What makes an agile workforce?

September 28, 2022 | Article

Agility as a predictor for employee’s readiness to navigate the dynamic business landscape using simulation-based training to solve the most frequent problem in a company HR division.

The one certain thing about the business landscape today is that nothing is ever certain anymore – the market can change either very quickly or very slowly, often without warning signs. Solutions that worked last year might not be applicable in today’s challenges, and what was ground-breaking in the previous quarter has now become the new industry standard. Innovation, a factor that was previously a prestigious trait to have, has now become a survival necessity.

In the very distant past of the business environment, the ability to adapt was a must-have for top and even mid-level managers; front-line employee’s adaptability is not that big of an issue. Recent business landscape has changed that standard, especially after big data analysis has picked up popularity – adaptability for front-line employee suddenly became important. Now, with the emergence of both industry 5.0 and recovery from the pandemic, the standard is, again, changing.

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Why is lecture-based training ineffective?

In order to thrive in these ever-changing times (and even gain a competitive advantage over competitors), a company needs to have an agile workforce. They need people who can adapt to any market conditions; who can respond quickly to the demands of the market, capable of making quick decisions, and able to expedite the timeline required to do so. This presents us with another question: what makes an agile workforce?

An agile workforce is a workforce with three-layered agility : one for each individual (how good is an individual employee in terms of agility), one for leaders (how can leaders influence their teammates to be more agile), and one for the system itself (how much does an organization system supports its workforce to be agile). A truly agile workforce with all three layers developed will gain a massive competitive advantage in the form of quick responses, correct solutions, and automatic adaptability for future changes.

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Yet despite its importance, multi-layered agility is still a massive blind spot for most companies. Many front-line employees are still unaware of the term “agility” -- it seems that it is a term only used by mid-to-top level managers, or even VP-exclusive. Moreover, it is very challenging to get a specific snapshot of a company’s workforce agility!

Presented with such a challenge, AMBIZ tried to unveil this blind spot in one big telecommunication company in Indonesia (we shall call this Telecom Inc) using our three-layered agility assessment which measures individual agility, leadership agility, and system agility using a valid & reliable instrument.

The results of the assessment are both shocking and revealing – by having this snapshot of workforce agility, every single department & function inside Telecom Inc can be mapped in terms of agility traits – which function is good on which traits, and what traits must be improved on a specific function to enhance performance. Most shocking is that based on the assessment done, it is possible to map out which function works best for an individual employee – enabling data-driven function rotation that accurately predicts an employee’s performance across different functions.

FEATURED ARTICLE

What makes an agile workforce?

In order to thrive in these ever-changing times (and even gain a competitive advantage over competitors), a company needs to have an agile workforce. They need people who can adapt to any market conditions; who can respond quickly to the demands of the market, capable of making quick decisions, and able to expedite the timeline required to do so. This presents us with another question: what makes an agile workforce?

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Benefit

The greatest benefit that we believe Telecom Inc gained is one in terms of knowledge – by gaining an accurate snapshot of their workforce agility, Telecom Inc knows who their rising stars are; who to develop more (and which traits to develop), and who to consider for leadership position in the future, all done in a data-driven way – which brings us to the next step of agility development .

Thus, we now have the answer to the question “how to ensure that a company can thrive in these ever-changing times”: by having an agile workforce. The second set of questions, “how to have an agile workforce”, has 2 answers; one, by having a snapshot of the workforce’s current agility, and two; by using said snapshot to devise an effective training program that will improve the workforce’s agility factors.

In conclusion, the business landscape today is comparable to that of an ever-present storm, where the companies are the ships and the workforce, the sailors. In order to have a stable sailing experience & reach one’s destination, each part of the workforce must be able to quickly adapt to changes in the environment, be able to influence each other to adapt better, and the ship itself must be well-fitted to weather the ever-present storm of change – failure to meet one of them will results in a rocky journey, or, at worst, unreached destination.

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