The concept of working in cross-functional, self-managed teams 鈥� or what we call 鈥�dynamic teams鈥� 鈥� is a reality for most employees. In our聽, we found well over three-fourths (82%) of respondents have participated in a dynamic team more than once, and 64% are engaged in multiple dynamic teams simultaneously.

Despite being created out of necessity, dynamic teams can be either a culture shift or a culture shock. Our research shows that fewer than one-quarter (20%) of employees are satisfied with these experiences and only 36% of managers are motivated to encourage direct reports to participate in a dynamic team in the future. Surveyed managers want clear expectations for their employees鈥� involvement, real-time updates on challenges and progress, and awareness of skills acquired through the dynamic team experience.

According to Kathi Enderes, Ph.D., senior vice president of Research and global industry analyst at The Josh Bersin Company, the HR technology used often contributes to this misalignment within dynamic teams. 鈥淧eople don鈥檛 naturally work in a linear structure. However, teams often fall into the trap of following the rigid hierarchies of their traditional HR technologies, stemming from the industrial age, to manage performance, give feedback, coach, and develop teams,鈥� says Enderes.

Heed the Signs of a Changing HR Landscape

The informality of dynamic teams can provide the flexibility companies need, but it can also lead to trouble for the overall business culture. It鈥檚 human nature to lean into the convenience of casually asking people we already know and like to join a dynamic team to tackle a critical business issue or deliver a strategic initiative. But that also means managers are missing out on talented people without the right connections 鈥� narrowing the diversity of knowledge, critical capabilities, and compatible traits necessary to deliver positive outcomes.

Management decision-making about personnel based on a biased 鈥渨ho knows who鈥� mindset 鈥� rather than a strategically focused one 鈥� can limit employee opportunity and reduce engagement, and highly skilled employees suffer. They increasingly disengage when passed over for roles and promotions that can further develop their competencies. The people with the potential, desire, and enthusiasm to acquire and apply new skills who are shut out of any chance to grow eventually seek out a new employer openly committed to their immediate and long-term personal development.

That kind of environment is the perfect breeding ground for groupthink. Over time, entrenched teams are compelled to add more tasks, processes, systems, and complexity rather than subtracting existing ones that do not add value to the project at hand.

C-suite leaders can 鈥� and must 鈥� find ways to eliminate this risk in their workforce culture. By prioritizing digital strategies for properly skilling and engaging employees and matching them to the right opportunities, they set a foundation that not only creates a future-ready workforce but also future-proofs the business.

As a first step, organizations need to start their HR transformation journey with an understanding of the skills available today and the skills that will be needed in the future. This includes keeping a dynamic team strategy adaptable enough to support a growing list of diverse work arrangements, including hybrid work, the four-day work week, talent marketplaces, internal gig work, or non-linear career pathways.

鈥淧eople now work in agile teams that come together around customer problems, analyze and solve them, and disband again quickly,鈥� says Enderes. 鈥淗R technologies must be as dynamic as the way we work today.鈥�

Enhance Outcomes with Greater Organizational Agility

Cohesive and cross-functional team strategies that support organizational agility unlock the door to dynamic teams that are not only successful but also embody the benefits of empowerment and inclusiveness. With visibility into their existing workforce, organizational managers can construct teams that reflect the diversity of the people impacted by the initiative鈥檚 outcomes. Even more, they connect the right people to the right challenges, elevating the quality of the workforce by creating more skilled employees.

The first step is forming a team-based structure 鈥� a shared visual representation of the team 鈥� to define individual roles and help ensure accountability. In return, dynamic team leaders and their members can pinpoint gaps in skills, functions, and responsibilities and source new colleagues with the skills and strengths that can add value to the overall initiative.

Colleagues across different departments can discover open dynamic team roles through the solution. Leaders can quickly generate an assignment within the dynamic team experience that includes the role description and required skills and qualifications. As soon as the assignment is published, employees throughout the organization can view the open role, consider if they or someone else is a fit, and apply if interested 鈥� all from the same view.

