liquid workforce - tech vision 2016 trend 2

Trend 2: LiquidWorkforce

People First: The Primacy of People in the Digital Age

The Accenture Technology Vision 2016 identifies five technology trends fueled by the people first principle and that are essential to business success in the digital economy.

People First: The Primacy of People in the Digital Age

Copyright © 2016 Accenture. All rights reserved. 3

Intelligent Automation

Liquid Workforce

Platform Economy

Predictable Disruption

Digital Trust

Business Drivers of Constant ChangeIncreased Pace of Technology Adoption: The expectations for businesses’ technology acumen is speeding up. For example, the telephone took 39 years to reach 40% market penetration;; it took the smartphone 10 years.1

Misunderstood Millennials: 12% of hiring managers expect that teamwork/co-workers is a top priority for Millennials – while 39% of Millennials report it as their actual priority. (Same with earning potential: 75% expected vs. 44% actual)2

Changing Needs: IT and business executives report that “deep expertise for the specialized task at hand” is only the fifth most important characteristic they require for employees to perform well in a digital work environment. Other qualities such as “ability to quickly learn” and “ability to ‘shift gears’” ranked higher.3

Companies are investing in the tools and technologies they need to keep pace with constant change in the digital era.

Copyright © 2016 Accenture. All rights reserved.

1 "The Pace of Technology Adoption is Speeding Up,” Harvard Business Review, November 2013;; 2 "The 2015 Millennial Majority Workforce: Study Results,” RedBrick Research, October 2014;; 3 Accenture Technology Vision 2016 Survey

Technology Drivers of ConstantExpanding Workforce: 51% of workers believe that digital technology has expanded the number of individuals they work with outside of their organization.1

Accessing Talent Faster: Upwork reports that they can get hiring managers the talent they need in 3 days, compared to the months long traditional process.2

On The Job Tech: By 2019, it is expected that 17% of workers will only use mobile devices to do their job.3

Companies are investing in the tools and technologies they need to keep pace with constant change in the digital era.


1 “Technology’s Impact on Workers,” Pew Research Center, December 2014;; 2 “Solution overview", Upwork, 2015;; 3 “39 ways the American workforce is dramatically changing in 2015”, Business Insider, June 2015

Instead of acting solely as a disruptor, technology can help companies transform their people, projects, and entire organizations into a highly adaptable and change-ready enterprise

But to achieve their ambitious goals, leaders are refocusing on an often overlooked factor: the workforce


Shifts in the workforce are creating new opportunities


Worker Redistribution: Demand for jobs humans excel at (non-routine interpersonal & analytical jobs) are at an all time high.

Automation: Automation is taking over more routine and manual tasks.

Pace of Innovation: New technology is constantly emerging, and the pace of adoption is faster than ever.

Rise of Freelancing: 43% of the US workforce is expected to be freelancers by 2020.1

A New Generation: In 2015 Millennials became the largest share of the workforce. By 2025, that number will be 75% globally.2

Skills Economy: Companies can build new strategies to leverage the contingent workforce and quickly access a wide range of deep technical skills.

Continuous Training: By making training a core competency, organizations can actively develop the skills that will set themselves apart from competitors

Digital Natives: With the right engagement strategy, businesses can leverage the excitement for technology, teamwork, and digital acumen of Millennials to push forward on their new initiatives.

1 “Intuit Forecast: 7.6 Mln People in On-Demand Economy by 2020,” Intuit press release, August 13, 2015;; 2 “Millennials Surpass Gen Xers as the Largest Generation in U.S. Labor Force,” Pew Research Center, May 11, 2015;; “Creating a ‘Generation Connected’ Workplace,” Workforce, May 1, 2015

Business leaders are realizing a more liquid workforce can become their new competitive advantage.


Tomorrow: Adaptable workforces organized around projects, with embedded training.

Static workforces organized around specific skills and functions

Project oriented working groups, emphasizing

collaboration, agility, and skill sharing.

Increased expansion of

workforce to external talent including both formal contractors and crowd platforms.

Failing fast and iterative;; employees are empowered to innovate.

Continuous training as a core organizational competency.

Data-based organizational

management using predictive analytics and end-to-end HR suites.

TheFutureSiloed work generally

aligned by business function (engineering, sales, marketing, design, etc.)

Training is ad-hoc, as needed for a particular tool or technology (in which the company has generally already invested)

Low levels of collaboration

Innovation generally practiced by specific non-official groups or ‘lone wolfs’ in the organization.

Fragmented workforce management tools

The Present

But, how? Businesses must develop new, more fluid, strategies

9Copyright © 2016 Accenture. All rights reserved.

SkillsBuild learning as a

core competency in the organization to actively generate skills that are

in demand.

Projects Use technology to

coalesce and disband internal and external talent at your disposal for new innovative projects.

Organization Optimize workforce responsiveness with insightful analytics that provide a real-time view

of organizational capabilities.

