The last few years we have experienced several crises in a row: pandemic, war, supply chain disruptions, shortages, high-energy prices, increasing food prices. Today, we stil feel the impact of the (past) crises and need to adjust to this new reality. And a next crisis nocks on our doors: the global shortage of employees!

With the rapid ageing workforce population, we have reached a point where the outflow of people who retire is already higher than the influx of new labour forces. Per saldo, the workforce is declining in The Netherlands! And this process just started and will continue for the next 20 years. Leaving us with the question: how can we cope with an increasing amount of work and fewer people to do this work?

In this blog, I want to shed some light on this topic from two angles: 1) what can we do as The Independables to attract and maintain the right people to facilitate our ambition and 2) what can we do as The Independables to support our customers in their ambitions?

Let me start with the first one, how can we as The Independables attract new employees to facilitate growth and maintain them? Besides the fact we offer new employees a challenging and inspiring environment (assignments, workplace, colleagues), we also look specifically for people that recently have retired, but who are not ready to quit yet. They want to stay active and challenged via assignments, maybe on a parttime base. Being fulltime retired is not appealing to them, and they would like to use their knowledge and skills to stay active. Staying active and being challenged when older seems to increase the mental health, which can result in a longer and healthier life.

In this case, the pool of Business Transformations experts and Project Managers increases, which increases our chance of attracting a new (older) employee to join our organisation. Once employed by The Independables, we make sure that their ambitions can be fulfilled by a challenging and inspiring environment, to keep retention up. This is just a first step in dealing with the shortage of employees, we are looking into other ways to attract and maintain the right people. Any suggestions are welcome, please reach out to me.

And what can we do for our customers? They experience the same issues to attract and maintain their workforce. Even to a larger scale than we do. In that case, a strategy calibration is necessary. Knowing that the workforce is declining and the amount of work not getting less, companies need to reconsider their strategy. One option could be hiring of foreign workforces, for example people that fled their country due to terrible conditions. Part of this foreign workforce are highly educated and skilled and willing to work. But it only solves part of the problem.

Another option could be to rethink internal processes. Automation of work currently still done by humans is a main differentiator. RPA (Robotic Process Automation) will free up the workforce, doing the same (or more) with fewer people. I truly believe the labour shortage will increase inventions in this area to further automate work. That could be done by robots and software. Employees in roles like Administration, Finance can be trained in other disciplines within your organisation to take on a new role, a new assignment.

The automation of work (RPA) is a strategic decision. A strategy calibration looks at the current strategy, internal & external data, trends, and forecasts and suggest changes to the strategy for the coming years. Changes that will impact the organisation dramatically, but for the good. Taking the short-term pains will result in long-term gains. Preparing the organisation now for a shortage of skilled labour in the future will pay off.

Can we predict the future? No, we cannot. But the decrease in labour in the coming 20 years is a fact. We need to respond now to deal with this issue currently and in the future. The later you start preparing your organisation, the more difficult it will be to adjust. Contact us to see how we can support you in making the required transformation.