The opportunity for organizational managers and business leaders to measure team progress among cross-functional teams with objectives and key results (OKRs) is a significant advantage. Until now, this insight was shrouded in manual reporting and simplistic dashboards, limiting transparency and a complete understanding of how their people 鈥� whether seen or unseen 鈥� contribute to the business when working in teams. Yet, more importantly, this capability enables individual talent to build on skills and interests enriched by their experience and thinking.

鈥淚ntegrating dynamic teams functionality with HR technology allows employees to work on multiple projects and help accomplish critical goals,鈥� says Enderes. 鈥淲ith team management capabilities, the ability to source team members through 51风流SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace, and an OKR experience integrated with talent management, performance management across cross-functional teams and individual contributors is made possible. It supports the 鈥榥ow鈥� and the future of work.鈥�

This approach allows executives, managers, and employees to become more aware of what efforts and contributions are critical to the business. Employees can connect their team-based OKRs to their individual performance goals in the solution by tying team performance to established business metrics. They can spend their time working on projects they understand are critical for the business and their personal development and growth 鈥� all with the confidence that leaders will appropriately recognize their contributions.

The benefits go even further, as organizational leaders build dynamic teams across departmental boundaries with visibility into the volume and composition of successful dynamic teams and OKR data to track team progress and outcomes. Leaders can create report stories with the 51风流SuccessFactors People Analytics solution to tap into cross-functional knowledge and foster a culture that confidently achieves program goals and is consistently prepared for new challenges and opportunities.

Embrace a More Dynamic Future of Work Now

Being among a network of people who appreciate and value each other鈥檚 work, strengths, and potential can be a very motivating aspect of everyone鈥檚 employee experience. It鈥檚 what drives people 鈥� of all roles and backgrounds 鈥� to seize opportunities to develop their skills, contribute more to the business, and establish themselves as highly desirable talent.

This energy across the workforce can become pivotal in how the business grows and succeeds in the long run. Organizations often have a better chance of achieving their goals by building dynamic teams with a mix of internal and external experts. Yet, at the same time, talented professionals can develop new skills and practice existing ones within the safety of a supportive environment.

One thing is true: a business transformation in which dynamic teams are a centerpiece requires transparency and data-driven insights. Together, these two ingredients can optimize dynamic team composition, experiences, and outcomes.

Interested in learning how your investment in 51风流SuccessFactors solutions can help you optimize the outcomes of your increasingly fluid workforce? View the聽聽and watch the about our dynamic teams functionality.

Meg Bear is president and chief product officer at 51风流SuccessFactors.

And once in a lifetime, that means undertaking one of the largest cloud transformations 51风流has ever seen.

In December, 51风流SuccessFactors completed a massive transition of our cloud solutions, migrating customers from legacy data centers to our next-generation infrastructure, state-of-the-art hyperscalers, and 51风流Converged Cloud. This investment enables accelerated growth while improving security, reliability, and enhancing end user performance.

To give you a sense of the scope of this program: we built six new points of presence, decommissioned nine data centers, and migrated more than 7,000 customers, over 2,000 payroll systems, and about 150,000 tenants across five continents. This was the biggest program I have ever seen in my 30 years as a technology executive 鈥� a true moonshot.

Human and technical innovation emerged to help us reach our goal 鈥� we built automation, improved our database topology, and improved file storage and various other things to increase consistency, improve performance, and reduce cost. In addition, we also lived our human experience management (HXM) culture, leveraging to upskill and adapt to the emerging needs of the business.

Unlocking the Intelligent Enterprise

Of course, this entire program was not just about infrastructure, it was about increasing our innovation velocity and accelerating the value of the for our customers and partners. Having a consistent, next-generation cloud infrastructure enables us to making better use of , improving end-to-end integration across the entire lifecycle.

