DNA Trait 1: The Nouveau Workforce

For our Workforce 2020 research, we asked participants to indicate the factors that will significantly impact the workforce by the year 2020. 'Smart technologies' was the top answer, followed by 'employee expertise requirement.' These two factors tend to be synonymous. Smart technologies are the tools, devices and platforms that have sensing abilities, automation, and predictive capabilities. Their primary function is to make workers 'smarter' and more efficient. But they can only be fully leveraged by people who have the expertise to make the best use of them.

Past industrial revolutions have left behind a residue of traditional ways of managing employees, with most power still residing at management levels. And yet, a recent Deloitte study found that just 14% of executives believe traditional hierarchies make their organizations highly effective. Hierarchies are not completely disappearing, but they are largely being replaced with more networked structures.

Why? One reason is networked technologies have changed the flow of information both inside and outside organizations. Another reason is that today's tasks and projects are more complex than in previous eras, requiring teams to work across boundaries, quickly making their own decisions.

Another HR.com study, 'An Overview of Today's Organizational Structures', found that 36% of larger organizations (15,000 or more employees) have put in place highly matrixed work structures. Moreover, 77% of responding HR professionals indicate that it is very important or important for organizations to adopt or maintain networked organizational structures. This change has considerable implications for the role of employees. Information will flow from the bottom up as much as the top down. And, employees will be counted on to influence or make many key decisions that, in the past, were reserved for senior leaders.

Greater employee empowerment leads to the rise of a period that we call the 'Era of the Expert'. High-performing employees will need to be "know-it-alls" in a collaborative and positive sense. They will be increasingly held accountable for making decisions as business issues arise. Seventy-three percent of HR professionals surveyed in our Workforce 2020 study expect that their employees will need to become subject matter experts to a  "much greater/greater extent" by 2020. That expertise needs to be both deep in specialty areas and broad across multiple functions. In fact, 81% of the respondents indicate that working across multiple functions will become far more important.

What worker capabilities will be most essential? The figure below lists five capabilities. Although "analytical" was most widely chosen by respondents, all five point to the need for employees to harness the volumes of information and data at their fingertips and to then turn them into shareable insights.

Such necessary skills are in short supply among organizations that do not feel their workforces are well prepared for the future. Just 36% of such organizations say their workforces are able to collaborate in an effective manner. Just 27% said their employees are good at critically thinking about information.

With 2020 just around the corner, it is alarming that only 11% of organizations report they are making considerable progress towards building a workforce capable of meeting their 2020 goals. For most organizations, catching up during this brief time will prove difficult. Major barriers include constrained resources, misalignment between workforce strategy and business goals, and insufficient understanding of disruptive changes. Of the three, the last is most concerning. The inability to understand the potential impact of technology and other future trends on our business and the talent required could spell the difference between capturing attractive growth opportunities and perishing amid more well-prepared competitors.

Radical disruption will change our business models and, in turn, the nature of work in virtually every single industry. Our only path to success is to be prepared for what will be an uncertain future. Those making substantial progress toward building a workforce capable of meeting 2020 goals tend to enjoy better financial performance than their less prepared counterparts.