SCB X Public Company (SCBX) has taken a decisive step in Thailand’s virtual banking sweepstakes by formalising a tri‑party partnership with South Korea’s KakaoBank and China’s WeBank Technology Services.

The collaboration combines SCBX’s domestic banking muscle with KakaoBank’s mobile‑first product playbook and WeBank’s heavyweight tech stack, including AI and cloud‑scale infrastructure, to launch a new virtual bank in Thailand.

Also Read: How digital banking is driving financial inclusion in SEA

The announcement is less an experiment than a statement of intent. SCBX brings deep local distribution and regulatory know‑how; KakaoBank contributes proven UX design and product innovation from running Korea’s top digital bank; and WeBank supplies the plumbing — scalable core banking, data platforms and AI capable of supporting hundreds of millions of users. Together they aim to deliver an “AI‑native” bank that promises personalisation, operational efficiency and broader access to financial services.

How this will reshape banking in Thailand

Thailand’s incumbent banks are already digitising, but a native virtual bank built on modern cloud infrastructure and AI could accelerate disruption. The new entrant will compete on speed of product delivery, hyper‑personalised services, and lower operating costs. Expect simpler onboarding, faster credit decisions, contextual product recommendations and more competitive pricing for everyday banking services.

For consumers, the immediate effect should be convenience: fully digital account opening, frictionless payments, and AI‑driven customer support. For small and medium‑sized enterprises (MSMEs), the potential gains are more tangible. AI‑powered credit scoring that ingests alternative data (invoices, payment patterns, social commerce activity) could unlock working capital to businesses that have historically been underserved by traditional credit scoring. Embedded banking services (invoicing, payments, liquidity tools) integrated with the platforms many MSMEs already use would reduce administrative friction and cost.

On inclusion, the promise is absolute but conditional. A modern virtual bank can lower the cost of serving low‑income customers through digital channels, enabling small-ticket lending, micro‑savings, and tailored financial literacy tools. However, genuine financial inclusion requires careful product design, affordable pricing, digital literacy efforts and robust consumer protection. Without those, faster onboarding risks increasing over‑indebtedness or leaving digitally excluded groups further behind.

Where Thailand fits in the regional picture

Southeast Asia’s virtual banking sector is embryonic but fast evolving. Regulators across the region have been cautiously issuing digital banking licences to stimulate competition and inclusion, but outcomes have diverged.

• Singapore and Hong Kong moved early on digital licences, but the most dynamic greenfield activity is now in Southeast Asia. Thailand’s central bank has signalled openness to new digital players, creating fertile ground for SCBX’s venture.
• Indonesia has seen notable activity from incumbent conversions and fintech collaborations, but full virtual banks have struggled with market fragmentation and distribution costs.
• Malaysia has issued digital banking licences and attracted consortium bids; the challenge remains scaling customer acquisition beyond promotional offers.

Also Read: Why neobanks are better than digital banks

• The Philippines has a vibrant fintech ecosystem and several digital banks, buoyed by remittances and mobile money adoption; regulatory sandboxes have helped innovation, but funding and trust remain hurdles.
• Vietnam is an emerging battleground, with both local banks and tech firms experimenting with digital‑first offerings; regulatory clarity is improving, but infrastructure and consumer trust will define winners.

Key regional players include SeaBank and GXS Bank backers in Singapore, CIMB’s digital initiatives in Malaysia, and a range of fintech incumbents (Grab, GoTo) that are increasingly integrating financial services into super‑apps. Korea’s KakaoBank and China’s WeBank stand out as proven playbooks for customer experience, product velocity and scale — exactly the capabilities SCBX is importing.

Growth patterns and choke points across SEA

Growth in virtual banking across Southeast Asia has been steady but constrained. Several issues consistently throttle expansion:

1. Customer acquisition costs. The region’s fragmented markets and low per‑user revenue mean huge marketing spends to reach scale. Free promotions and sign‑up bonuses are costly and often unsustainable.
2. Regulatory complexity. Each country has distinct licensing frameworks and consumer protection rules. Compliance costs are high, and approvals can be slow. Cross‑border scaling requires careful legal and operational planning.
3. Trust and brand recognition. Banking is a trust business. New digital players must convince customers to deposit and borrow with them, a high bar without tangible endorsements or long track records.
4. Monetisation and unit economics. Many virtual banks struggle to convert trial users into profitable customers. Low average balances and thin margins on payments make profitability elusive without scale or diversified revenue streams.
5. Infrastructure and identity. Effective digital onboarding depends on reliable digital identity systems and payments rails. Where these are immature, onboarding friction increases costs and drop‑off rates.
6. Talent and tech costs. Building AI‑native banking capabilities requires specialised engineering and data science talent, and recurring cloud costs can be sizeable unless optimised.

