Work Different: 10 Truths for Winning in the People Age – With Guest Kate Bravery | HR 69

Hi, welcome to the podcast HR inside out. I'm your

host is Rene and I'm absolutely delighted to welcome our guest

Kate bravery to our time together today. Kate's one of

the co authors of the recently published book, work different

10 truths for winning in the people age. It is absolutely

excellent. When I would highly recommend you consider reading

and one that we're going to be delving into today. Welcome,

Kate.

Well, it's great to be here. Susan, I'm really

been excited about coming on your show. So thank you so much

for inviting me.

Thank you. Now first a little bit about you for our

listeners. Kate is let me go. I just want to share how wonderful

you are, first of all, Kate's a corporate psychologist and a

Mercer's Global Advisory solutions and insights leader.

She's a senior partner with 25 years of experience advising

executives on global talent trends in the future of work.

She's UK chartered occupational psychologist with an MSc in

occupational or sorry, Organizational Psychology, and

an MBA. She has expertise in people strategy, talent

management, assessment and leadership development and HR

process design. Kate commenced her career with American Express

where she focused on new employee orientation and its

impact on culture and integration. Her interests in

cross cultural leadership and decision making had been

constant throughout her career. Her technical background lies in

people strategy, design of talent management solutions,

organizational development, performance and succession

management systems, assessment and high potential development,

as well as career architecture and job leveling. Wow. Kate is

currently living and speaking to us from Brighton in the United

Kingdom. Let's dive right in if that's okay with you.

Yeah, absolutely. This isn't just listening to

that list of things. I think that says just how old I am more

than anything else. I have been around for a while and done this

for a while. But

I don't know about that. But certainly why it's so

keen, I'd like to actually start my questions in the back of the

book. And where are you summarize your data with what

you term as the 10 truths for winning in what you term as the

people age? Now, the first of these is good by employees.

Hello, contributors. Can you tell us more about this?

Yes, absolutely. You know, it was interesting,

because when we were thinking of writing the book, we just come

out of the pandemic. And I think everybody was recognizing that

everyone has taken the moment that, that pause, to reflect on

their work. And one of my truths that I learned during this

period was no one wants to work for you, doesn't matter how good

your paying compensation your benefits are, doesn't matter how

inspiring your culture is, no one wants to work for you. They

do want you to work with them. And that for me, it was the seed

of the shift that we've seen, from what we call an employee

mindset, to a contributor mindset, that let me just give

you a flavor of some of the things we not only observed

inside our company, but we started to see in our research,

the employee mindset is work life balance, you and I know

about it, you know, I'll shift my life to fit around the

companies and, you know, I'm doing that juggling act. You

know, I want to long you know, our long term career, you know,

I expect to be trained for my job and, and then I will be re

skilled. And, you know, I'll do my time, I'll climb my ladder.

And, you know, I will to a certain degree work within the

lines. And also, I want to know, what is the company culture, and

that will fit in with that. And that's what we grew up on. And

yet what I'm now seeing, I have the privilege of doing vs global

talent trends study every year, what I'm now seeing is, the new

generation coming in just has a really different perspective.

They don't work life balance, they want lifestyle integration.

They are, you know, if you want me to bring my best self to

work, it needs to fit around some of my life objectives. And

they don't want that long term career path. They want to know

what's next now, and they want to be valued for the skills they

bring today. They don't see their worth being defined by

career levels and roles. There's a little bit of that, but they

expect that their worth is defined by their contribution.

They also want to contribute more than just profit. And

that's a really big theme this year we see in the data, and

they want to shake things up, you know, they want to play an

active role in shaping the values of the company and

impacting its culture. And I think that's really vibrant and

exciting. But boy, are we underprepared. Yeah, to respond

to that new way of working and that new set of expectations

that are on managers.

And that's the contribution. Yeah, that's a

contributor.

And you know what we wrote this about a year ago

now, and we've just released this year's global talent Trends

report. And it really reflects that shift because we ask every

year Yeah, it's about 14,000 voices around the world, what

helps you thrive. And this year, the number one is what helps me

thrive is a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, feeling

valued for my contribution, and being able to contribute beyond

just that profit. So we have seen that shift. And these were

the things at the top of the list when you are not at the

peak of our career.

You know, it's interesting, they may not have

been at the top of the list. But I think probably as important,

we just weren't in a position to, or we didn't articulate

that, or, you know, we were just not prepared

to Susan, I agree with you. We just weren't so

vocal on this. And the other thing I've been fascinated by

and I know this links into the chapter on stressed out burnout,

and quietly quitting is the Gen Zed, how vocal they are on

health and well being and mental health. And I agree with you. I

don't think that wasn't there before. It's just we didn't talk

about it. Yeah,

yeah. Well, it's interesting because your second

truth is stressed out, burnt out and quietly quitting. And I

certainly wasn't surprised to see the stressed out and burnt

out pieces, particularly the impact of the pandemic. But this

quiet quitting intrigued me and you shared in the book, The

Gallup estimates that half of us employees are already close to

quiet quitting. That's a really somber second truth. And I

suspect just it's not just pertinent with the younger

generations of workers. What, what have you found to be the

major contributors of this quiet quitting, and for our listeners,

quite quitting as a worker putting in the jobs, minimum

requirements and to know more?

