the building blocks of an agile and adaptive team.

The labour market, much like the broader world, has changed rapidly during the last decades. Notably, it has transformed from a mostly unified structure to a fragmented landscape, marked by the replacement of traditional employment models with agile and dynamic alternatives. And as change seems to have become the new normal, it's crucial to find ways to enable the organisation, team, and individual employees to adapt to new conditions.

In this text we will present and discuss the building blocks of an agile and profitable team – a framework designed to help companies and organisations thrive in an environment where everything changes all the time.

1. skills

2. size

3. balance

4. location

5. leadership

1. as work transforms, the need for new skills arises

The current trend of digital transformation, combined with changes in customer behaviour and needs, demands a regular update of skills requirements, as well as how different roles are designed. However, navigating this challenge remains a puzzle for many companies and organisations. In fact, according to the 2024 Randstad India Talent Trends Report research, 72% of leaders worldwide anticipate that the skills gap will pose a great challenge for their business in the coming years.

At times when you're facing clear challenges or opportunities, you can learn a lot about your workforce by taking stock of your existing skills. Which core skills are within the organisation today and what other skills are available for support? What additional talent do you need to succeed? After all, the process of building an adaptive workforce is not about replacing current employees with new ones, but rather integrating new skills with previous experiences.

skills exchange and knowledge transfer

With increased mobility in the labour market, the exchange of skills within the company becomes even more important. This is often especially important for organisations facing retirements en masse, for example, where a lot of skills disappear at the same time, but also for organisations with high staff turnover where it becomes expensive to start over, time after time. 

2. expand, downsize – or both?

The right size of the team is not primarily about headcounts but about ensuring that you have the ability to meet the demands of your customers without being over or understaffed. This will also ensure your employees have a good work-life balance, which can lead to reduced turnover. For most businesses, the need for talent depends on the season, orders and business cycles. It isn't uncommon for organisations to have to make redundancies in one area, while facing a lack of staff in another.

questions to consider when planning staffing needs:

When building a well-composed team, the first question to ask yourself is whether you have sufficient staff and skills within your core area. Are you staffed, not only to manage ongoing operations, but also to ensure the right development in the future?

Creating a good balance of permanent employees and temporary staff is also a key priority. We often recommend that our customers work from a 1-2-3 categorisation of skills:

1. Business-critical skills – Skills that permanent employees should master. Can be hired by you or with external help.

2. Mid-level skills – Can be a mix of permanent and temporary employees. Temporary needs, for example, are often resolved with external help.

3. Less-advanced skills. Can be temporary employees for shorter or longer periods. All three categories can function within the same team, and an individual can often move from one category to another.

mix it up

A recent study by McKinsey, Diversity Matters Even More, shows that companies with diverse workforces are likely to outperform financially less-diverse competitors. In addition, our own 2024 Talent Trends Report indicates a growing demand from employees globally for inclusive and diverse workplaces. This suggests you should seek to create a mix of ages, genders and backgrounds among the employees in your team. Recruit with an open mind to create mixed work groups.

4. the right location has many places

With online work tools and technology constantly evolving, physical location is not as important as it once was for many roles and sectors. Adapting to this change, more than a third of UK employees wouldn’t accept a new job if it didn’t provide flexible locations (39%) or working hours (43%), according to our 2024 Workmonitor report. The increasing availability of flexible and contingent talent, regardless of geography, can help you acquire people and skills that are traditionally hard to find. 

the right resources in the right places

For companies that have many different workplaces, it's not uncommon for workloads to change. Some may experience a lack of resources while others have excess capacity. Creating a geographically diverse team can be a way to enable swift staffing adjustments in response to changing demands. When investing in talent, it's therefore good to clarify within which parts of the business and at which locations the workforce is expected to increase or decrease.

To secure talent, it may sometimes be justified to move a particular function, in whole or in part, to another location. Naturally, it helps if you already have workplaces at several locations.

Another good advice is to connect the employment contract to a region instead of a location. Nowadays, it's common practice for employment contracts to specify a particular location, complicating the process of sharing staff within a region without contract renegotiation. Instead, it may be a good idea to write the employment contract for a larger region. 

5. flexible organisations require new leadership

Working with flexible organisations is not always simple. Leading a team of people who are in different time zones or working on various projects, for example, places new requirements on managers. In an ever-changing work landscape, the need for clarity regarding goals and follow-up of performance also increases. 

clear and common rules for everyone

A single team could include people with different agendas, conditions, expectations and priorities, which creates a need for clear rules of play. In addition to having different perceptions about the team's goals and action plans, there are also often very different ideas about ideal working methods. Some prefer as few meetings as possible because they want to work on their own. Others want to meet every day and discuss everything. 

According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, more than half (53%) of individuals who partake in remote work to some extent express that it negatively impacts their ability to connect with colleagues. Obviously, what matters here is finding a common platform that is both effective and satisfies different needs.

Collaboration among individuals with varied contractual terms and time horizons introduces new requirements for effective functioning. When people are temporarily associated with the workplace or part of a project, having a comprehensive understanding becomes crucial. Maybe they only fulfil a partial goal, but they affect and are affected by other parts in the process at all times. 

clear definitions of the different work roles

With more standardised work, clear and structured job descriptions enable new or temporary employees to quickly settle into their new workplaces. Even for more complex services, it's valuable to have clear job descriptions for efficient organisation, but also to be able to identify talent and lay the foundation for a requirements profile when recruiting.

onboarding for both permanent and temporary employees

Regardless of how a person is connected to the organisation, a well-planned onboarding programme is needed. Understanding an organisation's business, culture and method of working is always important, since it affects the person's ability to act in the best interests of the organisation. According to a survey conducted by Paychex on the consequences of inadequate onboarding, 66% of employees in small-scale enterprises feel undertrained as a result of a negative onboarding experience – a finding that provides ample room for improvement.

Consequently, the onboarding programme probably needs to adapt, based on the role being filled. In a role that requires core skills and great insight into the entire business, naturally, the introduction will be more extensive and take considerably longer than a role that is more limited.