By Freya Purnell
While today’s workforce might be more connected, collaborative and dynamic than ever, those same connections have created a level of workforce complexity that actually makes business success more difficult to grasp.
That’s the finding of the Simplifying the Future of Work survey, commissioned by SAP and conducted by Knowledge@Wharton, the online business analysis journal of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Sixty-seven per cent of senior leaders believe business simplicity will be very important in the next three years, and 42 per cent are optimistic that their efforts to achieve this will be strong effective in three years.
Despite this rosy outlook, the challenges are considerable. Nearly three-quarters (74 per cent) of all respondents said that process and decision-making complexities have inhibited their ability to meet business goals, and only 27 per cent believe that senior leaders take day-to-day actions designed to simplify business.
Technology is also proving to be more hindrance than help, with 60 per cent of respondents stating that technology was limiting their ability to meet strategic goals. Paradoxically, respondents believe that technology will be a key enabler in reducing complexity, with growth of 165 per cent expected in the next three years in leaders’ ability to access information through self-service tools.
The most desired technologies to improve simplification include:
- More efficient talent management and performance tools,
- Deeper insights and analytics, to assess the effect of leadership,
- Comprehensive learning and development processes,
- Collaboration tools for engaging employees and having leadership discussions,
“The first way to reduce complexity is to devote serious time and resources to solving the problem,” said Morris Cohen, professor of Operations and Information Management at the Wharton School. “These results show the lack of attention that complexity has received. This lack of attention cannot continue any longer.”
The study combined the responses of almost 700 respondents at companies across industries, geographies and sizes, with interviews with Wharton professors and SAP executives.
