An Introduction to People Ready Business
Alistair Baker, managing director, Microsoft UK
The first question you might ask is: “So what is a people-ready business?”.
For Microsoft, it starts with a very simple principle - a people ready business is a business that knows that people are its most important asset.
We believe that people, more than processes, systems, machines, location, or outside consultants, are the ultimate drivers of business success. A people ready business not only realises this, but also centres its operations, culture and tools around getting the most out of this critical and important resource.
Recent research carried out by PwC on behalf of Microsoft shows that 78% of UK business leaders, when asked to name their most important asset, replied unprompted: ‘people’. This is great news, but by itself this realisation does not make an organisation a ‘People Ready Business’.
Indeed, in the same survey only 39% of those questioned said that their IT strategy was designed to get the most of out their people. This seems strange, especially given that 91% of respondents admit that IT has helped people to work better. So why are UK organisations not putting the emphasis on getting the tools and infrastructure in place to support what they say is their most valuable asset?
The People Ready Business aligns its culture, leadership and tools around its most important asset. The leadership provides people with a vision and values that they buy into and fervently support, the culture provides them with an environment that they want to work and excel within, and the tools provide the framework that allows them to excel and innovate.
By itself, this makes PRB extremely relevant for the UK and our businesses. It becomes perhaps even more relevant for us when you consider that according to the ONS, as of December 2005, an incredible 82.5% of the UK workforce are involved in the sector that is most focussed on the engagement and interaction between people – the service sector.
It’s not just the service sector that PRB is relevant towards however – all industries benefit in different ways from putting people at the centre of their operations and thinking.
So how can you tell if you are on the right road? How can you gauge whether you are becoming a people ready business? A good start point would be to ask some simple questions of yourself and the people around you, questions such as:
1. Can your people access data and application as easily on the road as at the office?
2. Do they have cross-company access to information they need to make the best decision every time the pressure is on?
3. Can they give customers instant answers, no matter whether the question is about billing, etc?
4. Can they track inventory, finances, customer orders, payroll and project schedules in real time, across department?
5. Do all your business applications share a common user interface?
A people ready business creates, and invests in, a culture around a shared value system—an infrastructure that empowers and enables its people to drive the business forward. This infrastructure is based on having the right tools in place – the tools that allow you to answer ‘yes’ to all of the questions above without having to even think about it.
It is this infrastructure that gives people the support, resources, and mandate they need to act intuitively, respond decisively, and invent imaginatively.
When individuals realise their potential, your company realises its potential. That realisation is what separates what we call a People Ready Business from an ordinary one. Are you People Ready?