Workforce Continuity & its Impact on Organizational Resilience

Some Statistics

Research by the London Chamber of Commerce in 2008 found that:

Only 29% of organizations with business continuity plans made allowances for workforce disruption
35% of companies have experienced a workforce disruption in the past year
Most plans address threats of fire or terrorism, despite the fact that only a small number are actually affected by those threats
40% of firms could not function if 30%-50% of staff became unavailable

So why is it that organizations continue to ignore the importance of "planning for people?" Improvements in this area can yield significant benefits, not only to staff morale and even safety, but to organizational resilience during a crisis or emergency.

Measure the Resilience of Your Workforce

The bedrock of organizational resilience is the organization's workforce. People who are properly selected, motivated, equipped and led will overcome almost any obstacle or disruption.

Evaluate Employee Commitment

Job commitment is built on a number of elements: personal financial requirements, nature of the work, personal effectiveness, intrinsic rewards, feedback and recognition, rate of learning/growth, career opportunities, and perceptions of the organization.

Do you have enough employee relations equity to draw upon in a crisis?
How will you keep people engaged and committed to their work in a crisis?
What steps should you take now to increase the probability of people being willing to do exceptional things in a crisis?

Evaluate Leadership

One of the essential capabilities of leaders in a crisis is the ability to be persuasive. They must be able to convince people to work 12-hour days or even get some people to sleep and work at certain facilities for a week or two.

People will be most influenced by their history with that leader.

Has he or she been consistently candid and truthful?
Has he or she communicated in an accurate and timely manner?
Has he or she been respectful and trustworthy?

Chances are you know the standing of top leaders and line supervisors in general. If it's marginal, it must be fixed. Leadership cannot be delegated. It is right up there with critical priorities like supply chain links and public health protocols.

If you don't have data - or you need some political cover - hire a reputable outside resource to examine the situation through employee surveys, focus groups, and/or selected interviews. Consider other measures of trust and commitment ranging from exceptional levels of absence and turnover of key talent to how many people - with what frequency - turn down emergency assignments or overtime.

Evaluate Organizational Culture

According to Gartner, a resilient culture is built on principles of organizational empowerment, purpose, trust and accountability. The resilient organizational culture has a strong sense of enterprise purpose that cascades down and across the enterprise.

A resilient culture is built on a strong sense of trust between employees, management, suppliers and partners. People assume responsibility without question. People commit to action and do what has to be done - regardless of rank, title or job description. A resilient organization is a passionate organization, and it is this culture of passion that drives, achieves and rewards personal and team accountability.

Strategies to Increase the Resilience of Your Workforce

Reduce Stress & Increase Employee Commitment

The relationship between resilience, stress, and competitive advantage in today's marketplace, makes it imperative that you understand how to increase the resilience of your workforce.

This is because the more resilient a workforce, the more they can handle heavy workloads, pressures, and major change without becoming stressed out. Also, the intellectual, emotional, and physical consequences of stress directly compromise the sources of competitive advantage in today's marketplace.

Identify & eliminate or reduce sources of unnecessary stress: This might be done using an anonymous survey.
Increase employee control over work: The more control employees have over their work, the more they can handle heavy workloads, major organizational changes, and difficultpressure without becoming stressed. Thus, designing as much control and autonomy into each job helps you to "stress proof" your workforce.
Initiate or implement flextime: In a recent Monster survey, 89 percent of employees said flextime is key when evaluating a new job, but only about half of human resources professionals polled consider such programs important. Flextime allows employees to work more flexible hours than a traditional work week schedule. (see Good Morning America and Entrepreneur)

Conduct "Employee Resilience" Training

Lea Strickland, President of F.O.C.U.S. Resources writes, " The moment I heard the title of the training I cringed and laughed. Only in the corporate world would a course with that title be put forth as a positive signal to the workforce. You might as well wave a red flag in front of your workforce and announce that the work place has become a reality show called "Corporate Survivor" in which your employees are going to be starring on a daily basis."

"Resilience is a fine concept, and teaching your team to deal with stress and to deal with change in a positive manner is good. Communicating positively and proactively about upcoming changes and strategic direction of an organization, long-term visions and how these will impact roles and responsibilities is even better. Clearly spelling out the expectations and impact of changes and expectations of performance as the result of reorganization will certainly help mitigate uncertainty and facilitate adaption to new operations and processes. Training the organization on new processes and procedures is fantastic! Listening and providing forums for input and feedback? Wow! That's progressive!"

Improve Employee Communications

Emergency Notification Companies will be happy to hear that no organizations should be without an emergency notification system that allows them to communicate with employees and stakeholders under all conditions. Remember that the communication capabilities should be both inbound and outbound

But don't just communicate during an emergency - during difficult and uncertain times, amp up your communication. How? Ask your employees what information they want and the best ways to get it to them. Try to make it face-to-face (even if it's "semi-face to face" through web conferencing) as much as possible, and allow for Q&A. Because a percentage of employees are not comfortable speaking in groups, make sure you make it clear they can ask in private.

Move Toward a "People-Centric Structure

Say goodbye to the corner office. Traditional notions of the workplace as a fixed workstation in a fixed office, at a fixed address, need to be transcended. The ability to work in cyber- and physical space is critical to successful workforce resilience. Confirms the importance of flextime.
The network is the workplace. The workplace portfolio will need to transform itself from a collection of properties to a network of places and electronic connections. Employees need to be able to work from home and from remote locations.
A highly distributed and connected environment. Workplace resilience is achieved through the distribution of the workplace into multiple, dispersed settings.
Ensure workplace safety and security. It is essential to undertake a comprehensive assessment of workplace security and safety. This workplace "triage" is the first step in identifying high-risk locations from people and operational standpoints.

Evaluate Jobs by Function and Criticality

Job functions should be categorized into two basic "buckets" according to mission-critical or nonmission-critical functions. This categorization is essential for future identification of necessary resources and training. Within each of those categories there are two sub-categories.

Mission-critical functions
- Category One - Who performs a mission-critical activity and must be on site to perform the work?
- Category Two - Who performs a mission-critical activity and may work remotely (e.g., from home or from an alternate work location via remote access)?
Non-mission-critical functions
- Category Three - Who performs an activity that is not mission critical but could be performed via remote access if sufficient appropriate resources (such as bandwidth or equipment) are available? (These staff could also "backfill" the Category One and Two staff.)
- Category Four - Who performs an activity that is not mission critical and cannot be performed via remote access (e.g., mail room clerk or shipping attendant)?

According to Gartner, the resilient workforce is the template for organizational competitiveness and survival in the 21st century. It is an organizational framework that will enable the organization to respond and flourish in an environment of hyper-change.

The organization must operate on foundation principles. It must:

1) be without boundaries;

2) be impassioned by a strong sense of leadership;

3) build a culture of purpose, empowerment, trust and accountability;

4) select, motivate and support people who have the requisite skills to flourish in ambiguous and uncertain environments;

5) exploit systems to connect and inform the organization; and

6) move to highly distributed settings that diffuse and disperse enterprise assets and operations.

To do any less will squander competitive advantage and heighten organization risk.