Agility will steady firms past rough waters
What you need to know:
As the employer, you have to invest in relevant training on agility.
The biggest hindrance to agility may not be employee attitudes, but their knowledge on the subject matter.
After you train them, you will know if they are agile.
Aaron De Smet, a senior partner leading organisation design at McKinsey, defined workplace agility as the ability of an organisation to renew itself, adapt, change quickly, and succeed in a rapidly changing, ambiguous and turbulent environment. With the breaking of the coronavirus pandemic and an increase in industry disruptions, a more apt meaning cannot be found.
Indeed, employees' capacity to be aware of, understand and duly respond to changes in the workplace is being tested with wanton consistency now than ever before. Only firms that embrace agility speedily, and put in place data-driven systems for it, will survive and maintain competitive advantage.
Tools for collaboration and information-sharing should also be deployed so that no department drags the other ones down. It’s not just the wherewithal, though. Culture, attitudes and mindset of employees such as trust, empowerment, ambiguity, tolerance, persistence, decisiveness and an overall appreciation for mistakes have a crucial role to play in steadying a ship past rough waters.
Employees have to feel empowered to make decentralised decisions and work around procedure to speed up a response. And they need to have the freedom to deploy their ingenuity and creativity on an unmitigated challenge.
As the employer, you have to invest in relevant training on agility. The biggest hindrance to agility may not be employee attitudes, but their knowledge on the subject matter. After you train them, you will know if they are agile.
They will not be afraid to change course and adapt to their surroundings. They will listen more, communicate better and collaborate across the board without feeling inferior. They will be proactive, snuffing out danger before it shows up. They’ll be disciplined and committed to the course. Resilient. Innovative. Loyal.
A model agile organisation not only maintains exemplary customer service and its going concern status. According to a 2018 Gallup study, employees who strongly believe their companies are well-equipped to meet changing business needs are also far more likely to advocate for their organisations as employers. The optimism, employee engagement and low turnover of your best staff could only lead to attainment or exceeding of set targets.
While many companies in Kenya struggle at the stage of aligning workplaces with digital transformation and business goals, as well as tracking staff performance on productivity platforms, Europe and America have moved to the next level. They are working on “work when you need to” models that measure job KPIs (key performance indicators) such as milestones and deliverables instead of hours logged on the job. Everybody is using SaaS and the cloud to run remote work. Quality assurance and product presentations are done via virtual and augmented reality.
Thus, a government directive such as Covid-19 isolation should not be an impediment but rather a new innovative approach of how organisations carry out their day-to-day business through the invisible disruptions.
Companies and leaders that are agile are few and far between at the moment. But come back and check after a few years. They will be all you’ll see.
Ms Ngala is Head of Human Resources at Diamond Trust Bank. [email protected].
