By Chee Jo-Ey
A DIGITAL workplace or remote work is still very much a foreign concept for companies here. So when the movement control order (MCO) was imposed last month, challenges abound for both employers and employees when they were forced to work from home.
But change they must as many companies had to adopt digital transformation to keep their operations running amidst the Covid-19 outbreak.
Businesses with a technology infrastructure that supports remote work will be able to function as usual and mitigate the impact of the outbreak.
Kelly Services MD Brian Sim told FocusM: “Restrictive movement due to the Covid-19 outbreak has created a learning opportunity for both employees and employers. During the past one month, they have been trying out the work from home model and this allows them to explore the potentials of a flexible work experience. They should take advantage of this to learn about the flexible work arrangement model to meet any emergency situation.”
Although technology infrastructure is critical to such work arrangement, a true digital workplace is so much more than sharing documents on an online server.
“For the past one month, what most companies experienced was a business continuity model but I hope that employers won’t benchmark against this model. The real work-from-home model has multiple layers to it, including the kind of technology to be used as well as setting the right culture.
“Employers should explore crafting out a series of legal and human resources policies and the training and development required for such a model. There’s more to be done transforming a conservative workplace into a digital work culture and that can take from six months to more than a year,” said Sim.
The workplace is evolving at all times along with employee’s expectations and organisations that delay in adopting the digital workplace risk falling behind.
A digital workplace consists of technological tools people use to get work done in today’s workplace. It ranges from your human resources applications and core business applications to e-mail, instant messaging and enterprise social media tools, and virtual meeting tools.
“The digital transformation of the workplace in Malaysia is still in its early stages. Adopting a digital workplace strategy can increase productivity. There is 60% of the Gen Y population working in the market and they have been surrounded by tech since birth.
“When they are working in a tech-oriented environment, it will be second nature to them as they leverage on their tech skills to elevate productivity,” Sim added.
The flexible work arrangement is definitely worth looking into even post-MCO as it brings many benefits and not only to cater to an emergency situation. For starters, flexible arrangement is highly demanded among young talents.
“Employers can bring the work-from-home model to another level by looking at all aspects of it. Once companies decide to take this route, prepare the older generations of workers for flexible work arrangement.
“Management has to be the role model to set the right tone and encourage employees to adopt a new culture. Drafting out policies gives a clearer direction on the dos and don’ts. Employees are at a limbo and not sure about their key performance index (KPI) while team leaders are not sure when to engage staff at the beginning of the MCO.
“Create human resources policy to give clear expectations including deliverables and work hours and keep continuous communication. Also lastly, think of a series of learning and development programmes to increase productivity,” said Sim. — April 20, 2020
