Agility is trending all over the world. Companies are now getting serious in investing into agile operations and supporting their teams with professional training and coaching. Here’s what we saw happen in 2021 when working with several global companies and regional business and HR teams:
Not just training – but real change: An increasing ratio of our customers not only want to be trained in Agile Business or Agile HR. Instead, they expect to immediately adopt agility as the way of working. There is a strong consensus around teams needing a professional capability build to really adopt the agile mindset, to change behaviours, everyday approaches, prioritisation and customer centricity in addition to ongoing coaching when the team begins to work by Agile practices.
Europe & UK in the forefront of Agile HR. During 2021 we have seen an uptick of interest towards Agile HR in the EU, UK and Australia areas. Clearly, UK and European companies are pioneering in truly Agile people operations. Some signals lead us to expect HR professionals in the US will also grow their interest towards Agile HR during 2022. It will be interesting to see how US-based organisations adapt to the rapidly changing talent market, the “wave of resignation”, the uptick in mergers and acquisitions, and the growth & possible inflation pressure. Agility in HR will definitely be a key capability for success, while the outside environment is changing this quickly!
Tribes and Pools of HR people: An increasing number of global HR teams are now pursuing Agility as their main operating model. They are redefining the team structures, implementing prioritisation models, setting up tribes or pools of professionals that will deliver project based work in a cross-functional manner. The teams who are a bit further face the need to let go of the previous working model and mandates. They are facing some tensions from moving from one steering model to the agile steering, noticing they have to dismantle previous structures to get the value of the new structure.
Agile in Business: A clear trend is that companies are seeking to upskill their managers and leaders, but without the “IT-terminology”. Many are also asking for basic Agile for business programs without the pushing of a certain scaled Agile model.
-
Plenty of organisations are in a phase of their transformation where they are scaling Agility beyond IT, product development and software teams. They want other functions such as supply chain, sourcing, sales and services to begin their Agile journey, too.
-
One bottleneck for broader or faster adoption of agility is the lack of Agile coaching for teams that begin. There are many companies realising that they have “tried to adopt, train and learn agile by themselves now for a year, but very little has changed”. (Our recommendation is of course – do this well, offer the needed support, or don’t do it at all…!)
Many are just starting: Most companies that contact us are in the very, very beginning, only starting to bring their first leadership teams and HR teams on board with Agile.
Agile HR Community has had the privilege to deliver a lot of in-house trainings in various industries. During 2021 we’ve trained over 400 Agile HR Certified Practitioners, 250 Agile Product Owners, 120 Scrum Masters and 200 participants in Agile Leadership and business professionals in Business Agility. Additionally we’ve inspired 300 HR professionals with the Agile mindset, through the Agile HR taster workshop.
With the trust we’ve gained with our work with HR leaders, Agile HR Community has been a natural professional Agile partner towards the business, too.
We want to thank all our customers, partners, trainers and co-hosts for making this year such an impactful year! In the end of the newsletter you’ll find a sneak peek into what’s up for 2022…
What’s up for Agile HR Community in 2022?
We are committed to our vision of Co-creating a healthy future of work, and doing so with our community, customers and partners. In 2022 we aim to keep our world class professional standards while we also grow. We are aiming for a sustainable pace of growth, delivering high impact in all we do, onboarding new trainers and employees. We are so excited of working with global top brands and innovative companies, and can’t wait to share case studies with you all. We’re continuously learning so much from you in our network, and by carefully listening to your areas of interest to understand where to focus our limited resources next.
Here’s a sneak peek into our new products…Launching early 2022…
-
Public Scrum Master trainings.
-
(Non-IT) Agile Product Owner trainings
-
Masterclass Agile HR Strategy and Portfolio. Once a year opportunity to learn how to setup the Agile portfolio management to lead work across the whole HR team, moving from annual decisions to quarterly prioritisation.
-
Practical Employee Experience (EE) Programs for corporate clients. Delivering the Agile HR and Design thinking trainings in parallel with your teams implementing it in practice onto real EE projects.
-
Business Agility – self-facilitated training program. Offering Agile HR Certified Practitioners a learning product to scale agile training to hundreds of business professionals, with high quality and impact.
-
Amazing and valuable virtual meetups regarding Agile HR and Agility in the business, case studies, practitioners sharing their recommendations and learnings.
-
Growing our team organically and step-by-step – with onboarding more trainers, offering deliveries in more languages, and inviting new team members to work with us globally and 100% remotely.
Of course, the flagship program, Agile HR Certified Practitioner continues and is indeed incrementally improved, too!
We are excited to redefining organisations, teams, management and people operations with YOU in 2022.
