Orient - The Official Magazine of the British Chamber of Commerce Singapore - Issue 71 April 2019
Asia’s Businesses: Becoming Future-fit in the Human Age
By Kate Bravery, Partner, Career Solutions Leader, Career Global, Mercer & Puneet Swani, Partner, Career Business Leader, International Region, Mercer
According to Mercer’s 2019 Global Talent Trends Study, almost all organisations are taking action to prepare for the future of work, thus creating an urgency of rethinking the people agenda to unlock potential. One of the main drivers of all this activity is the surge in awareness of disruption – 71% of Asian executives are predicting significant disruption in the next few years.
When Prudential Hong Kong automated some of its front and back office systems, they expected transformational results. But the anticipated savings didn’t materialise. To discover why, the insurer used an activity survey and employee interviews to quickly identify what work was being done and by whom. The insights led to better informed work designs and enabled HR to suggest where resources could evolve into future roles.
Prudential’s story reveals the urgency of rethinking the people agenda to unlock potential, particularly as almost all organisations are taking action to prepare for the future of work, according to Mercer’s 2019 Global Talent Trends Study. One of the main drivers of all this activity is the surge in awareness of disruption – 71% of Asian executives are predicting significant disruption in the next few years.
Yet as executives focus on making their organisations future-fit, there is growing sensitivity to the human capital risks that can impede transformation efforts. In today’s uncertain climate, employees seek stability; HR is concerned that with uncertainty comes low engagement, employee apathy and change fatigue. Mercer’s study finds that job security is one of the main reasons employees in Asia joined, and stay with, their company. Addressing people concerns is paramount, given that only one in three executives rate their company’s ability to mitigate human capital risks as very effective, dropping to just one in five in Japan.
The way to help employees feel secure is to foster engaging human connections so individuals can thrive in their careers, even if their job is evolving around them. The key is ensuring individuals feel they have a career for life, not a job for life. Mercer’s study identifies the following four trends that leading companies are addressing in 2019.
Aligning Work to Future Value
Agility remains a critical organisational competency. But agility alone is not enough. Further, as more companies move to flatter work structures and embrace agile work models, new value creation opportunities are needed to stay ahead.
Leading firms are aligning change efforts to a few anchor points where they believe future value will be created — be it new products, new critical skills, or new operating models. Key to success will be redefining the “jobs to be done”, as Prudential did, and uncovering ways to optimise current roles. This year, the C-suite across the world named job redesign as the area of talent investment with the highest ROI potential. Yet, the picture is more mixed in Asia with executives in China, India and Hong Kong proclaiming the need for job redesign while few Japanese and Singaporean executives have this on their radar. The challenge for HR across the region is to deliver an