With new requirements around flexible work, listening to employees key: expert

“Singapore, it's a relatively tight and competitive talent market. We have very low levels of unemployment. We have employees that are becoming more discerning around what it is they expect from their employers. We have a new generation entering the workforce… who are now bringing different value sets and different thoughts to the workplace as well. 

“What the government is looking to do is get ahead of this and think about how [we can] start encouraging… different ways of working that are going to make sure that the workplace is still attractive, that we can retain talent over time, while balancing that with making sure that we still have that high work ethic that Singapore has always been known for.”

Findings from ADP Research Institute's People at Work 2023: A Global Workforce View revealed that more than 50% of employees in Singapore believe their companies allow remote relocation.

Why is effective listening important in the workplace?

Employers have long realized the importance of listening to workers’ sentiments. But with how the world is changing now, once-a-year assessment is simply not enough, says Huntington.

“All of these accelerations in rethinking workplace practices, whether it's the influence of AI on us or on automating certain parts of our jobs, whether that's allowing us to work in new ways and more flexible ways, being able to collaborate asynchronously much better than we could in the past… what this is making us realize is we can't wait to once a year to figure out how these changes are impacting our people.”

If employers wait that long to see the implication of changes on employees, employers would “miss a beat,” says Huntington.

Business leaders must also realize that they do not have “all the answers”.

“There's a lot of nuance that's coming into play, and a lot of one-size-fits-all decisions are not going to work. So we need mechanisms by which [there will be more] voicing up of opinions, voicing up of ideas, voicing up of suggestions and figuring out solutions that are not one-size-fits-all, but can be tailored to different teams, different divisions, different parts of the organization.”

AI adoption may have the greatest impact on high-skilled professional roles in major digital hubs, including Singapore, according to a previous global report. And HR leaders can have a big impact, said the academic heading up the global study.

According to Qualtrics’ EX Insights Report: State of Employee Engagement in Singapore, employee engagement levels differ across job levels.

_{Source: EX Insights Report: State of Employee Engagement in Singapore}

HR is ‘redefining its role in business’

With all these changes, HR, itself, is transforming, says Huntington.

“HR is in this process of… redefining its role in business as the facility data and the center of excellence around a lot of these processes, versus the owner of all of the solutions.”

In employers’ employee experience programs, there are going to be a lot of things that employees may say around flexible work or better rewards and benefits or better work-life balance, for example, she says.

“Not all of this can be fixed by an HR team. A lot of this needs to be fixed within the business itself. So what HR needs to do is think about how we create safe spaces – especially using the advancements we have in technology – to have employees’ voices be heard on a regular basis and across specific moments that matter in the [employees’] life cycle.”

Amid all these changes, here’s how employers can better support HR professionals, according to another expert.