Organisational agility: Role of HR in turbulent times

In order to survive in this dynamic and competitive era, organisations must think about reducing response times and improving flexibility in performing tasks and accept and adapt to changes with limited resistance. Even after the current recession lifts, underlying fluctuations in energy, commodity and currency rates, the emergence of new and nontraditional competitors and rising customer demands will continue to roil traditional business and operating models for some time to come. In today's knowledge era, the ability to transform information into insight in response to market movements is core to sustainability. Companies must think of ways to make their processes more flexible. Organisational agility is defined loosely as a combination of flexibility, nimbleness and speed is increasingly regarded as a source of competitive advantage in today's fast changing markets it is important to create agile people, teams, and cultures. Also in the case of operational processes, organisations need to continually adjust and align how people do their jobs by working together. It is not enough to ensure that people are accepting of changes, they need to advocate and initiate changes. Organisations as tool to achieve agility include flexible structure, human capital, technology, information technology, innovation and creativity. One of the most important survival and development factors of companies in dynamic environment is their agility. Thus, human capital is considered as the most valuable capital and the biggest property in every organisation and country as whole. In fact, human capital is the most important capital of any organisation and also is creative and innovative resource that includes all individuals, abilities and competences, talents, knowledge and staff and managers, experiences. Also, human capital includes factors such as staff's knowledge, skills, abilities and their attitudes (Bazbora, 2004). Today, the speed of changes has increased by growth and development of technology, creative communicative methods, virtual reality, markets improvements and alternative job patterns that each of them led to significant changes. Karl Albrecht refers to intelligent human factors, groups and organisations to succeed (Bagher Zadeh and Dibavar, 2011). The current business environment is demanding a great deal of workers around the globe. The practice of doing ‘more with less’ has become the modus operandi in most businesses and business areas, perhaps nowhere more so than in human resources (HR) divisions. HR is being stretched and pulled in every way to meet challenging goals within unprecedented resource constraints. This paper is purely based on secondary sources. Purpose of Research: The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical review of the literature to distil what agility is and what it is not and how business can survive and thrive in turbulent times. Also, how human resources in organisations are navigating this gruelling business climate to maintain organisational agility; meet the obstacles and challenges they face in today's changing times through some examples; and the areas in which they might find opportunities to develop and be more widely recognised as business-critical partners. Methodology: The methodology adopted for this paper is descriptive in nature. The paper provides an extensive literature review and brief case studies to provide an input regarding the importance of organisational agility and the role of human resources in managing agility in turbulent times. The review identified six dimensions of agility index given by Allied Consultants Europe (ACE) that can be used to explore and justify the importance of agility in turbulent times. Results: The various global surveys have indicated that agility may also be linked to profitable growth and also suggests that agile firms grow revenue faster and generate higher profits than non-agile companies. Originality: This paper is uniquely linked with the six dimensions of agility index, that is, leadership and management, innovation, strategy, structure, culture and leadership, and change referred by ACE in establishing the importance of organisational agility in turbulent times. It also elucidates the role of HR managers in rethinking the programmes and initiatives to make an organisation successful. Implications: The major implications of the paper includes that the role of HR managers as strategic partners is being redefined by organisations so that they can be equally important in building agile organisations in turbulent times.