Scott Day, Chief People Officer of Corel shares his advice on how companies can make a 4-day working week a...
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How To Make The 4-Day Working Week UK Trial A Success

A screenshot of WordPerfect 2021. You read that right. Recently my colleagues and I were discussing the history of word processors (that’s just the kind of thing we do here), and a few of them reminisced about using one called WordPerfect many, many years ago. Given that its heyday was in the eighties, I hadn’t heard much about it, so I Googled it for fun. And that’s when I discovered that it’s still being sold as a productivity suite. What’s more, it’s not one of those cases where a company is still taking money for what’s essentially abandonware — the most recent release is WordPerfect 2021. As in a year ago. And it’s on sale. Corel, the company that’s been in charge of WordPerfect since before I was born , is running a (horrifically modern) Black Friday in July promotion, which ends at 9 AM ET on Thursday. WordPerfect Office Home and Student , which contains the eponymous word processing software, as well as apps for making slideshows, spreadsheets, and taking notes, is marked down to $59.99 from $100. And the Standard and Professional versions, which include extra software and capabilities, are a full $100 and $200 off, respectively. Someone’s a mega-fan of word processing. Image: Corel
So just to sum up here: this software — one of the go-to word processors before graphical user interfaces were widespread — is still around, and the company behind it apparently thinks it’s something that new users are interested in picking up. All I can say is wow. To be clear, I’m sure there’s some sort of niche use case that people really love WordPerfect for, and that I’m going to hear from pretty much everyone who still uses it why it’s actually the best word processing software out there. (And I welcome that feedback! I’m fascinated to learn what you do with it.) But I’d also assume that anyone who needs WordPerfect for whatever they’re doing... already has it, meaning they won’t get much out of a sale. I don’t mean to knock WordPerfect, but I’m not really sure I’d recommend it to most people. If you’re already prepared to spend money on a productivity suite, you’d almost certainly be much better served by just going with the Office apps you get through Microsoft 365, which is basically the standard, for better or worse. If you hate paying subscriptions for software, Microsoft even sells a perpetual license for Office 2021 . And if you’re looking to WordPerfect as a cheaper alternative, why not just go all the way to free software — LibreOffice is a solid and completely free productivity suite for those who demand to have a full set of features available offline, and Google Docs is totally fine for most people who just want to write some documents and not have to worry about how to save or share them. With all that said, I’m very happy to hear that WordPerfect is still around. It’s not often that you hear about apps that have been around for 40-plus years, especially ones that aren’t the top dog in their category. Does it look its age? Sure, I guess — WordPerfect 2021 obviously isn’t using the same UI as it did in the OS/2 or Amiga days, but it does remind me a lot of the early 2000s when I was first learning to use a computer. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Not every app is made better by a flashy, modern UI, or cloud integration. Software that comes in an actual box. What a concept. One last note: if you want to have the most authentically retro word processing experience, you can even order WordPerfect on a disk. Yes, Corel will ship you a DVD with its 2021 productivity suite on it. As someone who understands the value of time far, far away from the internet, I really appreciate this as an option — and as someone whose computers are all less than five or six years old and therefore don’t have any sort of disk drive, I kind of wish it came on a flash drive. Or 5.25-inch floppies, like some of the DOS versions did. Given that the Home and Student edition requires around 2.75 GB of space, it’d only take around 2,300 high-density (read: 1.2 MB) disks. PS — to answer the question one of my colleagues asked when I discovered WordPerfect 2021: no, you no longer have to hit the enter key like a carriage return at the end of every line to make sure the text doesn’t just run off the screen. How far we’ve come! Next Up In Tech

TIL that WordPerfect is still around, getting updates, and is currently on sale

'True leaders, as opposed to 'you're a leader by virtue of the role that you have', are going to rise up by necessity'
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“If you look at the military, there is a very big emphasis on positional authority, you wear your rank on your shoulder, collar, or sleeve and people can see it,” said Scott Day, “but what I learned in the military is, that’s not the greatest distinction between a good and a great leader.”
The military was a 5-year stint at the beginning of Day’s career, but he still brings what he learned from leadership there to his role as chief people officer at Corel. “It's not what rank you have, or your positional authority, or the role you're in, it is which person makes sure that all of the people that are led by them, have eaten before the leader eats, said Day.”
A recent survey revealed more than three-quarters (85%) of employees claim their businesses’ leadership could be doing more to promote collaboration within the organisation, something that Day puts down to leaders of today lacking the skillset to achieve. “Really to me this is just highlighting that we lack leadership skills in the corporate environment, at least those that are sufficient to deal with the demands of this day and age,” Day told HRD. The skills that are required, he said, are skills that promote connection, support the establishment of trust, and enable collaboration. “They are the same skills that have always differentiated great leaders, it’s just that they’re more in demand and more necessary than ever before,” said Day. “True leaders, as opposed to, you're a leader by virtue of the role that you have, are going to rise up by necessity and that provides a tremendous opportunity for companies that value these things to invest in developing them amongst leaders.”
Survey data also revealed that one third of employees either have left or would consider leaving their job due to poor collaboration within their workforce, but Day believes bringing people back to the office isn’t the answer to collaboration woes, driving collaboration through empathetic leadership is. Most Read
“So much of what we hear today is that people miss collaboration, so we’ve got to get back to the office. The truth is collaboration is an output, the inputs that make collaboration possible are the trust built upon the safety and connection that one feels with another employee,” said Day. “The good leaders will use this as an opportunity to create opportunities for questions and answers, to create a sense of transparency and openness and authenticity in a way that creates that sense of interconnectedness with more senior leaders than perhaps people are used to. Day said that leadership is now central to the employment conversation and will be a big differentiator amongst companies moving forward. Organisations that emerge on top will be the ones who understand what employees are really looking for. “Which to me is a lot more than about where you work. It's about decision making and autonomy and how effectively, companies are able to adapt to a world where employees do have more power. And in fact, perhaps they ought to, and perhaps they ought to always have had, because, at least at my company, we only employ adults and adults are pretty good at making decisions.”
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Corel CPO on leading with empathy

