The concept of working in cross-functional, self-managed teams 鈥� or what we call 鈥�dynamic teams鈥� 鈥� is a reality for most employees. In our聽, we found well over three-fourths (82%) of respondents have participated in a dynamic team more than once, and 64% are engaged in multiple dynamic teams simultaneously.

Despite being created out of necessity, dynamic teams can be either a culture shift or a culture shock. Our research shows that fewer than one-quarter (20%) of employees are satisfied with these experiences and only 36% of managers are motivated to encourage direct reports to participate in a dynamic team in the future. Surveyed managers want clear expectations for their employees鈥� involvement, real-time updates on challenges and progress, and awareness of skills acquired through the dynamic team experience.

According to Kathi Enderes, Ph.D., senior vice president of Research and global industry analyst at The Josh Bersin Company, the HR technology used often contributes to this misalignment within dynamic teams. 鈥淧eople don鈥檛 naturally work in a linear structure. However, teams often fall into the trap of following the rigid hierarchies of their traditional HR technologies, stemming from the industrial age, to manage performance, give feedback, coach, and develop teams,鈥� says Enderes.

Heed the Signs of a Changing HR Landscape

The informality of dynamic teams can provide the flexibility companies need, but it can also lead to trouble for the overall business culture. It鈥檚 human nature to lean into the convenience of casually asking people we already know and like to join a dynamic team to tackle a critical business issue or deliver a strategic initiative. But that also means managers are missing out on talented people without the right connections 鈥� narrowing the diversity of knowledge, critical capabilities, and compatible traits necessary to deliver positive outcomes.

Management decision-making about personnel based on a biased 鈥渨ho knows who鈥� mindset 鈥� rather than a strategically focused one 鈥� can limit employee opportunity and reduce engagement, and highly skilled employees suffer. They increasingly disengage when passed over for roles and promotions that can further develop their competencies. The people with the potential, desire, and enthusiasm to acquire and apply new skills who are shut out of any chance to grow eventually seek out a new employer openly committed to their immediate and long-term personal development.

That kind of environment is the perfect breeding ground for groupthink. Over time, entrenched teams are compelled to add more tasks, processes, systems, and complexity rather than subtracting existing ones that do not add value to the project at hand.

C-suite leaders can 鈥� and must 鈥� find ways to eliminate this risk in their workforce culture. By prioritizing digital strategies for properly skilling and engaging employees and matching them to the right opportunities, they set a foundation that not only creates a future-ready workforce but also future-proofs the business.

As a first step, organizations need to start their HR transformation journey with an understanding of the skills available today and the skills that will be needed in the future. This includes keeping a dynamic team strategy adaptable enough to support a growing list of diverse work arrangements, including hybrid work, the four-day work week, talent marketplaces, internal gig work, or non-linear career pathways.

鈥淧eople now work in agile teams that come together around customer problems, analyze and solve them, and disband again quickly,鈥� says Enderes. 鈥淗R technologies must be as dynamic as the way we work today.鈥�

Enhance Outcomes with Greater Organizational Agility

Cohesive and cross-functional team strategies that support organizational agility unlock the door to dynamic teams that are not only successful but also embody the benefits of empowerment and inclusiveness. With visibility into their existing workforce, organizational managers can construct teams that reflect the diversity of the people impacted by the initiative鈥檚 outcomes. Even more, they connect the right people to the right challenges, elevating the quality of the workforce by creating more skilled employees.

The first step is forming a team-based structure 鈥� a shared visual representation of the team 鈥� to define individual roles and help ensure accountability. In return, dynamic team leaders and their members can pinpoint gaps in skills, functions, and responsibilities and source new colleagues with the skills and strengths that can add value to the overall initiative.

Colleagues across different departments can discover open dynamic team roles through the solution. Leaders can quickly generate an assignment within the dynamic team experience that includes the role description and required skills and qualifications. As soon as the assignment is published, employees throughout the organization can view the open role, consider if they or someone else is a fit, and apply if interested 鈥� all from the same view.

The opportunity for organizational managers and business leaders to measure team progress among cross-functional teams with objectives and key results (OKRs) is a significant advantage. Until now, this insight was shrouded in manual reporting and simplistic dashboards, limiting transparency and a complete understanding of how their people 鈥� whether seen or unseen 鈥� contribute to the business when working in teams. Yet, more importantly, this capability enables individual talent to build on skills and interests enriched by their experience and thinking.

