How does a tech workforce hiring strategy IIoT style impact customer and employee retention and value creation? Let’s face it: the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) workforce ecosystem catalyzes legacy hiring mindset to enter, kicking and screaming, into greater engagement.
How does tech workforce hiring strategy IIoT style contribute to an organization’s value stream?
It seems like last week. Yet I launched the Sales Aerobics for Engineers® Blog 9 years ago, this month. And what a journey it continues to be, thanks to you, dear readers!
Along our journey together, Industrie 4.0 was born in Germany or the industrial Internet of Things in the US. As a result, our sales and engineering worlds have never been the same since.
The hallmark of the IIoT is interconnectivity and collaboration. Systems, machines and software connect humans in ways never before imagined. The IIoT is in its infancy. No two workforce days are ever the same.
Not only does the IIoT make the future of work anything but boring. Also, there is no room for complacency due to the pace and cadence of technology change. Your organization cannot afford to play catch up, because you won’t.
Consequently, the ability of the workforce to collaborate and communicate become more critical than ever in creating not only an engaged workforce, but an equally engaged client base.
Tech workforce hiring strategy IIoT style not only challenges whom your organization hires.
The hiring paradigm itself is challenged.
- First of all, how and why do you continue to hire yesterday’s “hirers” as HR personnel?
- Then, ponder whether yesterday’s Human Resource personas are the right people to architect the right hiring strategy to meet the challenges of creating a data-driven IIoT workforce?
When the Sales Aerobics for Engineers® Blog was launched in April, 2009, the primary focus was lack of communication and collaboration between technical and non-technical personnel. Within industrial Internet of Things environments, lack of synergy across the sales-engineering interface® has been magnified.
Why? Because collaboration is the hallmark of how people work in the IIoT ecosystem.
As a result, the problem to be solved isn’t just what type of engineers or sales people your organization hires. Rather, the issue has morphed. The question becomes: what type of network of IIoT resource personnel your organization provides to drive value through your organization and your clients’ organizations.
Common denominators still remain within the globally competitive IIoT business ecosystem.
For starters, a tech workforce hiring strategy IIoT style still wrestles with two challenges:
- First, whether it is possible for technical and engineering professionals to communicate more articulately and understandably with non-technical colleagues; and
- Then, how can an IIoT workforce hiring strategy poke holes in legacy business models and departmental silos to facilitate greater levels of cross-functional collaboration.
The IIoT challenges legacy command-control mindset, siloed business models and aging equipment and software infrastructure. More importantly, the IIoT challenges legacy learning and development models which tend to be static rather than dynamic.
Where does your organization fit in, when it comes to your current tech workforce hiring strategy IIoT style?
Do your HR personnel function as procurement specialists rather than architects of a dynamic and collaborative workforce network fine-tuned to serve and retain customers?
Throughout this week, we start celebrating the 9th year celebration of Sales Aerobics for Engineers® Blog. I offer three sets of posts, addressing three sets of evergreen questions.
- What does a rock-solid Customer Experience, Customer Success, Customer Loyalty and Customer Retention look like in the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) ecosystem?
- How can we optimize and execute a finely-tuned Technical Workforce Hiring Strategy to fulfill IIoT Human Capital Strategy?
- Why do clients and colleagues continue to not grasp the relevance and value of what sales, technical and engineering professionals are trying to communicate? Perhaps more importantly, why continue to communicate in a legacy manner when no one understands what you are saying in the first place?
My professional mantra continues to be: Depending on where we sit around the business table, we see the same things differently. When these differences create synergy, instead of barriers, we collaborate to create innovative and enduring outcomes for our customers.
In today’s post, I’m re-setting our business table for tech workforce hiring strategy IIoT style.
I offer these select articles for you to chew on this week. I welcome your questions. Let’s continue the conversation we started on April 18, 2009.
Read these articles. Ponder the variables that are the same and those which have become different within the dynamic IIoT human capital ecosystem.
I can’t wait to see where our journey leads us next. How about you?
Smart Manufacturing Plant Strategy tests Organizational Dynamics
Tech Workforce recalibration for Customer Success
HR strategy for Tech Workforce Collaboration
Digital Disruption Impacts Business Models and Workforce Gaps
Are Predictive Hiring Models the New Norm?
CIO Leadership is a must for IT-OT Convergence
Seamless Connected Operations creates Value for the Smart Enterprise
Babette Ten Haken is a catalyst, corporate strategist and facilitator. She writes, speaks, consults and coaches about how cross-functional team collaboration revolutionizes the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) value chain for customer loyalty, customer success and customer retention. Her One Millimeter Mindset™ programs draw from her background as a scientist, sales professional, enterprise-level facilitator, Six Sigma Green Belt and certified DFSS Voice of the Customer practitioner. Babette’s playbook of technical / non-technical collaboration hacks, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon. Visit the Free Resources section of her website for more tools.
Sections of this blog post are reproduced, with this author’s permission, from the April 3, 2017 blog post on customer retention, due to continuity of thematic content.
Image source: Fotolia
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