A smarter workforce is about more than just productivity

A lot has been said in Singapore about the workforce, and much of it seems like 50 shades of the same few hot-button issues. If it is not about raising worker productivity, it is about how to achieve work-life balance, or how to negotiate a raise with your boss.

Or it’s about how Singaporeans are the unhappiest employees in the Asia-Pacific, as revealed by a Randstad survey in January.

As a society, we seem to view work as a necessary evil, something we have to do rather than want to do. But slowly through the years, and as Millenials increasingly constitute more of the working population, the nature of “work” has fundamentally changed from a means of providing basic needs, to one that provides status, satisfaction and self-fulfillment.

The narrow definition of work is being stretched and the era of manpower efficiency is drawing to a close. Sooner or later, organisations will realise they have to engage the human spirit in individuals in order to tap the most powerful computer that exists — the human mind.

CHANGES AND CHALLENGES

The sea change is the result of four major shifts that are making the world of work increasingly interconnected, instrumental and intelligent. These four shifts are:

Social collaboration: People are connecting with each other more quickly and today’s workforce is more empowered and informed than ever before. Whether employers encourage it or not, their workforce is sharing knowledge and collaborating in new ways, inside and outside company firewalls.

Mobile prevalence: As connectivity becomes more widespread, collaboration is done more rapidly and decisions get made much faster. Information about practically every topic and sundry is not just readily available, it is accessible in real-time by a finger-tap on a smart device.

Big data and analytics: Increasingly, decisions are made less on limited information and gut feel and more based on insights extracted from the massive volumes of data generated by candidates and employees. Companies use these insights to guide whom and how they recruit, how they design their jobs to attract and retain talent, and how they manage their workplace culture.

The emerging independent worker: As human capital becomes the leading source of sustained economic value, more workers are striking out on their own. People are networking with other people and employers to pursue the work they want to do, who they want to do it with, and when and how they want to work.

Each of these shifts will either magnify or create new obstacles for employees and employers. As it is, under the current model of work, both employees and employers have their own set of challenges.

Employees struggle to gain the right skills to succeed in today’s competitive job market, find meaningful work and determine which organisation best matches their personality and lifestyle. Employers, on the other hand, struggle to find the right talent, help their employees to outperform, provide skills and training to adapt to an ever-changing marketplace, and draw out the best from the talent they already have.

But the good news is that there is a solution within the problem — a smarter workforce.

A SMARTER WORKFORCE

If employees understand their true talents, and in turn find work that will use their full capabilities that give them a fulfilling experience at work, both employee and the employer will indubitably benefit.

Obviously, to do that, there needs to be a shift in thinking and attitudes about work — and of course, a fundamental change in management style.

Today, with the power of technology and collaboration, those decisions are being made from the bottom up to match the flow of collective information. This makes businesses more nimble and adaptable to market change and, as a result, more successful.

At the same time, the recent advancements in human insight mean we now know what makes people good at what they do, individually and collectively. We also better understand the dynamics of talent and the science of human behaviour.

The combination of technology and human insight has produced mounds of Big Data around human behaviour and workforce tendencies that employers have been collecting for decades through their legacy human capital management (HCM) systems, but have not been able to extract and act on until recently.

So, if we can harness the power of big data and analytics with human insight, human behaviour and workforce solutions, along with social and mobile technologies, we could bring people and employers together to do more meaningful and valuable work to drive business.

In summary, a smarter workforce is smarter when:

• Behavioural science identifies what makes people good at what they do and organisations thrive because of it.

• Technology does not just drive efficiency, but also fuels collective and collaborative innovation.

• Analytics is both a predictive and management tool critical for driving continual improvement.

Ultimately a smarter workforce recognises there is power and meaning in work — if we make it so. When you can reduce time-to-hire, increase productivity, lower turnover and increase retention rates, the business wins by getting its products or services to market faster, sharing collective knowledge and being more creative and innovative.

Once companies truly understand how employees affect the bottom line, an engaged workforce is essential. It’s not just about a smarter workforce, it’s also about doing smarter business.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Peta Steele is Head of Smarter Workforce at IBM ASEAN.