You know, what's interesting, I mean, you just

mentioned there, the whole stressed out, burnt out and

quietly quitting. And I can just tell you, one of the press, that

burnout rate has actually gone up this year globally. So we are

not heading in the right direction before the pandemic,

it was down to the low 60% of people felt they might be at

risk of burnout this year. Straight off the pandemic,

because we are always working in new ways of working at Shut up

to 80s. And now in the US is 84%. That is staggering. And 40%

of the workforce in the USA 39% globally 49 40% In the US, that

work is fundamentally broken. So we've got some problems that we

need to fix. And the book is not pessimistic, I think the books

very optimistic. But this one particular particularly, I

think, is a really intriguing phenomenon because it was coined

when you had people speaking on Tik Tok and others about if I'm

not basically getting a fair deal, and the psychological

contract with my boss or the company is broken, I'm going to

do the bare minimum I need. And it's almost the flip side of

that. employee advocacy that we were just saying, and we were

just saying, This Shut up, and we're praising. But it's when it

when it goes over too much to the point that you cannot

embrace some of the exciting technological transformation

that's happening, because you've got a workforce that's putting

the brakes on, that is really the bare minimum. And I think

there's a few things that are feeding into it. Either one

thing that's come up as having a really big impact on people's

intent to stay, their engagement, their sense of

thriving, not being at risk of burnout is trust, how much they

trust their manager, how much they trust the organization to

do the right thing by society, and more recently, how much they

trust, senior leadership to make good business decisions. Now,

this is a very different relationship that employees are

having with their work. And one of the things we asked in our

recent study is what erodes trust, because we have seen that

trust has dropped quite a bit this year. And when it drops,

you get a number of things, you get people taking more time off,

but you also get this quiet quitting phenomenon. And what

they said was, number one, broken promises. So we're flip

flops on things like flexible working. Number two, frequent

org changes, you know, you and I know there's going to be more of

them happening this year, an unfair treatment. And the unfair

treatment is interesting, because we also said to people,

why do you stay with your company this year, we have

listed 20 items and what has shot up into the top position.

fair pay, not absolute pay, fair pay, and it's not a surprise

we've got pay transparency laws coming in across the US. We've

got pay equity laws, we've now got new sustainability reporting

in the EU. You can actually just reach into your pocket, grab out

your whatever your check GBT is and say how much I pay pay for

this. We are living in a world where people's worth is very

clear. We've had more people go on strike in the last few years

than we have seen in decades. People pool are feeling the

pinch of the cost of living. They're evaluated, whether

they're getting a fair deal, and when they don't feel they're

getting a fair deal they're putting the brakes on. And I

think that lower engagement and that preparedness just to not

put in that time or go, what we would say above and beyond, is a

real risk. Because when people are in the right role that fits

their motivation, and they're inspired. You get all of that

great thing. And I'm not saying we all have to be workaholics

and work crazy hours. But we're not clock watching. Because

we're actually thinking, Oh, my gosh, how much of this great

work? Can I get done? Before I'm clocking off, as opposed to? How

much do I need to churn for until I can kind of close my

laptop, that's a different mindset. And we need more of

that in our organizations. And, you know, when we look at trust,

we know that, you know, trust goes both ways. We have to be

trust people, and we have to be trustworthy. Flexible Working

was a good experiment around that. But you know, and trust is

reciprocal, if you give trust you gain trust. If we want our

organizations to be dynamic and responsive, we have to defer

more power to a workers which requires trust, but they also

need some guardrails as to route to, what does that look like?

Particularly this generation that didn't get socialized in

the same way you and I got socialized? And, and that I

think has led to some, some issues. And, and we do know that

it, we want to build that trust and reduce the incidences of

quiet quitting. You know, we need to show competence as

business leaders, we need to show benevolence doing the right

thing by our people. And we need to show integrity, which has

been a lot more honest and transparent. And that includes

about some of the equity gaps that maybe we haven't made as

much progress on in the past.

Lot for organizations to be contending with and

understandably, really important.

Yeah, absolutely. And there is a lot to contend

with. I think the most important thing this year is setting a few

clear goals, being vocal about them, and staying the course on

them. Because you're right, we're living in a much more

complex world. And there's a lot of issues to tackle.

While that, yes, yes. And I've thought of many, many

things as you've been talking, and we could make this podcast

three hours. So I'm, hopefully going to touch them and some of

the other truths, get passionate about the book. And one of one

of them was passion. Because I know when I've worked with a

team that I think I know, I've called a team that just hummed.

And it was just, it was just such a pleasure to work with the

individuals, we love the work we were doing, and it made such a

difference. So, you know, as

a team is quite quitting, or if they're

inspired, because you can feel it, you can smell it, you can

see it. And it's so invigorating, and it transcends

culture, gender generations. And we need to get that right.

Particularly, when, you know, we're ushering in a new age of

human machine teaming, which is exciting and scary at the same

time.

And we're gonna get into some of that, that new

technology a little bit later in the podcast. The third truth is

that it doesn't pay to stay. And you do talk about a number of

positives for the individual, such as the gaining of new

experiences through the those kinds of moves. But man, that's

tough on organizations. Yeah, just, you know, the whole

retention, recruitment, retention challenge. The

colleagues left behind the impact on them. Your thoughts?

It's one of the truths of this paper.

