Latest news with #EngageRocket
Tatler Asia
18-07-2025
- Business
- Tatler Asia
How to embrace AI without losing ourselves
Above Dorothy Yiu is the co-founder and CEO of EngageRocket, an award-winning Singapore-based employee engagement platform (Photo: EngageRocket) AI is here to stay; you either adapt or die. That's the reality of things - Dorothy Yiu - Being more human Both Yiu and Tang highlight the importance of coaching. Performance might be better measured through systems that can track indicators and generate progress reports. But the human aspect of spending time with someone and seeing them, as we do when we coach, could lead to even more meaningful insights. As Yiu says, it involves conversations like, 'Hey, what's your ambition? Where do you see yourself in the next year or two years? How can we set you up for success in this organisation?' She adds that it's also human relationships that drive retention and turnover. 'People don't leave bad companies; they leave bad bosses.' This isn't likely to change just because AI systems and agents become part of work. 'You use data to help inform, right? How can we tailor our humanness and build connection? That's where data is helpful,' says Yiu. In other words, we can use data to better understand our teams and flag challenges, and we can use AI to become better managers and leaders. 'See it as a way to improve yourself,' says Cheng. 'I'm a big fan of using AI for knowledge and education. How can it help us improve on areas where we may be weak? Of course, we need to be careful when working with generative AI due to hallucinations, where it may cite untrue information, but as the models get better and offer deep research capabilities and other features, it means that we have access to an almost limitless amount of knowledge.' Read more: AI at work: what are Singapore CEOs prioritising and finding a challenge? Above Arvin Tang is the founder and CEO of Akin by Techlyon, a digital agency that designs impact-driven marketing campaigns backed by human behaviour data (Photo: Darren Gabriel Leow) Tang adds, 'What does it mean for you to be human? It means the critical thinking that happens 99 per cent of the time in your brain. You might not be able to explain it but the conscious and the unconscious [are involved in] your thinking process.' This can lead to new ideas and other positive outcomes, he says, when coupled with an AI with a different thinking model. The quality of ideas and the speed of work can increase as we combine human insights and intuitions with such powerful tools. This means we can do better and get more done much faster. The question then becomes: what do we do with our time? Tang says that leaders will have to 'embrace and accept that it is true that they, both leaders and their teams, will do less work but not necessarily less thinking'. In his case, he sees the newly available time as an opportunity to focus on well-being and space to find innovative ideas and solutions. He tells his team: 'Make sure that you are considering new skills, new things to think about. Use your AI to learn about how this connects to performance.' Read more: AI decoded: a guide to digital twins, synthetic media and other buzzwords We humans still need to be the ones to plan the next step, navigate it and then use the AI as a very good compass to get there - Arvin Tang - Leading with purpose It's key to lead with mission, purpose and meaning— essentially, a 'why'. Tang says that a key activity for him has been to realign his company's vision to its purpose. 'This purpose-led vision allows me to align it with my and my team's personal interests as well.' He says that being purpose-driven allows them to stay fresh and excited about their work, which in turn minimises, if not prevents, burnout. Yiu concurs, saying: 'In a world like this that's so uncertain and chaotic, more engaged employees are more resilient to change. They're willing to tough it out with you. They're willing to be more creative. They're willing to go the extra mile for the organisation when times are tough. 'We are living in an era where there are five generations in the workforce. How can I tailor my approaches to the diversity that we're seeing?' Add to that the coming introduction of non-humans into the mix, and this diversity will bring both challenges and opportunities. If we can understand the technology, be more human in our interactions and lead with purpose, then we might be on the right track to take advantage of those opportunities.
