how to organize your teams to meet uncertainty

increasing need to build an agile and flexible team

The world around us is changing more and more quickly impacting the labor market and how we decide to build our teams and organizations. 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 2020 Global Human Capital Trends study from Deloitte, 45% of HR professionals stated that incorporating agile and team-based work is the biggest change HR can make to maximize its impact.

Next to this, more than half (53%) of organizations that have adopted a team-based strategy have seen a significant improvement in performance.

This makes it clear that it’s becoming increasingly important for HR to take an agile, adaptable approach to the unique challenges and opportunities businesses are currently facing.  HR needs to find  ways to enable the organization, team, and employees to adapt to new conditions.  In this blog, we examine 3 key considerations to help you restructure your team to adapt to the new normal while future proofing your organisation. 

three key consideration when reorganizing your team to meet uncertainty

Do we 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.

What are our 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 organize your team. To prepare for 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.

Do we have the right mix of permanent and temporary staff?

To adapt the organization 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 our customers to distinguish between three types of skills; business-critical, medium-level skills, and less-advanced skills. 

• Business-critical skills: these employees should preferably be permanently hired by you.
• Medium-level skills: these employees can be a mix of permanent and temporary employees. 
• Less-advanced skills: these employees may be advantageously  temporary employees for shorter or longer periods. 

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

a guide on how to build profitable teams

In the end, you want to organize teams who create a long-term successful and profitable growth. In an increasingly changing market, with demands for both continuity, speed, and agility, your organization needs to prepare for uncertainty. 

If you're interested in learning more about how to organize your teams to meet the current challenges and future-proof your organization, you can download our in-depth guide on how to build profitable teams below.