The way we work is changing fast; organizations are transforming to meet evolving business and customer needs—and transforming their workforces to meet these new needs. Unfortunately, a lot of businesses haven’t found the key to preparing their employees to meet changing demands. What will it take to build a workforce with the critical skills and capabilities to help drive the future business imperatives of an organization? To find out, we surveyed 1,200 HR professionals—in virtually every industry from over 20 countries—on the state of workforce transformation. The results are alarming!
Yet, HR is much more likely to play a major or significant role when we look at high-performing organizations. Workforce transformation initiatives fall into many of HR’s core strengths, like L&D, talent management and recruiting. It’s critical for HR to make itself central to the development of the transformation strategy.
Only 15% of organizations say their leaders are “very skilled” at leading change, creating cultures of commitment, influencing others, challenging the status quo and driving employee engagement. These competencies are key to differentiating the high-performing organizations from low-performing ones.
To meet new demands, workforce transformation efforts require finding ways to improve the overall performance and skill level of the entire organization. Create a talent ecosystem that supports business needs by increasing agility, embedding continuous learning and supporting mobility.
Culture and strategy are intertwined—they influence each other. The workforce mindset needs to match the organizational mission and have a shared understanding of goals, tactics and vision so everyone is pulling in the same direction.