Why this partnership matters

SCBX’s alliance with KakaoBank and WeBank attempts to tackle several of those choke points in one go. KakaoBank’s brand and UX expertise can lower acquisition friction; WeBank’s tech offers cost‑efficient scaling; SCBX’s local footprint eases regulatory navigation and distribution. Embedding AI from day one could accelerate productisation and lower per‑customer servicing costs.

But the partnership’s success will hinge on execution. Will the joint venture convert engagement into deposits and credit customers? Can it design safe, affordable products for MSMEs and low‑income users? And will it manage the unit economics so that growth is sustainable, not subsidised?

Also Read: What are Digital Full Bank and Digital Wholesale Bank licences?

The strategic play is sensible: combine global digital banking playbooks with local muscle. If they get product market fit right — marrying trust and convenience with genuinely useful MSME and consumer products — the virtual bank could be a material force in Thailand’s financial services market. If not, it will join a growing list of ambitious but under‑monetised digital challengers across Southeast Asia.

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A quiet revolution is taking place in computing where single board computers (SBC), which in the past were mainly used for industrial automation, are now being used by tech enthusiasts to run home automation, personal web servers, and even local artificial intelligence off the cloud. SBC manufacturers are taking note, with companies like Raspberry Pi, Lattepanda, RapidAnalysis, and even large companies like Google and NVIDIA producing consumer-oriented development boards aimed at the hobbyist market. 

Due to the form factor of these boards, a legacy CPU is often used to both minimise costs and operating temperatures. However, can these boards do anything useful? Actually, they can, if accelerated with special libraries and peripherals. 

Hardware acceleration

One such peripheral is the Google Coral Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), which is a small ASIC used to accelerate mathematical computations on low-power devices. Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) were first showcased during the crypto-mining boom when they were used as an efficient method to mine cryptocurrency.

Its superb efficiency is exploited by Google Coral to boost MobileNet V2 performance to almost 400 frames per second for image recognition, even on legacy or low-power CPUs. The Google Coral M.2 accelerator can provide 8 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of performance for just under US$40 by plugging into a PCIe M.2 port found on many high-end SBCs. 

Software acceleration

On the software side, the OpenVINO project can perform integrated GPU acceleration on older and current Intel CPUs, adding increases sometimes as much as 25 times faster. It does this by optimising operations, for example, fusing primitives like linear operations into convolutions. Projects converting Stable Diffusion models to OpenVino’s Intermediate Representation format have demonstrated GPU processing on Intel CPUs, albeit slowly. But sometimes the need for speed is not as important as the need for low power consumption, low noise, and low cost. 

Software apps

Since the Amazon Dot has snuck into our kitchens promising home automation, others who are creeped-out at the thought of Jeff Bezos listening in on their cooking conversations have opted for alternatives. HomeAssistant is an open source app that can run on your mobile device or web browser to help link wifi door locks, lights, and other home automation devices together to work through a single interface. Frigate is an open source real-time security camera video recorder built around artificial intelligence object detection.

Objects and zones for detection can all be configured and searched through a web interface. Both of these home automation apps offer a level or privacy not found in Amazon’s cloud-based devices. But the catch is that you need to run them on your own server, and setting one up can be a bit daunting and costly.

Also Read: Securing tomorrow’s metaverse today: Why safety in the new frontier must leverage on hardware

However, with both HomeAssistant and Frigate, a thriving market has developed where integrators and hardware vendors have started pre-configuring light-weight servers with these open source tools built in. Frigate has even implemented Google Coral integration, making a low cost AI accelerated image capturing device available to anyone interested in an off-cloud solution on their own device. 

