‘Russell is able to shed new light on the future of work, in his own personal, witty

and humble manner. A much-needed and highly inspiring perspective.’

David Plink, CEO, Top Employers Institute

‘The World of Work to 2030 does not map the future – it does something better. It
gives us an algorithm for approaching the inevitable uncertainty with confidence
and competence. The secret to future-proofing lies at the margin between science
and art, and Russell Beck shows us the skills and talents we’ll need to prosper in
a world where constancy is ever elusive. Focused, flexible, fast, friendly and fun –
by 2030 it needs to be “the way we do things round here”.’
John Mark Williams, Chief Executive Officer, Institute of Leadership

‘Russell aims to challenge our thinking with how we work and he certainly does
that. The book is jam packed with insightful tips, many of which I will be applying
at my company. I found the section on recruitment particularly inspiring. In a
world where companies are struggling to attract and retain talent, Russell’s novel
approach to carrying out a simple task such as writing a job advert could be game
changing in attracting “best fit” employees. If you want to best prepare yourself,
your current and future employees to confidently embrace and succeed in a rapidly
changing, complex and global work environment, then this book is for you.’
Gabrielle Cummins, CEO and Programme Director, Beat 102–103, Ireland

‘Russell has surpassed his aim to provide a grounded, relevant and practical
book on the most significant topic for the greatest number globally. His insights,
personified along with empirical evidence, both informs and inspires the reader
to face the future by taking action. Russell casts his own leadership shadow by
lighting the way for all business professionals who need to confront the changing
workplace landscape. The book is a joy to read in its style, insight and inspiration.’
Danny McCoy, CEO, Irish Business and Employers Confederation

‘The author gives us hope that despite ChatGPT, and all things AI, we humans have
a lot to offer the future world of work…it’s compelling and thought-provoking.
People will increasingly demand meaningful purpose to their work – we can leave
the rest to robotics!’
Ali Williams, Chief Commercial Officer, Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust

‘This is a book that covers so much ground – effortlessly. Everything you need to
know about the world of work in 2030, and, more importantly, how you (and your
business) can respond positively to the challenges and opportunities outlined.’
Mark Hallas, CEO, Crimestoppers

‘The World of Work to 2030 is an essential read for both business and HR leaders. It’s
a dive into the crystal ball depicting a future already upon us, alongside practical
and pragmatic advice on how to future-proof our own careers and thrive.’
Adrian Seligman, Executive Board Member/CCO, Top Employers Institute
‘Russell’s book is both a balanced and insightful glimpse into the near future and
also a powerful call to action for educators to think hard about how schools are
preparing young people for a dynamic and volatile future in which opportunity
and uncertainty abound… [It] brilliantly synthesizes the complexity of the fourth
industrial revolution into a framework that makes sense and which provides a
roadmap for all of us.’
Ceri Jones, Headmaster, Caterham School (TES Independent
Senior School of the Year 2023)

‘This book offers a practical yet visionary perspective on the future of work.
Tackling the subject with a touch of humour and a healthy dose of “scary”
scenarios, making it an enjoyable read for anyone interested in the evolving world
of work and their place in it.’
David Vincent, Managing Director, EMEA, Randstad Sourceright

‘Since reading this book I have been using many examples and ideas presented
as thought food for my management team and all those who will listen. I found
Russell’s considerations for The World of Work to 2030 both compelling and
challenging, and I know that he will resonate to a wide audience. It is clear that
our leaders and mangers of the near future are going to face some tough decisions
and have to adapt to new horizons, this book will definitely help them prepare.’
Michael Brooksbank, Managing Director Europe, Chauvet

‘Russell writes from deep insights into the practicalities of work and the realities
of careers and businesses. This is not a book of lofty theories, but a map to guide
us through a world of work that is arriving faster than many are prepared for. The
reflective questions at the end of each section make this essential reading and an
ongoing reference.’
Aileen Dempsey, Advisory Council Member, Design Management
and Leadership Consultant

‘The World of Work to 2030, wow what a thought provoking and inspiring read.
Written in a way that pragmatically sets out the current world as it is now and
then opens your mind, heart and soul to the future. Not just for business people
of all specialisms, but for anyone invested in themselves and their future. Read
this book, it will open your mind to the possibilities available and the potential
impact you can make, now and into the future.’
Michelle Reid, Director of Performance, Culture and Delivery, IOM

‘As an educationalist, employer and a parent, interested in the future of

our workforce and our world, this book is gripping. It’s thought provoking,
challenging yet easy to read for busy people. To be honest, this blew my mind!
Highly recommended!’
Laurence Frewin, Principal and CEO, South Devon College
 BLOOMSBURY BUSINESS
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First published in Great Britain 2024

Copyright © Russell Beck, 2024

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 To my wife and daughter.
Without you I would be a shadow of what I am today.
 Contents

Synopsis viii

CHAP TER ON E
Introduction – scene setting and background 1

CHAP TER T WO
The changing world in numbers and data 14

CHAP TER TH R EE
The megatrends playing out in the world today 26

CHAP TER FOU R

What does this mean for business? 51

CHAP TER FIVE

What does this mean for our people and talent? 88

CHAP TER SIX

Future skills 127

CHAP TER SE VEN

Sustainability 157

CHAP TER EIG HT

Future-proofing our careers 184

Conclusion 197
Acknowledgements 204
Author’s note 206
References 207
Index 229
 Synopsis

In the context of work, consider two headlines we regularly face.

Firstly, that the financial reality is few of us can afford to retire and,
secondly, that robots and AI are destroying the very jobs we need to
make a living.
How are these two realities compatible?
At the same time, our businesses face unprecedented hazards with
globalization, technology, talent shortages, changing consumer choices
and politics all threatening us. Competitors seemingly arrive from
nowhere overnight, challenging and upending our markets.
It is all up in the air, it is all happening at once and it is happening to
all of us. From any perspective – personal or corporate – shouldn’t we
seek to understand what is happening and prepare ourselves for what
is coming next?
This is a practical book that addresses these challenges. Backed by
extensive research, it is aimed at anyone who wants to know how to
navigate the commercial and personal uncertainty of the future. With
a timeline to enable action to be taken today, the book considers how
the world is changing and through a series of lenses it explains how
businesses and individuals can future-proof themselves. And for every
answer offered, it gives real-world examples of where the future is
already playing out. After all, to quote William Gibson from 30 years
ago, ‘The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed yet.’
 CH APTER ONE

Introduction – scene setting

and background

If you fell asleep in early 2020 and have just woken up, it’s a fair bet to
say that you would be shocked at what you saw. Whichever lens you
choose for viewing the world – economic, business or personal – the
landscape would be unrecognizable from what you knew. In just three
years the COVID-19 pandemic touched every aspect of our lives and
rewrote the rulebook.
But even as we struggle to grasp the continuing impact of COVID-19,
it is ‘just’ another in a series of trials we have had to face this century
including wars, terrorism, austerity, The Great Recession of 2008/9,
shifting economic power, and 9/11, all exacerbated by the uncertain
and changing political environment. On some measures we have faced
more change in the past 23 years than any previous 23-year period in
our history. Our collective challenge is that this pace of change is not
letting up, it is accelerating.
Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, summed this up
neatly at the World Economic Forum (WEF) conference in Davos on
23 January 2018, where he said: ‘Think about it: The pace of change has
never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again.’ Given this was
said before the pandemic, it seems somewhat of an understatement
and yet, deep down, we know that it is so true. Almost wanting to
prove Mr Trudeau correct, the Paris Peace Forum conference held on
11 November 2022 was entitled ‘Riding out the multi-crisis.’

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

Both comments encapsulate the moment. But while we know the

world is changing, it is changing far faster than we realize, and as it
changes it becomes more complex. This book considers this from a
business and a personal perspective, what it means and how we can
prepare to future-proof our businesses and our careers.

The personal perspective

Work, we underestimate its impor tance
Consider ‘work’. Work remains a dominating and defining part of our
lives. We spend one third of our time doing it; increasingly more time
than we spend with our loved ones. To show how dominating it is, just
think about the conversation you have whenever you meet someone
new for the first time. It is highly likely that after enquiring about their
name some of the first questions you ask are: ‘what do you do?’ and
‘who do you work for?’ And off the back of these three answers, we
consciously measure and appraise, and our inner voice rears its head
making comment.
Work is, and has always tended to be, one of the most defining
aspects of our lives. It is of course how we earn money to become
economically active. But work is far, far more than the simple monetary
transaction. Work is where we obtain purpose and meaning; where we
meet friends, socialize and have community (and in an increasingly
secular society it is one of the few remaining places where we can get a
sense of community); it is where we get motivated and engaged; where
we can create and solve.
On the flip side, work can also drive us to utter exasperation and
frustration; where we feel our efforts are a waste of time; where we feel
unvalued, unloved and taken for granted; where we feel stressed. This
all has an impact. There is already a large bank of research detailing the
connection between how we feel about work and how we are treated
at work to the direct impacts this has on our health (both mental

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 I nt r oduc tion – sce ne se t ting a nd back gr ound

and physical), on our well-being and, most worryingly, on our life

expectancy. Consider just three reports:

• According to Forbes, ‘new data shows that for almost 70 per cent of
people, their manager has more impact on their mental health than
their therapist or their doctor – and it’s equal to the impact of their
partner.’
• The Macleod Report found that ‘54 per cent of the actively disengaged
say that work stress caused them to behave poorly with friends or
family members in the previous three months, against 17 per cent of
the engaged. More alarmingly, 54 per cent of the actively disengaged
say their work lives are having a negative effect on their physical health,
versus 12 per cent of the engaged.’
• The Stress Institute in Stockholm found that ‘employees who had managers
who were incompetent, inconsiderate, secretive, or uncommunicative
were 60 per cent more likely to suffer a heart attack or other cardiac
condition.’

Work, let’s hope we enjoy it!

Parking, for now, the psychological and emotional impacts of work,
let’s consider one of the most quoted work-related headlines today and,
frankly, maybe the scariest aspect about work… how long we are going
to have to do it for.
The reason for this is simple: we are all living longer. Between 1969
(when the author was born) and 2020, life expectancy at birth in the
UK increased from 75 years to just over 90 years for women and from
just 68.6 years to 87.3 years for men. (These figures, which are for 2020,
represent a reduction – in 2012 life expectancy at birth for girls was
95 and for boys 91.8 years.) The author’s daughter has a one in three
chance of receiving a telegram from a future king or queen to celebrate
reaching the age of 100. The author only has a one in eight chance –
and he is already over halfway there.

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

The King James Bible, first published in 1611, writes in Psalm 90:
‘The days of our lives are threescore years and ten.’ This landmark
was not reached for men in the UK until 1977 – women reached that
milestone in 1948.
This significant increase in our time on this Earth is a remarkable
achievement. Potentially even more impactful is that at the same time
as living longer, we are able to live a fuller, active life for longer.

Work, it is all about the money! But not as we know it

But this all comes, quite literally, at a cost. It is all very well living for
longer and being active, but an increasing amount of that additional
active time will have to be spent working. Quite simply, in a lot of
cases, we simply will not be able to afford to retire. Long gone are the
days of Defined Benefit (DB) pension schemes where the pension
you received in retirement was linked to your years of service and
your final salary. Never again will we see repeats of the 1980s or
1990s when swathes of the workforce took early retirement in their
mid-50s with their pensions being topped up to ease their exit from
the business.
In January 2023, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in the UK
reported that the average pension pot size by age of the population was
as follows:

Age group Average size of pension pot

16–24 £2,700
25–34 £9,300
35–44 £30,000
45–54 £75,500
55–65 £107,300

The Retirement Living Standards (RLS) are based on independent

research by Loughborough University. They detail the annual income
required to achieve a defined standard of living in retirement and their
figures for 2023 are:

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 I nt r oduc tion – sce ne se t ting a nd back gr ound

Retirement UK (Excluding London) London

standard One person Couple One person Couple
Minimum £12,8000 £19,900 £14,300 £22,400
Moderate £23,300 £34,000 £28,300 £41,400
Comfortable £37,300 £54,500 £40,900 £56,500

Notice the challenge. The ONS set of figures shows the size of the entire
pension pot – i.e. the money to fund the entirety of one’s retirement.
The RLS figures show what you need to spend annually.
The reader of course will choose the living standard they aspire to in
retirement, but you may be surprised by what each level contains – or,
more worryingly, what each does not. Firstly, these figures assume you
have no housing costs whatsoever – i.e. no rent and/or mortgage. Over
this, the Minimum level listed allows for £54 per week for all food, £580
per year for clothing and footwear, has no budget for a car and allows
for holidays in the UK for one week and one weekend per year. The
Moderate level broadly equates to earning just over the equivalent UK
minimum wage and the Comfortable level allows for £144 per week
for all food, £1,500 per year for clothing and footwear, three weeks
of European holidays and a car to be replaced every five years. As
one article says: ‘if you want those little extras in life, perhaps some
expensive hobbies like golf, or multiple holidays, you’ll need to add
those costs on top too.’
The math shows that to retire today, in March 2023 (the time of
writing), a comfortable standard of living means you need a pension
pot (not taking the state pension into account) of £869,533, or a pot of
£627,844 if the current state pension of £9,627 is taken into account.
That equates to eight times or six times respectively the size of the
average pension pot of anyone aged 55 to 65. The answer is simple: few
of us can afford to retire.
It is easy to see that the word pension may become an anachronism
to most people under the age of 40. Indeed, from that data it is no
surprise that 24 per cent of Millennials – that cohort born between

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

1981 and 1996 and (in 2023) aged between 27 and 42 – think they
will never retire (this statistic was pre-pandemic before the recent
bout of inflation further tarnished any retirement plans). Or, more
accurately, they think that they will be able to consider retiring only
when they inherit from their parents (assuming of course that the costs
of healthcare and support have left anything behind to inherit). And it
may get worse. In the UK, the retirement age is due to rise from 67 to
68, and recent reports have indicated that the government may bring
this date forward by eight years.
The data is clear. For the vast majority of us, our pension pots are
nowhere near sufficient. We cannot afford to retire. We need to keep
working.

The depressing truth

Your author is currently 53 and left university just over 30 years ago,
aged 22. The somewhat depressing truth is that I am not, as I would
like to believe, two-thirds of my way through my working life; the
actual answer is closer to a half. Broadly I have slightly less time left
in work than I have already been in work. At the same time, we are
educating our children for careers that will span 60, 70 or maybe even
80 years.
Consider what that means. The author has been in work for 30 years
and needs to consider working for another 20–30 years. Rewind my
career and let’s review what I have experienced in my work life:

• Ten years ago, the iPhone 4 was released (definitely cool at the time,
most definitely not cool now). Back then there was no Siri, Alexa,
streaming, or Zoom. Uber was a German word, drones didn’t exist,
shopping remained a physical activity and experience and social media
simply meant Facebook.
• Twenty years ago the internet came through the television as Ceefax
or Teletext. If we were privileged enough to have a dial-up modem, we
waited patiently, for minutes, even hours while high-pitched noises

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 I nt r oduc tion – sce ne se t ting a nd back gr ound

came from our computers and blocks appeared on our screens – only
for it then to fail, forcing us to start over. I travelled a lot at this time and
remember how laptops weighed a tonne, taking two batteries with me
as each might only last for two hours and having a having a ‘specialist’
rucksack with a handle and wheels to carry it.
• Thirty years ago we used typewriters or, if lucky, maybe we were
allowed to touch the team’s shared computer and a mouse was
something furry that you caught. Knowledge was found in libraries
or, a few lucky families may have purchased their own Encyclopaedia
Britannica set for use at home. I remember being told that I could
not be promoted as I had not been with the company long enough;
capability was irrelevant.

That is how much work has changed in my working career, and I need
to have a career that will broadly last the same amount of time into the
future. Noting the increasing pace of change, just imagine what work
could look like in that time horizon!

The nature of work

Now consider the second most quoted work-related headline today.
Whatever the number or scale or duration, it is the scare headline that
talks about robots, Artificial Intelligence (AI), automation and the
destruction of jobs as we know them.
Now we could argue that it has always been this way. The threat of
machines taking work away from humans has been ever present – and
arguably present before the Luddite Movement between 1811 and 1816
gave us a name for those who resisted the impending technological
revolution. What has changed is the frequency of predictions, the pace
of change and the sheer volume of jobs that are being predicted will be
impacted.
In 2011, Dr Carl Benedikt Frey and Professor Michael A. Osborne
released a paper in which they estimated the probability that
technology will lead to job losses in the next 20 years. They considered

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

702 occupations and, according to their estimates, about 47 per cent

of total US employment was identified as being at risk. When released
it was a shocking revelation, but as time has progressed it has become
more broadly accepted today.
The BBC picked up the story and embedded the results into their
news website. If you follow the link listed in the references you can
enter your current job title and find out ‘the likelihood that it could be
automated within the next two decades’.
Since its publication Osborne and Frey’s research has been
widely used as a headline-grabbing statistic. As an example, the
Bank of England’s chief economist Andy Haldane was quoted in
the Guardian in late 2015 as saying that ‘robots threaten 15 million
jobs in the UK.’
But the fear and expectation of impending job destruction
continues. When COVID-19 struck, the Economist reported that
‘a wave of job-killing robots would sweep over the labour market.’
Indeed one prominent economist, in congressional [sic] testimony
in the autumn [of 2020], asserted that employers were ‘substituting
machines for workers’. Separately, the IMF published a paper in early
2021 stating that ‘our results suggest that the concerns about the rise
of the robots amid the COVID-19 pandemic seem justified.’
Regardless of the numbers, it is certain that technology, AI and
robots threaten the nature of work as we know it today.

The self-delusion
And there is a fascinating statistic here. Broadly, with little
exception, everyone believes that ‘well, yes, robots and technology
will destroy jobs. Of course this is going to happen.’ According to
a Pew Research Center survey in December 2018, 82 per cent of
US adults say that by 2050, robots and computers will definitely
or probably do much of the work currently done by humans, and
37 per cent of employed adults say robots or computers will do the
type of work they do by 2050.

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 I nt r oduc tion – sce ne se t ting a nd back gr ound

The irony, however, is that in the same survey 70 per cent of

respondents think that the problem is someone else’s. While everyone
broadly agrees robots will destroy jobs, 70 per cent of people think it is
not their problem: it is your job that is going to be automated, not mine.
They cannot all be right.

The result
The financial reality is that we need to have a career for far longer than
most of us realize, and yet at the same time robots are destroying the
very jobs we need.
Who is connecting these two headlines together?
If we need to work for another 30, 40 or 50 years, we will want a
number of things: for one, a career that will last that long; work that
is meaningful; work that is motivating; and work that will give us an
income so we can continue to provide for our families. How do you get
that if robots are going to take the jobs?

The corporate perspective

It is all change, change, change
While that may be scary enough for employees, consider what this
means for our employers. Everything is changing for them too.
Externally threats come from everywhere, seemingly overnight and
when you least expect them.
The pace of change that Trudeau alluded to has had whole
industries spinning on a coin; collapsing or booming in the period
of a few months. Consider the price of oil, which during the
pandemic went negative – you could have been paid for taking it off
a producer’s hands. The last three years has seen the price of petrol
fall to £1 a litre, then double to a peak of £1.96 only to then fall back
by 25–30 per cent.
New competitors are upending established industries, consider
one example: TESLA made 1.4 million cars in 2022 and has a market

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

capitalization of US $ 804 billion. This is equal to the next eight largest

car companies combined, and these eight companies collectively made
over 30 million cars in the same period.

Left-hand graph shows the market capitalization in (billions of US $) of the

eight largest car manufacturers after TESLA. Right-hand graph shows the
number of cars manufactured (in millions) by those eight car companies in
2022. (NB: Ferrari is included in the manufacturing statistics but produced
13,221 cars making it hard to see on the scale shown.) By comparison,
TESLA has a market capitalization of over US $ 800 billion and made
1.4 million cars in the same period.

And that is just the external context. Internally what it means to work,
what our people want from it and the work contract are all under flux
and changing beyond recognition. Generational values and beliefs are
increasingly conflicting, causing misunderstanding and resentment.
For all the talk of tolerance, it increasingly feels that we are becoming
more diverse with generational labels being used as excuses or weapons.
Employees (as well as consumers) increasingly want the organizations
they frequent to reflect their environmental and social concerns whilst,
at the same time have a purpose and stand for something. As business
increasingly relies on Human Capital, skills shortages mean people
and talent have become even more important to business success

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 I nt r oduc tion – sce ne se t ting a nd back gr ound

and yet simultaneously harder to acquire and retain. The nature of

offices; remote, flexible and hybrid working; four-day weeks; mental
health; and diversity all throw up challenges business has never had
to truly tackle before and which, therefore, it does not always have the
experience to deal with.

What does this all mean?

Everything is up in the air, it is happening at once and it is happening
to all of us. From any perspective, whether personal or corporate, we
need to understand what is happening. Given the unpredictable nature
and pace of change, it would be naïve to think that what has worked
in the past will continue to work in the future. Going forward, if we
continue to look at the world through the rear-view mirror and make
decisions on the basis of intuition based on historic experience, we
may well be wrong.
There is a powerful human tendency to want the future to look much
like the past. The one thing I can predict with some degree of certainty
is … it won’t and so it would be foolhardy to ignore these challenges.
That would be putting your future and the future of those you love –
and of the firm you work for – at risk.
Prediction is, however, a tricky thing. The great sage and philosopher
Albus Dumbledore once said: ‘The consequences of our actions are
always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very
difficult business indeed.’
Whilst this may be true, we can seek to understand what is going
on, what trends are playing out on a local and global basis, what
is the direction of travel – and from that make assumptions and
interpretations as to what is likely to happen.
So, for me, the best quote about prediction is this from Edward
de Bono: ‘If you cannot accurately predict the future then you must
flexibly be prepared to deal with various possible futures.’ This is the
key point. We need to understand what is happening in order to create

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

flexible plans, to pursue ideas that will survive under different and
changing circumstances.
And that is what this book is about. This book is about getting
prepared. Getting prepared to be flexible enough to cope with what
will happen, come what may.

How to get the most from this book

The book follows a structure and can, of course, be read through from
beginning to end. But acknowledging that there are some readers
who like to read ahead or who have a burning platform, it has been
designed to allow the reader to explore the sections in the order they
feel most useful.
To understand the future, we need to understand what is happening
today. We need to understand the trends that are impacting, shaping
and changing the world because these will form the foundation of what
will happen next.
In Chapter 2, I highlight how fast the world is changing through a
series of ‘fascinating facts’ which I have grouped under six over-arching
trends. Chapter 3 then focuses on these six trends, providing the
background and detail on how and why they are shaping the current
world and defining its future. Chapters 4 to 8 answer the question:
So what? What do these trends mean and how will they impact
organizations and careers viewed through a series of different lenses?

• In Chapter 4 I consider the impact on businesses including strategy and

focus; a consideration of what is core verses what is chore; the rise of
the holistic workforce; workforce flexibility and the changing nature of
‘the office’.
• Chapter 5 examines the impact on our people and talent strategy and
looks at what ‘The Great Resignation’ has taught us about the changes
made by the pandemic to people’s expectations and aspirations and
what people now want from work.

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 I nt r oduc tion – sce ne se t ting a nd back gr ound

• In Chapter 6 I look at future skills and what organizations will need in

order to be successful moving forward. I consider the actual impact of
AI on jobs and the challenge of hiring the skills that you need.
• Chapter 7 considers sustainability from two perspectives, the internal
factor of diversity and the external factor of the environment.
• In Chapter 8, in a switch to a more personal view, I consider how we can
future-proof our careers.

Throughout the book, my goal is to be grounded, relevant and

practical. My content is solidly backed up with research from academic
and consulting organizations, journals and literature together with
corporate illustrations to give tangible examples of how the future is
already starting to take shape. The References section at the end of the
book contains links to the source material. There are 405.
The timeframe of the book is purposefully short – the world of work
until 2030 – as I felt that considering anything further into the future
runs the risk of being too unrealistic and bordering on science fiction.
I very consciously want this to be real and practical so that readers can
plan, prepare and take action today.

Summar y
This book is not designed to give you all the answers. If I knew
all the answers, I would have bucked the trend and retired some
time ago!
It is, however, designed to make you think.
I will lay out what I consider to be the evidence for the opinions
I have and the predictions I will make. But this is one person’s
point of view. You may agree with my points but, equally, you may
disagree. In either case, by making your thoughts and opinions
conscious what is most interesting to question is: where does this
take your thinking, and what does that now make possible?

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 C H A P T E R T WO

The changing world in

numbers and data

I have been lucky enough to travel the world. In the 1990s and 2000s
I worked in places that today are almost unrecognizable. From just
the perspective of the cityscape, new roads, airports, buildings, entire
under- or overground networks have been built that have changed
those places immeasurably.
In reflecting on the scale and pace of change I was struck that to a
greater or lesser extent, we all acknowledge and accept that the world
in which we live is changing. The challenge though is that we can
assume that the pace of change we experience in our day-to-day lives
is uniform and is the same as that experienced by everyone. While we
read or hear news about places further away, we often fail to appreciate
quite how much change is happening elsewhere and how fast that
change is occurring. Paraphrasing the quote from William Gibson, the
pace of change is unevenly distributed.
I vividly remember a video from about 15–20 years ago. It was
about five minutes long and through a series of graphics it presented
facts on the changing world. It would say things like ‘if the world had
100 people then XX would be…; China and India have done this, will
do that… Africa is…’. I distinctly remember how popular it was at the
time and certainly I was shown it at more than one conference and
boardroom meeting I attended. Try as I might I could not find an
updated version.
This chapter is my attempt to create it. My goal is to immerse you in
the reality of what is taking place in the world and to give you a global

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perspective on the pace of change. To provide structure, I consider six

broad headings: Urbanization and the rise of the East, Technology,
Demography, Globalization and Interconnectedness, Climate and
Politics. For each, I have picked a series of facts to demonstrate how
these forces have changed and continue to change the world in which
we live. In each case I have picked facts that made me think, that
amazed me, inspired me and also some that concerned me.
When running workshops on Innovation we immerse delegates in
‘fascinating facts’, exposing them to what is happening in the world.
In reading this chapter I ask of you what we ask of those delegates, to
suspend judgement. Immerse yourself and see just how much our world
is changing. In later chapters I discuss the how’s and why’s and so what’s.

