Today’s episode of the show features Mary Faulker of IA-HR, a consulting firm helping organizations start the change management process and ultimately transform their organizations. Mary has held multiple roles in organizations across the HR functions and has a plethora of valuable advice to offer for today’s conversation focused on business and HR transformation. To begin, Mary outlines her nontraditional career path.

Shifting gears, Mary defines the liquid workforce. Work is no longer a task that you come in, complete, and leave. In the workforce today, there is an emphasis on matching people to work they find interesting and fits their skillset. The other option is reskilling the existing workforce to fit into the work which needs to be done. The entertainment industry is a perfect example of a functional liquid workforce. Mary expresses empathy for those in talent acquisition positions, but she believes there needs to be a new focus on hiring for potential. The term learning agility refers to the ability to unlearn what you think and learn what’s new. Organizations run into conflict when they hire new change-makers before the organization itself is ready for drastic change.

There is a difference between a dynamic organization that changes a lot and one that changes effectively a lot. Mary believes it is never too soon to begin thinking about your change management, communication plans, and training plans. Change management is something that should be threaded throughout everything happening in the organization.