Current cost of homelab SBC

• Google Coral Dev Board (US$169.99): Configured as a removable system-on-module (SoM) with host board, 4 GB RAM, and quad Cortex-A53. Runs a derivative of Debian Linux Google calls Mendel. Google Coral acceleration can also be run as a M.2, mSATA, or USB peripheral.
• NVIDIA Jetson Nano (US$149.00): Configured as a removable SoM with host board, 4 GB RAM, and Quad-core ARM Cortex-A57. The official operating system for the Jetson Nano is the Linux4Tegra, based on Ubuntu 18.04. This board uses the popular CUDA application programming interface.
• LattePanda V1 (US$165.00): Configured with an integrated processor, 4 GB RAM, 64 GB HD, and x86 Intel Z8350. This board can optionally come preconfigured with Windows and is the smallest x86 board available. Can run all x86 apps that can be run on regular PC platforms. Can be powered over POE with an optional Ethernet and 5V Power splitter.
• Raspberry Pi 5 (US$60.00): Configured with an integrated processor, 4 GB RAM, SD HD, and quad-core Arm Cortex-A76. Runs a derivative of Debian Linux. Is one of the most popular and least expensive boards with many peripherals and custom applications. Can be powered over POE with an optional Ethernet and 5V Power Splitter.
• RapidAnalysis Darius (US$64.82): Configured with an integrated processor, upgradable RAM (up to 8 GB), ungradable mSATA HD (up to 1T), x86 Intel N2840. Has an upgradable RAM slot that supports up to 8GB. Has two mSATA slots for SSD HD capacity up to 1T each or an optional Google Coral accelerator. Can run all x86 apps that can be run on regular PC platforms.

Sustainability

Measuring the environmental impact of cloud computing platforms compared to locally run low-power SBC alternatives may surprise you. A recent news story reported that “just one large data centre can consume the same amount of energy required to power 50,000 homes.” But what if each of these homes had an SBC powering most of their cloud-computing needs? New metrics are now focusing on “performance per watt” and efficiency is moving in the right direction. 

Graphics processors (GPU) have shown great strides in recent years against Central processors (CPU) efficiency, with NVIDIA and AMD showing the greatest gains in compute performance. However, when you compare compute power to how much electricity these processors are consuming, we can see that some processors are much more efficient.

Also Read: Embracing clean beauty: A path to conscious consumerism and sustainability

For example, the HAILO AI accelerator can perform 26 Tera-Operations per second while consuming only 2.5 watts of power, which makes it less costly, more powerful, and more energy efficient than rival NVIDIA’s Jetson Nano. In general, specialised chips like ASICs and FPGAs that perform a narrow set of functions can be useful in both conserving energy and breathing new life into older system architecture. The internet is full of new engineers turning old systems and SBCs into fully functional home labs. 

Learning curve

But even if you can’t afford the price of these low cost SBC computers, picking up a free PC from an e-waste facility or close-to-free from an eBay auction can be a viable solution to outfit a dedicated homelab. The strong-arm tactics used by Microsoft to bully its customers into upgrading to Windows 11 has pushed a lot of corporate PCs into retirement and picking up an older Windows machine from a large corporation for cheap or free off Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace is easier than ever.

Unfortunately, a learning curve still exists when setting up a Linux homelab server environment. But tools like Docker containers, Homepage Dashboard, and Webmin can provide a more friendlier web-based interface compared to the word-driven commands of the SSH Linux shell prompt. 

As homelab hobbyists and small-office IT professionals start bringing cloud services in-house, the demand for these small-footprint SBC computers will increase, creating a new market for pre-configured low-power personal servers.

Also, as more computers are deemed “worthless” by corporate IT standards, a new generation of engineers are using these systems as a playground for their own home lab versions of their work or academic networks, often with increased efficiency over their office-based counterparts. Hopefully, this will breathe new life into older hardware otherwise destined for a landfill. 

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Zara, the flagship brand of Inditex, is often held up as the gold standard of fast fashion. Since its founding in 1974 in Spain, the brand has expanded into over 90 countries, employing more than 165,000 people worldwide. Its appeal lies in its ability to get new designs from concept to store shelves in a matter of weeks, keeping shoppers constantly engaged with fresh trends.

At the heart of this success is a value chain that’s both agile and tightly controlled. Yet, that same machinery that fuels Zara’s rapid growth also carries environmental, ethical, and operational challenges that the brand can no longer afford to ignore.

A value chain built for speed

Zara’s supply chain is the engine behind its fast-fashion dominance. Approximately 57 per cent of its clothing production is handled internally in factories near its headquarters in Galicia, Spain. This proximity allows for quick turnarounds, high flexibility, and strong quality control.

The rest of its production is outsourced to a web of suppliers scattered across Asia, Latin America, and other parts of Europe. This global footprint includes more than 1,800 suppliers, with over 1,000 based in Asia. Core inputs such as fabrics and yarn are partly sourced internally—around 40 per cent from Zara’s own network—while the rest comes from countries like Portugal, Morocco, and Hong Kong.

