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Digital transformation is a boogie man lurking in the office shadows. Employees are intimidated by the thought of reskilling or afraid of being made redundant by a robotic assistant whose artificial intelligence outranks their years of on-the-job experience.
Easing the transition from the traditional siloed corporate culture to a cooperative and agile way of working is a new breed of learning evangelists. Charged with teaching employees the benefits of the digital way, they demonstrate how digital collaborative tools are the heralds of a new era of productivity.
“I believe that silo is an acronym for Secrets in the Learning Organization,” said WandaJean Jones (pictured), digital learning evangelist at GE Healthcare Inc. “When you have those secrets and you have no idea what this team or this team is doing, it could really cost the company cost, quality, speed.”
Jones spoke with Rebecca Knight and Jeff Frick, co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Smartsheet Engage event in Seattle. They discussed Jones’ role in introducing digital productivity tools to thousands of GE Healthcare employees worldwide (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)
This week, theCUBE spotlights Dr. Wanda Jean Jones in our Women in Tech feature.
Leading the employees of GE Healthcare into the digital future is a work of passion for Jones. As a professional development expert, she understands that having a rapport with employees is important to overcome the psychological hurdles blocking the adoption of digital productivity tools.
“I’m a teacher at heart, so what I like to do is, take what they already know and build off of that,” said Jones, describing how she introduces new technology to employees. “I want them to tell me the story about their process; then I go through and match them to the technology that already fits within their current behavior.”
Education is the keyword for Jones’ life. Her resume is loaded with degrees earned, courses taken, and certifications gained. Her first major stepping stone was a bachelor’s degree in business communications. She went on to be awarded a master’s in business administration in communications and information technology from Sullivan University & Sullivan School of Technology & Design, where she also received certifications in web development, IT project management, and computer graphic design.
Ongoing certifications and training continued as Jones built her professional resume. She joined GE as a global operations knowledge management leader in 2014 and has gained experience in several learning-focused leadership roles within the company. As president of the GE global operations African American Forum, she assisted members to build personal and professional networks with leaders, mentors and sponsors within the global GE organization.
Although she moved on from the AAF to lead the service delivery process improvement and communications team, Jones continues to promote diversity and inclusion alongside spreading the digital learning gospel.
As well as her continuing involvement with the AAF, Jones posts advice and encourages others to reach out to her for career counseling via her LinkedIn profile. She also volunteers for the Hispanic Forum; Veteran’s Network; Women’s Network; Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender & Ally Alliance; Asian Pacific American Forum; and People With Disabilities.
“I remain an active contributor to affinity activities because employees are enriched and engaged by them,” she wrote in her personal resume. Her mission statement is “to strive to affect employee experience by making sure when people come to work, they feel positive, productive and prepared to do their best work.”
Continuing her drive for personal and professional excellence, Jones recently completed her doctorate of education in organizational leadership and innovation.
Jones’ process of matchmaking technology with the employee’s current work methods and role within the business allows her to customize the adoption process for each employee. “I want to make sure they’re comfortable,” she said. “[By] listening to them talk and seeing the sophistication in their current process, I’ll know how far I can go.”
Sometimes the only thing stopping workers from using new tools is a lack of vision. “[They] just haven’t taken that digital leap to figure out: ‘How do I get my process a little more digitized and save myself some time?’” Jones stated.
The goal of digitalization is to solve the triple business constraints of cost, quality and speed, according to Jones. Her go-to productivity tool is the software-as-a-service application Smartsheet. Most employees dislike time-consuming meetings but consider them unavoidable because teams need to touch base and make sure that projects are on target. “[In Smartsheet] we can automate those reports and make them exactly what the executive or the leader wanted to know from a high-level perspective,” she said. “So we don’t have to have as many meetings.”
With 4,000 employees served by the GE learning and development team, Jones has a lot of demand for her attention. She uses Smartsheet to manage her own workload with a custom intake form where employees can mark the urgency of their need. As well as helping her prioritize, this gives Jones an overview of her own progress and achievements. Moreover, she noted, these statistics can help validate an employee’s workload at performance reviews, giving solid data to back up requests for promotion or a raise.
“It will be interesting at the end of the year to look back at this intake and see everything that you’ve actually done versus what you signed up to do when you took the job,” Jones said. “Sometimes it looks really different!”
Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Smartsheet Engage. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Smartsheet Engage event. Neither Smartsheet Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)
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