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Move over VUCA — today’s world is BANI. While in the past, the principles of VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) captured the unpredictable nature of our environment, a new acronym has emerged to characterise our current circumstances: BANI (brittle, anxious, non-linear and incomprehensible).
In today’s complex world, with heightened fragility, pervasive anxiety, intricate interconnections and bewildering complexity, adaptability is key. Talent must be flexible, resilient and empowered in order to help your business thrive. What are some key considerations for talent leaders to help drive value and supercharge performance in challenging times?
1. Adopt a growth mindset
Balancing short-term pressures with longer-term strategic goals requires a growth mindset. Encourage a culture of innovation and continuous learning — a culture where failing is seen as a stepping stone to mastery. In this environment, employees are encouraged to adapt, embrace change and find creative solutions to challenges. As the pace of transformation accelerates, this mindset becomes even more essential.
How to do it
Develop a culture of continuous learning and innovation by providing upskilling opportunities, relevant learning programs and development resources to help employees stay agile, adaptable and comfortable with change.
2. Optimise your existing assets
During challenging times, the mantra becomes doing more with less. The challenge for HR is to be innovative about it. How can you optimise your existing assets to help drive workforce efficiency and performance? Look at ways to determine why, where, when and how you need to buy, borrow, build, boost, bind and bounce talent. How can you map internal and external competence, skills, potential and aspirations against the organisational strategy, environment and work to be done?
How to do it
Look at ways to identify skills gaps, leverage your internal talent, provide talent mobility opportunities, and deploy people strategically to meet the changing demands of the business while providing sustainable opportunities for your people, aligned to their aspirations.
3. Think holistically to drive greater value
Thinking holistically is essential for long-term success. Your talent function must be purposefully systemic and fully connected to work effectively and drive meaningful value. Look for solutions that integrate your HR functions, processes and systems to promote efficiency and maximise performance. Breaking down silos and encouraging cross-functional collaboration will help you optimise the talent journey and achieve better outcomes, driving productivity and innovation.
How to do it
Consider how you can interconnect your HR functions using technology. When you can use data and make decisions based on how one function affects others, this will help create a more seamless and personalised people experience.
4. Become talent-centric
The foundation of any successful business will always be its people. To elevate performance, delivering a consumer-like experience that spans the entire talent life cycle — from attraction through to offboarding — is essential. To thrive during disruption and uncertainty, prioritising your talent and fostering a culture of belonging is paramount. Focus on providing an employee experience that energises your talent and empowers people to do their best work.
How to do it
Look at ways to shift the focus toward putting employee needs, motivations and wants at the center. Explore ways to transform the conversation with talent, moving beyond engagement towards fostering satisfaction and a sense of belonging. How can your work environment and outputs offer greater meaning and rewards?
A resilient and adaptable workforce
Ultimately, nurturing a more agile, satisfied and engaged workforce leads to significant business gains no other corporate initiative can match. Having a resilient and adaptable workforce is a key asset in navigating through challenging BANI times and positioning your organisation for long-term success. Winning organisations are more likely to attract and retain the best people, amplifying the impact of a talent-centric culture.
Learn more about driving value through talent in a BANI world with support from our talent advisory team.
Contact our talent advisory team
About the author
Hary is well-respected as a leading figure in the domestic and global talent acquisition industry, and possesses extensive experience in supporting large corporations and their senior HR leaders through complex, strategic transformations and outsourcing decisions. This experience has served him well as an RPO client service delivery executive for Randstad Sourceright, the global concept leader for RPO and MSP and now as managing director for strategic operations.
