Despite all its rapid growth, the economy in Asia deals with stagnating productivity. Much of Asia Recent growth is powered by larger investments and not by improving total factor productivity or by efficient use in outputs. In the best case, productivity growth slows down. In the worst case, it sinks.
And even if productivity improves, it doesn’t Fast enough to catch up to leading companies in developed markets such as the USA in the 2010s, the leading companies across Southeast Asia Productivity expanded Under the global average. (China in comparison managed to keep step.)
“In almost every Asian market, productivity is stagnating or sinking as a measure of GDP divided by GDP per capita,” says Simon Tate, President of the Asian-Pacific area for Workday. “Every manager I talk to is concerned about productivity”, be it because of the aging population, the poor public order or the rise of remote work.
In the past, Asian companies had a simple solution to the productivity problem: just throw more people on the problem. Cheap labor made it possible to expand manufacturers and companies without hurt the margins.
But since the economy in Asia gets richer and older, the attitude of more people is no longer the simple solution it used to be. “There are no more people,” says Tate. “There is no longer any productivity if you have only thrown people on the problem.”
Let the youth take over
Managers such as act often argue that AI, in particular “Agent Ai”Can help to increase productivity. In theory, these newer forms of AI autonomously use -defined tasks can perform and get human employees to do more.
Almost all Asian companies say that they want to introduce these new technologies. A survey by Accenture in February showed that nine out of ten Asian companies was preparing to adopt a form of agents -KI over the next three years.
But in fact, another question is to be put into practice, especially for older managers with little experience with AI, let alone AI agents.
Tate notes that Asia’s jobs will soon accommodate five different generations that extend from boomers to the youngest workers, the so -called generation of Alpha.
“Generation Alpha will have a higher digital fluence than the other four earlier generations together,” says Tate, adding that today’s personnel officials are “not prepared for the flood of Ai-Savvy young workers”.
According to a recently published report from the working day, around 80% of employees in the Asian-Pacific area would like to have the most modern technologies at their workplace. A little more than two thirds of these employees would consider the lack of state -of -the -art technology to be negative.
But Tate believes that the answer more than just younger employees gives the room to thrive in the office. He suggests that Asian companies go one step further and treat younger generations as a source for urgently needed specialist knowledge.
“If you look at the make-up of boards of the top 100 public companies in APAC, board positions-self-advisory positions are still very strong of baby boomers and gen Xers,” he says, with “almost zero” positions that are held by those in their twenties and thirty.
Tate suggests that companies are considering “reverse mentoring” or causing a younger person to train older cohorts in how new technologies can best be used. Just like a thousand-year-old or Gen-Z founder could ask someone of an older generation to act as a board director, Tate suggests that established companies are considering a younger member of society in order to offer their own specialist knowledge of technology and business.
“We simply wrongly assume that they are too young and have no good ideas,” he says. “If you put a few really bright, super ambitious people into a room and throw a problem on them, they will give added value when solving value.”