For Mercer, which is basically the largest

conversation firm in the world. It was an unusual, I think

chapter for us to, to kind of get out there. But the, you

know, the reason why we ended up having this chapter was because

myself and my co authors were actually in airport, and we

overheard somebody who I think worked in HR, basically, on the

end of the phone talking about this issue. And they were

saying, you know, I know we can't hold on to our people. I

know that they're leaving, they were saying, there's nothing we

can do. Yes, you know, we've got a good brand and good training

when they come in. But we don't give them you know, long term

benefits. We don't share our equity. You know, there isn't

much of an incentive for them to stay past two years. And then

the peaceful resistance, they started to say, actually, I

worry more about the people who stay rather than the people who

go because the people who stay are the ones that don't have the

confidence to go elsewhere. And obviously, myself and my

colleagues because we work in HR, you know, started listening

into this thinking, Gosh, when did we get this so wrong that a

people leader or an HR leader is resigned to The fact that that

compensation planning is kind of tying their hands. And so we did

a bit of research to have a look at well actually, does it pay to

stay? If I was a switcher, rather than a Stayer? Do I end

up earning more or less? And so on first blush, you are

absolutely right. And I think in 2023, those that left got 16.4%,

average pay change. And that was a lot higher than what it was

3.8 that you got for people who stayed. So on first blush,

particularly in certain markets, like the US. You can earn more

by job hopping. And is that really what we want to respond?

Do we really not value loyalty, we did another piece of research

that showed, if you have a more tenured member of the team who

has been with the organization, 1520 25 years, they actually

have a positive impact on people staying not just with the people

around them, how they have a positive impact on the Gen Zeds.

And the Gen Xers wise as well. So there really is something to

this. And of course, it is cheeky, because actually, we

believe that when you stay, you build social capital, when you

stay, a lot of the psychological safety, you know, can be built

up and are where we innovate, it doesn't pay to stay in your

current role for too long. And Arkfall is for greater urgency

in building more vibrant talent marketplaces, moving people

around quicker. And dare I say, moving people out of fixed jobs

into either flex or flow roles. What I mean by that is, a

proportion of their time can be spent on learning or internal

gigs, or fully flow roles. Because the reality is, we're

literally running out of people, we don't have enough talent to

meet our future needs. And that's without even putting on

the demographic time bomb that is happening. And so we have to

value our human resources a lot more than we have in the past.

And we need to build more agile talent models, so they can

contribute in more ways quicker. And you know what the

interesting thing is, they stay longer when you do that, Oh,

absolutely. One of the big reason they're leaving, is

because they gotta wait a whole year until I can be considered

for a promotion. I don't want this retrospective performance

management engine dictating my future, I'd rather get out and

do something else. We also see that many of the young people

want to have gigs on the side. And there's some really

progressive companies in the book that are figuring out how

to do that, and how to reward loyalty. But yeah, it's it's one

of those truths that many people in HR know, that hasn't figured

out yet how to fix. And AI is actually playing a role in

helping us kind of personalized packages and fix some of that,

so that we don't get inequity between hire people who come in,

and people who've stayed, as well as between the genders.

I think it's really important for organizations to

become more creative, and in figuring out those growth

opportunities. And I am going to be asking about AI a little bit

further on. So why don't we hold that that piece for a little bit

later? The the fourth truth, it talks about that purpose rules

and empathy wins. And you've talked a little bit about it

already about how critical it is for articulation of a purpose

that people can believe in. And the importance of alignment of

decisions with that purpose. Oh, how true that purpose and

cultural alignment have never been more important. Are you

seeing that that's finally being recognized and the work that you

do with with the organizations who work with

you know, what, I actually believe we are seeing a

big shift on this than we have in the past. We saw a bigger

shift last year, when when the labor market was a little bit

different. I think when the labor market when people don't

trust the labor market and that they'll get another job, then I

think it swings a bit more to the employer, but I think we are

seeing really good strides on that one. We are seeing

employees asking the companies to come off mute on what they

stand for. We have seen that this year. executives have said

the one area we have to make progress on is around ESG and

sustainability reporting. And that was global. And that really

surprised me because it does have a political undertone. Yes.

And I also have heard anecdotally in the report that

many managers say I have to be able to answer questions about

what are we doing in the markets we operate? How much does the

diversity of our workforce represent them? What is the

gender balance in senior leadership? I get questions

around our board diversity, I get questions on what we're

doing around net zero. I don't know about you, I didn't ask

that of a prospective employer. But that is the reality we're

in. So I think the younger generation being as vocal as we

started off this conversation, saying they are beginning to

say, there's, there's nowhere to hide. Now you've had investors

over the last few years really putting a focus on kind of the

environmental side of ESG. They really switched attention now to

the s. And so they're looking for more sustainable people

models, they're looking at progress on di, they're looking

at human capital disclosures around equity and fair pay all

these topics we've just been talking about. That's put that

on the corporate agenda. And I think that's quite exciting. The

other thing is, young people want to be part of that. And so

more and more, they're asking for proportion of their work to

be in some of these social responsibility areas. And that

also, I think, is giving some momentum to organizations on

this agenda, we still got a long way to go. And don't get me

wrong. But I do think how an organization translates its

values into things like inclusive benefits, is a

conversation that just wasn't happening five years ago, you

know, what do we mean? What are we doing for same sex marriages?

What are we doing for women's reproductive health? What are we

doing with regard to living wage around the world? Do we care

about these topics? And if so, what does that mean for the

total reward package we offer? And I think that's exciting.

Also an opportunity for some of those creative

opportunities within organizations to involve

employees in in some of those reach outs, some of the

community engagement involvement. So very, very

positive send you as you say, the book has got a lot of

positives and lots of really great ideas. You talk a lot

about empathy and the book and the importance of it. And that's

about walking, understanding what it means to walk in someone

else's shoes. It seems that you found this to be a really

critical piece. And I think we're going to move into some

examples and some of the other truths, but talk a little bit

more about empathy and and how important that's been.

