What is behind a successful business or a successful organisation? One would intuitively say that it is a high performance culture, which for each particular business is created differently, however, two components are usually the same: highly motivated, engaged employees and right leadership capable of creating proper working environment that boosts innovation, creativity and in fact gives voice and power to employees.
Isn't it a shift in the whole working environment paradigm that we are observing at the moment? Most probably it is. HR departments and educational institutions more and more are mentioning the need for the reinvention of people management practices and instead of an old approach of just getting rid of lower performers, working differently by doing research on employees and helping them grow in their roles and becoming more engaged and satisfied with their jobs. »Learner-centricity« is what you hear more and more from education providers and HR specialists. Individualizing learning experience, making sure learning can happen both in formal and informal setting, at the planned moment and when acutely needed when facing a particular job task – is currently considered forward-thinking.
It seems that actually technology and digitalization are driving this people-centricity processes. Moreover, the generation that grew up now with technology from a very early age and is actively using it, will change the whole understanding of what work is, what company loyalty means and how important the company culture is. The part of the workforce that actually will need a lot of learning and adaptation is the older generaiton – young people come already equipped for the digital era.
Those organisations that will be able to accomodate to this trend of employee-centricity will ensure a big part of the success. However, those organisation that on top of that will be adaptable enough to be able to cope with tomorrow's changes will win big. We are in fact talking about ambidextrious organisations.
What companies will survive in this interesting and challenging times? The CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella for instance says that the only way to survive in this digital era is to embrace the digitalization. He thinks that: »Companies succeeding at digital transformation are doing four things, becoming more engaged with their customers, empowering their employees, optimizing how they run their business operations and transforming the products and services they offer using digital content! ». Let's see what the future holds for us.