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The Key to Navigating a Recession is Innovation: Part Two

By Michael Watkins

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Our friends at Gartner recently published a blog that identified 9 actions that organizations should take to effectively navigate a recession. Upon reviewing this piece, we recognized that a company’s ability to innovate is fundamental to the implementation of all 9 of these actions.

In this blog – the second of a three-part series – we’ll look at how innovation, and in particular Innovation_360 from Wazoku, enables a business to make the changes that Gartner recommends. The second cluster of three actions revolves around how a business has to adapt and become agile in order to secure the right digital talent.

#1: Work Models

Gartner’s Advice: “Fundamentally rethink the way your organization leverages its people. Consider flexibilitylocation, hours, part vs full time, and in-house vs. outsourced.”

Following almost three years of disruption because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world of work has fundamentally changed. Through the adoption of technology such as Microsoft Teams and Jira – both of which Wazoku is integrated with – businesses can operate in a hybrid way and find success.

The Wazoku Platform has been used by a number of our customers to improve the experience of employees. The visibility and access it provides across your organization allows you to identify the shortcomings in the way you currently leverage people and find solutions to these problems that involve those employees.

#2: Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

Gartner’s Advice: “Clarify your EVP so you are positioned to attract and retain the right digital talent.”

In a time of instability, people are actively looking for reasons to either stay with or move to employers that value them and their contributions. A clear EVP allows you to manage both sides of the retain and attract coin.

The Wazoku Platform has supported employers in their ability to retain the right digital talent in their company using intrapreneurship schemes. These are aimed at giving agency to the most entrepreneurial members of your company, meaning that their aspirations can be pursued in-house. It also acts as a draw to prospective applicants. Along with the rewards schemes that our platform assists in setting up, companies which use Wazoku can confidently advertise as an attractive place to work.

#3: Digital Talent

Gartner’s Advice: “Aggressively seek to secure the right digital talent needed to help you accelerate your digital plans. Snap up talent cut loose from digitally native companies that retrench.”

Traditional hiring practices dictated by location or inflexibility will not cut it in this recession. In order to not only survive but thrive in this difficult time, businesses need access to expertise from around the world. With the Wazoku Crowd, a global network of millions of problem solvers that breaks down boundaries of geography, industry, and language, our customers can leverage that expertise however they wish.

We’ve found that, across 20 years of crowdsourcing solutions, a staggering 80% of awarded Solvers don’t meet the hiring criteria of the companies who implement their ideas. The decisions made over the next twelve months will dictate your ability to navigate a recession: can any business afford not to seek the insights of experts, wherever or whoever they are?

In this blog, we’ve focused on the next three key actions Gartner recommends a business takes in order to navigate a recession. We’ve outlined the advice given, provided a real-world context for it, and illustrated how Wazoku both can and has been used to implement these strategies in the past. Coming next, we look at Gartner’s final block of three key actions, which focuses on the initiatives you want to implement and how to accelerate that process.

Discover all of our content related to Gartner’s recession advice by clicking here!

By Michael Watkins

Michael is Wazoku's Product and Brand Marketing lead. Away from the office, he's our resident film buff, so if you want some recommendations for a night in front of Netflix or a trip to your local cinema, get in touch with him!