By Dr Mohd Nasir bin Mohd Ismail

During the early months of 2021, a group of 13 data analysts employed at Goldman Sachs conducted a survey to evaluate their job experience. The results were startling, with many of them reporting working up to 100 hours per week and sleeping at 3 a.m. in the morning. As a consequence of this work environment, their physical and mental health deteriorated significantly. These findings drew widespread media attention and were regarded as an exposé of the challenging and, in what some termed as, “inhumane working conditions” at Wall Street companies.  Despite this, some respondents to the exposé argued that these junior bankers were highly compensated and therefore should persist through the gruelling workload and maintain the status quo. On the other hand, Goldman Sachs found the data concerning and went on to implement changes including limiting work hours and increasing automation to reduce workloads.

Bank Negara Malaysia data show that around 165,000 people work in the financial services sector in Malaysia. As Malaysia strives to develop its sustainable banking sectors, it is crucial to acknowledge that fostering a healthy workplace is a critical step towards this objective. Without a healthy workplace, Malaysian companies could experience high employee turnover and a loss of talent, which could have significant repercussions for the country’s financial sector. Therefore, it is vital to start addressing toxic and unhealthy workplace issues and create a healthy work environment for all employees in this sector.

What is an Unhealthy Workplace?

A toxic or unhealthy workplace is a workplace that harms the physical and mental health of workers. It is imperative to recognise that workplaces can impact individuals differently. However, any workplace that negatively affects the physical or mental health of its employees could be regarded as toxic or unhealthy. Therefore, the individual worker’s experience should be used as the criterion for assessing workplace toxicity and unhealthiness. Nonetheless, aggregating data from all workers in each workplace can provide a more precise picture of that workplace.

A toxic or unhealthy workplace can have detrimental effects on the company, such as high employee turnover, loss of talented workers, decreased productivity and profitability, and hindering innovation. This toxic or unhealthy workplace can also impact the workers inside and outside of their employments, including affecting their relationships at home and, studies have demonstrated that women working in high-stress work environments reported countless reproductive issues, including miscarriages. Hence, it is imperative that the banking and financial sector in Malaysia actively work towards eliminating toxic or unhealthy workplace.

Towards a Healthy Workplace

The pathway towards a healthy workplace should be laid down by data. Data will allow companies to assess, intervene, and evaluate their state of workplace health. Using data to create a healthy workplace allows us to have a systematic and well-informed approach. Data also allows us to evaluate the changes incorporated so that their efficacy and impact could be understood. There are a few pathways to using this data, including training human resource (HR) personnel on data, assessing the current workplace using survey tools, creating interventions based on recommendations by workers and empirical evidence and shift the paradigm towards a healthy workplace.

Train HR Personnel on Data

The use of data can shed light on the impact of work on employees. Therefore, today’s HR personnel should be trained in data collection and analysis. Such training can be considered a means of upskilling and accumulating micro-credentials that will greatly benefit companies. Many workers in developed nations consider training and upskilling to be essential for talent growth, so providing data training will enable Malaysian workers to stay ahead of the curve. These data gathering and analysis skills will be highly utilised by HR personnel as companies becoming more digitalised.

It is crucial to recognise that data training for HR personnel should cover quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods data, as data can be collected in various forms in the workplace. It is ideal for the trainers to have extensive academic and real-world experience, so the data training is aimed at continuous improvement rather than just for the purpose of publication. HR personnel equipped with data gathering and analysis skills can play a crucial role in collecting and analysing data at both micro and macro levels within the workplace. In addition, they can use this data to implement effective interventions and evaluate their impact on the organisation. Hence, providing data training for HR personnel is setting the foundation towards a healthy workplace.

Assess the Workplace

It is imperative that organisations actively work in assessing their workplace. A survey tool should be developed with the objective of giving the organisation an aggregated data of the workers’ experience in the workplace. This survey should assess various characteristics of healthy and unhealthy workplaces and demands the involvement of a social and behavioural scientist who is familiar with those characteristics.

The survey should be conducted in both our national language and English and translated versions should also be provided for foreign workers who do not speak either language so that we are inclusive to all employees. The data gathered through this survey should be kept confidential to respect the privacy of individuals and so that no backlash is experienced by the workers.

By gathering aggregated data through such survey, organisations can evaluate their workplace and identify necessary interventions. Without this kind of survey tool, organisations are left to operate based on anecdotal evidence or limited exit interview data. So, such surveys could provide a more comprehensive data of the state of the workplace.

Interventions Based on Social and Behavioural Science Theories

Once the workplace has been assessed through the survey, it’s important to identify necessary interventions based on the data. Items which performed poorly should be given attention so that interventions can be implemented. It is also recommended to ask employees for their suggestions and allow them to rate the interventions they would like to see in their organisations.

Focus groups and interviews can be used to collect suggestions and a mini survey can be used to rate them based on factors such as feasibility and impact. By allowing workers to evaluate interventions, organisations can make the most impactful changes. This participatory approach to interventions can help organisations make the necessary changes based on the lived experience of workers.

Interventions need not be expensive and challenging as organisations could even start at interventions deemed as low hanging fruits. Regardless, it is advisable to seek input from social and behavioural scientists in shaping these highly rated interventions. These scientists will help to ground the interventions based on empirical evidence and fine-tune these interventions to achieve maximum impact.

Changing Paradigm Towards a Healthy Workplace

A healthy workplace is not just something good to have but something that could influence productivity and profitability of every organisation. In Malaysia, the ultimate objective of building a sustainable banking sector should guide us in prioritising workplace assessment and intervention efforts aimed at creating a healthy work environment. This might call us to change our paradigm by paying a lot of attention to the state of our workplace.

Resistance from those who prefer the status quo may arise and often these individuals become a major barrier to the changes need to take place in our workplace. One method to battle this resistance is by using data, narratives, and scientific literature. Empirical evidence through data and other studies is the only robust method we could utilise to strive towards a healthy workplace. Furthermore, forward-thinking HR leaders who understand the importance of a healthy workplace must spearhead this paradigm shift, which can inspire others to follow suit. Ultimately, this change can benefit workers and the banking sectors in Malaysia.

In conclusion, data plays a crucial role in achieving a healthy workplace in Malaysia. Working without data can be ineffective, as data empowers us to understand the current state of workplace health and make the necessary changes needed in our workplace. Hence, it is time for the banking and financial sector in Malaysia to work towards a healthy workplace by using data.

Dr Mohd Nasir bin Mohd Ismail  obtained his PhD. in social and behavioural science from Johns Hopkins University. He also has a master’s in energy and mineral engineering and a bachelor’s in Physics from Penn State University. He has vast experience in conducting research in assessing and improving workplace environment in multiple countries. Currently, he serves as the Chief Scientific Officer at m5 Solutions Sdn Bhd. He is passionate about fostering healthy, productive, and profitable work environments for individuals and organisations worldwide through the power of data. He firmly believes that the key to unleashing the full potential of any workforce lies in creating and maintaining a genuinely healthy work environment for the employees. This healthy work environment is imperative to increasing productivity and profitability for all global organisations.