Urbanization and the rise of the East

Of course I always ‘knew’ that developing countries were evolving.
What shocked me was the sheer relentless scale and pace of the change,
where it has taken place and increasingly what that means for where
future growth will occur.

• Mahendra Modi was elected President of India in 2014. At that point,

the length of the rural road network was 381,000 km (237,000 miles).
By the beginning of 2023 it measured 729,000 km (453,000 miles). I
calculated this growth as being equivalent to building a three-lane
highway around the equator every single year. Over the same period,
the number of Indian airports has doubled (to 140) and broadband
connections rocketed over 13-fold to 816 million.
• China though led the way. Between 2012 and 2018 China built 52
airports, taking their total to 235. (By comparison the UK has not built
a new runway in 70 years and looks unlikely to get one in the next 20;
Berlin’s new Brandenburg Airport was finally completed in 2020, a full
ten years late and three times over budget.) China plans a further 215
airports by 2035, the year in which it is predicted that China will handle
a quarter of all the world’s air passengers.

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• ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) was established

in 1967 with five members (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore
and Thailand). In the following years they were joined by Brunei,
Vietnam, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Cambodia. Collectively, the group
is now the sixth largest economic block in the world with a combined
GDP of US$ 2.55 trillion. On its fiftieth anniversary in 2016, GDP per
person had grown 33 times (to US$ 4,021) and trade 2,219 times (to
US$ 2,219 billion). Since 1990 poverty rates have fallen from 47 per cent
to 14 per cent.
• According to Population Connection, ‘In 1975, the world had three
cities with more than 10 million inhabitants (also known as megacities):
Tokyo, New York City and Mexico City…’ By 2022 this had increased
to 33 of which 27 were located in developing countries. This trend will
continue with ‘nine of the ten cities projected to become megacities by
2030 will be located throughout Africa and Asia.’
• In the book Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind’s Greatest
Invention, Ben Wilson, predicted that by 2025, 440 cities in emerging
markets, with a collective population of 600 million, will account for
half of the world’s gross domestic product. Some of these cities are
those we are familiar with – Shanghai and Mumbai, for example. What
startled me is how many I could not name with Recife, Belo Horizonte,
Bandung, Surabaya, being just four examples. I for one did not know
the country they are in, let alone have the ability to put them on a map.
(Recife and Belo Horizonte are both in Brazil; Bandung and Surabaya
are in Indonesia.)

Technology
As an engineer, I have always been fascinated and inspired by
technology. The ability of humankind to harness technology to solve
the problems we face is, to me, one of the most promising aspects of
the future. Technology is often taken to mean sophistication and to
involve computers, but the solutions it offers do not always have to

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be complex to create something revolutionary that makes people’s

lives better.

• The centre of innovation for mobile money is not in Europe, America or

China. It is in Africa, specifically Kenya, and is called M-PESA (Pesa is
Swahili for money; the ‘M’ stands for mobile). The system is remarkably
simple. To make a deposit or get cash from the app, M-PESA uses a
network of humans situated at key locations across the country. These
agents act like an ATM: you give them cash to deposit money in your
mobile money account, or transfer money out of your account to be given
cash. In much of the developing world, people don’t have bank accounts
– in Senegal it is only 8 per cent of the population; in Uganda, it’s 11 per
cent. In Kenya by comparison, 72 per cent have a mobile money account.
This has revolutionized banking in the country. In the year to March
2022, the total value of transactions on M-PESA increased over a third
to KES 29.5 billion (GBP 181 billion). M-PESA’s agents handle cash
equivalent to 31 per cent of Kenya’s GDP annually, by comparison, the
largest bank in America is J P Morgan Chase whose assets of circa US$
3.3 trillion equate to ‘just’ 14 per cent of the United States’ GDP.
• Frugal innovation is defined as ‘the process of reducing the complexity
and cost of a good and its production’. The approach can be applied to
highly complex systems and simpler products.
As an example of a complex system, the first space agency to
successfully put a satellite into orbit around Mars at their first ever
attempt was India’s – and at a cost of US$ 74 million, they did it for less
than the cost of the film Gravity and for approximately one-tenth of
the cost of NASA’s MAVEN explorer or one fifth of the European Space
Agency’s Mars Express. They achieved this feat by building on existing
technologies and by having a project team of only 14 people which ‘set
a benchmark in project management’.
More down-to-earth examples of frugal innovation include:
• The Mitticool fridge. This is built out of clay and requires no
electricity, only water, to keep its contents cool.

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• In responding to COVID-19, Swiss coffee machine manufacturer

Thermoplan developed a functional ventilator within four weeks.
The design was fascinating – 80 per cent of the components for
their ventilator came from a coffee machine – and it could be
mass-produced at up to 800 units per week at a quarter of the
cost of an ‘original’ ventilator. Unlike these original devices,
Thermoplan’s was also battery-powered and compact meaning it
could be used as a mobile unit in an ambulance.
• The Fold-Illuminator is ‘a paper-based device designed to support
biochemistry and biotech applications’. Including the heating
element, it costs around US$ 9 and ‘provides the utility equivalent
to laboratory equipment that costs in excess of US$ 10,000’. Unlike
those more expensive versions, the frugal option is portable.
• The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the successor to the Hubble
Space Telescope. Designed to find galaxies that formed in the earliest
moments of the universe and to watch the formation of stars, it is
currently sitting about 1,600,000 km (1 million miles) from Earth. To
operate, its equipment needs to be kept very, very cold, and to achieve
this it is equipped with a sunshield. The sunshield is made of five layers
of a material called Kapton; when combined these five layers are just 0.06
mm thick. If the sunshield could be bottled and sold in your local chemist,
it would have a sun protection factor (SPF) in excess of 1,200,000.
• SpaceX now flies more things into orbit than all other companies and
countries in the world combined. Averaging a launch a week in 2022,
SpaceX has launched around 3,500 Starlink satellites, roughly half the
total number of active satellites currently in orbit. It plans to launch as
many as 40,000.

Demography
We are used to hearing stories of the Earth’s ever-growing population.
This is no longer true in the developed world and, surprisingly, also
increasingly untrue in the developing world. At the same time, we are

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all living longer – and in the majority of cases healthier – lives. The
implications of this will be profound.

• The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development

(OECD) has 38 member countries. The majority of these are high-
income, developed counties, who collectively account for 62.2 per cent
of global GDP. Assuming no migration and unchanging mortality rates,
a steady population is maintained by a total fertility rate (TFR) – the
average number of children born per woman over a lifetime – of 2.1. A
TFR above or below this ‘population replacement rate’ is likely to lead
to population growth or population decline, respectively. According to
the World Bank, the TFR across OECD members has been lower than
2.1 every year since 1982. In 2020 (the latest data the World Bank has
released at the point of writing) the figure across the OECD stood at
1.6. In 2022, only two OECD countries (Israel and Mexico) had a TFR
at or above 2.1.
• With about 213 million inhabitants, Nigeria has Africa’s biggest
population. A UN-backed survey in 2021 found the TFR there had
fallen from 5.8 to 4.6 – in just five years. Compared to their estimates
of only a decade ago, the UN has thus reduced its population forecast
for Nigeria in 2060 by more than 100 million people; likewise, by 2100
the UN now expects Nigeria to have 350 million fewer people than
previously forecast – if they stay on this current trend, these figures are
likely to increase even further. This pattern is being repeated across the
continent: Senegal’s TFR fell from 4.9 a little over a decade ago to 3.9 in
2021; in the Gambia the rate fell from 5.6 in 2013 to 4.4 in 2020; and in
Ghana it dropped from 4.2 to 3.8 in just three years.
• In 1950, the average life expectancy of an inhabitant of our planet was
46.5 years. COVID-19 has negatively impacted life expectancy over the
past few years, but even taking this into account, average life expectancy
in 2021 was 71.0 years. The average person can expect to live more than
24 years longer today than 70 years ago, and arguably at the same time
will experience a far higher quality of life throughout their entire life.

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Life Expectancy 1950 to 2021. Source: Our World in Data

Globalization and Interconnectedness

Globalization has made the world a smaller and smaller place. It has been
a force for economic change but it has made us more interconnected
than ever before. In considering three aspects I was fascinated to find
that natural resources are not sourced from where I expected; how new
entrants can rapidly enter and take over markets by playing the game
differently; that our interconnectedness means events impact us far
faster, far harder and from further away than we often consider.

• As the largest producer inside OPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum

Exporting Countries) and home of Saudi Aramco (the state-owned oil

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producer whose revenues, profit and market capitalization jostle for top
spot with those of Apple), the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is often assumed
to be the world’s largest oil producer. It’s true the Kingdom produces a
lot of oil – 13.24 per cent of the oil consumed in the entire world daily in
2022. However, this level of production places it only third. The second
largest producer is Russia (at least, this was true before the imposition
of sanctions following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which
are likely to have lowered their production). The largest producer of oil
globally is the US – and has been for over a decade. (One of the main
reasons behind this is the exploitation of shale oil and the development
of fracking.) As an aside, the fourth largest producer of oil is Canada.
The situation is the same when considering the production of natural
gas. Here, Russia is again second and again the US is first, producing
some 30 per cent more natural gas annually than Russia.
• Shein was founded in 2008 and registered its first website in 2011. By
2016, the company had 100 employees. Since then, its growth has been
astounding. In 2020, it reportedly made US$ 10 billion in revenue,
making it the seventh consecutive year of sales growth of more than
100 per cent. Shein is a fast-fashion company. In January 2020, Shein
had 12 per cent of US fast-fashion sales; in November 2022, they
accounted for 50 per cent of sales and generated US$ 24 billion in
revenue that year. Focusing on younger generations and harnessing
the power of fashion influencers and social media (including being
an early adopter of TikTok and Instagram), Shein is now the largest
fast-fashion firm in the world, larger than established companies such
as Zara, ASOS and H&M.
• As recorded by the Wall Street Journal, on 24 February 2023, KPMG gave
SVB Financial a clean bill of health for 2022. Two weeks later however,
due to ongoing client withdrawals during February, on 8 March, SVB
announced it would book a US$ 1.8 billion loss and seek to raise US$
2.25 billion by selling stock. Within a few hours, Moody’s responded by
downgrading the bank. In response, on 9 March, SVB’s stock crashed,
and fears of contagion caused the shares of the four biggest US banks to

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also drop, wiping out a combined US$ 52 billion in their market value.
On 10 March, shares of SVB were halted and federal regulators took
control of the bank making it the second-biggest banking failure in
US history. On 12 March (a Sunday) regulators announced they had
also taken control of Signature Bank (making it the third-largest bank
failure in US history). On 13 March, President Biden addressed the
nation to stress the safety of the banking system. On 15 March, shares
in Credit Suisse hit an all-time low and the bank announced it would
borrow up to US$ 53.7 billion from the Swiss central bank to shore up
its liquidity. On 19 March (another Sunday), UBS announced it would
buy Credit Suisse for US$ 3 billion – half its stock market value just two
days previously. On 20 March, shares in First Republic a US regional
Bank plunged 47 per cent. On 21 March they rebounded 30 per cent.
The reverberations are continuing.

Climate
When reading about any subject, what fascinates me is what lies behind
the headlines. The following statistics on climate really challenged my
preconceptions and consider more broadly the impact we are having,
the unintended consequences of developing technology and the
opportunity.

• The average annual electricity consumption of a person in sub-Saharan

African, excluding South Africa, is 185 kilowatt-hours (kWh) a year,
compared with about 6,500 kWh in Europe and 12,700 kWh in America.
As a comparator, the most efficient fridge-freezer, one with an energy
rating of ‘A’, uses 206 kWh per year. New York City uses more energy
than all of sub-Saharan Africa put together.
• The comic John Oliver once described bitcoin as ‘Everything you
don’t understand about money combined with everything you don’t
understand about computers.’ Bitcoin, like all cryptocurrencies, relies
on a blockchain – a giant, decentralized, constantly updating database,

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which logs each transaction. The process by which Bitcoin transactions

are validated and added to the blockchain is called ‘Bitcoin mining’
and this is done by solving complex cryptographic puzzles. The first
system to solve the puzzle ‘wins’ and is rewarded with new Bitcoin. The
complexity of the puzzles requires lots of computer power which, in
turn, requires lots and lots of electricity. If it were a country, the power
used to mine Bitcoin annually is larger than that consumed by Norway,
Pakistan or Sweden. Bitcoin mining would, in fact, be the 27th largest
country in terms of electricity consumption globally.
• There are currently two methods used to maintain a blockchain –
‘Proof-of-Work’ and ‘Proof-of-Stake’. The former method (which
is computationally intensive, power hungry and used by Bitcoin)
uses competitive puzzles to confirm transactions, the latter uses
randomly selected validators to confirm transactions. In September
2022, Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency, switched from
proof of work to proof of stake. In doing so it reduced its electricity
consumption by 99.84 per cent, equivalent to forever ‘turning off ’ the
country of Finland.
• According to Bloomberg NEF, global investment in the low-carbon
energy transition totalled US$ 1.1 trillion in 2022 – a new record
and a ‘huge 31 per cent acceleration from the year before’. This makes
investment in low-carbon initiatives equal with that in fossil fuels.
• Thanks to three recent laws passed in America – the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law (BIL), the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation
Reduction Act (IRA) – firms have announced about US$ 200 billion in
investments into batteries, electric vehicles, renewables and hydrogen
and (according to the Economist) ‘up to US$ 800 billion in clean-energy
handouts is up for grabs over the coming decade.’
• China is following suit, The International Energy Agency expects China
to build renewable generation capacity capable of supplying 1,000 TWh
(terawatt hours) by 2025, equivalent to the total power generation of
Japan today; China will account for more than 45 per cent of the growth
in renewable generation in the period 2023–2025.

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Politics
Churchill once said: ‘democracy is the worst form of government –
except for all the others that have been tried.’ It seems that a majority
of the public would disagree and, whilst there are some countries that
buck this trend, many people increasingly no longer have faith in the
democratic process.

• According to the Centre for the Future of Democracy at the University of

Cambridge, in the 1990s a majority of the population in Europe, North
America, Northeast Asia and Australasia felt satisfied with democracy
in their countries; today a majority (57.5 per cent) feel dissatisfied.
‘Many of the world’s most populous democracies – including the United
States, Brazil, Nigeria and Mexico – … [lead] this trend. In the United
States, levels of dissatisfaction with democracy have risen by over a
third… in one generation.’
• According to Peter Frankopan, Professor of Global History at the
University of Oxford, in a survey published in late 2022, ‘60 per cent
of people under the age of 45 in liberal democracies don’t believe that
regular elections are an essential part of a functioning democracy and
would pick a strongman to solve problems rather than looking to solve
things through democracies.’
• There are some bright spots for democracy. The Future of Democracy
survey continues with ‘Many small, high-income democracies have
moved in the direction of greater civic confidence in their institutions.’
As examples, ‘in Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and
Luxembourg democratic satisfaction is reaching all-time highs. [In]
these countries… less than a quarter of the public express discontent
with their political system.’ Fascinatingly, according to the 2023 World
Happiness Report published by the United Nations, these five countries
are also ranked in the top ten countries with the happiest populations.
I will leave others to work out whether this is causation or correlation,
but the connection is intriguing.

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Summar y
We all appreciate that the world is changing, but it is changing
far faster than we realize. My goal for this chapter was to be
immersive, using facts to demonstrate the true reach and extent
of how fast change is occurring. There were many examples I
could have chosen but the ones I selected resonated with me,
they piqued my interest and to varying degrees shocked and
challenged me. Above all though, they made me think and learn.
Each of the six headings I used to structure this chapter shows
the challenge, threat and opportunity of the world today and thus
for the future at large. The following chapter will continue using
the same structure and look at what is causing these six trends to
exert so much change on the world where we live and work.

Questions for you to consider

Having read this chapter, consider:
• What resonated for you?
• What would you challenge?
• What surprised you?

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 CH APTER THREE

The megatrends playing out

in the world today

It may well not have seemed it at the time, but in the US the period
starting from the mid-1980s until 2007 is now somewhat affectionately
called ‘The Great Moderation’ as, when compared with historical periods,
this quarter-century window was characterized by a reduction in the
volatility of business cycles. Given this period included the dotcom boom
and bust and the shock and repercussions of 9/11, it strikes me that to call
it The Great Moderation only shows how volatile things have become!
Regardless, it is safe to say that that period is now well and truly over.
Since 2007 we have experienced the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–
08 (the deepest economic contraction since the Great Depression), the
Eurozone crisis, the rise, success and fall (?) of populism as a political
force, the global pandemic, the Great Resignation, the rampant return
of inflation and interest rates and war in Europe… The list seems
endless and relentless.
The words of Justin Trudeau were indeed correct. Change is constant
and it is accelerating. To ask a somewhat prosaic question: Why? What
has happened to seemingly upend the benign state of affairs at the start
of the century and tip the world into a state of flux?
We need to understand the trends that are impacting, shaping and
changing the world because these form the foundation of what will
come next. As Sherlock Holmes once said ‘It is a capital mistake to
theorize before you have all the evidence.’ This chapter is designed to
give us the evidence.

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Hit for six

As the examples given in Chapter 2 have shown, there are six trends
disrupting the present and defining the future. Each on its own would
rank among the largest economic forces the world has ever seen, each
surpassing the impact of the Industrial Revolution. But these forces
are all happening at once, amplifying and feeding off one another and
producing monumental change.
Chapter 2 considered these trends from the perspective of numbers
and data. That chapter was designed to immerse you in the reality
of what is happening, the sheer scale and at what pace. This chapter
follows the same structure, but looks behind the data to work out why
these forces are playing out and how they are causing such change. The
chapters that follow this one (Chapters 4 to 8) then answer the all-
important question, ‘so what?’
As a reminder the six trends are:

• Trend 1: Urbanization and the rise of the East

• Trend 2: Technology
• Trend 3: Demography
• Trend 4: Globalization and Interconnectedness
• Trend 5: Climate
• Trend 6: Politics

Each is considered in turn.

Urbanization and the rise of the East

It is something of a cliché and no longer news that Asia and the
emerging markets are growing and having an ever-increasing impact on
the world stage. According to McKinsey in 2018, emerging economies
accounted for almost two-thirds of the world’s GDP growth and more
than half of new consumption over the past 15 years.

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But we can miss the true extent of what this really means and how
quickly it is changing.

The centre of the world – economically at least

Pre pandemic, economists at McKinsey’s Global Institute attempted
to show the impact. In a paper they measured the world’s centre of
economic activity as a weighted point on the Earth’s surface, showing
how this has moved since AD 1 and predicting its future movement.
The underlying maths are, in the words of the Economist, ‘to be taken
with a pinch of salt’ but the resulting worldview is important. The
economic centre of the earth is shifting: it is shifting eastwards and at a
pace that is unprecedented in human history.

Evolution of the Earth’s economic centre of gravity from 1 CE to 2025.

Reproduced and adapted from Reddit post, original source: MGI analysis using
data from Angus Maddison, University of Groningen

From AD1 to broadly the advent of the nineteenth century, the

economic centre of the world was very much in the east. The industrial

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revolutions and industrialization of the west pulled it ever westwards,

but it took 100 years for the centre to shift. Since then, in the lifetimes
of our grandparents and parents, westward was where it remained.
Even until the advent of the millennium the economic centre of gravity
remained firmly in the west.
But it is moving east, and it is the sheer pace of its move that is
shocking. As the map shows:

It took 100 years for the centre of economic activity to shift from the
east to the west.
The reverse will happen in 25 years.

The book No Ordinary Disruption notes that in Britain, the impact of

the Industrial Revolution took 154 years to double economic output
per person, and it did so with a population of 9 million people. The
US achieved the same in 53 years with a population of 10 million.
China and India have achieved it in 12 and 16 years respectively
with 100 times as many people. In other words, the economic
acceleration is 10 times faster and 300 times the scale of Britain’s
Industrial Revolution.
I stated that this analysis was released before the impact of the
pandemic and subsequent economic impacts and policy changes.
Reshoring (bringing a business operation that had been moved
overseas back to the country where it was originally located) – most
predominantly instigated by the economic policies of the USA and
company’s nervousness of China’s political environment – combined
with an apparent slowdown in China’s recovery post lockdowns may
mean that this eastwards shift slows. But as China slows, India appears
to be picking up the pace. S&P Global Ratings have forecasted growth
at 6.7 per cent for the next three years, meaning India is ‘retaining its
tag as the fastest-growing major economy’. Having the fifth largest
economy by GDP today, it is estimated that India will achieve third
position by 2027.

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What is important is not the actual position of the economic

centre of the Earth, rather it’s significant and extremely rapid shift
eastwards.
Two examples of what this means:

1. When Fortune released their Fortune Global 500 list in August

2020, for the first time China had the largest number of companies
listed. Chinese firms slightly outnumbered those from the United
States, 124 to 121, but were way ahead of third-place Japan with 53
companies on the list. China had more firms on the list than France,
Germany and Great Britain combined.
2. For decades Asian trade has been considered a one-way affair.
Containers were loaded in Asia with goods manufactured by the
continent’s cheap labour. They sailed westwards to return, largely
empty. According to the Economist, in the late 1990s more than
70 per cent of Asian exports by value went to other parts of the
world. Today nearly 60 per cent of Asia’s exports flow within
the region.

Broadly speaking, in economic terms, by 2025, we will be back where

we started. The challenge is that for those of us in the West we are
simply not used to this. We are used to the economic, financial and
business power residing where we live. It isn’t – and it isn’t going to be
coming back any time soon, maybe ever.

The streets are paved with gold

The reason this is happening now and at such a scale and a pace is
simple; it is caused by urbanization. Since the days of Dick Whittington,
people have always travelled to cities. (Dick Whittington was the poor
boy who moved in the fourteenth century from the country to the
City of London, where the ‘streets were paved with gold’; his story
later became the inspiration for the folk tale Dick Whittington and his
Cat.) Today the number of people moving and their pace are daunting.

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Global urban population has increased by 65 million people (broadly

equivalent to the entire population of the United Kingdom or France)
every year for each of the last three decades. According to the World
Bank, 4.4 billion people – equating to 56 per cent of the world’s
population – live in cities today. It’s a trend that is expected to continue,
with the urban population expected to more than double in size by
2050, equating to nearly 70 per cent of people on the planet.
Cities are important as powerful engines of growth. Cities turn
poor, previously rural peasants into more productive workers and
then into global consumers, integrating them as part of the global
economy. Cities drive collaboration, innovation, cheaper delivery
of services (electricity, broadband, medical, etc) and the sharing
economy (think Uber). City dwellers also enjoy networking effects
with greater access to peers, gain access to financial institutions (for
instance, according to the Economist, rural households living within
5km/3 miles of a city are twice as likely to have a bank account as
those 30km/20 miles away) and they offer business customers –
many, many more customers. It is therefore no surprise that people
living in cities enjoy living standards 1.5 to 3 times better than those
living in the country (the streets may not be paved with gold, but
you are better off!). It is estimated that a key element in the GDP gap
between US and Europe is down to Americans living in bigger cities
than Europeans.
This really matters. A McKinsey study published in late 2022
showed that half of the increase in global output over the first two
decades of the millennium was generated by regions making up less
than 1 per cent of the world’s landmass. The world’s growth is taking
place in cities we know, like Los Angeles, London and Shanghai. But
growth is increasingly coming from places that most of us could not
put on a map.
An example, you may have heard of Tianjin (probably for the
massive explosion at its docks in 2015). Tianjin is a metropolis on the
north-eastern coast of mainland China, home to 13.9 million people

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and one of the four autonomous municipalities in the country under

the direct administration of the central government.
In 2010 Tianjin had an equivalent GDP to that of Stockholm. By
2020 it had an equivalent GDP to Greece, or Qatar, or Kuwait, or
Morocco. By 2030 it is entirely likely that this city will economically be
a ‘top 50’ sized economy.

Summar y
Urbanization has impacted the living standards of billions of
people worldwide. This trend will continue. People moving from
rural environments to become city dwellers become integrated
into the global economy, becoming global citizens, global
consumers and global employees. This shift in economic focus
means increasing amounts of the world’s growth will come from
cities residing in developing nations opening up opportunities
and competition.

Technology
The late Gordon Moore, co-founder and former CEO of Intel, is famous
for the law that bears his name. Moore’s Law states that ‘the overall
processing power of computers will double every two years’. While its
demise has been predicted for over a decade, the law has stood the test
of time since he first made the comment in 1965.
Moore’s Law implies that as transistors on integrated circuits
become more efficient, computers and computing power all become
smaller, faster and cheaper with time. But it is an exponential law
and we often fail to realize quite what this means. Imagine in one
hand you have a stone tablet and in the other you hold the most
technologically advanced tablet money can buy today. Moore’s
law predicts that the gain a computer will make in the next two

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years is equivalent to the difference between the two objects you

are holding.

