by Marlon Madden
One financial industry expert is advising consultants in Barbados and the rest of the region to invest in technology use and the upgrade of their skills in order to meet the needs of companies around the globe that are now engaging in a “war” for talent due to a disruption in traditional work models.
Georgia Wright, Senior Manager in the Strategy and Transformation Division of the National Commercial Bank (NCB) in Jamaica, gave the advice recently as she pointed to several trends in the working environment and what companies were looking for when engaging a new partner.
Wright was addressing a recent online Caribbean Institute of Management Consultant (CIMC) mix and mingle networking session, titled The Future of Work: A Client’s Perspective.
She indicated that there were three main areas that were shaping the future of work, adding that they had implications for consultants.
She pointed out that companies were reviewing their existing work policies and looking at ways to support modifications to those policies including engaging more consultants; they were embracing digital innovation more to allow them to have people work remotely; and they were shifting from a role focused approach to a skills-based approach in their hiring.
“We have to start embracing the technology. Digital innovation will be used to thrive in the future of work and companies will now require the support of consultants to fast-track digital innovation and transformation,” said Wright.
“Consultants and consulting companies are now required to rethink how they prepare to leverage the technology and improve productivity and support the business,” she said.
Wright indicated that businesses were seeking partners that are willing to build a long-term relationship, challenge business assumptions, invest sufficient time in understanding the culture of the company, being agile and adaptive, and employ very little bureaucracy in their culture.
Adding that companies were seeking skills that complemented their strategic objectives, Wright told the regional consultants that they would need to “shift their employees and team by equipping them with future ready skills in order to adequately support the businesses they wish to serve”.
While pointing to the importance of using collaborating tools, she said with the possibility of the COVID-19 virus being “with us for some time”, technology and innovation will continue to result in rapid changes in the work environment.
“We anticipate that the traditional work model will transition to models that provide greater visibility, agility, scalability and resilience,” said Wright, who admitted that she has not worked from her company’s office in the past two years.
“This is not the only shift we are seeing. We are seeing companies augmenting their staff with more consultants. With the rise in the need to digitise we are seeing more companies searching for consultants to increase their staff complement,” she said.
Wright, who has more than two decades of experience in the financial industry, said businesses in some markets were accelerating the development of “dynamic work policies” that allowed for the hybrid work model, adding that this was now resulting in a “war for talent” globally as a result of globalisation. She urged the consultants in Barbados and the rest of the Caribbean to invest in their knowledge and skills development to better take advantage of available and potential opportunities.
She said: “The ones who are laughing all the way to the bank have invested in themselves and have acquired the necessary traits to perform in the global economy.
This is good news for you and your team. We have to be ready to take advantage of some of these opportunities”.
Meanwhile, President of the CIMC Nsombi Jaja said she believed there was need for greater collaboration among consultants if they were to better take advantage of opportunities.
“We can’t do it alone. We have an opportunity to join together with talents from wherever those talents are . . . to be able to make use of the opportunities that exist out there,” she stressed.
Pointing out that a number of projects were available regionally and internationally in which consultants could become partners, Jaja said she was declaring 2022 to be a “major breakthrough year” for consultants in the Caribbean.
“We were disrupted in 2020 and we just have to find our footing. In 2021 we started using the technology and building our international networks.
So we have it good now. We know the platforms we need to use to be able to do it and many of us have mastered it.
This is the time for us to take off,” said Jaja.
During the event, the CIMC president introduced her team of board members as she welcomed the CIMC members who shared in a casual networking session.
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