Navigating the big shifts in the world of people and work

In his keynote address at People Matters TechHR Singapore, Graham James Lim, Senior Partner Manager-APAC teams, Globalization Partners, shares his incredible take on how leading businesses must approach the world of people and work. The APAC region, according to him, is marked by three dominant trends: a constantly evolving workplace, changing priorities of the employee and how the talent landscape is bridled with new challenges and opportunities equally. 

He shares his expertise on the entry-level workforce and points out the glaring reality that most candidates might not know what they want. As a result, it becomes increasingly essential for organisations today to provide opportunities to re-skill and collaborate on projects beyond what they were hired for. This also becomes a key step in aligning oneself with the ever-changing employee mindsets. 

Coming back to the talent landscape, Lim shares how APAC also suffered from mass layoffs, especially in the tech space, but an opportunity area that opened up as a result of this was the steady rise in profits from remote sales. Amidst a dwindling yet increasingly global workforce, the marketplace continues to thrive, with statistics showing how remote sales professionals are closing a higher proportion of deals, as much as half a million USD. But this is just one instance in a sea of doors that can be unlocked if leaders today intelligently solve the ongoing, burning talent challenges.

The challenges that remain for today’s HR teams

Talent shortages continue to be prevalent, as shown by the Willis Towers Watson Report, where 89% of companies in Asia continue to struggle with talent acquisition and 88% with retention. This also highlights an inconsistency in the labour pool. Naturally, layoffs should have increased the talent available to recruit, but that hasn’t been the case as skilled employees today now take a step back and reimagine what they wish their careers to look like and if they want to switch their professional trajectories. As Lim said, “The tech talent crunch continues alongside retrenchment.” Employers have no excuses or benefits if they decide even to cut corners when it comes to their people.

As remote work becomes more and more commonplace, organisations can no longer overlook the challenge of isolation which has a decisive impact on how employees perform and engage with the vision and mission of their workplace. Additionally, compliance also becomes critical as each region has their own unique employee regulations. Compliantly hiring someone is a critical need, but accomplishing that is easier said than done and can be a roadblock in successful remote hiring. 

Strategies that will empower organisations to thrive

For Lim, this boils down to two things: keeping people at the centre and thinking outside the box.

With only 56% of employees believing that C-level executives care for them, it is high time that leaders today revisit their compensation and benefits, whether their employees feel satisfied and fulfilled at their jobs and most importantly, whether they feel that you care about them. In order to achieve this, Lim suggests four key strategies:

• Accepting the possibility that your hires might wish to pick up skills and take up tasks beyond the roles they were hired for. At Globalization Partners, this is getting done through internal internships. Such opportunities indeed make a difference because not only does it empower your talent to own their career journeys, but it clearly highlights how you, too, are invested in their growth.
• Invest in making your employees feel like they belong. Something as simple as a global welcome pack system makes your hires feel recognised as new members of the workforce, and they can now feel that they will be looked after, and paid attention to even though they might be working on the other side of the globe.
• Prioritise your people’s mental health and well-being. With several vendors in the wellness market today, it becomes easier for employers to collaborate with them in launching Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs). With a remote workforce, this becomes even more pertinent as it creates a greater risk of disconnect and isolation. 
• Rotate the timezone sacrifice. One cannot overlook that timezone management can often be a barrier to building connections with a remote workforce. What will become fruitful then is to ensure that when scheduling meetings, one adjusts to the other’s timezone every week. This is something that Globalization Partners prioritises.

Coming to thinking outside the box, an interesting perspective shared by Lim is that not all layoffs are necessarily bad. It can be an opportunity to reassess one’s allocative efficiency with people you couldn’t hire during the layoffs marked by the tech talent crunch and crypto winter. With Globalization Partners, this becomes easier as it helps counter the challenges of remote hiring. Rather than bringing the employee to the local country, they help organisations align to the employee's home base through their employer of record solutions. They also offer localised subsidiaries in these countries to look after their talent. Globalization Partners has also accomplished this entire remote hiring feat for their customers in as less as 12 hours, even though the average time is 3-5 days.

Hiring a remote workforce is increasingly beneficial for organisations today as it counters the risk of having a homogenous workforce, and they benefit from a plurality of ideas for innovation and growth. Studies also show a 50% increase in productivity due to a diverse workforce. Furthermore, as companies today embrace the future of work and design strategies for growth and expansion, a remote workforce then becomes a key ingredient to unlocking success. 

If you would like to learn more about how to build a global remote workforce quickly and compliantly with Globalization Partners, schedule a demo today.