And of course, this also creates the foundation for our , data-driven, individualized experiences that enable growth, foster belonging, and value every person every day. Achieving on this initiative will also present opportunities to level up broadly across our product set moving forward, including setting ourselves up for and other 2023 priorities.

This project could not have been achieved without the support of our customers and partners. Throughout the process, we held dozens of customer webinars for thousands of attendees. We also developed a cutover methodology to transition customers while minimizing risks, with existing infrastructure remaining untouched聽during the build, prepare,聽and test phases. The trust our customers and partners placed in us allowed us to work diligently and efficiently, and many conversations I鈥檝e had with them shows how excited they are to have such a successful result.

The Next-Generation Cloud Delivery campaign was truly a herculean effort with a single goal 鈥� continuing to improve the 51风流SuccessFactors experience so together we can change work for good.

Meg Bear is president and chief product officer of 51风流SuccessFactors.

Going forward, workforce plans must be dynamic and adjustable based on a continuous monitoring of supply and demand. Such flexibility used to be extremely difficult to accommodate 鈥� back when the top determinants of supply were worker location and role. Location-bound talent meant that when an employee worked in California, your skills were in California. If you needed specialized IT skills in New York, you had to fly your employee across the country and often they also needed a role change.

But as the pandemic shifted working models to work from home or hybrid models, knowledge workers not only became untethered from the office, but part of a free-range workforce that can work anytime and anywhere. They became location unbound 鈥� and prefer it, as evidenced by the large volume of people moving out of the city to the country, to Florida, or even debating a move to the British Isles, anywhere with a good broadband connection.

At the same time, we鈥檙e seeing a new trend: unbound workers who are performing multiple 鈥� and increasingly diverse 鈥� roles as part of their current position. For example, they may work three days a week on one project or in one part of the business, and on the other two days support other initiatives with teams that are across the country or even overseas. These versatile workers are in demand for dynamic teams because their diversity of experience and unique skill sets aren鈥檛 necessarily needed in their full-time role, but they are in high demand across the business on an ad-hoc or project basis. This trend could be beneficial to both the organization and employee, as variety can prevent monotony 鈥� which hurts the employee experience and leads to attrition 鈥� and even increase job satisfaction, engagement, and retention. Mostly this leads to significant increases in productivity and organization agility.

Given these trends, we鈥檙e seeing the future of work as a flexible, global, incredibly agile gig economy that encompasses internal and external workers. This means hiring managers don鈥檛 always need to create a new position and budget for every skill set they need; rather, the business makes it easy for them to meet their 鈥渄emand鈥� by finding, accessing, and onboarding the right people 鈥� wherever they are 鈥� with the right skills to meet their needs. Imagine having a talent management system that can cross-charge the salaries or hourly rates of workers to multiple tasks, departments, and operational units across the globe. People can also sign up for flexible, part-time opportunities, get exposure to new areas of the business, develop new skills, and add value along the way.

There is, of course, a balance to be considered between the permanent and flexible elements of any employee鈥檚 position. Too much flexibility and fluidity could diminish job security and expose employees to the negatives of a potential precarious work environment 鈥� a healthy balance is therefore vital.

Looking ahead, this kind of role and location flexibility will increasingly become necessary to access the skill sets needed to meet business and sustainable economic growth. Many Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries have had insufficient for births between 2020 and 2022 to meet the demand for skills in 16- to 20-year-old employees entering the workplace between 2036 and 2040. However, Africa will potentially have enough 20-year-olds to fuel OECD country development and economic growth. Tapping into people with desired skill sets from these areas of the world in an ethical and a sustainable way by not relocating people is the best possible way forward. It preserves and bolsters communities and cultures rather than depriving them of their skill base and human resources.

As discussed in a previous article, flexibility is also important when trying to diversify your workforce by attracting, hiring, and retaining workers of diverse genders, age, and ethnic groups. This is critical today. Surveys conducted during the pandemic, such as the , indicate that Black males, for instance, had a much better employee experience when working remotely because they report experiencing less unconscious bias and a great deal more equality. Forcing these workers to come to an office every day can make them more of a flight risk 鈥� and put your employee engagement and access to their valuable skills at risk.

