Firms in Singapore are failing to meet staff's expectations

Singapore organisations are lagging behind their employee’s expectations to be more productive, collaborative and innovative in a mobile-first, cloud-first world.

This was a key finding from Microsoft's New World of Work (NWoW) Index.

Polling 5,000 respondents across Asia Pacific, the Index compared how workers perceive their ability to succeed in today’s fast-paced and modern workplace.

Respondents in the study rated themselves in the three key principles of people, place and technology and provided a comparison between markets.

Singapore ranked 9^th among 13 countries scored with a score of 39 out of 100.

This was lower in comparison to the Asia Pacific average of 44 out of 100.

The report shed light on the current work and life needs of employees in the region and Singapore, and helped identify the gap preventing them for thriving in today’s work environment.

For instance, it found local firms offered limited mobile productivity to a highly mobile workforce.

More than half (52%) of respondents said they needed to be in the office to access special equipment or tools that are only available in the office, even though 67% considered themselves to be mobile workers.

In addition, 67% of respondents stated their bosses do not have policies to support remote work.

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A majority (71.25%) of respondents said that they are still required to be contactable outside of work today in order to complete their work effectively.

"While technology plays a key role to enable ‘work from anywhere’ scenarios and higher productivity, there are other aspects such as organisational culture, policies, infrastructure, enabling collaboration or the ability to break down barriers to innovation which are becoming increasingly important for an organization to be competitive, especially when many are undergoing digital transformation of their businesses today,” said Borko Kovacevic, director of marketing, Microsoft Singapore.

Indeed, the findings clearly showed that the traditional notion of work is changing, even within organisations in Singapore.

The report highlighted employees in Singapore are using more personal devices (46%) to get work done today.

More than half (54%) are also using online tools that go beyond just email – document & file sharing, storage, virtual meetings and social.

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