Agile talent management: Insights for HR managers

An organisation should necessarily have three elements namely a shared vision that explains the purpose of its existence, a structure that guides who is doing what and people. Ever changing business environment demands organisations to respond to the changes swiftly. Therefore, agility of the structure and the talents is vital for survival and growth of an organisation. This short article attempts to examine different facets of agile talent management. The insights shared will be useful to both HR managers and aspiring young professionals. 

The biggest asset of an organisation is its human resources. However, they can become a burden unless their capabilities are updated and upgraded in response to the changes in the business environment. Despite the cost, time and resources needed, up skilling people through regular training is therefore very important. The era we attempted to benchmark our performance only against the best in the industry is gone. To be in business and grow, we must live up to the expectations of our partner firms in long and complex value chains. Organisations having the desire of leading their industry verticals should therefore necessarily have the required skills as and when in need. Agility matters. 

Run faster to stay

 The popular quote “Run faster to stay” by Philip Kotler, the marketing guru will continue to remain valid. Ever increasing customer needs, social changes, and fast evolving technologies demand no firm to rest. This challenge exists equally for employees especially in tech domains. Some job roles require continuous acquisition of new knowledge and skills. This goes against the general human tendency of living in the comfort zones. As business organisations should possess cutting edge knowledge in their respective domains, they should either have a mechanism to replenish the work force periodically or keep on training them. Ignoring employee attrition and filling the head count with fresh talents will solve the problem for most organisations. However, this cannot be the strategy for those who want to be the industry leaders instead followers. 

Compete or collaborate? 

The era we see other players in the same industry only as competitors should come to an end. Organisations must collaborate with other players in the industry in the process of value creation. However, they are free to compete with others in capturing value. Collaboration can reduce rivalry, bring harmony, curtail waste, save energy and create synergy. In agile talent management, we must practice collaboration. Hostile environments can make our efforts of agile talent management practically not feasible. Our agile talent strategies will not bring desired results if there is no cooperation among different players in an industry. 

On-demand learning 

When you operate in an industry where rapid evolutions take place, up skilling your talent pool will be a daunting task. Motivation to learn, cost, time allocation and resource constraints can hinder your efforts of updating and upgrading the knowledge and skills of the employees. Micro credentials or short courses are now available with an array of reputed vendors. Many leading universities also offer such programs. On demand learning opportunities that will meet the learner’s own pace and time schedules can be a cost-effective solution to bridge the knowledge gaps. This is a useful agile talent strategy as it enables employees whose current performance and future potential are restricted and constrained by technology lock-ins to have flexibility to switch to other stacks when the need arises.

Organisational readiness

The famous statement that says it is not the biggest who will survive but those who can respond to change will only survive is still relevant. In this context, HR managers must be proactive. They should take the responsibility of developing skill matrices, succession plans and introducing agile talent strategies. Probably one of the most interesting things I ever read in organisational behaviour textbooks is the Peter Principle which says people in an organisation will eventually rise to a level of relative incompetence. HR managers should rethink whether they can face the challenges in today’s business environment with a talent pool comprising individuals who have reached this level of incompetence or pushed to a zone where they cannot perform and contribute. Agile talent management needs drastic changes in your promotional and reward policies. 

Open innovation 

Open innovation is popular among business organisations as a strategy to acquire external knowledge to accelerate innovations and to early commercialise them with the support of external parties. Harnessing the benefits of open innovation demands organisations to have the right talents. Imagine a situation where your organisation works on a research project with a university and not having someone at your end who can readily grasp the knowledge the university attempts to share. The domain of open innovation has its dominant vocabulary including terms such as dynamic capability and absorptive capacity. The former refers to the necessity of having capabilities that are dynamically upgraded in respond to external changes and the latter emphasises on ability to recognise the value of external knowledge and assimilation for internal innovations. In this context, it is very crucial for an organisation to have an agile talent strategy to facilitate these requirements. 

Resource augmentation 

It is a prudent strategy to get ready with resource augmentation and to be in both demand side and supply side of the equation. Having a talent pool comprising people competent in different technology stacks will enable you to extend the services to other organisations when you have excess capacity. Similarly, your readiness with such a culture will allow you to acquire talents on short term basis when needed. Given the economic uncertainties and the thin margins, this can be a prudent strategy for organisations with a low-risk appetite. 

Disruptions 

Deep Seek disruption is a classic example for business firms of all industry sectors to understand the importance of promptly addressing unresolved gaps of new products. Such shortcomings of new products neglected by the vendors can lead to exciting and rewarding opportunities for competitors. The novelty in this story is that a product which is still in its introductory stage being threatened by a disruptive technology. It is quite confusing to understand how such opportunities are identified by a disruptor at a time early adaptors are still testing the beta versions of the original product and diffusion has just begun. HR managers should understand the threat their organisations may face. Your new products require continuous R and D support coupled with rigorous analysis of possible threats from substitutes for which you need talents not restricted or limited to one area. Negligence of this will result in disruptive innovations by competitors and losing your investment in the product that is facing a premature market failure and fast obsolescence. This situation is quite crucial in industry sectors where rapid technology evolutions happen. 

Growing gig economy 

According to certain sources the global freelance workforce has now exceeded one billion people. In my classes at the university, I always tell the students that finding a job on completion of the degree should not be an accident. This is to highlight the importance of planning, having a target, preparedness and the need of acquiring knowledge and skills with the objective of applying. In these conversations I used to check their choice of becoming employees, entrepreneurs and freelancers. Occasionally, I tend to follow up with the performance of those who opt to become freelancers. One cannot become a freelancer without meeting or exceeding the level of competence expected. Given the challenges of retaining employees and the substantial cost of up skilling, business organisations should necessarily look at the growing gig economy to fulfil their talent needs. 

Temporariness

The temporary nature of business cycles that are pivoted on certain technologies in terms of products, processes and business models requires organisations to be agile in mobilising resources including HR talents. Temporariness refers to relatively short and stable periods followed by prolonged periods of uncertainty compared to long stable periods and short uncertainties we experienced in the past. Many readers will be able to recall long periods of over decades of economic stability in the past that were disturbed for a short time due to natural or man-made disasters. Instead, what we observe now is the reverse. Temporariness can badly affect your revenues, profitability and the payback calculations. You should have the resources including the right talents to move quickly when a conducive time slot for your business is re-emerging. 

A mindset change is needed 

Naturally, organisations prefer to continue with existing processes if those processes give them the desired output in a reasonable manner. The textbook term to describe this phenomenon is path dependence. This is no different for HR processes in organisations. The current method of attracting and retaining employees will continue to be there unless a major mishap pinpoints the culprit. The resultant impact of values and aspirations of the new generation employees, increasing uncertainties and rapid technological advances demands organisations to revisit the HR processes and come up with innovative strategies. Flexible contracts, innovative reward and recognition schemes, outsourcing, resource augmentation, shared ownership, team-based work allocation, matrix and agile structures are some of the strategies. Understanding the dire necessity of the need for change is a priority for HR managers in getting ready to implement agile talent management strategies. 

(The writer is a fellow of the British Computer Society, the Chartered Institute for IT and holds memberships in 8 other professional institutions in mechanical engineering, computing, engineering and technology, innovation management, marketing, psychology, transport and logistics. He is an ex-banker with four decades of experience in diverse industry sectors. He has over 20 years of postgraduate teaching experience in programs of 23 local and international universities. He headed the HR function of three software companies for over a decade. Currently, he is a senior academic fellow attached to SLIIT Business School. Email: [email protected].)