Continuous job iteration is the future for flexible and high-performing work environments
With technological changes happening faster than ever before, demanding "always-on" agility & resilience from businesses and talents, workplace flexibility needs to focus on what we work on. To create a dynamic work culture, leaders need to ask - ar…
With technological changes happening faster than ever before, demanding "always-on" agility & resilience from businesses and talents, workplace flexibility needs to focus on what we work on. To create a dynamic work culture, leaders need to ask - are people engaged in work that is relevant, challenging and enjoyable?
Continuous job iteration is the future for flexible and high-performing work environments.
My vision as a business leader is to create a culture of continuous innovation where individuals can thrive. In order to do so, people should not be limited by their academic backgrounds or professional experiences. They flourish when allowed to craft, expand, and pivot their own job scope, led by their own interests and motivations. A traditional top-down job design structured by HR and senior management will no longer cut it.
Take the story of Chiqui, who was looking for a career change. She had a PhD in Linguistics and a teaching background. She initially joined us as a conversation designer for our user interfaces such as chatbots. Over time, driven by her own curiosity and desire to get out of her comfort zone, Chiqui started working with our brand strategist to design narratives and user interactions. As app development became more central to our product strategy, she became more involved in the design thinking and product design. Now, Chiqui, is the head of design ops; she designs and directs the entire web app system for our company.
The data supports it, too: Work needs to be managed differently if companies need to remain agile.
A recent Gallup survey suggests that nearly 7 in 10 employees in South-East Asia are not engaged at work, 63% feel it's a good time to find a new job and 48% are waiting or actively seeking a new job. For countries such as Singapore, data from LinkedIn suggests over 80% of Singaporean professionals are open to switching jobs in 2024. Seven in 10 of the respondents reported looking for another industry or role, with top motivations being a desire to explore other interests or pursue a role with better growth prospects. Meanwhile, the PWC 2023 "Asia-Pacific Hopes and Fears Survey" reveals 39% of respondents believe their companies will not survive the next 10 years if they do not reinvent, 44% believe the skills they need will significantly change within the next 5 years, but the majority do not know how their skills need to evolve.
With Adaptability said to be the No.1 skill required from employees, how can organisations help employees upskill while boosting employee retention?
Flexibility in job roles needs organizational support, employee initiative and open communication
The Human Managed team
Flexibility is a critical mindset within the wider context of developing a culture where change, fluidity and organised chaos is embraced. When employees request to work across multiple functions and pivot based on their interests, organisation leaders need to be supportive. Open communication is essential, enabled by inclusiveness, transparency, and appropriate organisational structure. These are needed for an employee to explore how to align their traditional job design with additional interests.
Success is inspirational and contagious. When people see fellow colleagues thriving with evolving responsibilities, they are encouraged to imagine and take charge of their own transformation journey. While Chiqui's story above is more organic and self-driven, another employee, Mursheeth took on job iterations led by both self-motivation and organizational support. Mursheeth came from a non-IT background and started working with us to manage physical infrastructure and facilities. He expressed an interest to do more but was not clear where he could upskill. The company directed his path of progression, from physical hardware operations to virtual infrastructure operations and security. Similarly, management was aware of his organizational skills and strong relationships with our cyber analysts. When there was an urgent need to resolve sudden spikes of alerts in cybersecurity, the company knew exactly where to deploy Mursheeth's skills. Mursheeth now trains our new cyber ops hires and teaches them to operate our virtual desktops.
How do we know when to pivot? The 80-20 framework is a guiding factor.
It's important to note that there is a very clear distinction between learning and doing. Everyone can learn new things, but not everyone can apply what they learn in a meaningful and valuable way for the business. To encourage a dynamic work culture, one of the guidelines we use to assess individual capability is to see if they consistently complete 80 per cent of their core responsibility. Once that is demonstrated, we work with the employee to include alternative duties for 20 per cent of the remaining time. This has proven to be successful in helping individuals redesign their work scopes.
Business sprints can also unlock speed and agility within an organization.
One of our experiments last year was a "fail fast, correct fast" short-term sprint. We had a product release or update every week for three months. This is another example of how planned organisational initiatives can encourage team members to innovate without fearing failure. In doing so, people get energised to take on tasks beyond their prescribed roles and discover new or related areas of interest that challenge them. The weekly releases produced some of our web app's most high-impact and high-quality work.
Such sprints, part of the Agile work methodology are now increasingly embraced by non-IT departments such as marketing, sales, finance and HR as well, and can be used across diverse industries.
Individual accountability and regular communication keep chaos manageable.
Some chaos is a natural side-effect of flexible job scopes and fluid responsibilities. To ensure that chaos is managed, accountability is an imperative practice. Accountability needs to be practiced both top-down and bottom-up: leadership communicates to an individual on outcomes they are accountable for. The accountable individual works with relevant team members to get the job done. When something goes wrong in the project, the individual must ensure that it is resolved. Over time, as the organisation gets more mature in executing ideal end-to-end processes and pipelines, it also gets better at defining the jobs to be done. Organisational chaos gets contained and becomes part of the tempo, with less room for misinterpretation.
Ultimately, the focus should be on the work and the job to be done, where everyone's contributions are valued. This inclusive mindset underpins the success of diverse and vibrant teams. Flexible work arrangements, including dynamic job scopes, champions inclusivity at work, while unlocking talent strengths in ways that are beneficial for both employees and organisations.
The article titled "Continuous job iteration is the future for flexible and high-performing work environments" was authored by Karen Kim, CEO Human Managed
About the author
Karen Kim is the CEO of Human Managed, the ASEAN cloud-native data & AI platform that empowers businesses to make smarter decisions and faster actions for cyber, digital and risk outcomes. She enjoys applying her learnings, love for design-thinking and service-first mindset to various domains like branding, service design, and business development. She is proud to lead a "different kind of" company that dares to solve complex problems of today's data-flooded world.
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