- Insider assessed 128 different enterprises that underwent transformations between 2016 and 2020 as part of its
Human Impact of Business Transformation research project. - The study found that, above all else, employee engagement is paramount to success.
- Leaders from IBM, Gensler, and Huge share their strategies for engaging employees through creativity, DEI, and opportunities to move through the organization.
What does it take for a business
There are countless factors involved in corporate growth, but look closely and you'll find the companies that have made the greatest advances share a number of core attributes. When Insider assessed 128 different enterprises that underwent transformations between 2016 and 2020 as part of its Human Impact of Business Transformation research project, we found that, above all else, employee engagement is paramount to success.
Promote co-creation and learning
If there's one core takeaway from Insider's research, it's that people are the catalyst of transformation. "Employee engagement is critical," agrees Obed Louissaint, senior vice president, Transformation and Culture with IBM. "If you have an engaged workforce of employees and practitioners, they're going to take care of your clients, and then your clients take care of the business. It's about bringing value to the clients, and engaged people--skilled people--bring that value."
Co-creation is among the strategies IBM employs to keep its teams engaged. "We find when we listen and co-create, we create solutions that are much more impactful for our people." As an example, Louissaint points to a "cognitive build" executed in 2016, a kind of "company-wide Shark Tank" in which teams were invited to propose technologies the company should focus on in the future.
Prioritizing employee skills, from cloud computing to business process management, are key strategies for IBM as well. Louissaint notes that 98% of IBM's employee population utilizes its learning platform every quarter, and in the first half of 2021, its people spent 1.37 million hours learning.
IBM is also responsible for launching P-Tech, a program that enables high schoolers from underserved communities to develop technical and professional skills. "Diversity and inclusion has been one of the bedrocks of our company," says Louissaint, adding, "Across all of our constituencies, and our 300 chapters of business resource groups, we have a mindset of advocacy, allyship, and accountability."
Build diversity and inclusion into company DNA
Over the past 22 years, experience design and marketing agency Huge has transformed from a startup in a co-founder's apartment to a global organization with a dozen offices worldwide. For Huge, this growth and transformation has been a direct result of employee engagement, diversity, and building an inclusive workforce.
"DE&I is huge at Huge—pun intended," says Toni Howard Lowe, the company's group VP of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. "We're committed to holding ourselves accountable, to doing the real work. That means integrating inclusive language into our contracts. Focusing on supplier diversity, and challenging the traditions and biases of the advertising industry." As part of this undertaking, Huge invested in Huge XD School, a paid 10-week virtual training program that was revamped to focus on underrepresented identities in the design industry.
Huge's DEI journey is centered in disrupting bias from the inside out, continually examining and improving their strategy and approach.
"It's really an inside job, an internal transformation that becomes a fundamental force for Huge," says Lowe. "This kind of enterprise introspection is bound to uncover opportunities to do better."
Drive innovation through engagement
Putting people first isn't just a slogan for 56-year-old global design and architecture firm Gensler. Co-CEOs Diane Hoskins and Andy Cohen say it's what drives everything about the company's success, growth, and impact.
Over one decade alone, the firm went from 20 offices and $400 million in revenue to 50 locations in 14 countries and revenue in the range of $1.5 billion. Hoskins and Cohen believe this success is directly linked to innovation, and innovation is a direct result of Gensler's talent.
That talent is distributed and diverse; overall, the Gensler workforce speaks 98 non-English languages. Couple this diversity with what Cohen calls "the flexibility to excel," and you've got a passionate team with a global perspective and the means to leverage it.
"The opportunity to develop deep expertise and grow in different ways is what we built this firm to be all about," Hoskins says.
Fifteen years ago, Gensler developed The Gensler Research Institute, which gives employees the chance to explore areas of design that are of personal interest to them. They're invited to apply for research grants on an annual basis, creating teams that cross the boundaries of departments and locations to develop winning ideas. The grant money Gensler doles out to applicants amounts to about 18 percent of the firm's annual profits.
"Innovation is really an outcome of your people thinking in new ways, and it's what has driven our deep focus on design," adds Hoskins. "It's the glue, it's the secret sauce," she says of collaboration and the open flow of information.
"We are a learning organization," Andy Cohen says, adding, "Grow your people, grow the firm."
Each of these three case studies demonstrates an important angle on how business transformation is only possible through authentic human connection with employees. Job satisfaction, diversity, inclusivity — all of these things hold a place of honor in executives' playbooks. By investing in the happiness, creativity, and growth of their teams, organizations can successfully secure their reputational and financial health.