To the moon and back

Stop and consider for a moment what this relentless technological pace
means.
It is widely shared on the internet that the average smartphone has
more processing power than the Apollo 11 guidance computer. And
it’s true. The iPhone 6’s clock was 32 thousand times faster than the
best Apollo era computers and could perform instructions 120 million
times faster. The iPhone 6 was launched in 2014 – or, in terms of
Moore’s Law, four and a half cycles from the time I wrote that sentence.
Today, even a simple Wi-Fi router is more powerful than the Apollo-
era mainframes.
In 1997, the world’s fastest computer was the ASCI RED. It cost US$
55 million to build, occupied 150 square meters (equivalent to 76 per
cent of a singles tennis court) and consumed 850 kW of electricity,
equivalent to 800 ‘average’ homes. Nine years later there was a new
machine that was faster than the ASCI ever was. It was called the
PlayStation 3. In less than a decade we went from a single physically
large, massively expensive machine, to delivering a consumer-
orientated, mass-market offering that was by most measures better and
which cost just US$ 400.
This means we constantly underestimate what technology will do
and its capability.
The Human Genome Project was an international scientific research
project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up
human DNA. It started in 1990 and was completed in 2003. Less than
five years later, the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 was identified.
CRISPR-Cas9 has the potential to effectively change the genetic
makeup of any organism. In five years, we moved from identifying
our DNA to literally being able to cut and paste elements of DNA and

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

giving the potential to fix a near-infinite number of problems – with

the corresponding ethical issues.

It is not just about the numbers

In addition to sheer processing power, technology allows everything
to be digitized: books, music, video, photos; everything and anything
can be digitized. Once the process is complete, we can then, at virtually
no cost whatsoever, share, discover, transact, change and interact
with that digital version. Attach the digitized version of anything to
an email and send it to anyone, anywhere in the world at the speed
of light. Couple this with 3D printers and, as an example, photos of
actors on the red carpet at the Oscars can result in copycat dresses
being manufactured within the hour. Make a recording of a play, a
film, a song and, subject to copyright, upload it for the whole world to
view and share and enjoy.
Today there are just under 7 billion smartphones in the world
(equating to roughly 87 per cent of people owning one). Seven billion
smartphones with access to the World Wide Web of information. With
that kind of access each of us can learn online from the greatest learning
institutions in the world; read almost any book ever written; search for
better or cheaper or different alternatives for any product or service we
desire; look for work near or far, wherever our skill takes us. Everyone
can appear, at face value at least, to be an expert in something.

Platforms supercharge the possibilities

Technology also gives us online platforms and marketplaces that
facilitate production or sales. Exchanges like eBay or Alibaba,
e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Etsy all offer a global shop
window to the smallest minnows and individuals – from Mum and
Pop shops to hobbyists and SMEs – enabling them to compete head-
on with multinational organizations. In the fiscal year 2022, products
from third-party sellers represented nearly 60 per cent of the units sold
on Amazon.

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Adoption rates mean that new technological trends become

mainstream far quicker. It took 14 years for television to reach 50
million users; the internet took 4 years and Twitter just 2; ChatGPT
reached 100 million users in just 2 months. As adoption rates speed up,
platforms become reinforced and self-perpetuate.

Summar y
The benefits of all this technology are tremendous. Think of the
data you can have on almost every aspect of your business, how
you can experiment with new business models or pricing or
engagement and receive feedback almost in real time, how easy
it is to reach customers on a global basis, how quickly business
can be scaled up. This all makes business possible on a scale and
at a pace of reaction that was only dreamt of a few years ago.
It also enables competitors in the same way. What is Intellectual
Property and how is it enforced in a world where I can take a
photograph of an object, send it to a designer or factory and via
3D printers be making copies of that object instantly? Data has
to be stored, but how secure is that storage? If everything is but
a search and click away, why do people pick your shop window
over someone else’s?
From a personal perspective, the ability for anyone to have
access to the world’s information store means competition for
work from broadly anywhere and at any time. If we are looking
for work, we will be competing against people locally but also
potentially competing against people half a world away – and
there will always be someone cheaper than you.

Demography
Put very simply, across the world we are having far fewer children and
we are all living longer.

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

Potentially peaked…
The UN christened 15 November 2022 as the Day of Eight Billion and
it came 12 years after the global population reached 7 billion. From
this point, the growth in global population is forecast to slow. However,
it is how quickly the future population forecasts are changing that is
perhaps most intriguing.
The graph below shows the Earth’s population as reported by the
UN up to and including the figure of 8 billion. There are then two
projections: the first (and upper one) is the population projection
made by the UN in 2017, the second (and lower one) is the same UN
projection made five years later in 2022. In just five years our best
forecasts of population numbers by the end of the century result in
a projected reduction of almost 1 billion people. In 2019 the UN had
projected just a one-in-four chance of the global population plateauing
before 2100. In 2022 it revised its view, now envisaging a 50:50 chance
of population peaking at some point between 2080 and 2100, and
possibly declining by the end of the century.

12

10

0
1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 2050 2100

World population (in billions) since 1800 and projected to 2100. The light
(upper) line is population projections made in 2017. The dark (lower) line is the
same population projection made five years later in 2022. Whilst the difference
looks small, forecasts for global population fell by almost a billion people
in just five years.
Source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

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 T he meg at r e nds play ing ou t in t he wor ld today

Assuming no net migration and unchanged mortality, a total fertility

rate of 2.1 children per woman ensures a broadly stable population.
This is simply not happening in most of the developed world. The
birth rate in the USA is 1.64, in Canada it is 1.40, in the UK it is 1.54.
According to Eurostat there were ‘1.53 live births per woman in the
EU in 2021, ranging from 1.13 in Malta to 1.84 in France’. The lowest
fertility rates (currently) in the world? South Korea with 0.98 (Hong
Kong and Singapore are very close behind).
Historically, birth rates fell as countries developed. What is causing
future projected population numbers to decline so rapidly is how
this trend from the developed world has rapidly taken hold in the
developing world. China’s birth rate is 1.28 and in India, according to
the National Family Health Survey, the birth rate has fallen below the
replacement ratio for the first time and currently stands at 2.0. Global
population will no longer grow exponentially, growth will slow, then
plateau and may even begin to fall.

The real problem

We are not used to this. Broadly our economic model is predicated
on growing populations. We have babies, we educate them and then
they get jobs, become taxpayers (paying for the education of the young
and healthcare of all) and consumers (creating jobs for others). Finally,
they retire – and after a few years they hit three score years and ten and
depart this mortal coil.
The trouble is, this is no longer true in most of the world. We are
having fewer children than ever before and at the same time we are all
living longer.
Take a single element of the impact here, the emotional impact. In
1950, global child mortality (the number of children who died before
reaching the end of puberty – around the age of 15) was 27 per cent.
More than one in four children died before reaching 15. In 2020, the
figure for children reaching that same age was 94.3 per cent. Iceland,
Finland, Norway, Japan and Slovenia are the countries with the lowest

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mortality at 0.3 per cent. My father experienced the death of multiple

siblings when growing up; my daughter’s only experience of death has
been her grandparents in their old age.
According to the UN, ‘by 2030, older persons are expected to
outnumber children under age 10 … in 2050, projections indicate that
there will be more older persons aged 60 or over than adolescents and
youth at ages 10–24.’ We are approaching, and to some extent already
at, the stage when countries will be facing the very real problem of
one child, two parents, four grandparents. How does that work
economically?
The challenge is that demography is a very slow-moving trend –
after all, it takes 20 years or so to have children before they become
part of the workforce. But let’s consider how this trend will play out
with no correcting action to compensate:

• In Japan a quarter of the population is already over 65 (and a third over

60). Coupled with a very small birth rate, the population is shrinking
– and by 2050, the country could lose a fifth of its current population.
It faces the very real problem, as articulated by the front page of the
Japan Times, that if trends continue the Japanese people will, as a race,
become extinct.
• A study by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in May
2023, found that by 2030 Germany’s working population will shrink
by 1.8 million people and by 2060 it will shrink by 5.3 million people
(equivalent to a reduction in the workforce of 11.6 per cent). This is due
to a declining population and the result will be that Germany will shift
from being the most populous country in Europe today, to being the
third most (behind the UK and France).
• In the UK, workers across many professions are getting older, as
examples: the average age of both lorry drivers and engineers is 55,
almost half (47 per cent) of construction workers are aged over 45
and one fifth of UK-born construction workers have retired in the
last decade.

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• In June 2021, France spent 14.5 per cent of GDP on public pensions, nearly
double the OECD average. According to the Economist, in 2004 there
were 13 million pensioners in France. Longer life expectancy and retiring
Baby Boomers mean that by 2020 this figure had risen to 17 million.

Summar y
The French philosopher Auguste Comte is credited as saying,
‘Demography is not always destiny.’ He may well be correct, but
without a reasoned debate about tax, healthcare, migration we
run the very real risk of sleepwalking into a crisis.
Longer life expectancy and less children (proportionately)
will mean people will have to work longer. Yet today too many
older people say they face age-related discrimination. And the
issues will not stop there: fewer workers, higher health bills for
a longer period of time, higher pension payments, and shrinking
economies and cities will mean the state will come under
significant financial pressure. The recent riots and parliamentary
stand-off in France over increasing the pension age from 62 to
64 offer simply an inkling of the challenge that awaits. (Note: At
64, France still has one of the lowest retirement ages in Europe.)
Another sobering example is the pension crisis in Illinois, where
by November 2022 their state pension fund was underfunded by
some US$ 140 billion.
Angela Merkel’s 2015 refugee policy of ‘Willkommenskultur’
was in part a humanitarian response, but it was also a response
to the economic realization that without more people, Germany’s
economy will face chronic skill shortages. The majority of the world
faces similar challenges. Very few are having the conversations.
As a final point, Peter Drucker, the ‘father of management
thinking’, believed that the most important transformation in
contemporary working was not technology… it was increasing
life expectancy.

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

Globalization and Interconnectedness

The BBC Bitesize website, designed for students taking exams at the
age of 16, states ‘globalization has been taking place for hundreds of
years, but has sped up enormously over the last half-century.’ This is
quite an understatement.
According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), world trade
volumes in 2022 were 45 times higher than those in 1950 (against, in
the same time frame, a ‘mere’ tripling of the Earth’s population). Since
1995, when the WTO was first established in 1995, world trade volume
and value have expanded 4 per cent and 6 per cent respectively on
average each year.
Globalization, and the complexity of the supply chains it enables,
is a phenomenon. In the course of production, the parts inside every
car built in the US visit Canada and Mexico and then return – again
and again. They have been called ‘industrial tourists’, going over a
border, being connected to another part, then coming back, being
connected to a part, then returning. On average the parts cross a
border eight times before completion. There are 30,000 parts in every
new vehicle.
This ability to shift production to locations which specialize in
each element of the process is a wonder of the modern age. This
will continue. But this is not a section marvelling at globalization
or indeed its downsides. Rather I want to focus on the challenges of
interconnectedness.

We are all connected now

The constant, rampant pace of globalization means we are all more
interconnected than ever before. Trade, capital, finance, people and
information all connect and intertwine us in ways we do not even
realize, at a near instantaneous speed. As I was growing up, it was often
said: ‘When America sneezes, we catch a cold.’ Due to their economic
heft this remains true. However, our interconnectedness means we
catch colds from multiple locations, sometimes all at once – and these

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 T he meg at r e nds play ing ou t in t he wor ld today

connections also means that events that we may not see coming have
an oversized impact.
Consider finance and, more specifically, the Eurozone crisis and
Greece. As noted by Forbes, Greece accounts for less than 2 per
cent of the Eurozone’s GDP. It has 11 million inhabitants – less than
the metropolitan area of Paris. Before their debt crisis of 2009–
2011, Greece had been in default for 50 per cent of its time since
becoming an independent country (in 1829) and had defaulted on
its external sovereign debt obligations at least five previous times in
the modern era.
Greece is not a large country, either economically or in terms of its
population. Given its economic history, it is perhaps no surprise that
it defaulted. But it did and the ramifications were such that it almost
destroyed the Euro. Why? Because we are connected, because one bank
had a loan that was linked to another bank and another – and if one
domino fell the rest could come tumbling down.

External events catch us unaware

But it is not just finance that connects us. Consider the Japanese
tsunami of 2011. On 11 March, 2011, one of the most powerful
earthquakes ever recorded triggered a tsunami off Japan’s Pacific coast.
This caused widespread devastation across a massive area – waves 2.4
metres (almost 8 feet) high struck the coasts of California and Oregon;
waves of 30 cm (12 inches) reached the coast of Antarctica, causing a
portion of the Sulzberger Ice Shelf to break off its outer edge. Among
the myriad of effects, let me comment on two:

• No iPods were made. Apple faced a sudden shortage of lithium-ion

batteries because the factory couldn’t receive the chemicals it needed to
create an essential polymer. The factory itself was not damaged, but the
port needed to transport the materials was destroyed.
• The impact of the tsunami on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power
Plant caused the German government to accelerate the closing of its

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

nuclear power plants, legislating to phase them out by 2022 and catching
a whole industry unaware. In 2011 the power plants contributed 20 per
cent of the country’s energy. This was one reason behind the corporate
split of E.ON into two businesses, which was completed in 2016 –
Uniper, a business focused on the fossil fuel, ‘dirty’ side of generation,
and E.ON, which focuses on renewables.

Summar y
Interconnectedness is a good thing.
The more connected we are, broadly the better off we are. The
more integrated or travelled we are, the greater our appreciation
of culture, diversity and our place in the world. Between 1995
and 2019 (the year before the pandemic struck) trips by people
who arrived from abroad and who stayed for at least one night
increased 3.25 times to over 1.8 billion.
Whether for tourism, education or work, we no longer think
anything when meeting ‘a foreigner’. Indeed, when you go skiing
in France, you may meet an Australian instructor teaching an
American student and think nothing of it.
The more we are able to see our impact, the greater our desire
to have an impact. Is it a surprise that the younger generations are
more environmentally aware given they are the generation that
travelled the world backpacking on gap years?
But there is a downside – shocks appear from almost anywhere
and can impact you from halfway round the world.

Climate
Most people accept that humanity is having an impact on the climate.
As time passes, we are seeing an increasing awareness of the impact
of our carbon-based economy on the environment, the weather,
biodiversity and climate.

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 T he meg at r e nds play ing ou t in t he wor ld today

The brutal reality

The simple, honest, stark truth is that whether individually or
collectively, we are simply not doing anywhere near enough to hit
the Paris target of maintaining the increase in global temperatures to
within 1.5˚C of pre-industrial levels. As of the start of 2023, the world
has already warmed by 1.1˚C and is likely to breach 1.5˚C in the very
near future.
The IPCC report, published in early April 2022, predicted we had
at best an 11 per cent chance of maintaining temperatures below
1.5˚C – and that is if we had acted then. We didn’t, or we didn’t act
either sufficiently quickly or with sufficient action, and so now, with
the publication of the ‘AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023’ on
20 March 2023, the byword is overshoot. We will breach the limit but
then ‘we come back down as quickly as possible after overshooting this
mark.’ By coming ‘back down’, the authors mean deploying methods
to suck tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere en masse to
reduce temperatures. By 2050 the IPCC estimates are that we need
to extract 6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere a
year. Currently, as an entity, Planet Earth removes only 2 billion tonnes
a year and forests are responsible for 99.9 per cent of this, mankind
just 0.1 per cent. (The continued destruction of forests – ‘globally we
deforest around ten million hectares of forest every year… an area the
size of Portugal’ – just compounds this problem.)
The technology to remove such quantities of carbon dioxide has not
yet been developed. The corresponding challenge is that we continue
to pump billions of tonnes of Carbon dioxide into the air over what is
required to meet the goals. According to Reuters, ‘To achieve 1.5˚C,
annual emissions must be reduced by 45% compared with emissions
forecasts under current policies in just eight years.’ This is not a gap.
This is a chasm.
The longer we put action off, the bigger the actions we need to
take. When we finally decide to act – and the day will come – it will
come quickly and the impact will be huge. To quote the Economist

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

in an article entitled ‘What if firms were forced to pay for frying

the planet?’:

‘If governments agreed, sooner or later, to commitments serious enough

to limit global warming to 1.5–2.0°C above pre-industrial levels, it
would send shock waves through entire business models.’

Today, only about one-fifth of global emissions are covered by a price

on carbon and as a result the global average price is just US$ 3 per
tonne of carbon dioxide. To meet the ambitions of the Paris agreement,
the IMF says the global carbon price needs to rise to US$ 75 by 2023.
Some are advocating for an even higher price.

The impact
Reuters reported in October 2022: ‘Government pledges to cut
greenhouse gas emissions put the planet on track for an average
2.8 degrees Celsius temperature rise this century, after “woefully
inadequate” progress to curb warming.’
The goal is 1.5˚C but we are on track for broadly 2.5–3˚C of
warming. We fail to realize the importance between these two figures.
A difference of 1.2–1.5˚C, a near doubling of the target seems piffling.
It isn’t. The difference is more like maybe keeping the Greenland ice
cap or sea levels rising by 6 metres (19½ feet).
According to the Economist, a rise of 3°C in global temperatures
above pre-industrial levels by 2100 would be disastrous. Its effects
would be felt differently around the world, but nowhere would be
immune. Prolonged heatwaves, droughts and extreme weather events
could all become increasingly common and severe.
A report in Science in late 2022 stated that even exceeding 1.5˚C
of global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points,
including the collapse of Arctic and Antarctic ice caps, leading to
substantial rises in sea level; the slowing down of what is known as
the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which

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could disrupt rainfall for billions; the loss of the Amazon rainforest;
the sudden melting of permafrost (which would release tonnes of
methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere); the loss of all
mountain glaciers; and the dieback of biodiverse biomes such as
the Amazon rainforest or warm-water corals. These kind of changes
‘would have significant, long-term effects on life on Earth’.

Surely COVID-19 helped?

An interesting question. Cast your mind back to the early days of the
pandemic as lockdowns swept the world.
In the spring of 2020, restrictions in the northern hemisphere
were at their strictest and the impact of humanity on the planet was
significantly reduced everywhere. The Guardian noted that ‘Flights
halved, road traffic in the UK fell by more than 70%. Industrial
emissions in China, the world’s biggest source of carbon, were down
about 18% between early February and mid-March – a cut of 250m
tonnes. Car use in the United States declined by 40%. So light was
humankind’s touch on the Earth that seismologists were able to detect
lower vibrations from “cultural noise” than before the pandemic.’
This shuttering of the world economy reduced carbon dioxide
emissions by 7 per cent in that month. That was the reduction. We
need the impact of 14 lockdowns at once and continually to reach net
zero. So, in the words of the United Nations Environment Programme,
the impact of the lockdown was ‘negligible’, equivalent to just 0.01˚C
difference by 2030.

The current impact

We are already seeing the impact of a changing environment. Summer
2022 saw records set for temperatures across Europe. The European
record-setting continued into 2023 with the Economist noting that ‘On
January 1st eight countries recorded their warmest-ever January day –
by huge margins. In Switzerland the temperature was … 1.6°C higher
than the average between 2012 and 2021…; in Bulgaria … [it was]

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4.8°C higher; Poland exceeded its highest previous temperature before

sunrise [and] Warsaw … hit 5°C above the previous record; in Bilbao
[Spain], temperatures of 25°C outstripped average temperatures for
January by 10°C.’
That is just the European picture over Winter 2022/23. Globally we
saw Pakistan record unprecedented floods. Houston has experienced
three ‘500-year’ storms in three years, Munich registered 820 natural
disasters causing insured losses in 2019 – three times as many as thirty
years ago.

Summar y
The evidence is increasingly all around us. Climate will be one
of the most defining aspects on our lives moving forward. When
governments decide to act, the impact on us will be monumental
both personally and professionally. I have dedicated a chapter
to sustainability and how you can respond, but the answer is a
simple one: start now.

Politics
Groucho Marx is quoted as saying: ‘Politics is the art of looking for
trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying
the wrong remedies.’ Of the six trends this chapter is considering,
politics is by far the most difficult to predict, but it is having a very real
impact.

The culmination of everything that has gone before

It can be argued that the trends already articulated are causing or at
the least have played a major part in causing the challenging political
times. Globalization allowed people to enjoy an unparalleled standard
of living, yet the destruction and offshoring of manufacturing from
developed to developing countries caused massive, and in many cases

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reasonable, resentment. Protection of rights for older people – pension

triple locks (UK), not increasing the retirement age (France) and
the feeling that lockdowns were to protect the old at the cost of the
young – is an effect of demography. Technology and the impending
destruction of (nominally) blue collar and (pretty soon) white-collar
work is scaring people and causing fear. Urbanization was great when
our streets were paved with gold, but there is an increasing feeling that
it is now their streets that are now paved with gold and it is us who are
being left behind. China has built a high-speed train network of 40,200
km (25,000 miles) since 2008; if HS2 gets built, Britain may manage
225 km (140 miles) by 2029, or 2033 (the date is ever changing).

The new norm…?

Over the last decades we have steadily seen the rise of populism. This
has been fuelled by many factors – the feeling by segments of the
population that they were being ignored by ‘the metropolitan elites’
and the resentment of austerity imposed after the Great Recession
being just two – but it has resulted arguably in the greatest period of
political uncertainty and change than ever before.
Two points are worth making. The first is about accepted behaviours.
As any leader or parent knows, actions speak louder than words. Our
children are not always very good at listening to us, but they copy
what we do remarkably well (at least in my case!). The same is true
in any hierarchy. Humans have a desire to fit in and so to help with
their assimilation ‘into the tribe’ they copy the behaviours of others,
especially those of the leaders. Going forward it will be interesting to
see whether the behaviours of our political leaders alter what Romans
called the ‘mos maiorum’ – roughly translated as the unwritten rules of
behaviour and morality that it was felt properly governed how people
behaved. Will there be a reset to the older respect for civic norms, or
will future leaders stretch the boundaries even further?
The second point is that of generations and age. It is widely
acknowledged that age is a strong indicator of whether you vote –

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

the older you are the more likely you are to vote. In the 2020 US
election, voter turnout was highest among those ages 65 to 74 at 76.0
per cent, while the percentage was lowest among those ages 18 to 24
at 51.4 per cent.
But the analysis goes deeper:
Age was a strong indicator of how you voted in the Brexit referendum
(73 per cent of people aged between 18 and 24 voted to Remain,
compared with just 40 per cent of people aged over 65). The breakpoint
was around the age of 47.
In France, President Macron made it to the second round of
voting only by relying on those aged 60 and over. Research by Ipsos
showed that in the first round Marine Le Pen beat Macron amongst
all age groups under 60, she was first of all candidates among voters
aged 35 to 59, and second amongst voters aged 18 to 34. (Jean-Luc
Mélenchon, ‘a veteran firebrand of France’s far left’ polled highest in
the lower age bracket.) Intriguingly this created the situation where
the youngest President in French history got the job by relying on the
oldest voters.
In Ireland, according to a general election exit poll taken in February
2020, Sinn Féin is the most popular party in every age group up to 65.
The party dominates the 18–34-year-old bracket with almost double
the support of the two main parties of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. It
leads in the age groups up to 65 – albeit by a much smaller margin. The
story is repeated north of the border in Northern Ireland. Here 36.5
per cent of those under 35 would vote Sinn Féin, dropping to 20 per
cent of 35 to 59 year olds.

Age, the new political battleground

Demography may be a slow-moving trend, but it will cause monumental
change in politics.
This analysis gives rise to a prediction: age will become the new
populism. Consider a simplistic list of have and have-nots from a UK
perspective. On one side you have a group of people cushioned with

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triple-locked pensions (and maybe a Defined Benefit, not a Defined

Contribution pension), who are likely retired, who were seen as being
protected from the pandemic by the lockdowns, who own their own
houses, but who restrict any developments near them and who received
a free higher education. On the other side a group that has none of
this apart maybe from a growing sense of marginalism and under-
representation. In the UK, 3.2 per cent of MPs are under 30 whereas
16.2 per cent of the population are aged between 18 and 30.
My prediction is that there is a cohort that could be made to feel
empowered and that could be harnessed. Age will be the facture point
moving forward; if young people voted at similar levels to their elders,
change will happen. It is their apathy and feeling that the establishment
panders to the elderly that enforces the status quo.

Summar y
This chapter outlined what I consider to be the most significant
forces that are shaping our world and which will define it in
the future. Individually, each of these forces would be having a
significant impact on the world, but we are facing all six at once
and they are reinforcing and boosting each other:

• Urbanization is increasing, but increasingly in the developed world

and thus fundamentally changing the world’s economic landscape.
• Technology is incessant in both its ability to get faster and cheaper
and to enable new ways of working and earning in ways that seemed
like science fiction just a few years ago.
• Demography is slow moving, but the Earth’s peak population is
feasibly in sight and the impact on the working population and state’s
social support systems will be profound.
• Interconnectedness and globalization will continue but in return,
contagion or threats from halfway round the world will surprise us
with their speed and impact.

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

• Climate will be the most defining aspects of our lives going forward.
Barely a week passes without it being in the news. The more action is
put off, the greater our response will need to be.
• Politics is the culmination of everything else. With large segments of
populations increasingly feeling ignored.

These six have already been playing out for decades and they will
continue to do so, crafting our world in the years to come.
I said in the introduction that you likely already know these
trends. Entire books have been written and careers made on
any one of these six, and I have attempted to highlight their
importance in a mere few pages. My goal was not to scare, but
by presenting them as a whole to raise your awareness and bring
them to consciousness.
The most important aspect is what comes next. Once we
know, or at least have an appreciation of what is coming, we can
heed Edward de Bono’s advice and prepare. Now we can plan.
The following chapters will each take an element of business and
analyze what this means. Throughout I will give examples where
things are already happening and where the future is already
forming.