A Corel survey indicates 78% of employees say leadership should do more to boost collaboration, and 27% say their company has invested in the wrong tools for the job. Even Apple must surely now see that the future of work is a technology challenge. Solving that challenge will demand new generations of office equipment designed to support much deeper experiences of remote and hybrid collaboration , and solutions must reflect the needs of employees. Searching for a collaboration superstar
Corel offers up fresh insights from its Collaboration Survey , which polled 2,027 office workers in the US, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Australia. It found that 54% of enterprise employees believe poor collaboration tools are a problem and 70% believe they limit productivity and waste time. So, what’s the state of play? Reading between the lines, businesses need to think much more deeply to ensure the tools they supply are appropriate and sufficiently good that workers will use them . They need to provide ease of use and functionality, and people need to be properly trained in how to use them. Corel’s data shows:
25% agree that collaboration tools have poor functionality. 22% of employees say they aren’t using the tools at their disposal. 21% of employees state they aren’t trained to use the tools. What are the characteristics of a good collaboration solution? Corel’s data suggests that tools must be platform agnostic, must work across every device, and should enable multiple people to work on the same project at the same time. They needs to support people working asynchronously, be simple and intuitive, and improve the employee experience. We’ve always known this, of course. Think back to the pre-pandemic years, when the twin mantras of employee choice and employee experience taught us that no business should insist workers use poorly designed software . There has long been a reactionary belief that work-related products should be hard to use because they are used for work, but the advent of the iPhone and BYOD should have ended such thinking. No modern business should rely on an interface that's not developed with employee experience in mind — particularly when Corel’s survey shows 41% of workers have left, or would consider leaving, their job because of poor collaboration at work. It is also worth noting a recent MindGym survey; it showed the transformation of the workplace is also taking its toll on managers, 70% of whom feel burnt-out as they struggle to get a grip on these changes. Business leaders must recognize their employees need help at senior and junior levels. Relevance is a business challenge
While simplicity is a design challenge, relevance is a business challenge. That’s why employers seeking collaboration tools should speak to their teams first , engage with them to find out what challenges they face, and work to identify and select the most appropriate solution for that unique set of needs. That’s how Volvo improved its own field services teams . That’s not to say that every firm will find a one-fits-all solution. But employee engagement and collective decision-making can at least help optimize success. You aren’t investing in autonomous decision making (a vital quality to remote work) if you insist on forcing people to use ineffective tools chosen in the boardroom. At the front end of your business, the employee experience is your business, not ancillary to it, which means your choices impact how workers experience their day. Shiny happy people holding hands
A happy employee will use the tools you provide and boost your bottom line. Tools that don’t get used because you’ve forced them onto your employees are far less likely to achieve success. That’s true across in-person teams, but is far more an issue for remote teams, which need high degrees of loyalty and engagement to succeed. And yet, despite these realities, some managers insist on hierarchical approaches to remote work. That's why 78% of employees say leadership could be doing more to boost collaboration. “Respondents reported issues with their company failing to invest in the right tools (27%), current tools lacking necessary functionality (25%), a complete lack of access to collaboration tools (22%), and lack of training on the tools they do have access to (21%),” Corel’s survey says. Employees say they need videoconferencing, remote access, and instant messaging, of course. But they also seek tools for mind mapping, concept creation, and direct collaboration such as design and review. Where tomorrow shines
The jury has already returned its verdict on remote and hybrid work . Since the pandemic struck, we’ve learned that hybrid and remote working can be productive, but having the right tools helps maximize that opportunity. Even Apple knows this, which is why it continues to try to find its own new models for work . Corel’s Chief People Officer, Scott Day, said in a statement:
“This survey underscores the alarming cost of inadequate collaboration tools and highlights that organizations of all sizes are limited by the quick fix solutions that were implemented at the beginning of the pandemic. “Rather than improving employees’ ability to be productive, these stop-gap solutions are frequently a barrier to getting work done and can significantly impair hybrid and remote workers’ overall productivity. Listening to employees, creating an environment in which people want to work, and investing in simple and intuitive collaboration tools is what will set businesses up for success in 2022.”
Meet me in the crowd
The future of work is a technology challenge . Understanding what that means requires a close collaboration both within and across teams. It may also necessitate conversations with key partners to ensure systems interoperate effectively. And don’t neglect to consider the lessons of Shadow IT – which is how your employees are already asking for help to get work done.

