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The HR department plays an important role within the organisation. Employee welfare, benefits, onboarding, social activities - all typically fall under the purview of the HR department. Of course, all these are executed by the HR professionals and executives themselves but without the strategic direction from top management, these HR initiatives and processes might not even take off.

Given that the workplace and employee needs are constantly changing, here are six things that you HR head should be doing right now to meet these evolving needs.

This week, we attended the Accounting & Finance Show Hong Kong that brought 1,500 attendees from SMEs and accountancy practices in Hong Kong. We are happy to meet up with the people who came by our booth to share on our online payroll software solution. With the high digital consumer rates in Hong Kong, many businesses are aware of the technological advancements such as digitalisation or software applications that can help employees manage administrative repetitive tasks.

With only eight working hours a day and a mountain of workload, most people would no doubt want to maximise their time in office.

However, how can one be truly productive at work when there are multiple "distractions" at work?

For starters, work constantly piles up every day. Once you have cleared a particular tasks, there will always be new tasks to work on. After all, that is the nature of work.

Then there is peer pressure. The pressure to appear busy and productive, as well as the pressure to take part in social activities and work lunches. However, if the company values face time over actually getting work done, employees will not have the incentive to be productive. Similarly, social activities and work lunches can leave employees drained from the social interactions, resulting in a less productive afternoon.

However, there are numerous ways to juggle multiple tasks while being highly productive as well.

The wages for service staff has been a longstanding debate. These particular group of employees are subjected to long working hours, even longer overtime hours and nasty remarks from customers - all for a meagre hourly rate figure.

In countries like United States, service crew can rely on tips to boost their daily or monthly earnings. According to the United States Department of Labor, the minimum hourly rate that a tipped restaurant service crew in United States earn is USD2.13 (SGD2.85) per hour. In general, the tipping rate in United States ranges between 15% to 20% of the total bill, depending on the quality of service. Most of the time, these tips are for the service crew themselves to keep.

In Singapore, there is no minimum wage law implemented. However, service crew in Singapore can expected to earn only about SGD6 to SGD10 per hour. Moreover, tipping is not customary in Singapore - even in restaurants. In some places, such as airport, airport staff are forbidden from accepting tips.

With this single-figure hourly rate, coupled with the 10 hours and 6 days work week that service crew are expected to work, this brings their monthly salaries to around SGD1,000 to SGD1,500 at best. Is this amount sufficient for service crew to get by? Certainly not.

The solution? Raise the hourly wages for service crew or implement a tipping culture in Singapore.