Embracing digitisation
> What the new wave of change will mean to both employers and employees
A Noverwhelming trend called digitisation is sweeping across the Asia Pacific. At least 60% of its GDP (excluding Japan) will be digitised by 2021. Malaysia is among the top three countries with high digitisation awareness in Asia Pacific. Hence, Malaysians (73%) can expect a high impact of technology to “hit” their workplace and work style.
Despite the high awareness on digitisation, 44% of Malaysian employees feel their managers are not proactively engaging them on this important subject that will impact their careers.
Around two in five (43%) Malaysian employees see digitisation as a threat to their jobs and 37% feel they do not have the right skills to futureproof their careers into the digital economy. These figures were derived from a collaborative study conducted by Workday, a leader in enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, and International Data Collection (IDC), a global marketing firm. Results were based on answers to a survey involving over 1,400 employees across eight countries, namely Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, Japan and South Korea. According to the study, Malaysians are among the happiest employees in the Asia Pacific. 84% of respondents said they feel satisfied and engaged at work. However, Malaysia also has one of the highest turnover rates in the region with 38% of employees claiming they would likely switch jobs in the next 12 months. “A result like this can make any manager feel concerned,” Workday Southeast Asia managing director, Jasie Fon said. “We think digitisation helps organisations meet the future, but what does that mean for employees?” “Instead of saying their jobs are at risk, what about having the organisation prepare its workforce for the future? To do that, organisations need to have the right approach to retrain and re-skill their people. Employers need to provide their employees a new career path, new responsibilities or new roles,” she added. From the employees’ perspective, recipients wished to be associated with companies that are more modernised. They want to be seen as being trained by their companies and be given the opportunity to be re-skilled to meet the new economy.
One of the things Workday does is what they call “Anytime Feedback”. It involves responses that can be given to an individual at any time. For example, if a colleague is doing a good job on a project he is working on, a co-worker can give him a “thumbs-up” on Workday’s mobile application platform. This act will empower that colleague to feel happy and proud of his work and at the same time, his manager will get to see that feedback, even accumulated feedback.
“These are small things that help employers get more engaged with their employees. It also allows employees to see their own value in the company,” Fon shared.
Machine Learning is another part of what Workday promotes. In a nutshell, it involves learning the behaviour of the organisation.
It is basically a matrix which is built within the system and can foretell when an individual is “at risk” of leaving an organisation. The system will flag the manager and come up with recommendations, based on statistics, on how to retain the employee.
It could suggest increasing the person’s salary, moving him to another role, or giving him a new project to “inspire” him.
“I think this element is very powerful. It naturally translates to the employees’ feelings. Employees want to see their organisation adapting to digital transformation and many organisations see themselves being at the top tier of leveraging on technology.
“If an organisation has this kind of forward-thinking capabilities, employees will see the value of working in that organisation,” Fon emphasised.
No one can predict what new technologies will be available in the next five or 10 years, but it is clear that if organisations are not jumping on the digital bandwagon, they risk losing their people and even being phased out by more pro-active and engaging companies.
Workday sees a growing interest among organisations which want to embrace digitisation, and Fon believes Workday is a good platform to get these organisations there.
“In Asia, we are at a stage of accelerated growth. We see more companies which are excited and want to get on this bandwagon of growth. (Hence) we will continue to focus on customer satisfaction, which we are very proud of.
“From the technology investment point of view, we will continue to invest in what we think is coming up in the future and leverage on any new technology.
“Right now, we are engaging in technologies such as machine learning, chat box and voice command,” Fon informed.