Agile business: a business that can respond quickly to opportunities and threats whilst adapting easily to market changes and customer demands. To not compromise on quality, an agile business also adapts to change in an efficient and cost-effective way. In theory, sounds like a perfect model for the modern day, right? In my opinion, ABSOLUTELY!!

The future is unpredictable. To survive change and continue to grow, future focused businesses are having to create innovative, cross-functional and multi-disciplinary teams. Rigid teams will increasingly struggle in the future, as businesses become more vulnerable to issues such as response-time demands, adaptability to changes in client needs, and work/life balance issues with internal staff.

The modern business landscape has, in a sense, “forced” businesses to adopt more flexible and robust structures which have the ability to adapt and change quickly and easily according to market forces. A flexible structure and an employee cross-skill focus are critical modern-day considerations when looking to combat these issues and maintain a competitive edge.

If they expect to reach a level of efficiency and adaptability that will meet the current and future demands of their clients, teams can no longer channel or pigeonhole their resources into one, or even two, particular skill-sets. Issues such as tight organisational staff budgets, leave considerations, poorly trained staff and rigid corporate structures can adversely affect how well organisations are likely to cope in the future.

Staff who are open to cross training will have multiple skill-sets which can help to cover for staff leave, respond to changes in client and industry demands and offer maximum efficiency to budget tight teams. Organisations will be able to respond quicker and easier to client and market demands by utilising one resource across multiple duties. Workers will also benefit from this training as it will not only improve their employability but allow them to demand better pay rates and bonus structures.

There is also the issue of the digital age, where workers are increasingly required to up-skill and understand modern communication and IT.

I don’t believe this to be exclusive to small business either. Large businesses, although departmentalised, could still structure teams to be more agile within their own departments. In other words: a mini structure within a larger structure. Workers will need to be open to new ways of working such as hot desking, shorter term contracts and hybrid arrangements, where they might have to split their weeks across multiple sites or take on multiple functions within a role. As the business landscape becomes faster and more competitive, markets will become increasingly volatile and budget-driven. Adopting an agile approach will ultimately become a “typical” approach in trying to better adapt to these challenges.

Through our collaborative approach, Alexander Appointments has adopted this way of thinking. When you consider the multiple skill sets a successful recruiter must have to be successful such as communication, engagement, marketing and sales, financial, IT, verbal, written, consultative and good overall business acumen, it is clearly evident that when there is a change in demand, issues with leave schedules or even staff fall-outs, having cross-trained staff working in a collaborative team, is paramount.

Understanding the industry, our clients’ work culture and expectations, as well as candidate market knowledge for our specialist industries, is critical to our collaborative and agile culture. This allows us to efficiently address client concerns, respond to changes and new requests whilst keeping clients as accurately informed as possible throughout the recruitment process.

I believe there is still much to learn about the future of the changing business landscape, and adopting a flexible mindset is certainly a worthwhile approach.