The future of work is a tech (and management) challenge

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Nielsen Norman Group announces this year's top intranet designs, Microsoft suggests we're measuring the wrong things, plus more from Miro, Corel and Yoobic. For the last 21 years, Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) has produced an annual list of what it identifies as that year's best intranets. The 2022 list , released last week, shows companies across a range of industries striving to address the changing needs of their employees. In the announcement, NN/g noted this year was particularly challenging for those designing and maintaining these offerings, pointing out the intense pressure IT, HR, and corporate communications — the teams normally responsible for the intranet — have faced to provide an offering for remote workforces, but also (and probably more challenging) hybrid workforces. The full list of award winners is here (paywall), but more important are the criteria which separate the winners from the rest. The authors of the report highlighted a few common traits the winning intranets shared that are particularly useful during the pandemic, but which are relevant at any time. Those traits include:
Readiness and functionality that enables them to change as needs change — NN/g stated the difference between surviving and thriving over the past 12 months in respect to intranets was a willingness to change the intranet and not just the ability to change it. While this characteristic is not new, the enterprise response to COVID-19 and the emergence of new work models have made this a key attribute. Understanding of employees — The second criterion was built around Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs but adapted to analyze employee needs rather than general human needs. While organizations need to meet basic employee needs, such as comfort and the tools necessary to accomplish work, the authors note employees also need to feel they have job security and a manager they believe they can rely on. While the pandemic didn’t change that, it made it more difficult for organizations to meet those basic needs, leaving many struggling in response. Employees who previously were preoccupied with high-level needs like getting a promotion and growing their careers turned their focus to holding onto their jobs, managing understaffed teams and potentially juggling work duties and family duties while working from home. Some organizations were able to respond to this within days, weeks or a few months of the pandemic's onset. The corporate intranet became a key element in meeting those needs. An intranet's “excellent features and workflows” supported these efforts in the short term and many of the same features and workflows will likely be adopted on a permanent scale. What we see in this report is how companies respond to the changing needs of their people and the critical role intranets played to connect businesses and colleagues during the continued work from home period in 2021. Move Over Employee Engagement, Here Comes Employee Thriving 
Employee engagement has as many definitions as there are people, which makes measuring and understanding the state of the workforce challenging to say the least. Microsoft recently took a deep dive into its own numbers to try and understand where the real indicators lie. In a recent Harvard Business Review article titled " Why Microsoft Measures Employee Thriving, Not Engagement ," authors Dawn Klinghoffer and Elizabeth McCune shared how elusive it was to pin down a definition of employee engagement, even with Microsoft's analytics and internal research at their disposal. Klinghoffer is head of people analytics at Microsoft while McCune is the director of employee listening systems and culture. The authors concluded that rather than pursuing some nebulous idea of employee engagement, companies should instead measure employee thriving. Their rationale was that even when they found high employee engagement scores, many employees still were struggling. "To us, this was a reflection that we hadn’t yet set a high enough bar for the employee experience, and it motivated us to do better in measuring what matters,” they wrote. Microsoft defines thriving as “to be energized and empowered to do meaningful work." Klinghoffer and McCune found employees seen as thriving talked about work cultures that were inclusive, with autonomy and flexibility as well as support for their well-being. Employees who weren’t thriving talked about experiencing siloes, bureaucracy and a lack of collaboration. But they also uncovered another factor related to collaboration: using a combination of sentiment data and de-identified calendar and email metadata, they found employees who worked five fewer hours per week, spent five fewer hours a week collaborating and had 17 fewer employees in their internal networks were also happier. Klinghoffer and McCune don't go as far as suggesting that collaboration is inherently bad, but rather suggest that managers need to be aware about the impact collaboration has on their workers. Workers Unhappy With Their Collaboration Tools
Ottawa, Ontario-based productivity app provider Corel has also been looking into collaboration and specifically, problems related to it in the workplace. While the Microsoft research above looked at the negative impact of collaboration on workers, Corel surveyed 2,027 office workers  in the US, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Australia to establish how a lack of collaboration across an enterprise can impact the productivity of the workforce. The survey found a clear, and negative, impact, with 54% of office workers saying they believed poor collaboration is costing revenues, and over 60% stating the reason behind the poor collaboration is lack of effective tools. Learning Opportunities

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TiVo Inc. , the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders , in partnership with Roxio , a division of Sonic Solutions , the leaders in digital media software announced today the highly anticipated availability of TiVoToGo for the Macintosh platform .

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