How Cognizant is Reshaping the Future of Work | Leading Through Change | Salesforce

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When the pandemic hit in March, many of us thought to ourselves, okay, I can make this work for a couple of months, right? Fast forward eight months later. It is clear this is not a temporary situation. We are in the midst of a new normal and it's time to adopt to new ways of working, learning and living. It's time to reshape our future. Good morning, I'm Leah McGowan here and welcome to another one of our live weekly conversations as part of our Leading Through Change series, a chance for you to hear from leaders around the world who are doing their best to get through these challenging times as well as support their communities. Now, before we get started, I want to preview the next hour. We'll bring you a conversation between Genevieve Weber, COO and SVP Salesforce platform, and Anel Cherian, EVP of strategy and technology at Cognizant, about how they're using work.com, part of the Salesforce Customer360, to reimagine the way they work and the new normal. We'll then dive into a live demo highlighting the latest innovations in our expansion of work.com into trusted communications and employee experience solutions. True innovation. And after that, we have a very special guest joining us, Aisha Curry. You may have noticed I'm coming to you from my kitchen. A very clean kitchen, I may add. We will then close, so you don't want to miss that. We well then close today with a sneak peek from How I Work, a series about connecting with your health and your customers. Listen to leaders talk about the way they are pivoting to adapt to the digital world. Today we're gonna bring you Emma Lovewell, senior peloton, instructor and founder of Live Learn Love well. And as we do every week on Leading Through Change, we we want to help those who need it the most. This year we are commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disability act to celebrate progress towards ensuring equal access for all. Salesforce and the Muscular Dystrophy association are teaming up to show strength for mda. And listen later in the episode, NDA CEO Lynn o' Connor Vaz will talk about how they're bringing back the famous NDA Telethon on October 24, totally reimagined for the digital age and featuring Kevin Hart and friends. So you want to get involved, please visit the link you see here on the screen. Now, before I pass it over to today's host, Genevieve, we have some very exciting news to share with you all. I think you need to take a seat Are you sitting? Okay, you ready? We're coming up on the time of the year where we typically host our most important event of the year. Dreamforce. Well, when we thought about how to approach Dreamforce this year, we knew it is unlike any other technology conference, especially in the context of a year like no other 2020. Our very own Marc Benioff will deliver a virtual keynote on on November 12th. Mark your calendars to share our vision for the future, Celebrate our customers success, unveil new innovations across Salesforce Customer360 platform and so much more. Dreamforce to you will bring the power of Dreamforce right to our customers. Wherever you are, stay up to date with all of this and what's available to dreamforce.2ucontentsreamforce.com with that, it is my pleasure to welcome the fabulous Genevieve Weber. Over to you, Genevieve.

Thank you so much, Leah. I'm so pleased to be here today with Anil Cherian, EVP of Strategy and Technology at Cognizant. But before we start our discussion, I want to share with you the latest innovations on work.com. when we launched work.com this spring, our goal was to deliver crisis response solutions. And as Leah mentioned, it's clear that this is not just a temporary situation that we find ourselves in. We are in the midst of a new normal and we all need to adapt to a new way of working and living. In this new normal, customers have heightened expectations around how they interact with businesses and how businesses are keeping them safe and informed. And employees, they require new, more engaging ways of working with their employers, with their colleagues, completely digitally in order to remain happy, healthy and productive. That's why this week we announced Work.com is expanding beyond crisis response. Work.com now includes brand new innovations, entrusted communications and all new out of the box employee experience. So how exciting is that? In order to help organizations adapt to new ways of communicating, we have decided to expand work.com and now we'll be able to use work.com in this all digital work from anywhere world. Work.com is the new way to work in the new normal. And that's what we're going to talk with Anil about today. We're going to learn not only about how Cognizant responded to this unprecedented global crisis, but how they're meeting the needs of their customers and employees in the future of work as they adapt to their new normal. Anil, thank you so much for joining us today.

