The changing role of HR leaders in hybrid and remote workplaces
For several years, the conversation about hybrid work was framed as a temporary negotiation, a phase organisations would eventually exit in one direction or another. That framing no longer holds. Gallup’s latest workplace research finds that 52% of remote-capable employees now work in a hybrid arrangement, with a further 27% working fully remotely1. Separate data […]
How to build an HR strategy that aligns with business goals
The most common reason an HR strategy fails to land isn’t poor execution. It’s that it was never built from the business strategy in the first place. Too many HR strategies begin with an inventory of HR’s own priorities, engagement, retention, learning, wellbeing, and then look for ways to connect them back to the business. […]
HR data security and compliance: What ASEAN businesses need to know
HR holds the most sensitive data in the business. Payroll numbers, national ID details, bank accounts, medical records, disciplinary files, biometric attendance logs. Nowhere else in a business does so much personally identifiable and sensitive data sit in one system as it does in HR. Yet across ASEAN, HR teams are often the last to […]
Building a Skills-Based Workforce: The Practical Playbook for HR Leaders
Job titles are ageing faster than the people who hold them. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2026 Future of Jobs Report, 44% of the core skills required in the average role will change between 2025 and 2028¹. A workforce plan built around role names alone masks that shift entirely, because the same job title […]
Employee Self-Service in 2026: What employees expect and what HR must deliver
Employees now expect the same instant access at work that they get everywhere else: checking a bank balance in seconds, tracking a food delivery in real time, booking a cab in minutes. When that same employee has to email HR and ‘wait’ for a leave balance or a payslip, the gap feels larger than it […]
HR software implementation: What successful ASEAN companies do differently
Southeast Asia’s HR technology market is no longer an emerging story; it is a fast-moving one. The region’s HR software market was valued at approximately USD 578.4 million in 2024 and is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of around 15% through 2030¹, as enterprises move away from spreadsheets and manual payroll […]
The hidden cost of payroll errors and how to eliminate them
Payroll rarely makes headlines when it works. It only becomes visible the moment it fails – a missed allowance, a miscalculated tax code, a delayed transfer. Each mistake looks small in isolation. Add them up across a year, a department, a region, and the picture changes entirely. Payroll errors are not a rounding error. They […]
Managing 5,000+ employees: Why manual HR fails at scale
By Anwar Parves For industries like Ready-Made Garments (RMG) factories, industrial parks, and zones, large workforce management is no small challenge. As businesses expand and employee numbers swell into the thousands, the inefficiencies of manual HR processes are evident. Whether it’s tracking employee hours, scheduling shifts, maintaining payroll accuracy, or managing regulatory compliance, industrial HR […]
From data to decisions: Building an HR analytics culture
Most HR teams today are not short of data. Engagement scores, attrition rates, time-to-hire, learning completions, performance ratings — the dashboards are full. And yet, in many organisations, the gap between having data and acting on it remains stubbornly wide. Reports get produced, circulated and filed, while the decisions they were meant to inform are […]
Data protection and employee privacy in Sri Lanka: What employers must get right
By Pubudini Abeyesekera In my previous articles, I explored two important priorities shaping the future of work in Sri Lanka: building a digitally competitive workforce and strengthening HR compliance as an enterprise-level responsibility. The next priority is equally important, and increasingly urgent: employee data protection. As organisations digitise HR, payroll, attendance, performance management, recruitment, learning, […]