In the ever-evolving business landscape of Southeast Asia, HR leaders are grappling with a pressing challenge: maintaining high employee productivity. The SHRPA Research Report 2024 underscores this sentiment, revealing that a staggering 90% of HR and business leaders in the region view enhancing and sustaining productivity as a critical priority. As we step into 2025, addressing this challenge will be pivotal for driving business growth.
The SHRPA Talent Talk: Driving Productivity Through AI in Southeast Asia brought together Alexander Boe, Head of People & Operations, Telenor and Michelle Yong, Global HR Consultant, Shell who spoke with Cheshta Dora, Head - Research, Content & Community, People Matters on how can AI can transform employee productivity and help HR create greater business value.
The Promise of AI
While traditional factors like experience, skills, and engagement continue to influence productivity, AI emerges as a powerful tool to revolutionize the workforce. Its potential to reshape skilling, performance, experience, and overall productivity is immense. The SHRPA report further highlights the growing recognition of AI's role in business success, with 42% of respondents believing that leveraging AI will be crucial for thriving in 2025.
Overcoming Challenges and Seizing Opportunities
One of the primary barriers to AI adoption is the lack of understanding and expertise in how AI can be applied to improve workforce productivity. Many HR professionals are still uncertain about where to start or how to measure the impact of AI on productivity. Additionally, there are concerns about data privacy, ethical implications, and the need for change management to ensure successful implementation.
Top suggestions on overcoming barriers from our speakers include:
- Building AI and data competencies: Speakers note how leveraging technologies like AI requires HR to build its own competency
- Getting the basics right: Having the right structures, the right data, right workflows and processes in place is key to enhancing productivity through AI
- Business and customer alignment: To ensure AI strategy success, it's important to look closely at business objectives and customer needs. Alignment will play a major role in ensuring AI usage is impactful. This will also help set the right target and ambitions for AI implementation.
- AI as part of the skilling journey: Skilling and training employees across industries is becoming more frequent. Companies need to embed AI in their learning initiatives to help raise productivity and maintain efficiency.