The digital revolution is impacting every aspect of business. Corporate leaders are looking at digital technologies not as disrupters but as enablers to transform the way their workforce functions, the way projects are executed and also the organisational workflow.
The crux of the matter is that a workforce has to be highly adaptable and change-ready to stay relevant in the fast-changing digital world: It is called a ‘Liquid Workforce’. With automation taking over many processes and the workplace undergoing a sea change due to this, employees have to be re-trained to be on top of the developments. With digital economy constituting 22 per cent of the world economy, companies have to embrace technologies at the earliest.
The idea of proactively re-training employees to adapt to the changing demands of the organisation, which are most often dictated by market forces, is not new, except that the pace at which digital technologies are spreading is astounding and companies have to more than keep their eyes open and ears to the ground; they have to be highly intuitive.
Skill upgradation, skill development, innovation, project planning and restructuring an organisational set-up have become critical to an organisation that seeks to be ahead of the learning curve. Having a ‘liquid workforce’ gives it a distinct edge.
Today, we are seeing companies being continually pushed to change products, services, and sometimes even business models as new technologies break in. And with a ‘liquid workforce’, companies will be able to access critical skills quickly, innovate faster, and operate more efficiently. The digitally-powered workforce won’t just change what businesses do but will change how they do it. The imperatives for a "liquid workforce" are:
Upgraded Skillsets
Successful organisations make continuous learning part of organic growth. This includes online open courses and one-to-one virtual training that allow employees to re-skill rapidly.
Organisations can also develop their own alternatives to fill the gaps in skills and meet the high demand in areas such as robotics, artificial intelligence and data science.
Challenging problems
To solve challenging problems, organisations need teams with top talent. Many a time, these skills do not exist within an organisation. To attain these skills and broaden their interpretation of workforce, companies must blur traditional boundaries and find the right combination of internal employees, freelancers and technologies.
Governments and companies must collaborate to arrive at a new social contract for the liquid workforce. Organisations must also use combination tools and cloud-based services that allow anytime, anywhere working model. As the future of work increasingly goes virtual, digital reputation may replace resumes and traditional performance processes.
Flexible structure
To sustain a highly skilled workforce and fluid project model, digital businesses must have an equally flexible organizational structure. Leaders have to shift to a parallel form of leadership, where they co-create and manage simultaneously. They need to be clear about expectations, transparency with feedback and ultimately trust their people to make decisions. Trust will be the new currency of the digital age.
Measuring effectiveness
Feedback mechanisms and objective success metrics can be even more important in successfully managing fluid work and teams. Team connecting for a few minutes, frequent sharing of even partial project deliverables, and deftly-created milestone tracking are all elements of successful liquid team management. Creating a supple workforce might sound challenging, but once done, the rewards are immense.
( Murali Padmanabhan is Senior Vice President and India Head - Talent Management at VirtusaPolaris Corporation .)
