LACE Partners and Actual Experience are joining together in partnership to support Chief People Officers (CPOs) and Chief Information Officers (CIOs) successfully deliver digital transformation within their businesses.

This partnership will bring together businesses looking to answer some of the big challenge questions that have evolved in recent years post pandemic, most notably:

• Who is accountable for the digital employee experience (EX)?
• How much does digital EX impact the overall employee experience?
• Why is it so important that CPOs and CIOs are aligned to solve the digital challenges of their respective businesses?

As part of this partnership, LACE and Actual Experience will be working together on a host of different initiatives to help support CPOs and CIOs to navigate complex digital transformation challenges,  including joint events, thought leadership, combined offerings to support both CPOs and the C-suite.

This partnership has been developed as a direct result of some of the key challenges that CPOs have identified to LACE Partners as their biggest concerns and areas of focus, following a research report – HR’s One Big Thing’ – which was launched in 2022. In the report three key issues were identified including tackling talent attraction/retention in a hot market, flexible/hybrid working and getting the balance right, as well as building out a compelling employee value proposition (EVP).

To further support these perceptions, Actual Experience commissioned Savanta ComRes to interview 1,006 demographically representative UK adults about their hybrid working experience. The study has found that work-life flexibility is welcomed, with 51% wanting to work from home more often (only 8% want less). But the employee experience of the digital workplace is poor. 89% say they have digital experience problems, 46% say this is very or fairly stressful, and 53% say this makes them less productive.

Speaking of the partnership Cathy Acratopulo, Managing Director and Co-Founder at LACE Partners, said “Talent attraction, hybrid working and the EVP are deeply interwoven future of work themes and dominate HR’s 2023 agenda. Employee experience underpins them all and today, critically, this relies on the digital workplace working properly for everyone, everywhere, all the time.

There is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the EVP and workplace technology. The CPO and CIO must come together to make this transformation a success, but this has to be a human-centric, data-driven process. CPO’s have an opportunity to embrace data and lead their business through systemic, quantifiable improvements in employee retention and productivity. Equally, CIO’s have an opportunity to embrace new data and deliver more directly than ever to top-level business objectives. That is why – in response to what CPOs have been talking to us about, we decided to develop this unique relationship with Actual Experience, so that we can bring some of the latest critical thinking to those people responsible for setting the people strategy for their respective businesses.”

Dave Page, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Actual Experience, said: “People have embraced their new technology-enabled work-life experience, and want more of it, but the digital workplace isn’t yet fit for the Future of Work. Data emerging from customer deployments of our Digital Workplace Management Platform confirm these findings and, without urgent attention, will continue to undermine employee experience and productivity, and the 2023 HR agenda.

“Organisations are now seeking to embrace and institutionalise the Future of Work, and there will be significant sustainable competitive advantage in doing so. Critically, this will rely on a new C-suite partnership between CPOs and CIOs, where a deep and mutual understanding of the interplay of technology and human factors will govern success. This is why we have decided to partner with LACE Partners, whose wealth of cultural and digital HR thought leadership and experience will be critical in the Future of Work transformation in 2023. We are delighted to be working with LACE Partners on an increasing number of client opportunities.”