North America recently hosted the six-week World Cup, bringing millions of fans to stadiums and screens. Many employees changed their schedules or took time off to watch matches live.
Those changes created staffing and productivity challenges for some employers, especially when workers arrived late or came in tired after World Cup activities. At the same time, the tournament gave businesses a reason to rethink their approach to workforce development.
The Cost of Business Disruptions
According to recent UKG research involving roughly 8,000 employees throughout the US, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, the Netherlands, the UK, and Mexico, World Cup-related productivity losses may have reached £12.6 billion or more, equal to roughly $17 billion.
The loss of productivity may have come from various activities, including skipping work or watching matches while on the clock. Some employees in the UK admitted to working while hungover or watching matches at work without their employer's knowledge. In the UK alone, about a third of employees said they would have called off work if England had won the final, even without their employers' approval.
What Businesses Should Understand About Workforce Resilience
So, what does the World Cup have to do with workforce development? In short, it highlights the importance of workforce resilience.
The working world is ever-evolving, requiring employees to learn new skills or adapt to new approaches and technologies. To keep pace with innovation, businesses should be adaptive and flexible.
An organization that embraces workforce resilience knows how to reallocate workers in response to sudden shifts in priorities. It also fosters a supportive culture that allows employees to feel comfortable reaching out to colleagues or leadership for help and to embrace new opportunities. Transparency and empathy, along with flexibility and adaptability, are key characteristics of a resilient workforce.
Achieving workforce resilience comes down to two things. First, businesses need to ensure their workers have the tools and systems necessary to achieve business objectives, even as those objectives evolve. Second, businesses should foster an environment that promotes team collaboration and encourages the continuous development of employee skills.
How Business Owners Can Create an Adaptable Workforce
An effective way to create a resilient, adaptable workforce is to anticipate business interruptions. For instance, employers who knew certain workers wanted flexibility during the World Cup could have arranged for coverage in advance. Employers can also identify staffing risks by paying attention to historical absence patterns and demand forecasts.
Incorporating flexibility into the operating model is also helpful. Rigid rules can lead employees to seek informal workarounds, such as calling in sick at the last minute, when faced with a major life event. It's often better to give workers a clear way to request time off, swap shifts, or adjust availability.
All businesses have an uncertain future due to the ever-present possibility of productivity disruption. Workforce development should include a degree of organizational agility so teams can anticipate risks and adjust as conditions change.
