With the prevailing global crisis, what is your personal opinion on how the future of work will affect your business operations?
The future of work will primarily require 2 things. Firstly, the technology. As business operations will depend more and more on technology, it is important that the new technologies can be easily adopted by the majority of employees. Secondly, the data security. Work from anywhere also means that the data will roam outside of your corporate network and policy-based and technological measures should be considered to secure your business data.
According to you, which emerging technologies will be most crucial and relevant to the dynamic changes at work?
Clearly within our sight right now is the collaboration platforms that allow the employees to work with internal and external parties using different types of form factors (e.g. mobile, tablet, computers) and across diverse work setups. These platforms should also be designed with zero-trust model to isolate business data within trusted environment and total transparency to boost integrity among the employees.
How do you think change management and HR policies will cater to the needs of employee welfare and engagement to effectively adapt to the future work culture?
The acceptance of future work culture is the most important key. Organisations should imagine a realistic work culture that is contextualised with their nature of business or industry. Certain industries like tech or consulting can have better tolerance towards work mobility compared to industries that require on-site presence such as banking or production. Once they have the clear picture then only, they can design their change management plan and new HR policies. The benefits for employees might also need a review as the uncommon benefits such as unlimited holidays, full remote working, device or internet allowance could weight even more than bonus, medical or car allowance to attract talents.
What are the main challenges in evolving into the future of work operations with respect to WFH, Remote Work and Virtual Employees formats?
I would say data security. As the data roam outside of the corporate IT network, different approach has to be used to ensure the data remains secure.
How do you suggest organizations will deal with business confidentiality, cyber threats, safety and security concerns which are crucial factors for the changing work operating models?
Organizations should think how to make the security level of their IT networks more mobile. When we talk about remote working, we’re talking about decentralization, diversification and extension of office environment. The security controls that corporations have put in place in their office IT network lose their grip when employees work from home. The challenge that all corporations have to answer is how to hold the grip regardless of the locations of their employees. Again, I’m a strong supporter of zero trust model and on top of this, I also encourage that corporations to start seriously giving privilege to cloud-based IT management and security solutions.
How do you feel attendees will benefit from Future WorkTech Forum?
Very timely as I believe many corporations are strategizing their plan to cope with the new normal and this forum would seed some ideas for them.
