Current employees, companies, the academic eco-systems and Governments will have to spend their fair share of efforts in preparing the population to tomorrow’s employability.

What are the consequences on a company’s internal organization?

Flexibility and agility will be the best attributes a company can have to master the transition to the new business models of circular economy.

Very often, the complexity of internal organizations freezes a company and makes it even more difficult to apply change. The complexity usually comes from the organic growth a business faces when adapting to its success and mastering market challenges along the way. Same goes for the company’s internal communication which trades its flexibility for structural / administrative layers.

In this new economy everything is expected move faster thanks to the digitalization of the work environment. Hence, strategies based on stacking up management layers on the internal organization are destined to fail.
Therefore, vertical organizations must transit to more cross-functional work practices in which the decision making processes come closer to the action.

To quote: Martin Geissdoerfer, Sandra Naomi Morioka, Marly Monteiro de Carvalho and Steve Evans in the book
Business models and supply chains for the circular economy :

Circular business models are business models that are closing, narrowing, slowing, intensifying, and dematerializing loops, to minimize the resource inputs into and the waste and emission leakage out of the organizational system. This comprises recycling measures (closing), efficiency improvements (narrowing), use phase extensions (slowing or extending), a more intense use phase (intensifying), and the substitution of product utility by service and software solutions (dematerializing).

Managers become “coaches” instead of decision-makers. The many positive effects are:

• Creativity gets unleashed
• Reactivity and client satisfaction improve
• Employee involvement rises

Of course, one shall not expect the transition to circular business models is a piece of cake, cultural resistance being one of the difficulties an enterprise may encounter. For work environments to become more fluid such a project has to be well thought with a skilled digitalization partner and especially by including the company’s human capital at the heart of the process.