Building Tomorrow’s Workforce today

6 Key Steps

As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said, “change is the only constant in life”. This wise aphorism also applies to organisations. In light of the many changes in the world and their impact on the world of work, PwC’s latest “Future of Work & Skills Study” shows the key actions that leaders can take to seize these opportunities and develop the full potential of their workforce to ensure the long-term growth and sustainability of the organisation.

The study, conducted across nearly 4,000 businesses internationally and over 200 Swiss-based business leaders, found that leaders believed that remote and hybrid working had boosted their productivity. On the downside, less than one third of leaders felt that they were building high trust levels with their workforce. In addition, the study also shows that Swiss leaders feel less confident as compared to the international average in several key critical areas such as the ability of the HR function to effectively deliver on the business strategy or the ability to identify the skills workers will need in the future. Nonetheless, the good news is that there is a significant and positive bottomline impact for taking a strategic, fact-based approach to people planning.

How do we manage change to build trust and ensure that people and businesses thrive? The study identified six key actions enabling leaders to access the full potential of their teams. We call these “no regrets moves” as they will have an immediate and ongoing positive impact on business results and ensure that HR practitioners are seen as strategic business partners to business leaders.

Anticipate and plan for the future. Planning is more important - and more difficult - than ever, as organisations face an increasingly uncertain future. Swiss leaders were significantly less likely to use either scenario or dynamic planning: 17% compared to 26% internationally. This presents a major risk especially given the generational change occurring in the workforce as the baby boomer generation moves into retirement. Leaders who used both scenario-based planning and dynamic planning were 30% more likely than those who use neither approach, to perform at or above financial and other targets. Those who used dynamic planning alone were 10% more likely to overperform on key targets. Organisations can increase their agility and resilience by envisioning different scenarios of what the future could look like and draw conclusions which should be reflected within their workforce strategy.
Build trust in the organisation: According to PwC research, building and maintaining trust between leadership and staff is essential to attract and retain talented workers. Only 18% of Swiss-based leaders felt that they were building trust between workers and their direct supervisors, which is fundamentally lower than the international score of 30%. Since organisations seem to struggle in establishing and maintaining a culture that reinforces trust at all levels the topic should be revaluated and improved.
Optimise workplace productivity and performance: When organisations can’t measure productivity, then they can’t manage the workload. The majority of survey participants believed that remote and hybrid work had boosted productivity, although reality shows a significant variation depending on the industry and nature of work. At the same time, only 25% of leaders in the international sample felt that workloads were manageable or that they could accurately measure productivity. Swiss-based leaders where less optimistic with approximately 16% confident on both measures. Organisations should measure their peoples workload, and target a successfully balanced workforce productivity and well-being to increased performance.
Enable skills of the future: 26% of international leaders believed that they could identify the skills essential to their organisation’s survival compared with 21% of Swiss-based leaders. In Switzerland, only 15% of leaders used workplace analytics to rigorously identify and monitor skills gaps. This compares to 23% of the international leadership sample. Organisations should prioritize the internal ability to identify future skills and upskilling requirements, otherwise they will likely underinvest in one of their most important resource allocations – human capital.
Prepare for and deploy human centric technology: Digitalisation is a top concern for leaders and a source of anxiety for employees – if poorly handled. Implementing new technology is more sustainable when the impact on people is consistently kept in mind. 21% of international leaders were confident that they have identified the risks of digitising human work and 25% felt that they were effectively communicating about the impact of technology on skills requirements. The numbers for Swiss based leaders were 18% and 14% respectively. Overcoming this hurdle requires that leaders clearly communicate the impact of technology (e.g. automation and AI) on jobs as well as the opportunities created and upskilling programmes available. Ignoring this will create a major change blocker and there is some way to go in this area.
Build the ability to rapidly access and deploy talent: Less than one third (28%) of international leaders were confident in their ability to rapidly adjust their workforce strategies. The figure was a mere 12% for Swiss based leaders. However, Swiss based HR leaders were nearly three times more likely than business leaders to believe that the HR function effectively delivers on workforce strategy (28% vs 7%). There is an underlying opportunity to reduce the perception gap between Swiss leaders and their HR department by working more closely together to develop, deploy and track a common workforce strategy that is fully integrated into the wider business strategy.

Summary

To help their organisation thrive, leaders can benefit from taking vigorous and prompt actions to strengthen their company’s capacity to meet today’s pressing challenges and to prepare for the future of work. By helping leaders to plan and implement them, HR leaders will ensure their positioning as true strategic partners in the business. As such, they have a unique opportunity to support leaders in building an environment that promotes trust, sustainable productivity, and well-being.

This article was originally featured in HR Today Magazine.