Build training as a core competency in the organization to actively generate skills that are in demand and unveil new talent in the organization.

Every Job is a Digital Job: Technology is fundamentally changing the way people work and the work they do, a trend businesses embrace as they move to compete in the digital age.

Have Tech, Need Skills: Now, the talent companies demand is rapidly outpacing the speed at which individuals are able to traditionally acquire those skills.

Train Your Own: Companies must take an active role in creating the skills they need by making training a critical component of their talent management strategy.

Developing fluid skills as an organizational competency


One of the biggest impediments to adopting new technology solutions is the lack of skills.

2014: Facebook acquired Oculus. In 2015, the demand for VR jobs went up 37% year over year.

200 companies have listed postings for VR related skills, including Disney, General Dynamics, John Deere, and others.

A recent view accounted for 12,000 people in the US with VR related skills, concentrated in Washington DC and the Bay Area.

The answer? Create the skills you need.

Building fluid skills for new tech will deliver a decisive advantage


200 Companies Now Hiring – A Look at the Growing Virtual Reality Jobs Market, Road to VR, May 29, 2015

Creating fluid projects requires a combination of freelancers, employees, skills and technology


Costs $40-$60

million

Crew400-500 people

Production12 months to 2 years

Distribution

Actors

Script Writers

Cinemato-graphers

ProductionTeams

Editors

Electrical Technicians

Studio Producers

Director Cameramen/Grip

Learning from Hollywood

Optimize workforce responsiveness with insightful analytics that provide a real-time view of organizational capabilities.

Consolidate Tools: Reduce the clutter of existing tools and invest in end-to-end workforce management solutions.

People Analytics: Gather valuable data to do things from increasing efficiency to smart talent placement.

Workforce + Strategy: Make workforce management a key part of new business strategy and pursuing broader organizational goals.

Managing a distributed workforce with increasingly fluid projects and people requires a strong core organization


Fluid organizations may seem daunting to enterprises everywhere, but there are big companies that have been doing it for years


Fluid Organizations at Scale: We know, because we do.

Scale: 373,000 Employees*

* As of Nov 30, 2015

Education: Robust career

development with $841 million on training and

professional development in fiscal year 2015.

Continuous Performance: New model of

on-going feedback.

Distributing Skills: Employees learn new skills on the job and rely on them to teach their peers new skills.

Talent Fulfillment: Set of employees

dedicated to matching every employee with the

right jobs.

Address Workforce Disruptions Today

Agile Workforce = Agile Business

Start Your Transformation: Making training a core competency to ensure you have the right skills for the right jobs.

• Becoming more project oriented and agile while empowering collaboration and new ideas.

• Effectively managing a distributed workforce with an organization that is built to facilitate, not impede.

The liquid workforce is rapidly becoming the new normal for how businesses organize themselves.


Liquid Workforce: 100-Day Plan


1. Perform a skills gap analysis. Have your HR organization review open roles in your company and determine high priority roles that are remaining unfilled due to difficulty finding appropriate talent.

2. Build a strategy for expanding your organization’s training capabilities. Determine what investments in facilities, technology, or people will need to be made to deliver training consistently and effectively across your workforce.

3. Create a new engagement strategy, keeping in mind what millennialsdemand from their employers. Develop a plan that will allow workers to contribute to projects they are passionate about, move freely through the organization, and find work that best suits native skills with digital technology.

4. Formalize your organization’s approach toward engaging with freelancers and contractors. Create a clear distribution of work between long and short-term employees that plays to the strengths of each and communicate this framework with employees.

5. Pilot a new liquid project. Assign a ‘stretch’ project to one of your groups and grant them the autonomy and dedicated resources that allow them to accomplish their goal. Use this pilot as a foundation for developing a formal liquid project strategy.

Liquid Workforce: 365-Day Plan


1. Put your new training strategy to work. Pick one high-need skill and pilot a new curriculum to train existing employees in that area.

2. Build a plan to scale your liquid project practices across the organization. Learn from the progress of your pilot group.

3. To understand where your enterprise stands to benefit most from crowdsourcing, commission three projects that each focus on a different area that the crowd is well-suited to address.

4. Integrate the use of analytics into your HR organization. Pair a team from HR with your data scientists to derive new insights from your workforce that could help with reviews, promotions, hiring, or other areas that need improvement.

5. Introduce predictive analytics to one area of your people management strategy (promotions or hiring for example).

Predictions


Roles VanishOrganization charts become obsolete,

gobbled up by software. Employees change their skills and focus to achieve their

personal goal which is common outcomes for the business, inventing the new.

Freelance is the FutureWithin 10 years, we will see a new Global 2000 company with no full-time employees outside

of the C-suite.

What to expect next


Corporate Education Will Replace Some Higher Education

Rise of Digital Reputation

Fully Liquid Enterprise

Predictive Workforce


Thank you#techvision2016www.accenture.com/technologyvision

https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-technology-trends-2016?c=tech_tchvs16ss_10000001&n=smc_0116