Cultivating an enabling culture for the future of work

The concept of “the future of work” is no longer something that will happen over the next 10 years; it is already here. Experts from the Tripartite Alliance for Fair & Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP) provide tools to equip your organisation.

Organisations have come to realise that the concept of "the future of work" is no longer something that will happen over the next 10 years. Indeed, the future of work is here – as part of the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment coupled with increasingly disruptive technology and a demographically diverse workforce.

One result of this realisation has been an urgency to re-look at traditional business models and incorporate new technologies.

A frequently underrated area in this flux has been the employees who are the very heart of the organisation, and the key to success. Beyond training and development to upskill and retool employees, it is important that organisations care and empathise with their workforce as the changes can be overwhelming for some.

Conducting a culture and values assessment

The Tripartite Alliance for Fair & Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP), in partnership with the National University of Singapore, has developed a Fair and Progressive Employment Index (FPEIndex), which assesses an organisation’s culture – from both the employer and employee perspectives – to allow users to conduct a gap analysis and take corrective action where areas for improvement are identified.

This tool is designed specifically for the Singaporean context and is based on the values and attributes of fair and progressive organisations. It anchors an organisation’s culture and guides them through a learning journey to:

1. Assess and measure their organisational culture.

2. Benchmark their scores and practices against other organisations within the industry and at a national level.

3. Take steps to strengthen their organisational culture by implementing the recommendations.

By enabling organisations to assess their organisational culture in line with the identified fair and progressive values and attributes, they will be able to evaluate their effectiveness in engaging and enabling employees for success for the future of work.

The results will highlight an organisation’s strengths and weaknesses in:

1. Leadership – Are the organisation’s leaders effectively role-modelling fair and progressive values, prioritising goals and allocating resources towards their achievement?

2. Systems – Are the existing HR systems effective in anticipating and addressing medium and long-term manpower needs, cultivating touch-points across all employee groups and creating an inclusive workplace?

3. Communications – Are the current verbal and non-verbal communication platforms conveying the intended messages, inspiring and reinforcing a desired culture and employees’ behaviours?

To date, over 200 organisations have leveraged the FPEIndex and benefited from the recommendations. The aggregated results indicate that leadership and communications are key areas of strength.

However, the results have also highlighted a worrying concern that organisations could do better in the areas of workforce planning and employee relations.

Particularly in workforce planning, organisations can do more demographic analyses of their workforce and formulate a talent development strategy that takes into account both employees’ career aspirations and the organisation’s needs for the future.

Having this viewpoint will give organisations a better perspective on the skill sets employees will need for the future and the competitive edge they need to stay relevant and competitive. In employee relations, organisations will need to prioritise and allocate resources to equip their HR, line managers and supervisors with critical people-management skills so that they can take a more proactive role to implement regular touch-points and to cultivate an environment in which employees thrive because they feel included, engaged and motivated to give their best for the organisation.

Your people matter

In today’s world where change is taking place at an accelerating rate, an organisation’s culture acts as a compass that guides its leaders, HR and employees through the rapid and disruptive changes – what decisions are made, how people interact and communicate with one another, what the accepted norms are, and what should be rewarded or rebuffed.

A strong and consistent organisational culture, aligned with fair and progressive values and attributes, can be an anchor to provide assurance and stability, and act as a powerful lever for business success.

To find out more about the FPEIndex and assess your organisational culture, please visit fairprogressive.sg today.