In our third and final installment of our company values blog series, we look at being people-centric. Specifically, we consider the advantages of the top-down, company-wide approach. We also examine the ways to apply this value inside and out. Finally, we also ponder how this affects both the bottom line and client satisfaction.
Being people-centric is a challenge
It isn’t always easy or simple to maintain a focus on people, no matter the industry you work in. Most modern products and processes disconnect from the individual. This is usually because they are either digital/virtual, or because they are mass-produced. Thus, the product providers often have little tendency to make people the center of development.
What’s more, people-based processes themselves are more generic. Recruiting, for example, is usually a talent seeker casting a very wide net over a plethora of virtual platforms and hoping to net worthy candidates. You can perform most HR functions digitally with minimal fuss. And if we’re dead honest, it’s very convenient for us to forget about the human elements when working remotely.
In some ways, then, organisations can now learn more from the user experience paradigm than ever before. This is because the end user has always been a specific focus. The lessons learned in the past about engaging with people are suddenly relevant internally.
Why seeing and acting on people is paramount
At the beginning and end of every process and communication, you will find a human being.
And yet, many modern considerations of these processes belie this simple fact. Try it for yourself – take any process or communication, and you’ll find a person at either end, either sending or receiving something. Even machine-to-machine interfaces typically have human input at one end and yield a result for a human to use at the other.
This alone, then, constitutes enough reason to put the spotlight on those people. And all the people they connect to as well as everyone in between. While this seems daunting at first, remember than you can make this each person’s responsibility to assist. As we just demonstrated, people-centric starts and ends with people.
Some advantages of this are obvious. In your own workplace, the results are greater engagement, better communications and improved growth. As highlighted above, the user experience model can also benefit from more attention paid to people. And the culmination of efforts like these is not just happier staff, but happier clients as well. The latter also speaks to our tradition of applying our values both inside and outside the organisation.
How to stay people-centric
As with any company values, you should make this part of your corporate culture. While it’s easier to incorporate a new approach at a time of rebranding or culture reshuffling, the fact that it’s people-based means you’ll always have champions for it. What’s more, like most soft skills, it becomes easier when you make it habit-forming. Repetition is the key here, so it’s important to make the steps you decide on simple and easy to perform over and over.
In addition, you should approach all elements of your business with being people-centric in mind going forward. In other words, redesign your processes if necessary, and make sure all your elements, from leadership down to base purchases, keep this in mind.
Finally, you also want to make inclusion for this in all your future strategies. While the modern product/service delivery cycle caters for this already, think a little deeper when it comes to culture and personal development. The adage “happy employees equals happy clients” does start with employees being happy. So next time you’re looking at people’s future in your company, make your approach about their happiness first. This will not only boost them up, it will also translate to better reflections from those they serve, which is an absolute boon for any organisation. What’s more, once word of this begins to spread, you’ll find top skills knocking on your door, clamouring to join you and your fabulous culture.
As the inimitable Zig Ziglar once put it, “You don’t build a business. You build people, and people build the business.”
Adept’s reliance on our values to ensure the happiness of our staff and clients is nothing new. If anything, it’s the ongoing culmination of applying our values in the best ways we know, and improving on them in the new ways we learn. This is the main theme of our corporate culture, one that we’re proud to live by and share with peers, professionals and populace alike!