People and organizations become key elements for productivity in the digital age

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

The technological revolution that has been transforming the business world for some years has led the leaders to believe that the future of the labor market is in the investment of new digital and intelligent systems which allow users to make processes more efficient and more competitive within businesses. However, faced with this trend, organizations have begun to focus on people, placing their human capital at the center of strategies that seek to achieve success in the various processes of change that are leading out, where values ​​and corporate culture have a great impact.

Andrés Raya, Academic Director of the Custom Partners Area of ​​ESADE, speaks in an article published by the newspaper El Mundo of the important weight that people still have in organizations, despite the technological investment being made by many companies belonging to different sectors. Thus, as detailed, "employees work longer hours and production increases," but also emphasizes one of the challenges facing leaders and managers of human resources: productivity, which is understood as production per hour worked, "does not finish growing," despite having already introduced enough technology to see results in this regard.

Although there are already work methodologies based on Agile and Scrum that seek to increase the agility and efficiency with which they perform their function and improve the times and the quality of the results they present, and although the technological and digital skills have increased their importance in many processes of talent selection, for Raya the key to business success remains in people, who are again at the center of the equation. This would explain why many organizations have among their priorities the management of talent, in order to encourage their attraction and reduce their escape.

"Digital technologies have not yet really improved our productivity. Therefore, after the acquisition and selection of the necessary technological tools, companies are forced to improve the employee's experience, if they want to become a differential element in the economy of the creativity in which we live. It is in this context that the talent race is played," explains the expert for El Mundo.

In this line, it stresses that, faced with the stability and protection of employment that companies provided their workforce years ago, now is committed to increasing the satisfaction and development of people, in line with the changes that have brought with them the new generations.

"The objective is to involve workers in horizontal dynamics that favor their autonomy and creativity," says Raya. "We must stimulate and continually reward that talent capable of developing the ideas that will later be put into production," he adds in the article.

To do this, it describes the role of the areas responsible for the management of vital people, especially when seeking and retaining the talent that the company needs, focusing on the importance of having professionals with social skills such as "empathy , communication, creativity, listening, reading, writing, influence and teamwork. " He also cites the promotion of training as a key element for the development of talent, bearing in mind that such learning must be aligned with corporate values ​​and have a "hacker approach, intuitive, creative and unrestricted."

On the other hand, it places the social and intrinsic benefits of performing a specific task or reaching a concrete goal "as the key to motivation at work. In this sense, to maximize these intrinsic benefits, companies are advised to "give talented people the possibility to participate in different types of activities", while, in order to improve their social skills, they recommend "fostering teamwork situations". And is that, according to El Mundo, "relationships are another key to the management of the present and the future, and, therefore, the spaces of companies are evolving to new concepts," introducing areas of coworking, or huddle rooms, spaces dedicated to brief and improvised meetings, in the offices and favoring the mobility of the talent and the smart working.

"Offering people flexibility and autonomy in choosing the spaces, schedules and tools they can use, allows them to increase their responsibility in achieving the results, and thus enhances the entrepreneurial skills of each employee," he explains. In addition, he argues that "agile work allows organizations to adopt new models that reduce expenses and increase productivity," while for workers, "it is an opportunity to gain spaces of trust and an improvement in the balance between work and private life."

Finally, Raya talks about the importance of the role of leadership, whose task is no longer to be the best team, but "to identify and communicate the goal to be achieved and encouraged." For its part, the professionals it manages now have as a goal to overcome the challenges posed, "choosing autonomously the best tools to achieve it."

"Modern management has to create a context in which all employees are autonomous - which does not mean a lack of constraints and limitations - and where the corporate culture is lived and aligned with the beliefs of each one. To all this should be added a third pillar: coaching," he concludes.

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

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