The best human capital management applications have evolved from just automating standard human resource (HR) processes to become strategic tools for managing talent and analyzing workforce capabilities.
Now, a new wave of innovation is taking HR evolution a step further with work/life applications that are designed to help employees better balance their professional and personal lives. In the following interview Oracle Director of HCM Product Strategy Mark Bennett explains how Oracle's new Oracle Work Life Solutions Cloud offerings can enhance creativity, boost productivity, and help individuals become more effective inside and outside of work.
Q: How do you define work/life solutions?
A: They're applications and features of products that help individuals better understand various facets of their professional and personal lives. Many people want to find a better balance between these two areas, but they're finding they don't always have the information they need to make that happen.
Q: Can you give us some examples of work/life solutions?
A: Oracle Work Life Solutions Cloud offers an extensible set of solutions including My Reputation, a feature that helps employees better understand how they are seen within their social media communities. It can also help them develop their professional brand as it aligns with that of their company to help with their career development and advancement. Another example is My Wellness, a feature that leverages wearable devices that enable people to monitor their activity levels throughout the day and their sleep patterns at night. So for example, people with a low energy level may decide to get more sleep to see if that makes a difference.
Offerings that are based around competition, such as the My Competitions feature of Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud, can help organizations create incentives for employees. Software developers may engage in friendly competition to see who fixes the most bugs in a week. Or someone might organize a contest for workgroup members to come up with ideas about new features for a product redesign project.
In the future, work/life solutions might include taking advantage of the video capabilities in smart phones to provide an easy way to upload clips to ask a question of coworkers, share a new research findings, or even to link to short profiles of a person's appointment contacts—helping individuals connect on a more personal level and gain a better understanding of the context of meetings.
Q: How do organizations benefit from making work/life solutions available to employees?
A: There are three primary ways. First, individuals can better understand their work habits, so, for example, they don't push themselves so hard they risk burnout or don't pay enough attention to other facets of their lives.
Second, these solutions send a powerful signal to the workforce by indicating a company's interest in their employees that goes beyond their professional contributions. Many employees will appreciate that their company is paying attention to their personal as well as professional needs.
Third, there may be a dollars-and-cents payoff. If the information collected from one of the solutions encourages more employees to participate in wellness programs, healthcare costs may start to decrease through rebates from carriers or from reduced claims.
Q: What should employers keep in mind to assure work/life solutions succeed?
A: It's essential that companies make it clear they are not monitoring any of this data but instead are simply providing tools to help employees gain insights into their lives to help them decide whether they want to make adjustments based on their personal goals. The key is giving employees the tools they need to make their own decisions about their own lives.
Learn more about Oracle Work Life Solutions Cloud and and request a demo today.
This content is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle's products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.
Mark Bennett is a Director of Product Strategy at Oracle. Mark focuses on setting the strategic vision and direction for tools that help organizations understand, shape, and leverage the capabilities of their workforce to achieve business objectives, as well as help individuals work effectively to achieve their goals and navigate their own growth. His combination of a deep technical background in software design and development, coupled with a broad knowledge of business challenges and thinking in today’s globalized, rapidly changing, technology accelerated economy, has enabled him to identify and incorporate key innovations that are central to Oracle Fusion’s unique value proposition. Mark has over the course of his career been in charge of the design, development, and strategy of Talent Management products and the design and development of cutting edge software that is better equipped to handle the increasingly complex demands of users while also remaining easy to use. Follow him @mpbennett