The complexity and the fast pace
of change in today’s business world
have put a premium on the ability of
organisations to respond to change
in a speedy and effective manner.
According a report by the Economist
Intelligence Unit (2009), nearly 90%
of senior executives surveyed across
the world believe that organisational
agility (ability to anticipate and
address the forces affecting the
business) is critical for business
success. These findings resonate
with the responses to the CIPD
Labour Market Outlook summer
2014 (CIPD 2014a), where ‘smart
working’ was named as one of the
top tactics to improve productivity
by 56% of organisations in the UK,
including 60% of organisations in
the public sector.
The need to increase organisational
agility is also driven by the
changing needs of the workforce.
An increasingly diverse working
population means that more people
require and expect enhanced
flexibility to help them balance
their lives at work and at home,
manage a range of different caring
responsibilities and transition into
retirement, for example, by reducing
hours or through adaptations to
how they work (CIPD 2012).
The interest in working in a more
agile way has the potential to offer
organisations practical solutions
to not only meet the evolving
needs of their workforce, but also
control operational costs, while
finding competitive advantage
in greater customer focus and
innovation. Previous CIPD research
(2008) provides evidence of the
business benefits observed by
some organisations that introduced
flexible working, flexible physical
work environments, technology
supportive of collaboration, and
management practices that are
conducive to greater employee
autonomy and empowerment at
work. More recent case studies
from the Agile Future Forum (2013)
summarise further reasons for
rethinking how businesses operate
in the present, plan for the future,
and organise their workforce,
workplace and work processes.
What this accumulating evidence on
the benefits of agility demonstrates
is that the challenge of agility
is directly linked to people
management practices. The
top traits of the ‘agile’ business
include a high-performance
culture, flexibility of management
practices and resources, and
organisational structures that
support collaboration, rapid
decision-making and execution
(Economist Intelligence Unit
2009). People management
practitioners, therefore, can play a
key role in creating and maintaining
such organisational structures
and cultures – through change
management, organisational design,
talent acquisition and development,
and performance management
(CIPD 2013a, Accenture 2013).
There is clearly a growing appetite
for re-imagining organisations
and the ways of working, building
organisational environments
geared for collaboration,
innovation and ongoing – rather
than intermittent – adaptation.
At the same time, it is not clear
what level of sophistication in
designing and implementing
smart and agile working practices
organisations – and particularly HR
practitioners – have been able to
adopt. Equally, there is a concern
that even where such practices
are being implemented, the HR
teams themselves are not effective
enough in tackling the wider
organisational barriers, such as
habit, lack of flexibility and diversity,
and short-term thinking, that lie
at the core of the adaptability and
agility challenge (CIPD 2013a).
Note on methodology
Findings of this research draw on:
1 A survey of 633 HR leaders
(individuals with overall HR
responsibility, even where there
was no dedicated HR function in
the organisation) in the private,
public and voluntary sector in
the UK. See Appendix 1 for more
detail.
2 A survey of 1,132 employees in
the UK, representative of the
UK working population, and
an additional sample of 508
individuals employed in ‘nonstandard’
jobs (for example, those
in part-time, temporary roles and
self-employed individuals).
3 Case studies with organisations
building agile workforces
and developing agile ways of
working. See Appendix 2.
In addition, we invited a small group
of practitioners and consultants to
help us interpret survey findings and
put those in the context of a likely
experience of an HR practitioner in
an organisation to help us shape an
understanding of the implications
of the agility imperative for the
profession.
3 HR: Getting smart about agile working
The term ‘agility’ in the business
context can refer to workforce
agility (flexibility in matching
workforce fluctuations to
demand), and operational agility
(responsiveness and adaptiveness
of processes and structures).
Looking at workforce agility,
the Agile Future Forum (2013)
describes agile working as a set of
practices that allow businesses to
establish an optimal workforce and
provide the benefits of a greater
match between the resources and
the demand for services, increased
productivity, and improved talent
attraction and retention. These
practices span four dimensions:
• Time: when do people work?
(for example, part-time, shifts,
staged retirement).
