As a society, we have become fascinated by the future of work and the topic has garnered significant airtime recently, specifically over the past three years in the wake of the COVID pandemic. What will the workforce of the future look like? Will remote work be the way of the future? What are the trends that will shape the coming 10 to 20 years? Will artificial intelligence (AI) take over our jobs? You can’t open a business article or LinkedIn without seeing something about predictions of the future. This fascination has only increased in the wake of the commercialization of AI.
All of this focus on the future would make one believe that we’ve nailed down the art of prediction. Yet, if you read any analysis about prediction studies, you’ll notice they all have one thing in common: humans are bad at predicting. Whether government agencies, corporations, or non-profits conduct the research on predictions, their work has a high probability of inaccurately predicting the future. The miscalculation is a result of far too many interconnecting dependencies within a global economy to predict when/where/how something may happen.
WATCH: Charles Abramo in an HR Exchange Talks on Generative AI in HR
If you’re interested in reading more about that, check out “Spies, Lies and Algorithms,” specifically Chapter 51, by Amy Zegart. She goes into depth about how the world of espionage undergoes a valiant effort at the art of prediction and despite the sophistication of the government agencies, there still is a strong delta in what is predicted and actual outcomes.
Utilizing that same lens, let’s look at a more common problem that we in HR need to solve for: succession planning, or the art of predicting internal mobility. Should the above statement be accurate (even the best studies on predictions come up empty), then how are organizations to prepare themselves and their workforce for the future? How are they able to anticipate the skills that are going to be needed in the future to win in the marketplace? Are they powerless because any prediction will most likely be inaccurate?
Absolutely not.
What Can HR Do?
Like most groups focused on the future, HR departments must forget about hitting the bullseye of prediction and focus more heavily on their process and what they hope to gain learn. Human Resources professionals must prepare for an infinite world of possibilities. In 2021, I wrote about "learning agility" and its importance for one’s development. Learning agility is key to help navigate whatever the future has to throw at us, but the competency of learning agility is individual; its focus is solely on how one individual can pilot new mental waters.
While learning agility is critical to one’s success, organizations must consider how to ensure their workforce will have what it needs in five, 10, 15 years and beyond.
READ MORE: Modern Day HR by Charles Abramo
Education Agility
“...Education agility refers to how skillful a person or group of individuals… are at teaching a different person or group of individuals new material.”
Education agility is another competency an organization should focus on to scale new challenges and meet the unpredictable future.
WATCH: L&D Director Brings Talent Management into the Future
What do I mean by the term education agility? It’s a core capability of an HR department to ensure the talent within the organization has the skills, knowledge, and capabilities to meet the needs of its strategy. Learning agility typically refers to how one individual navigates new material and concepts. On a more macro scale, "education agility" refers to how skillful a person or group of individuals (say perhaps, an HR department) are at teaching a different person or group of individuals new material.
When we apply education agility to the backdrop of an uncertain future, it can be a critical survival skill for companies. The market winner will not be the company that accurately predicts what product or service will be most used. The market winner will be the one that can upskill its team quickest… and then upskill its team again in six months on something different.
While "upskilling a workforce" is not a new concept, companies do need to sharpen their ability to upskill quickly, effectively, and repeatedly to compete in the market.
How Do I Develop the Skill of Education Agility in My Organization?
Establish Your Values and Live Up to Them
As with anything in organizational development, it starts with company values. Regardless of if they’re on the wall in the breakroom, on your intranet, or not officially determined yet, your company has values.
Once the right values are established, it’s imperative that they are upheld and woven through the fabric of the culture (another article for another time). Be a company that values learning, growing, and continuous improvement. No company is going to come out and say they don’t believe in learning, but only the true greats have a culture of cognitive growth, continuous improvement, embracing curiosity, and giving their people the resources and time to grow their skills. Value these things. Make them part of your DNA.
Build a Learning Ecosystem
Regardless of the size of your organization, a multi-faceted approach to talent management and culture is key. Your learning ecosystem, which may include development programs, speaker series, professional development activities, or technical training, must be broad enough to intersect with a variety of individuals. Leaders and individual contributors alike need to interact with these programs, so when the time comes to be taught new skills, there is a program that the audience is familiar with, and you have an avenue to deliver new content and teach new skills.
This multifaceted learning approach ensures that learning never stops and acts as a framework for how a company teaches its employees.
Hire Curious Individuals
If you’re reading this article, I imagine you don’t need to be convinced that an organization’s greatest strength is its people. A group of amazing people have a high probability of producing amazing results. A group of disengaged people have a high probability of not producing amazing results. Countless studies have supported these theories, so it’s no surprise that building teams with a natural curiosity and hunger for learning will perform better when new concepts, theories, and applications are introduced. Want to learn how to hire these folks? Check out this Forbes article.
READ: UPDATED - Talent Management - A Guide for Human Resources
Get Leaders to Promote Learning Inside and Outside of the Organization
To build off hiring curious individuals, those who are hungry for new information and the ability to apply it tend to navigate new waters quicker and more effectively than those who are not. It’s unlikely to think that those individuals will be satiated by only learning inside the organization - and that’s OK.
Leaders need to encourage additional learning opportunities outside their company. This helps drive diversity of thought, networking, and new ideas. If this isn’t encouraged frequently, it could cause siloed thinking and result in homogenous thought processes and stifled creativity. Leaders not only need to encourage learning outside the organization; they need to enable it.
WATCH: Charles Abramo in a DEIB Session on Championing Allyship
Provide Spaces for Formal and Informal Collaboration of Employees
From corporate town halls to water cooler conversations, our employees interact in a variety of ways. With the onset of remote work, the number of studies measuring communication, effectiveness, and engagement has skyrocketed. The result? We need a balance of formal and informal interactions with our coworkers to keep engagement high and build collaboration.
If we want our employees to learn and adopt new concepts quickly, we need to provide spaces to connect, engage, and collaborate. This can be done virtually or in person.
As leaders of people, there must be an obsession with removing roadblocks for your team. And one of those roadblocks is how your people communicate with the organization. The connection of people within the organization increases engagement and, in turn, performance.
READ: Michael Arena's Research on Connections and Collaboration at Work
The above list certainly isn’t all-inclusive but sets the foundation for how an organization can move its culture to one of skills development and helping teach its people new ways of working.
It’s imperative that despite the accuracy of our predictions, we continue to keep predicting. The art of predicting isn’t about hitting the bullseye per se. It’s about what you learn in the process; the vulnerabilities, the strengths, the variables. The benefit of attempting to find the prediction isn’t the prediction itself. It’s the information you unearth in the process.
“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and diligence.”-Abigail Adams
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