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The journey towards implementing a frictionless people experience

Capgemini
3 Aug 2022

Jon Harriman talks to Claudia Crummenerl, Alan Connolly, and Stephan Paolini on how Capgemini’s Intelligent People Experience portfolio puts people at the heart of HR operations – transforming the way our clients address their talent and workforce challenges – to deliver an intelligent and frictionless “consumer-grade” people experience.

Jon Harriman: In days gone by, employee experience used to be the driving force behind business profitability. But as the conversation switches towards providing enhanced people experiences in the post-pandemic world, employee experience is becoming a thing of the past.

For example, 15% of the workforce are now contractors or part of the liquid workforce, many of which have similar needs to an organization’s employees. So, the question isn’t about employee experience – it’s about people.

While all of this may feel a little overwhelming, it all falls neatly into four main areas – people experience, culture, technology, and organization. Delivering a great people experience requires collaboration and alignment between all of these areas to ensure everyone is on the same page, while keeping people experience front and center.

Of course, having a portfolio that spans all these areas is vital, which is why

I’m joined by three of my Capgemini colleagues who focus on HR processes, people and culture transformation, change management, and technology services to talk about the solutions and services they deliver that combine to offer our clients an intelligent people experience.

Jon Harriman: Firstly, let’s look at “reinventing work.” Claudia, can you tell us more about what this term means?

Claudia Crummenerl: Thanks Jon. As you’ve said, it’s really important to invest in an intelligent people experience. However, if organizations want to invest in a truly consistent people experience, they need something that can address these four elements of people experience, culture, technology, and organization. Indeed, Capgemini brings together these four building blocks, while connecting advisory, technology, and operations services.

Reinventing work is the driving force behind how we build a people-centric and adaptive organization. This means laying a new, flexible foundation, reorganizing to re-center efforts around employees, and enabling maximum job satisfaction and productivity. We believe that only a truly people-centric transformation can give people and organizations the edge they need to succeed in today’s hybrid world. This calls for reinventing work in a deeply people-centric, empowering, and engaging way, while orchestrating people, technology, and data effectively.

We identify the transformation starting point that is right for our clients and tailor the transformation foundation around four key areas. These are:

  • Reinventing work models – rethinking ways of working, while fostering an adaptive culture within the workplace
  • Reinventing the workplace – identifyingthe right mix of hybrid tools and workplace to drive agility and security
  • Reinventing the workforce – designing the right development strategies, upscaling programs, and career paths to really empower people and build a thriving culture of continuous learning
  • Reinventing HR – ensuring HR applies relevant technologies and achieves the productivity and organizational effectiveness required to create a more people-centric culture.

We all know disruption isn’t new, but the rapidly accelerating pace of change means that to succeed today, organizations must continue to reinvent work.

Now, let’s have a look at the technology solutions delivered through our Connected Employee Experience offer. Alan, can you give us an overview of things here?

Alan Connolly: Sure Jon. Capgemini’s Connected Employee Experience portfolio pulls together a raft of technologies, integrations, workflows, and devices to make things work. Our objective is to enable fast, frictionless, and consumer-like experiences that accelerate work, tailored to the individual needs of each individual employee.

It’s understanding the expectations and needs of each individual employee, and providing the right physical and virtual workspaces they need to work productively everywhere. It’s enabling people to collaborate effectively throughout their working day, and empowering them through business transformation and automation. Today’s smart buildings can be immersive spaces that enhance how people collaborate physically and virtually.

And support, goes further than just providing reactive IT support – its predictive. It uses intelligent automation and chatbot solutions to prevent and eliminate issues, enabling us to provide value-add services around learning, adoption, expert support, and people services.

So, to summarize, it’s about going further than just the technology – our services and technology solutions are always designed with people and a great experience in mind. This ensures a good people experience, promotes inclusivity, drives productivity, and lays the foundation for a long-term, sustainable business.

Finally, let’s look at intelligent people operations. Stephan, could you tell us more about this please?

Stephan: Absolutely, thanks Jon.Capgemini delivers an intelligent, frictionless people experience by putting our clients’ people at the center of their organization’s HR proposition. This helps them engage more effectively with their HR function through providing streamlined, digitized HR processes and simplified touchpoints.

This is what we call a “consumer-grade” people experience that enables our clients’ people – whatever their level or device – to solve the same challenges quickly and efficiently at every level of the business.

Capgemini’s Intelligent People Operations approach gives our clients access to optimized organizational resources and helps them better utilize their data to give their people more personalized and memorable experiences. We give our clients the ability to drive actionable insights through an intelligent command center that helps them make the right decisions in real time. In turn, this helps our clients increase the flexibility of their operations, organize upskilling at scale, and target their knowledge management services.

Finally, we need to remember that automation is a means, not an end. While it’s the basis of increased productivity, automation can’t solve all people challenges, simply because it’s a lot more demanding than it was before, and now encompasses more people, including employees, managers, leaders, content engine employees, and the entire capability ecosystem. This is exactly what we’re talking about when we talk about people experience.

Thank you, Claudia, Alan, and Stephan! It’s been extremely informative! It’s clear that the journey from employee experience to people experience is one organizations can’t afford to ignore.

About authors

Jon Harriman

Group Offer Lead – People Experience
Jon is a renowned expert in employee experience, leveraging his role as the People Experience Group Offer Leader at Capgemini to drive organizational success through people-centric approaches. With an extensive and diverse background encompassing roles in portfolio and offer development, pre-sales, solutioning, and delivery, coupled with a fervor for transforming how companies cultivate their workforce, Jon is committed to empowering organizations to establish engaging environments for their employees.

Claudia Crummenerl

Global Head of Workforce and Organization, Capgemini Invent
Recognizing the importance of people in business transformation, Claudia works with clients to reinvent the employee experience through data and technology. She uses her expertise in the people perspective of digital to understand how leadership in the digital age is evolving, how talent and workforce productivity can be transformed through automation and AI, and how to effectively engage employees throughout the transformation process.

Alan Connolly

Global Head of Digital Workplace Services – Cloud Infrastructure Services
Alan has a passion for working closely with customers, partners, and industry experts to solve complex challenges across the workplace. As a seasoned professional with over 20 years experience, he brings a unique blend of creativity and analytical thinking to the table to develop comprehensive plans that meet the needs of both the organization, and its employees.

Stephan Paolini

Global Head of Intelligent People Operations – Business Services | Executive Vice-President
I help build solutions to accelerate implementation and provide change efficiency in complex environments. I go beyond operational performance to create renewed and collective social performance that successfully transforms organizations.

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