People managers should prepare for AEC

Given the arrival of the AEC, ASEAN will be transformed into a region with free movement of goods, services, investment, skilled labour as well as free flow of capital. As a result, on one hand, it is not surprising that the best employees and the most skilled talents in ASEAN will then have even more work options.

On the other hand, many firms are now branching out to places they can truly benefit from the lower cost of resources; hence, becoming global companies.

Moreover, when globalisation has become an unavoidable situation that creates changes in the business environment, the global war for talent in searching for the right and the most suitable candidates across the globe to fill in the talent pool has become the critical success factor.

In fact, the war for talent will only get worse in the future given the aging population, the social/cultural or language barriers, the lack of infrastructure as well as the low standard of education which could severely limit potential of many. Thus, as the skills shortage is intensified, hiring will be more dependent on having a globally diverse and highly mobile talent.

Consequently, if you want to remain competitive and stay relevant to the changing circumstances, companies cannot simply afford to sit idle and wait for job applications to pour in. Instead, they should rigorously build their employment strategies and get out of the way to seek for the right person across the globe that can help their companies to move forward.

Meanwhile, human resources have been undermined in Myanmar for a long time with the lack of qualified staff nationwide. This is why improving human resource strategies in Myanmar must be a top priority for the country to attract new and potential workforces while advancing the businesses forward to fully reap the benefits of what AEC has to offer.

In this sense, the "war of talent" requires HR professionals to be aware of an increasingly diverse, competitive and shrinking labour market in order to make the best use of the distributed workforce and find creative ways to recruit, retain and develop talents while giving an opportunity for mere workhorses to a part of any critical projects so they can learn from the best i.e. the top performers , experience the moment of success and feel inspired to develop themselves to become the talents of the organisations one day.

Moreover, HR needs to implement a proactive employment strategy by unifying HR goals and strategies across the entire company, tapping on the increasing complexity and multiplicity of the global workforce through the advanced technology while customising and adjusting HR practices according to the needs of each location.

There are several employment strategies that can be implemented in order to boldly face the AEC and to potentially win the global war for talent but you need to start early to get ahead of this race.

All in all, recruitment will be even more challenging with the arrival of the AEC. Thus, when AEC is lurking just around the corner, ask yourself and your company whether you have the appropriate strategies in place now or else you might be facing a talent and staffing crisis that could certainly threaten not only your people strategy, but your business continuity as well.

Note: APM’s consultants team can be contacted at [email protected]