But I think we all learn about empathy. During the

pandemic, we started to see the person behind the machine, the

job, the Zoom tile, and that was really positive. I also think

executives learn to be humble and transparent, even when they

didn't have the answer, or good things. Now, as we face economic

headwinds and tailwinds, and we need to tighten our belts, we

need to make sure that we've balanced that empathy with

economics. And I think the two do go together. You just

mentioned there about, you know, we've talked about ESG and Dei,

you know, we've got to make sure that we're not just a fair

weather organization, and we invest in those things when

we've got abundance, and we pull back on them when we don't,

that's a real risk for your talent, attraction and

retention. You know, therefore, balancing economics and empathy,

for me is saying, every time we talk about our corporate goals,

it's not just our profit, and our revenue goals we talk about,

we talk about what are our goals with regard to society, to the

environment, to employees to customers, and making firm

commitments on them in exactly the same way we will on our

financial areas. We did some work a number of years ago,

which is in the book with the World Economic Forum on what

constitutes good work, and urging companies to set bold

goals. By 2030. We will upskill X employees to keep them

employable. By 2035, we will ensure flexible working for all,

by 2025. We will ensure living wage by all these are some of

the commitments that I think help organizations deliver on

that promise of stakeholder capitalism. Hold them

accountable for for making sure. And I know we're going to touch

on that. As we bring in new opportunities with AI. They

actually benefit the humans in our organization, and benefit

society. And I think keeping an eye on that is more important

now than it's ever been. So I do think balancing economic and

Empathy means some tough work about building in those other

goals into your life. In else, and galvanizing the organization

to make progress on them in the same way that we have in the

past on the purely corporate or shareholder agenda.

Just for our listeners, the good work

framework, as outlined by the World Economic Forum lists five

elements of what they term good work, it's probably a good good

place to insert this. These being and they are wonderful, a

healthy, equitable, resilient and human centric future of

work, respecting fundamental rights across in person hybrid

and virtual work for all workers. That's a pretty

wonderful thing to aspire to.

It is and I know that there's about 30 companies

that have signed up with goals on there. And there's some

really innovative ones in the in the health and wellbeing space

where people have said, year on year, we want to reduce stress

related illnesses by one or 2%. And when we've got non

communicable diseases rising, we've got the stress incidences

that we were talking about earlier, we've got young

generations impacted by physical and mental health. sending some

of those bold goals I think, demonstrates that you care back

to what builds trust, what ensures that you don't get quiet

quitting, it's all the things we've just been chatting about.

And it's the alignment to, you know, setting

a purpose and making decisions that are actually consistent.

Make sure that the EVP promises, actually the lived

experience, and that is really important, and that it's

congruent between your customer brand experience and your

internal brand experience. And there's some good examples in

the book of I think, who's getting that right. And where

there might be some some misses. Because, you know, we live in a

transparent social media world, you know, people sniff that out

pretty quick. Yeah,

absolutely. And it's something that people talk about

around the water cooler and the pubs. So it's, it's the

transparency is certainly broader with with what the

reality is. The next truth is trust and accountability. We've

talked about about that. The importance of that delivering

psychological safety, the climate of learning innovation,

I think we've probably touched on that sufficiently. So I'm

gonna move to the sixth truth, which talks about the new rhythm

of work. And I, there were a couple of points under this

truth that I want to delve into. And again, we've touched on it,

but I want to go deeper, that if we want to inspire the next

generation, in our workplaces, we need to redesign workplaces

around their diverse needs and interests, tackling head on what

demotivates them disengagement and disengages them, and you

talk about the need to flex loudly. I love that term. And I

think you've you've talked about flex what's flex loudly? And

this individual interests being critical importance. And again,

there's that empathy piece that comes into it, because it's

about recognizing what those are for the individual. Yes, what's

flex loudly and an example of an exam. That's done effectively.

You know, I think, Gosh, we've all been obsessed

with flexible working, have returned to Office ever since

the pandemic period. You know, first, that wonderful digital

experiment, where before the pandemic, very few leaders

thought we could ever work remotely, and then their eyes

were opened, and then none of us wanted to come back. You know, I

know I'm only talking about a segment of society here. But

boy, we've been on a journey on this. And you're right, flexible

working does relate to some of the other topics we've talked

about, such as trust and just getting enough agility into our

workplaces. And in the book we talk about when we consider

flexible working, let's move away from just talking about

where you work, because it's not about being on site, off site or

hybrid, particularly as we want to get flexible working

happening for non knowledge workers and frontline workers

who are pretty fed up during the pandemic didn't have that

option. You know, and we in the book introduced the six

dimensions of flexible working that we have Mercer evaluate

each jobs potential on and AI is a big part of that how if we

look at how tasks could be allocated to AI, you could

actually reduce certain dependencies and allow for more

flexible working, but the flex loudly is whatever your company

policy is. If there are times when you are flexing out of

work, be because, you know, you like to take Friday mornings off

to play golf. And you know, you've worked that into your

schedule, and that's fine. Talk about it, you know, share with

people that you're doing that if you are working a full shortened

week where you've taken a 20% pay cut or a 10% pay cut, and

you're doing a nine day fortnight, don't hide that I

think what's been happening is we've got lots of exceptions.

