Accenture
Tim Ringo - Executive Partner, Human Performance Service Line.
Few if any executives would dispute the notion that people are a major factor in an organisation’s success. However, acknowledging people are merely a factor would be a vast understatement. Indeed, a just-completed survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers found nearly 80 percent of UK executives, unprompted, said people are by far their most important asset-a finding that illustrates the veracity of Microsoft’s People-Ready Business concept.
In a world where intangible value makes up more than three-quarters of the total market value of companies-and human resources are by far the largest component of intangible value-an organisation with an inferior workforce will be hard-pressed to attract investors. Furthermore, as markets become increasingly commoditized, companies rely more on their workforces-which are not easily duplicated or co-opted-to provide the competitive differentiation necessary to grow.
In short, it’s incumbent upon leaders to ensure that their organisation’s most precious asset is protected and cultivated.
Yet at precisely the time people are most critical to an organisation, the confluence of several trends threatens to confound even the best-run businesses:
- The incredible shrinking talent pool. The aging workforce and declining birth rates in many countries pose an enormous challenge to companies’ recruiting efforts and, in some industries, could have a devastating impact on institutional knowledge and overall skill levels.
- Changing values of younger workers. In addition to there being fewer young people coming up in the ranks, workers under 35 years old have different values than their predecessors, are more demanding of employers, and more willing to switch companies or even careers if they are not fulfilled.
- Growing disengagement. Recent surveys have shown that employee engagement with their companies has been steadily declining in the past five years. Workers who are unmotivated, disinterested and often disenchanted represent a major challenge to companies that must get the best out of every person.
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Quite simply, organisations must work harder and smarter to attract, retain and develop their people, lest they find their biggest asset has become an albatross.
That’s why Accenture believes Microsoft’s People-Ready Business concept is both timely and compelling. With its focus on software and tools that harness the power of an organisation’s people, People-Ready Business is addressing head on the challenges companies face in creating and sustaining a high-performance workforce.
In fact, Accenture’s own research and experience have found that such tools can play an important role in transforming crucial business functions or entire organisations-and consequently, have a dramatic impact on overall financial performance. We have seen firsthand in our consulting work the power of technology to help teams share and leverage knowledge, managers make better decisions more quickly, and professionals meet the their customers’ needs more completely-all of which embody what the People-Ready Business concept is all about.
The key is focusing on the entire employee lifecycle-from attracting top talent and developing core skills through continuously improving performance and retaining top performers over time. By judiciously using technology to support this life cycle, organisations can get the right people engaged with the right skills to do the right job at the right time; rapidly align people with the organisation’s overall strategy; increase workforce productivity; reduce employee time to competence and staff turnover; and capture the knowledge and expertise of the retiring workforce and pass it on to those who are entering.
These certainly are challenging times for businesses everywhere. But by adopting an intelligent approach to their people that incorporates technology tools as a key enabler of workforce productivity and engagement, senior executives can help ensure that their organisations are fully prepared for the talent crisis that is gaining steam around the world.
........................................................................................................................................ Tim is Executive Partner in charge of Accenture’s Workforce Transformation Strategy. He is also the Workforce Transformation Practice lead for EMEA. During a 16-year career with Accenture, he has focused primarily on helping leading global organisations, across many industries develop and implement programs for achieving workforce and strategic change. He has led the development and implementation of advanced change enabling techniques and technologies, such as Performance Simulation elearning technologies and role-based portals.
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