 billion in lost market cap to show for it. But hey, on the bright side, ad impressions are up!

Best of the enterprise web

My top seven

• Meta Expected to Announce Massive Layoffs This Week - Speaking of Meta, as per the Wall Street Journal - via Business Insider - layoffs are coming. The human cost of hubris and economic turmoil is where the satirical humor stops.
• Google and Indicio progress verifiable credentials in the cloud - verifying credentials digitally has been a persistent riddle. But Constellation's Steve Wilson believes we're making progress: "By extending verifiable credentials as a service, Google and Indicio will make this critical technology more accessible to enterprises.  In particular, any organisation will be able to build verifiable credential solutions within existing technology and business infrastructure."
• The Connection Between The Jolt Effect and the Sales Innovation Paradox - Gartner's Hank Barnes contrasts book reviews with his research on enterprise buyers. 
• Twitter Is Already Rolling Out Elon Musk's Blue Check Verification - Twitter's Blue Check verification service has always been flawed, but it's hard to see how a broad monetization rollout will help with user trust. Twitter is far from the public town square it once aspired to, but it's still a platform that factors into enterprise conversations. We'll see...
• AI in Medicine Is Overhyped - Scientific American raises a caution: as data sets grow, the accuracy of AI in medicine doesn't necessarily back up earlier studies.
• Renewable development: Overcoming talent gaps - Some original work here by McKinsey, tying sustainability progress into talent needs.
• Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee wants us to 'ignore' Web3 - Finally some cold water on half-cooked, poorly-adopted Web3 concepts. And a reminder: decentralization and personal data control does not have to be tied to crypto.

Whiffs

Technically, I don't consider this a whiff, except that all layoffs have a grim aspect that deserves scrunity:

Thomas Wieberneit wanted to know what the CEO is giving up to face such times, but overall, a candid approach. If you're going to get yourself booted off of Twitter, here is a good way to go out:

If LinkedIn's self-promotional cheese wizz is getting you down, give Reddit's LinkedIn Lunatics a spin:

More rough news - if you didn't see the FedEx "last mile bot" on its world tour, I'm afraid that was your last chance, sorry 'bout that:

See you next time.... If you find an #ensw piece that qualifies for hits and misses - in a good or bad way - let me know in the comments as Clive (almost) always does. Most Enterprise hits and misses articles are selected from my curated @jonerpnewsfeed.