And there are exceptions for very good reasons, but no one is

talking about it. And then you have a situation of the haves

and have nots, and people don't really understand why. What this

period has forced us to do is to set some really good rules and

expectations about when you need to be in the office, when you

need to be out of the office, which jobs should flex which job

shouldn't flex, how we can think about the how work is being done

and who does the work, and shifts and sheduled. You know, a

lot of the things that went out of fashion, like job sharing

really support people with children at home. The

opportunity to go down to a three day workweek really

supports people who want to phase retirement, there are lots

of benefits of thinking really creatively, as opposed to the

more Sledgehammer approach. And here's what's interesting this

year, in our global talent trends study, we asked how many

companies last year made changes to flexible working and how many

more make changes this year. Spoiler alert, about half of

still making changes. So we haven't landed. But 32% went

towards more flexible working and 10% encouraged on site. And

we asked the 32 why? And they said because it's driving up

productivity, and it's increasing employee engagement

back to that quit quitting. That one ones that said they're

encouraging more on site said it's because our people aren't

learning the corporate behaviors they need. Our managers have

difficulty managing remote and hybrid teams, we've had an

increase in mental health issues. And we're worried about

cyber risk. And I think I think that just shows that you haven't

got it right. And we need to invest more in managers in

having a constant conversation around flex working, because

what what I wanted six months ago was different to what I want

now. And it's gonna probably be different in six months time.

The companies that are getting it right, are recognizing it's

not a once and done, it's nuanced to the job, and what how

you show up in the job. And it might be influenced by people's

life stages and the lifestyle contract that they want.

Yes, yes, yes. And yes. Those those those critical

conversations, and I love that the new generations in

particular are insisting that that we actually have those.

Yeah.

Before we're asking them, which I think is

good, because we're not playing catch up the boy, it can be

overwhelming.

Yeah, it can. And that, you know, I certainly feel

for people who are over seeing people, because if you're not

provided those skills, of having those kinds of conversations of

recognizing that those conversations are really

important, which certainly wasn't in any of the accredited

education that that I received. And I suspect that that it

probably, I know it's gotten better. So those are also

positives. Just continuing to think about the whole

individualization you speak about what you term as a

principal agent being an important stakeholder because of

course, there's many stakeholders and all of the

stuff that we're talking about. Now, as I read the section like

the Union came to mind. And my involvement with unionization is

that it's all about the collective. It's not about

individual interests. Have you found in your work that unions

are starting to become more like recognizing more of that some of

the old historic rote step seniority? Not paying attention

to individual it's all about the collective is starting to change

to this people age new reality.

I think you're absolutely right, Susan. We do

need to evolve, how we interact with work councils and unions

around the world. And they need to evolve how they work with us

because we've got a talent crisis coming. We've really

struggled to meet employees expectations around the world on

pay, given the cost of living crisis. We've got people going

to stripes because Because of AI coming in and infringing the

copyrights on their work, or disrupting their work,

livelihood because of the opportunity to do more platform

business. So we are rife with conversations. And one of the

things I benefited from on writing this book is having

people from different parts of the world. So Ilya bionic, who's

the president of Korea, Mercer is based in the US. And chi

Anderson, who leads on transformation in Europe is

based in Germany. And it was just wonderful comparing Germany

and the US. And it's interesting, because in Germany,

we see that we look pay disparity between new hires, and

legacy, minuscule, because of the work councils. You know, in

the US, do we have investors in the US saying, this hiring, and

then riffs and then hiring and then riffs, is actually not the

most respectful way to manage talent, and actually, is a

signal that maybe you don't have a sustainable people model, you

don't see that in other parts of the world where it's more

difficult to let people go. Now, there's the flip of that. You've

also got some of those in more ageing economies, where we've

got to bring more vibrance, and we've got to be able to make

changes more quickly, because employees, the individualistic

piece you were talking about is demanding it. And so I think

both parties are recognizing that if we're going to bring the

agility into our talent models we need, we need a different way

of working together. Because you know, this year, although

executives around the world are bullish on growth, I think got

predicting, you know, 10 to 15%. top line, one in two says, we

don't have enough agility in our talent models to deliver on that

growth. And that is related to some of this rigidity, which has

come from these long, protracted discussions on all aspects of

work, and work negotiation.

Thank you. We're moving to AI. Choose seven talks

about skills being the real currency of work. Can you talk a

little bit about what you mean by skills? And let's move into

AI? What's the impact? You talked in the book about when

you your skills become devalued? By AI, that they also will take

a hit in adjacent fields. So over to you, let's let's get

into this very important. Development. Yeah, well,

you're you're now on my favorite topics. So I am

as fascinated as everybody else's on AI coming into our

workplaces, and what will be the impact on the workforce, the

future skills that is needed in that workforce, and actually how

we will work together with more human machine teaming. And

although I think we all agree that, you know, AI is not going

to take away whole jobs. In fact, there's a really nice

quote. I'm gonna forget the gentleman's name. There's a

really nice quote by Stephen Baldwin. He said, AI won't take

your job, but someone who knows AI Better with You probably

will. And I think you're right is about the skill. In an even

though, AI augments at the task level, our research shows that

up to 80% of roles will be touched by AI. And what we saw

in our research is executives, are expecting some real

productivity loss by bringing AI into the firm, the majority of

them think it's going to be at least 30%, which is staggering.

