This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on May 15, 2017 - May 21, 2017

A media roundtable organised last week by TalentCorp, the agency tasked with facilitating the availability of talent to drive the nation’s economic transformation, pinpointed a major challenge facing Malaysia in realising its ambitious development vision.

TalentCorp CEO Shareen Shariza Abdul Ghani’s presentation, entitled “Is Malaysia Prepared for the Future of Work and its Demanding Reality?” brings into focus numerous issues that are gnawing at the foundations of the economic transformation plan that is seen as the key to the country’s future prosperity.

It is unsettling that the number of Malaysian professionals and experts who chose to return to the country under TalentCorp’s Returning Expert Programme has plunged 55.8% from 2013, when 900 applications were approved, to 398 in 2016. But that is hardly the primary problem.

True, as the 2011 World Bank report on Malaysia’s brain drain problem states, key factors that motivate Malaysians to move abroad include differences in earnings potential, career prospects, quality of education and quality of life, as well as discontent with the country’s inclusiveness policies, particularly among the non-bumiputeras who make up the bulk of the diaspora.

Packed into the quality of life factor are elements like the evidence of a working democracy, respect for the rule of law and fundamental liberties and low levels of corruption that are experienced by people living in the advanced economies.

All these factors apart, the reality that TalentCorp is referring to is the radical transformation that is occurring in the global economy as a result of technological innovations that are impacting virtually all aspects of life, including the way organisations function and how people work.

The Boston Consulting Group’s recent report, “Twelve Forces That Will Radically Change How People Work”, captures the essence of the challenges that businesses will encounter in the new world that is taking shape.

Describing the change as a tidal wave, the report predicts that it will soon make the way we work almost unrecognisable to today’s business leaders. In an age of rapidly evolving technologies, business models, demographics and workplace attitudes — all shifting concurrently — change is not only constant but also exponential in its pace and scope, it states. In its year-long study of the global work landscape, the consultancy identified 60 major trends propelling this tidal wave, which it grouped into 12 megatrends and further distilled into four categories.

The first two concern changes in the demand for talent, and the second two, the supply of talent.

The new demand for talent is being driven by advances in technological and digital productivity through automation, Big Data and advanced analytics and enhanced access to information and ideas, as well as shifts in the ways that business value is generated.

A new vocabulary is emerging to describe business value, such as “simplicity in complexity”, as organisations that are becoming unwieldy try to discover intuitive ways to deliver business results without getting stuck in processes. So too, “agility and innovation” is the new normal and “new customer strategies” such as the eco-friendly market are gaining momentum. The changes in the supply of talent are no less dramatic and far-reaching. In the Boston Consulting report, they are identified as shifts in resource distribution: namely, a new demographic mix, skill imbalances and shifting geopolitical and economic power; and secondly as changing workplace cultures and values, encompassing diversity and inclusion, the rise of individualism and entrepreneurship and a growing emphasis on well-being and purpose.

These trends are too immense to be discussed here except by way of snapshots of the evolving scenarios.

As presented in the report, these are:

•    One in five people worldwide will be 65 or older by 2035.

•    By 2020, 30% of tech jobs will go unfilled because of talent shortages.

•    The world’s 80 richest people own as much wealth as half the global population.

•    Diverse teams are 13 times more likely to engage employees as non-diverse teams.

•    By 2020, freelancers will constitute 50% of the workforce.

•    Organisations driven by purpose and values outperform their competitors in revenue, profit and stock performance.

So, what changes to the future of work do these trends portend? In Boston Consulting’s view, four key developments will occur in the next few years:

•    Companies will develop a more fluid sense of what is inside and what is outside their boundaries.

•    To remain competitive, companies will look to break up entrenched departments and reporting lines, opting to organise work in smaller and more agile interdisciplinary teams.

•    Companies will continually develop (and redevelop) their people, so that they are equipped to deal with the tidal wave of change. Diversity, inclusion and flexi-

bility will be inculcated into their corporate DNA.

•    The increased prevalence of digital technology and artificial intelligence will lead to new job functions and categories — but also to shortages of people with the skills needed to fill those roles.

To be sure, the Boston Consulting report is only one among a host of studies that are documenting the dramatic business changes that are taking place worldwide.

The Global Human Capital Trends 2015 report by Deloitte University Press, entitled “Leading in the new world of work”, identifies 10 trends that shed further light on the coming transformation.

Among the additional perspectives the Deloitte report presents are that companies are struggling to develop leaders at all levels and are investing in new and accelerated leadership models to unleash entrepreneurial solutions for their changing markets.

To incentivise the new age worker, organisations are finding that they must replace traditional performance management with innovative performance solutions.

The human resource function too is undergoing an extreme makeover to deliver greater business impact and drive HR and business innovation. Too few organisations are actively implementing talent analytics capabilities to address complex business and talent needs.

HR and talent organisations are expanding their HR data strategies by harnessing and integrating third-party data about their people from social media platforms.

Where does Malaysia stand in this whirlpool of business transformation? These trends should tell us that in order to ride this tidal wave, we must quickly reorient national policies to an economic environment where openness, flexibility and creativity are the primary currencies.

Mindsets that do not empower this change will prove to be our undoing.

R B Bhattacharjee is associate editor at The Edge Malaysia

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