Jason Averbook Of Leapgen On How To Use Digital Transformation To Take Your Company To The Next Level
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Use data to make better decisions: Technology can take a company to the next level ONLY when they leverage this data to improve business strategy for success.
As a part of our series about “How To Use Digital Transformation To Take Your Company To The Next Level”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jason Averbook.
Jason Averbook is the CEO and Co-founder of Leapgen, the HR technology consultant and digital transformation company shaping the NOW of work. Averbook is a thought leader and leading analyst in human resources, the future of work, and technology’s impact on that future. At Leapgen, Averbook helps organizations shape their future workplace by broadening executive mindset to rethink how to design and deliver employee services that meet the expectations of the workforce and the needs of the business.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
My name is Jason Averbook, CEO and Co-founder of Leapgen.
A little about my backstory: I’ve been in the world of human resources and work technology for the last 30 years. I started implementing payroll, which really helped me understand what it took to drive HR functions, including payroll and back-office processes.
From that point on, I’ve tried to think about how to help HR. How can I help payroll? How can I help finance, automate, so that they can focus on the human side of truly driving their strategy? So I’ve worked for software vendors. I’ve been an HR practitioner on the learning and development side. I’ve been on the services side, building companies focused on strategy. I’ve been on the product side, too, building more products that truly are innovative and how people work. Still, today, I have a massive appetite for trying to make work better.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
That’s a go-live party. It’s the implementation of software where you celebrate and say, “thank goodness, we’re finally live.” I was the head of HR and the CEO of a major insurance company. Through implementing software, we were able to reduce their time to fill a job from 52 days to 37 days. We thought that was a huge win. We reduced 15 days from their time to fill!
Then we went to the CEO, who said, “you have to be kidding me. It takes 37 days to fill a job here.” From that point on, it was a huge lesson; how we measure success in HR is not by our own metrics, but truly by the metrics of the business.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
There are so many people that I’m grateful to that have helped me along the way. I think probably the first and foremost I’d say is my wife. She’s helped me a ton in driving my success, in keeping me focused on what I was trying to accomplish, and always being there as support while raising two boys who are both teenagers today. Second of all, I am very thankful to all of the CHROS, the Chief Human Resource Officers, who are trying to make the HR function more strategic, who are trying to make the HR function more human, and trying to make the HR function more aligned to the business. Those individuals keep me focused every day. I’m thinking about how to stop counting people, and start making people count.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Probably the biggest film that has had an impact on me is Moneyball. The story of Moneyball is all about talent, and what talent can do, but it’s not necessarily about how much you pay for talent. It’s not necessarily about how you manage talent, but it’s about understanding talent. It’s about understanding how talent works together towards an outcome. Watching the process of developing talent, understanding talent, measuring talent, and putting the best talent on the field can help you achieve outcomes. In this case, it was winning the World Series. So Moneyball, for sure, would be the movie I’d say had the biggest impact on me.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose-driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
When Leapgen started, our vision was to help make work better. That’s it, the vision was to help make work better. As they entered the workforce, I wanted to ensure that my teenagers had a place to work that valued them, a place that they cared about and could be proud of. The work we do today is still focused on that. How do we create the best work experience that closely mirrors the outside world experience? One of our problems is that outside of work, we’re humans, but inside of work, we do inhuman things. That’s a huge problem going forward, especially with Gen Z.
Are you working on any new, exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?
Every single thing we do is an exciting project. How do we think they help people? I think they help people by learning that there are no right answers. There’s only right: innovation.
We’re all creating the future of work and what we like to call the “now of work” together. So really, everything we do is exciting. The way we help people is by doing things like this interview, by sharing this knowledge. We share why experience is most important, why transactions are no longer the golden rule, but interactions, and how experiences are the things that truly drive the feeling of excitement.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion about Digital Transformation. For the benefit of our readers, can you help explain what exactly Digital Transformation means? On a practical level what does it look like to engage in a Digital Transformation?
Let’s think about the concept of digital transformation. What does it look like? Digital transformation is a mindset shift that helps businesses reframe how they operate. Now a lot of people, unfortunately, think of digital transformation as buying technology. Technology might be a component of transformation, but it’s not the only thing. When we think of digital, digital is not just technology, digital is a mindset shift into how things get done.
There are four key components to digital. First of all, how do we understand and develop the mindset to do things differently? We need to be digital, not do digital. It needs to be part of the fabric of how we work. That mindset needs to be part of the fabric of how we work. That mindset has to include key measures of success, and those measures of success have to be business measures of success, not only technology measures of success. The second key component of digital is ensuring that you’re designing for the right audience. In the past, we’ve designed for functions like HR, payroll, and finance. Today, we need to design for the workforce and meet the workforce in the flow of where they do their work. If we do that, they’ll buy into our model of work; they’ll feel engaged, and therefore we will get data from them that we can use to make better business decisions.
