The past decade has been defined by continual disruption, from technological change and shifting workforce expectations to economic uncertainty and political instability.
Such disruption is only set to continue, with the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Risks Report detailing how business challenges like global conflicts, climate change and supply chain issues are all interconnected – and here to stay.
For business leaders, dealing with this volatility has often been about focusing on how quickly their organisations can adapt to change. Agility, efficiency and speed of execution have been prioritised as businesses react to turbulence.
However, a byproduct of this is the increasing fragmentation of teams, with burned out employees scattered across offices struggling to keep pace with how their jobs and organisations are evolving.
Trust and listening
Jackie Dube is CHRO at The Predictive Index, a company focused on behavioural science applied to work. She believes that HR has a crucial role to play in ensuring organisations remain stable through change, providing organisational cohesion, trust and a way for employees to voice fears and concerns.
“One of the things that is most important in the current environment is listening and adapting. When leaders can be very explicit about organisational priorities and the trade-offs that come with that, people feel stability and know what to work on,” says Dube.
Creating that clarity at all seniority levels is key to building a cohesive organisation.
“When each team understands what they’re focused on and what their objectives are, that’s cohesion. The company is marching forward at the same pace in a focused way,” says Dube.
“I also think that while HR is leading organisations through change, everyone needs to be accountable. If HR can bring leadership and teams together and empower everyone to lead on culture and align strategy – that’s when you’re successful,” she adds.
For Dube, the first step to organisational alignment is understanding the core values of your business. Once these are established, organisations should focus on three areas: ensuring leaders are aligned on strategic priorities; encouraging communication across the business; and putting systems in place so that this communication happens regularly and both up and down seniority levels.
One way The Predictive Index helps connect employee experiences to leadership is through its advisory council. Made up of employees from across the business and across behavioural profiles, the council meets regularly with both HR and the senior leadership team, with the aim of building relationships and communicating how strategic decisions affect day-to-day operations.
“We have a rubric of where we want perspectives from,” says Dube. “This can be tenure, position, team, ethnicity, how an individual identifies – we want to get experiences from everybody in our organisation.”
For the leadership team, the advisory council provides a way of sense-checking communications and decision-making.
“Any time we have a major communication going out to the company, we run it past the advisory council first. We’ve had tremendous feedback from this, with employees able to tell us if something doesn’t make sense or doesn’t hit right. It allows leadership to really connect in the right ways to employees, while our people feel respected in being listened to and empowered to feed back,” says Dube.
HR has a crucial role to play in ensuring organisations remain stable through change
Creating an environment where people feel able to speak up is vital. However, this can’t be achieved overnight, but requires constant engagement, practice and encouragement. Trust between leadership and employees is key.
“Providing a psychologically safe space for people to give feedback is important. It means that when things do change or something happens, your people are more likely to speak up before it becomes a problem. Listening is a muscle that needs to be exercised, and the more you build that muscle, the more the wheel turns in terms of feedback, action and trust,” she says.
An example of this is how The Predictive Index has engaged with artificial intelligence tools in the workplace, including using Gemini as an internal artificial intelligence assistant and mandating its technology team to use a coding agent. By being open with their people about the impact of AI on work, The Predictive Index has been able to deliver efficiencies and a more engaged workforce.
“I think that being able to empathise with the fears employees have over AI is important. Being able to talk about how their jobs will change is impactful.
“Our role in HR and leadership is to bring employees on that journey, and to listen to and understand any fears they may have. We also need to move them forward – we have to be direct about the importance AI will play in day-to-day work. We’re a better company for using AI and we’ve helped our employees be comfortable with it,” says Dube.
Learning and development
Another factor in building organisational cohesion and employee alignment is the requirement to help your people develop.
In a world of constant change, employees understand that their jobs and skillsets will need to adapt. What they want is the opportunity to grow and learn with an organisation. Often, this is about providing pathways for people and looking beyond job titles and experience to behaviours and abilities.
“One of the things that has made us successful in times of change is choosing not to pigeon-hole people into certain roles. We don’t see individuals as just salespeople, or just marketing. We look at behavioural insights, lived experiences and interest to give employees opportunities through the business,” says Dube.
Doing so allows The Predictive Index to adapt to change quickly and fill gaps in times of need, with individuals moving from marketing to engineering, or starting out as a receptionist and becoming a senior product leader.
“We tell employees in orientation to have two jobs in mind – the one you are doing and the one you want. It’s a constant conversation between what people want and what the organisation needs,” says Dube.
For business, disruption is the new normal. The organisations that will thrive through change are those that are able to both adapt at speed, and create a cohesive culture that empowers employees to be a part of transformation.
To find out more, visit predictiveindex.com
The past decade has been defined by continual disruption, from technological change and shifting workforce expectations to economic uncertainty and political instability.
Such disruption is only set to continue, with the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Risks Report detailing how business challenges like global conflicts, climate change and supply chain issues are all interconnected - and here to stay.
For business leaders, dealing with this volatility has often been about focusing on how quickly their organisations can adapt to change. Agility, efficiency and speed of execution have been prioritised as businesses react to turbulence.