So how can your HR department support this level of flexibility and optimize workforce planning in such an environment?

Start to think of ways to address skills gaps and empower employees to work how and where they want. Enable employees to work in cross-functional teams based on organizational tasks or projects. They can be across hierarchies or lines of business and help to create an agile working environment while fueling skill development. It鈥檚 also important to take an employee-centric approach to development and growth by providing access to internal opportunities through fellowships, gigs, temporary assignments, mentor programs, and experiential learning. Employees will have the flexibility to create a work experience that is uniquely their own, but it will also create an adaptable workforce that is future ready.

The future of workforce planning is here 鈥� and it鈥檚 full of potential for innovations. To learn more, visit www.sap.com/people-analytics.

Tammie Eldridge is part of Solution Marketing at 51风流SuccessFactors.

The 51风流SuccessFactors second half 2022 release, which is available for preview today, introduces new innovations focused on empowering organizations to create an agile and future-ready workforce in a rapidly changing workplace as well as further investments for individualized experiences and agile and compliant HR.

Creating a Future-Ready Workforce

In the face of increasingly complex and more urgent transformations, organizations must accelerate their talent development at scale. At the core of such adaptability is an understanding of the skills organizations need to build and grow. As part of our early adopter care program, select customers will have access to skills ontology, growth portfolio, and dynamic teams, which work together to deliver greater intelligence on the skills and capabilities that currently exist and are needed within an organization.

The skills ontology is a major advancement for 51风流SuccessFactors that鈥檚 connected to global skills databases to help ensure that organizations have a comprehensive and up-to-date view of the most important skills for their workforce. It delivers machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) powered recommendations to employees about relevant and trending skills to prioritize for development.

The growth portfolio, also part of the early adopter care program, is how employees can reveal their skills, capabilities, education, language proficiencies, and certifications. In the second half release, this data will connect employees to the most relevant assignments in . While the skills ontology gives organizations the ability to align talent development to the ambitions of the organization, the growth portfolio enables employees to align their own talent development to their ambitions.

Dynamic teams is also part of the 51风流SuccessFactors foundation and available to all customers. Within organizations today, there are countless teams that exist outside of traditional organizational structures 鈥� groups of people that work cross-functionally on a project for a certain amount of time. The dynamic teams functionality can provide organizations with visibility into these teams as well as tools to help manage and assemble teams. Team progress can be measured using objectives and key results (OKRs) and employees can find a dynamic team within 51风流SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace to help learn new skills and continue to grow their career. This transparency within the organization levels the playing field and creates equal opportunity for employees.

With richer data and greater talent intelligence, organizations can help ensure that employees are connected to the most relevant talent development opportunities that are aligned to the ambitions of employees and the needs of the organization. Skills ontology, growth portfolio, and dynamic teams provide significant updates to the foundation of 鈥� built into what customers already have instead of requiring an entirely new solution.

Some more exciting features for our second half 2022 release are around individualized experiences and agile and compliant HR, including:

