THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
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Redefining work with smart move

Redefining work with smart move

Future of work is not only about growing an adoption of digital and technology, but more into a significant change of workplace, workforce and the nature of work owing to the influence of a rapid social and environmental shift as well as emerging technologies, such as robots, artificial intelligence and automation, that could be worked alongside humans to assess, develop and deliver new value around expanded work outcomes.

In order to be ready and be well prepared for changing external factors, it is a need for business itself to rethink and redefine its existing way of working and step ahead in the digital era.
Prior to redefining work in practical approach, enterprises should come up with solid vision and expectation of what your future of work and organisation might look like in consideration of two major trends: a capability to handle a changing of customer expectation and preference with a wider array of options provided in the market, and a pressure of corporate performance to no longer delivering diminishing returns but increasing improvement and marginal outputs not only for customers and shareholders but also for employees to work in a better environment. These two trends significantly lead to a new non-linear value for future of work by emphasising on reorienting the organisation, systems and processes around learning, adapting and transforming in time for the changing environment. Lagging in execution seems to be a significant loss of opportunity for companies, not only to satisfy customers but also to develop itself.
Redefining work is to re-imagine what work should be shifted to create a big impact with smart moves. Big impact doesn’t mean spinning up large or major changes and creating big investment. It rather means to demonstrate a significant impact with actual planning and monitoring before, during and after execution, to ensure a success of future change and generate further momentum in a timely manner. Going with big moves without well-designed working processes, less-talented workers and unstructured organisation might create an imbalance between spending a big investment and achieving the desired results. There are three key shifts to create redefining work efficiently; shift the objective, shift the focus and shift the requirement.
First, shift the objective of work from traditional linear development, focusing heavily on efficiency and cost saving of sales and product development, to boarder non-linear value creation. Spreading an idea of transformation on both business and support functions, such as IT, HR and Finance, to optimise way of working and support sustainable growth and, at the same time, build internal development in a long term. Actions can be taken without starting from scratch or doing everything at once. Proof of concept becomes a meaningful tool to help targeting on the right issues, shortening time to identify pain points and seek out improvement opportunities.
The second is to shift the focus. The organisation needs to know how to best redefine way of working to rapidly respond to rapidly changing customer expectations and a more complex environment by freeing up workers to do more value-added and/or insight-driven activities instead of executing routine and/or standardised tasks. Digital technologies and automation are applied to optimise many processes. Robotic process automation, for example, can take part of the repetitive work. BI tools can be applied on reporting for better visualisation to support routine forecast and constant performance evaluation. Technologies give humans an opportunity to identify and address unseen opportunities that could contribute sustainable differentiation and create new value across systems, practices, and infrastructure as long as it has been used wisely.
Lastly, shift the requirement of workers beyond specific skills to build and train them on core human capabilities to learn fast and adapt quickly to context. Organisation must drive fast learning and problem-solving skills among workers and, at the same time, promote collaboration between humans and machines plus humans and humans to better address and diagnose previously unknown opportunities that have never been considered before. Then, develop roadmap, test a pilot initiative and implement quick-wins/initiatives in a timely manner.
It’s a need for business to grow and change in a promptly manner in response to external changes. Redefining work is relevant for many organisations to shift from old school practice to the future-state working culture considering three key shifts: shift the objective, shift the focus and shift the requirement across process, system and people in order to create a smart move and deliver a big positive impact on the organisation and ecosystem in a long run. It’s time for management to either plan upfront for change or stand behind.

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