The journey from fiber to fashion involves multiple steps: fibers are spun into yarn, woven or knitted into fabrics, dyed, printed, cut, sewn, quality-checked, and packed. Finished garments are then routed through “The Cube,” Zara’s central distribution hub, before reaching one of its 2,221 stores or shipping to customers in 66 online markets.

This vertically integrated approach has long been one of Zara’s key advantages, enabling it to pivot quickly to shifting fashion trends and avoid the months-long lead times that plague slower competitors.

The environmental cost of fast fashion

The fast-fashion model is built on speed and volume—but that comes with a heavy environmental price tag. Globally, the fashion industry produces about 100 billion garments annually, with 92 million tonnes ending up in landfills each year.

Zara’s operations, like much of the industry, rely on processes that are resource-intensive and polluting. Dyeing and fabric finishing contribute to water contamination, while the transportation of materials and products across continents adds to fashion’s estimated 10 per cent share of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Also Read: Why Vietnam’s digital bank licenses are the dark horse opportunity of 2026

As climate awareness grows, this footprint is becoming harder to justify. Consumers are increasingly questioning whether they need a constant influx of cheap, trendy clothing—especially when its lifecycle is often measured in months, not years.

Ethical pressures in a global supply network

Zara’s far-reaching supplier network has brought efficiency, but it has also exposed the brand to labor controversies. Allegations over the years have included long working hours, unsafe conditions, and low wages in countries like India, Argentina, and Brazil.

In response, Zara has strengthened its supplier code of conduct and increased audits, aiming to ensure fairer labor practices. However, maintaining consistent ethical standards across such a vast network remains a daunting task, especially in regions where local enforcement of labor laws is weak.

For a brand that markets itself on being responsive to customers’ needs, the challenge is to be equally responsive to workers’ rights.

Business resilience in a shifting retail landscape

The pandemic years highlighted just how vulnerable Zara’s model can be to external shocks. From 2020 to 2024, the company closed over 600 stores as in-person retail sales plummeted. Supply chain disruptions in 2022 led to delays and shortages, demonstrating the fragility of even the most sophisticated logistics systems.

Economic downturns and inflationary pressures have also tightened consumer spending, making shoppers more selective. For a brand that thrives on frequent purchases, this means adapting quickly—either by leaning further into e-commerce or by rethinking product cycles to better match consumer realities.

The technology factor: Risk and opportunity

Zara has long used technology to enhance its supply chain—from RFID tags for inventory tracking to data analytics for demand forecasting. Now, the stakes are higher. Artificial intelligence, automation, and digital design tools promise faster, more sustainable production cycles and reduced overstock.

For example, AI-powered demand sensing could help Zara produce closer to actual demand, cutting waste. Automation in cutting and sewing could speed up production while reducing errors. Virtual fitting tools could lower return rates and help customers make better purchase decisions online.

Also Read: Rebuilding the fast fashion model from the ground up: Grana’s Pieter Wittgen & Luke Grana

However, digitisation also introduces new risks. Greater reliance on connected systems means greater vulnerability to cyberattacks, data breaches, and privacy issues. As Zara integrates more technology into its operations, safeguarding data will become as crucial as safeguarding supply chains.

Can fast fashion be sustainable?

The central question for Zara—and for the fast-fashion sector as a whole—is whether speed and sustainability can truly coexist. Efforts like using more recycled materials, investing in cleaner dyeing processes, and setting science-based emissions targets are steps in the right direction.

But real change will require structural shifts: slowing down production cycles, encouraging repair and reuse, and being transparent about supply chain impacts. This goes beyond marketing campaigns; it demands rethinking the very business model that has made Zara successful.

Strategic moves for the future

To navigate this next phase, Zara will likely need to focus on four key strategies:

• Smarter demand forecasting: Leveraging AI and real-time sales data to fine-tune production and avoid overstock.
• Sustainable sourcing: Expanding the use of eco-friendly fabrics, water-saving dye technologies, and renewable energy across the supply chain.
• Stronger supplier accountability: Deepening partnerships with suppliers to ensure compliance with ethical labor standards, while providing support for improvements.
• Digital resilience: Investing in cybersecurity, privacy safeguards, and staff training to ensure technological tools enhance rather than endanger operations.

The balancing act ahead

Zara’s value chain is a study in contrasts: a highly efficient, vertically integrated system that also amplifies many of fashion’s biggest challenges. Its ability to turn trends into products at lightning speed has won it millions of customers—but the social, environmental, and operational costs are becoming harder to ignore.

