07
The Future of Work Supplement:
MATTERS OF OPINION
Richard Warburton,
Executive Director at Arcadis Singapore
“Digital transformation is changing the business landscape, especially in terms of the required skill-set, ways of working and building a community. This requires everyone to re-think their business strategy and invest in their people and the workplace. For Arcadis, these are three critical areas that have been considered:
1. In construction, digital will improve productivity and enhance efficiency. Technologies such as BIM, drones, AI and data analytics not only requires project application, but investment in people. At Arcadis, we actively train and develop our people and now have four certified drone pilots to conduct façade inspections, site and volumetric surveys.
2. The workplace of the future is about embracing new ways of working, promoting a culture of collaboration, wellbeing and delivering sustainability in everything it does – this is embodied by our new Singapore office.
3. Community is essential to success. When done well it can enhance learning, elevate innovation and creativity, and enable people to be responsive to challenges. With more break-out and collaboration spaces for staff, internal initiatives that promote a sense of belonging and diversity, our new office space creates an open and inclusive environment that showcases the future of work."
Graham Silverthorne,
Head, UWCSEA East
“The future of schooling is a hot topic. We have been using the same basic model for well over a century and disruption is coming; indeed it is already here. There are many views of what might and what should happen. My view is that our industry will fragment at the margins around the school leaving age. I believe that there will be a very blurred line between senior high school and undergraduate learning within the next 30 years, unrelated to a learner's age, and a move away from place-based institutional learning. The drivers here are technology, cost, market competition and demographics. There is too much resource tied up in school buildings that are unused for significant periods of time and more evidence available that there are effective ways of ‘bypassing’ traditional schooling and higher education routes without penalty to the learner. Increasingly, traditional linear pathways do not meet the needs of our time, nor will they meet the needs of our future workers or their employers.”
Stephen McNulty,
President, APJ, Micro Focus
“As mobile, big data and cloud continue to impact the modern enterprise, the gaps in the skills required continues to be a significant constraint towards businesses’ growth. Moving forward, companies will need a degree of workforce flexibility in their strategy – in the form of upskilled current staff or new hires trained with the requisite skills. In areas such as cybersecurity, which face a skills shortage, an adequate level of foundational knowledge can help employees to adapt to a variety of different job roles and functions. It’s key that both multinational corporations (MNCs) and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have equal opportunities to find efficient and innovative ways of attracting and retaining talents while accelerating training to uplift skillsets and reduce costs. Government initiatives must also remain committed to giving SMEs an added boost in embracing digitisation to ensure Singapore continues advancing towards its Smart Nation goals. As an African proverb states, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."”
Matthew Lempriere,
Head of Asia Pacific and Middle East, BSO
“We see technology playing an increasingly important role in the future of work, particularly as cloud-based technologies become more widely adopted. The growth of cloud computing is leading to more flexible work structures, which can benefit both employers and employees. Having information stored on the cloud and providing workers with the functionality they need through native or web-based apps, allows employees to work from home or other remote locations while still enabling collaboration with co-workers or interaction with customers. We see more and more firms now taking this approach.
To capitalise on the growing opportunities that cloud offers, firms will need secure and reliable infrastructure that allows them to maintain control without compromising on performance or availability. And as every business is different, firms will need access to the right combination of public, private or hybrid cloud solutions to support their mission-critical workloads, security concerns, uptime requirements and management demands."
official FUTURE OF WORK PARTNER: