How To Future Proof Malaysian Workforce

Arlene Wherrett is the Vice President & Managing Director for Sage Asia responsible for accelerating the growth of Sage’s business in Asia. She has over 20 years of experience, managing businesses within the IT and Services industries across Asia Pacific leveraging her strong leadership skills and deep industry expertise. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Sociology from Trent University in Canada and has a Masters of Management from the Macquarie Graduate School of Management in Australia and, also Arlene a certified Gallup Strengths coach.

- Arlene Wherrett

The Malaysian workforce incurs RM6.46 million in losses every hour from administration activities, amounting close to RM56.6 billion losses in productivity a year, according to a survey conducted by Sage entitled “We Power the Nation - People & Productivity”.

The survey commissioned by Sage and carried out by YouGov, a leading market research and data analytics firm, polled 3,000 small and medium businesses (SME) in 12 countries around the world including Malaysia. This is a significant loss given that SMEs constitute 98.5 percent of all businesses entities in Malaysia and is the lifeblood of the economy.

The survey investigated productivity losses and how future investments in technology impact people, productivity and businesses in the long term. The findings revealed that encouragingly, Malaysian businesses believe digital upskilling is a key solution to address productivity loss as:

• Almost half (46 percent) of business leaders in Malaysia consider digital skills a priority investment

• Over three quarters (78 percent) of all businesses are planning on digital skills investments

• 56 percent of respondents see improvements in productivity, profitability and customer service as a result of digital investments

• 52 percent are seeking government subsidised technology and tax breaks and revealed that free training would help improve digital skills.