Questions for you to consider

• What resonated for you?
• What would you challenge?
• Knowing this, where has this taken your thinking and what is now
possible?

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 C H APTE R FOUR

What does this mean for business?

Chapters 2 and 3 gave us the facts and reasoning behind the trends
that are changing our world. Now we have the data, this chapter and
those that follow answer the all-important question of ‘SO WHAT?’
Each takes an element of work and theorize how the future world of
work will play out. This chapter focuses on our businesses and business
strategy, while the following chapters consider people and talent, future
skills, building a sustainable business and future-proofing our careers.
To provide structure, this chapter is broken into three:

• The first section focuses on the impact on our businesses and on

our business strategy. It considers how competition will alter, and
how businesses are starting and might continue to respond to this. It
proposes how organizations can protect themselves and what this then
means in terms of company size and focus.
• The second section then considers how the changes in business strategy
will impact the workforces of our businesses, how they might be
structured and how they might look.
• The third section focuses on the internal impact. Given the changes in
our strategy and workforces it considers the two intertwined aspects of
business that have seemingly caused more angst recently than anything
else: the yin of flexibility and the yang of the office.

Par t 1: The impact on our business strategy

The continuation of interconnectedness – it star ted years ago

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

For decades the story of the global economy has been one of globalization.
Companies have been offshoring production to low-cost manufacturing
centres (typically in Asia), which produce goods of all shapes and sizes
cheaply, for consumption in the West. As evidenced in the previous
chapter, sophisticated supply chains have developed to move raw materials
and part-finished goods from specialist supplier to contract manufacturer
in order to take advantage of cheap labour and tax incentives and gain
access to markets as the world developed.

Interconnectedness now becomes political

Politicians have stepped in to have a say about this seemingly relentless
march. Politicians, though, are merely reacting to the fears of their
populations and the changing geopolitical landscape. There are
many elements you can highlight that are driving the emotions and
reactions of the populace. Providing just three examples: the reality
for many segments of the population is that they are being left behind;
the competitive threat from a rising and more expressive China; and
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the ongoing war. Outside of
the terrible impact on those directly affected, of the three elements
listed, arguably the Russo–Ukrainian War has had the most significant
ripple effect externally with households seeing their household costs
likely soar over the winter of 2022 and into the spring of 2023.
Starting with President Trump and continued by President Biden,
the US has heightened and increasingly taken action to increase their
own self-reliance and national security. The Bipartisan Infrastructure
Law (BIL), the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act
(IRA) promise hundreds of billions of dollars of investment over the
coming years to bring manufacturing of strategic goods (for example
computer chips) onshore, provide the largest infrastructure investment
in US history, and invest in all manner of climate-related technologies
from emerging research to renewable energy.
The impact on our classic understanding of globalization cannot be
underestimated. As noted by McKinsey, the CHIPS and Science Act alone
directs US$ 280 billion in spending over the next ten years. The majority

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of this – US$ 200 billion – is for scientific R&D and commercialization.

But US$ 52.7 billion is for semiconductor manufacturing, and another
US$ 24 billion worth of tax credits for chip production. As a result by
November 2022 (only three months after the act was signed into law)
the construction of 15 new fabrication plants (fabs) and the expansions
of 9 ‘fabs’ across 12 states had already been announced. Intel alone
announced the investment of over US$ 40 billion in four new ‘fabs’.
Not to be left behind, the European Council and the European
Parliament announced their own version of the CHIPS Act in
April 2023. Their goal is to double the EU’s global market share in
semiconductors from 10 per cent in 2023 to at least 20 per cent by 2030.
The Chips for Europe Initiative is expected to leverage €43 billion (US$
47.1 billion) in public and private investments.
The conscious decoupling from China is already having an impact,
reshaping many companies’ global investments and supply chains.
As noted by the Economist historically, most Apple products were
made in China; by one estimate a quarter of iPhones and more than
60 per cent of AirPods will be made outside of China by 2025.

What does this all mean?

Seeking to park geopolitics for a moment, globalization will continue.
For decades globalization has been on a relentless march driven by
offshoring – first of manufacturing and then, increasingly, of services.
The move by Apple to reduce their manufacturing reliance on China
is, yes, to an extent driven by politics, but the move away would likely
have taken place regardless of any political influence. It is a reaction
to many of the forces we have discussed. After politics it is a reaction
to operational risk, and here Apple are following the well-worn path
of diversification – the so-called ‘China + 1’ strategy. As noted by the
Economist, after the SARS epidemic paralyzed supply chains two decades
ago, the clothing industry increased their operations outside China. The
COVID-19 epidemic, which similarly paralyzed factories simply taught
technology firms a similar lesson. A third rationale is purely financial –
average wages in China have grown significantly. According to a survey

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by the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), a Japanese industry

body, a Chinese manufacturing worker typically earned US$ 531 a
month by 2020, roughly twice as much as one in India (US$ 265) or
Vietnam (US$ 250). When you indirectly employ some 500,000 people
in manufacturing, those differences mount up!
This means – and this may sound trite – that the world will increas-
ingly become a smaller and smaller place, and it will be a place where
competition between businesses for customers and between workers
for jobs will be happening everywhere, for everyone, all the time.
This will increasingly occur for the provision of everything. The access
to consumer platforms like Etsy, eBay and Amazon means everyone
can sell anything to anyone, as long as they have access to the internet.
Likewise, COVID-19 has proved that services can be delivered from
the office or from somewhere 5 miles, 500 miles or half a world away.

You just won’t see it coming

Buyers, whether businesses or consumers, will become even more
swamped by choice than they are today. This means you will have to
fight harder to rise above the noise of the competition. This competition
will not just be the decades’ old challenge of the developed verses the
developing world. In terms of manufacturing, you can order something
from halfway round the world and take delivery as if it were created a
mile away. But the bigger challenge moving forward is that competition
for your customers will come from the places where you least expect it.
Corporate examples abound, including the story of Shein in
Chapter 2, a company which came from seemingly nowhere to
become the largest supplier of fast fashion in the world. Here are just
two other examples:

• Back in 2017, who would have considered that Google was a threat to
Ford? Yet in May 2017, Ford fired its CEO Mark Fields (even though
Ford had posted its most profitable year ever in 2016) because the
company was floundering with regards their electric vehicle strategy.
Google’s Waymo division meanwhile was showcasing the electric future

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and ‘was the first company to put fully self-driving cars on US roads
without a safety driver [or any human at all] behind the wheel’. Six
years later, it is to Ford’s credit that their BlueCruise assisted-driving
technology was the first such product to be approved for hands-free use
on UK motorways, beating TESLA.
• In the same vein, who would have foreseen that Amazon would compete
head-on with FedEx, UPS and DHL, the providers of logistics and
parcel delivery that enabled Amazon to become such a success in the
first place? But in 2019, FedEx ended their relationship with Amazon
after Amazon’s continual investment in their own logistic networks.
Fast forward and it is clear there has been one winner – today Amazon
accounts for more than 50 per cent of US eCommerce volume.

The competitive landscape for each business will get bigger and
bigger and more and more complex every day. Threats will come at
us tomorrow from places we would have found hard to predict today.
Whether providing services or manufacturing, there will always be a
business that is cheaper, faster and maybe, just maybe, even better than
you somewhere in the world.

Focus and Size

The forces playing out mean that companies everywhere will face
continual, relentless, competitive threats. This poses an obvious
question: How to respond?
To succeed in the future, companies will be forced to think
consciously about what they are and how they do it. With competition
becoming incessant and global, companies will need to decide what
they do, what market they will focus on and where they will specialize.
Most importantly, at the same time, they will consciously decide what
they are not, which markets they are not focusing on and where they
will not specialize.
This merely echoes what Harvard Business School professor Michael
Porter said when defining strategy: ‘the essence of strategy, is choosing
what not to do.’

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

Just say ‘no’

The challenge in business (and to a similar extent in our personal lives) is
that we seek to do too much ourselves. When a customer calls us asking
for help, or wanting a different product or a different service, we dislike
saying no. The same thing happens in our personal lives where we seek
to do everything – all the tasks that life presents us with, from gardening
to decorating – and to be expert in them all. No business can be expert
in everything. It is exceptionally easy to say ‘yes’ to a customer. But as
we progress further away from what we are good at, from what we are
known for and from where our expertise lies, the thinner the ice on
which we are skating and the greater the risk in something going wrong.
As Red Adair, the American oil well firefighter, said: ‘If you think
it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an
amateur.’
To be successful, companies will not be able to be all things to all
customers. They can’t spread themselves too thin being, in effect,
wide and shallow. If they do, competition will swarm around them,
nibbling away and they will suffer the death of a thousand cuts. Rather,
to succeed and protect themselves, businesses will define their purpose
more narrowly, more specifically, and will then seek to achieve depth,
seeking dominance of that narrow space. Going forward, successful
businesses will no longer be generalists: average will no longer be
enough, depth and specialism will be critical.

Businesses will increasingly focus on their core purpose, seeking to achieve

dominance of that space.
To succeed, they will no longer be able to be all things to all people.
Source and ©: ImagineThinkDo

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This is already playing out. In research published in early 2023, Lorenz

Ekerdt and Kai-Jie Wu of the University of Rochester found that the
average number of sectors in which American manufacturers were
active fell by half between 1977 and 2017.
Let’s bring this to life with a corporate example:
In March 2015, GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis finalized their
‘unprecedented decision to swap US$ 20bn worth of assets’. Through
the deal, GSK gained 12,000 employees from Novartis and became the
number one business in vaccines and consumer health. Meanwhile,
Novartis received 2,000 employees from GSK Oncology and gained
nearly all of GSK’s cancer drugs, making them a leader in oncology
and set to become the number one pharma firm in terms of medicine
sales by the end of the decade. The FT described the GSK–Novartis
deal as ‘a model for industry’.
The two companies could no longer compete on all fronts and offer
everything to everybody. They needed to focus; GSK chose vaccines
and consumer healthcare, Novartis chose oncology.
The tale did not stop there.
Four years later, in March 2019, GSK announced that it had
completed a transaction with Pfizer to form a new ‘world-leading
Consumer Healthcare Joint Venture’. GSK merged their ‘Novartis-
enlarged’ consumer healthcare division with Pfizer’s, making it ‘the
global leader… and [having] number 1 or 2 market share positions in
all key geographies, including the US and China.’
To complete the story, in July 2022, GSK announced that the now
enlarged GSK–Novartis–Pfizer consumer healthcare division had been
demerged to form a stand-alone company, Haleon which, as the largest
floatation in a decade immediately joined the FTSE100 at roughly 50
per cent of the value of its parent, GSK.
Being a generalist is not sustainable. Focus and depth of specialism,
combined with scale in that specialism, is needed in order to be
successful.

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Focus, focus, focus

Companies will increasingly define and focus on a specialist core
purpose, seeking to achieve dominance of that space. Their specialism
will be, in Warren Buffet’s terms, ‘their economic moat’ – their defensive
position to make them unassailable.
Then, as they achieve dominance companies will use that strength to
move into adjacent spaces to expand and reinforce. An example here
is Apple. First they dominated music with the iPod. Next they moved
into smartphones, which they dominated (and still dominate). Then,
building on their strength here, they moved into adjacent markets:
apps, watches, fitness monitors and, more recently, TV. As they build
out the ecosystem, they cross-sell to ensure the cost of leaving is too
great. The interesting aspect of their business is exactly that ecosystem.
For all we hear about the AirPods, TV, Fitness+, iMac, iPad and the
plethora of products they offer, everything they do is underpinned by
their dominance of the mobile phone market. In Apple’s results for the
quarter ending 1 April 2023, the iPhone still accounted for 54.1 per
cent of the company’s revenue – 15 years after its launch.

Core v. chore
As companies specialize and seek dominance and as technology allows
work to be packaged up and distributed with ease, the next step on this
journey is that companies can consciously decide what they want to
do in-house and what they don’t. Businesses will need to consciously
consider two questions: What is core and What is chore?
What in your business is absolutely core to who you are, what you
do and how you do it? What is sacrosanct, which you must hold close
to your chest and never let go, which defines you and makes your
business yours?
Similarly, what is a chore to you? Which aspects of business have to
be done rather than those aspects you want to do?
These are two interesting questions, and we do not always think
about them deeply enough. Often in business (and again this is true

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in our personal lives too) there are a lot of things we do or have done
that we do not really care about at a basic level: we do not care who
does it, where it is done or even how it is done. As long as the piece
of work is delivered on time, to a mutually agreed level of quality
and an acceptable price, then we are happy. So… what makes your
business unique and therefore is core to you? The rest is a chore and
may likely be better delivered not by you, but by someone for whom
that task is core.
This will naturally become self-reinforcing. As companies focus
down onto their core they will increasingly outsource their non-core,
chore work, to other companies and for those other companies your
chore will be their core. After all, that is one of the key reasons why you
will have chosen them. This then reinforces each business’ specialism
and depth of that specialism in their respective spaces.
There is, of course, a constant friction between outsourcing a
function and then, as time passes and situations change, bringing
that function back in-house. Maybe your business size means you
cannot keep a digital marketing expert busy for 40 hours a week
today, so you outsource the work until business growth means you
can justify the decision to bring it back in-house. This dynamic will
remain true in the future, but it will just happen a lot, lot faster.
Different elements of business functions, and indeed entire business
functions, will be at different points on this never-ending loop at
different times. The question is: Do you know where each of your
functions and operations lies?

For each function or operation in your business where are you on this loop?
Where could you be and what would that enable?

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On one level, you could argue what’s new? Companies have been
outsourcing business functions for decades. That is absolutely true.
But historically the outsourcing was classically a longer-term, Business
Process Outsourcing (BPO) type engagement, where an organization
was engaged to deliver the service or function in a timeframe typically
measured in years. The difference moving forward is the scale,
opportunity and speed with which not just entire functions can be
outsourced but the opportunity to outsource discrete elements of work
to individual specialists in a multitude of defined areas. This ability
refocuses how we consider our workforces.
A quick pause to allow you to reflect before we look at the rise of
specialists and the impact on our workforces.

Pause for reflection

• What is your business’s domain of expertise? How defined and
narrow is this?
• How deep and broad is your moat?
• What do you say ‘no’ to? Which markets or products do you operate
in where you are not the number one or number two player?
• What is core to you? What is so important that it must be yours and
yours alone?
• What is a chore in your business?

Par t 2: The impact on our workforce

In responding to increasing competition, the previous section
identified that businesses will increasingly focus, choosing what is core
to them and what is a chore and then deciding how each element is to
be delivered. Historically the choice in how ‘chore-work’ was enabled
was limited. Today, and increasingly in the future, technology and
interconnectedness have opened up multiple different options for
businesses to consider and in enabling this, it will have a dramatic and
profound impact on our workforces.

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In considering this, let’s first go back in time to briefly look at the

rise and importance of specialists.

The rise of specialists

In 1776, Adam Smith published the first edition of An Inquiry into the
Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (commonly abbreviated to
The Wealth of Nations). In the very first chapter Smith introduces the
fundamental economic concept of the division of labour. His account
remains one of the most famous descriptions of an industrial process
in the history of economic thought.
Smith shares his observations of how pins were manufactured and
the impact of specialization on productivity. He noted 18 distinct steps
in the process of manufacturing a pin: ‘One man draws out the wire,
another straightens it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it
at the top for receiving the head … the important business of making a
pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations.’
He noted that there are two ways to approach the 18-step
manufacturing problem. One is to hire workers who are generalists,
each performing all 18 steps; another is to hire specialists, people
whose skill lies in a single or in a few of the 18 steps which they perform
before handing over to another specialist.
In commenting on this he said: ‘I have seen a small manufacture…
of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some
of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations…
though they were very poor [and thus did not have much machinery]
… Each person… might be considered as making four thousand eight
hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and
independently… they certainly could not each of them have made
twenty… in a day.’
Simply put, hiring specialists to perform a specific, discrete task as
opposed to having generalists perform multiple tasks dramatically
increases productivity.
His thesis was called the division of labour and it is a fundamental
economic principle that underpinned mass-market manufacturing

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from 1776 through the Industrial Revolution through to today. Maybe

the most famous example is that of Ford’s Model T moving assembly
line. Workers stood in the same place and as the cars moved down the
assembly line to them, they performed their task, the same one day
in, day out. The cars then moved on to the next person for them to
perform their task and so on.
The resultant increase in productivity was simply astounding.
According to the Detroit Historical Society, after its launch in
October 1908, the Ford factory in Piquette Avenue made only 11
cars in the first month. As the Model T proved to be wildly popular,
to keep up with demand Ford built a new plant in Highland Park
which opened on 1 January, 1910. In 1913 the plant began using the
moving assembly line to build the car’s chassis. Initially the chassis
was assembled in 12 hours 8 minutes, but by 1914 it took only 93
minutes. The resultant efficiencies were passed to consumers; in 1909
a new Model T cost US$ 850, but by 1924 the price had reduced to
only US$ 260.
Specialization delivered an unprecedented efficiency, which heralded
the age of manufacturing and enabled mass consumerization.
Specialism in our people enhances their skill in that specialism and
drives productivity. This has obviously been understood for centuries,
but historically businesses were faced with a more binary decision – hire
a specialist to do the job for you, or employ a generalist to do several
jobs for you and take the resultant hit on productivity. Historically, we
may pay people for 40 hours of work a week – but how many hours are
delivering productive output? In the future, businesses have the ability
to handle this challenge in an entirely different way.

Holistic workforces
As businesses hunker down onto their core, they can consciously
decide how they manage and deliver their chore. The trends discussed
in Chapters 2 and 3 have altered the landscape and importance of
options available.

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From a fundamental economic standpoint, businesses tend to scale

back on their investments when times are uncertain. They limit or
delay spending until there is a clearer indication of future more benign
economic conditions. (Governments of course classically respond to
this by seeking to prompt business investment – the super-deduction for
business investment in the UK during the pandemic is but one example.)
One of the top three costs of any organization is people costs –
salaries, associated expenses, and the office space to house them – and
so one of the quickest and easiest ways business can reduce or delay
incurring additional costs is to limit investment in people, typically
by cutting training and freezing hiring. Again this can be seen in the
UK. As this is being written in mid-2023, we have experienced a year
of inflation running in double digits and the Bank of England base rate
has risen to (at the time of writing) 5.25 per cent from the pandemic-
induced low of 0.1 per cent. This has precipitated a cost-of-living crisis
and the economic prospect is uncertain. Business is responding and
since the peak in March 2022, the number of vacancies in the UK has
dropped by 176,000 to 1.124 million. (Note: As Chapter 5 will explore,
the number of vacancies stands at 1.124 million, still some 50 per cent
above pre-pandemic levels.)
From an economic standpoint it makes sense to limit hiring, but
work still needs to be done. So to deliver, business will respond by using
less permanent labour but replace it with more and more temporary
labour. For businesses, this gives the best of both worlds. The ability to
deliver, but total flexibility in when, how and for how long they use it.
If the economic situation deteriorates, flexible labour can be turned off
instantaneously; if it improves it could be made permanent.
Compounding this and mirroring what happened in manufacturing,
technology and globalization will amplify and exacerbate specialization.
The moving assembly line broke blue-collar work into discrete work
packages. One specific worker would (for example) fit the driver’s front
wheel to a Model T Ford every 93 seconds of every day, 220 days a
year. Another worker would fit the passenger’s front wheel every 93

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seconds of every day… and so on. (As an aside, performing such

repetitive tasks every day may not have been the most motivational
work ever, but we will cover this aspect in Chapter 5.) Technology is
now increasingly enabling typical white-collar work to be split into its
component parts, into discrete work packages. Once split, companies
can then consciously decide how each could be delivered.
At the same time, technology also lowers the transactional cost of
using an outsider. Lockdowns proved that workers need no longer
be considered on the basis of geography. Technology allows distant
workers to have the same access to systems, data and, to a greater or
lesser extent, people as anyone residing in an office. Workers could be
in the same office, or halfway round the world from you.
Finally, technology has provided us with platforms like Upwork and
Fiverr (two of over 500 platforms that form part of ‘The Open Talent
Ecosystem’) that facilitate the connection of specialist individuals
offering their services to deliver packages of work, with institutions
needing that specialist support. (I have used the word institution as the
purchasers of the specialist’s time are not simply limited to business.
Anyone, personal or professional, could be a supplier or purchaser.)
Experts can be engaged transactionally, from halfway round the world
to create a marketing plan, or design your brand, or run your digital
marketing, or design your infographics, build your website or write
blog articles, etc.
These changes all come together to provide business with multiple
ways to deliver each element of your chore. Historically your choice was
relatively simple – use permanent headcount, temporary headcount
or outsource it. The opportunity moving forward is to blend all the
various ways of delivering together and to consider the entire delivery
operation holistically.

The rise of the holistic organization

This trend, already under way, is set to accelerate. Staffing Industry
Analysts (SIA) is the global advisor on staffing and workforce

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solutions. In 2022 they noted that the number of contingent (i.e. non-
permanent) workers in the US was 51.5 million equating to 35 per cent
of the nation’s workforce.
As is always the case, many companies exceed this figure. According
to OnContracting​.co​m, in 2023 ‘based on several surveys, ATS/VMS
software company reports and news articles, it is estimated that most
large companies have an employee to contractor ratio of 1:1 now.’
(Applicant Tracking Systems and Vendor Management Systems are
technology platforms used by companies and recruitment companies
to manage the hire-to-retire employee lifecycle.)
SIA’s research published in 2020 found that this is just the start. Over
half of companies surveyed thought that their permanent headcount
would decrease ‘significantly or moderately’ over the next ten years.
That decrease was mirrored by over half of companies ‘significantly or
moderately’ increasing their use of Statement of Work consultants and
Freelancers and workers operating via outsourced vendors.
To maximize efficiency, workforces will be considered holistically.
As a challenge, how many hours of gainful work do you receive from
each of your employees? For someone employed 40 hours a week, do
they deliver 40 hours of work? If not, how many is it? Now consider,
is that person’s function core or chore to you? Is there a more efficient
way of having that work delivered?
As I said earlier, companies do not care who does much of the work,
or where it is done, as long as it is done to the right level of quality,
and is delivered on time and at an agreeable cost. Can you therefore
consider different ways of having work delivered? These are important
considerations because they open new ways of thinking about what is
important to your business and how you do things.

Company reach will be far bigger than their size suggests

This all means that as companies focus and specialize, they will
employ less permanent headcount directly, but will correspondingly
have significant numbers of non-permanent headcount. In these

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hybrid organizations, the people you work with could be employed

under multiple different methods: as permanent headcount of the
organization ‘everyone’ is working for; as independent contractors
engaged on a day rate basis; as independent contractors engaged
to deliver a Statement of Work project; as employees of a company
to whom you have outsourced the work; as a freelancer engaged
transactionally to deliver a specialist piece of work and then depart;
as a shared resource with a customer/supplier/other company that, for
example, shares the same building as you; as a permanent employees of
a partnering company – and so the list goes on.
This approach of businesses focusing onto their core and outsourcing
their chore is possibly best exemplified by Apple. In the year 2022,
Apple employed 164,000 full-time employees (FTEs), a 6 per cent year-
on-year increase over 2021.
At the same time, ‘Apple is one of the biggest job creators in the
United States, responsible for two million jobs in all 50 states.’ In
Europe they created a further 1.76 million jobs. In a single Foxconn
factory in Zhengzhou, China, as many as 300,000 workers work at the
single factory. They indirectly employ 15 times as many people as they
directly employ – and that is just in the US.
Apple’s logo is remarkably prescient. The ‘bite’ from it represents their
permanent, direct, headcount. The remainder of the apple represents
their indirect headcount.
In the future, a company’s size will not be determined by the number
of office locations or the number of employees they have. Moving
forward, companies will employ fewer and fewer people directly, but
they will appear far larger and have a far larger reach due to the network
of relationships and arrangements that they have in place to enable
their delivery. Each element of the core parts of their business will be
augmented by partners, gig workers, contractors, Statement of Work
delivery, outsourced arrangements, supply chains, etc – all engaged to
fulfil some discrete element of their chore, enabling them to deliver to
their end customer.

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The logical conclusion to this is, as some articles have recently

mused, that there will soon be a unicorn business (a start-up worth
US$ 1 billion) with only three employees.

The societal challenge

This raises a fundamental societal challenge. If you picture Apple’s logo
again, where do the riches reside? Consider who works in the US$ 5
billion office in Cupertino, California. Shaped like a flying saucer, it
boasts (among other features) a 1,390-square metre (15,000-square
foot) cafeteria and espresso bar and a 9,290-square metre (100,000
square-foot) fitness centre. Contrast that with those who make
iPhones, say, working longer hours, for less pay, in less salubrious
surroundings.
Considerations of the societal impact are beyond the scope of
this book, but the consideration is worth noting as it sharpens the
discussion about the haves and have-nots and the potential political
reaction.

