Profoundly different you would agree from today, no doubt; but how?

The good news is that many of these workplace trends are predictable.

The bad news however, is that your organisational culture is probably not ready to accommodate these changes.

For instance, we know that:

• IT will play a greater role;
• generally the workforce will be older;
• people will have developed more skills;
• flexibility with increasingly be the norm;
• there will be an increasing focus on productivity
• women will hold more management positions; and
• men will play a larger role in raising children

Yet - at the same time - there are a number of discrepancies between employer and employee and the expectations each has. For instance, employers expect those employees approaching 65 to still be working. On the other hand, very few employees want to continue to work past 65.

However, there are some areas where employer and employee can align their expectations. Flexibility is one such area. Flexibility will be at the heart of the organisation of the future. Employers need a flexible workforce to meet the demands of fast changing marketplace and employees need flexibility to meet their challenges of balancing their work and home responsibilities.

The challenge over the next decade is how to align the changing needs and interests of employer and employee. We can assist you by providing you with a ‘train track to run on’, which means that you will be able to measure, monitor and develop strategies to align your people and organisation as a basis for enhancing your productivity.

Contact WINNERS-AT-WORK for more information about creating a productive organisational culture to meet the challenges and demands of the next few years.

Globality refers to a world of hyper competition in which Australians - and Swiss and Japanese - compete with everyone from everywhere for everything. And not just for customers and market share: they’ll compete for energy and raw materials, skilled and unskilled workers, knowledge, patents, financing, suppliers, partners, even potential acquirers. According to a new book entitled: Globality: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything, in the new world of globality the new rule is there are no rules.

And the important thing for you to know is that this is not exclusively a new marketing challenge; it is a challenge to create an organisational culture that is responsive to globality. Companies need to be fast and flexible and understand their markets and customers as never before.

Companies that will prosper in this new environment will proactively create an organisational culture consisting of 8 core values: These values include:

• Flexible Deployment replacing Specialist Employment

• Customer-focus replacing Internal-focus

• Performance-focus replacing Job-focus

• Project-based Work replacing Function-based Work

• Human Spirit & Work replacing Human Dispirit & Work

• Commitment replacing Loyalty

• Learning & Development replacing Training

• Open Information replacing Closed Information

Dr Tim Baker, is the Author of The 8 Values of Highly Productive Companies: Creating Wealth from a New Employment Relationship (Australian Academic Press) that provides practical steps to create this new, responsive culture.

Here is one of many comments about the book.

The 8 Values of Highly Productive Companies is an inspiring book with great practical value. Tim provides much more than smart ideas, he draws on his real world consulting experience and his academic knowledge to make a convincing case for a values approach to management which can enhance the productivity and sustainablility of organisations.

Professor Hitendra Pillay - Queensland University of Technology

If you would like to purchase a copy of The 8 Values of Highly Productive Companies: Creating Wealth from a New Employment Relationship, please head to the WINNERS-AT-WORK website, www.winnersatwork.com.au and use the Pay Pal facility to place your order on the homepage.

All of the 80 statements in the survey instrument are based on the New Employment Relationship Model.

There are 10 statements for each Value in the New Employment Relationship Model.

Half the statements relate to the employee (individual) accountability and half for the employer (organisation) accountability.

For example, a survey item for the Value of Customer-Focus is:
” I am very clear about my role in servicing internal and external customers”.
That is that statement completed by employees.

The corresponding statement for Managers is:
” Staff are generally clear about their role in servicing internal and external customers”.

From this data, the consultant prioritises 16 issues (two for each of the 8 values in the New Employment Relationship Model).

This agenda for change will be further analysed by the Project-team in stage 5 ( Continuous Innovation Workshop).

Figure below provides an example of an agenda for change:

2 Top Managers
4 Middle Managers
8 Workforce members

• Within these three organisational strata, a close as possible representation of the organisation needs to be considered. For example, all functional areas need to be represented in at least one of the three strata
• The legitimacy of this team is based on the degree it reflects the organisation-at-large.

Margerison-McCann Team Management Wheel

A sample of this can be found the in the table below:

In doing this, the objectives for the team are three-fold:

• To validate the survey results.
• To offer strategies for change to better reflect the model.
• To agree on a process for working together as an on-going project team.

To achieve the first two outcomes, the project team is principally charged with the responsibility of responding to three key questions for each of the 16 agenda items:

• What are the factors contributing to the result in the HIPSYS report?
• What are some practical examples that support this result?
• What are some strategies that will improve this result?

The outcome of this discussion culminates in a documented action plan.

In summary, the final report from the project team deliberations covers the following important aspects of their discussions:

• Executive Summary
• The New Employment Relationship Model
• Agenda for Change
• Recommendations
• Role of the Project Team
• Where To From Here?
• Personal Impressions of the Workshop

<< Stage 5. Continuous Innovation Workshop