The Future of Work: No-Code and Flexible

After spending years in the employee engagement space, I've heard it all and learned that every culture is different. Every company wants a bespoke toolkit for its specific culture and employee base.

Because of that, software companies, on average, have xx software tools and spend xx per person per month and the average tool only gets used xx times a year.

The first question that may come up is that worth the money…. Maybe? But the bigger question you should ask is, what does that do for employee productivity and engagement? Does having 15 tools that all do marginally different things make sense? Is tool fatigue just a saying everyone hears or is it real?

Most companies have a performance management system for year-end reviews. Occasionally for 1:1s and goal setting (Lattice, Culture Amp, 15Five, Office Vibe), most companies have an internal communications solution (Slack, MS Teams, Workplace), and most companies have survey tools for both heavy surveys like eNPS and eSAT surveys. Still, in addition to those platforms, most companies utilize Google forms, Microsoft Forms, Survey Monkey, Typeform, or Qualtrix. However, these companies that may have multiple tools in each category will also likely have a task management tool like Trello, Asana, ClickUp, etc. This list can continue as we add more subcategories (recognition, rewards, announcements, games, icebreakers, document storage, search, etc.) that involve employee productivity and engagement.

There is an old-school thought where point solitons are the only way to drive action. They may be very effective at one thing, but switching context between software solutions is costly for employees, and with a robust point solution comes a lack of flexibility. For example, Excel is the best worksheet by leaps and bounds, but why do Airtable and Google Sheets exist. The short answer is people are willing to sacrifice 20% of functionality for 100% more collaboration and flexibility.

In the past decade, a new type of solution emerged, a kind of technology that changed the game… "No-Code." No-code technology allows a nontechnical person to drag and drop build their desired outcome with minimal effort and no technical understanding. Companies leading this category are Shopify, Notion, and Airtable.

Shopify is a no-code website builder that allows anyone to create the website of their dreams without hiring a developer; you simply drag and drop your layout, copy and paste images into place and that's it.

Notion is a modern document that you can manipulate in thousands of ways. They gave you lego pieces to create your bespoke document of choice.

What Notion did to a document, Airtable did to a spreadsheet.

Airtable is a collaborative spreadsheet with thousands of templates to which any marketer, product person, HR, finance, etc., can come into the platform and find a prebuilt template for their specific use case. You can adjust worksheet templates to your particular use case, customize the views, and include anyone you want in the document.

The use cases of these companies are vast, and the true power is flexibility. After working at multiple high-growth companies and seeing different cultures, teams, and industries thrive, the short answer is every company is different. So if your software tech stack is not flexible, you will fall into the trap like most companies out there and buy dozens and dozens of software that will not be utilized and, even when they are, not to their full potential.

Employee engagement and HR tools have been left behind in this trend of innovation and flexibility. What Notion did to the form, Shopify did to the website, and Airtable did to a spreadsheet, Assembly has now done to the form.

Assembly has created a platform where any individual, team lead, manager, or HR lead can custom create engagement, productivity and performance modules precisely as they see fit. You can set permission within each module you create of who can participate, who can have visibility right, should the form be anonymous and additional, every module provides analytics to the module's creator.

Assembly has hundreds of prebuilt templates for recognition and rewards, task management, surveys (internal and external surveys), manager to report 1:1's, company announcements, icebreakers, company moment feeds, and more.

Within a company, if management launches a company-wide rigid software, there will undoubtedly be groups who reject or seldomly use the platform. Why force something unnatural. With Assembly, HR can launch a company recognition & rewards program, launch annual performance reviews, twice-yearly eNPS surveys, and quarterly surveys to understand employee sentiment. Managers can launch 1:1's, about us questionnaire forms, and quick polls. Project leads can run automated daily standups, sprint/project retrospectives, and 360 feedback on their team. Individuals can run a daily reflection, an automated daily journal, or utilize the task management tool to keep them accountable. Every template is editable and can reoccur on any cadence the creator would like.

Historically HR tools function as a command center where only HR can build and launch templates, and analytics are reserved for just the HR team. As proven by statistics, that format is not prone to high engagement. Inspired by the titans of no code, Assembly has built a tool where any employee can create use cases, utilize templates and build programs that are effective for their role.

Because the platform is bespoke, can automate your routine tasks, and every workflow has its self-contained analytics, Assembly generally sees over 90% participation when turning off more than one flow.

Companies on the Assembly platform have launched over 30 workflows, and the reported cost savings of tool consolidation for a handful of companies came in at over $30K per year on average for companies between 50 and 200 employees and over $100K per year for companies north of 500 employees.

No matter your role, Assembly is for you. If you're an individual or team lead, feel free to sign up here and start playing around with the task management tool, the project retros, the automated 1:1 functionality, and more. If you're looking to launch a flexible all-in-one engagement and productivity tool for your company but would like a demo of how the platform could solve engagement problems for your teams, feel free to book a demo with an Assembly product expert here.

The future of work is no code, and the future of work is flexible.

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