ServiceNow World Forum: How to digitize the world of work

Tech giant ServiceNow is currently hosting World Forum events all across the world. UNLEASH had the pleasure of attending the London iteration of the conference to learn about the future of work (and tech) from ServiceNow experts, as well as its big brand customers.

World Forum London 2022 was kicked off by a keynote from Dave Wright, ServiceNow’s chief innovation officer. After joking about the UK’s political situation – we’re on our third Prime Minister in as many months – Wright focused on the pressures that companies are feeling.

They’re “panicked about inflation” and worried about supply chain disruption. The third is that more and more regulations are coming in, so businesses are concerned about compliance and how to present data.

Three is then the challenge around talent – despite inflation, “it is still hard to get people into jobs, and to retain people”. Wright talked about the changing expectations from candidates – it used to be about benefits and facilities, “now it’s all about what does your company stand for, what’s its purpose, what’s the flexibility you offer”.

In this challenging environment, why do some companies succeed? The answer, according to Wright, is because they are change makers, they’re focused on innovative, and they are digitizing their business; frankly, “the old way just doesn’t work anymore” in Wright’s words.

Ultimately, digital transformation – and thinking like a digital native – is essential to success in the future. It’ll make the world better for customers and employees alike, noted Wright.

HSBC and MAG on COVID-19 and digital transformation

The second part of the London World Forum 2022 opening keynote involved two ServiceNow customers: Manchester Airports Group (MAG) and HSBC.

Ryan Cant, chief digital officer at MAG, which oversees East Midlands, Stansted and Manchester airports, spoke candidly about the impact COVID-19 has had on the travel industry, and particularly airports and airlines, over the past two and a half years.

In 2020/21, the group only saw 1% of its normal traffic. As a result, MAG was in survival mode, but very quickly it had to switch to change mode and it wasn’t sufficiently prepared to do so.

One issue is that MAG’s hiring processes were “somewhat archaic” – at one point it was taking the group six months to hire someone. This meant that when there was an explosion of demand for travel in the summer of 2022 it was hard for MAG to scale up its hiring.

So, the airport group is now laser-focused on digitizing its hiring processes, as well as having a top-notch digital employee experience, in order to get the business working, and passengers travelling again.

HSBC’s Erica Peters, MAG’s Ryan Cant and ServiceNow’s Nick Tzitzon at World Forum.

Sharing HSBC’s perspective, Erica Peters, global head of HR advisory at the bank, noted that part of the complexity during COVID-19 was “dealing with the pandemic in 63 different locations around the world”.

As a result, the bank needed to use its technology “to use as data sources, to make sure we were capturing what is going on” and then figure out the best way to support and look after its employees.

“There wasn’t a day that went by when we didn’t have to rethink our processes”, and without technology like the Now platform to track and support the situation, HSBC would have struggled to stay on top of what employees and managers needed.

It’s time to use tech to automate

Cant added that he is on a personal mission to digitize the airport group’s operations – ServiceNow’s HR tech is helping here to create a solid foundation that will help MAG move away from its current suboptimal employee experience.

The focus is “leaning out our processes and automating them” – this will make HR teams’ lives much easier in the future, particularly if MAG and the travel industry finds itself in a similar talent shortage in the future.

A digital-first mindset is key here, and Cant is hopeful that ServiceNow’s technology will help MAG achieve its goals around employee experience.

On the topic of of automation, Peters shared that the HR team at HSBC also had to rethink its processes to ensure that work was seamless, easy and simple for employees.

One thing the team did was integrate data from different sources – in HSBC’s case, SAP SuccessFactors and ServiceNow – and leverage AI tools, including ServiceNow’s new virtual agent. Peters gave the example that this reduced the time it took employees to get a reference from five days to minutes.

Cant noted that MAG is focused on providing a great experience in the moments that matter – for example, getting a mortgage. Employers need to take the stress out of that, and if they do, then it could be a solution to the current retention challenges.

In a session later on at ServiceNow’s World Forum, bottling giant Coca-Cola Europacific Partners’ Suzy Jearum agreed that technology can help reduce employee’s pain points. She commented that the employer is on a mission to save its employees a million hours – and that they have far exceeded that time saver.

To do this, the bottling giant stripped out waste, automated other processes, and that allowed the HR team to give employees time back and focus on value-adding work.

This work has been great for Coca-Cola Europacific Partners’ engagement and retention – currently 97% of those onboarded since ServiceNow was implemented five years ago are still at the company.

The importance of a personalized EX and the right tech

Of course, a great employee experience doesn’t just come from automation, but also personalization.

During the opening keynote, Peters is very clear that employees now expect a personalized experience, “they expect to be known” – so employers must provide it, and technology is key.

“We are feeding data between systems and recognizing when it is anniversaries, birthdays, and focusing on building proactive journeys and life events through the ServiceNow portal.” This is “game changing for our service to our employees,” according to Peters.

While Cant is clear that personalization is a great long-term goal, MAG is further behind in its implementation of ServiceNow’s technology than HSBC.

Therefore, the current focus for him and his team is simplifying the process, standardizing and automating it, and then focusing on personalization.

For Cant, that foundational work needs to come in first, because otherwise it is “garbage in, garbage out”, which won’t move the needle on employee experience.

Peters concluded that when employers are doing digital transformation, “you’ve got to have amazing sponsors” and partners.

“Choose your products and partners really carefully” – don’t get overawed by flashy, new products, instead focus on a few core products and evolve it together in partnership with your vendors.

Jearum from Coca-Cola Europacific Partners agreed. She explained that the bottling company has created a digital demand team that focuses on what tools the organization actually needs – whenever someone suggests a new tech tool then they need to also think about how it fits in with he wider roadmap.

Technology implementation is expensive and time consuming, so it is crucial to take a long-term view of how you are going to use the tool and how it will actually bring value to the business.

The International Festival of HR is back! Discover amazing speakers at UNLEASH America on 26-27 April 2023.