Great. I'm happy to be here. Thanks. Thanks for hosting me, Genevieve.

Yeah, it's wonderful. Let's dive right in. Given the state of the world, well being is more important now than ever. As a leader focused on strategy and technology, I'd love to hear your opinion about how the technology in the workplace supported your strategy to better support your employees and focus on well being. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Sure. Great. I'd love to do that. So as you can imagine, just like any other corporation, we spent a lot of time, we were beginning to spend a lot of time on employee well being in addition to things like their physical well being, their diversity and inclusion, their training and learning and so on. So we had a pretty good program going in terms of improving the safety and well being of our employees. But then Covid hit and Covid hit really hard and we had to really move fast at that point. So we took several actions, as you can imagine. I think a lot of our peers did as well. And it's all about immediately figuring out a way in which we can get 100% of our employees working from home, building the right security and technology protocols to allow them to do that. We spent a fair amount of time in terms of just enhancing our communications and doing pulse surveys and trying to get a real view of what the employees were going through. In addition, we built out, you know, we were based on a very physical world. People were where they worked and they, you know, they talked about where they worked. And we're now moving to a much more virtual world where you might have people working in different locations, but they serve the same client. It was, it was the whole moving away from a client base to much more of a virtual base. And, and we're building out that flexibility. And now we're in the whole process of figuring out how do we return to office and do that in a way that's really catering to our. And that's a significant amount of work in terms of the technologies and we can get into that. But in addition to that, one of the things we did just from a wellbeing perspective, we invested and gave raises to well over 22/3 of our employees right in the heart of this crisis. And we felt was critical as they went through this transition, traumatic experience, to really feel that we cared for them and we raised their compensation. And in addition, in the communities that we belong in, we actually had Cognizant foundation invest well over $10 million in really dealing with communities, dealing with the COVID issue. So it's a significant amount of work. It's not just about technology. It's a full it's got the full focus of our executive committee and so on.

Wow, you shared so many amazing things there. Clearly you are adapting to the new normal. You have a new way of working. One of the things that's interesting that you shared with me is that you actually joined the company during COVID which means you are living the new normal. I also thought it was really interesting what you shared about well being and how you're prioritizing that. And I mean, that's such a great example of keeping your employees healthy, happy and productive. And you know that that's going to help your company grow. That's amazing. Okay, let's talk a little bit about the future of work. So Cognizant has, as I understand it, been thinking about the future of work for some time. So pre Covid, particularly through your center for the Future of Work. So I'd really like to hear more about that and also how your forward thinking approach to the future of work prepared your organization for this rapid shift that you needed to make to a digital employee experience. Why did you decide to prioritize in.

This area before COVID Yeah, no, that's a great question. I'd say one of the things Cognizant we pride ourselves with is on thought leadership. Way over 10 years ago, Cognizant was the originator of the idea called smac, which was social, mobile, analytics and cloud. So that was our terminology, which kind of took off about 10 years ago. So as we looked at the technologies that were changing and there's a significant amount of convergence that's going on, whether it's machine learning, AI IoT, 5G distributed ledgers, your quantum computing, gig labor. And I could go on and on. There's this huge amount of technology that's coming up there. And while a lot of that is in the future, one of the things we would say is that the future is much faster than you think. We really took a view of that and said, well, how does that affect the way in which we work? What is the future of work? And so we put together a thought leadership paper. It's actually on our website, but it's really talking about the five areas. One is what is the way we work? How do we do what we do? The second piece is what are the tools of work? Meaning what apps, what systems, what networks, tools and processes? Do we need things like zoom and collaboration tools and so on? What are the aesthetics of work? What does work look like? How does it feel to be at work? And all of that's going to Change. With all of the advent and convergence of this technology, what are some of the issues? When do you say work is work and home is home? How do you split the two and really make that feel of issues? Then what is the real meaning of work? What gets us out of bed and makes us proud and feel good? So this is a thought leadership paper that we put together. If you ever want to go on a website, it's called everything you ever wanted to know about the future of work but were afraid to ask. Is good piece and it's a real, really well thought out and it's really helped us frankly, having that thought leadership upfront to really look at it. And it's really become a playbook for a lot of the things that we're now going through within the pandemic.