The third component is thinking about processes and journeys. In a digital world, processes generate data, but journeys generate feelings, and we need to understand those feelings for people to adopt new ways of thinking. They need to feel valued. They need to feel like it was valuable to them. Therefore, we must think about how to design journeys that work for them, not just processes that generate data.
The last component of digital is technology. What technology do we need to meet our goals, our objectives and our measures of success? So if we think about the four components, mindset, audience, journey, and technology, that’s what digital is. And if we think about transformation, it’s discovering how we truly change work in order to deliver better outcomes to the entire organization.
Which companies can most benefit from a Digital Transformation?
It’s every organization in the world. Every organization in the world must think about transforming. Now, why do I say must? Work has changed, workers have changed, and business has changed. What should the company do, stay the same? That makes no sense. We will be completely out of business if we do that. Every company in the world must think about how they are continually being digital in the way that they think.
We’d love to hear about your experiences helping others with Digital Transformation. In your experience, how has Digital Transformation helped improve operations, processes and customer experiences? We’d love to hear some stories if possible.
Let me just talk about a couple of them. First of all, working with a large nurse organization. This nursing organization had a turnover of 27% for first-year nurses. If those nurses stayed past the first year, that turnover dropped by 5%. Excuse me? Yes, that turnover dropped to 5%! Ensuring we were checking in with people during their first year reduced that turnover from 27% to 12%. Think about that. Think about how much more effective and efficient that nursing ward is because of that drop. Think about patient satisfaction. Think about costs. All of those are results of that.
Another example. How do I quickly onboard people in a world thats short on talent? Working with quick-serve restaurants, we were able to transform how they hire. They were able to interview someone one day and have them start the next day, then have them paid that next day. That’s a process that took two to four weeks in the past. Think of the revenue, and think of the customer dissatisfaction that would happen during that time. Those are some examples of how organizations can truly benefit from transformation.
Has integrating Digital Transformation been a challenging process for some companies? What are the challenges? How do you help resolve them?
Integrating transformation is always challenging for companies. And the biggest challenge is unlearning. We’ve been at this a long time; business isn’t new. What is changing is how we do things. The opportunity to focus on hands, heads, and hearts. Technology’s great at doing hands work. People are great at doing hearts work. So what we need people doing is hearts work.
The challenge is shifting people from doing hands work to doing hearts work, from getting people to trust that employees and managers can interact with tools. It’s getting people to change processes that maybe have existed for 20 to 30 years. These processes no longer have to be that complicated. It’s getting organizations to realize that what they’ve been measuring and doing for the last 10 years no longer matters. These are the biggest challenges, which is why change enablement is one of the most important things that we do, and help organizations resolve those challenges. But this has to start at day zero, it can’t start at the end of a program. It has to start at day zero. Change and unlearning are the most critical components of driving transformation.
Ok. Thank you. Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are “Five Ways a Company Can Use Digital Transformation To Take It To The Next Level”? Please share a story or an example for each.
#1: Develop a mindset shift: Accept the reality of the digital era of work as an opportunity to shift your way of thinking about work completely.
#2 Integrate automation: Efficient implementation of automation will allow organizations to eliminate manual work and old processes to create room for new ones.
#3: Allow HR to be strategic: Efficiently supporting management and all employees through digital transformation is another opportunity for HR to focus on strategy. Give employees and managers the tools they need to get their jobs done. Give the HR function the capabilities they need to be truly strategic, not just transactional data enters.
#4 Focus on employee experience: This is the time to transform the employee experience. This transformation should ensure that your employees want to be there. This is an opportunity to make sure their work engages them, not enrages them.
#5 Use data to make better decisions: Technology can take a company to the next level ONLY when they leverage this data to improve business strategy for success.
In your opinion, how can companies best create a “culture of innovation” in order to create new competitive advantages?
Three things. Number one: accept failure. Introduce flexibility into accountability, and don’t hold people accountable when things don’t work. We have to try. We’re all actors in this movie. Number two: lean on the data from technology. Technology without data doesn’t get us anywhere. Building a solid foundation is so incredibly important. Once you have that solid foundation, you can focus on innovation, but without a solid foundation, it becomes very, very hard. Number Three: be excellent at change. This is how you truly create a culture of innovation.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favorite life lesson quote is pretty easy to choose: never give up. I have no idea who said that first, but in a world where you’re trying to change the world, where you’re trying to do crazy things that people tell you that you’re never going to be able to do, the only thing you can do is stay positive and never give up.
How can our readers further follow your work?
People can follow my work at leapgen.com, @jasonaverbook on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok.
Most importantly, people can follow my work by committing to making work better. You’ll find me there, but it’s not just finding me. It’s taking the knowledge and using it, using it to make your world of work better.
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
Jason Averbook Of Leapgen On How To Use Digital Transformation To Take Your Company To The Next… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
