A continuous learning culture at Maxis key to a future-ready workforce

The future workforce is driven by rapid waves of technological disruption in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Organisations that are focused on building leadership among their top employees will perform better than the average, but those that aim to stay ahead in an evolving landscape needs to develop its employees consistently with the right skills and capabilities, particularly in digitalisation.

Inculcating a strong language of Learning and Development helps companies to both attract and retain employees more effectively. Randstad Malaysia found in a survey that 89% of Malaysian employees and job seekers responded that they would need to acquire new skills to work in a digital-led environment, while 93% said they were willing to acquire these skills themselves to guarantee their employability. The majority felt employers should be the ones to provide such training.

To become a world-class and efficient organisation that creates new and effective ways of working, Maxis has accelerated its workforce capabilities in critical business and technology skills, imbued in its culture of continuous learning.

Natalia Navin, Chief Human Resources Officer, Maxis, said, “We embarked on a journey to refresh our company’s culture and values in 2020, embedding continuous learning across the different areas of business.

“A key element of the refreshed MaxisWay culture is our focus on exploring possibilities and committing to learn and grow continually, both within and beyond our roles. We achieved this through a comprehensive rollout plan, equipping our employees with toolkits and interactive workshops to help them live and work together the MaxisWay.”

“A key element of the refreshed MaxisWay culture is our focus on exploring possibilities and committing to learn and grow continually, both within and beyond our roles.” – Natalia Navin, Chief Human Resources Officer, Maxis.

Amidst this transformation, Maxis recorded an increased awareness and appreciation of its culture and values among 93% of employees, as evidenced in its 2020 Voice of Maxis survey responses.

The acceleration of digitalisation has also become more essential in the current work climate as Malaysians continue to work from home and online learning has become the new norm. Maxis has revamped its Maxis Academy portal to make it more intuitive and simpler for users to look for learning opportunities and materials, ensuring that employee development was not disrupted, but in fact accelerated during the pandemic.

Maxis Academy works closely with internal teams to identify learning needs and provide employees with the appropriate enablement solutions. Its learning principles are three-pronged – identifying and building critical skills, motivating employees to own their development, and delivering effective and impactful learning solutions.

Navin added, “In 2020, Maxis employees achieved an average 30 hours’ blended learning per person, and we are encouraging everyone to keep this up and do even more in 2021. Our area of focus for this year is to equip employees with key business skills and soft skills, while at the same time build a future-ready talent force armed with critical and future technical skills to address Maxis’ rapidly evolving business requirements.”

In helping employees grow holistically, four main pillars were introduced in the Maxis Academy – Leadership, Business, Technical and Compliance pillars. The Leadership Academy creates advanced leadership and critical industry-specific skills programmes are conducted to help rising young leaders and Maxis managers. The Technology Academy runs analytics bootcamps for employees to learn or level up in coding, statistics, build advance analytics models and more.

Under the Business Academy, a growing catalogue builds on employees’ business acumen and industry skills. Courses range from fundamentals of converged solutions to embedding a digital mindset, to agile and 5G awareness courses that help Maxis navigate the industry’s ever changing technological landscape.

A robust Compliance Academy also gives every employee a strong foundation in ethics, safety and good conduct at the workplace – whether in employee interactions, relationships with business partners and customers, or even the way personal data is treated.

Navin said, “Learning solutions made accessible to employees can range from virtual instructor-led training and workshops to industry-related whitepapers and case studies, to e-learning platforms like LinkedIn Learning and MindTools. Being digital, employees enjoy the flexibility of anytime, anywhere access to bite-sized lessons that are easy to digest and can easily be looked up right at the point of need.”

Importantly, certification training with leading technology partners, such as Microsoft, AWS, Google, Cisco and others, ensures that Maxis Business solutions experts remain at the forefront of successful collaborations to deliver new products, services and know-how to enterprises. Maxis Academy continues to grow its internal pool of certified design thinking facilitators to lead co-creation initiatives across the organisation, as well as with clients and business partners.

As technology and innovation continue to be a strong focus for Maxis in attracting the best talent and building deep capabilities, its Graduate Programme launched in February this year is tailored to enable graduates to develop solid capabilities and hands-on experience in specialised fields.

Maxis has since added technology-focused fields, including data science and IoT, which will equip the future workforce of Malaysia with critical skills, as these emerging technologies have become the focal point for IR4.0 and the digital economy.

Gokhan Ogut, Maxis’ Chief Executive Officer, concluded, “Encouraging every employee to map their career growth with an individual development plan that encapsulates both short-term goals, as well as their long-range ambitions, has enabled us to retain, grow and empower our people.

“The goal of our culture of continuous learning is to enable talents to be at the forefront with critical skills, not only for today’s environment but also for tomorrow, strengthening further our position as Malaysia’s Leading Converged Solutions Provider. At Maxis, we want our people to always be ahead in changing world.”

Join Natalia Navin, Chief Human Resources Officer, Maxis at HR Tech Festival Asia Online 2021, where she will be participating in a panel discussion titled Gen Z Will Revolutionise The Workplace: Are Your Leaders ready? on Wednesday, September 22, at 11.30am.