The gig worker

The drive for holistic workforces is well under way. I’ve managed to
get this far in the book by only mentioning the word gig (in a work
context) twice. There is a lot written about the gig economy, which is
viewed mostly in negative terms and associated with blue-collar work
– typically Uber drivers or those delivering fast food.
As with preceding advances, the gig economy will bring change;
it will challenge businesses, individuals and society at large with the
very definition of what work and what being employed means. It will
challenge how stuff is done, where it is done and who does it — but
at the same time it will also drive massive amounts of opportunity
and flexibility. As with most things in life there are good and
bad connotations, depending on which side you take. There are,
however, many misconceptions regarding the gig economy, here are
just a few…

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For one, the gig economy is not new. A gig is a transactional piece of
work: paying someone a set amount of money to do a job with an agreed
output, regardless of the time it takes to deliver. Gigs have been around
for centuries – when barristers were engaged to defend a client for a sum
of money in the Middle Ages, that was a gig. Bringing it more up to date:
if you have asked your children to wash the car or mow the lawn for a
fixed sum of money, those are gigs. If your accountant charges you a
fixed price to prepare the accounts (like mine does), that is a gig.
This means that gigs fundamentally change the nature of pay from
being a time-based function into being an output-based one. As an
example, if you agree to hire someone to work fulltime – say 40 hours
a week – then there is really only one question left: How much will you
pay me? A gig switches this. A gig is output-based remuneration. ‘I will
pay £5 to have my car cleaned’ – you do not care (within reason!) if it
takes five minutes or five hours; you pay for the task to be completed,
to an acceptable level of quality, and for that, you will pay a mutually
acceptable amount of money.
There is a fascinating dichotomy here between full-time and gig
work. If I am employed for 40 hours a week, but I am super-productive
and manage to do my work in, say, 32 hours, does my manager
congratulate me or do they feel cheated (maybe saying something like
‘Do some work!’). Likewise, if I take 45 hours to complete the work
does my manager feel vindicated (‘I got five hours of work for free!’).
Where in this is the drive for productivity and efficiency?
In addition, notice the logical extension of gig work. From an
individual’s perspective (i.e. the perspective of the supplier) this
means that the better you are at your task, the more efficient you are
in delivering the work, the more you will earn. A simplistic example
is that a fast cyclist will earn more from Deliveroo than a slow one; an
efficient PowerPoint user will earn more than an inefficient one, and so
on… Ultimately, of course, this reinforces chore v. core. If it is not core
to you, you are likely not overly efficient at delivering it. Outsource it
to someone for whom it is core.

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There are of course challenges with the gig economy. Firstly, gigs
make everything individual. Historically when outsourcing work it
was typically a Business to Business (B2B) engagement with each
side generally permanently employing workers to deliver the work.
The rise of platforms and globalization has enabled work to be made
individual. Today individual workers can be engaged to deliver
individual, discrete elements of work, removing the permanency that
was historically the bedrock of employment and, to a greater or lesser
extent, tax revenue and the economy. The second challenge is whether
gigs are seen as a means of reducing worker pay and manipulative,
much like ‘piece work’ when it was used in the industrial revolution.
Many countries have legislated a minimum pay rate for workers
(typically hourly). Gig work needs to consider the ‘fair rate,’ what an
average worker, working at this rate, can earn and ensure it meets this
minimum wage. These two points are ethical and social challenges
that are beyond the scope of this book, but the debate on gigs taking
advantage of workers and the potential reduction in wages will
rage and most likely rage loudest in connection with manual jobs
(as examples those in agriculture and manufacturing) that are most
under pressure from automation.
As a final point, surveys show individuals are embracing this
opportunity. According to one survey published in Business Leader in
February 2023, ‘almost three in 10 (28 per cent) of current employees
in the US and UK plan to do freelance work in the next five years, and
another 21 per cent want to do it in the next 11 months.’ There will be
many reasons for this, maybe it is as a response to the cost-of-living
crisis and having to take on additional work to supplement a main
income, maybe it is to test a new business idea before fully committing,
or maybe it is to sell time or products you have made that you enjoy
doing. Whatever the cause, the flexibility that gig work enables has
brought the phrase ‘side-hustle’ into our language and there is already
(somewhat ironically I suppose) an industry supporting or helping
people define, create and sell their hustle.

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The shifting problem

This dynamic, changing network of relationships that businesses will
have in place to enable their delivery, changes the focus on how those
businesses operate and get things done. When operations are in-house,
the worry is about people and people management and the entire
employee life cycle, from hiring, managing, developing, coaching and
mentoring to the individual exiting your business. Simplistically, when
the challenge is in-house, the challenge tends to be people-related and
typically the domain of management or maybe HR.
Managing a network of relationship is different: supplier
management, contract management, metrics and KPIs have been de
rigueur for years. But these tend to be the domain of corporate support
functions. As the relative importance of permanency and partnering
changes, this will challenge both functions.
As businesses outsource work, they will need to take a greater and
greater interest in how that partner manages their employees and their
partner’s approach to their employee life cycle. How does your partner
treat their workers – those who are actually doing your work? How do
they represent you? If your and their employees are working next door
to each other, can you tell the difference? Do they share the same values
as you? To mitigate risk, the outsourcing entity will want to know how
the partner is representing them and seek to ensure that there will be
no negative impact of association – on any level. It will be damaging to
your business if you don’t. The recent allegations of sexual harassment
of employees at multiple franchised McDonald’s restaurants in the UK
are a case in point.
(NB: Added to this will be an increasing interest in how your
partners support sustainability, their approach to the environment and
their carbon footprint. This will be considered in Chapter 7.)

Apple… again
Apple is again a case in point. In 2010, reports started to surface about
the working conditions of Foxconn employees making Apple products
in China. In the Longhua factory alone, there were 18 reported suicide

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attempts that year and 14 confirmed deaths. A further twenty workers

were talked down to safety by Foxconn officials. The resultant media
sensation focused on talk of worker suicides, sweatshop conditions,
immense stress, long workdays, harsh managers prone to humiliate
workers for mistakes, unfair fines and unkept promises of benefits
in the ‘House of iPhone’. In 2010, Apple was not the technological
juggernaut it is today. In fact, back then at the end of the year it was
‘only’ worth US$ 297 billion (almost 10 per cent of what it is worth in
2023) – and it was ‘only’ the fourth most valuable quoted company in
the US, behind Exxon Mobile, Microsoft and Walmart.
Now, on a somewhat crass level, Apple could have taken the
stand along the lines of This is absolutely terrible, you are absolutely
correct, but these worker issues are not our problem, they are Foxconn’s
problem. We have outsourced our manufacturing, Foxconn is the
employer, speak to them. Indeed, as noted by the Guardian, Steve Jobs’
declaration at the time: ‘We’re all over that’ failed to convince, and
he was considered callous for pointing out that the rate of suicides
at Foxconn was within the national average. However, the blowback
onto their brand was such that they had to take a greater interest and
prove quite literally that they were ‘all over that’. In February 2012,
Apple requested that the Fair Labour Association (FLA) conduct a
special investigation of worker rights and working conditions at three
of its final assembly suppliers. Tim Cook visited the new Foxconn
factory in Hebei that year and Foxconn agreed to achieve full legal
compliance regarding working hours by 1 July, 2013, while protecting
worker’s pay. In the years since, Apple has done a lot of work to try
and improve conditions, including refusing to use suppliers who
employ underage workers and publishing an annual report detailing
exactly what it finds in its visits.
Your network of partnerships and relationships that enable your
business to get things done will become larger and more complex. You
will need to be as concerned about how they manage your brand and
how they treat their people as you are about managing your brand and
your people.

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Pause for reflection

• Is everyone you permanently employ gainfully working for 40 hours
a week?
• How could you deliver your chore? Could you partner, outsource,
share resource, employ a freelancer…?
• In terms of workforce strategy, how well do corporate services work
together?
• If size isn’t everything, are you as small as you could be?

Par t 3: The internal impact – The office and flexibility

I have said that businesses will protect themselves by focusing on
their core, they will outsource their chore and thus employ less
people directly, compensating that reduction with an increase in
non-permanent workers, outsourced relationships and a network of
partnerships.
This raises a very simple question: What is the purpose of the office?
Which sounds like a strange question to ask. After all, isn’t the answer
obvious? But in this brave new post-pandemic world, I suggest that we
need to move past the noisy headline-grabbing pronouncements that
employees should return to the office or, as Elon Musk puts it, ‘pretend
to work elsewhere’. There are subtler forces at play. Rather than binary
in/out discussions, the actual question we should be spending our time
considering is: What is the purpose of the office? – and then designing it
to meet that purpose. This is the path to a sensible conversation.
Tied up in this question is a discussion about flexibility and hybrid
working. After all, if we want people to return to the office, we need to
give them a reason to be there. But it is worth having that discussion.
Long before the pandemic, we were having discussions about flexibility
and office space, but like its impact on a lot of aspects of life, COVID-19
took an existing situation and dramatically amplified it. Let’s consider
these two elements in the context of the future world of work.

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Flexibility
The long path to flexibility
‘The competition to hire the best will increase in the
years ahead. Companies that give extra flexibility to their
employees will have the edge in this area.’
Bill Gates

Before the pandemic the ability to work flexibly was seen as a perk, a
benefit to be enjoyed by the trusted few. Pre-pandemic, I once asked
one manager whether his company offered flexible working, and was
told: ‘Yes, absolutely. We can do what we want as long as we are at our
desks between the core hours of 09:00 and 17:30.’ I thought he was
being sarcastic. He wasn’t.
The truth back then, and to an extent now, is that most businesses
tended to see flexibility as being fine when it was one-sided, or
specifically when the company obviously benefitted – for example,
we were encouraged to embrace remote access email and thus work
encroached upon the sanctity of home – but most companies remained
more entrenched about allowing home life into work. It is mutual
flexibility that is the opportunity.

The desire for flexibility

Pre-pandemic workers wanted flexibility – the Guardian reported that
over 40 per cent of the working population in the UK stated a desire to
work flexibly. Yet given this, flexible working options were mentioned
in only 6 per cent of job adverts.
Having lived through lockdowns and being forced to work
from home, the desire for some degree of flexibility has become
entrenched. Research in 2022 of 35,000 employees across 34 markets
by the world’s largest staffing business, Randstad, showed that ‘Job
flexibility is expected’ with 42 per cent of respondents across all age
groups stating they wouldn’t accept a job if it didn’t provide flexibility

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around working hours, and over a quarter (27 per cent) having quit
a job because it didn’t provide enough flexibility. According to data
from the Office for National Statistics in the UK, (and quoting the
Guardian) ‘between September 2022 and January 2023, 16 per cent of
the workforce still worked solely from home, while 28 per cent were
hybrid workers splitting their time between home and the office….
[In addition,] 40 per cent [of workers] had worked from home at
some point in the past seven days.’ (In 2019 this figure was just 12
per cent.) This reflects global trends. ‘A survey of employees in 27
countries … spent an average of 1.5 days working from home; the UK
average was 2 days.’

But what is flexibility?

Flexibility sounds amazing, but at the same time not all roles can
deliver this fully.
For white-collar, ‘knowledge’ workers, flexibility allows the best of all
worlds – working from home, arriving at work later than contracted,
leaving earlier and blending the demands of work and home life to
ensure there is the chance that everything can get done. This is the holy
grail, for some workers at least.
For blue-collar workers, those working in strict shift patterns, and
their managers, this fluid approach to work has less appeal and can
sound akin to chaos. After all, it is rather difficult to perform retailing,
manufacturing or logistics from the comfort of your home.

‘Low-wage’ flexibility
The stark reality is that it is virtually impossible to give the same degree
of flexibility to lower-wage, location-reliant workers as their higher-
wage, knowledge working colleagues. However, for this cohort research
shows that predictability is much more important than flexibility.
Flexibility is many things to many people, but knowing which shifts
you are working weeks into the future rather than days or even hours
enables people to plan their lives – and this is valued.

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Various American cities have introduced laws that, among other

things, require employers to give workers a set amount of notice when
setting their shift rotas. As an example, under the Fair Workweek Law,
fast food employers in New York City:

• Must give workers regular schedules that stay the same week to week.
• Must give workers work schedules 14 days in advance of the start of the
schedule.
• Must pay premiums for schedule changes or clopenings (working a
closing shift one day and then an opening shift the following day).
• Must give workers a chance to say ‘no’ to extra work or to clopenings.
• Must give current workers the opportunity to work more regular hours
before hiring new employees.
• Cannot fire or reduce the hours of a worker by more than 15 per cent
without just cause or a legitimate business reason.

Both employees and employers benefit. Recent research by Harvard

Kennedy School into the effect of fair workweek legislation in Seattle
found that the requirement for two weeks’ notice of schedules
improved workers’ reported sense of well-being, sleep quality and
economic security. Another study published in the Harvard Business
Review concluded that introducing more stable employee schedules
increased sales and productivity at a retailer. Yet another (published in
the MIT Sloan Management Review) found that predictable schedules
had a marked effect on retention for blue-collar employees.
In this context, it is interesting that the headline in the campaign for
unionization of Starbucks workers in the US is about a starting wage
of US$ 20 per hour nationwide. But if you move past the headline-
grabbing details, the Washington Post notes that ‘the main priority for
the union is guaranteed hours and predictable schedules... Workers
want a guarantee of 32 hours a week for full-time staff and 20 hours for
part-timers, plus the right to have the same schedule every week or for
a month at a time.’ As a comparator, in the UK in the mid-2010s there

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was significant backlash against zero hours contracts. It is interesting

that the changes in law affecting these, which gave rights to employees
regarding (as an example) exclusivity of working, have meant that
whilst still in use little has been heard about these contracts for quite
a few years.
In the absence of being able to offer flexibility in the broadest sense,
ensure predictability for your shift workers.

‘Knowledge worker’ flexibility – it is all about time

I suggest there is a simple reason why some leaders seem to resent the
very idea of flexibility. I propose that it is fundamentally down to trust.
Let me explain why.
The late David Graeber, Professor of Anthropology at LSE, in
his book Bullshit Jobs noted that since the Middle Ages, work has
increasingly been seen as a good thing and the opposite – idleness
– a bad thing. Language from that period reinforced this concept –
Chaucer used phrases like ‘the devil makes work for idle hands’ and, in
the UK, laws made the point explicitly with the original apprenticeship
levy signed in 1563 being designed to ‘banish idleness’. The belief that
work was good and idleness bad was further reinforced by the religious
and work ethics of the Puritans and Victorians who fostered the belief
that ‘atonement could be achieved through hard work’.
Technology also played a part and it is partly the reason why the
word time is the most commonly used noun in the English language.
As railway networks grew, there was a need for a common and accepted
measure of time – one reason why old railway stations have clocks. But,
as Professor Graeber noted, once clocks became commonplace, time
could then be measured, and once measurable it could then be bought
or sold for money or, as we call it, wages.
Coupling these two aspects together – a strong work ethic and
the purchase of time – then once agreed that you will work for 40
hours a week, your manager expects to see you working for those 40
hours. If they see you appearing to slack off, this can lead to righteous

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indignation on their part as their centuries-old work ethic means if

you are not working when they are paying you then you are, in effect,
stealing from them.

‘Knowledge worker’ flexibility – actually, it is all about trust

This raises a challenge, but it is not a challenge about flexibility. To a
greater or lesser extent, there is a stigma that flexible working means
working less, that working from home is ‘pretending to work’. If there is
one person who actually is pretending to work that is not an excuse to
haul everyone back into the office. This is, at its centre, an issue of trust
and dealing with those that abuse it.
There will always be people who take advantage of situations. If
that were not the case. then there would be a lot fewer procedures
in our workplaces, but we have expenses, holiday and a plethora of
other procedures to guide behaviours and define what is ‘acceptable’.
If someone decides to abuse the expense policy, it is not a fault of that
expense policy that they did so. Likewise, if someone abuses working
flexibly it is not the fault of flexible working. The challenge, the issue
to be dealt with, is what happens when anyone takes advantage of
any company policy? If someone takes advantage of expenses, or
holidays, or flexible working and ‘gets away with it’ then that is a fault
in management for not calling it out and not dealing with the problem.
Call it out. Managers do a disservice to the business (and to all their
other employees) if they don’t.

Making flexibility work

There are, unfortunately, no hard and fast one-size-fits-all ways in which
to enable flexibility to work. Different roles, in different functions, in
different businesses may likely need different approaches. One thing
that is certainly true is that whatever you do should align with your
company values and culture (and more on that in Chapter 5).
Part of any solution, as the Economist noted in March 2023, should
be the defining of clear boundaries. Working flexibly is not the same

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as your manager being allowed to contact you at any time of the day
(or night), any day of the week (or weekend) and regardless of whether
you are at work (or on holiday). Evening people may well still be up
bright-eyed and alert well past 22:00, but that does not mean colleagues
appreciate receiving a call at that time!
Likewise, spend time defining how to effectively communicate.
We have many channels available to us, but that does not mean that
a manager should email, then call, then WhatsApp, then IM, then
Teams people just to ensure they got the message. Clearly define which
channel is appropriate for which type of conversation and what is the
expected response time for that channel.
There are exceptions to both the above rules. But the key word in
that last sentence is exceptions. An exception is not every day, or even
every week. If that is the frequency of exceptions in your business, then
I suggest you have bigger problems to deal with.
If people are expected to come into the office, ensure they are not
there working on something that would be better done from home.
There will be no greater way to build resentment in your people if
you drag them into the office, only to sit, with their headphones on,
doing individually focused work. Define the kind of work you expect
people to do at home and the kind you expect done in the office. As
an example, Slack specify core collaboration hours, which is when most
meetings and group activities happen. They have also instituted ‘focus
Fridays, where teams cancel all internal meetings and employees are
encouraged to turn off their notifications so they can work without
interruptions’.
Getting flexibility to work is hard. But it is undeniably worth
it. Maybe the best way of finishing this section is a quote from the
Managing Director of a small advertising company who said:

‘Working today may not be a choice, but where the best talent choses to
work is a choice. People who want to lead interesting and meaningful
lives want their time at work to support their life and family goals. Use

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flexibility as a way to help ensure people like their work and see it as
something that benefits their family rather than detracts from it. We
believe flexibility has a strategic purpose. It helps us attract and retain
the best people which is exactly what we need to give our client the best
service.’

Pause for reflection

• How do you enable flexibility?
• What do you signal as being acceptable?
• How does your culture enable or conflict with your people’s desire
for flexibility?

The office
The yin of flexibility fits neatly into the yang of the office. Employees
want a level of flexibility in their work. This does not mean exclusively
working from home; that may be an element of it, but as discussed
above they want the flexibility to work and live their lives. As an
example, a recent article in the Telegraph noted ‘the rising popularity
of the late-afternoon “lull” … with employees deferring tasks in favour
of personal time.’
But if we want our people to come to the office, there needs to be
a reason for them to come to the office. This brings us back to the
question I asked a couple of pages ago:

What is the point of the office?

Compare your office to your home

‘We shape our buildings and afterwards our
buildings shape us.’
Winston Churchill

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If you have ever spent a full working week in the office, then it is a fair
bet to say you spent more awake time in the office than in your home.
Yet consider the amount of time, effort and money we spend
personalizing, controlling and altering our homes – to get that exact
shade of slightly off-white green with a hint of blue that we must have
to match the curtains and sofa… and compare that to the effort made
to personalize, control and alter our workspaces.
In our homes, we use space differently for defined activities. We cook
in the kitchen, sleep in the bedroom, wash in the bathroom, relax in the
lounge and so on. Each room is designed to complement the activity
that we do in it, and even if we do mix it up, we mix complementary
aspects by eating food in the lounge whilst watching TV. We don’t go
too far though, we don’t, for example, sleep in the kitchen (at least not
intentionally!).
Each room in our house is designed for an activity. An activity
distinct from those that take place in the other rooms. Compare that
with the office – almost regardless of the activity we are doing, we tend
to sit inflexibly in the same position: same office, same floor, same
desk. We do everything sitting bolt upright at the desk, and even if we
move to a meeting room, we sit in exactly the same position there. The
final reinforcement (or even indignity?) of the office culture is that if
we want to eat, we may even do that al desko.
Imagine the message a large office subconsciously reinforces.
Often in a large, multi-storey office each floor is broadly identical,
with identikit desks laid out in an identikit formation, with identikit
carpets and wall colours. No matter the work function performed, this
reinforces a sense of everyone being all the same, all performing the
same task, all tied to the same desks. It reinforces a lack of diversity.
Office design needs to copy that of our homes. They increasingly
need to reflect the reality of how we work, to provide more options,
more alternatives, more and different environments, enabling us to
operate at our best to deliver the different tasks we are engaged to
perform.

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It is not about hot-desking

I am not having a debate about hot-desking; hot-desking was a cost-
cutting strategy. It was a financial response to ‘sweating an asset’.
But it is completely devoid of any human or emotional interaction.
Hot-desking absolutely ‘increases your utilization’ but it totally
and utterly misses the impact on the people. Each week we see more
and more reports of mental health issues at work. In 1992 research in
Psychiatric Nursing stated that a ‘sense of belonging is a vital mental
health concept’, so is it any surprise either that the rise of hot-desking,
which removed my space, my desk and my sense of community with
my desk-mates, resulted in the destruction of an employee’s sense of
belonging, or that this coincides with an increase in mental health
issues at work?
Hot-desking saves money in the financial sense, but trashes
employees in the emotional, mental sense. With hot-desking, all
desks are the same, there are fewer desks than people, there is implicit
competition for resource – ‘I must get in early to secure a desk’ or even
‘I must get in very early to secure the best desk – and employees lose
something’.

Nor is it about open-plan

Likewise, this is not a debate about open or closed offices.
Open-plan offices were thought to enhance collaboration, to
increase face-to-face encounters and drive productivity. The simple
answer is that they do not. We forget that open-plan offices are, in fact,
interruption factories. Research by Harvard published in Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society proved that people who switched from
individual cubicles to an open-plan office collaborated less. Specifically
they spent:

• 73 per cent less time in face-to-face interactions

• 67 per cent more time on email
• 75 per cent more time on instant messaging

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Have you ever noticed that in an open-plan office more people seem
to be wearing headphones? That is the modern-day equivalent of
putting a sign up that says, Do not disturb. Likewise, when sitting in
an open-plan office, do you ever find yourself constantly looking up?
That is your fight or flight response kicking in. Your brain has caught
a glimpse of movement out of the corner of your eye and wants you to
check if it is a sabre-tooth tiger, or just someone nipping to the toilet.
As I said, offices are interruption factories.

It’s to collaborate and for culture, isn’t it?

Leesman measure and analyze the experiences of employees in their
places of work. In studying over 110,000 people they have found there
are 21 workplace activities that employees participate in. These range
from planned meetings and informal meetings to individual focused
work, collaborating, making a phone call, relaxing and taking a break.
You cannot do all of these effectively at a desk in one single place.
Humans perform far better when we can move around and
occupy different spaces designed for the task at hand – just like
we do at home. Our homes are agile; work needs to be the same,
realizing that different types of work require different types of space.
In agile working environments there are many different types of
working areas, each designed for different tasks – reading, writing,
collaborating, calling, presenting, meeting; there are more places to
work than people, but fewer traditional desks than people and thus
employees gain something.
Decide what the office is for and then design it appropriately.
If it is for collaboration, then consider how collaboration takes
place. Collaboration does not occur sitting at a uniform bank of desks,
in identikit office chairs. Collaboration occurs sitting in a comfortable
sofa, being able to relax and chat over a decent cup of coffee (or tea
or…). Offer places where people can sit comfortably, engage, throw
ideas around and offer coffee that employees choose to stay in the
office for, rather than disappearing outside to the nearest coffee house.

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(There is a clue in that sentence. If your people leave to have coffee

externally, that tells you all you need to know about your office and the
quality of the space and/or coffee.)
As humans we want to spend time in environments that energize
and inspire us, in workspaces that help us feel more creative, engaged,
and connected to the company we work for and that makes us feel that
the company we work for understands and cares for us. The workplace
acts as a symbol that represents the organization and our decision to
choose to work there.

Design it for the output

Strangely, most offices are not designed to enable the inhabitants to
perform at their best. Small things have a big impact on how we work
and most of these affect us subconsciously. Here are five examples:

Enhance your lighting. Russell Foster, Professor of Circadian

Neuroscience at Oxford University says: ‘When you are exposed to
1,000 lux (the measure of brightness), you are getting enough light for
full alertness.’ But offices deprive us of light: ‘the average office lighting
only produces 300 lux, which is less than we need.’ Workers who toil
near windows get better sleep outcomes, so make ample use of natural
light or (in warehouses and with shift workers, for example) use full
spectrum light bulbs to help regulate workers’ circadian rhythms.

Expose workers to nature. According to Forbes, ‘researchers examined

10 high-performing buildings across five U.S. cities … to study the
relationship between the conditions inside the building and both the
productivity and well-being of the occupants… when we work in
green-certified offices, we get a 26% boost in cognition, and 30% fewer
sickness related absences…. respondents also reported a 6% rise in
their sleep quality.’ Dutch research has also shown that a green office
may also aid long-term decision making, the greenery delaying our
need for instant gratification.

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Go for colour! It is well known that colour impacts how we feel. It is

one of the reasons we spend so much time choosing the right shade
for each room in our home. However, colour impacts far more than
our feelings. Adam Alter in his wonderful book Drunk Tank Pink
notes that ‘“Drunk Tank Pink”; is a particular shade of pink that
psychologists discovered has an extraordinary effect: if you stare at it
for two minutes, you dramatically weaken in strength.’ Colour impacts
our productivity and in the context of an office environment, this one
is quite easy. According to a University of Texas study, you should
stay away from white, beige and grey. These colours induce feeling
of sadness and depression in people, especially women. Purple and
orange have the same effect on men.
Strangely the most popular colour for office walls, white, actually
makes humans less productive and more error prone. To quote two
sources: ‘in a prior study workers were LESS productive in a white
office than in any other office colour’; ‘Workers make more errors
working in a white room.’ Interestingly this research was funded
by NASA, as ‘Traditionally, NASA has only used white for the
interior of any of its habitation modules. With significant findings
about colour, NASA may be more amenable to greater variation in
the colour palette within its confined habitation module.’ Overall
it is not the colour that is important, but how we respond to the
colour. Generalizations do not usually hold. But, given a choice,
the research shows that the majority of workers go for blue or blue/
green environment – not unsurprising because these are the most
common colours in nature. The artist Kandinsky once said, ‘Colour
is a power which directly influences the soul.’ White may or may not
be a colour, but it does indeed influence our soul; just not in the way
we think it does. Remember that when considering what colour to
paint your office.

