Leading The Shift From Surviving To Thrive

I’m delight that attends the latest Alchemizing HR at HRCI series, hosted by Clarissa Peterson - "Former chair of the board of directors of HRCI" and the amazing speaker Jonathan Pearce "Workforce strategies leader at Deloitte", about what lessons can be learned from the pandemic, and How HR and professional leaders react to lead their organizations in the next era from surviving to thriving.

The session includes also discusses the latest survey managed by Deloitte for almost 6000 business and HR leaders from 99 countries and these are some of the discussed thoughts and insights about managing the change.

The main 3 Keys insights

1- “Shifting into scenario planning” Organizations need to do preparedness differently than before, usual ways by only focusing on business planning wouldn't be much enough, an additional tool such as scenario planning is becoming increasingly required and important, this means doing more focus for unknown planning and prepare different scenarios instead regular planning.

2- “Ability to Navigate Future Disruptions will Rely on Distinctly Human Capabilities” to maximize the organization's preparedness for the future, organizations have to have more Human capabilities than ever before, this means putting the humans in the center, doing More and more attention to them in terms of adaption, reskill and preparing them for taking A new roles side by side with enhancing the organization's ability to make a rapid decisions?

3- “Focus on Work Re-Imagination” This is totally different from work transformation or work optimizing since the latter means doing the work with “less” human efforts through using the tools and the technology however “Reimagine Work” is to get “different” outcomes and values by using technology and human capabilities.

So the organization has to take the lead and look to the disruption not just a "Temporary Crisis" that needs to be addressed and then the business will revert to normal, this is called the “Surviving Mindset” but considering the disruption is continuous, and looking to it as a Catalyst to drive the organization forward, by reinventing itself, or finding new ways for Doing the business and this is the “thriving mindset”

On another side there are “3 headlines” that can support the organization to make the shift:

1- “purpose” focus on the purpose of the organization and connecting team to the purpose

2- “potential capability” give the team the space to open up the capacity into high-level?

3- “perspective” meaning the shift from backward to forward, re-architecture of the work to take bold steps forward.

All of those headlines need to be done through 5 moves:

1- Design the work for well-being: the end of work/life balance

2- Super teams: where work happens

3- Beyond the reskilling: unleashing workforce potential

4- Governing workforce strategies: setting a new direction for work and the workforce

5- A memo to HR: accelerating the shift to re-architecture the work?

1- Design the work for well-being: the end of work/life balance: the organization will need to do more focus on redesigning the work, by putting the human in the center, to reach the balance point between home and work, and not affecting the human well-being

2- Super teams: where work happens:?focus on super-teams, the power of technology and AI how the organization could brings all teams and optimize their work together, and use the Impact of that technology to generate more productivity. All this demonstrate how much we need?to use technology and putting it at the center of the teamwork?

3- Beyond the reskilling: unleashing workforce potential: And this focus on "How could you inspire your team" letting them use their strengths to have more determinations about their work and the new areas of the business.

We saw that already, at the dramatic shifts in different trades such as fashion companies start doing masks, or perfume companies start doing hand sanitizer, etc. So it is time for allowing your team to find new ways and giving them an additional space to use their skills, and to work on things that matter to them most, which will be upskilling them and give them a new different scale

4- Governing workforce strategies: setting a new direction for work and the workforce: Shifting the way we used to do in terms of measurement, assessment, and reporting in HR from looking back to looking forward, and increasing focus on workforce planning to understand the needed future skills, work preferences and what the skills are required for future leaders ...etc. And putting all in scenario modeling which is becoming a new skill required from HR.

5- A Memo to HR: Accelerating The Shift to Re-Architecture the work: This is about HR opportunities not just designing the programs and managing them, but redesign and reinventing work, and connecting people with new opportunities.

So this is a fantastic time for HR professionals and for those who are interested in extending the capabilities of human capital management

Now Our work is about 3 dimensions

1- Work: the activity performed and technology applied to produce work and create value

2- Workforce: the combination of skills and talent options to perform the work

3- Workplace: the context and environment in which the work is done

So, what we had been through last year, will make us put some sort of lens on those domains to be like :

So it will be From "Work" into “Re-architecture the work” redesign the work

From "Workforce" into "Unleashing the workforce", empowering them, and extend them the opportunity to reskill their careers

From "Workplace" into "Adapting the workplace", find new ways for people to connect and collaborate??

So What the HR Leaders Can Do in these 3 Dimensions?

1- "Re-architecture the work": We used to think of the (Tech-work) relation as putting Humans in the center of technology to adopt the technology, now we’re shifting into more "Humanized" technology, in order to support us and helping us to get more collaboration to achieve a different better outcomes

2- Unleashing The Workforce:?There are new trends now like the massive increase of remote job posting and the planning process which the workforce doing in order to relocate to new less cost of living locations since they now can remotely be working from anywhere. This has also happened, but at the organizational level, Microsoft's last survey revealed that this year nearly 40% of the global workforce will leave their employers.?

So our role is to provide kinds of the pathway, experience, and opportunities to develop long-lasting careers so we have an advantage in that unleash workforce – so we need to shift the Classic think from?“Attract, develop and retain” to “Access, Curate and Engage” as following:

ACCESS: Creating a talent marketplace as more dynamic, to find and create new opportunities to help them build their careers. And to enable leaders to have better insight into the skills that are available inside the organizations that they can tap into.

The best example of that is how much time we were taken to get the vaccine from the concept phase to production in a short period than usual. And what the head of the vaccine's program at AstraZeneca –?she said, as they thought of different ways to bring the available human capabilities from all over the organization, even for those who didn’t usually work on a vaccine but they have the needed capabilities to support, then they worked beyond the organization limit to get the required support they need, like universities and other outside organizations and using different?digital tools in agile way of working to achieve the goal

CURATE: This is a development experience, not just a program to have learning experiences, but new ways for people to grow their networks, experience and to have new learning ways to grow their career

ENGAGE: How to integrate, design, and create workforce platforms that maximizing performance and engagement.?

3- Workplace: To do more focus on the adaptability of the workplace to be more flexible that Allows people to flow through the organization. Some studies show that almost 38 M will be working remotely in 2025. Also, many different organizations will give different work options to employees either to be fully remote, hybrid, or office-based. eventually, the workplace will further evolve as technology will evolve, as the ways of working, and workforce expectations keep shifting

The last thing, what do HR leaders and business leaders can do?

In the end, I’d like to give A huge thank you to Jonathan Pearce for his presentation during the session, and for his inspiration and expertise, also a big thank you to Clarissa Peterson for hosting this amazing series of Alchemizing HR with HRCI .

To learn more, read Deloitte’s 2021 Global Human capital trends report online at www.deloitte.com/hctrends

Also check this for the social enterprise in a world disrupted: leading the shift from surviving to thrive https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/human-capital-trends.html

To following up the series go to HRCI.org and subscribe for the next event

Thanks?