By Alvin Gan, Head of Technology Consulting, KPMG in Malaysia
Digital transformation has been the ‘buzzword’ for businesses, even more so as they focus on investing towards transforming their operations to be fit-for-future and withstand future shocks from external events. Though technology has played a large role in driving digital adoption, I am of the belief that we need to acknowledge an equally big ‘star’ of the show: the people.
Business leaders must get the people factor right to successfully achieve real transformation. In the 2022 KPMG CEO Outlook Pulse Survey, 74% of CEOs agree that the accelerated pace of digital transformation through the pandemic will not be sustainable without first addressing burnout among their workforce.
Rising out of this pandemic doldrum, Corporate Malaysia will continue its momentum to leverage on technology to attain business growth. Here are three critical areas businesses should build up to ensure this momentum is sustainable:
Specialist talents
Many companies have started recognizing the need for more technology talents. With the advent of Malaysia’s Digital Economy aspirations and the roll out of Malaysia’s Digital Economy Blueprint and MyDigital to make Malaysia a regional hub in leading the Industry Revolution 4.0 (IR4.0), the demand for talent is steadily increasing.
But this demand is also quickly outpacing the available supply. It is important to not only attract digital experts, but to also focus on retaining them. Businesses need to think beyond compensation as a driving factor and start considering the expectations for a modern digital workplace.
So how can organizations leverage innovative recruitment and retention actions? One major gap we often see is the lack of a clear technology career path.
Talents are now motivated by an organization’s culture, ESG strategy, investments in innovation and technologies, as well as training opportunities and mobility. Providing growth opportunities, upskilling existing talent and acquiring young talent can help organizations foster outside-the-box thinking and build loyalty that’s resilient to challenges in the marketplace.
Hybrid working
KPMG’s survey found CEOs are focused on providing increased flexibility for their workforce. 45 percent of global CEOs foresee majority of their employees will be working remotely between 2 to 3 days a week.
At its core, hybrid working means flexibility in the work life balance employees choose for themselves. Prioritizing mobility – and implementing a secure technology infrastructure to enable this – will help organizations find diverse, previously untapped talent with expanded accessibility and accommodations. Not meeting those expectations could mean employees log off and take their expertise elsewhere.
Organizations should deliver on employee expectations around three areas: connectivity, talent mobility and well-being. The bottom line is to help employees feel fulfilled and productive, and deliver on their evolving expectations.
ESG matters
While it is usually the investors and end customers who are demanding ESG insights about an organizations’ products and services, the younger generations entering the workforce also expect their employers to act responsibly in ESG issues.
Meeting these collective expectations requires organizations to evaluate and assess their entire supply chain, and helps businesses tap into new markets within and outside of Malaysia while avoiding eroding market share. In this context, data becomes critical to modeling scenarios and tracking progress against an ESG strategy.
Identifying ESG relevant data, and bringing structure to its collection, cleansing and curation is critical. The trickiest bit is the supply chain data that’s outside the business. Small and mid-sized companies often don’t have the required resources and look to Platform as a Service (PaaS) as a solution. That’s why we’ll see enterprise resource planning vendors starting to update their offering to address ESG requirements, and tech vendors adding ESG-related capabilities to their existing software.