Give employees the choice. Allowing workers to design their own

office increases their productivity – by up to 30 per cent. The converse
is also true. Removing their ability to influence their surroundings

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destroys their productivity. Researchers from the University of Exeter

tested four office layouts:

1. Stripped down, a spartan environment with a bare desk, a swivel

chair, and a pencil and piece of paper.
2. Softened, the same spartan environment but softened with pot plants
and ‘tasteful’ close-up photos of flowers.
3. The same as option 2, but instead of the layout being defined for
them, workers were given the plants and pictures and invited to
decorate the space themselves.
4. The same as option 3, but after the workers had put things where they
wanted them, the researchers interrupted. Apologizing, they said
that the set-up would not support their research and so rearranged
everything.

Fairly unsurprisingly, option 1 was deemed oppressive. Option 2

created a better environment and this resulted in 13 per cent more
work being done. With option 3, workers did 30 per cent more work
than in the minimalist design and 15 per cent more than the decorated
office. With option 4, workers hated it and their work output suffered.
When workers were empowered to design their own space, they had
more fun and they worked harder.

Shake it up. Possibly the biggest challenge with our office spaces is that
they are so depressingly static. When, for example, was the last time
anything was moved, the desk or chairs rearranged, the walls painted,
the pictures shifted...? To quote the World Green Building Council,
‘There is overwhelming evidence demonstrating that the design of an
office impacts the health, well-being and productivity of its occupants.’
Our brains pick up on subtle changes in our environment. We pay
attention to difference, we work on autopilot when things are the
same. Difference in an environment that we take for granted, acts as a
stimulant, knocking our brains out of a rut and allowing them to think
differently, to think creatively. So shake the office up, move things

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around, change or rotate the pictures, paint a wall a different colour, go

for change – it will shake up your thinking.

Pause for reflection

• When was the last time your offices were altered in any meaningful
way?
• Do you know why you have an office, and is it designed to best suit
that purpose?

Summar y
In the future, to defend themselves from incessant competition,
businesses will define their purpose narrowly and specifically.
They will focus down in order to seek dominance of that space and
then use that dominance to move into adjacent markets. Going
forward, company size will not be reflected in their permanent
headcount or the number of offices they have, but rather in the
network of relationships, partnerships and arrangements they
have in place that enables them to deliver. This will shift (and
potentially create) problems for organizations; there will be a
reduction in the challenge of managing people directly, but an
increase in the challenge of managing multiple different entities –
suppliers, contractors, partners.
Finally, it may be true that the office is no longer where work
is done. But what is it for? Decide its purpose and then design it
accordingly. Design it to enhance the lives of its occupants rather
than being a drudgery. While not everyone can have flexibility,
predictability for lower-wage, shift-based workers is at least as
important. For knowledge workers, flexibility is no longer nice to
have but a table stake. Trust your people, deal with the problems
and they will reward that trust.

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Questions for you to consider

Having read this chapter, consider:
• What resonated for you?
• What would you challenge?
• Knowing this, where has this taken your thinking and what is now
possible?

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 C H A P T E R FI V E

What does this mean for our

people and talent?

Many years before the impact of COVID-19, numerous research

bodies and consultancies had been predicting the impending dearth of
talent. For years, the challenge articulated was that in the future there
simply will not be the volume of people available with the skills that
business wants to hire.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) summed up the challenge
facing organizations in their 2016 report, ‘The Future of Jobs’:

‘For businesses to capitalize on new opportunities, they will need to put

talent development and future workforce strategy front and centre to
their growth.
Firms can no longer be passive consumers of ready-made human
capital’

In the data to 2020, it was hard to find any silver lining with projections
of skills shortages across the board. As a single example, in the UK the
Home Office’s Shortage Occupation List (SOL) is a way of prioritizing
some jobs over others, based on where the shortages are most severe
and where the consequences of those shortages are most serious. The
answers provided by SOL are used to influence the UK Government’s
immigration policy. The update in May 2019 listed 108 roles
recommended for inclusion on the SOL. This list includes perennial
favourites such as STEM roles, IT, programmers and business analysts,
but it also includes significant swathes of roles across healthcare

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(care workers, nurses, occupational therapists, medical practitioners

– and note this was pre-pandemic), education, hospitality (chefs),
construction, finance, legal and creative industries. It even includes
roles you might not have expected to see on the list; in final position
were librarians.
This shortage of skills comes with a cost. The Open University has
estimated that the UK skills shortage costs organizations £6.3 billion
annually, and it is not surprising therefore that the skills shortage issue
has reached the boardroom. PWC’s 2020 annual global CEO survey
states that 79 per cent of UK CEOs see the lack of availability of key
skills as a threat to their business – the second-highest factor behind
cyber threats (at 80 per cent).

COVID magnified the problem

Then came COVID-19 and, as with many aspects of life, COVID
fanned embers that were glowing gently in the background. It added
petrol to a combustible situation and now we have a blazing fire.
The first inkling that COVID-19 had potentially and fundamentally
changed the employment landscape came in April 2021, when a
McDonald’s restaurant in Florida started paying people to turn up for
a job interview. This was not a sign-on bonus if you took the job; it was
a payment to simply turn up and have an interview. (As an aside, while
being creative this initiative did not solve the restaurant’s recruitment
challenges.)
This was just a sign of things to come, and since then staff shortages
have become more acute and they are affecting all industries and all
organizations. No one and nowhere is proving immune.
There is no agreed definition on the term ‘The Great Resignation’
(or indeed why or for whom it is so ‘great’), but there is a general
acknowledgement that trends that were already well under way have
been turbocharged. At its peak in the US, over 4 per cent of the entire
permanent US workforce quit their jobs every single month.

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

Demand
Consider the demand side of the equation. COVID-19 caused seismic
changes to the economy and people’s way of life. Demand for workers
– whether in warehouses and logistics to cope with the shift to online
shopping, or in digital to cope with, well, everything to do with life
and work – has grown beyond any economist’s wildest imagination.
The following graph brings this to life. It is based on data from the
Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) issued by the US
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). It shows seasonally adjusted, total
non-farm job openings (i.e. vacancies) in the US:

US seasonally adjusted, total non-farm job openings (i.e. vacancies) in

thousands. Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://data​.bls​.gov​/timeseries​
/JTS​0000​0000​0000​000JOL (Accessed June 2023)

The graph makes stark viewing. In March 2022, staff demand in the
US reached a peak 58 per cent higher than in any previous economic
cycle. Since then, despite over 18 months of rising interest rates and
tech firm job lay-offs, the drop off from ‘peak vacancy’ still means that
there are 36 per cent more vacancies in April 2023 than at any time pre
pandemic. The number of ongoing vacancies is proving more resilient
than anyone thought possible.

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 W hat does t his mea n for our people a nd t ale nt ?

This is having a predictable result. People are quitting their jobs.

Using data from the most recent JOLTS report, in the two years from
June 2021 to May 2023 an average of over 4.1 million people quit
their jobs every single month. Given a US workforce of broadly 160
million, that equates to an annualized churn rate of over 30 per cent,
meaning that the average tenure of every single employee in the US
is just over 18 months. The graph below shows the US ‘quit’ data
since 2013:
4750

4250

3750

3250

2750

2250

1750
Oct-14

Oct-19
Jul-13

Jul-18
May-14

Jan-16

Nov-16

May-19

Jan-21

Nov-21
Mar-15
Aug-15

Jun-16

Apr-17

Mar-20
Aug-20

Jun-21

Apr-22
Feb-13

Sep-17
Feb-18
Dec-13

Dec-18

Sep-22
Feb-23

US number of people quitting their job (in thousands) per month.

Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics https://data​.bls​.gov​/cgi​-bin​/surveymost
(Accessed June 2023)

Fairly predictably, one of the trending hashtags on TikTok right now is

#quittingmyjob. As of August 2023, #quittingmyjob had received 776.9
million views.

Supply
Compounding the challenge is a lack of supply. For decades businesses
globally have benefited from an ever-expanding labour pool, mainly
caused by three factors: more women entering the workforce,
globalization and immigration. Today, however, these labour pools
have all been broadly fully depleted.

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

Simultaneously, as noted by the Economist, ‘other trends have

conspired to make the labour pool smaller than it might have been.’
Many workers, especially men, ‘continue to slump out of the job
market’. In November 2022 in the US, according to the New York Post,
over 7 million men of prime working age (aged between 25 and 54)
were neither working nor looking for work; according to Forbes, legal
immigration shrank by 49 per cent under President Trump (but may
have rebounded under President Biden – the data is unclear at the time
of writing); and according to the Federal Reserve Bank COVID-19
may have prompted more than 2.4 million Baby Boomers into early
retirement than would have been expected. These problems are not
unique to the US. The UK faces a similar situation – best epitomized
when Jeremy Hunt, Chancellor of the Exchequer, said in January
2023 that life ‘doesn’t just have to be about going to the golf course’.
A remark aimed at the over-50s, as statistics show that the number of
people working in that age bracket had shrunk by over 300,000 when
compared to pre-pandemic levels.
As the Economist noted, ‘these trends will not reverse quickly.
Boomers are unlikely to rush back to work en masse…. a surge in
immigration looks unlikely [certainly politically] and while some men
have returned to the workforce since … 2020, the male participation
rate has plateaued below pre-pandemic levels.’ There is no pool of
labour just waiting to be tapped.
To bring this all together and demonstrate it graphically, the
following graph shows the number of unemployed people per open
job vacancy in the US:
The US is at full employment with only 0.6 unemployed people per
vacancy. A tight labour market is here to stay.
As I said, this trend started in the US, but it fast became global.
Employment rates and vacancies are at their highest and unemployment
rates at or near historic lows across the world. In April 2023, Australia
announced that unemployment now stands at 3.5 per cent, the lowest
rate in almost half a century.

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7
6.5
6
5.5
5
4.5
4
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
Oct-10

Oct-17
Jul-12

Jul-19
Jan-09
Jun-08

Aug-09
Mar-10

Jan-16

Mar-17
May-11

Apr-14
Nov-14
Jun-15

Aug-16

May-18

Apr-21
Nov-21

Jan-23
Jun-22
Dec-11

Feb-13
Sep-13

Dec-18

Feb-20
Sep-20
US: Number of unemployed persons per job opening, seasonally adjusted.
Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www​.bls​.gov​/charts​/job​-openings​
-and​-labor​-turnover​/unemp​-per​-job​-opening​.htm# (Accessed July 2023)

Below is a graph showing data for the UK from the Office for National
Statistics (ONS). In black on the left-hand axis is the number of job
vacancies in the UK. In grey on the right-hand axis and as a proxy for the
unemployment rate, is the number of unemployed people per vacancy.

UK data since 2004, number of open job vacancies (thousands, left-hand axis,
black) and number of unemployed people per vacancy (right-hand axis, grey).
Source: ONS

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

Like the US, post-pandemic vacancies in the UK were over 50 per cent
higher than ever before whilst at the same time unemployment has
fallen to record multi-decade lows. Again, like the US, and moving
past the doom and gloom stories about the economy and cost of living
crisis, the reality is that even after over two years of ever-rising interest
rates the number of unemployed people today broadly equates to the
number of job openings. This has never happened before. The UK is
also at full employment.
This is the challenge.
From an individual perspective this means that, without any
doubt, it is a seller’s market. People have a choice in who they work
for. The reality is that anyone with the ‘right’ skill and the ‘right’
attitude is in demand, and in being in demand they have a choice in
who they work for.
Simplistically, for businesses, the problem is far more acute.
Fundamentally this means that anyone you want to hire is extremely
likely to already be in a job or, if you are hiring an unemployed
person, they may require reskilling and/or relocating to where you
are based. Secondly, because staff demand is so high, if you are
trying to hire someone it is extremely likely that other businesses
are trying to hire the exact same person. Thirdly and potentially
most critically, if those with the skills and the attitude can choose
who they work for, despite an individual being capable, how
appealing is the job you are offering and why would they choose to
work for you?
The economy may blow colder over the next period, but the data all
point to this not being a blip: talent scarcity is the new reality. A Korn
Ferry report finds that by 2030, more than 85 million jobs could go
unfilled (giving a labour deficit equivalent to 11 per cent of the global
workforce) simply because there aren’t enough skilled people to take
them. This will result ‘in about US$ 8.5 trillion in unrealized annual
revenues’. Note what this means. By 2030, one in nine jobs could
remain permanently unfilled.

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If your business relies on people to get things done, this is an

existential threat. To rephrase the words of the WEF quoted earlier
and make it fit for a post-pandemic world:

To survive you MUST put talent development front and centre to your
growth.

According to Harvard Business Review, in mid-2022 ‘More than

100 CEOs from around the world recently met at Harvard Business
School and shared the things that keep them awake at night: 33% said
recruitment and retention of talent was by far their biggest challenge.
(For context, the next most-cited challenges, which included uncertainty
and instability, and inflation/stagflation were only mentioned by 10%
of the CEOs).’ If you find it hard to attract and retain the people you
need today, I have bad news for you. The problem is going to get worse.

But why now?

Before considering solutions, we need to consider not why this is
happening, but why it is happening now.
One of the conundrums of the economic recovery from The
Great Recession of 2008/9 was the drop in unemployment across the
developed world. Broadly unemployment dropped to unprecedented
lows – a 40-year low in the US and UK as examples. If you look back
at the graphs above and cover the period from 2020, i.e. from when
COVID struck, they show that job demand steadily picked up from
2009 through the 2010s. But despite the near doubling in vacancies (in
the UK) over the decade, wages were broadly kept in check.
Then came COVID-19, which amplified and exacerbated the situation.
Various sources agree that it broadly takes an average of 66 days
for a new behaviour to become automatic. COVID-19 lasted two to
three years and so the effects of the pandemic mean that the legacy of
lockdowns, forced teleworking, home schooling and the resultant social
and economic changes continue to shape our choices. It forced people

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to consider and accept there is a different way of doing things, that their
needs and wants may well be different across aspects of work and life.
The pandemic left many people pondering about how well they felt
supported by their employers. It has made them question how they
are treated: do they feel valued; are they being developed; is their
company willing to listen to them and act; are they treated as a human
or as a human resource? It may be no surprise that organizations and
industries who took the opportunity to remove employees during the
pandemic are the ones finding it hardest to recruit them now. Airlines
are a case in point. According to Travel Weekly, after the debacle of flight
cancellations and delays in the summer of 2022, ‘Airlines that made
most job cuts were hit hardest by cancellations.’ The article continues:
‘the league tables of cancellations almost exactly correlate with those
airlines that made the most redundancies and most significant changes
to terms and conditions and those that did not.’
People are weighing it up, and, in a seller’s market they are making
decisions – and the situation is not likely to change. According to People
Management in September 2022, two in five people were planning to
leave their jobs within a year; as reported by the BBC a recent survey by
Microsoft of more than 30,000 workers found that over 40 per cent were
considering quitting or changing professions within the next 12 months;
McKinsey put the figure at 40 per cent within the next three to six months.

From resignation to migration

This is the change. What we are seeing is not a great resignation, it is a
great migration. A migration by workers from work they do not find ful-
filling, and where they do not feel valued, where they do not feel that they
belong, where they are not developed, to places where they do. As the HR
guru Josh Bersin puts it: ‘Employees are migrating from crummy jobs to
better jobs and from companies that don’t seem to care to companies that
really, really care, and for many workers this means moving to companies
with opportunities for growth, promotion, and even a new industry.’
In an interview for Vistage members, Patrick Lencioni, author of The
Five Dysfunctions of a Team, mused recently along the same lines. He

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felt only 15 per cent of organizations were what Deloitte calls ‘simply
irresistible organizations’. There is a silver lining and it is this: for
organizations that get this right, it will become self-reinforcing, they
will be able to hire great people and they will do great things, enabling
them to hire more great people. They will become talent magnets and
they will drive ahead.
The threat here has already been pointed out: the majority of hiring
that businesses want or indeed, need, to do will be of people who are
already in a job. This threat is double edged – if you are hiring you need
to be irresistible to those you are trying to hire. Equally, even if you are
not hiring, you need to be irresistible to your employees to encourage
them to stay. This is the challenge. Companies that do not get this right
will slowly but surely haemorrhage people; they will face death by a
thousand resignations. To paraphrase, I do not need to take over your
company, I will take it over one employee at a time. This is existential
and it will be a virtuous and vicious cycle at each end of the scale.

What can you do?

One obvious way to respond is via pay or compensation.
Compensation is absolutely important, but it is only part of the
solution. Due to its nature, pay is often the lightning rod around which
other factors revolve.
The various industrial strikes taking place across the UK at the time
of writing are absolutely about pay – but dig a little deeper and they
are also about working conditions and working practises, employees
working onerous hours to compensate for the number of vacancies, an
inability to deliver the service employees aspire to deliver, and so on.
Given such a significant percentage of employees work remotely
changing jobs is often as simple as getting a new email address. For
non-remote workers, pay is increasingly a table stake: it intrinsically
demonstrates how the company values the individual, tying into
whether they feel valued by the company, their own sense of fair play
and equity with their colleagues. But pay is also a hygiene factor: if I,
for whatever reason, believe I am worth £15 an hour, then you will

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have a hard time selling me a job at £12 an hour. Pay therefore tends to
be binary and polarizing – it is enough or it isn’t.
The challenge is that while pay is important, organizations cannot
simply focus here. A focus on pay makes work a transaction. If I decide
to work for you for 40 hours a week then there is only one question
left – what is that worth to you? But once you get past the hygiene
factor, humans crave more than a transaction, we want interaction.
That is why, according to Adecco, 80 per cent of employees who resign
but who then accept a counteroffer to stay, will then leave within 6
months; and 90 per cent leave within 12 months. Pay was not the issue
– well, not the whole issue.
Pay – or, as I will call it, compensation – is necessary but it is not suffi-
cient. To be able to attract and retain the employees your business needs,
you also need to consider other factors that are at least as powerful but
which are often only treated with a veneer of respect. I use the word com-
pensation because once that hygiene factor is sated, employees want five
others Cs – those of Community, Career, Cause, Company and Culture.

The 6 Cs – How to build an organization where people want to work and stay
working. Source and ©: Alison Beck and Russell Beck

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Let’s consider each in turn.

Compensation – it’s all about the money

Compensation is important – after all, who does not want a pay rise?
And it is often the first lever that organizations pull when facing hiring
challenges. Salary levels are a critical part of an organization’s talent
strategy and each needs to pay what they feel is right in order to attract
and retain the level and volume of staff required. I do not want to
get into a discussion about what is right. The discussion I do want to
have is that pay is but one element; it tends not to differentiate and no
company has enough to make this their winning strategy.
As an example, the BBC reported in March 2023 ‘Costa Coffee is to
give its staff their third pay rise in a year, as rivals make similar moves
amid a labour shortage. … The pay increase will be between 6.1 per cent
and 7.3 per cent’ and ‘the announcement comes days after Pret a Manger
said it was giving its staff a similar pay rise within the same time frame.’
Costa’s move not only followed hot on the heels of Pret but also
‘Tesco [who] agreed [last month] to increase its workers’ wages by 7
per cent, while Asda said it would raise pay by 10 per cent. Aldi and
Lidl have also announced pay increases.’
Pay has risen. But Costa’s move followed everyone else’s; the tide has
risen and the starting salary for jobs in this sector is now £10.70 an hour.
The investment does not differentiate them, it simply keeps them level
with their competitors. At the same time, it is worth acknowledging
that £10.70 is not that much and is in fact below the ‘living wage’ –
currently set at £10.90 an hour outside of London and £11.90 inside.
I am by no means saying Costa should not have raised pay. What I
am saying is that they had no choice, and all they have done is level the
playing field and by paying the going price it has stopped pay being a
disadvantage.
If any of these companies decided to differentiate themselves by pay,
it is likely that the rest would simply copy. Pay is absolutely a focus,

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but you do not have enough money to maintain it a true differentiator

– and in a seller’s market there will always be someone willing to pay
more than you, meaning you will eventually lose.
To create an irresistible organization, we need to offer more than just
pay, and this is where the other Cs come into play.

Community – it is all about belonging

Community is about being part of a tribe. That sense of being
comfortable with those around you, that we are all on the same team
and are in it together. Overall, it is that feeling that we belong and are
able to be our true authentic selves at work.
Before proceeding further I want to acknowledge that belonging
and community are elements of the massively important area of EDI
(Equality, Diversity and Inclusion). EDI is a complex topic and people
more experienced than I have written entire books that focus specifically
on this area. For the purposes of our story, I will be concentrating on
belonging and community in the context of staff attraction and retention
as the opportunity and potential this offers is often overlooked. As an
example, a recent survey by McKinsey cited that the top three factors
given by employees as reasons for quitting were that they didn’t feel valued
by their organizations (54 per cent) or their managers (52 per cent) or
because they didn’t feel a sense of belonging at work (51 per cent).
Not feeling part of the group happens more often than we
realize. According to a 2018 report by the Human Rights Campaign
Foundation, almost 50 per cent of LGBTQ+ people in the US remain
closeted at work. Likewise, a study by Catalyst in 2019 found that the
majority of women and men across ethnic groups (58 per cent) report
being highly on guard at work. The main reasons were indeed race
and gender, but other reasons included physical appearance, physical
ability, age and spiritual or religious beliefs.
Hiding part of yourself, feeling like you have to continually and
carefully cultivate a workplace identity, levies an emotional tax that
prevents people from fully engaging and participating in work. It takes

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a toll on us emotionally, mentally and physically; it wastes time and

effort which could be spent doing the job.
Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy, authors of the excellent book No
Hard Feelings, drew it this way:

How it feels when you belong and when you don’t. Reproduced from No Hard
Feelings by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy

And this has an impact: for example, the Catalyst study notes that
respondents who experience higher levels of being on guard are 38 per
cent more likely to frequently consider leaving their jobs.
Potentially the biggest challenge for everyone here is that for those of us
not in a minority, research shows we completely and utterly underestimate
how taxing this effect can be. As an example, it took until 2021 for M&S
(the largest seller of women’s underwear in the UK) to ‘offer five new
shades under a “new neutrals” banner following customer feedback to
“nude” and “neutral” being used to refer to lighter skin tones only’.

The neurological impor tance of belonging

Language gives us a clue as to how important belonging and being part
of a community is to humans.
Notice that when relationships break up or we experience some
social unfairness, the language often used to describe feelings include
phrases like ‘hurt feelings’ or ‘broke my heart’.

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This is not a peculiarity of the English language, either. A study of

social pain terminology across 15 different languages found that words
for social pain are almost exclusively borrowed from the domain for
physical pain in each language.
Why use these words? Our heart is not broken, feelings cannot be
hurt. But the language we use to describe social pain is the same as the
language used to describe physical pain.
Neuroscience is providing mounting evidence that suggests this is
not a coincidence; the connection is far, far deeper. Research from the
University of California Los Angeles states that ‘the brain uses similar
neural circuits to handle the social and physical variants of pain and
pleasure.’ From a neurological perspective, social injury may affect our
brains in the same way as physical injury.
This effect is hard-wired into our brains. It is evolutionary in nature.
We cannot change it.
As Maslow identified, our basic survival needs are food, water and
shelter and we feel pain – hunger, thirst, cold – when these basic
needs are not met. But at birth (and for many years afterwards) we
are immature; we need, and in fact are totally reliant on, people to
provide those basic needs for us, we need someone to look after us,
we need caregivers.
Without a caregiver we would die. Evolution has wired us to feel
pain when basic needs are not being met; it seems evolution also wired
us to feel pain when we lack, or anticipate a lack, of social connection.
Our strong negative response to exclusion has been called a neural
alarm system to protect us against social exclusion and, back in the
day, death.
Consider what this means…
We would never expect someone with a broken leg to run from one
meeting to the next. But when someone is in social pain, we treat it as
‘not a work issue’ and believe that it should be dealt with ‘outside the
office’. Worse, we say that people should ‘get over’ their hurt feelings
despite the fact that we would never say to someone, ‘Just get over your
broken leg.’

