Posted by To build an agile workforce, you need talented, flexible individuals with the right mindset and responsive behaviour. The question is where to start? Business leaders are struggling to keep up with technological advancement. By establishing an efficient workforce, your organisation will be able to adapt and meet changing demands in the industry. Here are some strategies to cultivate an agile working culture among your employees.
1.Empowering employees
Your employees need to trust your decisions that will make a significant impact on them. The feeling of trust and importance is what brings out their desire to work harder. Agile organisations encourage employees to work things out their way, by cultivating the habit of taking risks and accepting challenges. Here are several approaches to inspire your workforce to take responsibility and develop a proper work environment for everyone:
- Encourage self-improvement by learning new skills.
- Encourage employees to take up leadership roles.
- Giving opportunities for independent decision-maker by offering them the autonomy to perform tasks on their own.
- Show your appreciation for their efforts to improve work quality and efficiency.
- Motivate employees by inspiring creative thinking.
Related: What Can You Do With Negative Feedback From Your Employees
2.Support experimentation
Companies such as Booking.com and Expedia deploy various experimentation to improve all aspects of their business. Given the inevitable market shift, your business will need to respond by adapting accordingly. Start encouraging employees by sharing fresh ideas, test and implement them to scale up your business. With proper tools and sufficient resources, your employees will able to kickstart a culture of experimentation. You can promote innovation among your employees by:
- Allowing creative freedom for all employees and setting up brainstorming sessions.
- Provide resources when required.
- Test ideas on a minimal scale without risking your entire business.
- Embrace failures and acknowledge the insights gained from the outcome.
- Keep track and document all your results and failures.
3. Encourage employee cooperation
It is essential for you to promote employee collaboration which is composed of different generations, cultures and skill sets. Ensuring there is an open and constant communication channel will create more opportunities for innovation and knowledge sharing among employees. These practices have become the go-to approach for companies that wish to adopt an agile workforce. When an agile workforce becomes more diverse, employees with a collaborative mindset will drive engagement across all prospects. There are various approaches to drive collaboration through:
- Encouraging employees to be a team player and work as a team.
- Adopt gamification to encourage friendly competition among groups of employees.
- Set-up an environment where trust and respect remain as the key focus.
Related: Future Proof Your Workforce “The 4 Key Strategies in 2019”
4.Reflect on past hiring, development and retention
To achieve long-term sustainability, factoring in reflection will help identify what has and has not worked in the past. Take for instance, what hiring methods are proven to be the most successful in finding the right talents? What is the outcome of the learning and development initiatives? Conducting internal confidential survey could provide insights for a company to explore further. Reflection time will allow you to capitalise on your previous accomplishments and learn from past failures to move forward towards creating an agile workforce.
Ng You Jing Content Marketer at Jobstore Reach me at youjing@jobstore.com