Strategic Human Capital Insights

Recently, organizations have had to adapt to a new operating environment in response to the pandemic. As you think about how you have had to adapt by instituting remote work, extended sick leave, and complying with new regulations, think about how these changes may have impacted your organization's health. 

It would not be unusual for your organization to have reverted to Maslow’s survival mode. And even though you may think that everything is OK, take a candid look at how you would rate the current organizational health of your group, division, or company. And as you look to the future, how do you plan for an organizationally healthy group that starts healthy and stays healthy throughout the year? And, if you need to repair some organizational health issues, what will you do?

What do we mean by organizational health? Health is a relatively simple concept. On a personal level, we use many terms to describe health. The positive terms are robust, energetic, improving, strong, and vibrant. On the less than positive side, the terms are lethargic, sick, failing, deteriorating, and declining. These same terms apply to organizational groups. That's why the term organizational health resonates with managers. It reflects the total dynamic impact of all the individuals' interactions and contributions within each group.  

What should you do to assess the organizational health of your group?
(Keep in mind that your managerial mindset needs to be totally objective & completely honest.)

Here is a 3-part checklist that may help you evaluate, build, and sustain organizational health.

This blog was co-authored by Joanne Flynn, Jim Bosserman, and Debbie Gower. This article combines perspectives and research from three strategic performance and learning and development professionals.

What is the role of Learning & Development (L&D) in an organization’s growth and transformation?

What is the role of L&D in dealing with continuous change?

6 Key L&D Strategic Issues

Learning & Development is critical to an organization’s success. Although the “war for talent” focused attention and efforts on recruiting since the late 1990’s[1], the “war to develop talent”[2] recently emerged more prominently on CEO agendas. Why?  Concerns over talent shortages and skill gaps have created obvious obstacles to achieving business performance and transformation goals.

As a result, the investment and ROI to elevate organizational learning functions has become just as, if not more, important as “buying” talent through the recruiting function.

2 Leadership Milestones on The Upskilling Journey– A Personal Story

The background to this blog in Part I: I was off to a marketing conference to learn more about recent developments with our inbound marketing platform, new products and new functions.  This literal and figurative journey was overwhelming, to say the least.  Read Part I of this series for the full background.

Below are two issues that leaders must lead their people through on the individual upskilling journey. 

1. Knowledge Inadequacy and Emotional Angst

Leadership: Factor these feelings into the upskilling process.  To ignore this is unthinkable.  Proceed at your own risk!

Some people may look at all this new inbound marketing information and be excited. I face this new reality with trepidation.  I understand marketing, however, marketing technology is not as familiar to me.  I still classify myself as a beginner. These feelings do not inspire confidence. I have an admittedly low competence level with marketing technology tools.  I also recognize there is no denying or avoiding this new knowledge and skills reality. It’s here to stay.  To deny or avoid this new operating reality would create grave business consequences for my newly-launched business.  

What is Upskilling? 

Organizations face continuous change as the 'new normal'.’ To meet these changing business demands, every person in the organization must critically look at their current knowledge levels and skill sets and measure them against the current and anticipated required task benchmarks. The frustration for an individual and an organization is that as soon as you get the required knowledge and skill sets, it is very likely that the benchmark will shift once again. It is often reflected in the statements, "I'm dancing as fast as I can," or the famous treadmill analogy," I'm running faster and faster just to stay in place."