Workplace flexibility: the skill HR values most and companies misread

Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2012, during Spain’s economic crisis; the European study it cites was newly published then, and its results, including flexibility as the top-rated skill in Spain, refer to that year.

A European study has just come out analysing the professional skills most in demand (key competencies) by companies when they hire someone. The results were presented country by country, and in Spain, the skill most highly rated by human resources departments was “flexibility”.

But… what do HR departments mean by flexibility, and what do companies mean by flexibility when someone joins them? If we turn to the dictionary of the Real Academia Española, a flexible person is one who, “in a confrontation, readily yields to the opinion, will or attitude of another or others”.

If we look at old human resources manuals, “a flexible person is one who is not bound by strict rules, dogmas or constraints and is open to changes or variations according to the circumstances or needs of the company”.

For today’s human resources departments, on the other hand, a flexible person in a company is one who “has the ability to adapt to the business environment, plus the ability to learn from the clients they work with, to be able to modify the goals and objectives to be achieved, plus the skill to understand the context and adapt to the new environment more quickly and efficiently”.

Clearly, going by this last definition, a professional of this kind, with this single trait, is not easy to find, because it covers a whole range of “virtues” that basically make them an excellent professional.

Now, what do companies understand by flexibility?

Far from what HR thinks, many companies are twisting these definitions. A flexible person is taken to mean someone able to accept working conditions they would never have accepted before and salaries they would never have considered. That is the adaptation to the new environment and the new business situation that is asked of the candidate in the first place.

See also: IQ doesn’t matter: grit and self-discipline predict success, a study finds

Many companies are starting to understand flexibility as the ability to work without set hours and with variable pay. That would explain why, in the current environment, the most sought-after professional skill is flexibility, with flexibility meaning the ability to give your all for the company without set hours or a set salary.

According to the Asociación Española de Dirección y Desarrollo de Personas (AEDIPE), the Spanish association of HR managers, the other professional skills most in demand by companies across Europe, besides being flexible enough to accept slavery, would be:

1. Respect for hierarchical relationships.
2. Being able to develop strategies.
3. Keeping your emotions under control.
4. Understanding what it takes to be fully accepted into a work group.
5. Being willing to work in a team.
6. Understanding the culture of the company you are joining and being able to adapt to it.
7. Being able to listen to others.
8. As well as being able to work in a team, being professionally independent when it comes to representing the company at a meeting (being able to go to an appointment or meeting on your own).
9. Respecting the set working hours (punctuality).
10. Looking after yourself.

They also remind us that young people are better and better prepared, and that sometimes the person hired is not the one who has these skills, but the one who shows the strongest academic background: degrees, master’s, and so on.

Further reading

• Unbroken lines in human resources: when talent acquisition turns into a talent drain

Featured image: FML, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.