How to successfully create an agile workforce
Now, in the recovery stages of the crisis, organisations have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to re-evaluate policies and practices, and to reimagine their workforce and workplace.
How can organisations support and grow their businesses in an environment of extreme uncertainty and continuous change?Organisations have had to review their workforce and the mechanics of work and the workplace, which has in turn brought change. Companies are introducing new ways of working at the same time as managing a surge in recruitment needs during a skills shortage.
To build a clearer understanding of this, ManpowerGroup Talent Solutions partnered with global research firm Everest Group to create the recent ‘Future of Work’ Series, which gives practical advice on navigating the next normal. These reports examine three key questions confronting the workforce and workplace mechanics today:
1. Where will the work be done?2. Who will do the work?3. How will the work be done?
Whilst many organisations have been phasing employees back into the office, 51% are seeing 40% of employees continuing to work from home. As a result of this, 92% of organisations have executed a move to a hybrid working model for suitable roles – where a proportion of employees work from home, some work from the office and some alternate between the two.
This means employees are benefiting from a better work-life balance, more flexibility, higher productivity and cost savings on the office commute. In turn, many businesses are reducing office overheads – increasing their access to a broader talent pool and improving performance on the Environmental and Social elements of their ESG metrics.
Talent acquisition has always been tied inextricably to location, but at the same time, the talent demand-supply gap has worsened, resulting in a serious talent shortage. When adding immigration rules and policies to the mix, leveraging a global talent pool can get complex. The pandemic has shaken this up, bringing change which organisations can benefit from by making a rapid shift to new ways of working, where talent is not restricted to geographical boundaries and work is not defined by physical office spaces. This approach would allow access to a vast talent pool, which is critical to meet short- and long-term business objectives.
The hiring and onboarding of new employees and IT security should also be factored in, requiring clear support structures around management style, goals and accountability, plus investment in digital transformation.
This would still need to be accompanied by efforts to make the workforce agile and foster a culture of belonging within the workforce.
As businesses focus on who will do the work, and with an opportunity to leverage talent pools globally, there will be a requirement to adjusting hiring policies in local talent markets and to equip teams with relevant technology.
Further to this, a shift in the workforce because of the pandemic has resulted in a reduction of workers from diverse groups and this needs to be a priority for organisations to improve.
Download the first paper in the series – Where will work be done? – for essential insights on:
Workforce design principles for the future of work
How to create a distributed workforce through the hybrid working model
Key considerations when deploying a global talent acquisition strategy
As a result, women were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic because of the additional pressures of balancing these responsibilities alongside work. This has contributed to 13 million fewer women in the workforce globally in 2021 compared to 2019, as more women have left the workforce or downshifted their careers to improve their quality of life.
Workers from ethnic minority groups were also severely affected, but movements like Black Lives Matter have fuelled a drive for change in the workforce. As the economic recovery has gathered pace, it has become increasingly important for organisations to improve the effectiveness of diversity and inclusion programmes to attract and retain workers from these diverse groups.
Almost 92% of organisations globally believe that a diverse workforce is more beneficial, and 95% want to improve this over the next 12-18 months. But planning and implementation of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DE&I) initiatives is fraught with challenges. These include the ability to attract diverse candidates, the lack of an inclusive organisational culture and insufficient support structures. The long-term success of DE&I initiatives will depend on the promotion of a culture of belonging in the workplace.
As organisations look to attract and retain top quality contingent talent, workplace DE&I can be a true differentiator in the employee value proposition. And by adopting flexible work arrangements, businesses can achieve objectives of both diversity and agility.
For this to succeed, organisations will need to fundamentally transform the way in which work is delivered. How this will be done will be explored further in the final paper of this series, coming soon.
Download the second paper in the series – Who will do the work? – for insights on:
How to improve diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging
How to adopt more flexible and scalable talent models
Creating a more agile workforce by leveraging contingent workers
Talent Solutions has partnered with Everest Group to create this series of reports, leveraging data from 200 senior HR leaders across various geographies, industries and organisation sizes.
