THE future workforce is driven by rapid waves of technological disruption in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Organisations that are focused on building leadership among their top employees will perform better than the average, but those that aim to stay ahead in an evolving landscape need to develop their employees consistently with the right skills and capabilities, particularly in digitalisation.
Inculcating a strong language of Learning and Development helps companies to both attract and retain employees more effectively.
Randstad Malaysia found in a survey that 89 per cent of Malaysian employees and job seekers responded that they would need to acquire new skills to work in a digital-led environment, while 93 per cent said they were willing to acquire these skills themselves to guarantee their employability.
The majority felt employers should be the ones to provide such training.
To create new and effective ways of working, Maxis is accelerating its workforce capabilities in critical business and technology skills, imbued in its culture of continuous learning.
"We embarked on a journey to refresh our company's culture and values last year, embedding continuous learning across the different areas of business. A key element of the refreshed MaxisWay culture is our focus on exploring possibilities and committing to learn and grow continually, both within and beyond our roles," said Maxis chief human resource officer Natalia Navin.
The acceleration of digitalisation has also become more essential in the current work climate as Malaysians continue to work from home and online learning has become the new norm.
Maxis has revamped its Maxis Academy portal to make it more intuitive and simpler for users to look for learning opportunities and materials, ensuring that employee development is not disrupted, but in fact accelerated during the pandemic.
The portal's learning principles are three-pronged — identifying and building critical skills, motivating employees to own their development, and delivering effective and impactful learning solutions.
"Our area of focus for this year is to equip employees with key business skills and soft skills, and at the same time build a future-ready talent force armed with critical and future technical skills to address Maxis' rapidly evolving business requirements," said Natalia.
Among four important pillars to grow a digitally savvy workforce for Malaysia are Leadership, Business, Technical and Compliance, which were introduced in the Maxis Academy.
The Leadership Academy creates advanced leadership and critical industry-specific skills programmes to help rising young leaders and Maxis managers, while the Technology Academy runs analytics bootcamps for employees to learn or level up in coding, statistics, build advance analytics models and more.
Under the Business Academy, a growing catalogue builds on employees' business acumen and industry skills. Courses range from fundamentals of converged solutions to embedding a digital mindset, to Agile and 5G awareness courses to navigate the industry's ever-changing technological landscape.
Lastly, a robust Compliance Academy gives every employee a strong foundation in ethics, safety and good conduct at the workplace — whether in employee interactions, relationships with business partners and customers, or even the way personal data is treated.
"Learning solutions made accessible to employees can range from virtual instructor-led training and workshops to industry-related whitepapers and case studies, to e-learning platforms like LinkedIn Learning and MindTools," added Natalia.
Importantly, certification training with leading technology partners, such as Microsoft, AWS, Google and Cisco ensures that Maxis Business solution experts remain at the forefront of successful collaborations to deliver new products, services and know-how to enterprises.
Maxis Academy continues to grow its internal pool of certified design thinking facilitators to lead co-creation initiatives across the organisation, as well as with clients and business partners.
As technology and innovation continue to be a strong focus for Maxis in attracting the best talent and building deep capabilities, its Graduate Programme is tailored to enable graduates to develop solid capabilities and hands-on experience in specialised fields, including data science and the Internet of Things, which will equip the future workforce of Malaysia with critical skills, as these emerging technologies have become the focal point for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the digital economy.
"Encouraging every employee to map their career growth with an individual development plan that encapsulates both short-term goals, as well as their long-range ambitions, has enabled us to retain, grow and empower our people. The goal of our culture of continuous learning is to enable talent to be at the forefront with critical skills, not only for today's environment but also for tomorrow. At Maxis, we want our people to always be ahead in changing world," said Maxis chief executive officer Gokhan Ogut.
To find out more about Maxis, visit www.linkedin.com/company/maxis/