• Chosen name and personal pronouns: As part of our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, we are taking important steps to help every individual be seen and valued. People can now indicate their chosen name, personal pronouns, and gender directly within the people profile. This information is displayed consistently across 51风流SuccessFactors solutions 鈥� from recruiting to learning, helping to foster a greater sense of belonging.
• End-to-end visual redesign: We are enhancing the overall look and feel of 51风流SuccessFactors by implementing the Horizon visual theme for 51风流Fiori. This new theme enhances consistency while delivering a more informed and streamlined product experience. Employees will find nearly every element of the solution updated with new colors, typography, iconography, layouts, and visual hierarchy focused on intent and success. We remain on track to have every employee-facing 51风流SuccessFactors experience unified with the theme by the end of 2023.
• 51风流SuccessFactors Work Zone guided onboarding experience: By bringing together 51风流SuccessFactors solutions and third-party integrations, organizations can more efficiently handle an array of complex onboarding processes. This new feature helps ensure that employees receive individualized experiences, even before their first day. Covering key phases of the new hire journey, the guided onboarding experience for helps provide the tools and information employees need, both before and after hiring.
• Cross-system workflow capability: We are unveiling a new cross-system workflow capability for processes that involve multiple users from multiple systems, such as 51风流SuccessFactors Employee Central and the payroll component of 51风流ERP Human Capital Management. A guided activity framework for key processes enables our on-premise customers to more rapidly unlock the value of the cloud with 51风流SuccessFactors Employee Central and the latest HXM innovations while maintaining and progressively moving on-premise processes to the cloud over time.
• Time management enhancements: We are continuing to enhance our capabilities in time management with the much-anticipated ability to export leave events into calendar applications along with better support for public holidays and handling of grace rules. Time administrators can now copy time-related configuration objects, reducing the need for manual duplication during configuration. In addition, temporary work schedules and absence information on a per day basis will now be available for reporting in 51风流SuccessFactors People Analytics.

All these and many more exciting features will be available in our 2H 2022 release, in preview today and production on Friday, December 9. Please watch our for more information.

Amy Wilson is senior vice president of Products and Design for 51风流SuccessFactors.

Maybe you鈥檙e part of a dynamic team without realizing it. Dynamic teams are self-managed teams typically comprised of three to 10 members. These teams last as long as they need, with some teams working together for just a few months and others continuing for years.

The flexibility intrinsic to a dynamic team helps organizations respond quickly to changing business strategy and priorities. According to the , which studies industry trends that impact technology need, 73% of line managers report that dynamic teams have had a positive impact on their business.

Dynamic teams benefit individual employees, too, by supporting talent development and mobility. Employees working in this flexible environment are able to access and apply skills and capabilities that they may not have used in their everyday role. Moreover, working cross-functionally gives them an opportunity to acquire and hone new skills as well as broaden their internal business network. According to 51风流research, 66% of employees participating in a dynamic team said it had a positive impact on their career and led to higher engagement and company loyalty.

While research shows a positive impact for employees, the same 51风流research revealed that only about 20% of dynamic team members were truly satisfied with the experience. And while many employees who participated in dynamic teams say they would join one again, they also report that their hard work and contributions to the business through the team were not being recognized. 51风流research also found that those tasked with forming a dynamic team were often challenged with finding appropriate channels through which to identify the right people for the job. Lastly, line managers, while encouraging employees to branch out and seek opportunities, had concerns about losing line of sight to the work employees are doing, thus making it harder for them to make important growth and career path decisions as well as recognize and reward their employees.

Today, dynamic teams are solving business challenges quickly, enabling employees to learn new skills and even helping reduce turnover. It鈥檚 clear dynamic teams are a benefit to businesses and employees everywhere. But the future of this new way of working is at risk because businesses don鈥檛 have the tools they need to manage dynamic teams or measure their value.

Future innovations to will help counter fears and eliminate challenges from managers and employees alike. As part of the 51风流SuccessFactors solutions road map, we鈥檙e supporting dynamic teams with new features designed to help your business get work done. 51风流SuccessFactors is developing the ability to create and manage teams and source team members through , as well as create team objectives and key results. Additional innovation includes celebratory cards on the new homepage that recognize team milestones and the ability for team members to easily give and request feedback to and from one another.

As your business goals and priorities shift, dynamic teams can support you with exactly the talent and resources you need. Soon, you will be better able to take advantage of this new way of working with tools for dynamic teams from 51风流SuccessFactors solutions.

For complete insights on dynamic teams, read the full report .

Susie Thomas, PHR, is global director of Solution Marketing at 51风流SuccessFactors.
Caitlynn Sendra, PhD, is an experience product scientist at 51风流SuccessFactors.

