Customer voice: Redefining productivity, leadership, and connectedness at INSIGHTS 2023

At Dayforce, our goal is to make sure our customers get the value they expect from the moment they join as a new customer, all the way through each interaction with us and our partners. We want that value to extend beyond their expectations and become the reality of their businesses.

Achieving this north star means connecting with dozens of customers around the world every year to understand how we can bring real value to their organisations – and their people. And this is what we love about INSIGHTS – we get the pleasure of connecting with our community of customers as everyone comes together to learn from each other.

This week at INSIGHTS 2023, Ceridian’s President of Customer and Revenue Operations, Steve Holdridge, sat down with three of these incredible customers: Jill Notz (Chief Accounting Officer and Corporate Controller, PwC), Andy Ratcliffe (Head of Global People Shared Services, Costa Coffee), and Geri Williams-Fitts (Chief People Officer, Highgate).

To introduce the session, Donnebra McClendon (Ceridian’s Global Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) explored the ways that inclusion and belongingness will help leaders navigate talent development and retention in this new world of work.

"Tackling problems requires agility, creativity, and strong community connections for us to share, listen, and connect. But that's what INSIGHTS and a Brand New Dayforce is all about. It's continuing to break down those old paradigms with community and technology to help us do that best."
– Donnebra McClendon, Ceridian

After Donnebra’s opening remarks, Steve expressed the foundational importance of community in the workplace, a thought which he further explored with our customer panel. In their conversation, he asked about their biggest challenges ahead for 2024. Here are a few insightful takeaways from their conversation.

Redefine productivity in the new world of work – Jill Notz, Chief Accounting Officer and Corporate Controller, PwC

For Jill Notz of PwC, the focus right now is on the changing definition and measurement of productivity. PwC is in the process of reimagining productivity and realising the potential of its people to unlock greater value. This means rethinking things like what a full-time job really means, and considering how technology can generate time for thinking. How do you measure ideation and creativity within the scope of productivity? That’s a key question for Jill and the team at PwC today.

“One of the biggest challenges for organisations and leaders going into 2024…is redefining and recalibrating the measurement for productivity”
– Jill Notz, PwC

When Steve asked Jill how employees themselves view productivity, she shared that today’s new generation of workers wants growth experiences at work and to fully understand their roles. With the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) into how we work, these growth experiences are coming quickly, and leaders must work to reconfigure productivity measures for new roles. As these next-gen workers — the strategists and thinkers of tomorrow — start operating in unexpectedly new capacities, organisations will be tasked with managing this workforce complexity.

Aim for adaptive, data-driven leadership – Andy Ratcliffe, Head of Global People Shared Services, Costa Coffee

Given this new view of work and workers, leaders are challenged to react quickly. Andy Ratcliffe of Costa Coffee stressed the need for adaptive leadership. For him, this flexible leadership style will be the key to activating your people’s full potential. While pre-pandemic there was a more standard leader-follower relationship, today’s leaders face many challenges and are expected to adapt.

Andy shared how creativity and innovation are needed to foster new approaches to problems, inviting important considerations like diversity, equity, and inclusion. Today’s organisations should be mirrors that reflect their customers, which means having a diverse workforce.

"Adaptive leadership is going to be key in the future."
– Andy Ratcliffe, Costa Coffee

At Costa Coffee, they’re looking more critically at roles now. When a person leaves a role, they look at filling it from the perspective of building the workforce they predict in 18 months, not just next week. Andy explained how he’s relying on data and analytics to make informed decisions that ultimately impact the consumer experience. In his view, technology is the key to making leaders adaptable and agile, especially AI.

Build connectedness to empower people – Geri Williams-Fitts, Chief People Officer, Highgate

Geri Williams-Fitts of Highgate explained how important it is to empower the people at the center of decision-making in this new world of work. For her, the importance of interconnectedness — in our systems and in our people — cannot be overstated. Speed matters when getting the data and analysis needed to fuel agile leaders. If leaders are to find the right answers for their skills-based workforce, they need to rely on multigenerational communication. By assessing both the technologies at their disposal and workers’ varying capabilities, we can encourage brilliant minds to create with purpose.

"The traditional workforce is not as it used to be. Adaptability is a key component."
– Geri Williams-Fitts, Highgate

For Geri, the pandemic revealed to leaders that there was no rulebook — nothing was predictable. Leaders have to stay ahead by using analytics to predict what their business needs are and when those needs will arise. And leaders’ commitment to curiosity about AI will play a leading role in this data-drive people empowerment.

Community is at the center of today’s evolving workforce

The world of work has never been more complex with a workforce that is increasingly boundless — fluid, borderless, and always on — and an ever-evolving compliance landscape. The path forward happens together, innovating for and with our customers. And we couldn’t be more excited for what comes next.