Organisations in Asia need to adopt a five-pronged talent strategy to contend with rising skills shortages.
By Michael Switow
A severe talent crunch is leaving key positions unfilled across Asia-Pacific.
âHow do you get more people? How do you attract more applications?â asks Arun Vignes Radhakrishnan, TCSâ regional HR head for Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau.
Hong Kong is the third most difficult market in the world to find skilled employees, according to research presented by Alexander Mann Solutions at the 2019 HRO Today Forum APAC. Two-thirds of major employers in Singapore are reporting talent shortages whilst in China, the working population has shrunk for seven years straight. By 2020, China is predicted to have a shortfall of nearly 230 million workers.
âIf we look at this skill shortage, traditional talent acquisitionâgoing out and hiring on skills and experienceâis not going to work. You canât find the skills. They donât exist,â says Neil Jones, regional head of APAC at Alexander Mann Solutions.
This shortfall is leading talent acquisition experts to embrace new strategies.
âThe modern thinking should be around hiring for curiosity, potential, and adaptability to change,â says Jones, who is based in Singapore and has worked in talent acquisition for more than two decades. Talent acquisition leaders need to begin thinking about âmanaging segments of work,â not just people, he argues. A five-pronged total workforce strategy can provide some insight: buy, build, borrow, partner, and automate.
First Prong: Buy
Katie Ng, Hewlett-Packard Enterpriseâs Hong Kong head of human resources, is asking her managers to adopt a new mindset. Even if they can find someone with the right experience, she encourages them to search for candidates with the potential to become future leaders instead.
âWe ask managers to hire for the future, not for now,â she says. Her company, which spun off from Hewlett-Packard three years ago, offers cloud and financial services. In one sense, itâs a new business, yet at the same time, much of the staff has been working with the company and its predecessor for years.
Then Build, Borrow, and Partner
Hiring âfor the futureâ and âfor curiosityâ necessitates that companies invest in building competencies internally. But traditional training and courses may not be the best way to proceed. Research released by Deloitte last year shows that when people are put into teams with peers in a real-time environmentâwhat Deloitte calls âconnected learningââproductivity increases by nearly 40 per cent.
Determining who receives training can present its own set of challenges, particularly in markets like Australia where more than one in 10 workers are independent contractors.
âWe wrap our arms around the permanent workforce and give them all the benefits and training, but contractors and temp workers are also really critical to achieving the goals of your business,â says Tara Knobel, Alexander Mannâs Melbourne-based APAC director of operations and solution design. âThatâs where we find it very challenging. All these people contribute to the total success of your organisation but are treated and managed in very different ways.â
A closer relationship between procurement and HR teams may help address this disconnect. Jones sees these two departments working more closely together now than just a few years ago, though a lack of clear data still poses challenges.
âIt used to be marriage guidance counsel between HR and procurement. Now we see much more alignment and forward planning. But I still havenât seen a silver bullet of systems that gives you a uniform set of data for contract and perm. Thatâs going to be essential to really crack this total talent problem,â he says.
Lastly, Automate
The final piece of the total workforce puzzle is building the right technology ecosystem.
âWe are seeing a hyper-acceleration of a digital agenda and organisations that donât grasp it will be in trouble,â Jones says. âOne in four companies have no plans for digital transformation. Iâm pretty sure theyâre going the same way as Blockbuster and Kodak.â
One of the biggest challenges faced by talent acquisition leaders when discussing digitalisation and new systems is obtaining leadership support, particularly in firms where the leadership team is older.
âA lot of companies in Asia are being dragged kicking and screaming rather than actually saying, âyes, this is the way to go,ââ observes Independent Auditâs Asia Director Phillip Baldwin. âIt always comes down to the leadership. Getting that total buy-in has got to come from the top. They often know theyâve got to digitise, but theyâre not exactly sure what it is.â
Shirley Fong, Li & Fungâs vice president for HR, says that this uncertainty about new technology can lead CEOs to embrace digitalisation in front of the board but slow it down behind the scenes. But in other cases, leaders dive in too fast.
âSometimes bigger companies bite more than they can chew, so we tend to do a lot of these digital initiatives at a very large scale,â observes Fongâs colleague, Assistant HR Manager Sukriti Sabherwal. âYou donât have to roll out the entire gamut of digital transformation technologies that are available. Do a pilot.â