鈥淚ntegrating dynamic teams functionality with HR technology allows employees to work on multiple projects and help accomplish critical goals,鈥� says Enderes. 鈥淲ith team management capabilities, the ability to source team members through 麻豆原创 SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace, and an OKR experience integrated with talent management, performance management across cross-functional teams and individual contributors is made possible. It supports the 鈥榥ow鈥� and the future of work.鈥�

This approach allows executives, managers, and employees to become more aware of what efforts and contributions are critical to the business. Employees can connect their team-based OKRs to their individual performance goals in the solution by tying team performance to established business metrics. They can spend their time working on projects they understand are critical for the business and their personal development and growth 鈥� all with the confidence that leaders will appropriately recognize their contributions.

The benefits go even further, as organizational leaders build dynamic teams across departmental boundaries with visibility into the volume and composition of successful dynamic teams and OKR data to track team progress and outcomes. Leaders can create report stories with the 麻豆原创 SuccessFactors People Analytics solution to tap into cross-functional knowledge and foster a culture that confidently achieves program goals and is consistently prepared for new challenges and opportunities.

Embrace a More Dynamic Future of Work Now

Being among a network of people who appreciate and value each other鈥檚 work, strengths, and potential can be a very motivating aspect of everyone鈥檚 employee experience. It鈥檚 what drives people 鈥� of all roles and backgrounds 鈥� to seize opportunities to develop their skills, contribute more to the business, and establish themselves as highly desirable talent.

This energy across the workforce can become pivotal in how the business grows and succeeds in the long run. Organizations often have a better chance of achieving their goals by building dynamic teams with a mix of internal and external experts. Yet, at the same time, talented professionals can develop new skills and practice existing ones within the safety of a supportive environment.

One thing is true: a business transformation in which dynamic teams are a centerpiece requires transparency and data-driven insights. Together, these two ingredients can optimize dynamic team composition, experiences, and outcomes.

Interested in learning how your investment in 麻豆原创 SuccessFactors solutions can help you optimize the outcomes of your increasingly fluid workforce? View the聽聽and watch the about our dynamic teams functionality.

Meg Bear is president and chief product officer at 麻豆原创 SuccessFactors.

And once in a lifetime, that means undertaking one of the largest cloud transformations 麻豆原创 has ever seen.

In December, 麻豆原创 SuccessFactors completed a massive transition of our cloud solutions, migrating customers from legacy data centers to our next-generation infrastructure, state-of-the-art hyperscalers, and 麻豆原创 Converged Cloud. This investment enables accelerated growth while improving security, reliability, and enhancing end user performance.

To give you a sense of the scope of this program: we built six new points of presence, decommissioned nine data centers, and migrated more than 7,000 customers, over 2,000 payroll systems, and about 150,000 tenants across five continents. This was the biggest program I have ever seen in my 30 years as a technology executive 鈥� a true moonshot.

Human and technical innovation emerged to help us reach our goal 鈥� we built automation, improved our database topology, and improved file storage and various other things to increase consistency, improve performance, and reduce cost. In addition, we also lived our human experience management (HXM) culture, leveraging to upskill and adapt to the emerging needs of the business.

Unlocking the Intelligent Enterprise

Of course, this entire program was not just about infrastructure, it was about increasing our innovation velocity and accelerating the value of the for our customers and partners. Having a consistent, next-generation cloud infrastructure enables us to making better use of , improving end-to-end integration across the entire lifecycle.

And of course, this also creates the foundation for our , data-driven, individualized experiences that enable growth, foster belonging, and value every person every day. Achieving on this initiative will also present opportunities to level up broadly across our product set moving forward, including setting ourselves up for and other 2023 priorities.

This project could not have been achieved without the support of our customers and partners. Throughout the process, we held dozens of customer webinars for thousands of attendees. We also developed a cutover methodology to transition customers while minimizing risks, with existing infrastructure remaining untouched聽during the build, prepare,聽and test phases. The trust our customers and partners placed in us allowed us to work diligently and efficiently, and many conversations I鈥檝e had with them shows how excited they are to have such a successful result.

