Why Is Agility An Essential Skill For Remaining Competitive At Work?

Describe how communication strengthens relationships at work and, as a result, increases your productivity.

Explain how self and social awareness can help you know your personal strengths and limitations and help you be more successful at work.

How can self and social awareness help you be successful in your career?

In the future, what types of jobs will most likely be automated? What types of jobs are more resistant to automation and why? Explain how technology advances will impact HOW we work.

Reply to these prompts using the company for which you currently work, a business with which you are familiar, or a dream business you want to start:

Does the business operate in a market that is characterized by perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, or pure monopoly? Explain how you drew your conclusion about its market structure.

Effective Employees

All organizations operate in a highly dynamic environment, mainly due to rapid technological transformations. Businesses are no longer immune to digital disruption, and when the environment is changing rapidly, they require people who can adapt effectively. The capacity to adapt is at the core of retaining a competitive edge over the high number of rivals in the business environment. While investing in technology is necessary for competitive advantage, having an agile team of employees is also critical because they determine the ultimate productivity outcomes. Thus, employers should invest in agile employees, good communicators, with self-awareness, and can quickly adapt to changes in technology.

Why is agility an essential skill for remaining competitive at work?

Agility is one of the most critical factors for competitiveness in the rapidly changing workplace due to digital disruption. Employee agility is characterized by the ability to embrace and adapt to change fast, resilience when faced with challenges, a fail-fast attitude, and the desire for ongoing learning to contribute positively to the future of the organization. Research evidence supports the fact that agility is a vital tool to encourage positive performance in the modern competitive environment. For example, according to Doz (2020), strategic agility is a significant contributor to positive performance outcomes in organizations. Besides, strategic agility results from the skills and behaviors of employees, especially when implementing strategic actions. Thus, in the fast-paced workplace, agility is one of the most critical skills to improve strategic performance and achieve competitiveness. In the face of internal competition, such as when companies assess the level of performance for each employee, agility is featuring as a competitive advantage. For example, when companies evaluate their employee and their performance, they focus on those who can contribute to organizational performance in the wake of intensive changes in the workplace, such as the implementation of innovation. Therefore, employees seeking to remain competitive and relevant should develop agility. Managers should also strive to motivate human resources to embrace agility to make them more competitive at the organizational and industry level.

Describe how communication strengthens relationships at work and, as a result, increases your productivity.

Communication is one of the most essential skills in the organization due to its necessity at all levels, such as when interacting with leaders and other employees. Communication is the exchange of ideas and information from the source to the recipient and the feedback from the message. For example, employees communicate with leaders about various aspects of their work and expect feedback from the communication process. In workplaces that support open communication and interaction, employees feel valued and respected. They also develop a positive relationship with leaders and colleagues, which motivates them and builds organizational commitment. Hill, Kang, and Seo (2014) suggest that effective communication promotes psychological empowerment and positive work outcomes. For example, when employees communicate openly and honestly with their leaders, they achieve organizational commitment. The article uses electronic communication as a case study in supporting the role of effective interaction between leaders and employees in the workplace. They used the leader-member exchange (LMX) theory in revealing the role of communication in amplifying positive relationships, psychological empowerment, and increased productivity. Furthermore, when employees perceive the existence of open and honest communication, they are motivated due to the ability to relate well with leaders. They are free to share their challenges and trust in leaders to address them efficiently. Communication is a critical factor for building positive relationships in the workplace and improving productivity through motivation and psychological empowerment.

Explain how self and social awareness can help you know your personal strengths and limitations and help you be more successful at work.

Self and social awareness are among the essential abilities in an employee since they play a crucial role in understanding personal strengths and limitations. Through self-reflection and understanding the social environment, an individual can learn the areas that he or she excels and those that require more work to improve. Showry and Manasa (2014) established that self-awareness is a critical factor in one becoming an effective leader since it helps one to become aware of meaningful personal experiences, major driving forces, the response through self-reflection, and redirecting decisions to restructuring actions. Thus, self-awareness as a critical factor in improving individual abilities that predicts managerial effectiveness and success in the workplace. The knowledge of strengths and weaknesses makes one a productive employee because of the understanding of areas that one can excel and those that require improvement. For example, a person understands a strength in communication and collaboration, he or she can excel in teamwork. Conversely, weakness in social skills requires that the person trains and practices on how to interact with others. Therefore, strengths make a worker useful, while the knowledge of weaknesses creates the room for improvement to avoid adverse outcomes due to the limitation. All employees should engage in self-reflection to improve self and social awareness, to become competent in their organizations primarily in the current competitive business environment.

