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How is Resilience Achieved?

Transferable competencies
Both employers and employees have a real interest in adaptability. In fast-changing markets, even a highly skilled workforce that is overly-specialised in one area can prove an obstacle to responding to new opportunities. Those employees themselves may only enjoy employment security for as long as their specialist area of work is still required. If they lose their jobs, the narrowly specialist nature of their skills means that they only have a limited range of possibilities within the wider labour market.

In defining the competencies needed by an employee the ability to undertake the functional work tasks associated with the job is clearly of prime importance. These are often very specific to that job, but in order to act as a versatile resource for companies in an increasingly volatile product or service environment, and in order to achieve greater security in the wider labour market, employees need the ability to:

• be involved in planning and logistics;
• manage contingency, handling unexpected situations with ease and being able to anticipate and avoid disruption;
• manage and prioritise several different work tasks at the same time, including taking responsibility for decisions which involve competing priorities;
• embed and “own” quality as part of day-to-day work tasks, reducing the need for external “quality control”;
• identify, articulate and implement ideas for continuous improvement and innovation within daily work routines;
• build collaborative relationships within their immediate team, with other teams and departments, and with customers and suppliers.

These competencies can be built in part by formal training, but they also develop through work practices and job design which enable employees to participate in a range of activities which far exceed functional work tasks.

Partnership from the high road perspective moves beyond representative structures and participation mechanisms to make a direct impact on the task environment. Building a workplace in which employees can develop and deploy their competencies and creative potential begins with job design. According to standards of job design developed in The Netherlands (the WEBA instrument) for example, employees at all levels should be able to assume responsibility for day-to-day decisions about work through co-operation or communication with others. Systematic opportunities should exist for problem solving through horizontal contact with peers. The ability of the employee to adapt the execution of work to changing demands, circumstances and opportunities is an essential prerequisite for occupational learning and reduces stress. The job should contain demonstrable opportunities for analysis, problem solving and innovation, in which the working environment is a place of learning. A high frequency of horizontal and vertical contact is required to support problem solving, learning and innovation, taking the form of ad hoc co-operation, formal and casual discussions, and possibly social contacts outside the work sphere. ‘Distributed intelligence’ throughout the organisation is also required to support problem solving, ensuring that knowledge and expertise are widely shared or readily accessible by individuals throughout the organisation.

Resources
The following case studies offer insight into versatility and transferable competencies:

GSK
Hempel
Hollandse Betongroep

The Dutch WEBA Instrument offers a highly effective tool for measuring the effectiveness of job design, including its impact on learning and competence development.

This paper by Professor Annika Lantz from Sweden provides a useful overview of assessing learning and competence.
http://www.hiceducation.org/Edu_Proceedings/Annika%20Lantz.pdf

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