CNA
19-05-2025
- Business
- CNA
Commentary: The manager meltdown – why disengaged leaders are costing us billions
SINGAPORE: In 2024, global employee engagement dropped from 23 per cent to 21 per cent, said Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2025 report. This decline – only the second in more than a decade, noted Gallup – has cost the world economy an estimated US$438 billion in lost productivity. And the primary driver behind this sobering picture? Manager disengagement. We've all heard the saying 'People don't quit jobs; they quit bad managers.' Gallup calls this a 'breakdown': A cascading effect where disengaged managers lead to disengaged teams, dragging down performance and the productivity of the workplace. Managers are the last-mile connection between an organisation and its workers. Managers shape culture, drive execution and man the levers of day-to-day motivation. Yet today, many of them are running on empty – and this should deeply concern business leaders, especially as we brace for continued economic headwinds. PRESSURE FROM ABOVE, BURNOUT FROM BELOW Managers of today are not just people leaders. They're expected to be digital transformation champions, change agents and empathetic connectors, all while navigating employees' rising expectations for flexibility, inclusion, and well-being. EngageRocket's HR Outlook 2025 report finds that managing a multigenerational workforce is a top concern, with many businesses and workplaces seeing four generations (Gen Z, millennials, Gen X and baby boomers) working side by side. Managers are expected to tailor development, communication and engagement approaches to meet divergent needs, all while holding the team accountable to shared goals. As the post-COVID recovery slows to a cautious crawl, this pressure is amplified by prolonged and mounting economic uncertainty. Locally, employment growth in Singapore slowed in the first quarter of 2025 while unemployment rose, shows data from the Ministry of Manpower (MOM). It expects the labour market to continue softening amid growing external risks. Hiring is down, investments in people programmes are being deferred and cost-efficiency has returned to the top of the boardroom agenda. Managers are being asked to deliver more with less. No wonder it's becoming increasingly unmanageable for them to 'square the circle', as Gallup says. WHAT WE'RE GETTING WRONG ABOUT ENGAGEMENT As co-host of EngageRocket's The HR Impact Show, I've had many conversations with senior human-resource leaders across Asia and around the world about how organisations are navigating change. Time and again, the same gaps in engagement efforts come to the surface: First, cutting people investments in uncertain times is a false economy. Ironically, it's in times of economic uncertainty that employee engagement matters most. Yet in the race to tighten belts, many organisations default to deprioritising investments in their staff. They freeze learning and development (L&D) budgets, delay feedback initiatives and shelve well-being programmes. But this short-term thinking creates long-term consequences. When morale is fragile, even small acts of perceived neglect can compound into costly attrition. Conversely, when organisations choose to double down on employee engagement during periods of uncertainty, they build trust and emotional commitment – the kind of intrinsic motivation that sustains performance and resilience through challenging times. And the business case is undeniable. According to Microsoft's Work Trend Index, companies that doubled down on employee engagement during economic downturns performed twice as well financially as those that deprioritised it. The most engaged organisations outperformed the S&P 500 and, on average, each additional point of employee engagement correlated with a +US$46,511 difference in market capitalisation per employee. Put simply, companies with highly engaged workforces don't just feel better, they perform better. Leaders need to treat engagement with the same strategic importance as financial performance. Second, manager development must be a strategic agenda. Globally, only 44 per cent of managers say they have received formal management training, noted Gallup's report. Moreover, many are promoted based on their performance as individual contributors, not for their ability to lead others. When these managers struggle to coach, resolve conflict, or align their teams, it's too often misread as a personal failing rather than an organisational oversight. Gallup's 2025 report also found that younger managers under 35 experienced a sharper five-point drop in engagement, a clear signal of the gap between growing expectations and insufficient preparedness. Many were promoted during times of rapid change and are now leading in hybrid environments with limited experience and support. The result: a global cohort of people leaders who feel overwhelmed, under-resourced and alone. But the solution doesn't need to be complex. Gallup found that even basic management training can halve the number of actively disengaged managers. In other words, a little support goes a long way – and can pay dividends in engagement, retention, and performance. Third, we don't measure what matters – or we don't share it. Most organisations still rely on annual engagement surveys, a cadence that leaves too much time between signal and response. Worse, some HR teams hold back team-level results, worried that managers 'aren't ready' to interpret or act on the data. But depriving managers of real-time, team-specific insights also deprives them of their ability to focus on key areas for improvement in their teams, intervene in a timely manner, and take overall ownership of team engagement. This kind of timely insight is particularly helpful for female managers, who saw a seven-point drop in engagement, the steepest among any group in Gallup's 2025 report. Research by and McKinsey & Company shows that women in leadership roles are more likely than men to shoulder disproportionate emotional labour, such as checking in on team well-being, fostering inclusion and ensuring workloads are fair. Yet this labour often goes unsupported, creating higher levels of stress and burnout among female managers. Real-time feedback systems can help surface these invisible burdens, not just for teams, but for the managers themselves. With better data and more transparent sharing, we can better support all managers, especially those most vulnerable to disengagement, to lead with clarity, empathy, and impact. START WITH MANAGERS As employee engagement continues to dip across all ranks and levels, managers are more important than ever, say experts in the Harvard Business Review. Gallup estimates that managers account for 70 per cent of the variation in employee engagement – as such, they are arguably the most powerful force influencing intrinsic motivation at work. To effectively leverage this crucial group of change agents, we must build ecosystems of support. That includes formal training, mentoring, regular feedback loops, decision-making autonomy and tools that will enable them to better manage their teams and their own engagement. These are not 'nice-to-haves". They are foundational to organisational health, especially in a time of rapid change and uncertainty. The good news is that if global engagement reaches the levels seen in best-practice organisations, the world could unlock a US$9.6 trillion productivity boom, estimates Gallup – equivalent to 9 per cent of global gross domestic product. That future starts with better management. In a world increasingly disrupted by artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, it's tempting to look to technology for every answer. But the most powerful lever for employee engagement remains profoundly human. Managers are not mere implementers of policy. They are architects of team culture; to most employees, they are the face of the company. AI can interpret data and detect tone, but only a manager can hear the pause behind the words or sense the unspoken tension behind a carefully worded response To rebuild trust and engagement at all levels, we must first rethink what we expect of managers and what we're willing to invest in their success.
