Sankara Vishi Viswanathan, SVP & CIO, Day & Zimmermann
In order to effectively bridge the gap between employees and the IT department, cios must focus on identifying and strategically placing both business savvy technologists and tech savvy operation experts within the company
They must take a human-centric approach to IT. In order to build this type of infrastructure within their companies, CIOs must rethink how their own departments operate and where they fit within the larger corporate strategy. There are three actionable items that CIOs can follow:
Collaborate
According to a survey performed by Gartner, CIOs should seek stronger relationships with other business departments for three main reasons: to gain a clearer understanding of business strategies and priorities, to identify initiatives and projects to focus on, and to build more collaborative relationships with business executives. When thinking about how to take a human-centric approach to their work, CIOs would be wise to begin their collaboration efforts with the one department that is most adept and experienced at the management of people— Human Resources.
When collaborative relationships across other business functions are formed, CIOs and technology professionals can fully understand the needs of each unit and work together with department heads to institutionalize technology best practices. There should be constant two-way communications between departments and IT to ensure that the technology put in place is efficient and effective.
Elevate and Integrate
Regardless of how engaged employees are with the use of technology within their organization, there will always be a need for IT experts. But in order to effectively bridge the gap between employees and the IT department, CIOs must focus on identifying and strategically placing both business savvy technologists and tech savvy operation experts within the company. These hybrid employees should be positioned as leaders.
The latest State of the CIO by CIO Magazine states that 36 percent of CIOs say they believe that people in other departments see IT as an obstacle to the corporate mission, while 31 percent of business executives agreed with that sentiment. This perception of IT must be changed from “roadblock” to “team member.” When these hybrid employees are introduced into other business units and start to disseminate valuable information, their peers will not only gain new knowledge, but also begin to view technology as an ally rather than an obstacle.
Educate
CIOs need to put systems in place to ensure that everyone in the organization, from front line associates to the CEO, understand the benefits of learning new technologies and have a basic knowledge of how those systems work. It can’t be assumed that employees have technology experience already, even as the workforce skews younger. IT leaders need to recognize that their employee’s skills must be continuously developed as technology evolves, and realize that the education never stops. CIOs should push for technology proficiency and understanding to be a metric evaluated alongside other basic job skills for every position within an organization.
As the success of other departments is becoming increasingly reliant on technology, CIOs must reevaluate how their department is run, now more than ever. According to CIO magazine, 31 percent of CEOs say a top priority for IT is to simplify it. Doing so will not be easy, but it starts with understanding that effective enterprise technology must start with the people using it. User experience design has become a critical component of technology development in the last decade. CIOs would be wise to learn the lessons of this evolution in their own organizations in order to maximize organizational efficiency and technological opportunity.