That's amazing. I'm definitely going to check it out and smack, I learned something. That's great. Let's talk a little bit about employees. We'll go a little bit deeper here. It sounds like Cognizant is really treating their employees like customers, which is amazing. It's clear that this pandemic has really shifted working dynamics and employee needs. Organizations now need to serve both their employees and their customers in similar ways, protecting their safety, delivering innovative solutions to meet their needs, all while inspiring productivity. So how have you been approaching this transition?

Yeah, it's really been. When you think about cognizant, we're about 300,000 people global. We serve our global 2,000 clients. So a significant amount of touch points across between our clients and our associates. And, and so for us, the health and safety of our associates is paramount. That's number one as far as that's concerned. And so what this is really about now is how do we balance what we need to be doing from a fundamental perspective, from a health and safety perspective, while continuing to meet our client needs, which frankly has continued to grow during the whole pandemic crisis. So I kind of categorize this into three main areas. Area number one is communications. We really focused on opening the lines of communications between our executive team, our management team, our leadership teams, and all of our associates. And there's a real back and forth that's going on in a variety of different ways. I mentioned before that we do these pulse surveys, which is really getting a sense of what do our employees really feel Now Covid has been going through these cycles where you have individuals who are like, I've got to get back to work. You know, we talked about, you know, our, you know, the real Introverts really don't care about going back to work where the extroverts might. And I don't mean to, I don't mean to say anything bad about anyone, but I think there's some issues there. But it's really getting the pulse and it's really, you know, how well. And we have these surveys that we go and get from, from our, from our associates to really get a sense of where they are. The second piece is investing in our people. We're really grateful for our team for really keeping and doing the work that's needed for our clients and they're really focused on it and that's really what's making us successful. You know, they're staying productive despite the traumatic experiences that they're going through is all over the world. We're a little bit safer here in the US but when you think about different parts of the. Different parts of the world where you don't have the right communications capabilities, you know, our team, our associates, have really gone in and done a phenomenal job in investing. And that's what I mentioned about, you know, giving them raises to really show that we appreciate them, but really stepping up our training. Our chief people officer really puts it really well. And she says, Becky Schmidt, she says supercharging our talent pillar with remote training is really the core here and she's really been leading that effort within. Congressman. And then lastly, I think it's about trust and I think it's building the trust that we are instilling that sense of trust and it's really demonstrating that we understand that keeping our employees safe is paramount and really walking the talk. Right. It's really, that's really the shift that we're moving towards. Earlier we talk about careers, projects, investments and data and so on, but now we're talking about well being. That's become a key component. So that's why, you know, we partnered with Salesforce and we actually used work.com to run a pilot and we call it the Safe Building Solution. And, and it's really for a division within Cognizant. It's one of our solution centers. It's in Missoula, Montana. And we really worked with Salesforce to build out some of the core components of work.com and we're trying it out, we're piloting it, we're using Iot to look at the return to office solutions, the way in which we gather information in terms of building, building temperatures, air quality and so on. We're using wellness surveys for the staff that's there. We've built a pandemic dashboard leveraging tableau, and that's allowing us to really view where people are and what's going on as well as we're using my trailhead for employee enablement and for training and so on. So it's really a great pilot. And we're in the middle of that right now and we're looking at what does that mean? One, not only for ourselves, the 300,000 people who belong cognizant, but also how can we bring that jointly with Salesforce to our clients? So there's some actual real opportunities I know that both of our teams are working on.

