Creating an Adaptive Workforce

Due to various internal and external pressures, companies today are forced to be more responsive to shifting market needs; more flexible in how they operate; more focused on their core competencies; and more resilient to external threats.

Developing a workforce that is adaptable to change has become essential. According to the Global Human Capital Study , however, only 14 percent of HR executives state their workforce is very capable of adapting to change.

The Study identified three critical success factors to developing an adaptable workforce:

The ability to predict future skills: Successfully anticipating future business scenarios enables organizations to know what key competencies to target in advance of critical market shifts. Only 13 percent of organizations interviewed believe they have a very clear understanding of the skills they will require in the next three to five years.

The ability to locate experts: While predicting future skills is important, so is the ability to apply existing knowledge and skills to new challenges. Expertise location is cited by respondents as critical in identifying and allocating resources to address new opportunities and threats. Only 13 percent believe they are very capable of identifying individuals with specific expertise within the organization. Companies are using a variety of techniques to improve their expertise location capability. More than 50 percent of companies that rate themselves as “very effective" in locating experts use some form of employee directory while only 39 percent of all respondents report using them.

The ability to foster collaboration: Once the experts are located and identified, collaboration is the next step to foster innovation and growth. According to the study, only 8 percent of companies believe they are very effective in fostering collaboration across the enterprise. Surprisingly, technology is not the deterrent to effective collaboration, with only 28 percent of companies indicating this is a significant factor. Instead, organizational silos (42 percent) are the leading barrier of collaboration in an organization, followed by time pressures (40 percent) and misaligned performance measures (39 percent).

Therefore its important that you and your organisation put procedures in place now rather than later to make sure you are able to make the most of the volatile markets we find ourselves doing business in .

Mark De Stadler
Dale Carnegie
Performance Consultant