This is the perfect example of a鈥�dynamic team:鈥痑 group of people with different skills, strengths, and work styles, that鈥痺ork together鈥痮n a mission-critical initiative, and once the team鈥檚 goals are achieved, they disband.鈥疘ncreasingly, this is the way work gets done. Our research found that 82% of employees have participated in a dynamic team more than once in their current organizations.*

Dynamic teams are sometimes the most innovative and productive groups within an organization, creating important networks and lasting impact. However, with today鈥檚 human capital management (HCM) systems, these teams 鈥� and their value 鈥� are hidden.

Consider what happens today when a leader needs to assemble a team for an important, high-visibility project. They鈥檙e likely to pull in people they already know. But is this the best way to optimize both initial results and long-lasting effects? Does this serve diverse populations that may be hidden themselves?

With dynamic teams hidden from view, organizations lack insight into how work is allocated, how to optimize and replicate results, and how well capabilities are building. Meanwhile, employees are not getting recognition for the skills they are gaining and the results they are delivering. And within the dynamic teams themselves, leaders and team members lack the visibility into what each person brings to the table and how they can most effectively work together.

This lack of transparency is holding us back in our pursuit of personal and organizational sustainability and adaptability.

The Next Chapter for HXM: Dynamic Teams

Today at鈥疭uccessConnect, we announced the delivery of 51风流SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace, backed by our center of capabilities, as the foundation for bottom-up learning, skilling, and self-development. It is an ever-evolving platform that extends beyond the traditional matching capabilities of HCM software to support a range of opportunities, from learning content and mentor relationships to temporary assignments and career roles, curated around an individual鈥檚 whole self — who they are today and who they are becoming.

But we are not stopping there. We believe that dynamic teams are the pinnacle of opportunities. Just think about when you experienced your most significant growth 鈥� was it when you were holed up in your office studying or when you were surrounded by a team working together on an audacious goal? It was most likely the latter. Our research found that when an employee participates on a dynamic team, more than 70% of their line managers report a positive impact on their career development and engagement.

Today, we shared our vision to bring dynamic teams to the forefront of (HXM). With HXM technology to support dynamic teams, organizations can identify, track, measure and optimize the outcomes of these鈥痟idden鈥痝roups, and individuals can access broader development and networking opportunities.

The benefits of elevating the power of teams include:

• Diversity and inclusion: By making dynamic teams and the roles within them transparent, organizations can open opportunities to a broader set of colleagues. With data and insight into diversity of thought, strengths and backgrounds, they can assemble teams with balance and belonging.
• Trackable investments: Understanding where and how work is being done, organizations can gain greater insights into what and who is driving innovation and agility throughout their business.
• Sustainable development and transformation: Participating in a cross-functional team helps people acquire new skills and strengthen their network. This growth benefits their 鈥渄ay jobs鈥� by fostering ongoing adaptability and development. In turn, organizations can accelerate broad transformation initiatives that rely on the network effects of cross-functional skill development and behavioral change.
• Health and prosperity: With a better understanding of who we are as individuals and what we can bring to a team, along with greater empathy and understanding of our teammates and how best to work together, we can optimize team dynamics. Not only does this help deliver tremendous results, but it also helps people have more fun in doing so.

Human experience management is about putting people at the center of business. With our introduction of and the center of capabilities this year, and dynamic teams next year, we are reshaping the way we work and grow 鈥� as organizations and as humans. So together, we can change work for good.

Our journey to bring our HXM vision to life would not be possible without the hundreds of customers who have partnered and co-innovated with us. To get involved, visit the .

Learn more about dynamics teams by tuning into and reading our current research on .

Amy Wilson is senior vice president of Products and Design for 51风流SuccessFactors.

*Based on a survey of 1,492 dynamic team-members and line managers globally, conducted by the 51风流SuccessFactors HR Research Team (March, 2021).