By Cecile Alper-Leroux

In October of 1966, my family emigrated from Valenciennes, France to Chicago, Illinois. Four months later, the historic blizzard of 1967 hit, leaving the city paralyzed in a record 23 inches of snow, and my newly immigrated parents in shock. They had been warned about the cold, snowy Chicago winters, but unfortunately they hadn’t prepared—no snow boots, no warm coats, no sled to pull me along in when the stroller couldn’t make it through the snow.
 
Today, we’re in the midst of a cultural storm that I call Workforce Fluidity. It’s a paradigm shift that will redefine our workplaces and our workforce. Cultural changes, like weather systems, have warning signs that should not be ignored.
 
I believe there are three major signs that a storm is brewing: The first involves people—and how they are changing. Some people are rejecting traditional identity categories in favor of more fluid definitions of themselves and, yet, when they interview for a job or complete the Census, they have to choose from restrictive terms—extrovert or introvert, male or female, unemployed or unemployed—because of outdated systemic limitations.
 
The second sign that Workforce Fluidity is coming is the discomfort we feel in our static, traditional organizations. Hierarchies can’t adequately cope with how people work today. That’s why reorganizations are so frequent and disruptive—we’re trying to impose rigidity on fluidity! Interestingly, nearly 40% of the U.S. workforce is freelance and almost half is actively looking for new opportunities. Maybe fewer would be looking if we designed more fluid organizations. Why not open our doors to people inside and outside our walls, and let people self-organize around getting the best work done?
 
The third warning sign of a brewing storm is our growing disenchantment with traditional jobs and job descriptions. People switch jobs more often today, and want the opportunity to move fluidly between roles because it helps them develop new skills and expand their horizons. In addition, employees want to contribute to the organization in multiple ways and to be compensated for their contributions—not be limited by a job description that quickly becomes irrelevant due to rapid business change.
 
We may not have the full range of technology that will be needed to support this fluidity and flexibility in our organizations today, but there are steps we can take now to begin embracing these changing expectations and behaviors in order to make work life better.
 
To start, we need HR and business leaders to change their mindsets about competing for talent. The “war on talent” is quickly becoming a thing of the past as more people seek to collaborate and work in “cross-border” teams. We also need to stop seeing frequent job changes as “red flags” and encourage them as development tools. Finally, we need to implement job-rotation programs for all employees, consider hosting internal job fairs, and begin hiring and transferring self-assembled teams as a unit. We need HR Agility.
 
If we prepare for the coming Workforce Fluidity storm together, by being more innovative, nimble, and observant than we’ve ever been, we can create more agile, human-natured organizations. 
 
For more of my thoughts on putting people first in the workplace, follow my musings on Ultimate Software’s Blog.
 
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About Cecile Alper-Leroux     
 
Cecile Alper-Leroux is Ultimate Software’s Vice President of Innovation. With more than 20 years’ experience in both national and global markets, Cecile is an internationally sought-out speaker, thought leader, and visionary on human capital management trends, hot topics, and global strategies.