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HR Tech Outlook | Thursday, February 10, 2022
One is faced with a false choice: keep someone on the job or find someone with equivalent experience and competence. But there is a third option
FREMONT, CA: As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, a surge in people quitting their jobs has prompted anticipated responses, contributing to employers' talent issues in an already tight labor market. Increased salary and flexibility, as well as better, more personalized benefits, are common responses to the Great Resignation. However, these are only temporary fixes for a long-term problem. If a company's job possibilities are identical to everyone else's, and compensation and benefits are the only differentiators, one will continue to lose employees in a never-ending competition for talent and an ever-increasing cost structure.
While most businesses are focused on the labor supply side of the issue, progressive firms see an opportunity to rethink and reorganize work by using today's talent war as a catalyst. The most prevalent difficulty businesses encounter in attracting and retaining talent originates from the belief that the work itself is fixed and all that has to change is who does it. As a result, one is faced with a false choice: keep someone on the job or find someone with equivalent experience and competence. The only way to avoid this false choice is to constantly deconstruct and reinvent the work itself, making it more appealing to talent and more valuable to the company.
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In times of labor shortages or rapid change, this reframe becomes even more important. Organizations in the new work operating system do not have outmoded workers. Rather, they adapt existing skills to new tasks. They close capability gaps by combining well-known supply-side alternatives such as building, borrowing, buying, or automating with demand-side options such as work sharing, decomposing tasks into projects, and rebuilding work into new employment. Working in this new method necessitates an understanding of things like tasks/projects and skills/capabilities at the deconstructed level.
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