Invest in career growth to drive workforce transformation

Winning the talent game involves prioritising investing in each employee’s career journey. Angelina Chua, Deputy Group CHRO at ComfortDelGro and Ishita Bandyopadhyay, Managing Director, Aon’s Assessment Solutions, at Aon, discuss how a safe and agile approach to learning with the right combination of immersive learning technologies can help drive the transformation of the workforce.

Right kind of career direction to drive workforce transformation

Angelina Chua iterated that workforce transformation in the new world of work is actually the disruption of businesses. It involves the ROI too. Currently, many talents are in the market, and considering the widespread workforce, it makes workforce transformation so important for the organisation. 

The transformation involves when a mix of people from the outside [new joinees] and people from the inside working together and coming out with a fresh perspective, which is critical. This makes the situation fruitful when fresh people are sent to different departments to assimilate the transformation. 

Why there is a need for transformation?

Investing in the talent’s growth is an altogether different cup of game. The question arises for leaders:

• How to equip these talents better to help the organisation grow better?
• What kind of news skills can be acquired?
• What is critical to building new businesses and new revenue streams?

Organisations in the new world of work need employees who have new skills and an underlying understanding of digitalisation and automation. So what can organisations do? Employees can be compelled through a set of learning programs. In terms of tech space, the employees should be equipped with analytics & cybersecurity skills and computing knowledge.

Workforce transformation also requires employees and new talents to expand their horizons, which can be possible through team-based learning. This kind of learning program comes from investors who look at what they want to achieve and capitalise on the idea of sustainability. 

The team-based learning programs also involve the element of safety, a key point which is very high on the agenda. An employee engagement survey done by Angelina’s team found that safety is of utmost importance for the employees. People feel very strongly about programs being safe places to work well. When the concern of safety is met, the leaders can accordingly look at the high-potential employees and offer the necessary learning opportunities.

Leadership milestone programs: Kick-starting workforce transformation

Leadership milestone programs are an approach, adopted by many organisations to bring high-potential employees to the forefront. The high-potential  employees can be assessed by asking four questions:

• Are you available?
• Would you like to grow?
• Are open to learning new skills?
• Are you into leadership training?

Angelina shared an example where she talked about asking an employee about his expectations of growth and learning. He said that he wants to learn MMA (Mixed Martial Arts). In such an interesting scenario, he was asked what kind of learning programs would interest him to enable him to learn MMA and what the budget would be. She reiterated that this offers flexibility to the employees to choose. Leaders may not know what's best for the employee but as HR professionals, it is really important to keep an open mind. 

The new world of work has compelled the organisation to put real business cases back into classrooms and develop out-of-the-box thinking. Leaders need to ask themselves when it comes to telling the employees: What is the best way forward for them to take up their careers?

The new generation and existing talents are at a stage where they want the right kind of experience and want to explore new things. These initiatives are the stepping stones toward driving workforce transformation.