PodChats for FutureCIO: How WFH is impacting the workforce in ASEAN

Gartner estimates that remote workers will represent 32% of all employees worldwide by the end of 2021. This is up from 17% of employees in 2019. Gartner defines a remote worker as an employee working away from their company, government, or customer site at least one full day a week (hybrid workers) or who work fully from home (fully remote workers).“A hybrid workforce is the future of the work, with both remote and on-site part of the same solution to optimize employers’ workforce needs,” said Ranjit Atwal, senior research director at Gartner.In today’s PodChats for FutureCIO, we are joined by Gibu Mathew, Vice President & General Manager for APAC, Zoho, to shed light on how WFH is impacting the workforce in ASEAN.It’s been over 18 months since businesses were forced to adapt remote work as the norm. What would you say is the number one learning for businesses in ASEAN, looking at it from (a) process; and (b) technology?Given that there is no certainty of when we will go back to pre-COVID-19 workplace, how should enterprises address the issue of training so that employees can make full use of the capabilities of emerging technologies like AI and automation?What is reasonable strategy that would enable them to measure the effectiveness of AI, analytics and other new technologies without costing the organisation a sizeable investment in what is already a very limited budget?As we see more enterprises move business applications to the cloud, can you name 3 things enterprises need to do to secure their use of the cloud?