And employees are worried about what does that mean for me? Are

you going to expect me to work harder, because quite frankly,

I'm already feeling depleted, distracted, exhausted. And so I

think we do need to kind of bridge that knowledge gap so

that employees know, how are you bringing AI into the firm? What

will be the likely impact on my future job? And to your point,

what are the skills that I need to stay relevant and to stay

employable over the longer term? And I think some companies do a

really good job in having that conversation with their

employees, and they're much more transparent about AI and future

skills, and others. There's just a void. And of course, when

there's that void, people get uncertain about their job

prospects. And you and I know when people get concerned about

their future job prospects, they play it safe. And then we don't

get the innovation And the boldness and the curiosity that

we actually need to usher in where we could be in the future

of work. So there is a lot really going on on on the AI

front, that that will impact jobs and livelihoods. And I

think the most important thing for everybody in the call is to

be in that conversation. You know, if you're in HR, listen to

the HR practitioners that are experimenting with AI and hear

how they're doing it. Be curious about it, play with chat, GPG if

you're not using it, at least on a weekly basis, and for

employees, challenge yourself, you know, what are the new

skills coming into my industry? And where do I sit compared to

those skills? And if the future job I hope to have disappears?

What are two different skills? One of the things that I really

like that the Singapore government does really well, now

Singapore, smaller country, so I understand that they have a

Skills Council, the on LinkedIn published what skills I can

become more in demand. So play a real premium, because they're

very specialist, and what skills actually allow people to do

multiple jobs. And I love that because they want to give a

learning account for everybody to spend on training as they

like, it's direct to employee direct to individuals, not

through the company, but that allows individuals to say, Do I

want to learn really highly specialized skills and go for

gold? Or do I want to learn skills that allow me to do lots

of different jobs, but I love the power that it gives to

individuals in that market to control their future? And I

don't feel we have that everywhere around the world?

No, and I think there's a lot of people that

really struggle with sort of knowing or knowing where to go

for that kind of information, and that our organizations could

be doing a much better job in providing that kind of guidance.

Yeah.

No, I was gonna say, I think the imperative is

now this whole movement away from jobs to skills powered

organizations, is picking up pace. This year, the amount of

companies that invested in talent, insight, tools, talent,

marketplace, scope, tools, scraping your background to make

judgment on what skills you have, or you don't have, is a

train that is running. And I think individuals need to take

control over that narrative as much as they can. Me leaning in

making sure the right content is on LinkedIn, using chat GPT to

say, what skills should I have in my job? What are the best

people in my job? Have? You know, what are two or three

potential jobs? If you have these skills? You know, getting

a quick yourself? Because I agree with you, some companies

are lagging on communicating where the future is headed, and

what skills will be needed

those critical conversations again? Yeah,

absolutely. And that we all have to be lifelong learners. It's

not about getting a degree. And you know, that's, that's it,

I've got my I've got my education, I don't need to do

anything more. It's just that's not our world anymore. Hey, I

want to take us to some of this other talent GPT for HR

technology, given that this is about HR inside out, you talk

about it redubbed redesigned the experience of talent acquisition

and Talent Management for both users and for HR, can you talk a

little bit about the impact this is having and how it works?

Yes, I think one of the exciting things that's

come into the HR world, I think, pretty early has been how AI is

being used to understand what skills are available in the

talent marketplace, and understand what skills the

people in our workforce have today. And that's allowing much

better matching at a skills level to the tasks now on, you

know, that can enable you to hire the right talent with a lot

more confidence than we could in the future. But the bit that

I've got really excited about is how that thinking is being

implied is being turned in house. And it's being used to

say, you know, if you have these skills, if you gather these two

or three other skills, you'd actually have more opportunity

to go into jobs in the future. And hey, here are a couple of

internal gigs that can get you that experience because you

mentioned there about training. We don't have time for training

anymore. I think we've got to make sure that we are creating

space for learning the skills of the next job in the jobs of

today. And I think talent marketplaces, internal gigs,

special projects, whether you do them using tech or not using

Tech is a fantastic way that we can, we can build the skills

that we need in the in the jobs that people are doing today. And

again, it's what young people are craving as well. So I think

AI being used to that's really exciting. The other piece that

I'm seeing AI being used within that context, is actually

matching people who are, who can be skills mentors, because

they're really strong at a particular skill, or they've

learned a particular technical skill with people who've

identified that's a skill I need. And so I think that human

matching, when you can match people up has really worked, I

think, being able to also then link that to your LMS system,

and have a much more connected up conversation between, I've

got a special project over here and I need to fill it, this

person needs to have, you know, these technical skills, these

behavioral skills, and we'd love them to work in one function of

our business and one particular location. Give me all the people

who've got that, give me all the people who might be a retention

risk, give me all the people who would benefit most from

developing them, overlay them together. And then tell me how

we get the best return for who we give that job to not just

return for the organization, but return for the individual in

terms of investing in their future. And that's what some of

the generative AI overlay is allowing us to do. And isn't

that wonderful, because you and I spent a lot of time on

spreadsheets, looking at lots of different systems. And we

wouldn't even want to ask an analyst to do that work, because

it's a heavy lift. But that's what we want to do. We want to

make sure that every opportunity isn't just filled today, but as

a learning opportunity for someone for tomorrow.

It really is exciting. I mean, you referenced

spreadsheets, I've worked in organizations where those kinds

of things weren't even gathered. And so there, there would be no

opportunity of seeing that, you know, person X might be a great

mentor or person why has those skills, perhaps not being used

in their current position, but absolutely, could be, you know,

could be placed in something else that would give them a

growth opportunity.

