Your Workforce Is More Adaptable Than You Think
Summary.
In 2018 the Project on Managing the Future of Work at HBS teamed up with the BCG Henderson Institute to survey 6,500 business leaders and 11,000 workers about the various forces reshaping the nature of work. The responses revealed a surprising gap: While the executives were pessimistic about their employees’ ability to acquire the capabilities needed to thrive in an era of rapid change, the employees were not. The employees were actually focused on the benefits that change would bring and far more eager to learn new skills than their leaders gave them credit for.
This gap highlights a vast reserve of talent and energy firms can tap into: their own workers. How can a company do that? By creating a learning culture; engaging employees in the transition instead of shepherding them through it; developing an internal talent pipeline for the entire workforce; and collaborating with outside partners to build the right skills in the labor pools it hires from.
Many managers have little faith in their employees’ ability to survive the twists and turns of a rapidly evolving economy. “The majority of people in disappearing jobs do not realize what is coming,” the head of strategy at a top German bank recently told us. “My call center workers are neither able nor willing to change.”