Embrace continual transformation centered on delivering long-term value
To build a successful and sustainable employee experience program, organizations need to meet the current and future expectations of employees, while delivering results aligned with business needs.
An overlapping area of need for both employers and the workforce is the ability to acquire future skills. After experiencing the lack of job security during the crisis, the workforce has become particularly concerned over lifelong employability and future relevance beyond the pandemic. To mitigate unemployment risks, employees are looking for opportunities to continually upskill and reskill. For employers, adopting a skills-based approach is critical to meeting their talent capability needs in a tight labor market as ongoing border restrictions have created inbound talent scarcity issues.
The challenge faced by organizations is that business models are still in flux and the workforce is still evolving amid the disruptions caused by COVID-19. Therefore, organizations will need to embrace a continual transformation approach by shortening talent planning cycles and embedding flexibility and agility in their decision-making process. Even as leaders work on adopting a continual transformation mindset, their transformation trajectory must have purpose as a central guide. As organizations explore the future and work backward to review their relevance, staying centered on their purpose will help prioritize competing needs and limited resources.
Consider how companies are adopting a future-back approach to plan their learning and development initiatives, which is critical in meeting future talent needs. In the past, organizations used to rely on past budgets and iterate from past initiatives. Today, organizations begin the exercise by first identifying future skills as well as current and future salary premiums required, and assessing investments needed in learning and development to bridge these skill gaps. This future-back approach allows the level of organizational spend to achieve business goals.
How governments can bridge the gap
The shift in the global workforce’s desire toward long-term flexible work arrangements has not gone unnoticed. While the aforementioned surveys revealed a mismatch in employee and employer expectations on the future workplace, governments across Southeast Asia have played a key role in helping organizations close this gap. For a start, governments have provided monetary support and guidance to help companies adopt sustainable flexible work arrangements (FWAs). The Singapore Government, for example, has pioneered a Work-Life Grant that offers FWA incentives of up to S$70,000 (about US$51,400) per company to promote workplace cultures that support better work-life harmony.1 These include FWA measures like part-time work and job-sharing arrangements. A dedicated Job Sharing Implementation Guide provides further support for companies to implement these arrangements and better match business and employee needs.
Apart from monetary funding, governments have also created regulations and guidelines to encourage FWA adoption. In the Philippines, the Department of Labor and Employment issued a set of employment preservation guidelines (Labor Advisory No. 17 Series of 2020) to encourage FWAs as an alternative to termination of jobs or business closure.2 The guidelines recommend initiatives like job rotation, transferring employees to other branches or functions, reduced work hours and other feasible work arrangements. Likewise, Indonesia’s manpower ministry has released new guidelines encouraging two-way communication and agreement between employers and employees on suitable employment practices like FWAs.3
The Malaysian Government has gone further to offer support beyond FWAs. In the past year, Malaysia’s National Economic Recovery Plan introduced FWA incentives worth MYR800m (about US$189.6m) to both employers and employees, with added childcare subsidies to support working parents.4 To support productivity at home, the Malaysian Government has offered tax relief on technological hardware for employees and invested MYR3b (about US$710.9m) to provide free internet connectivity for workers and students.5 Similarly, to improve productivity during remote working, Singapore’s Productivity Solutions Grant covers up to 80% of costs for IT solutions, equipment and consultancy services.6
Something positive is emerging from the pandemic and ensuing disruption: a transformation opportunity to make workforce planning more strategic and agile. This must be built on a more effective way of understanding and engaging with employees to deliver employee experiences and build a people-centered organization of the future.
