Dive Brief:

• A major survey has found that disruptive changes in digital technology, business models and workforce demographics are forcing 92% of business and HR leaders to identify the need to redesign their organization to address global business demands as vital.
• Unfortunately, only 14% of those same executives believe their company is ready to redesign their organization, according to Deloitte's  "Global Human Capital Trends 2016: The new organization, Different by design," now in its fourth year.
• The survey, which polled more than 7,000 HR and business leaders across 130 countries, found in its first three years that employers placed a high priority on increasing employee engagement and retention, improving leadership and building a meaningful culture. But the 2016 study found, for the first time, that nearly half of respondents (45%) are either in the middle of a restructuring (39%) or are planning one (6%).

Dive Insight:

Josh Bersin, principal, Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP, said that employers need to keep current and meet the demands of the rapidly-evolving global business ecosystem. By empowering teams, creating a new management model and developing a younger and increasingly inclusive leadership structure, organizations are reinventing themselves to innovate, compete and thrive, he added.

Bersin said that this year's research also indicates that companies are overhauling their organizational structure and shifting away from hierarchical, functional business models toward cross-functional "networks of teams," in an effort to become more agile, collaborative and customer-focused.

Despite the enormous interest in this shift, however, only 21% of business and HR executives feel expert at building cross-functional teams, and only 12% understand the way people currently work together. The new, digital world of work is further fueling changes, as the survey found that 74% have identified digital HR — the complete redesign of HR tools and services around digital technology — as a top priority. Forty two percent of companies are redesigning their HR systems to support mobile, just-in-time learning and 59% are shifting their back-office HR systems to mobile in an effort to make them easier to use by employees.