Delivering on business outcomes and engaging employees

Last week, Habanero earned three awards for solutions we built for our clients. One gold level Intranet Innovation Award for the Calgary Board of Education’s Iris solution plus one gold level Intranet Innovation Award and one CDN Channel Elite Award for FortisBC’s Information Request System.

Aside from validating our thinking that these solutions rock, they beg the question: “why?” Why are these solutions getting recognized, or, even more to the point, why have they been so successful at delivering value for our clients?

These awards are timely as we contemplate our path to Habanero’s future. This future will focus on fulfilling our purpose of helping people and organizations thrive. How can we start to move towards our future state?

There are several things we can discern from these award-winning solutions. They delivered business value. They were exceptionally useable. They drove engagement. They changed culture.

Are these outcomes connected? And if so, would that be mere correlation or can we suggest causation? We have talked much about the impact of usability in our solutions; quicker user adoption, reduced end-user training, reduced change management, and ultimately realized business value. But what about engagement and culture? Are engagement and culture the result of the solution, or are they the origins of the business value?

Driving engagement and improving culture can be both the cause and the effect of delivered business value. Engaged employees will outperform disengaged employees. Further, employees that deliver value to an organization will continue to be deeply engaged. In the same way, improving culture – through increasing transparency, for example – drives engagement, and increasing engagement will improve organizational culture.

This realization informs our approach in our journey to pivot towards helping people and organizations thrive. Thriving workplaces don’t just happen, they are built through culture, leadership, and vision.

Built thoughtfully, technology solutions – like the Iris solution or the Information Request System – can change culture and address business outcomes. This not only allows the realization of those business outcomes but they enhance the experience of all the people who use them.

Habanero’s solutions must still focus on the prime business outcomes, but to focus solely on these outcomes misses an opportunity. Each solution we build must move the needle on positive cultural change.