As consumer expectations evolve toward sustainability and transparency, Zara faces a choice: maintain the status quo and risk falling out of step with its audience, or reimagine fast fashion for a world that’s increasingly demanding slower, more responsible production.

The company’s next moves will not only define its own future but may also shape the direction of the entire fast-fashion industry.

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Toku, a Singapore‑incorporated, cloud‑native AI customer‑experience (CX) platform, has closed its initial public offering on the SGX Catalist board, raising SGD16.25 million (about US$11.86 million) at SGD0.25 (roughly US$0.18) per invitation share.

The public offer attracted 1,115 valid applications for 63,888,300 public offer Shares (a subscription rate of 31.9 times) and the placement was fully subscribed. Post‑IPO market capitalisation stands at S$142.56 million (approximately US$104.17 million).

Key financial outcomes and market response

The market’s reception was strong. Institutional demand included top‑tier investors such as Lion Global Investors, Amova Asset Management Asia, Asdew Acquisitions, and Ginko‑AGT Global Growth Fund, signalling validation from sophisticated allocators. The oversubscription of the offer (nearly 32 times) demonstrates retail appetite and suggests effective pre‑listing positioning and investor relations.

Also Read: Why Toku’s public listing could reset expectations for Singapore startups

Toku enters the market on a credible growth trajectory. It reported revenue growth of 47 per cent and net revenue retention exceeding 150 per cent over the past three years for its subscription and licensing revenue stream. Those figures point to robust customer expansion and high retention among enterprise clients, both positive indicators for long‑term unit economics in a sector where churn can be fatal.

How Toku’s platform differentiates

Toku pitches itself not as another omnichannel vendor but as an enterprise‑grade stack purpose‑built for complexity. Its differentiation rests on three pillars:

• End‑to‑end ownership of stack and connectivity: Toku controls the full technology stack from carrier‑grade connectivity through to AI applications. That reduces integration friction and offers predictability in heavily regulated or fragmented markets where telco relationships and local routing matter.
• AI and governance designed for enterprises: The platform includes transcription, summarisation, sentiment analysis, conversation analytics and governed virtual agents. Crucially, Toku emphasises governed AI — controls and auditability that regulated industries and public‑sector customers demand, rather than loose, black‑box models.
• Deployment flexibility and market breadth: Support for commercial cloud, private data centres and hybrid setups gives Toku a technical edge in markets with strict data residency or compliance requirements. The firm’s modular 360° CX orchestration is tailored for multi‑market operations where linguistic, regulatory and infrastructure complexity is the norm.

Together, these elements position Toku to serve customers where standard SaaS CX vendors struggle: enterprises operating across jurisdictions, regulated sectors and high‑volume voice environments.

Primary strategic objectives post‑listing

Toku’s management has been explicit about its next moves. The IPO proceeds will be directed at three strategic priorities:

1. Global scaling of the platform: The management intends to accelerate international expansion, particularly within APAC, where multilingual and regulated markets create demand for Toku’s approach. Capital will fund localisation, sales expansion and strategic partnerships.
2. Deepening AI capabilities: Toku plans to invest in advanced AI features — more accurate speech models, better conversational analytics and stronger virtual‑agent orchestration — while maintaining governance and explainability for enterprise compliance.
3. Growth through M&A and partnerships: The company signalled appetite for strategic acquisitions to expand product breadth or accelerate market access. Partnerships with channel and systems‑integrator ecosystems will be crucial to reduce go‑to‑market costs in new territories.

Why the market is taking notice

Toku’s model addresses pain points that many enterprises still face: poor voice transcription in local dialects, fractured integrations across channels, and compliance hurdles when deploying cloud services across borders. High net revenue retention (above 150 per cent) suggests customers are expanding usage after initial deployment, a key validation in recurring‑revenue businesses.

Also Read: Toku files for SGX Catalist IPO, doubles down on partner-led go-to-market strategy

That said, execution risk remains. The competitive landscape is crowded with global incumbents (Cisco, Genesys), cloud‑native challengers and regional specialists, all vying for enterprise budgets. Toku’s success will depend on converting initial customer wins into scalable, repeatable logos and on maintaining margins while investing in high‑cost AI and infrastructure.

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With economic uncertainty comes opportunity. This is a timely phase for Asian businesses to build stronger customer relationships, enhance services and grow efficiently.

