The Unit4 Business Future Index and Maturity Model

**What is it?**

The Unit4 Business Future Index and Maturity Model examines how employees and leadership think of their business’s performance over the past two years: in terms of profits, of business strategies and priorities, financial planning and management, and people strategies. It also focuses in on the characteristics that make up a successful business, and what the top performers are doing to align people with profit and remain resilient.

Maturity group breakdown

The maturity model classifies businesses into 4 levels of maturity, with the following breakdown:

1. Hesitating

2. Evaluating

3. Embracing

4. Optimizing

Those respondents’ organizations that we are calling ‘hesitating’ are the least mature and are likely to behave in the following ways:

Be least likely (5%) to have exceeded profit growth expectations over the past three years
Be most likely for staff to have left the business to work elsewhere (71%) and to have made redundancies (36%) over the past 12 months
Struggle the most with retaining talent (64%), talent shortages (53%) and a lack of leadership (51%)
Be most likely to self-assess themselves as risk averse, slow to adapt and vulnerable
Be most likely to think that their leadership team either gives no consideration to workplace culture (42%) or pretends to (54%)

Those respondents’ organizations that we are calling ‘evaluating’ are likely to behave in the following ways:

Still be very unlikely (16%) to have exceeded profit growth expectations over the past three years
The most likely change to staffing that they have experienced in the past 12 months is losing staff to other businesses/competitors (47%)
Are most likely in several cases to have the highest proportion of unengaged individuals who don’t know about various aspects of their business
Be the most likely (44%) group to struggle with differing priorities across the business impacting their ability to forecast accurately
Have the largest proportion (55%) of respondents who believe that their leadership team claims workplace culture is a priority, but the reality doesn’t match up

Those respondents’ organizations that we are calling ‘embracing’ are likely to behave in the following ways:

The most likely change to staffing that they have experienced in the past 12 months is being able to recruit from a wider geographic area due to remote working (37%)
Have the largest proportion (45%) of respondents who believe that they can keep pace for both expected and unexpected changes in the market, but fewer (24%) consider themselves to be ahead
Comparative to less mature groups, they are more likely to invest in skills training (45%) and technology (41%) to ease financial management challenges
Their efforts to improve retention and recruitment are considerable, – offering flexibility (40%), better training programs (37%) and improved workplace culture (43%)
Be considerably more likely than the two less mature groups to say that their organization does the following to influence workplace culture – be respectful (46%), inclusive and diverse (41%), listens to employees and takes their opinions on board (38%)

Those respondents’ organizations that we are calling ‘optimizing’ are the most mature and are likely to behave in the following ways:

Be most likely (76%) to have exceeded profit growth expectations over the past three years
Use the greatest number of metrics to measure success, including people-centric measures such as retention (36%) and recruitment (34%)
Be most likely to self-assess themselves as risk taking, flexible, innovative, resilient, and quick to adapt
Be most likely to have major adoption of different technologies such as AI/machine learning (51%), workflow automation (55%) and data management tools (59%)
Be most likely to think that their leadership team places workplace culture as a top priority (87%)

How did we compile it?

Using a series of questions and scores, we’ve compiled a model that assesses organizations on the maturity of:

• Their overall business state

• Their ability to manage financial processes

• Their people and talent strategies

This lets us see what characteristics define organizations that are top performers and underperformers, and explore what they’re doing that makes them experience these results.

How does it help you?

It’s our hope that the information in this eBook – including the metrics we’ve tracked and the responses given by different companies – will help you form a clearer picture of your organization’s health in terms of the three pillars mentioned in the introduction. Giving you a head start as we move into a “people powered” era for successful companies.