Yeah, and you're, you're at the mercy of your

boss. If your boss was in a role where he was well networked and

very visible, you might get great opportunities. If you

weren't so lucky, your field of vision was also constrained. And

I think what's exciting about this new technology is it

doesn't just democratize opportunity, but it also

increases visibility of your skills, motivations and

capabilities. And I think that's exciting. Oh,

God, absolutely. Hate truth. A the supply is

unchained. How's that specifically related to what you

call the people age? Just really quickly? Well,

actually, you know, one of the truths I think

that we learned through the pandemic was, work can be done

in ways it was never originally conceived to be done. And it can

be done across cultural, temporal geographic boundaries.

And as you start to explore that, you realize, wow,

actually, we can think about our site selection in new ways, not

being close to the customer, because that's maybe not our

critical gap. But being close to where those skills are, those

skills are at the right cost. And so that's really, you know,

added a new dimension to sort of labor arbitrage, and a new

dimension to how we can think about fueling our business with

those really hard to get skills by maybe looking at untapped

populations that have sort of skill adjacencies. And that's

what we mean that supply is no longer chained to a job is no

longer chained to a location. It doesn't even need to be chained

to an organization. And so we talk a lot here about the

opportunities of thinking about your talent supply chain,

thinking about more network organizational structures with

suppliers and customers. And so yeah, we want to encourage

companies to embrace that. And to think about managing supply

chain with the same level of diversity that they would their

business supply chains to make sure that you don't get exposed

by not developing the skills that you need for tomorrow.

Well, it's about being creative. I mean, we're

dealing with a skill shortage and that's not getting any

easier.

Yes, necessity really is the mother of

invention. Isn't that precious? Just going to increase as you

know, we still grapple with labor petition petition, excuse

me, as we grapple with labor petition with labor

participation rates as we grapple with Labor potential.

Yeah. As we, as we grapple with democratic. Yes, yeah. And that

will only get more acute as we look at demographics. And

especially if we aren't doing a good job of keeping some of our

more tenured knowledge workers, as some of our research shows,

we're not at the moment.

Thank you. Truth nine, intelligence is getting

amplified. And it's about having smarts, knowing where to go to

how to acquire what we need. We talked a little bit about that.

And how that has the opportunity to be an intelligence equalizer.

Well, we talk a lot there about the use of large

language models, obviously writing a book, when we wrote

the book, we're halfway through the book, Gen AI burst into the

scene. And we thought, Oh, is it a thing? I think it is. And then

obviously, we have to rewrite the book. And in fact, we

actually put the whole 10 truths into a large language model. And

as the machine, if you'd read this book, how would you manage

differently as a result, and for me, that was the first time I'd

had a machine, give me advice about how to manage my team that

was probably better than what I was intending to do on Monday.

So that was a bit of an eye opener for me. And if you read

if you buy the book, you can actually see that exchange,

because we just put it in directly. But yeah, it's always

a bit worrying when you write about AI a year before the book

releases. But what we talk about there is, from those early

lessons, what is the opportunity to bring human capabilities and

machine capabilities together, because when you've got human

intelligence, and machine intelligence, together, you get

amplified intelligence. And I think we always knew that was

coming back from Garry Kasparov. I don't know if you remember him

when he was beaten by Big Blue at chess, I think it's back in

the 80s. It he was, you know, he was knocked down by that. But he

came back. And you know, he said, actually, the brightest

chess grandmaster can't beat the computer. And the brightest

computer can't, can't, you know, and the brightest chess master

will struggle against the computer, and the grids, the

computer that but what he also found was an average human with

an average computer can beat them both. And it was the

combination that gave the lift. And that actually should be a

whole new form of chess, which, you know, is now commonplace.

But what he was talking about there is to unlock that puts

that human potential in a machine, augmented world, you've

got to understand the process, you've got to understand how to

work with the machine. And that's what we're doing. We're

prompt engineering, as we are beginning to learn how to

converse with machines. And that's going to get on steroids,

when we get conversational AI, it's going to change the way we

work, it will change jobs, it will change what we learn, it

will change what we don't learn. And, you know, getting ahead of

that, and experimenting that I think is one of the most

important imperatives for HR today, it's not a digital thing,

it's an HR thing, because it's about how humans will work. And

the lift that will get by working with machines.

I just said I love the example you gave of even

within school system of teachers having to, you know, how do you

how do you tell whether or not this essay was written by the

student and and techniques that are needing to be put into

place? So similarly? Yeah, how do we work positively with this?

It's not going to go away.

Now, let's see, I have two young children. I have

a nine and 11 year old. And it's been fascinating, because, you

know, during the pandemic, and just after the pandemic, there

was all fear about because you got to submit three times once,

once with with the chat GPT, once without and then once

combined. All of that is dissipated there, I think,

because there is a recognition. It's just a tool. It's a multi

purpose tool. And my kids are actually got pretty savvy at

saying, Yeah, that's rubbish mom. Obviously, sometimes they

say that to me, but they're also saying, God to check GPT. And I

am glad they're learning the lessons now. Because it is just

going to be the way we work. But what I worry about is they're

not doing this goes back to that very first trend. They're not

doing the hard graft that you and I did. And the reason why I

can look at an engagement survey or a personality profile or a

comp sheet and go at something's off here is because I looked at

lots of them as an analyst. And so that ability to thin slice

and bring that wealth of experience to go that

something's wrong there. They won't have that because they're

not going to do that type of analytical work now. Would that

bother them? so often Yes. But that's, that's something we've

got to consider. Mm hmm.

