2 November 2017, Hong Kong – The changing face of Hong Kong’s workforce has resulted in a need for organizations to foster a new culture of work to achieve digital transformation success, a Microsoft-commissioned Asia Workplace 2020 Study[1] has concluded. In addressing this need, Microsoft Hong Kong announced today general availability of new solutions purpose-built for small and medium-sized businesses with up to 300 employees. Available today, Microsoft 365 Business includes the Office 365 suite of productivity and collaboration tools, as well as device management and security tools to safeguard company information across Windows 10 PCs, mobile devices, and apps. It is an integrated solution designed to simplify IT for small and medium-sized businesses.
In addition, Microsoft StaffHub, an app to help Firstline Workers manage their workday, is now included in Microsoft 365 Business and Office 365 Business Premium subscriptions.
Local demand for a new culture of work for digital transformation success
The Asia Workplace 2020 Study found the following factors influencing the culture of work in Hong Kong today:
- Increasingly mobile workforce and exposure to new security risks: The rise of mobility and proliferation of mobile and cloud technologies have resulted in individuals working across multiple locations and devices. In fact, the Study found that 71% of respondents are working off personal smartphones and only 30% of respondents are spending all of their work hours in the office. The former raises new security challenges for organizations.
- The rise of diverse teams: The Study found that one third of workers in Hong Kong are already working in more than 10 teams at any one point in time. This makes the availability of real-time insights and collaboration tools crucial to get work done.
- Gaps in employees’ digital skills even as leaders are in the motion of embracing digital transformation: As the bar is raised with new technologies adopted across industries, deployment is uneven. In fact, 78% of Hong Kong’s workers expect their organizations to invest in new culture of work and 80% of respondents feel that more can be done to bridge the digital skills gap among workers.
Isabelle Perl-Scemla, Office Business Group Lead, Microsoft Hong Kong, said: “The rise of digital technologies, along with a new generation of millennials entering the workforce, has brought about a need to address changing workers’ expectations, knowledge and skills, as well as the tools they use. In addition, due to deployment of advanced and emerging technologies, organizations need to relook at reskilling its workforce to develop creative and strategic skills for the future.”
Considering the changing workforce and work culture, Microsoft is committed to helping empower and safeguard small and medium-sized businesses around the world with Microsoft 365 Business: –
- Become a modern workplace: Today’s modern, global workplace is changing, which brings tremendous opportunities and challenges for businesses of all sizes. Businesses must meet the needs of a five-generation workforce, contend with an increasingly complex cyberthreat landscape, and innovate quickly to meet evolving customer expectations. At the same time, small and medium-sized customers express that they want solutions that are easy to manage and maintain. Often small business owners find technology options to be complex and costly, leading many to make do with a patchwork of services or defer investments altogether. Such approaches compromise business productivity and introduce security vulnerabilities, which may be one reason why 43 percent of all cyber-attacks last year targeted companies with fewer than 100 employees.
- Safeguard your business: Microsoft 365 Business is built to deliver the productivity tools and security services businesses need in a single, simple-to-manage product. It safeguards company information, extending security across users, apps, and devices. It helps ensure PCs are up to date and secure, helping prevent security vulnerabilities that cyber-thieves often exploit. It also provides protection for company information across devices, with the ability to remove company data from lost or stolen devices.
- Empower your people: Microsoft 365 Business delivers the productivity and collaboration tools businesses need to help their people be their most productive. It includes the suite of Office 365 productivity and collaboration apps, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as Outlook for email; SharePoint and OneDrive for sharing files with customers, co-workers, and suppliers; and Microsoft Teams for chat-based teamwork.
- Simplify your IT management: Microsoft 365 Business is designed to reduce the complexity and costs of managing technology for businesses and their IT partners. It offers simple setup and management, so business owners and their teams can put more of their time and energy toward building their businesses. From a single console, you can quickly set up new employees, configure device security policies, and manage user identity and access, as well as ensure all your people are on the most up-to-date versions of Windows 10 and Office. And the single per-user, per-month subscription streamlines costs and simplifies management.
Give Firstline Workers the tools they need to do their best work with StaffHub
“Firstline Workers make up much of the global workforce and are the heart of many small and medium-sized businesses. It is our view that involving firstline workers in digital transformation will drive unprecedented opportunity – for workers and the organizations that they work for.” Isabelle added. “At Microsoft, we see the opportunities that can be unlocked with technology by equipping frontline workers with the right tools, such as Microsoft 365 and Microsoft StaffHub.”
Microsoft StaffHub is a purpose-built app to help Firstline Workers manage their workday, allowing business owners and employees to easily create and manage schedules, assign and complete tasks, and communicate with each other. StaffHub is now included in Microsoft 365 Business and Office 365 Business Premium subscriptions.
To learn more about Microsoft 365 Business, visit https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business.
[1] Asia Workplace 2020 Study, conducted between February and March 2017 involving 4.175 respondents in 14 Asia markets. The 14 markets include Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. All respondents were pre-qualified as at least spending 30 hours per week in a full-time role, or spending at least 20 hours per week in a part time role. This included 312 respondents from Hong Kong.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
For media enquiry, please contact:
Microsoft Hong Kong Limited
Alice Li
Tel: +852 2804 4130
Email: [email protected]
Hill+Knowlton Strategies for Microsoft
Fran Tam / Tracy Yiu
Tel: +852 2894 6294 / Tel: +852 2894 6295
Email: [email protected] /[email protected]