Yes, that's great. So I heard you say to recap the three things which I think are so important for our audience, Communications, productivity, and trust. These are values for Salesforce as well. I think what you shared around the surveys and the pulse, that's critically important. And then you can adapt how you take the responses and help the employees with their well being, the raises and doing that in this time is amazing. The training, I love what you said your chief people officer is talking about in terms of training that really being a pillar and more relevant than ever in this time. And we believe the same thing. And then trust, I mean, both customer trust and employee trust is so important at this time, you know, and that's why one of the reasons why we came out with trusted communications, we want to make sure that our customers can ensure their customers are feeling safe and informed. That's great. Yeah. So let's shift gears a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about Harvard Business Review report that we sponsored. And it was about the importance of technology on the employee experience strategy. And while many organizations say employee experience is a priority, they're not doing much. You just gave us some great examples of what you're doing. But surprisingly, the report found that many IT and technology leaders are central to the employee experience strategy, which we might not have thought of pre Covid. So I'd like for you to share your advice for other technology leaders who find themselves in this type of situation. And I think it's also really relevant given that you used to be a cio.

Yeah, no, that's great. Maybe, maybe the. You know, I do meet with several of my old CIO colleagues and we have a lot of interactions about what has Covid really done for the IT group. And IT is now no longer viewed upon as. You know, there's always conversations about how to raise the profile of the technology groups within an Organization, you have a seat at the table, and so on. And several boards are now hiring technology focused board members. But what's really the key piece here is this is the exciting reason why I joined Cognizant. Cognizant. In discussions with the CEO, we crafted this role where I'm on the executive committee, I work directly for the CEO, and I run the strategy and the technology for the firm. And this is really raising the profile of technology within Cognizant as well as raising, we're a technology shop, right? So we're a technology services company. So technology has got to be a core part of our strategy, knowing all about the technology. So we're now in the process of really digitizing Cognizant and we're digitizing it from an end to end perspective. And it's really. This pandemic has really showed that we have to move a lot faster in a lot of the areas as we start digitizing the pieces around us. Now, typically when you go down the path of digitizing an organization, you take a client view and you take a view of what are the potential markets that you need to be in, the kinds of revenue opportunities, and then you talk about efficiency and productivity and so on. But the approach that we're taking very much is client view, productivity and employee experience. Because we feel that our employees are really the face of Cognizant, especially when they're meeting with our clients. The term that I keep using is that as we go through this digitization of Cognizant, we want our employees to be living credentials of how we've gone through and digitized the firm. The old adage, a happy employee means a happy client. I mean, that's really fundamentally what we need to be doing. It's much more important for us, I'm sure, for Salesforce as well. Being technology companies, we've got to really digitize ourselves and we've got to frankly have our employees walk in with a little bit of strut and swagger when they come into a client location to say, hey, this is what we've done for ourselves. This is how we've digitized ourselves. And oh, by the way, when we work with you, Mr. Klein, we know what we're talking about because you can see it, you can feel it in how we're interacting with you. So that's a fundamental reason why I joined the firm. It's really the marriage of strategy and technology, and it's really an integration of internal tech and digitization. And what does that mean for our clients? And at the core of that is employee experience. That's the, you know, my firm belief is that we've got to make our employees our ambassadors. You know, there's nothing worse than having an employee work with a client. And you know, they're muttering under their breath saying, oh my God, you should see our systems are, you know, you're laughing because I'm sure that happens everywhere. And that's happened. And so it's more. That's what, that's what we want to make the change. So we want to be living credentials of our digitization.

That's great. I really love what you said about living credentials. I think that's so important of digitization. I mean, I also love that technology is at the core of your strategy. That's amazing. And just raising the profile too. You mentioned that. It's really great to hear that. I love that all of the things you're doing seem to be helping to build confidence in employees. A lot of what you're saying is when they are going to customers, they're confident that their company is behind them and helping them be more productive, be more safe. And that's just really great to hear. So as we wrap up and look, let's look ahead. We've seen how the expectations that we have for the organizations that we work with and work have changed. Right. We've talked a lot about that. We're in the new normal. We have a new way of living and working. And as we discussed, things are not going to go back to the way that they were. And that's why it's so critically important that we're bringing organizational trust, we're bringing safety and agility forth as top priorities across industries. So how do you think this period will reshape the future of work? Are you going to have to rewrite the paper? Let's talk about that.