The Next-Generation Cloud Delivery campaign was truly a herculean effort with a single goal 鈥� continuing to improve the 麻豆原创 SuccessFactors experience so together we can change work for good.

Meg Bear is president and chief product officer of 麻豆原创 SuccessFactors.

For the last 20 years, we have embraced our role as innovators and pioneers to create revolutionary tech, stayed at the forefront of workplace trends, and provided solutions that enable organizations to keep people at the center of their business.

In recognition of our market-defining vision for human experience management (HXM), we were recently featured in the Global Thought Leaders series on CBSNews.com. Building an adaptable and resilient workforce is a critical lever for CEOs to advance business continuity.

The , which launches today, shares our strategic vision to bring together the cloud technology, intelligent data, and adaptable tools to complement the agility organizations need to meet the accelerating demands of people and business. The positive impact technology can have on the human experience at work has never been greater.

A Humble Look Back

With a company culture that celebrates our founding principles of 鈥淒reamers that Do,鈥� people who 鈥淟ead with Heart,鈥� and 鈥淐ustomer Breakthroughs,鈥� it is in our DNA to continuously look at how organizations and work are changing in order to create the solutions our customers need to stay ahead. The SuccessFactors founders did this when they disrupted human resources (HR) tech in 2001 as one of the first companies to bring HR technology to the cloud — at a time when the world doubted if organizations would ever move away from on-premise software!

We鈥檝e never been afraid to be first. After being acquired by 麻豆原创 in 2012, we pioneered a global core HR solution. Today, it has unmatched scalability and reach with availability in 45 languages and localization in more than 100 countries and territories. Brands like , Microsoft, , , and Whirlpool are using it to tap into a single source of truth for their workforce data to make decisions and foster people-first inclusive cultures.

Then, in 2019, we took our vision for HR and the employee experience one giant leap forward. With the help of industry thought leaders, our research and product teams, and our customer advisory boards, we introduced the HXM category and made a bold commitment to move beyond the limitations of traditional human capital management (HCM) technologies.

By recognizing that top-down, HR-driven processes simply aren鈥檛 sufficient to support people amid continuous change, we saw an opportunity to create a new set of solutions that prioritizes the needs, motivations, and aspirations of individuals. We call this HXM. When people feel supported at every point along their journey — who they are and who they are becoming — the results are simply magic. As Charlene Li, chief research officer of PA Consulting, rightly says in the video: 鈥淔inally!鈥�

The Power of “And”: Leading HCM and Making the HXM Market

Our HXM innovations help organizations not only listen to but respond to and act on the sentiments, preferences, and motivations of their people. By helping organizations evolve their HR processes from static to adaptable, infused with employee feedback, we are helping them create individualized, modern experiences that make work easy and intuitive. Intelligent mentoring, continuous performance management, and 麻豆原创 SuccessFactors Work Zone are just some of our modern capabilities that make traditional processes flexible to the needs of the individual.

And we are going even further. With the whole self model as our data foundation, we can create a future of work that is more sustainable for people and the organization. For example, matches people with learning, mentors, projects and gigs, and dynamic teams spin up quickly for discrete projects based on each individual鈥檚 skills, capabilities, strengths, work styles, and passions.

These capabilities do so much more than simplifying work. It helps people align their careers to their passions. It elevates mental health and well-being, helps employees find the right work life balance, and creates more diverse and inclusive workplaces for a greater sense of purpose and belonging. Plus it ensures organizations have the right people in the right roles at the right time 鈥� strengthening organizational capability and building an aggregate understanding for future planning. This is how you drive truly impactful organizational transformations and create a more sustainable future of work.

The Next 20: Reinventing HR and Shaping the Future of Work

People make the difference, and enabling human connections will ultimately create lasting and impactful change. HXM will continue to play a leading role in shaping the future of work because it is the future of people at work.

Together with our customers, we are amplifying the role of HR by shifting focus from processes to people. We are boldly reinventing the employee experience with solutions that empower and inspire. We are reinventing how business is done by shaping the human experience at work to be more connected and sustainable, and by providing of greater purpose, empathy, and belonging. These are the values that stand the test of time.

Watch the Global Thought Leaders documentary on our long-term strategic vision .

Meg Bear is president and chief product officer for 麻豆原创 SuccessFactors.