Het
motto van Platform O is: "Gezonde bedrijven beter maken". Dat
betekent niets meer en niets minder dat wij u inspireren om zaken fundamenteel
anders aan te pakken en het ondernemingsperspectief krachtig en duidelijk neer
te zetten. Wij helpen u de gekozen strategie te concretiseren en het
ondernemersklimaat te doen herleven en vervolgens de “Sense of Excitement”
daadwerkelijk te laten landen bij alle
medewerkers. Tijdens een van onze opdrachten confronteerden wij onze
opdrachtgever met de thesis van Josh Bersin of Bersin & Associates:
"The end of a job as we know it". Arbeidsrelaties vragen nu eenmaal steeds
meer om maatwerk en maatwerk vraagt nieuw leiderschap. En juist daar ligt de
uitdaging voor HR. Door de inzet van onze High Performance Analyses HPA, hebben
wij onze opdrachtgever geholpen bij zijn strategische personeelsplanning,
waardoor hij in staat is sneller te anticiperen in een dynamische omgeving.
De thesis wil ik u niet onthouden:
The
concept of a job, as we know it, is starting to go away.
Over the last year I've been speaking with many
corporate business and HR leaders and have heard a common theme: we need our
organizations to be more agile. We need to redesign the organization so we can
learn faster, communicate better, and respond more rapidly to change. This
quest for the agile organization has changed the nature of what we call a job.
Something very profound is happening. Jobs are getting
more specialized, people work in teams and cross functional boundaries, and success
is being redefined by expertise, not span of control. And people without
specialized skills are finding it harder to find work. I would like to talk a
little bit about a theme which I call “the
end of a job as we know it.”
The
History of a Job
Many decades ago organizational development experts
came up with the concept of "a job" - a functional role which was
defined by a set of responsibilities, functional competencies (skills needed to
succeed), a job title, level, and career path. These functional roles are
institutionalized around the world. We write "job descriptions" when
we hire people; we create organization charts which show functional roles in a
hierarchy; we have billions of dollars of HR software which manage job
competencies, compensation levels, and skills; and we have millions of workers
and managers who have been trained to hire, manage, and organize their teams
around these pre-defined jobs.
For you as an employee, you read the job description,
take on the "job," try to do it well, and expect regular rewards and
upward promotion. And if you work for a well run organization, there are
training tools, assessments, feedback, and recognition programs to help you
succeed. Well, the world has changed.
It's all about expertise, not just experience.
Well the world has changed. Today, thanks to
communications technology, people can do their "jobs" everywhere and
anywhere. We collaborate across the
globe just as easily as we can in the same room. People don't necessarily
progress "upward," but often "sideways" or
"deeper" in expertise. And as a result of this shift, if you let your
skills atrophy, you're dead. Your
employer can likely find those skills elsewhere by hiring a contractor, bidding
out work, or finding another internal expert. We have entered a workforce where
deep skills are the currency of employment, not just experience. In our
research we call this "the
borderless workplace," a concept which explains how workers work
seamlessly with people inside and outside their organization on a continuous
basis. And this shift has redefined what a “job” actually is.
Let’s look at a few examples.
Customer service agents work in some type of support
center. But today this may be virtual, taking place at home or in a remote
location. Service agents can instantly access experts in engineering, sales, or
product design through knowledge portals, online video, and email. So if you
are a customer service agent that specializes in the support of one particular
product, are you a "customer support agent" or are you a
"product specialist?" If your company is smart, they will redefine
your job as "product specialist" and put you into a role which lets
you share your expertise with other service agents. You will make more money
and serve others in the organization.
Look at IT and engineering. In the 1980’s companies
hired “computer programmers." These were people with general programming
skills and they came to your company with to learn your systems. Today there
are dozens of highly specialized IT skills. If you don’t have deep expertise in
one of these specialized areas, you’re going to find it hard to find a
“programming” job. And IT executives use borderlessness more than ever: if your company needs a programming skill,
they will find it in India, China, or eastern Europe.
Your value as an employee is no longer "I am good
at my job" but “how much demand is there for my skills.” This is the
process of "increasing specialization," a process which naturally
takes place in high-performing organizations. Much research has been done over
the years and it all shows that "specialists outperform generalists"
by up to 10:1. Specialized software engineers produce 10 times more
productivity than generalists. Specialized sales people can sell 5-10 times as
much as generalized sales people, and on and on.