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If someone physically assaulted a colleague, there would rightly be

repercussions. If that same person excluded someone from (say) a
team event, the impact on the individual, the pain felt by them, is the
same. Yet often in this circumstance the repercussions are minimal,
and potentially made worse by comments from colleagues.
Social exclusion is in the eye of the beholder. I trust that we rarely
mean to exclude, but it happens all the time and the impact on people
is real. As a simple example, consider meetings. In your meetings
does everyone have their opportunity to speak and to be heard? Or,
instead, do you hear the same voices, always talking, talking over
people, chomping at the bit to fill the gaps? Meetings typically play
into the hands of extroverts, those who talk while thinking; meanwhile
introverts will be thinking before (potentially) delivering their
structured, considered answer. You need both, but whose voice is more
likely to be heard?
According to a study by Betterup, those who fail to get their
chance to speak have been excluded, and they have experienced what
neurologists call a micro exclusion. A micro exclusion can occur within
150 seconds and it results in a 25 per cent reduction in productivity –
even if that lack of productivity impacts the individual financially due
to a team bonus. You may consider this far-fetched, but have you ever
been in a meeting and not had the chance to speak, been interrupted
and lost your train of thought, or been mansplained? You experienced
a micro exclusion.
This feeling of exclusion in part explains glossophobia – more
commonly known as the fear of public speaking. According to the
British Council, by one estimate, about 75 per cent of people suffer from
various forms of this phobia and 10 per cent of people are genuinely
terrified. Public speaking puts you in on display; you are very much
in the spotlight. The fear of being exposed and the resultant potential
exclusion from the tribe is, in part, what underpins this phobia. This is
the power of belonging.
If lack of connections and social exclusion cause us pain, the
opposite is also true. A series of studies have begun to demonstrate

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that the brain’s reward system reacts as strongly to social rewards in the
form of social recognition as it does to the classic reward mechanism
of money.
When our needs are met, we feel pleasure: eating when hungry,
drinking when thirsty, coming in from the cold. According to the study
by University of California Los Angeles, ‘When our social needs are
being satisfied, the brain responds in much the same way as it responds
to other rewards that are more tangible.’ This is the neurological reason
why belonging and attachment to a group of colleagues can be a better
motivator for employees than money.
This also hints why ‘the loneliness epidemic’ has such an impact on
health – both mental and physical – and how belonging has a part
to play in its solution. A meta-data analysis found that loneliness
increases the likelihood of mortality by 26 per cent. It turned out the
great philosopher Britney Spears was right: there are indeed times
when ‘my loneliness is killing me’.
In the 1990s Gallup created the Q12 Survey, the ‘12 questions that
define employee engagement’. In this context of community and
belonging, it is fascinating that question number 7 was ‘Do you have
a best friend at work?’ At the time, it was this question that business
pushed back against most. This was the 1990s; business was not here
for friendship, it was here for profit and shareholder value.
But, this is the question that proved to be most predictive of having
engaged employees. A 2022 study by Gallup found that ‘having a “best
friend” at work has become more important since the start of the
pandemic,’ and that ‘Employees who have a best friend at work are
significantly more likely to:

• engage customers and internal partners

• get more done in less time
• support a safe workplace with fewer accidents and reliability concerns
• innovate and share ideas
• have fun while at work’

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Having a best friend at work makes you seven times more likely to be
engaged in your work, and workers who are engaged in their work are
19 per cent more productive and have greater tenure, take less sick
days and are more innovative.
It is important to note that community and belonging are not about
everyone being best friends with everyone or about making work a
walk in the park with sunlight and dappled shade. Gallup’s question is
quite specifically singular: A friend. Belonging is about being able to be
yourself and being able to cope with the emotional ups and downs that
are the very nature of work. No person is an island unto themselves.
We are born through connection, and it is through connections that we
achieve virtually everything in our lives. We do not just prefer healthy
relationships; we need them.

Pause for reflection

Consider:

• What tribes exist in your organization?

• Do you know what they each want?
• How could you differentiate your offer to them?
• Does everyone get their chance to speak and be heard?
• How do you demonstrate that you actively welcome people from all
groups?
• How do you show you embrace difference and, to you, that differences
are seen as strengths?
• Across your employee life cycle, are recruitment, hiring and
managing practices fit for everyone? How formal, complicated and
drawn-out are your application and interview processes?

Challenge yourself and remember, if you are not in a minority,

in the broadest sense of the word, you totally underestimate the
impact of being in one.

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Career – What will I learn?

Training and development have always been a motivator for people
to join an organization. At the Carlisle Support Services ‘Innovation
Lab // 2023’ conference, Dr Paul Redmond of Liverpool University,
a leading expert on generations in the workplace, stated that for the
youngest generations, the acquisition of knowledge and skills is often
one of the main drivers when considering which role to take.
And yet, while this is so important, research by Josh Bersin suggests
that only 11 per cent of companies offer formal on-going career
programmes for employees (take a moment to think about that
number, it’s a depressing statistic). This means that in a seller’s market
the only opportunity individuals have to grow and learn is to leave and
find it elsewhere.
The problem in the UK is further emphasized by announcements
around the Apprenticeship Levy. Since April 2017, UK businesses
with an annual wage bill of £3 million or more have paid a levy of 0.5
per cent of total employee earnings, less an allowance of £15,000. The
business can spend this money on apprenticeship training or, indeed,
gift it to other organizations – for example their suppliers – and they
have 24 months to spend it or else the government claws it back.
Whether through inertia or a badly designed scheme, the somewhat
depressing truth is that £3.3 billion has been reclaimed as unspent levy
in the past three years.

Do you know what you want (or need)?

In the context of people development, the key question for organizations
to answer is: Do you honestly know which skills, competencies and
behaviours predict that an individual will be a success (or a failure) for
each role in your business? This sounds somewhat obvious, but it is
a hard question to answer. Often we assume we know the answer or
we treat cohorts of employees identically, giving everyone the same
training, but it is a very important question and the answer even
more so. Once you have considered the question and arrived at some

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answers, which of the traits listed are intrinsic to the person and which
can be trained and developed?
This is hard to do, but if you do not truly know which skills predict
success in your people and which of these can be trained, then how do
you know who to hire and who to train?

Casting your net wider

To widen their net and to be able to search in the largest talent pool
possible, companies are removing educational and qualification needs
from jobs and challenging historic ‘must haves’ and binary filtering
criteria. The data analytics firm Burning Glass tracks 3.4 million job
listings daily and has noted that the share of job postings that list ‘no
experience required’, has more than doubled during the past two years.
This gives two interesting opportunities: firstly, it opens up talent pools
that previously you may not have considered, and secondly it gives you
the opportunity to showcase how you train and develop inexperienced
people so they are able to do the job. This enhances your employer
brand and counters the research by Bersin detailed above.
In a similar vein, companies are showcasing their development
programmes more openly and explicitly than ever before. Burning
Glass noted that the share of job postings to specifically offer training
as part of the role is now more than 30 per cent higher than pre-
pandemic.
One approach that companies are using is to broaden the definition
of what they consider to be acceptable qualifications. The days of ‘must
have a degree’ appearing on job adverts are increasingly disappearing.
(Note: This is a good thing – according to Google data, academic
performance predicts job performance for only two years after leaving
college.) What, if any, qualification(s) do your people need, what can
you consider as acceptable?
In Google’s case, when facing a dearth of talent, they responded
by opening up their training and offering courses (which they call
‘certificates’) online. To quote Kent Walker, Google’s Senior VP, ‘In

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our own hiring, we will now treat these new career certificates as the
equivalent of a four-year degree for related roles.’ Subjects supported
include Data Analytics, Project Management and User Experience
(UX) design. Students gain in multiple ways: from the equivalence of
the training; the flexibility of online learning (while maybe working
elsewhere) and saving the not inconsequential costs normally
associated with going to university. As Google tweeted in July 2020
when launching the initiative: ‘College degrees are out of reach for
many Americans, and you shouldn’t need a college diploma to have
economic security. Today we’re announcing Google Career Certificates
from #GrowWithGoogle to help job seekers prepare for careers in
high-growth fields.’
The Google programme is operated through the online learning
platform Coursera. Coursera offers over 7,000 online training courses,
certificates and projects from leading organizations and training
establishments including Google, Yale University, Johns Hopkins
University and SAS. If you have not already looked at this, I strongly
recommend seeing what it does and the opportunities it offers: www​
.coursera​.org. As an aside, one course on Coursera that I would
personally recommend is ‘The Science of Well-Being’ by Professor
Laurie Santos from Yale University. It will challenge your preconceptions
of what makes us happy, help you to build more productive habits and
increase your own happiness.

Development as retention
Once people become employees, how do you develop them?
One way can be by showing progression, and rather than
removing and shrinking the number of job levels, some companies
are actually increasing them. Some fast-food chains in the US have
replaced a single level of burger chef with three so that employees
can experience progression and development. Some companies
multiskill employees, enabling them to do jobs previously performed
by individual, separate people. This not only makes them more useful

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when scheduling work, it also means that only one person needs to
be sent to sort out a problem and it can make the work more fulfilling
for the individual.

Who are your masters?

One challenge experienced by high turnover organizations is the
rapid promotion new starters can experience in the early years of their
tenure (enabled by all of that high turnover) which then plateaus as
they butt up against colleagues who, like them, stayed. Development
does not have to be for promotion. Development can be developing
skills to enable individuals to become more rounded, more valuable
and, yes, more employable.
Companies have far more to offer here than they realize. As an
example, if I were to join your organization, no matter what role I took,
what can I expect to learn; who will I learn from; and what is my career
path, in both the short and longer term? Show me what this is and how
it will work. This is where mentoring comes in.
In the Middle Ages, apprentices learned at the knees of their
masters. Who are your masters? This may seem insignificant, but
each of your people has skills that they can teach others: it may be in
presenting, in the use of Excel, manufacturing, operations, whatever.
No matter how big or small, what are the skills your people have
that I encounter if I join you? Dan Pink, in one of the most watched
TED Talks of all time, proposes that we are motivated by Autonomy,
Mastery and Purpose. How does your organization expose people to
your masters so they may learn and develop in areas they may never
have previously considered?
A practical way to achieve this can be an I know, I need Post-it wall.
I’ve seen companies with a wall situated in a communal area which
is divided into two. On one side people stick Post-it notes detailing a
challenge they are facing, or support that they require. On the other
side people post problems that they have solved, challenges overcome,
and the skills – outside of the day-to-day – that they have. Anyone can

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pick a note from the wall and seek out the owner to provide support
or to learn. Not only does this share knowledge, but it is also a great
way to connect people from across the business, increasing the sense
of community.

Pause for reflection

The dearth of talent means you can no longer expect to hire the
finished article, so consider:

• What are you actually looking for? Which skills, competencies and
behaviours are important – and which are not?
• Which of these can be trained and does your training focus here?
• For each role, what training do you offer, what is the career path in
the short and longer term?
• Who are your masters?
• How does your culture encourage knowledge sharing?

Cause – it is all about meaning

‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.’
Frederick Nietzsche

Every parent knows that the question Why? is inbuilt in humans. One
aspect of lockdown was that a lot of people began questioning why?
Why did we work in that way, why did we do things the way we used
to, why do we put up with this, why are we bothering?
Our people all hopefully know what to do. Hopefully they know
how to do it. But do they know why they are doing it? Explaining the
why is critically important.
The Russian writer and philosopher Dostoyevsky, who served four
years’ hard labour in a prison camp, developed the theory that the
worst torture one could possibly devise would be to force someone to
endlessly perform a pointless task.

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In his semi-autobiographical novel The House of the Dead, he wrote:

‘… if it were desired to reduce a man to nothing – to punish him

atrociously, to crush him in such a manner that the most hardened
murderer would tremble before such a punishment and take fright
beforehand – it would only be necessary to give to his work a character
of complete uselessness even to absurdity.… Let him be constrained to
pour water from one vessel to another, … to move a heap of earth from
one place to another and then immediately move it back again, then I
am persuaded that at the end of a few days, the prisoner would hang
himself, preferring to die rather than endure such humiliation, shame
and torture.’

Dostoyevsky, though, was only highlighting something we have

known for aeons. The worst torment Zeus could imagine was to
condemn Sisyphus with a job of unending futility; the invention of the
treadmill came from a desire to inflict Victorian prisoners with work
that was literally pointless so they could ‘achieve atonement through
hard work’.
It is never the hardness of any task that destroys us, it is our belief
that the task is futile.
Unfortunately, things have not changed that much since Dostoyevsky’s
time. A pre-pandemic YouGov poll in the UK found that only 50 per
cent of people with a full-time job were entirely sure their job made
any sort of meaningful contribution to the world; 37 per cent of people
with a full-time job are entirely sure their job makes no meaningful
contribution to the world at all. This is not just a UK challenge. One
study put the second figure at 40 per cent in The Netherlands.
This is a problem because meaning matters. A Deloitte survey
published in late 2022 found that 62 per cent of employees consider an
organization’s purpose before deciding to join, with 36 per cent saying
that an organization’s purpose was just as important as their salary and
benefits package.

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Understand your impact

One way to create meaning is give people a clear sense of how their
work directly affects the end customer. We all serve someone. Too
often in business, that someone can be remote and out of sight, which
dilutes the meaning we can get from our work.
In his book Give and Take, Professor Adam Grant, of Wharton
Management University of Pennsylvania, writes about the power of
purpose. He considered paid employees in the university’s fundraising
call centre. Their job is relatively simple: call people and ask for money.
But this is not easy, most of us do not appreciate unsolicited calls at
the best of times, and we appreciate them considerably less when the
call is designed to get us to give some random person some money.
A call-centre worker therefore has to make numerous calls before
achieving their goal, making the job repetitive and frustrating. This
results in a workforce with low morale, which is hard to motivate and
correspondingly has low productivity.
As reported by McKinsey, ‘Grant conducted two experiments. In
the first, he arranged for the fundraisers to hear a senior executive
and a board member of a university speak about the significance of
education in society and the importance of their work to scholarship
recipients.’ The outcome of these supposedly motivational speeches
was that productivity didn’t improve. Worryingly, a typical way that
many businesses use to motivate their people is for an executive to wax
lyrical about the importance of their jobs and how great the business is.
The executive’s motivational talk produced minimal benefit.
In the second experiment, ‘Grant arranged for fundraisers to meet
a student who had received a scholarship. The student explained that
the scholarship had changed [their] life, allowing [them] to attend
university and study abroad.’ By engaging with the student, the call-
centre employees saw the outcome of their work first-hand and it had
a real impact. After the meeting they made more calls than before and,
as the meeting had given them a new positive attitude it made their
phone conversations more engaging and ultimately more successful,

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enabling them to secure larger donations. In the two months after

meeting the student, fundraisers raised 295 per cent more than they
had in the two months before.
This effect persists in all jobs. Lifeguards who read stories about
saving drowning swimmers were 21 per cent more active in watching
over their swimmers. Students editing letters written by other students
spend 20 per cent more time on them if they have first met the authors.
Having workers meet the people they are helping is the biggest
meaning creator – even if they only do so for a few minutes. Knowing
the impact of our work on others gives our work a significance.
As McKinsey notes, this does not have to be complicated or
expensive, but it should be personal:

• At the macro scale, where possible, insist that all employees make
regular on-site visits to the end users of your company’s products so
they can witness how your offering is used and the impact it has on the
end customer(s). This is important if they are customer facing – and
especially so if they are not.
• At the micro scale, encourage people to talk to people and discuss their
work requests rather than writing and firing off emails. When requesting
others to do work for us, we can fall into the trap of over-detailing what
it is we want, yet the person of whom we are making the request is likely
the expert (as that is why we are going to them in the first place). If
we discuss our needs with them, then the expert may know a better,
quicker, cheaper way to deliver what it is we are looking for.

Both approaches build meaning, but they also support innovation and
enhance productivity. Seeing your product or service used first-hand
(especially if you are not customer facing) shows how it is used on the
ground. Oftentimes how a product or service is used differs from what
the designers intend; it is this difference which provokes interesting
conversations. Engaging ‘the next person in the chain’ and explaining
what we are looking to achieve, means that person can use their skill

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and knowledge to refine, adapt or suggest alternatives that may well be

different or better than we had ever considered.

Tie it together
The oft-cited example about the power of meaning and purpose is the
conversation between President Kennedy and a NASA janitor. The story
may not be true – but it makes the point. In a visit to NASA in 1962,
President Kennedy saw a janitor carrying a broom. He interrupted his
tour, walked over and said, ‘Hi, I’m Jack Kennedy, what are you doing?’
To which the janitor replied, ‘I am helping put a man on the moon.’
Now at face value, that is quite a bold statement – a janitor with his
broom is helping put a man on the moon. But he was, and he knew it.
The janitor knew what he was there to do, he knew ‘what good looked
like’, but more than this he knew he was a cog in a process – but like
every other cog in the entire process, he was important because other
cogs were relying on him to do his job and to do it well. He knew that
doing his job well enabled others to do their jobs well and so, eventually,
like dominoes falling, his cleaning work helped Neil Armstrong take
one small step.
He knew where he sat, he knew his role, he knew it was all tied up –
and that provided alignment, focus and connection.
What is your equivalent to putting a man on the moon? And how do
you tie it all up?
Ultimately, can you show on a diagram how everything everyone
does in the company connects together and thus connects to your
purpose? Can you find the golden thread that links each department,
each team and each activity performed by each individual towards the
shared common goal?
This is a really important statement.
If you cannot find the golden thread, ask yourself: What is the
missing link? What do I need to add to enable it all to tie up? And if, after
that, you still cannot find the link between an activity and the company
purpose, maybe you should ask the question, Why are you doing it?

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Pause for reflection

Consider:
• What is your company’s purpose? Not all are as grand as NASA’s
stated goal in the 1960s of ‘putting a man on the moon’, but what is
yours?
• How do you connect it all together; what is the purpose of each
individual’s role in the context of that purpose?
• Ensure all your people spend time with their next link in the chain
internally and, preferably, with your end customer.
• Question why each task is done. If you can’t tie it to your purpose,
stop doing it.

Company – show you understand your people

This C is slightly different from the earlier ones. This C is not about the
actual work people do, rather this one is about how easy you make it
to work for you and the changes the business could make that do not
cost you much, but which make the lives of your people better and thus
make working for you more appealing.

What do your people want?

Businesses all use structures to organize the work that they want
done. The question I have here is whether those structures remain
fit for purpose in the post-COVID, talent-scarce world? If we
challenge ourselves, do we truly understand what our people want
and have we designed work to accommodate this or, regardless
of this?
Let me bring this to life with some examples. I once worked with a
call centre manager on staff engagement and retention. Very early on,
the manager called me to a window which looked over the shop floor.
‘Watch this,’ he said, and a few minutes later, in poured a torrent of
staff to start their shift, ten minutes late. The manager complained: ‘It’s

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unbelievable, yesterday they were 20 minutes early and just wasting

time in the canteen.’ The answer was simple. The call centre was on
an industrial park; most people travelled to work by bus and the bus
timetable did not sync with the shift times.
Now this is a somewhat simplistic example, but it makes the point.
How do your people get to work? Do you synchronize starting times
with public transport? Do you offer parking for cars or covered areas
for bicycles with changing rooms, showers and lockers for people to
store clothes and helmets?
The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) found that nurses prefer
working four 12-hour shifts rather than six 8-hour shifts. It is the same
amount of time worked, but working less shifts for longer made their
lives easier to plan and live. The report stated ‘some nurses also prefer
to work longer daily hours with fewer shifts, which gives them greater
flexibility and more days away from work…. As the majority of the
nursing workforce is female, this may also make it easier to balance
work and personal responsibilities.’
In the same vein, not all work shifts are as popular to work as
others. If you consider Uber’s surge pricing as a concept used to
regulate supply and demand, could you use wage dynamics to help
fulfil each shift? Wages could increase to help make some shifts more
desirable, maybe they could even reduce for shifts that are overly
popular?
Some roles are characterized with low pay, unpredictable shifts and
little opportunity for development, resulting in low productivity and
high employee turnover. As noted in Chapter 4, it is interesting that
many of the complaints raised by labour organizers at Starbucks and
Amazon have as much to do with safety and stress on the job as they
do with wages or benefits.
Walmart responded to the lack of talent by increasing pay
significantly, but equally as important, noted Zeynep Ton of the MIT
Sloan School of Management, have been its management changes and
the shift from using temporary labour and converting them into full-

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time employees. ‘In 2022 Walmart stated that two-thirds of the more
than 565,000 hourly workers in its stores would work full time, up
from about half in 2016. They would be given predictable schedules
week to week and more structured mentorship.’

Show you care

How does your business show that you care about the well-being of
your people? In Chapter 4 I discussed the impact that our working
environment has on us, on our productivity and well-being. How are
your offices designed and laid out?
Consider sleep. Sleep has been described as Mother Nature’s best yet
attempt at immortality, with those of us who get sufficient sleep being
healthier, more able to fight disease, and even less likely to gain weight.
But the opposite is also true: lack of sleep significantly negatively
impacts our emotional and physical well-being and our productivity
and makes us more at risk of serious injuries and accidents. Do you
promote good sleep hygiene in your business? For shift workers,
predictability is key – surveys of manufacturing-sector employees
found that ‘workers who reported a high degree of control over their
working time and low variability in working hours also reported
significantly higher quality of sleep.’ In this context, it is interesting that
as noted by People Management in May 2023: ‘Workers will be entitled
to apply for a change in terms and conditions of employment if there is
a lack of predictability in relation to any part of their work pattern, and
the purpose of applying for the change is to obtain a more predictable
work pattern.’
Period poverty impacts 36 per cent of girls aged 14 to 21 in the UK
and over 137,000 miss school because of it, some missing ‘anywhere
between 10 and 20 per cent of their schooling’. The author can
only find data on period poverty in the context of education, but it
is reasonable to assume that it impacts older cohorts and not just
younger ones. Some companies offer free feminine hygiene products.
What could you do?

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Highlight the benefit

Many people can miss intrinsic benefits of their roles. Consider an
experiment conducted on hotel housecleaners by Harvard psychologist
Ellen Langer. Their roles were described as mundane, repetitive, hard
work and physical. They spend virtually all day on their feet engaged in
some kind of physical activity. Despite this, it was found that most didn’t
see themselves as physically active. Indeed 67 per cent reported they
didn’t exercise. More bizarrely, despite the fact that all the participants
in the study exceeded recommendations for daily exercise, their bodies
did not seem to benefit from their activity.
The group was divided into two. One group had researchers carefully
go through the tasks performed each day, explaining how many calories
those tasks burned. They were informed that the activity already met
the definition of an active lifestyle. The second group was given no
information at all.
One month later, the group that had been educated experienced a
decrease in their systolic blood pressure, weight and waist-to-hip ratio
and a 10 per cent drop in blood pressure.
In essence, this is the placebo effect. My argument is not whether this
effect works or is a case of cause or effect. For example, did the process
of learning about the amount of exercise they were doing change
the participants’ behaviour? (This was researched and the answer
was no.) Or did the participants change their lifestyle because of the
new information – for example, eating more healthily? (The answer:
maybe.) My argument is that by repositioning the work people do,
and by informing them of the benefits of doing it, we can measurably
positively influence their health and well-being.
You can go further. In some work environments you could give
workers a device to measure their activity, to maybe measure their steps
or distance travelled. This could all count towards a goal (I have seen,
for example, teams competing via TheConqueror​.even​ts challenges to
virtually walk Great Wall of China), and in competing, communities
have been built.

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Summar y
The answer to this question can get quite granular because in
many ways, one size can fit only one, but… what are the needs of
the people you want to hire? Then based on this answer, how can
you redesign work and your offer to attract and support different
people who have different needs expanding your talent pool reach
and enhancing retention?
Likewise, what can you offer that workers value and helps their
pay go further, but which does not cost you as much? Offering
decent healthy food at work means people can save money and
spend it on heating or food for their children. Can you use your
spending power as a business to buy things for your people,
passing on the savings to them? Could you build a crèche, could
you share one with businesses close by, could you offer subsidized
childcare and activities for children during school holidays – and
so the list goes on.

Pause for reflection

Consider, outside of the job itself:
• What can you do to broaden your appeal to people?
• What can you offer that does not cost you significant amounts of
money, but which your people will value and appreciate and which
will make their lives easier?
• How can you structure, manage and engage different cohorts of
workers so that the work becomes more appealing?
• How can you make life easier or better for the people you need to
work for you?
• Can you reposition work and demonstrate benefits from the job that
few would have realized?

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Culture
Culture is like mist. It is definitely there, but it is hard to pin down.
But it is also very important.
Research from Donald Sull at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) finds that a toxic culture is ten times more important than pay
in predicting staff turnover.
Culture is often described as the way things are done around here.
That is not a bad definition, but I suggest it needs more specificity.
Culture is the way things are actually done around here, regardless of
how people say things are done. This is an important clarification. All
businesses espouse that they work in certain ways and live by certain
values. That may well be true, but what is the reality on the ground?

Know who and what you are

The challenge, I suggest, for most businesses is that they do not know
what their culture truly is, or indeed, what they want their culture to
be. This is a problem as if you do not honestly know what you are and
what is unique to your business and the way you actually do things, the
result is either you claim to be things you are not, or alternatively you
try and be everything to everybody. Either outcome is a problem – on
one hand you are selling a dream on which you will fail to deliver and
on the other ultimately you end up being nothing to everyone.
If you want to know and understand what your culture is, get curious
about the stories your people tell. Ask your people for examples of their
peak moments and their low moments in working with you. What
were their lived experiences, how did it make them feel and what were
the circumstances surrounding the experience? Analyzing the stories
will identify the values and beliefs that your people hold dear, which
define the way they behave, and your culture.
These stories are critically important. Every business espouses the
way they like to do things, often these are called their values. These need
to be brought to life and made real. Too often values can be ‘words on
a wall’ and unless they are lived and breathed within the organization

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and demonstrated to stakeholders externally that is indeed all they are.

Ask yourself:

• How do you demonstrate that those values make an impact in the way
that you do things on a day-to-day basis?
• What do you stand for and what are you prepared to sacrifice in order
to achieve those goals?
• How do you bring that reality to life?

