While the blurring of work-life boundaries due to COVID-19 is a cause for concern, remote work also brought increased flexibility and access to more career opportunities. Research shows that employees felt more engaged in authentic interactions despite being separated by geographical distance and digital screens.
In Singapore, about 90% of 9,000 survey respondents wanted to continue remote or hybrid work even after the pandemic. This came as people learned to adapt and companies shifted strategies to be more accommodating in these unprecedented times.
Beyond COVID-19, this recently amplified focus on engagement sets the stage for transformative Human Resources (HR) initiatives that can elevate both employee welfare and performance. An emerging innovating company supported by Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) offers an Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform that gathers and extracts relevant insights from employee feedback and data. Armed with unparalleled insights into the working experience, companies may soon see meaningful gains in both employee engagement and business productivity.
Traditional HR surveys were often too rigid and not extensive enough to capture the nuances of the employee experience—rendering any analyses futile. Accordingly, engagement activities were also often initiated too late to address immediate problems.
Given the need for a disruptive new approach to HR, a platform was built to leverage the power of data analytics, collecting timely and relevant people data. Just as how market analytics get a feel for customer sentiment, the platform directs this strategy internally and turns employee feedback into actionable insights for improving engagement.
Besides serving diverse company needs, the platform is attuned to various stages of the employee life cycle, from recruitment to retirement. Rather than the infrequent, insubstantial surveys of the past, businesses can initiate multiple touchpoints to gauge the pulse of employees and respond to concerns in real-time.
This platform previously helped a company improve their overall productivity by creating a more supportive environment for employees amidst pandemic uncertainty. Through data analysed by the platform, the enterprise saw the benefits of having more frequent one-on-one meetings between managers and staff, specifically to discuss career development.
This engages teams in continuous listening via a tool that carries a pool of scientifically-backed survey questions to encourage employee participation. As an automated warning system for low engagement, the platform can recommend follow-up initiatives and crucially reduce turnover rates. Moreover, with its rich Asian dataset and multi-language capabilities, the platform provides deeper insights contextualised to corporate culture across the region.
Meanwhile, another analytic module focuses on talent development through comprehensive performance reviews and progress tracking. The module helps leaders gather personalised feedback from the people they work most closely with, rather than relying purely on the perspective of their manager in traditional appraisal processes. With these features, the platform equips businesses with a data-driven roadmap to adapt to managerial changes, complex projects and even crises like COVID-19.
COVID-19 pandemic has forced companies to adapt to the new norms of working from home and transitioning from a partially digital organisation to a digital-ready one overnight. In those circumstances, fostering a sense of belonging and maintaining social cohesion amongst employees proved to be one of the greatest challenges faced. Therefore, the company recently launched an award about organisations and HR teams that leverage technology to meet higher standards of excellence as an employer.
By spotlighting businesses who adopted meaningful changes to their ways of working during the pandemic, the awards hope to inspire other enterprises to similarly put their people at the centre and set themselves up for success. The company envisions its digital solutions to accelerate HR transformation beyond Singapore. At a crucial time in the post-pandemic world, the company is changing the future of work by supporting employees to excel and companies to thrive.