Well, let's start with the fact that our teams have rewritten, have not rewritten the paper, but they've created a new white paper. And the white paper is now called after the virus. And fundamentally our thought process is that we have now we've gone through a period of time where we've accelerated the future of work. So the original paper had well over 42. And I won't bore you with all of the different ideas within them. 42 different ideas. You know why 42? You know, that's an old science joke, a sci fi joke, but you know, because that's the theory of life and everything. But there was 42 ideas. And what we found is that those are, a lot of them have accelerated and a lot of them, the work from home world and the pandemic has really accelerated a lot of those. And I don't think there is ever going back in a lot of these areas. Once you get to the new normal which is happening as we speak, people are not going to go backwards. Let me give you a couple of examples where segments of the world are going to go digital. They're going to go do it. It's just going to happen. It's just. So take the whole health world where telehealth is happening and it's really going to grow. You're not, you know, you're going to avoid going to the doctor's office if you can use telehealth. Shopping, huge, you know, grocery shopping, you know, why go to the supermarket when you can have it delivered? It's just going to change that way. Why go to the stores and walk around in a mall when you can have whatever you need? So shopping is going to change. Entertainment, are you going to the movie theater ever again? And perhaps you might. But if you're getting everything at home on your 70 inch screen and you're seeing the latest of all the shows, entertainment is changing and is changing drastically and has gone digital. So several segments clearly that are going to go digital and they have gone digital. And some segments probably would never, you know, the airline industry for example, you know, you can digitally transport yourself obviously. But you know, so there's some areas that like travel, the change is going to be a little bit different. But your business travel may not be as high as it once was. So we may never reach up to that area. The other piece is real estate. And you think about cognizant. We've got 300,000 employees all over the world. They usually sit in buildings. So now you've got vast amount of building space that's sitting empty. And meanwhile people are retrofitting their homes, they're adding WI fi, they're buying new equipment to operate at home. Offices are being retrofitted. As we kind of have a return to office component. There's going to be a hybrid piece of that. So do you really need all of that real estate? So that's going to change drastically and that's going to be another piece of concern. One of the things we mentioned in the white paper is this whole concept of privacy. Given the amount of data that's out there and the significant amount of digitization and the acceptance of levels of privacy, that's the battle that's going on right now even in Congress about what are some of the major technology platforms doing in terms of your data and so on. Privacy is going to shift and our views on privacy will change over time. And I can go on and on. I'm plugging the other white paper a little bit, but it's called after the Virus. And it's really about where are we going and what's going to happen, where are we going to land? I think, and it's a pretty accurate depiction. But all I say is this is an exciting time. It's a tough time. There are lots of people who've been put out of work. There's lots of people who are adjusting the way in which they operate. It is not an easy time. And lots of people have lost their lives and you can never forget that. But that's, you know, it's, this is going to change our whole attitude to health, cleanliness. You know, you name it. It's, it's just going to, it's going to be, it's going to be a fundamental shift and I don't think we're ever going to go back to where we were in whatever timeframe you may want to think about.

Yeah, for sure. Really, really interesting what you shared around telehealth, around food shopping, around the non existence of malls. As someone who grew up in New Jersey, shopping malls were the place to go. Not talking about strip malls or outdoor places. I mean inside, that's what you do. And to think that now those places are considered risky.

Right.

Or might not exist is crazy. Thank you so much for sharing all of this amazing insight. I'm so happy to learn all of the things that Cognizant is doing with the future of work, with their customers, with their employees, keeping them safe, improving the employee experience. Really the values of your company that you shared today I think are so meaningful and will definitely resonate with those that are watching. So thank you so much for making time to be with us today.

Great. Thank you so much, Genevieve, for hosting great conversation.

It was great. I hope to do it again soon. So with that, I'd love to hand it back to the amazing Leah Gawain Meher. Take it away.

