We have heard it over and over. “We have to work on establishing a more engaged workforce.” “We have to get our employees more engaged” What does that mean? Let’s define Employee Engagement. Employee Engagement is nothing more than the extent the individual chooses to apply their knowledge, skills, and abilities toward an effort. I invite your attention to three words “the individual chooses.”
What does that mean?
Our fifth installment of Developing a Workforce Plan involves Challenges. Businesses do not just decide to have a Workforce Plan, discuss it, and it happens. There are unique and expected Challenges of Workforce Planning that you will face when establishing a workforce plan that adds value. These challenges, if not addressed and overcome fully in the process, will doom your Workforce Plan before it ever starts.
What are the Challenges of Workforce Planning?
Recently I wrote an article titled, The Future of Work – Are you Ready, where I discussed the impact of technology on jobs, the workplace and how work would be accomplished in the future. An important statement in that article was “…nearly two-thirds of all jobs could have a significant part – at least 30% – of their activities automated by 2030.” and “ … about half of all work activities globally have the technical potential to be automated by adapting currently demonstrated technologies…” In other words, rapid advances in technology will not only change how work is done; it will change jobs and change the skills needed to perform those jobs. If that isn’t eye-opening enough for you consider a Dell Study that states “85% of the jobs that will be available in 2030 are not available today.”
What exactly does this mean to you?
No one likes problems. We either try and resolve them or we try to avoid them. We avoid them by doing nothing or by simply ignoring they exist hoping they will go away. Sometimes ignoring a problem is a good strategy as not all problems need or deserve our energies to resolve. However, when we decide to work on resolving a problem how we proceed is important to achieving an outcome. Too many times I have seen organizations and individuals focus on the process instead of the desired results. In other words, they spend more time talking about the problem, talking about the problem-solving process and little to no time about executing the solutions to the problems they are trying to fix. This process focus isn’t problem-solving.
Like it or not we all can find ourselves leading a workplace project. Our ability to successfully execute Project Management is key to the success of our businesses. As a result, we must understand what it takes to successfully manage a project. By success, I mean not only completing the project on time and within the budget but also achieve or exceed the expected results. Given that an estimated 80% of our work time is spent on projects the development of the necessary skills to do that is important to our total success as leaders.