• Location: where do people work?
(for example, homeworking,
across multiple sites).
• Role: what do people do?
(for example, multi-skilling,
secondments, job rotation).
• Source: who is employed? (for
example, permanent employees,
crowdsourcing, outsourcing).
With regard to processes,
structures and ways of working,
CIPD Shaping the Future research
(2011) defines agility as the
‘ability to stay open to new
directions and be continually
proactive, helping to assess the
limits or indeed risks of existing
approaches and ensuring that
leaders and followers have an
agile and change-ready mindset
to enable them and ultimately
the organisation to keep moving,
changing, adapting’.
While agility is overall associated
with responsiveness to change,
and sometimes with flexibility in
matching organisational resources
to demand in services, ‘agile’ also
has specific meanings, emerging
from applications of particular
methodologies in manufacturing
and software development.
‘Agile manufacturing’ has
developed as a production
technology that enhances ‘lean’
manufacturing by a greater
emphasis on adaptability of
change, for example, through its
potential for fast customisation
of products, as opposed to mass
manufacturing and optimisations
in lean. Agile does not exist in
isolation and uses many principles
of lean (such as continuous
improvement), but applies those
to the process and the way of
working as a whole, rather than
to the product. Agile teams rely
on self-organisation, iterations,
customer centricity, knowledgesharing
and collaboration, and
mutual trust (see, for example,
Ravet 2011).
‘Agile’ can also mean a software
development approach that is
based on the principles of:
• individuals and interactions over
processes and tools
• working software over
comprehensive documentation
• customer collaboration over
contract negotiation
• responding to change over
following a plan (Beck et al
2001).
A related concept is ‘smart
working’ which is defined as ‘an
approach to organising work that
1 What is agile working and why does
it matter?
Figure 1: Use of the word ‘agility’ in organisations
29% of
organisations
in the survey
use the word
‘agility’
34% mean
ability to match
resources to
demand
59% refer to
adaptive capacity
of processes and
structures
4 HR: Getting smart about agile working
aims to drive greater efficiency
and effectiveness in achieving job
outcomes through a combination
of flexibility, autonomy and
collaboration, in parallel with
optimising tools and working
environments for employees’ (CIPD
2008). It is characterised by:
• a high degree of autonomy and
a philosophy of empowerment
• concepts of virtuality in teams or
work groups
• outcome-based indicators of
achievement
• flexible work location and hours
• flexible physical work
environment conditions that
support collaboration
• high-trust working relationship
• alignment of smart working with
business objectives to create a
‘triple win’ for the organisation,
its employees and its customers.
The research highlighted a few
case studies of introducing
smart working practices across
four areas of organisational
practice (including physical
work environment, technology,
high-performance working and
management values) (CIPD 2008).
More recently, the UK Government
has launched a programme of shift
towards a ‘smart working culture’,
based on the principles of flexible
working being the norm, with a
focus on effectiveness in choosing
where and when people work,
technological support for virtual
collaboration, and outcome-based
rather than office presence-based
performance measures. In setting
the standards of best practice for
smart working, the Cabinet Office
(2014) smart working maturity
model emphasises that there
is a need to shift from isolated
initiatives targeting specific
employee and organisational
outcomes (such as ad hoc flexibility
and work–life balance initiatives)
to a systemic cultural shift that is
aligned with the business strategy.
Lean or agile?
One of the challenges with building
agile workforces and working in an
agile way is the legacy of rigorous
cost management and close control
in efficiency-led approaches (CIPD
2011). The current survey of HR
Figure 2: Which, if any, of the following are CURRENT priorities for your organisation?
Improving productivity
Cost management
Regulatory compliance
Customer service improvement
Product innovation and quality improvement
Growth of market share in existing or new
markets
% 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Significant refocus of business direction
Increasing sustainability
Improving corporate responsibility, reputation
and brand
Improving organisational responsiveness
to change
All
Private sector
Public sector
Voluntary sector
5 HR: Getting smart about agile working
leaders in the UK confirms that
despite an interest in developing
innovation and agility potential, a
focus on close resource management
remains a p