[The seminar conducted on 19th of July was held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, Kuala Lumpur ]
Kuala Lumpur, 1 August 2022 - Award-winning local enterprise mobility company, Complete Human Network (CHN), in collaboration with Apple and the National Tech Association of Malaysia (PIKOM), recently collaborated to organise a seminar, “Managing and Securing Mobile Employees in a Hybrid World” targeted at addressing gaps that have arisen in an increasingly hybrid work environment.
Held as a follow-up to Apple’s 2022 WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference), the session gathered IT and ITC decision makers from across industries to share best practices in implementing a secure and flexible model for employees and devices in a world of hybrid work.
As the local economy begins to once again operate at full force, employers have had to balance the feasibility of flexible work arrangements with growing employee demands in Malaysia. Just last month, the president of the Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) called on the necessity to equip human resource personnel and department heads with the knowledge and infrastructure to develop agile policies for hybrid workforces.
“We believe this seminar has been enlightening for local businesses to grow into becoming remote-friendly employers and helped make the idea of supporting a hybrid workforce less daunting. It has offered insights from Apple, detailing devices, systems and functionalities that make managing hybrid working easier. There was even a one-of-a-kind sharing session from Apple on how they manage hybrid working, which allowed others to learn from the best practices of one of the world’s leading companies,” said Teh Chai Peng, Founder & CEO of Complete Human Network (CHN), the main organiser of the seminar.
With the aim of helping businesses successfully adapt to this changing work landscape, the seminar provided timely guidance in identifying the key role of devices in hybrid workforce strategies. This included understanding the nature of this work arrangement and choosing the right hardware for employees both at home and in the office whilst mitigating security breaches.
The half-day seminar featured presentations from Apple representatives - on how Apple products are uniquely designed for work and managing and securing data in a hybrid environment. There was also a special presentation from Apple representatives which delved into the intricacies of how Apple manages the employee IT experience and a presentation from James Choong, Business Development Director at CHN - on Enterprise
Mobility as-a-Service (EMaaS).
Commenting on the increasing need for IT as a service solution for businesses in this hybrid working era, Ngoh Chee Hung, Deputy Director, PIKOM CIO Chapter, revealed, “CHN’s Enterprise Mobility as-a-Service (EMaaS) model has the ability to address challenges enterprises and businesses face with dispersed locations and limited support resources when it comes to devices deployment and management. SMEs will definitely benefit not only from the ease in IT and security management but also from better management of cash flow, Enterprise Mobility as-a-Service (EMaaS) is definitely the way to go.”
The seminar concluded with an in-depth discussion on the topic of hybrid working at a holistic level featuring representatives from the education, SME and start-up communities as well as from the commercial enterprise industry. Specifically, the panel featured Dr Wagheeh Shukry bin Hassan, Deputy Director of Education Resource and Technology Division (BSTP) under Ministry of Education; Ahmad Kashfi Abdullah, Senior Vice President at Cradle Fund and Pedro Aleixo, Head of Enterprise Strategy & Business Operations at Celcom Axiata Berhad.
The half-hour session saw the panellist dissect various concerns and challenges faced by their respective industries in adapting to more hybrid demands of the post-pandemic world. This included discussions on cost efficiencies, productivity in remote scenarios, the dispersion of office workforce across states and nations, remote teaching and learning, upcoming Apple devices and how this could assist in hybrid operations.
Wrapping up her thoughts on the event, Chai Peng commented “In being future-ready, companies should not only look to keep up with the demands of digital transformation but every aspect of supporting a hybrid workforce, especially as employees increasingly prioritise a work-life balance. This includes employee choice in tech devices and creating seamless ecosystems that facilitate this choice and the choice of working flexibly and remotely.”
