how to organise and adapt your workforce amid constant change.

Whether your company is challenged by digitalisation, supply-chain disruptions, inflation, or economic downturn, your organisation needs to prepare for future unforeseen events. In this article, we explore three key considerations for organising your teams to effectively adapt to continuous change and uncertainty. 

increasing need to build an adaptive workforce

As the world transforms rapidly, the labor market and how we decide to build our teams and organizations face continuous challenges. Over the last decades, we have gone from a unified, jointly managed labor market to one that is increasingly fragmented. The traditional long-term employment is, to a greater extent, replaced by temporary employment in a mix of project hires, consultants, and freelancers. 

According to the 2024 Global Human Capital Trends study from Deloitte, the next step for HR is to become a boundaryless HR, focusing on how "the organisation taps into the most skillful people, no matter where they reside, inside or outside the organisation, to address people-related challenges and issues."

Consequently, it’s becoming increasingly important for HR to take an adaptive approach to the unique challenges and opportunities businesses are currently facing. HR needs to find ways to enable the organisation, team, and employees to flex to new conditions. 

three key considerations when shaping an adaptive team

1. do you have access to the most critical capabilities and skills for the moment?

In a rapidly changing economy, the need for skills can drastically change. Suddenly, new areas and opportunities arise and you need to hire niche expertise fast. To ensure the most critical skills at the right time, many companies rely on consultants. Letting your employees work in parallel with external specialists with different cutting-edge skills is often an effective way of developing employees' competencies in essential areas.

2. what are your future staffing needs?

In many industries, there are apparent seasonal variations throughout the year, week, and day. Mapping them out makes it easier to plan for how to organise your team. To prepare for change and uncertainty, you also need to plan for different future scenarios. This allows you to formulate a strategy for adjusting the size of the group based on unforeseen events, which in turn will future proof your business.

3. do you have the right mix of permanent and temporary staff?

To adapt the organisation for unforeseen fluctuations, you need to have the right mix of permanent and temporary staff. When deciding which skills to hire permanently and which to hire temporarily, we recommend distinguishing between three types of skills: business-critical, medium-level, and less-advanced skills. 

All three categories of skills can operate within the same team, and one individual can often move from one team to another.