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FLIT businesses are characterised by a flexible workforce; lean processes; innovative business models; and tech-driven operations.
Talent in today's era is expected to flock to what are known as 'FLIT' organisations, characterised by their: flexible workforce; lean processes; innovative business models; and tech-driven operations.
This was one of the key findings of HSBC's new report, titled Digital Horizons: How emerging tech will shape tomorrow’s business, where trends identified where further validated by another survey with over 2,900 business leaders across eight markets globally including Singapore.
In the report, Martin Raymond, Author and Founder, The Future Laboratory, noted that FLIT organisations run akin to a Hollywood movie. He explained: "You bring all your people together to work on it and when the film is finished each goes off to do something else.
"This flexibility allows the business to adapt and once the job is done there’s no need to keep that team together.”
With simplified processes increasingly expected to aid the above scenario, the report authors expect onboarding of new employees to become streamlined into days rather than weeks. And, crucially, generosity and respect must be built into these processes to avoid a zero-hours, race-to-the-bottom mindset.
"Leadership teams need to know how to leverage diversity in order to deal with the complexity that we are now facing,” Melanie Cook, AI and creativity expert, and computer scientist, noted in the study. The benefits, she said, will be in the form of “many brains, many imaginations”.
For a FLIT organisation to come to life, the authors pointed out the following action areas for business leaders:
- Set up simple processes for onboarding employees, partners and customers remotely.
- Get up to speed with AI tools that provide data mining and sentiment analysis to anticipate customer needs.
- Digitise any remaining paper-based processes and review legacy systems to avoid sunk costs.
- Ensure finance and HR systems can handle the speed and flexibility needed in a staff-on-demand business model.
- Be prepared to compete for top talent.
Priya Kini, Head of Commercial Banking, HSBC Singapore, elaborated on the report: "The survey findings show that while Singapore businesses are adapting to the changes brought about by the acceleration of digital adoption, they continue to value the human touch in driving sustainable business growth."
She added: "It’s critical for businesses to start thinking about how to embed tech adoption and digitalisation through training and upskilling of their employees and adapting their business strategies to a more digitally enabled environment."
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