Welcome to the future of creative work

This post is sponsored by FOREFRONT.

Since the nation has returned to some sort of normalcy, it seems that there is nothing to stop us. Everything appears to be working again, ushering in a new dawn for the young and hopeful – that the universe will provide.

With regular Malaysians realising the fragility of life and impermanence of perceived stability, there has been a paradigm shift in the definition of livelihood – evidenced by the rise of the gig economy and micro-entrepreneurship – in favour of better work-life sensibility.

Flexi-arrangement: what does that mean to our clients and talent?

In our line of work, where creativity is the single most important commodity – we value our people above all things. The challenge lies in anticipating the expectations of a new breed of talent who choose experiences over the material, and purpose over glamour. We all have to change, fast.

Clients will also face the same in the foreseeable future. As the Malaysian economy matures, the population starts to seek meaning in everyday life. Such behaviour does not just end with employees, it extends to larger consumer behaviours. After all, we are consumers too.

That is why we have to rethink how we can give control back to our employees, where they get to decide how they want to deliver their value. That, in turn, allows for the team to have more freedom to have fun with their own space and time – by effectively bridging the gap between creative freedom and personal space, clients and employees benefit from improved productivity and work quality.

Digital nomad scheme: Trust is key to empowering productivity

The shifting business landscape, and workplace culture expectations, call for a complete rethink of our concept of workspaces. We agreed to pilot a concept programme, in which employees who qualified by years of service, may enjoy up to two months of one-off work-from-anywhere flexibility and 14 days of loyalty leave.

By finding new ways to make space and time irrelevant to the definition of a workspace (or time), we fully empower our employees to take back control of their career goals.

With the flexibility to supplement their nomadic work arrangements with loyalty leave, employees can return to work fully rested and equipped with fresh perspectives from a change of scenery.

Empowerment with freedom: Is it working?

While it is still in the early days, rethinking the concept of space and time and focusing on productivity has always been part of our agenda. The key to making it work is defining milestones that incentivise talent to strive for results, instead of focusing on looking busy.

FOREFRONT is no stranger to having satellite teams across the region and continents who work together over a few time zones with very limited visibility from my desk – that requires certain qualities, and we know what, or rather who, we are looking for.

The future is now. As we’re preparing to venture into a very exciting two decades, I invite you to join us and create something truly extraordinary together.

To learn more about our work and culture, visit our website at http://forefront.international.

The writer is Darien Mah, founder of FOREFRONT (pictured above).