To examine how a technology-enabled workforce can benefit workers, organizations, and economies, Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently commissioned a survey entitled, “Asia Pacific Digital Skills Study: The Economic Benefits of a Tech-Savvy Workforce.”
Conducted by Gallup, the study surveyed 16,000 working adults and 7,500 employers based in Australia, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Thailand across a variety of public and private sector organizations and industries.
The study revealed that Financial Services Industry (FSI) workers in the ASEAN region continue to face challenges in receiving training despite various governments’ recognition of the importance of building a tech-savvy workforce for the industry’s growth and success.
Here are other key findings of the survey:
- More than four in five (85%) financial services workers in the ASEAN region are “extremely” or “very interested” in training in at least one digital skill.
- Financial services workers across ASEAN are “extremely” or “very interested” in receiving training for an average of 19 digital skills such as AI and Cybersecurity.
- Lack of time is the greatest barrier to financial services workers in the ASEAN region receiving digital skills training. Roughly half of workers (51%) say lack of time is a barrier.
- Increased efficiency was the most named result among financial services workers across ASEAN who received digital training. Forty-four percent of FSI workers who participated in the training say their work efficiency increased as a result (of the training).
The full results of the study are available through this link.
In a related development, Eric Conrad, the regional managing director of AWS in ASEAN, stated during a press conference held in Singapore recently that the company is now working closely with its customers and partners in the public sector to help them effectively leverage the power of Cloud technologies to deliver faster, and more innovative citizen services.
“Today, we are seeing public sector organizations move into a new phase of their digital evolution,” he said. “We believe the cloud will play an even bigger role to help ASEAN governments and public sector organizations deliver national priorities, improve the lives of citizens, and drive economic growth.”
AWS has since partnered with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) to help the agency implement its “Philippine Cloud First Policy” across all government agencies throughout the country. Last year, AWS also announced its plan to launch a local zone in the Philippines, which is part of a bigger undertaking to establish 10 new local zones in the region.
Training for FSI workers in the ASEAN
In ASEAN, AWS, a comprehensive, evolving cloud computing platform provided by Amazon that includes a mixture of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and packaged-software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings, has trained over 1 million people for more than six years now.
Since 2017, the company has been providing training on cloud skills to at least 50,000 people in each of these countries located in the ASEAN region: Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Some of the most successful cloud skills training thus far were made with banking institutions like Union Bank of the Philippines and Techcombank in Vietnam.
“As the 2023 Celent Model Bank Award for Cloud Migration winner, UnionBank of the Philippines has the ambition to run fully in the cloud. To meet this ambition, UnionBank has partnered with AWS to create a learner’s guild program (ULAP) whose aim is to develop employees to work with cloud technologies and services. More importantly, the program included cloud training for people outside of technology, such as HR, audit, and risk, so they were able to understand and deal with implications of cloud transformation,” stated Daniel Mayo, a senior analyst at UnionBank of the Philippines.
For her part, Ashley Longabaugh, a research principal at Techcombank, shared, “Techcombank, one of Vietnam’s largest banks and a 2023 Celent Model Wealth Manager Award recipient for “Technology Tools to Reach New Markets and Client Segments”, is embarking on a five-year digital transformation program with a total investment of $500 million by 2025.”
In executing this vision, Techcombank is investing in training initiatives to upskill employees and develop talent as the bank successfully migrates to AWS.
“To foster an environment of innovation while building a workforce for the future, Techcombank is now leveraging AWS training programs, which include AWS Skills Guild — a comprehensive skills enablement program that’s designed to build cloud fluency across the organization. Self-paced digital training on cloud fundamentals will be made available to all employees of the bank. The AWS training also offers live classes with instructors, which can help upskill 2,000 participants over the next 24 months,” she added.