Roles not Jobs:
Tasks and Projects, not Functions. What this all means is that in
today's high performing companies, people now take on "roles" not
"jobs." They are responsible for "tasks" and
"projects" and not simply "functions."
While a company may still need to hire a
"customer service agent" or a "director of customer
service," what they really want to do is find a person who has a highly
refined set of skills which they need for their company. So if the company is
Southwest Airlines, they're going to look for someone with great sense of
humor, a high degree of emotional intelligence, and the willingness to do what
it takes to solve a customer's problems. They aren't looking for people who
"have had that job" but rather people who "have these
skills."
And leadership, by the way, is just a "role"
like any other - with its own particular set of skills. This is particularly true in technical and
professional roles. Many of the HR executives I talk with tell me they're
having an increasingly difficult time recruiting. As our research points out,
this is not because there aren’t people looking for jobs, it’s because their
organization needs specialized roles and the workforce itself has not fully
adjusted to this new world. This is the essence of my thesis: "jobs as we know them are changing
dramatically."
Five
Ways High-Performing Organizations Manage People
1. They reward
results and expertise, not position.
Accenture rewards its consultants based on a 7-level
capability model, which people are expected to focus on over many years of
their career. People are evaluated based on the "internal demand" for
their skills, not just their manager's assessment of performance. Intel
regularly rewards and moves top engineering talent around the company to
promote and build their expertise.
2. They break
down functional silos and facilitate work across business functions.
One of Pfizer’s greatest organizational breakthroughs
was the company’s focus on “science teams” which collaborate and share
information on various body systems, organs, and molecules – across different
product teams. IBM regularly creates global action-teams which take people from
functional groups and brings them together to work on large client projects.
3. They reward
continuous learning and “learning agility.”
The Federal Reserve and even the IRS now reward people
for contributing knowledge to others becoming better teachers and learners.
Some academics call this a push for "serial incompetence," meaning
people are regularly moved into new roles to expand their breadth of
experience.
4. They hire
for values, innate skills, and fit, not for experience.
The famous Google hiring tests focus on intellectual
ability and fit, not on experience. Swardovski, one of the world’s leading
retailers, looks for integrity and sense of value in its candidates, not retail
experience. Even the giant American Express has changed its hiring standards to
look for “hospitality personalities” not customer service experience.
5. They
encourage and promote horizontal mobility.
United Health Group posts all major job opportunities
internally and has built a whole team dedicated to “facilitated talent
mobility.” This team helps people find new jobs internally, develop their own
internal careers, and saves the company millions in external hiring. All these
high-performing business focus on people taking on "roles” and
“responsibilities” and building deeper levels of skills and cross-functional
contribution. Implications for You, Your Organization, and the HR Marketplace
I’ve been talking with companies about this for the
last year, and this shift has many important implications.
Job Seekers:
If you are a job seeker, it means that now, more than
ever, it is time to focus on your own skills and abilities. Decide what you are
truly good at, and focus on building this set of skills in a deeper and more
meaningful way. Read everything you can. Take courses to build fundamental
skills. Remember that experience drives mastery: get more experience doing
different types of projects in your own job today. This makes you more valuable
to your own employer as well as to the external job market.
Business Leaders:
If you are a manager or business executive, think hard
about your own organization. Have you created enough flexibility in the
organization to empower people to develop expertise and bring it to your
customers? Do you encourage continuous
learning and learning from mistakes? Do you reward expertise and functional
depth? Do you define a “high-potential” as a strong technical or functional
leader and not only a strong manager or executive? (Managerial skills are
actually “functional skills” also.) For more on this, read about our
High-Impact Learning Culture research.
HR
Vendors and Suppliers:
Are you delivering the right products and services
which reflect this huge shift in the nature of the workforce? Do you have tools
and services which help people build expertise, find expertise, and develop and
improve internal organizational agility? If not you may find yourself selling
products which rapidly become obsolete. (Look at how quickly Monster.com, “a
job-board” is being replaced by LinkedIn “an expertise network.” The company's
earnings just dropped 5% despite a 9% increase in the number of postings.)
HR
Executives and Managers:
Are you promoting HR practices which create
cross-organizational work and expertise? Is your reward system flexible and
open enough to enable people to work on project teams which cross the
organization? Is your performance management process agile and flexible and
does it force continuous feedback and transparency? Do you hire for skills and
capabilities or just experience? Do you promote and facilitate talent mobility?
Do you regularly communicate company values, goals, and strategies to encourage
people to think of the organization as “one team” and not a set of functional
silos?
