What happens when a drop of water falls on a tray of ice? It freezes.
What happens when the same molecule of water is dropped in a glass of water? It blends with all the other molecules.
What happens when a cube of ice is dropped in a glass of water? It melts.
In all the above cases, the molecule of H2O undergoes transition to stay relevant. This is exactly what is expected of us in the current business landscape: AGILITY, to adapt to the non-stop changes in a quick yet effective manner.
Organizations will be agile when the workforce is agile. Below are some of the ways to make your workforce future ready.
Encourage employees to innovate and experiment. Build a culture of no fear by pushing employees to speak their mind and shoot craziest ideas. All employees anyway get bored of routine work. Enable them to use 15% of their work hour daily to work on something they love. This would spur their creative juices and also make them more efficient.
Hire for the ability not skills. Focus on on-job training and job rotations every two years. It not only increases the learning curve of the employee but also proves the resource will be available for any role as per organization requirement and contribute to its success.
Promote horizontal communication and cross functional projects. Gone are the days of one domain expertise and working in silos. Today employees from Human resources, Marketing, Sales and technology teams should be able to work together on projects. Bereft of bureaucratic hierarchy, such teams enhance learning of employees as well as the over-all output of the project.
Embrace the upcoming technologies. Encourage employees to go tech savvy. Train them as per need and acknowledge and appreciate the use of new digital tools by them in their work. This shows that the workforce is continuously learning and evolving.
Learn-Unlearn-Relearn. Constant upskilling is a necessity. A good training and development plan chalked out for all employees to hone their skills and to equip them to perform in their role is indispensable. Empower employees to not only opt for training in their core field but to learn about other verticals as well.
Help employees become emotionally agile. The sense of belonging, variety in work and feeling of contribution is what keep employees content and happy. And a happy employee is a productive one. Prepare the middle and upper management to regulate the emotions of the employee and set the right tone. They should promote their positive thoughts and suppress their vulnerabilities and negative emotions. Help them channelize their emotions for the combined growth of individual and the organization.
Change is inevitable and the future is already here. Being agile is the key to stay relevant and successful.