As artificial intelligence (AI) reorients the nature of work, business leaders demand workers to tap into their more "human" talents and approach tasks with an open and global mindset, according to a new white paper published by The Economist Corporate Network (ECN).
The paper, sponsored by Hays and WeWork, is based on a survey and focus group interviews with CEOs and senior executives based in the Asia-Pacific region.
"Executives are increasingly witnessing a new type of graduate and employee. The popularity of workspaces such as those offered by Google and Apple of the US are causing more and more corporates in Asia to offer a different kind of work environment and experience to remain competitive," said Dr Florian Kohlbacher, ECN director for North Asia.
Millennial workers, he said, tend to prioritise opportunities to train and upgrade their skills over salaries. "Companies therefore, must offer more learning opportunities to attract the right talent."
Employees today want more flexible environments that reflect the changes brought on by technology and provide opportunities for constant learning, said Dr Kohlbacher.
OVERCOMING INERTIA
Dramatically changing the culture of a company to thrive in a digitally competitive business environment has become a major challenge for most CEOs.
"There is a huge amount of inertia in many large multinationals, and especially those with 100-year-old histories," said the ECN paper. "The senior executives in the Singapore focus group, for example, noted the importance of collaborating with government, academia and business including startups in order to build networks across the entire ecosystem."
In China, the government is providing financial support for industrial upgrading through automation, as well as for AI development. "The speed and scale of China's adoption of digital systems is creating a sophisticated and omnipresent digital ecosystem that has made changes to lifestyles in ways that are often hard for overseas visitors to comprehend: from intellectual property issues to surveillance," the authors wrote.
A common theme that CEOs brought up in the focus group interviews was the increasing importance for collaboration across borders in a globalised business world. Many say they want more employees who can work in multi-geographical, multicultural settings.
In Japan and Hong Kong in particular, CEOs also recognised that educational policy was lagging and greater global collaboration was vital for both businesses and future employees.
'ADAPT OR DIE'
The research also suggested that a growing number of CEOs are embracing the mantra of "adapt or die", as they see the rise of technologies as fast-paced and inevitable. Many now embrace an approach based on accelerating the arrival of AI and automation.
A significant change can be seen in just the past year. Of those surveyed in 2017, 58.1% said their approach was to soften the impact on work from automation and AI, while only 40.5% said they preferred to accelerate the arrival of automation and AI in the workplace.
In 2018, however, 64.7% of CEOs now believe in an approach based on accelerating the arrival of new technologies, compared with only 35.3% who want to soften the impact.
Despite the growing need for data scientists and others to optimise the benefits of new technologies, paradoxically, it is people and soft skills that will be the most important skills for the future, the paper noted.
Of those surveyed, 46.2% rate people skills as extremely important, closely followed by soft skills, at 41%. Meanwhile, hard skills remain one of the least valued by business leaders. Only 6.4% of CEOs think that hard skills are extremely important.
The report also notes a number of regional trends in relation to skills desired in the future workplace. A larger proportion (50%) of CEOs in Singapore and South Korea think business skills are extremely important. Furthermore, 70% of those surveyed in Japan, compared with only 25% in South Korea and 16.7% in Hong Kong, deem people skills as extremely important, suggesting cross-cultural differences depending on the business environment.