As you scale up your business, it’s also vital to provide an environment that attracts and, more importantly, retains skilled talent. Consider a ‘business as unusual’ approach to take stock of where you stand with customer expectations, use of technology and the employee experience to create the optimum setting for success.

Here are some of my thoughts.

Optimise digital technology 

With 350 million digital consumers, Southeast Asia is set to become the fastest-growing digital economy in the Asia Pacific. The pandemic pushed people in this region online at an aggressive pace, and businesses need to adapt and win digital consumers.

Technology allows even solo business operators to look prominent. But there is the catch — customers have come to expect technology to work seamlessly. Creating a website that is hard to navigate can create frustrated users and make companies appear unsophisticated. Whatever technology you use to connect to your customers and partners, make sure it is practical and easy to navigate.

Efficient technology solutions improve your customers’ experience and help you make vital decisions to grow your company. Data is the fuel for business success, from understanding and analysing competitors to tracking shipments or evaluating pricing.

As a global company, technology is core to our work, informing us of critical information we need to understand everything from a customer’s health concerns to the ordering of the raw ingredients used in our products that help improve people’s health.

We’ve designed customised technology to connect Herbalife to its distributors and the distributors to their customers for continuity and ease of product ordering and delivery. We enable our distributors to run their businesses more efficiently, whether they are in Asia or other parts of the world, regardless of their technology platform.

Grow or scale your business

Many business owners may hear the adage that managing and understanding company growth is challenging. What may have started as a solo operation may suddenly become a business needing additional resources.

Also Read: A tech worker should be all about improving customer experience: Kim Nguyen of Recruitery

When you’ve owned your business for a while, you start recognising areas that can be handled differently or by someone else. Once ready for this next step in your business, you can grow by adding resources, such as employees.

Scaling is increasing the profit of your business without significantly raising costs. An example is using technology to automate functions that previously required many employees, thus saving time and money while enhancing profit.

I am also a firm believer in having the right support network and mentor to provide seasoned guidance and advice on how to expand at the right pace. Our annual Herbalife Asia Pacific Entrepreneur Surveys consistently show that these two factors, built on top of good business fundamentals, are essential drivers of success and crucial when scaling your business.

Create immersive customer experiences

Asia is a diverse region, from cultures and ways of working to economic and developmental stages. Service expectations vary in each market, and if you are reaching out to an audience that sits across different markets, you must be able to cater to the customer’s needs accordingly. There is nothing worse for consumers than poor customer service.

How can you personalise the customer service experience, helping everyone feel heard, valued, and essential to the business? Focus on removing the pain point for the customer — from training customer support representatives to providing service representatives for your brand.

Technology offers many ways to connect to customers, yet it still needs to create a personal and not robotic connection. At Herbalife, technology augments the high-touch customer experience in direct selling so that our distributors can create individually tailored wellness programs for their customers, forge relationships and build communities.

Another way businesses can connect to customers is by using data to learn as much as they can about them how they shop and think. The more information you have on your target audience, the more you can create a seamless way for your customers to buy your products or services.

Also Read: The wave of layoffs in 2023 and the Vietnamese market

For example, our company has applications that enable distributors to provide an integrated physical and digital customer experience for their nutrition clubs and uses predictive AI to help our distributors deliver trusted brand experiences and take their business to the next level.

Be employee-focused

The pandemic taught businesses many important lessons, but perhaps the most important was that working in an office is not always vital for success. A recent study revealed that more than 56 per cent of employees in Asia Pacific want flexible work options. While the debate continues on whether or not remote working helps employee productivity, new ways of working are here to stay.

As a business leader, provide your teams with the technology tools to be productive. Dispersed teams need access to high-speed internet, webcam support, and ergonomic workstations that allow them to do their job and work seamlessly.

Managers must overcommunicate with their teams spread across a city or the world, ensuring they feel part of a connected work community that values them. Workers love being part of a larger, connected team, so incorporate scheduled meetings, one-on-one manager check-ins, and fun and engaging games and icebreakers.

Another lesson learned from the pandemic is prioritising employee health and well-being. This can include fitness memberships, mental health services, and other programs to allow employees to keep themselves mentally and physically fit.

Prioritise sustainable business practices

From solo practitioners to large multinationals, sustainability is good for our world and our customers. Consider sending fewer non-electronic communications, moving to sustainable packaging materials, and sourcing products from like-minded suppliers are all vital to the health of our planet.

Simple measures such as recycling at your office, determining how and when you travel, conducting more meetings digitally, and thinking of the environmental impact of your business can go a long way to doing your part to create more sustainable business practices.

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