Last truth, truth number 10. And I think it nicely

ties everything together is this sustainability starts with

people. And you stress that knowing what different people

want from the work experience is paramount. We've talked a lot

about that, especially if we don't want to find ourselves out

of people, we've talked about that. It's a big shift in my

experience of working within organizations, and how they

continue to function. And really is going to call for some pretty

big system changes. You talked in your book about the need for

deeper partnerships underpinned by mutual respect, humility,

transparency, I think we've talked about a lot of that. And

you've seen that start to happen in the examples that you provide

in your book. Any comments, on truth, and tam about

sustainability? And what what this is all I agree with you

comment,

Susan, I do think it is a reset. But gosh, if

there's ever been a time to make that reset, it's now we've just

been talking about the opportunities afforded by

generative AI. Most executives think is going to give a 30%

productivity gain. And we have a choice. Do we take that

productivity gain? And say, let's share it with all

stakeholders, and maybe put investment for upskilling put

investment for health and well being initiatives or return them

some time in a four day workweek? Or do we flow it to

the bottom line, and return it directly to shareholders. And if

we fundamentally believe that the purpose of an organization

isn't just to deliver profit, but to keep our people

employable, to do good in the world, to make a difference to

the environment, all the things that I think we should be

focused on, and our young people want to see us focused on. I

think there's, there's, there's pause, because this productivity

game changer, and it gives us some space, it gives us some

breathing room to maybe make this reset. Because if we don't

meet that reset, and really think about what's the purpose

of our organization, what do we want to do for all our

stakeholders, we will just keep on the treadmill that we're on.

And as we shared work is not working for everyone. One in

four people don't want to work at all. And 40% believe that

work is fundamentally broken. Because we hope to work, we get

away with a lot. But this there is an opportunity to build more

inspiring, more intuitive work environments. And it's a

virtuous circle, because those are the ones that the best

talent are going to flock to. They're the ones that the best

talent are going to stay with and move forward. And yet in the

book, we have some companies that's made that bold moves. I

talk about the Patagonia book, which is Patagonia book, which

is again, I talk about the Patagonia book, Let my people go

surfing, where they need to go look to say, we are no longer

delivering on our values, and they did a fundamental reset.

And then they basically taught ethics to their workforce to

make sure they could execute on it. We also talk in the book

about Unilever who listened to the fact that many of their

people wanted side gigs, or they were more tenured and wanted to

have more time off, but they love being part of the

organization. And they figured out how to give job security,

compensation benefits, or some level of security and flexible

working. I mean, they're the two awesome people. And so we're

entering a world where there doesn't need to be these trade

offs. But it does take some bold actions to reset. And honestly,

I think HR is in the best position to lead the charge.

Thank you. One of the challenges and you spoke about

it right at the end of the book is organizations resistance to

change. And I think you've just given us two excellent examples

of organizations that have managed to make that change

stick successfully as we bring the podcast to a close, any

other thoughts on on that point? is the change in organizations

is always a struggle?

Yeah. You know, people, although I do think

people have more of a relationship with their

organization, and they want to work for a brand that they're

proud of that's really come through in the voice day. I also

think people are inspired by people. And it does take a bold

leader, to be convicted, that there is a different way to do

things work could feel different work could look different. We

could all be working different to pull the charge forward. I

think if we keep tinkering around the outside with our

reward our talent, I help them benefits. We don't make the

world of HR particularly inspiring. And we miss this

opportunity to inspire the workforce to be part of a big

workforce revolution. And that, to me, is just such a lost

opportunity. Yes, I think pushing our transformation

agendas and our change agendas, when people are feeling fatigued

and exhausted and distracted, is tough. But when you get it

right, everything falls into place. And we've seen enough

green shoots of companies being bold and challenging the way

it's done, to give us confidence that the world of work that we

experienced today shouldn't look like that for my kids.

Love it. And when you talk about both leader, we're

not talking the CEOs or the the the C suite executives. We're

talking you as leaders, overseeing people, and taking

the steps that are available to you being creative, being

curious, engaging, having those conversations. That's really

what leadership is about. And bold leadership is incorporates

much of what we've talked about. Kate, any last thoughts,

anything I've not thought to talk to you about or ask you

about before we close?

Now, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking to

you today, one, because I know you read the book inside out,

because I'm worried about coming on. But to know, I think we've

touched on so many points today. And you know, I hope we have

managed to inspire people on the corm that there are some bold

leaders and I agree with you, you know, it can be people right

in their first or second job, that are challenging how we

work, and they are figuring out ways to make work more

exhilarating. And I want to be part of that journey, because I

think it's really exciting. Oh,

me too. It's, it's it is exciting. And that's why I

loved your book. Oh my god. It's easy to read. It's well

researched. It just makes so much sense. And love the work

that you're doing with Mercer's the future of work. Wow, that

that's cool. I

think it's a great talent Immerser, and two

wonderful co authors to the book as well. So that's why it's so

rich.

And I've worked with Mercer's within Canada, and

you're with a wonderful organization. So thank you,

Kate, thank you so much for making the time to be with us

here today. Have Kate shared with me, this has been a long

day for her with a number of these kinds of opportunities of

making a positive difference. So very much appreciate that you

said yes to this one.

It's been great, thank you.

I've put your contact information in the shownotes to

the podcast if people would like to get in touch with you. And

certainly we'll put a link to the book if anyone is interested

in purchasing a copy. And again, as Kate alluded to, I took lots

of notes. There's so many honors. Thank you.

Can I agree with you, we could have spent another