20 INTERVIEW
Meeting the challenge of upskilling human resources Arinya Talerngsri, Chief Capability Officer and Managing Director of SEAC
In the Covid-19 era, HR professionals have been embracing changes brought by the new normal and hybrid workplace and they must rethink of their new role and skills. UPDATE magazine interviewed Khun Arinya Talerngsri, Chief Capability Officer and Managing Director of SEAC (formerly APMGroup) on the key challenges, “burnout” phenomenon and new skills of HR professionals. Khun Arinya has been working for about 30 years with leading Thai organisations to win global recognition for people development. She has established the first assessment centre in Thailand. Marked as the first domestic private sector leader to conduct original research into Thai and ASEAN leadership, thereby providing ASEAN with the world’s first dual learning platform, she is also a speaker on leadership around the region and the world. As a strong believer in lifelong learning, she says “I'm in this industry because I practice what I believe, not only for myself, but also to motivate and inspire others to be lifelong learners.” What are the biggest challenges facing human resources (HR) departments of Thai organisations, and are they different from the pre-Covid-19 period? I have learnt three common things from talking to all types of companies and organisations, whether family-owned businesses, international firms, SMEs or even non-profit organisations like those in the government sector and state enterprises.
UPDATE 2/2022
First, the hybrid workplace has become a challenge since Covid-19 emerged, as nothing will be the same as before in terms of the way we operate our workplaces. Basically, it’s no longer going to be a five-day working week or ‘come to the office from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.’ The concept of hybrid workplaces is really of concern for organisations because if they don’t redesign their system, they are going to be faced with other issues, such as a high turnover rate. Organisations have to rethink how to organise the hybrid workforce, engage staff in the hybrid workforce model, and use the performance management process that existed before the Covid-19 pandemic. The second challenge is about upskilling and reskilling. Ever yone that I have talked to feels strongly that Covid-19 has accelerated the speed of upskilling and reskilling. During the past two years of Covid-19, every organisation has come to believe that the same skillsets or even 50%60% of existing experience is inapplicable. Once Covid-19 occurred, people could no longer use the same innovation. It proved that following the old processes took too long because with Covid-19 many organisations were able to iterate the innovation processes into a much faster approach. For example, they found that they could do things in 14-15 days rather than 30 days. If Thai organisations don’t upskill or reskill in many areas or even innovate, it won’t be possible to compete with China, Germany or the United States, where the speed of business and innovation is now much faster
than before. Reskilling and upskilling will be critical for many Thai organisations because in the past it could take 5-6 years to upskill or reskill; however, now it has had to be reduced to 5-6 months. Upskilling or reskilling is not new in Thailand, but the process needs to be reframed. Thai organisations are almost at the stage of panicking about what to do, so they choose quick solutions instead of solutions that help to solve the challenges. People in my network have faced the difficulty about finding the right approach to upskilling and reskilling their workforce. Third, the challenge is about how to design a workplace comprising many generations within the workplace. Most of experienced leaders are early Gen-X and baby-boomers as they are still the brains of the organisations in Thailand. Many organisations have tried to promote late Gen-X or early Gen-Y to lead, but only a few have been successful. Early Gen-X and baby-boomers are still critical for the Thai workforce because of their knowledge, skills and experiences. Surprisingly, many of them are able to upskill and reskill much faster than late Gen-X or early Gen-Y. Therefore, there are many generations within organizations. Gen-Z is also crucial given their new way of thinking and approaches, while Gen-Y is important for a workhorse as they are good workers but
