Microsoft Forecasts a Hybrid New Normal of Work in Asia-Pacific

Released whitepaper assesses the key trends shaping Asia Pacific’s workforce, and the critical role of organizations, people and technology in realizing a hybrid workplace

 

SINGAPORE – Media
OutReach -29 JULY 2020 – As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to
transform our daily lives, Microsoft, with research from TechRepublic Premium,
looked into the impact the pandemic has had on the region’s legacy work styles,
business operations and how it has accelerated an increase in overall technology
adoption, realizing a hybrid new normal of work.

Through a
qualitative research study the whitepaper, titled “Transitioning
Asia-Pacific to a New Normal of Work”, sees business and
thought leaders across industries — banking, healthcare, education, telecommunications,
research, and professional consultancies — share their insights on how organizational cultures in Asia-Pacific are evolving
to a new paradigm of work.

 

“As different parts of the world were hit by COVID-19,
life and work were changed overnight for everyone,” said Kady Dundas, Head of Marketing, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Corp.
“All of a sudden we’ve gone from working in conference rooms to working in living
rooms, and when you do that you have a high dependence on video. We know that
we have about 200 million meeting participants each day, which equates to 4.1
billion minutes of meetings[1]. Those data points show
the tremendous movement to remote work.”

 

Technology: The Enabler

Amid the
pandemic, Microsoft found that while organizations have prioritized technology
adoption to enable remote working environments and
overall business transformation, the change was not driven through technology
alone.

 

“The technology side has been relatively
straightforward,” said Dr Joseph Sweeney, IBRS Advisor and Future of Work
Expert. “When COVID-19 came and everyone had to start working from home,
Microsoft Teams was an obvious and natural tool to push out. It was already
there, and the environment is familiar to anyone using Microsoft Office 365. It
skyrocketed.”

 

A forced mindset change was in play encouraging organizations
to rethink ways of working, how individuals, groups, and managers
interact with one another and the change management needed to adjust to the new
normal of work focusing on the emotional impact of the change.

 

“Often
the reluctance to allow remote work has to do with a quite outdated concept of
how managers need to manage — for instance, you need to be able to ‘see’ people
to police that they are doing what they are meant to,” said Sarah Kaine, Associate Professor,
Management Discipline Group and Core Member, CBSI – Centre for Business and Social Innovation, University of Technology, Sydney.

 

Emerging Trends in
the New Normal of Work

Some of
the emerging trends that organizations need to be aware
of as they plan for the hybrid new normal of work include:

 

1. The risk
   of burnout — Organizations need to be mindful of the new perception
   of availability.  According to IBRS Advisor and Future of Work Expert, Joe
   Sweeney, one common response amongst people in their jobs is to “work
   harder and not switch off.” Those who have started working from home are
   fielding calls from their bosses late into the evening, underlining the need to
   re-draw boundaries for out-of-hours contact.
2. Career progression concerns — Organizations
   will need to reassess how performance is measured. Collaboration tools can measure activity but not the value that an
   individual has brought to the organization. Organizations are
   now finding that it is the “introverts” that are delivering while working from
   home, while the “star player” extroverts are no longer the center of attention.

The need for flexibility and empathy — Research finds that nearly half (47 per cent) of
people working from home reported managing at-home distractions as a challenge[2]. Organizations as
well as managers and teammates should do their part to not
only help employees create a distraction-free environment but also be more
flexible in the delivery of work and empathize with people’s challenges of
working from home.

3. Tech training and preparedness — As
   technology becomes a growing staple for employees, training will need to go
   hand-in-hand to unlock the full potential of hardware and software. “There have been people who were resistant to change —
   it was usually the seniors, because they never needed to learn how to use
   technology. They always had IT support in the room when they needed it,” said
   Dr. Nitin Paranjape, CEO and Founder, MacOffice Services Private Limited based
   in India.
4. Incorporating a social element — Organizations need
   to intentionally focus on policy and company culture rather than raw
   technology. The Microsoft Work Trend Index[3] released in April 2020 reflected
   this ongoing quest for human interaction — the number of people turning on
   video in Microsoft Teams meetings had doubled from before working from home
   became mainstream. Beyond enabling video conferencing, organizations need to
   find ways to encourage innovation, creative flow of ideas, and camaraderie that
   makes an employee feel that they are a valued part of an organization.

 

The Future of Work
is Now and Hybrid

At
Microsoft’s FY20 Q4 Earnings call[4] which reported a 6 percent
revenue increase in Productivity and Business Processes this fiscal year,
Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft shared, “The last five
months have made it clear that tech intensity is the key to business resilience.
Organizations that build their own digital capability will recover faster
and emerge from this crisis stronger.”

 

Undoubtedly, COVID-19 had accelerated the transition
to new ways of working and honed the focus on innovation across the region. At
the same time, social and cultural environments also have a considerable impact
on how organizations approach the new normal of work.

 

In some cases, organizations are in the process of
aligning themselves to the national government’s own response to the changing
nature of work. Hidekazu Shoto, Innovative
English and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Teacher, Ritsumeikan
Primary School in Japan shared how the primary school had to find ways to
respond to the changing regulatory environment around work that the government had
been implementing. “We just started a new working time system, to follow the
new labor laws in Japan. With that in mind, and each teacher’s individual circumstances
at home, we had to think about how to match compliance with flexibility,” said Hidekazu
Shoto. 

 

In
countries where commutes are longer, organizations will find that more staff
wish to work remotely. “The appeal is often due to the convenience of
professionals being able to manage their own timing,” Andy Khoo, Maybank
Head of Customer Experience, based in Singapore, said. “There’s less
transportation and time spent on the road — particularly in countries like
Indonesia, Thailand and India, where commutes can be long. For other places,
like Singapore, it’s simply that staff find they’re more productive when
working from home.”

 

Meanwhile,
countries with expensive real estate — such as Australia and Singapore — will
find financial benefit in transitioning to a model where office space is shared
and cycled among employees that spend part of the time in the office, and other
times working from home.

 

The hybrid approach in the future of work reflects how
the lines of work and personal life are blurring. Microsoft’s second Work Trend
Index[5] found that beyond the
typical 9am-5pm work day, Microsoft Teams chats outside of the typical workday
(from 8-9 a.m. and 6-8 p.m.) have increased more than any other time during the
day, between 15% and 23%. Weekend work is spiking as well — Teams chats on and
Saturday and Sunday have increased over 200%.

 

To cultivate the future workplace, organizations would
need to accelerate the process of developing policies enabling individuals to
break away from the standard 9 to 5 hours, setting reasonable expectations
around availability and relooking performance indicators.

 

Great Place to Work Institute, Chief Operating
Officer, Alicia Tung based in China said, “As far as emotions are concerned, we’re not there yet. But it is
happening. In ten years’ time, if I were to make a very broad prediction, I
would say 60-40 in terms of working in the office compared to working
remotely.”

 

Business leaders must
refresh their focus on policies that enable the upkeep of robust security
strategies and effective collaboration. As
lockdowns continue to ease across the region, the next step will be a renewed
focus on policy during this hybrid new normal of work.

 

For more information on how organizations throughout
Asia-Pacific are grappling with — and succeeding with — remote work, read the
full paper here.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital
transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its
mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to
achieve more.

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