How can self and social awareness help you be successful in your career?

Self and social awareness play a significant role in career development since it helps to identify strengths and weaknesses. According to Verbruggen (2020), a successful career requires considerable reflection of the personal abilities and the social environment within which a person intends to work. Therefore, when preparing for a job, a person must reflect on things, such as whether personal strengths are suited for success in that area and whether one can improve weaknesses to become successful. Besides reflecting at the individual level, such as skills and abilities, one should also situate the self within the broader social context. Generally, success will emerge when a person selects the career path that is aligned with personal skills, abilities, and strengths, as well as a room to improve weaknesses. A suitable decision depends on the capacity for self and social awareness, which is achievable through considerable self-refection.

In the future, what types of jobs will most likely be automated? What types of jobs are more resistant to automation and why? Explain how technology advances will impact HOW we work.

While some jobs will become easily automated, others are most likely to resist automation due to the high level of the need for human intervention. The modern world has witnessed an increase in the number of labor tasks that have been automated, such as the use of automatic tellers and waiting jobs in restaurants. In such tasks, automation has allowed customers to conduct self-service, such as paying for services (Nokelainen, Nevalainen, & Niemi, 2018). However, other jobs, such as teaching, health care, counseling and human services, and legal defense, cannot be automated due to the need for human intervention. For example, it is impossible to hire a machine to argue a case in the court of law. Regardless of the resistance to change, technology advances will impact HOW people work since machines will replace many tacks. Automation continues to have implications on demand for labor, wages, as well as employment (Acemoglu & Restrepo, 2018). Besides, they create a unique type of competition between machines and people as the latter tries hard to retain their jobs.

Does the business operate in a market that is characterized by perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, or pure monopoly? Explain how you drew your conclusion about its market structure.

I have worked in an organization that markets its merchandise online and delivers to customers on order. In the modern business environment, it is hard to come across a pure monopoly due to the high level of competition. Therefore, the organization operates as a perfect competition business due to the myriad of firms that sell identical retail products. As a result, the organization could not dictate the prices of products on its own due to the presence of competition. For example, the company had to research the prices of identical or similar products in the market to determine its prices. After all, customers would have numerous alternatives to meet their needs. In addition, buyers have detailed information about the product, pricing, and competition, which made it impossible for the organization to control the market. The organization had to seek other sources of competitive advantage, such as highly skilled employees or innovative distribution channels to overcome the impact of the competition. Employees would help the company to market its products more effectively than rivals.

Conclusion

Organizations in all sectors are operating in a highly dynamic and competitive business environment, locally and globally. Therefore, they should implement innovative strategies to help them to overcome the effect of the competition and have the edge over their rivals. The most effective means to achieve a competitive advantage is to have an innovative and agile team of employees. Employees who can make critical and factual decisions and communicate effectively with leaders and colleagues are the most effective and productive. Such employees should also engage in self-reflection to develop self and social awareness to create successful careers and adapt to business needs.

References

Acemoglu, D., & Restrepo, P. (2018). Artificial intelligence, automation and work (No. w24196). National Bureau of Economic Research.

Doz, Y. (2020). Fostering strategic agility: How individual executives and human resource practices contribute. Human Resource Management Review, 30(1), 100693.

Hill, N. S., Kang, J. H., & Seo, M. G. (2014). The interactive effect of leader–member exchange and electronic communication on employee psychological empowerment and work outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(4), 772-783.

Nokelainen, P., Nevalainen, T., & Niemi, K. (2018). Mind or machine? Opportunities and limits of automation. In The impact of digitalization in the workplace (pp. 13-24). Springer, Cham.

Showry, M., & Manasa, K. V. L. (2014). Self-awareness-key to effective leadership. IUP Journal of Soft Skills, 8(1), 15.

Verbruggen, M. (2020). Self-awareness in career development: meaning, importance and malleability. In Career Dynamics in a Global World. Edward Elgar Publishing.