TM - January 2008 - (Page 38)

recruitment & retention assessment & evaluation compensation & benefits performance management learning & development succession planning [learning & development]by John Ambrose Cross-Training for Workforce Agility A s organizations grapple with the increasing pace of change, workforce agility is emerging as key to becoming an industry leader. Cross-training workers in multiple skills and providing ongoing learning opportunities delivered in the right place, at the right time can ensure an agile workforce. Managing change effectively has become a significant corporate undertaking, impacting critical success factors when adopting emerging technologies and business models, fighting competitors and undertaking myriad business innovations. It is from this rapid-fire change environment that the term “agility” has emerged. Defining Agility Agility can mean different things to different organizational units, but one common thread persists: accelerating speed of change. Organizations must not only keep up with change, but catalyze change to keep a competitive edge. And, one critical aspect of an agile organization is a workforce with a broad skill set and in-depth knowledge across multiple areas of the business. Cross-training is the key. Why Agility? According to the Institute for Corporate Productivity’s study, “Agility and Resilience in the Face of Continuous Change,” an agile business “can move quickly, decisively and effectively in anticipating, initiating and taking advantage of change.” According to Mary Pat McCarthy and Jeff Stein, in their book Agile Business for Fragile Times: Strategies for Enhancing Competitive Resiliency and Stakeholder Trust, agile companies can do the following: • Maintain a continual focus on profitability and revenue growth. • Understand central priorities and the importance of assessing and reporting on value. • Sustain commitment to communication that starts at the top. • Acquire and filter pertinent information from and to key constituents, rapidly. • Test assumptions and frequently measuring results. • Have a performance culture. • Enable shared decision making. • Adapt rapidly to change. Agility and its qualities must be employed at the most senior level. Its importance is evident in executive education, such as the course offered in Harvard Business School’s Executive Education program, Strategic Agility: Leading Flexible Organizations. However, to be truly successful in being flexible, agility must permeate the entire organization. How does this translate into the different business units throughout the organization? A report from Gartner outlines how effective business process management (BPM) can result in agility. The 2006 report, titled “Achieving Agility,” states that BPM is “a discipline that enables business agility in three important ways. It allows faster and better-informed decisions, reduces the process revision cycle time, and promotes consensus for rapid adoption of changes.” Service-oriented architecture (SOA), a form of technology architecture that aligns IT services with business processes, is also frequently referenced as a means to agility. A 2008 IBM Global Services white As far back as the 1960s, researchers recognized the environmental contexts of organizations were changing at an increasing rate due in large part to technological change. F.E. Emery and E.L Trist wrote about the trend in their 1965 article in Human Relations titled “The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments.” According to “Agility and Resilience in the Face of Continuous Change: A Global Study of Current Trends and Future Possibilities,” conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity, practitioners were also noticing that the nature of change was changing, and from these studies, they coined the term “turbulent environment.” This new terminology was an acknowledgement that the normal expectations and rules for dealing with change no longer applied, and companies that could not adapt quickly enough would struggle for their survival. This is even more the case today, as companies are battling for their corporate lives in this rapidly changing climate. According to authors Edward Lawler and Christopher Worley in the 2006 book Built to Change: How to Achieve Sustained Organizational Effectiveness, “an analysis of Fortune 1000 corporations shows that between 1973 and 1983, 35 percent of the companies in the top 20 were new. The number of new companies increases to 45 percent when the comparison is between 1983 and 1993. It increases even further, to 60 percent, when the comparison is between 1993 and 2003.” Additionally, a series of major issues surveys conducted by the Human Resource Institute show that managing change has been perennially ranked among the top workforce management issues since the 1990s. 38 January 2008 talent management magazine www.TalentMgt.com http://www.TalentMgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of TM - January 2008

TM - January 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Learning Connections: Working With Those People Leading Edge: Hub Caps for a Buggy Human Performance: Hawthorne Effect Revisited Beyond Affirmative Action: The Changing Face of Recruitment Assessment Centers in Talent Management: Strategies, Use and Value Nontraditional Benefits- How to Hook the Best Talent Intersection of Web 2.0 and Talent Management Cross-Training for Workforce Agility Mapping Talent Among Younger Workers Dashboard: Using Personality Data to Identify and Develop High-Potential Leaders Application: Shaffer Title Uses Myers-Briggs to Develop Common Corporate Language, Jump-Start Growth Insight: Dreier, Stein & Kahan LLP: Using Strategy to Bring Back the Law Profession Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources Full Potential: Stop in the Name of Leadership

TM - January 2008

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