Today’s Program Management Office faces challenges at every angle. From new technologies and environmental factors to shifting business strategies and changing customer expectations, PMOs need to upgrade to keep up. Learn a few tips for making the shift in this blog.

Last year may have been unprecedented, but there’s one thing we saw coming: an accelerated pace of change.

While no one was expecting to have to become digital within just a few months (if not weeks), there were already signs that businesses needed transformations.

To start, changing customer expectations, mass digitization and newer, faster competition were already on almost everyone’s radar. Change is becoming the new standard, forcing organizations to rethink not only their business strategy but also how they transform to meet and deliver on that business strategy.

Bring on the EPMO

In fact, according to one study, 67 percent of business strategies don’t work because of a failure to enact end-to-end strategy execution. To avoid this fate, you need to realign, deliver and gain value from your company’s project portfolios. That means embracing enterprise program management (EPM) as a strategic business capability — one facilitated by agile portfolio, program and project management to execute the strategy from end-to-end and realize business value.

The first step in embracing EPM as a capability lies in evolving your project management office (PMO). Today’s PMOs need to be agile themselves, focused on business outcomes and the organization’s overall strategy. An evolved PMO will play a critical role in ensuring your company is ready for any change the world throws at it.

Imagining a New Project Management Office

Many of today’s companies face unclear business strategies, confusion over their overall objectives, and constrained support from senior executives. What most companies do know, however, is they’ll need more project managers to help as they:

• Take on more projects related to enhanced and emerging technologies, and
• Transition to operating models primarily focused on product-based work.

In fact — according to Gartner — 50 percent of large companies will have integrated their separate IT and business PMOs into enterprise program management office (EPMO) “hubs” to help facilitate business transformation.

As a result, PMOs must transform so they can drive new initiatives aligned to your company’s evolving business strategies. They must stop delivering control and start supporting everything from strategy and financial planning to business value realization.

As I talk with leaders of companies about permanently adopting remote work, they often ask, “What do I need to do differently to manage remote hourly workers vs. salaried employees?”

Some seem a little embarrassed by the question. Maybe they feel that just asking it suggests that they aren’t sure they can trust remote workers like they trust salaried employees. Or, maybe they feel that managing hourly workers remotely is more difficult because of issues such as supervision or overtime auditing and compliance.

After I assure them that their concerns are completely natural and OK, I quickly share the good news: While the approach may differ in some ways, hourly workers can be just as effective as salaried workers in a remote environment.

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In fact, absolutely no research indicates that hourly workers are any less trustworthy or will perform at a lower level when working remotely. Most people want to do a good job. I’ve worked with thousands of remote workers, and it’s rare for someone to intentionally neglect their duties, whether they clock in or work the same hours every day.

When preparing to have a remote, hourly workforce long-term, you need to think about how to unlock discretionary effort — inspiring employees to go above and beyond.

To do this, you must provide them with adequate support, the necessary tools for the job, and recognition for their efforts. You must also actively connect employees with the broader company mission. When employees feel their work has meaning, they put in more effort and feel more satisfied with their jobs, leading to greater productivity and retention.

Once you’ve considered how you will establish trust and inspiration, here are the operational tactics that will help ensure long term success for hourly workers:

• Provide remote-work training first. Everyone may struggle initially without training and guidance if they are new to remote work because supervision is different when leaders and workers can’t see each other as easily throughout the day. Increased training, supervision and check-ins will help hourly employees transition to full time remote work.
• Deploy smart metrics. “Smart” metrics are not about surveillance or tracking—they are about helping employees do their jobs. Putting in place smart metrics help identify training opportunities, process inefficiencies, and those who need help working from home—not monitoring their behavior. This is one area where managing hourly workers remotely may be easier than salaried workers because hourly tasks are often easier to measure.
• Ensure legal and compliance requirements are in place. Hourly workers are subject to more complex overtime laws, and the laws vary by state. You need strong processes and auditing to track hours, approval of overtime and more.
• Learn the different tactics needed to lead a virtual workforce and virtual teams. The surest method to guarantee remote workers — salaried or hourly — stay engaged is to build strong relationships with them and encourage them to build relationships with one another. Without face-to-face interaction, showing your human side is critical. Use the first 5-10 minutes of meetings for everyone to share a little bit about what’s going on in their lives. Bring your whole self to show what makes you tick as a person. Schedule virtual coffees or happy hours to check in on things other than business. Encourage employees to develop work friendships — research shows they make people more productive, happy and satisfied with their jobs. Simple measures like these go a long way to building trust.
• Hire for culture. Hiring for culture is a common strategy for finding salaried talent, but many companies overlook its importance when hiring for hourly roles. Remember: Your hourly employees may be the ones who are closest to your customers, goods or services. That makes them extremely valuable assets, so hire accordingly! Start by thinking through what makes employees successful at your company. What skills do they need to bring to the job, and which ones can you teach? Knowing that will help you hire hourly workers who fit into your culture and are pre-disposed to succeed.

So, if the thought of managing your hourly workers permanently makes you uncomfortable, don’t worry. Your hourly employees can absolutely perform as well virtually as salaried workers, simply by applying these additional steps and considerations.

The insurance industry is ripe with opportunities to create better experiences through customer journey mapping, a proven method of capturing and meeting customers’ needs.

For decades, most insurance companies have relied on agents to work with customers, and few customers look forward to incidents that force them to call their agents.

However, that model is changing as insurers add more digital tools that allow customers to interact through multiple channels and along nonlinear paths. One simple example: a car accident victim might file a claim through their phone app, talk to their agent by voice, and coordinate repairs through email — all while expecting the same seamless service they enjoy when shopping online.

That’s why the smartest insurance companies are exploring customer journey mapping (CJM), a proven approach to understanding customers’ changing needs so insurers can build tools and processes to meet them.

In this interview with journey mapping and persona development software company UXPressia, our Customer Experience Design practice Senior Manager Noah Grayson discusses the unique opportunities CJM offers insurance companies. The interview will also appear as part of a UXPressia white paper.

Read on to learn why Noah believes that CJM can help you sort out your customers’ journeys and reimagine how you deliver smart, efficient end-to-end experiences that will give them a competitive edge.

1. One of the dynamics of the insurance industry that makes journey mapping challenging is the coordination of activity between the carrier and the agent when an agent is involved in selling and servicing a policyholder.
2. The agent’s role and involvement with the policyholder can vary from carrier-to-carrier or even agent-to-agent.
3. It becomes essential to define personas at the start of the journey mapping exercise and develop persona specific maps.

Associated with the above point, the other factor to account for in the journey map is the nonlinear or non-sequential activity that occurs across channels at several phases of the journey. For example, during the claims process, a customer may bounce from interactions with the carrier, agent and digital tools in different sequences. It is important to isolate behavior patterns across channels and use these patterns in the attribution or definition of personas or archetypes. It is also important to visually depict how stakeholders use these various channels during a journey phase to help the organization better optimize the integrated use of each channel.