How OCBC Bank’s HR team is keeping up with the gig economy

The gig economy is not just about Uber drivers or Upwork freelancers. Employees are expecting organisations to be agile enough to deal with the new world of work, whether that means offering options for part-time, project-based, contract, or remote work.

Below, Yap Aye Wee – OCBC Bank’s Head of Learning & Development, OCBC Campus – explains how the bank is encouraging a gig mindset across all levels.

Incorporating a gig mindset can begin with HR setting policy, process, and systems and this is relatively easy, and in fact, we already have this mostly in place, but its success ultimately depends on having managers and employees who value and embrace this concept.

In other words, for it to be a sustainable part of an organisation, it is about developing a people that accepts diversity and is prepared to constantly acculturate new elements – especially for a short term assignment.

As you know, one of the bigger challenges of having a gig workforce is their alignment to a company’s vision and values.

To this end, we have some HR programmes that have been in place that I would say are foundational pre-cursors to the “Gig” economy as we understand it today.

As many as one of out of five vacancies is currently filled by internal employees moving from one role to a different role.

Three years back, we also launched XPlore – a short term internal gig initiative which allows employees to try out another role for 3-6 months with their current role held open for them when they return.

These programmes are vital in getting people used to the gig concept and allowing time for the value of such a workforce to become apparent.