Story & photos by Rizal Raoul S. Reyes
ORGANIZATIONS have to develop a new culture in the workplace to ensure success in their digital transformation and cope with the entry of the millennials in the workplace.
“The rise of digital technologies, along with a new generation of millennials entering the work force, has brought about a need to address changing workers’ expectations, knowledge and skills, as well as the tools they use,” Cian O’Neill, Microsoft Philippines COO and chief marketing officer, said in a news briefing last month. “And with more than half of the world’s millennials residing in Asia, the workplace will need to transform to adapt to the technology habits of these digital natives.”
O’Neill added that “due to deployment of advanced and emerging technologies, organizations need to relook at reskilling its work force to develop creative and strategic skills for the future.”
The recent Microsoft Asia Pacific study indicated that the rapid developments in technology and a big upsurge in the entry of millennials in the labor force would force companies to craft a new environment to cope with the new trend. The study cited severall factors influencing the culture of work in the Philippines today.
One factor is having an increasingly mobile work force and exposure to new security risks. The study discovered that only 21 percent of respondents are spending all of their work hours in the office. About 81 percent of respondents are working off personal smartphones. This development raises new security challenges for organizations.
Another factor is the rise of diverse teams. According to the Microsoft study, 29 percent of workers in the Philippines are already working in more than 10 teams at any one point in time. With the business-process outsourcing industry being significant in the country, more workers are working with different and even virtual teams from different locations.
A third factor is the gaps in employees’ digital skills even as leaders are in the motion of embracing digital transformation. As the bar is raised with new technologies adopted across industries, deployment is uneven.
“In fact, 47 percent of respondents feel that more can be done to bridge the digital skills gap among workers,” O’Neill said.
Bertand Launay, Microsoft Philippines managing director, said people will remain to be a big difference in the march toward digital transformation, despite the belief of 86 percent of local business surveyed in the study supporting digital transformation.
“People are at the heart of digital transformation.” Launay said. “Their expectations, knowledge and skills, as well as the tools they use for work, are determining factors in the level of transformation that any organization can achieve.”
He added the challenge people faces now “is how to implement new ways to foster a modern culture of work to better empower Asia’s workers, especially those at the frontline.”
Launay estimated there are 2 billion firstline workers globally who make up majority of the work force today.
The survey covered 1,200 information-technology leaders across 12 markets, including Australia, China, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Forty-one percent of respondents are working in organizations with 250 to 499 personal computers (PCs), while 59 percent work in organizations with 500 and more PCs.
O’ Neill said in Makati City on September 29 that technology will play a key role in the digital transformation of an organization especially for first-line workers.
Image credits: Rizal Raoul S. Reyes