"When you love what you do, wonders will happen." – Suhaimi Sulong
In hindsight, Covid-19 has accelerated digital transformation for better or worst. Nonetheless, not all employees found it seamless to transition into the new digital workforce.
As the dynamic of this new era of work requires employees to be tech-savvy and agile with minimum supervision, on the receiving end, our organisation need to embrace the open culture and look beyond digital tools.
Being the enabler of Malaysia digital transformation, here are three essentials on how we at TM One support our employee digital journey.
The battle cry for new ways of working in the digital age must start at the top. At TM, GCEO Imri Mokhtar signalled the company's digital transformation when he introduced 'Ini Cara Kita' to set in motion NEW TM initiatives.
This initiative will equip 'Warga TM' with the right culture, talent and necessary skills as we re-invent to catapult TM and TM One towards a Human-Centred Technology company.
We had set in stone a talent management framework to support Warga TM, where we will have a one-on-one career conversation and individual development plan with each employee at every level to support their digital journey.
Being the forefront of Malaysia digital enabler, Warga TM is forged with future skills in 5G, Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Function Visualisation (NFV), IoT, Robotics and AI to act as the national execution engine.
True leaders make leaders, or in our case, 'Digital Leaders'. TM Elite graduate programme and other leadership programme is structured not only to provide a holistic overview of the new digital era but to hone the next digital leaders. Our employee will get the chance to get involved in high priority projects while being exposed to the new digital workforce culture.
Why does most legacy organisation suffer from slowness and drudgery that come with unnecessary bureaucracy?
And what make start-ups so effective? Was it the bean bag at Google office? The free sneakers and bottomless coke at Facebook? or the unlimited vacation policy at Netflix?
These are part of the perks, but certainly not the differentiating factors. Start-up biggest competitive advantage is their agility. It's how fast they attack problems and mobilise talent to address client issues without waiting for layers of approval.
Start-up agility often contributed to the employee versatility to take on multiple roles, which required them to understand how other business units function. As most employees have this peripheral vision and ride on the same wavelength, employees are often empowered to take an executive decision, thus trust comes as a natural selection.
Nonetheless, a tayloristic hierarchical structure is needed when an organisation expands to a certain size and often carries the legacy DNA along with it. Just as DNA can mutate and adapt to its surroundings, organisations can model a start-up’s to ‘Agile at Scale’ by adjusting its structure.
'Ini Cara Kita' is our cultural statement in addressing the issue.
Like an athlete who needs more advanced equipment to reach new heights, organisations need to equip their employees with the proper collaboration tools to keep up with these new business imperatives; speed to market, mobility and globalisation.
Since the pandemic, platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams saw a significant increase in daily meeting participants and daily active users. In fact, both IDC and Forbes see 50% of global businesses expect to increase spending on collaboration software in 20211.
According to a survey done by Harvard Business Review, 63% of 315 respondents rated Cloud and file sync/sharing as the most effective collaboration tools while videoconferencing and content management portals come second at 58% each2.
These services enable integration across departments which supports a more open, trust-based culture. We see varying advantages of supporting employees with these tools, from better work productivity and project management to stronger cross-border networking and employee relationships. Ultimately, the objective is not more collaboration but greater collaboration efficiency.
For an organisation to run successfully, every team member has an assigned role, just like every wolf in the pack has a role to play where each role is crucial to the team success. While entering this new paradigm, organisations need to be cognizant of their employee pace as some will require time to settle in.
