How Organizational Agility Helps Businesses to Thrive

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Synopsis: Organizational agility is shorthand for the strengths displayed by those companies or organizations that can identify their most pressing needs, critically reassess policies and priorities, and then swiftly act.  Companies that seek to attain and keep talent in the current job market are having this capability deeply tested. This blog post focuses on putting in place the foundations of this long-term, highly productive strategy and how it can bear results amid the toughest recruitment environments in decades.

The talent landscape remains a highly challenging one for businesses and organizations of all stripes. A perfect storm of factors make hiring and retaining skilled employees particularly challenging.

The vast majority of organizations do not have the luxury of being able to slowly adopt new strategies. They need to keep their star employees and attract skilled workers who can support their organization’s revitalization.

These pressing needs in the post-COVID period makes organizational agility an especially powerful quality.

A Challenging Vista

The wave of resignations that has swept the labor market in wake of COVID-19 has been termed ‘The Great Resignation’, ‘Great Reshuffle’, or ‘Big Quit’.

Interesting, even as specter of COVID recedes, the number of resignations at organizations has nevertheless continued to climb, reaching a recent high-water mark in recent months. It’s clear that employees are still voting with their feet in departing organizations that are not aligned with their own interests, expectations, and requirements.

At the same time, the need to hold onto star employees has never been greater. The loss of talent, be it in the Higher Education or Corporate sector, can be debilitating to an organization and disrupts both short and long term targets.

In this new labor environment, organizations now have to remold their talent management polices. This means putting in place a strategy that deeply considers the employee experience, while also refocusing on how to identify and get the absolute best from employees.

How to Support Employees from Hire to Retire

At the Convergence of Employee Experience and Talent Effectiveness

Organizational agility is exemplified by those organizations that can make those decisions that enrich the individual employee experience, as well as ensuring that the very best talents of employees are expressed in line with business goals.

The ability to do so rapidly and effectively, in the context of a changing workforce and make-or-break business goals, is crucial. In short, it’s about keeping employees happy while using their abilities to best effect.

Data forms the crucial foundation to this approach, but it’s how data is overlaid where true efficacy can be achieved.

Individual employees need to be engaged with both proactive and reactive feedback measures. When an employee experiences a landmark event in their time at an organization, this needs to be identified and given the significance it deserves. Individuals’ unique needs, desires, and opinions are a crucial part of this picture. Building a better understanding of the employee experience in this respect can be used to inform training, HR practices, and leads to happier, more productive workers.

However, building a picture of how talent is informing success is an essential next step. Who are the individuals and what are the business practices that are driving true success? Are there unsung heroes going the extra mile and producing true excellence? Are there individuals who are performing well, but who can be brought to the next level with the application of select support measures or training? Making the most of a company’s existing talent is crucial in this regard.

Now imagine an organization that has a near-complete and up-to-date understanding of employees’ needs and desires, as well this clear picture of who and what is producing organizational success. By layering these, a 3-dimensional sense of where changes need to be made and resources applied becomes so much clearer.

How to Get There

Having established the clarity that this approach can bring, in practice, what does an organizational agility strategy consists of?

Essentially, it consists of a comprehensive feedback process and strategy – bringing together consultation and assessment information that begins at the recruitment and onboarding phase. This continues through to ongoing role change and engagement surveys, to event-based surveying, all the way to exit interviews. In the academic sector this includes course evaluations, with 360 degree feedback being an especially strong feedback system that can support this insight.

Managing this overall process and producing the layered insight outlined above requites a dedicated People Insight Platform. Explorance’s Blue provides the “big picture” required, delivering a single place to view, understand, and take action based on all your feedback data. The process can be swift, with rapid integration with existing systems and strong reporting being quickly delivered as data streams are brought together.

Where can success be replicated across an organization to produce even better results? Where can support be applied specifically to bridge a need and deliver success?

In an era that has been defined by disruption, Blue’s holistic approach provides the answers to the above, with the context and overview needed to overlay talent and experience data and produce rapid, actionable insights.

It’s only once this insight is achieved that companies can really take charge of their existing talent, and move with confidence towards business success in a very challenging period.

Learn More About How Blue Provides Vital Decision Support