The Virtual Enterprise: The creativity of inclusive human-technology partnerships

Digitization introduces challenges for traditional workflows, as tasks once performed by people are taken up by machines. Resistance and fear could ensue. But, if implemented appropriately, technology can improve both productivity and the workforce experience.

Inclusive human-technology partnerships will define the virtual organization of tomorrow. They prioritize the positive potential of an organization’s people and its ecosystems. By implementing new systems and tools with empathy and intentionality, leaders can enable the best of machines and the best of humans—optimizing outcomes, talent effectiveness, workforce diversity, and work-life balance.

More than half of executives say they intend to tap anywhere-anytime talent pools for specialized skills in the next 3 years.

Navigating the virtualization of work

The way we work and interface with one another is changing rapidly, accelerated by the virtualization of customer and employee interactions. New possibilities for work and collaboration, including the ability to work anywhere and anytime, compel organizations to re-examine existing processes and create new ones across the ecosystem with partners.

For the Virtual Enterprise, this is an exciting and unmistakable opportunity—a chance to build a more modern, effective, and collaborative culture that amplifies human talents through the skilled, intentional implementation of technology.

For those who have been excluded from the workforce, tech-enabled ecosystems extend an invitation to the global economy by removing the need to migrate to access economic opportunity.

Evolution of human-technology partnerships

What differentiates cloud leaders

Digitization unleashes new workforce potential while also introducing new challenges related to empathy, sense of belonging, and human connection. In this way, working relationships and collaboration have been both enabled and tested by ever-advancing software and technology.

Leading enterprises integrate AI, cloud, and automation technologies to enable this new reality, empowering intelligent workflows fueled with data. This allows for the creation of new, agile business models and serves as the Golden Thread of value within the Virtual Enterprise, shaping the future of how work is performed.

We found that successful leadership depends on 4 priorities:

• Culture awareness: 89% of leading organizations realize they must transform their culture and processes, as well as reskill and retrain employees, to receive the full value of intelligent automation. This includes the responsible use of new tech tools and avoiding demographic inequities and biases.

• Authentic communication: Just 34% of executives say communication from their organizations’ leadership comes across as authentic and empathetic. Leaders must provide personalized engagement and deliberately foster an inclusive, positive workplace culture in a talent marketplace where employees have more freedom of choice than ever.

• Intelligent technology: As much as 12% of routine tasks and 11% of simple business decisions are expected to be performed by intelligent machines by 2023, compared to 7% and 6% in 2017, respectively. Entrusting more tasks to intelligent machines could free up people to focus on higher-value work.

• Workflow automation: Enterprises plan to entrust automation with complex, cross-enterprise work at 7 times the current rate by 2023, according to a recent IBV study.

Download the report to see how the Virtual Enterprise can enable accelerated productivity, collaboration, and creativity—building a more flexible, inclusive, and impactful workforce.