Lau Thiam Beng
Chief Operating Officer / President, Digital Systems, ST Engineering
Over the past year or so, the world has been grappling with the widespread, transmuting Covid-19. It has shaken global markets, affected supply chains and hurt global business growth. It is one that many world leaders and senior executives didn’t see coming.
Many organisations have since put their business continuity plan to real-life tests: IT departments have ramped up to ensure scalability and secure connectivity. Facility teams practice regular sanitising of premises and make temperature screening a routine. Leaders have been extending support to affected staff and family and embraced remote collaboration.
Whilst all these are happening, behind the boardroom doors, and more pressing than ever, senior executives are all making candid assessments on the evolving business dynamics and the impact on their people and organisations.
Beyond the questions on how far-reaching the effects are and how long-lasting they may be, one of the burning questions that we deliberated on is how organisations can still drive digital talent development and performance amidst this ongoing uncertainty?
This is more urgent than ever, as many organisations must accelerate their digital transformation to survive in current times of uncertainty.
The Grey Swan of the Digital Skills Gap
We are hurtling towards a world dominated by artificial intelligence, big data, cyber trust, high-speed and scalable connectivity, mixed reality and robotics automation. These technologies are shifting our daily experiences, accelerating communications, enabling remote maintenance and collaborations, and shifting business models.
If businesses are not transformed fast enough, and without the right talent to innovate, they would be at risk of being disrupted.
As leaders, we would need to bring the organisation not just up to speed, but also to be prepared to go far and beyond for growth. Apart from short-term stop-gap measures and strategic changes to combat against the cyclical situations, one clear and lurking grey swan that many have ignored is the widening digital skills gap that continues to grow and grow by the day.
A report released by APEC Human Resources Development Working Group highlighted the need to close the digital skills gap by 2025, and that any mismatch will hurt workers and the broader economy. The World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos last year further warned that 75 million jobs are at risk of being displaced globally because of the advent of mass automation and rapid technological change.
The impact of not future proofing our skillsets will result in not just a lost workforce, but also a skills crisis that can extend across generations in a vicious cycle. We face rising inequality, displaced jobs, growing distrust of technology and possible mass social upheaval.
Remote working has induced further perplexities. Some may be disengaged. Some are distracted, and worse, isolated. It is pertinent to help our teams to navigate and change the way we think about work and skills.
Driving the Upskilling and Tech Adoption Agenda
As we drive the emerging technology frontier at Digital Systems, we constantly vie for experienced data scientists, cyber & cryptography experts, cloud specialists, AI engineers, etc.
Back in end 2019 and even into the pandemic, we stepped up on providing the opportunity for our engineers and technologists to open up to new skills, methodologies and certifications. From cloud and edge computing, to data analytics and cybersecurity, and a suite of agile and scrum methodologies, DevSecOps best practices and design thinking workshops, we have journeyed from the initial lukewarm responses to full house sign-ups, both virtually and physically within the permitted group size.
I advocate that as leaders, we should commit digital upskilling as a long-term engagement & investment. Strong developer and technologist communities and forums should be cultivated where vibrant discussions can take place to spur ideation and learnings. Employees should also be encouraged to use their newly gained knowledge to identify and experiment possible improvements or new innovations. Be it to enhance our internal processes and systems, or develop smarter, sharper solutions and products for our customers, we should continue to deepen relevant digital skillsets not just for today, but for the future.
It is heartening to see how our engineers and developers at Digital Systems has grown over the past year – embracing personal development, driving the tech adoption to help transform not just for themselves, but for our customers and even the community.
Since last year, we have been mobilised to work behind the scenes in many digital enablement and innovation projects in Singapore and overseas. Our engineers worked round the clock to deploy the Infrared Fever Screening System in airports, hospitals, hotels and commercial buildings across the APAC and LATAM regions, including Mexico and South Korea. At Tan Tock Seng Hospital, a dedicated team of developers deployed scrum and agile principles for the hospital operations centre, providing up-to-date data to the frontline operations team to make informed decisions for lives. Our advanced communications teams alongside with our Robotics tugs were also deployed at the quarantine centre at the Changi Exhibition Centre, to assist in the operations and despatch delivery. Our Emergency Response Systems constantly race against time to help predict, pre-empt and activate first responders. Our cybersecurity and cloud team has scaled up to meet the many demands of the organisations and agencies, to ensure seamless operations. The list goes on.
Tech for Good
It has indeed been a ride over the past year. It is one that I hope that we, at Digital Systems, can equip and empower more of our staff to embrace upskilling earlier, to help adopt and use tech for good, and care for our customers and community.
Even in times of uncertainty, the development of our talent, adoption of new technologies and digital transformation cannot stop.
I advocate that every organisation should take a holistic approach to empower our talents to use new skills acquired, and reform the conventional ways of solution for purposeful and meaningful work.
From edge sensing to machine learning and analytics, from unmanned and autonomous robotics to 5G connectivity, from centralised situational awareness to smart operations centres, these emerging technologies are key to provide clarity, accuracy and ability to act efficiently for public security and critical infrastructures.
Here’s calling all leaders to embark on this journey together today, or risk getting disrupted. Co-curate and innovate to advance and bring about value now.