Thank you, Genevieve. That was such an inspiring and informative conversation. You know, I love the thought of employee experiences and treating employees like customers. And you know, it's so important, as Anel said, in terms of privacy, trusted communications, to make sure everyone is up to date on safety procedures and policies expected, especially as we are creating this new norm now I'm excited to hand it off to my colleague Jody to Show us how Work.com's new trusted communications app help customers safely and stay safe and informed and learn how Work.com's new employee experience products enable organizations to treat employees by customers in this new norm. With that, over to you Jody.

Thanks Leah. As we just heard from Genevieve and Aneel, for organizations to thrive in the new normal, they need to do more than just prioritize safety. They also need to find new ways to communicate and engage with both customers and employees. That's why we've expanded work.com into two new trusted communications and Employee Experience. Let's get into a demo to see how Cumulus bank can use these new work.com solutions to adapt to the new normal and drive growth. Meet Lee, a branch manager at Cumulus Bank. Now that his branch is reopening, he is ready to welcome customers back. And with broadcast messaging, he can proactively reach out to customers in bulk with notifications, alerts and reminders all sent directly to preferred messaging channels. Broadcast messaging is conversational and uses familiar channels like sms, allowing customers to more quickly get the answers they need through Einstein AI powered chatbots or by connecting with an agent directly. Now in this case, the chatbot sends the customer to the Cumulus website where they can see a digital trust card displaying up to date safety policies. Now these customers know what the local branch is doing to keep both employees and customers safe and when customers are ready to come and visit the branch. Q Management provides them with the ability to reserve a place in a virtual line, helping provide a safe and socially distanced experience. And for Lee, queue management lets him see who's in line while managing on site capacity through this simple to use interface. Working together broadcast messaging and queue management streamline communication, ensuring a safe and trusted customer experience. But the new Work.com is about more than just trusted communications. Work.com's new employee experience solutions can help Cumulus bank treat their employees like customers and keep them happy, healthy and productive. Let's see how like many of us, Michelle, an employee at Cumulus bank, starts her day right here in her inbox. And this morning she received a personalized email with new well being resources as well as an embedded interactive wellness survey that she can fill out right within the email. And with the new work.com concierge, she can access a help desk right from her inbox embedded in Google workspace so she never has to leave her inbox. This fast and contextualized experience means Michelle spends less time Searching for answers and more time being productive. So since Michelle just searched for well being perks help desk points her here to my trailhead where she can take a trail to learn how to incorporate some well deserved wellness breaks into her day. And with the information and resources she needs brought directly to her, Michelle is empowered and equipped to prioritize her wellbeing. Okay, so Michelle has been working at Cumulus for a few years and when her laptop is up for renewal, she gets a push notification for from concierge letting her know it's time for that upgrade. Michelle gets the same personalized treatment that you and I expect as customers. She's taken here to the concierge chatbot where she's asked a series of questions to make her selection, including verifying her shipping information which was integrated automatically from workday. Now like me, Michelle is quarantining with her parents. So she's asked the bot to change her shipping address and when she's done, her device upgrade ticket is automatically created. Now on the back end, that ticket created by the bot is automatically routed to the right agent to upgrade Michelle's device. This once manual time consuming task has been automated with Salesforce's new ITSM solution, its service center. And when you have a distributed team working on the provisioning, packaging and shipping, they can do it all right here with Salesforce anywhere. So once her device is shipped, Michelle gets a notification which takes her right here to her employer workspace. Here she can access the communications and the resources she needs her do her job. She can see the status of that device upgrade, but she can also single sign on to all of the apps she uses at work. And this is made easier with Salesforce's new Okta partnership. Michelle now has everything she needs in one place so she can be happy, healthy and productive. And that is how work.com helps every organization reimagine their employee experience for the new normal. Back to you Leah.

Thank you Jody. That was amazing. And if you want to dive deeper and check out this trail mix and discover a new way to work with work.com so check out the trail mix.

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It's SFORCE co newwaytowork.