Organizations and stakeholders constantly aspire for creative disruptions to stay competitive, relevant, and upgraded. In such moments of change, firms employ agile practices for production, marketing, and technology. However, they seldom focus on understanding or enhancing workforce agility at the individual level. While most literature revolves around 'systemic factors influencing employee agility, our work addresses the gap in understanding the 'individual factors influencing agility and the dearth of evidence-based practice to promote it. Through this research, we sought to understand the individual-level motivational, cognitive, and emotional antecedents to workers' agility. Through a narrative literature review, we published a conceptual model that proposed that I-type curiosity would enhance Reflective Pondering. Such pondering can build agile capacities when moderated by dispositional Joy. By contrast, D-type curiosity would attenuate Brooding, debilitating agile behaviors. In addition, we designed 'Intermodal Arts-Based Intervention' (IABI) to enhance I-type and decrease D-type curiosity, subsequently strengthening agility.
We then performed five consecutive studies to a.Validate the conceptual model and b.Expand our understanding of the attributes and effects of IABI at the workplace. Study 1 was a cross-sectional survey to validate the proposed model, Study 2 was a quasi-experimental study to evaluate the intervention's effectiveness, Study 3 is a case study to understand the phases through which the learning progressed during the intervention, Study 4 was a Diary study to understand the workplace outcomes, and facilitators and barriers to implementation of learnings at the workplace, and Study 5 was a focus group discussion (FGD) to analyze the long-term impacts (6 months) of the intervention on employees' personality factors. The findings revealed that Deprivation-type curiosity predicted both types of rumination; however, only the Brooding type negatively predicted agility. Interest-type curiosity buffered the effect of Brooding, thereby increasing agility, and Joy moderated this relationship. Experimental results showed that IABI enhanced Interest-type curiosity and agility but did not significantly reduce D-type-curiosity.
Furthermore, we noted IABI's role in promoting momentum and socio-cognitive mindfulness among employees, accentuating their resilience and thriving. Several long-term changes were also reported in employees' personality factors: affect, behavior, and cognition. Additionally, the results from case studies show that enhancing employees' perception of their strengths, emotional regulation, and self-control demands and instilling a solution-focused approach are crucial in determining the effectiveness of arts-based employee development initiatives. This paper advocates the need for exploratory work culture and strength-based performance improvement mechanisms and condemns deficit-focused employee development initiatives. 

 Keywords: Workforce agility, Epistemic curiosity, Rumination, Joy, Arts-intervention