4 Compelling Reasons Workforce Transformation Drives Organizational Growth

  Mar 5, 2023

One of the most intriguing (and quite alarming) statistics I’ve come across in recent times is that the competencies for jobs have changed by over 25% since the year 2015 (LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report 2023). This means several skills and their associated job roles have become irrelevant or obsolete. Not surprisingly, newer roles have emerged at a pace faster than most organizations expected. What’s more alarming perhaps, is that this is expected to double in the next 4 years. This obsolescence is not just affecting professionals but ultimately the organizations. Proactive organizations have implemented strategic workforce planning that includes transforming their workforce to take on the change-tsunami. With 89% of the L&D professionals  agreeing that proactively developing employee competencies will help enterprises deal with evolving nature of work, I believe we are in the right direction. However, if you’re still pondering over whether your organization or business needs workforce transformation, here are compelling reasons why.

4 Compelling Reasons Workforce Transformation Drives Organizational Growth Delivering Against The Strategic Ambitions Of The Organization

Companies that want to constantly stay ahead of their competition and grow their market share, need to adopt state-of-the-art technologies, processes, whilst retaining cost competitiveness. The workforce has to have the required competences if they are expected to deliver products and services that are future-proof. An alternative would be to outsource projects that require new-age competences. The negative of this approach is that the organization becomes dependent on external vendors. If it takes this approach even once, it will continue to play catch up for a long time to come.

Improves Employee Retention

The predominant workforce in action across organizations around the world comprises millennials. According to reports, close to 87% of the millennials believe that learning and picking up new skills at work is extremely important. They believe that personally, it is important for them to stay current. On the other hand, only 29% of the current millennial workforce is very satisfied with existing opportunities for L&D in their organization.

When jobs become monotonous and competencies reach threshold levels, symptoms of burnout kick in, eventually leading to poor engagement, disinterested involvement, lack of productivity and more. It is at that point that employees start looking for new challenges in the market. With costs being incurred by your organization to recruit and train new talent, the most practical solution (and less expensive with greater RoI) is workforce transformation. This will grow the engagement level  of your staff and reassure them of growth and opportunities.

Brings About A Cultural Shift At The Mindset Level

Today’s workforce transformation programs are meticulously crafted for specific organizational needs. They are built on tried and tested frameworks and methodologies that pave the way for perpetual learning. For instance, the Knowledge, Attitude, Skills, and Habits (KASH) model aids in 360-degree workforce transformation, where learning is not just part of the program but a shift in behavior as well.

When organization focus on transformational training, they lay the foundation for perineal learning amongst their workforce, where they autonomously push themselves in developing new competencies to stay abreast of market and industry advancements. Such a radical shift at mindset levels cannot be brought about by focusing only skill enhancements. Skill enhancements are required to perform today’s jobs successfully. It is only transformational programs that help the workforce prepare themselves for the future.

Develop A Competitive Edge In The Market

What differentiates an also-ran organization from that of a pioneering business is forward-thinking. It’s the step that a venture takes today with ideologies and visions of tomorrow. Having the right workforce that has mastered emerging technologies not only future-proofs its employees but transforms itself into a pioneer. With the new competencies of its workforce, it can foresee challenges of tomorrow, develop relevant airtight strategies, and refine protocols and policies accordingly. This helps businesses gain a competitive edge in the market and simultaneously becomes a USP for them to land new clients.

Final Thoughts

Apart from these, both skill-based training or workforce transformation also fosters a healthy workplace culture for learning, increases trust among peers, optimizes functionality among diverse teams, and ultimately keeps the cash registers ringing as well. The longer an organization delays this process of workforce transformation, the harder it will be to catch up. And in today’s world, a market leader, can very quickly become a follower or worse. It truly is the time to rethink our talent strategy.

 

(The author is Mr. Bhaskaran Srinivasan, Vice-President Academics, UNext Learning, and the views expressed in this article are his own)

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