Work Has Been Transformed: Now What?

Digital transformation is the new norm. Corporate culture can be a competitive advantage when implementing a digital transformation strategy. Culture propels digital transformation faster, allowing companies that align technological innovation with the needs of their employees to achieve extraordinary results.

Technological market drivers like 5G, electrification, autonomy, Cloud computing, artificial intelligence, personalized health care and the internet of things have transformed industries with amazing new products and innovation. Simulation is key to the innovation that supports digital transformation.

Some engineers accustomed to using simulation have been frustrated by corporate cultures that were slow to embrace transformation. You don’t have to be a structural engineer to know a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. It’s not enough for engineering teams to be agile. The entire ecosystem must support digital transformation to succeed.

As Ravi Kumar Devaki “RKD,” Director of Customer Excellence, is quoted in our newly released culture e-book: “Ansys is not static. Here, you are on a mission and the whole ecosystem exists to support you.

Transformation by Necessity

The global pandemic prioritized digital transformation across organizations, big and small. A McKinsey Global Survey of executives¹ conducted last summer asked about organizational changes. “For those that respondents have seen, we asked how long it took to execute them and how long that would have taken before the crisis,” writes McKinsey. “For many of these changes, respondents say, their companies acted 20 to 25 times faster than expected.”

If executives and senior management were shocked by how quickly their companies were able to go digital by making changes like moving assets to the Cloud or using advanced technologies to make business decisions and improve operations, imagine how non-executive employees felt. Were their heads spinning from the speed of the transformation, or were they grumbling “about time?” Maybe a little of both.

A Deloitte survey conducted last year asked senior executives and individual workers for the most important outcomes they hoped to achieve in their work transformation efforts over the next one to three years. The two groups were in lockstep on the second-most popular response: increasing innovation.

Where executives and workers differed the most in their responses to Deloitte’s question was the importance they placed on improving worker well-being. Workers ranked it as their third-most important outcome they hoped to achieve in their work transformation efforts, while senior executives ranked it much lower.

The surveys point to an inherent opportunity: Culture needs to keep pace with technology.

Expand the Spirit of Engineering Innovation

During the pandemic, our spirit of innovation ensured our team members understood how to use our collaboration tools to stay connected. We provided an abundance of wellness resources like our well-being clubs and community, wellness app, employee assistance program and employee resource groups. We conducted our own surveys to better understand how we were meeting employee’s needs.

For example, each year, all employees are invited to complete an engagement survey on culture-related topics. Even during the pandemic, our overall engagement index was 89%, which is a gold standard level of attainment that includes manager effectiveness, performance orientation and employee engagement. That engagement shined through when employees used paid time off to support their favorite community causes, exceeding our goal to volunteer 50,000 hours to celebrate our 50^th anniversary.

1. How COVID-19 Has Pushed Companies Over the Technology Tipping Point and Transformed Business Forever 

2. Diving deeper Five workforce trends to watch in 2021