Let me give an example. Many businesses today say that they are ‘an
employer of choice’. Whilst at face value this is a worthy goal, there are
several problems with this. The first is that a lot of businesses seek the
same title (and thus it is not the differentiator many believe it to be) and
secondly, we live in an age where just because you tell me something
does not mean I believe you. Do not tell me you are an employer of
choice, rather show me why I should consider you to be an employer
of choice.
This is where your people’s stories add value. Document the highs
and lows to bring the reality of working for you to life. Share them
internally and externally so people know what your people do and how
they do it, what you expect and hold dear, what you will tolerate and,
most importantly, what you will not.
A final point on this. Personally I am not a fan of table-stake values
or one-word values. Table-stake values are what Patrick Lencioni calls
‘permission to play’ values. If you have to have a value of ‘trust,’ or
‘honesty’ it does not comfort me, rather it raises my suspicions as to
why you feel you need to tell me that you are honest! Likewise, my
problem with one-word values is that the word will naturally mean
different things to different people. Any dictionary proves this, as most
dictionaries have at least three definitions for every word. So, instead
of using a word as a value, describe what you mean with a sentence, use
real voices, show what that value really means to you – something you
cannot, I suggest, do in a single word.

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Your people reinforce the culture

From the description above you can see that your people will determine
and be the foundation of your culture. Management certainly influences
the culture and one of the key ways they influence is in the hiring of people.
Your people reinforce the culture, and so who you choose to hire
and the characteristics on which you select signal to others what it is
that you value and what you hold dear. Hiring for cultural fit can be a
good thing as it amplifies those attributes you want, however if you are
not careful it can also run the risk of reducing diversity by reinforcing
stereotypes and hiring in your own image. We will discuss diversity in
the context of sustainability in Chapter 7.
Getting and keeping people is about setting the right expectations
for them. If you share the reality – warts and all – of what it is like
to work for you then candidates can choose if that fits with how they
want to work and be treated. Based on that they can consciously apply
or not, and if they apply knowing what you are, and wanting what you
offer, then you have a great hire. But the opposite is also true: if you
promise life on Bora Bora but the reality is a weekend on an industrial
estate, you now have a problem.
As an example, one team may state ‘We are a team of self-starters
who collaborate to serve our clients in the best way that we can. We
hold ourselves to high standards and use performance management
to keep us on track. We are generous in how we share our time and
knowledge and are rewarded with generosity.’
There are some strong messages that come through this statement.
As examples, people need to be self-sufficient, proactive and take the
initiative. You are not an island, collaboration with others and sharing
is important. It is customer facing and service sacrosanct. Quality of
work is important and work will be tracked. Team spirit is strong and it
is expected you will share and work openly with everyone around you.
It took just 50 words to clearly signal the kind of person who would
thrive in this business and the kind of person who would not. If you
want to work on your own, to a defined process, do not like sharing

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with others, do not like being openly measured… then this is not the
job for you. How often is that level of clarity achieved?

Management influence culture

While a company’s culture comes from its people, management can
allow, limit or augment that culture through their actions and their
policy choices.
Management continually sends signals to their people. For example,
when management says something is important (and then how their
actions reinforce or contradict that message); when they prioritize one
thing over another; what they say ‘yes’ to, or ‘no’ to; what they measure;
who they reward and what that person is being rewarded for, all signal
what management considers to be important and how they want their
people ‘to be’.
Some of these signals are conscious, most though are subconscious,
but these signals are all picked up by your people and influence what
they believe to be acceptable, and so influence how they behave and
thus the culture of your business.
Where actions may slowly influence culture, policy choices are where
management can almost forcibly allow, limit or augment a culture. Let
me bring this to life by way of an example.
One business I worked with had a value of being ‘Trusted’. The word
trust was used extensively across the business, permeating everything.
One day they rolled out a new expense policy. The new policy shifted
from an Excel spreadsheet process to an online system and the benefits
of being streamlined, less paperwork (etc) were wildly touted. However,
regardless of the claim size, the sign-off process after submission meant
it was approved by their manager, then by finance, then it went off-
shore for approval, returning for additional sign-off in finance before
payment finally being made. If any errors were found at any stage of
the process, the claim was returned for resubmission which ultimately
meant the clock for payment restarted.
My question: is this a trusted process?

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From an employee’s perspective, not only were they individually not

trusted, nor was their manager and nor were several levels in finance.
Claims were bounced due to simple mistakes resulting in multiple
submissions and lengthy delays in receiving payment.
My next question: how did this change employee behaviour?
Well for one thing, any activity that incurred an expense reduced,
including visits to clients and any form of client hospitality. Frustration
grew, people stopped bothering to claim and therefore resented
working and mentally (and sometimes physically) checked out early.
My final question: what would a trusted expense policy look like?
A classic example here is that of Netflix, whose expense policy
basically states: ‘that all employees must “act in the company’s best
interest”.’ On one level what you claim needs to be justifiable and
sensible. A trusted policy though would also pay employees promptly
– it is, after all, the employee’s money that has been loaned to the
business. So maybe in a ‘trusted’ world, expenses are paid within 24
hours but note that, they will be checked, and if any discrepancies are
found, corrective action will be taken.
Policy decisions influence the culture. The challenge is that most
policy choices are made by management reactively, often in direct
response to a situation that has arisen, and when made in this way it
is usually done without considering the impact on the culture. But the
impact is real.

Summar y
Culture is your secret sauce. It is critically important, but you
need to understand what you have and what you are.
Collect people’s stories and bring to life the way you do things
and what you hold dear. Show how your policies reinforce and
amplify the way in which you work. Above all, don’t tell people;
show them the evidence that reinforces what you say you are.

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Pause for reflection

Consider:

• How would you honestly describe your culture?

• How do your processes reinforce and augment this?
• How do you bring your values to life and show they make a difference
in the way in which you do things and how you act?
• What kinds of people will fit your business, and which will not?
• How do you explain this to prospective hires?

Summar y
The developed world is at full employment and there is no
indication that this will abate any time soon. Tech firms may grab
headlines regarding their rounds of firing – as I write, Amazon
have just announced that it is laying off another 9,000 staff with
this round of redundancies focusing on Amazon Web Services
(AWS). The associated headlines are full of doom and gloom about
the job losses, and these losses will impact people significantly.
But… headlines have a tendency to miss the bigger picture. AWS
are laying off 9,000 staff globally. Bersin just tweeted that there are
over 500,000 HR vacancies in North America alone.
We are at full employment, but what we are experiencing is a
migration, a migration of workers from companies where they
did not feel valued, well treated or supported, where they did not
feel they have a career or purpose, to organizations where they
do. If you need people to do anything in your business, this is an
existential threat.
Focus on the 6 Cs: Compensation, Community, Career, Cause,
Company and Culture. You may not be able to support all of
them; but consciously choose. Consciously pick the ones you

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can and use them to differentiate your business. Build a business

where people want to come and work, where they feel engaged,
supported and developed, where their work adds meaning rather
than takes it away.
If you need talented people, your people strategy should be the
most important part of your business strategy.

Questions for you to consider

Having read this chapter, consider:
• What resonated for you?
• What would you challenge?
• Knowing this, where has this taken your thinking and what is now
possible?

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Future skills

A strange phenomenon occurs to all parents. Some ask the question;

some observe a well-meaning relative or friend asking it instead. It
tends to occur first when our children are about four or five years old
and then carries on throughout their education. The question? Asking
our children: What do you want to be when you grow up?
The question is an entirely natural one to me, and to any person who
asks it of my age. In 1985, when I was in the fifth year at secondary
school (aged 16) I was asked to complete a questionnaire. Some
weeks(!) later the results came back. Those of my age will remember
the printout: A2 paper, perforated sides containing holes to guide it
through the printer, rows of green horizontal lines on the back. I sat
down with the Careers Advisor and was told that my future ideal job
would be as a librarian.
It was a strange experience back then. Given the pace of change
today, asking the question seems even stranger.
The numbers and statistics alter, but one thing is very clear. No
one knows what the jobs of the future will be. According to a report
published by Dell Technologies in 2018 and authored by the Institute
For The Future (IFTF) and a panel of 20 tech, business and academic
experts from around the world, ‘85 per cent of the jobs that will exist
in 2030 haven’t even been invented yet.’ To be fair, there was a caveat:
‘although an exact percentage is impossible to predict.’
The actual number does not matter. What matters is that a decade
ago no one thought there would be jobs and a good living to be made
designing or working on autonomous vehicles, cloud computing,

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prompt engineers, blockchain, NFTs or as a YouTube influencer…

One of my teenage nephews has exactly the kind of ‘side-hustle’ I
described in Chapter 4 making serious money doing what I can
only describe as custom-paint jobs on a pair of trainers. The list is
seemingly endless and, to someone of my age, to a greater or lesser
extent, bewildering.
The pace of change makes it impossible to say what the jobs of the
future will be. The challenge therefore is not what the jobs will be, but
rather what are the skills that I will need in my business to be successful
and what skills will I need to ensure I have a job in the future?
This chapter considers these questions. I tackle it from three
perspectives:

• The first is to look at the single biggest challenge to jobs in the future –
the impact of AI and technology.
• The second perspective is to consider what this means for skills and
identifying the skills that businesses will most need to hire.
• The third perspective is to look how a business can successfully hire
those skills.

The impact of AI and technology

In Chapter 1 I briefly talked about the Luddites and the more recent
work of Dr Frey and Professor Osborne. It is their research from
2011 which gave rise to the scare statistic that 47 per cent of total US
employment is at risk.
And that was the good news. That was for the US economy. Later
research published by the World Bank ‘estimated that 69 per cent of
today’s jobs in India are threatened by automation… China’s figure
was 77 per cent.’ Those in the UK can breathe a little easier; for their
economy the figure was 39 per cent due to the UK having a greater
percentage of creative roles than the US.

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The table shows an excerpt from Osborne and Frey’s original

research. Jobs at the top are the least likely to be at risk of automation,
jobs at the bottom are at most risk of automation:

Percentage likelihood that computerization will lead to job losses in the

next two decades (to 2033).

Job Probability
Recreational Therapists 0.28%
Health Care Social Worker 0.35%
Dentists, General 0.44%
Human Resources Managers 0.55%
Clergy 0.80%
Makeup Artists, Theatrical and Performance 1.00%
Chief Executives 1.50%
Mechanical Engineers 2.00%
Firefighters 17.00%
Managers, All Other 25.00%
Flight Attendants 35.00%
Actors 37.00%
Commercial Pilots 55.00%
Machinists 65.00%
Word Processors and Typists 81.00%
Proofreaders and Copy Markers 84.00%
Technical Writers 89.00%
Retail Salespersons 92.00%
Accountants and Auditors 94.00%
Telemarketers 99.00%
Source: ‘The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to
computerisation?’ by C. Frey and M. Osborne (2013). Sample of jobs.

One of the jobs towards the bottom of the list surprises a lot of people:
accountants and auditors. I will explain, but anyone who watched the
BBC/HBO series Years and Years (which first aired on the BBC in

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2019) will already know the reason. The series follows a family and
their experiences of life in Britain as it is rocked by political upheavals,
economic instability and technological advances. The first episode is
set in 2019, with subsequent episodes set annually from 2025 to 2029.
The main protagonist was an accountant. In the episode set in 2028
she says: ‘They found software that cost £200 to replace me for life.
There is no such thing as an accountant anymore. We joined that list of
jobs that no longer exists, like travel agents and referees.’
One does not have to look too far to see the impact that the very
real threat posed by automation and AI. At the time of writing, the
Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, the actors union, are both
striking simultaneously. One of the issues at the root of the strikes is
the potential use of AI to reduce or replace the use of and need for
writers and/or actors.

Take a step back…

Before accountants (and anyone else with jobs towards the bottom of
the list) throw their hands up in the air and start shouting at this book,
take a step back, take a wider view and think about what is happening.
Consider those working in manufacturing.
In American naval shipyards, workers are experimenting with
special exoskeleton equipment to help with their job. Prior to wearing
the robotic-looking skeleton, the work was characterized as being hard
and offering a poor quality of life. Workers had to carry tools weighing
tens of kilograms all day; they would go home from work so fatigued
that all they could do was to crash out on the couch; the work was very
physical meaning workers would take significantly more sick days than
an average worker.
Now, wearing the skeleton, the tools appear weightless, enabling the
worker to guide the tools rather than wield them; tools are attached to
the exoskeleton so they cannot be dropped, thus preventing injuries;
workers now take significantly fewer sick days; they no longer have to
carry everything manually, so the work is less demanding physically,
and they are able to go home and enjoy life. There can be no doubt that

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what the exoskeletons have done has significantly and dramatically

improved their quality of life.
And two people are more productive wearing the exoskeletons than
three people used to be without them.
We will marvel at the technology, we will marvel at the amazing
opportunities it opens up and how it will make our lives better… and it
will slowly destroy jobs. But this is not the main point.

Technology: the great leveller

Consider what has taken place. Take another step back…
Before the introduction of the exoskeletons, what characteristics and
attributes would you be looking for in your people? The naval shipyard
jobs were characterized by the need to be fit, butch and able to lift
heavy objects hour in, hour out.
How would you hire these people? Simplistically, an interview
consisted of inviting people in, getting them to pick up a heavy weight
and then see if they are still standing in an hour’s time. Those are the
attributes you want; that is how you work out if people have them.
Now, though, you have exoskeletons, and so the main question
becomes: Who do you hire now? Wearing a suit, anyone can do that
work, no matter how fit they are or what they are like physically.
This is the point about technology: it’s the great leveller. Technology
removes our individual uniqueness that gave us the ability, the
advantage to get the job in the first place. If anything, technology
democratizes work.

The Knowledge – three years to 30 seconds

Taxi driving is another great example. London taxis can be hailed
in the street and asked to go anywhere. To ensure quality of service,
drivers must have a thorough knowledge of London and to prove this,
all London taxi drivers have to learn and pass the world-famous test
called ‘The Knowledge’. According to Transport for London, ‘London’s
taxi service is the best in the world, in part because our cab drivers
know the quickest routes through London’s complicated road network.

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There are thousands of streets and landmarks within a six-mile radius

of Charing Cross. Anyone who wants to drive an iconic London cab
must memorize them all: the Knowledge of London.’
The Knowledge was introduced as a requirement for London’s taxi
drivers in 1865. Mastering it ‘typically takes students three to four
years; it’s a challenge, but plenty of help and support is available if you
are determined.’
London Transport are absolutely right, there is plenty of support and
it exists on any smartphone; it is called Google maps, Apple maps or
Waze and it takes about 30 seconds to master. As a consequence, there
are now more drivers for hire on London’s streets than ever before.
The barriers to entry to that profession have broadly been totally
removed, the work democratized. As a sidenote, since ‘the knowledge’
is no longer a differentiator, cabbies have started to switch to Electric
Vehicles (EVs) to differentiate themselves.

New talent
The corollary for business is that technology opens up talent pools
of people that you never previously considered. If anyone can do the
job wearing an exoskeleton, who do you pick? What characteristics,
behaviours and skills are important to you now? This will upend the
selection tools used by most businesses. I will return to this theme later
in the chapter.

Technology: the great creator

While technology destroys work, it also creates and enables other
types of work. But what it will create, we simply don’t know:
technology is moving at such a pace that we do not know what the
jobs of the future are.
When ATMs were first installed in banks, many commentators feared
for the cashier and their job prospects. But data show that employment
in banks increased in the period directly after their introduction,
not decreased, as they invested in other types of front-line staff; the
literature lists two key areas of investment: customer service and sales.

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This is another aspect of the power of technology. Technology takes

on our monotonous, repeatable, predictable tasks and does them for
us, freeing us up to do more interesting, challenging, creative work that
technology is less well able to do. The ATM removed the monotony
of handing out money. Taking the example from Chapter 4 and the
discussion on Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, robots replace the
manufacturing worker whose job is to fit the front wheel to cars every
minute for 40 hours a week.
The societal challenge is whether the people disrupted by the
technology have the capability, desire or aptitude for non-linear,
creative work. If your job was to serve the public from behind a counter,
then that job has largely gone. Technology removed your uniqueness,
the ATM did what you could do faster and cheaper, and you cannot
beat it. Herein lies the endless dichotomy between technology and
people. Organizations seek to lower cost by implementing technology
to complement or replace people – customer service and call centres
being a great example. We can now engage via multiple channels
including text and WhatsApp, we can tell/ask the voice recognition
systems what we want, we can enter our policy details to streamline the
interaction if we choose to speak to someone. Whether this actually
increases customer satisfaction and service, and values the customer’s
time and patience is, certainly in my mind, somewhat moot.

Technology: the great accelerator

Until this point, I have consciously steered clear of one of the biggest
talking points in the world of technology right now: ChatGPT. In part
this is because I wanted to give readers the chance to take a step back
from the noise and focus more broadly on what is actually going on
and its broader strategic impacts. The other reason is more prosaic:
the element of jeopardy associated with something that is so new and
that is moving quite so fast. At the point of writing, ChatGPT-3.5 was
released three and a half months ago and ChatGPT-4 is due imminently.
The acceleration between the two points in that last sentence is
astonishing. According to one source, ChatGPT-3.5 has 175 billion

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Machine Learning Parameters. Fast-forward through those three and a

half months, and the new version, ChatGPT-4 has 100 trillion million
parameters. A near 600-fold increase. In three and a half months.
This book will be published about a year after writing this section. If
growth continues in only a linear fashion from today until that time, I
could waste a page writing the number of zeros that future versions of
ChatGPT will consider. The challenge is that it may well continue at
that pace. Researchers at Stanford University recently studied how AI
algorithms have improved over time. They announced that prior to 2012,
AI results tracked Moore’s Law – i.e. doubling every two years – but since
2012 they found that AI systems have doubled every three to four months.
ChatGPT will profoundly and immeasurably change work. But it
will also come with challenges. Rather than follow the hysteria and
run the not insignificant risk of writing something that will be proved
wrong by the time you read this, I want to concentrate on the bigger
picture and highlight the key strategic points you need to consider.

ChatGPT in a paragraph
ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI
and launched in November 2022. GPT stands for Generative
Pre-Trained Transformer, which is a language model (or an AI
algorithm) designed to understand and generate human-like
language. In very, very simple terms ChatGPT is a text predictor.
For example, if I say: ‘Twinkle, twinkle’, you immediately think
of a small, bright object twinkling in the night sky. If I say: ‘Shut
the—’, you say ‘door’. ChatGPT-3 allowed written input and
output. ChatGPT-4 allows input and provides answers in video
and picture formats.

ChatGPT impact
The system is, of course, far more impressive. It is trained on vast
swathes of the internet, including Wikipedia. All of Wikipedia. It can

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deal with and answer complex human-like questions and give human-
like answers as examples:

• Act as a European travel agent and give me a 14-day itinerary for a trip
to France. Start the trip leaving London on the Eurostar. Include a visit
to the Louvre and Saint Tropez.
• Using my LinkedIn profile [profile] and this job [job] write my CV.
• Write a cover letter for a retail position highlighting my social and
communication skills.
• I am studying [book title] for my English Literature GCSE. My
examination board is [Board]. What are the top five questions I should
expect to be asked? [Note: A friend’s daughter actually used this prompt
when preparing for her 2023 GCSE and three of the five responses
ChatGPT gave were correct.]
• Write a letter of resignation to my employer. The reason for my
resignation is that I need a more flexible schedule due to family issues.
• Act as a tutor. I need help understanding how the quadratic function
works. Describe it in terms a 14-year old would understand.
• Answer this interview question [paste question]
• I need to hire a marketing person to perform these tasks [tasks]. Write
me a job description and an accompanying job advert.
• In the style of the Economist, write me a 500-word blog post on the
future world of work to 2030.

ChatGPT: the challenges

This ability is why ChatGPT will profoundly impact work. What robots
did to manufacturing jobs, ChatGPT will do to white-collar work.
I suggest, though, that past all the noise and hype and undisputed
potential, there are two key things to focus on.
The first is that, as any parent or executive coach knows, the most
important aspect is to ask the right question. As with a lot of things in
life, if you ask a stupid, or an ill-defined, or unclear question you will not
get a good or reliable answer. In order to maximize the system’s value,

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there is an absolute need and skill to ask the right question and to be
explicit in the asking. As with any tool we need to know how to use it
for most effect. Writing ChatGPT prompts is different to searching the
internet. To maximize its value prompts need to be clear and precise,
sentences can be used but make them succinct not verbose, provide
context (you will note above that I gave ChatGPT a ‘role’ such as a tutor
or in the style of…), ask specific questions, choose words that are easy
to understand and which help the tool interpret the context.
The second is that the answers provided should never be taken as
gospel. Anyone that answered my earlier question of ‘Shut the…’ with
the word ‘window’ experienced this on a small scale. The problem is
somewhat bigger. Much like the internet writ large, ChatGPT is not
infallible and its answers cannot be taken as gospel. In Microsoft’s
video accompanying the launch of AI Bing (Microsoft’s search engine
with ChatGPT built in), the system provided a summary of Gap’s
financials and compared them to those of Lululemon – and made
up some of the figures. As one observer noted ‘Lululemon’s diluted
earnings per share is $2.00 not [as ChatGPT reported] $1.65.’ This is
not a small or inconsequential mistake. When Google launched Bard,
its AI-enabled chatbot, in February 2023 it similarly made ‘a factual
error’. The system claimed incorrectly that the James Webb Space
Telescope ‘took the very first pictures of a planet outside of our own
solar system’. It didn’t, the first such photo was taken 14 years before
the JWST was launched.
Even more curiously, there are online forums showing screen shots
of conversations with Bing arguing about today’s date. In these, Bing
was adamant that the year was 2022. It asked the user to check their
phone, then suggested the phone was faulty, and hoped the user would
be able to get it fixed soon. When the user pushed back, repeating that
the year was in fact 2023, Bing asked them to stop wasting their time!
The full weirdly science fiction back and forth can be found in Simon
Willison’s referenced blog.
My own experience of using the system backs this up. Via the
Copy​.​ai system I asked for a blog entitled ‘How companies can turn

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themselves into talent magnets’. Based on Chapter 5 I added the

keywords ‘compensation cause career culture community company
interaction not transaction’.
The answer that came back was interesting (and the double question
mark at the end was generated by the AI):

It’s hard to quit!

There are many reasons why people quit their jobs. Maybe they want
to do something different, or maybe they just feel like they can’t make a
change on their own. It may also be that you’re unhappy with the work
environment and want out of there more than anything else in the world.
If this sounds like you, then don’t worry —you’re not alone! Many people
feel stuck at their jobs until they make a career switch (or two). You might
have come up with an idea for your next career move but haven’t yet found
an opportunity where it would fit into your life at this time? Or perhaps
another opportunity has popped up unexpectedly? Whatever the reason
may be, quitting isn’t always easy: sometimes it takes some serious inner
strength and discipline in order for us humans who were created by God
Himself (and love ourselves) as well as others around us who have been
blessed beyond measure by Him through His only begotten Son Jesus
Christ our Lord & Saviour Jesus Christ who gave His life so freely without
hesitation so all those who believe could live forever on earth instead living
eternally apart from Him forever in heaven without any hope whatsoever
ever again seeing each other again until Judgment Day when all souls will
rise together again after death goes away forever never returning again
until Judgment Day comes once more upon mankind finally learning what
happened during those few hours between 1st century AD when death
came into existence till now?? [sic]

Trying to second-guess a black-box system is a fool’s errand. I can only

suppose it took the word talent magnet, and followed a path from here
to resigning, hence to quitting and following a path to suicide. This
is at best a guess, but it gives a word to the wise of the rabbit holes AI
systems can go down.

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ChatGPT – the real value

ChatGPT will not fully replace humans. Much like the exoskeletons
in the naval shipyard, it will augment them. The system will not (yet)
give us the finished, polished article, but it will remove some of the
drudgery of our day-to-day tasks; it will do some of the heavy lifting
and give us 40, 50 or even 60 per cent of the answer.
It will also make the human element even more important. Key
skills going forward will be knowing how to ask the right question
and knowing whether the answer given is correct or any good. My
blog post response was obviously not appropriate, so where is that
boundary between accuracy and laziness? By the time you read this, I
suspect many will have fallen foul and lived to regret crossing that line.
A debate that will need to take place, inklings of which are already
starting, is around the ethics of AI. Despite calls for halting development
for a period of time, or even possibly banning it, the AI-genie is well
and truly out of the bottle. Humans have never been very good at
stopping something when the very use of that thing gives individuals an
advantage. Like all tools, AI offers tremendous opportunity and it comes
with tremendous challenges. Maybe we will end up with something
like Asimov’s laws of robotics, but having the reasoned debate whilst
avoiding stories of impending apocalypse has got to be the start.

The end of truth… or to put it another way, how do I know

what is true?
I have already signposted that the final section in this chapter will
consider how you hire people in this new age. Let me highlight the
ChatGPT ramifications on candidate selection:

1. ChatGPT can write LinkedIn profiles, CVs and covering letters.

One article written in February 2023 has already highlighted
how nefarious third-party actors (think terrorist states or even
competitors) could apply for a position that is fully remote, using a
bespoke AI-created CV, be interviewed using deep-fake AI-enabled
video technology, answer questions using AI-searches, be employed

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and then search out company secrets, insert ransomware into your
systems, etc.
2. If you use any kind of remote testing of candidates or indeed
employees – whether situational judgement, verbal or logical
reasoning tests – ChatGPT can identify the right responses and
in early 2023 already performs very well. It will only get better. To
quote just one report ‘In a simulated Bar exam, GPT-4 passed with a
score around the top 10 percent of test takers,’ the article continued
noting that when GPT-3.5 passed it was in the bottom 10 per cent.
To reiterate the scale of change – the student went from the bottom
to the top 10 per cent of test takers in three and a half months.
3. One-way, asynchronous video interviews, or interviews conducted
by text (for example, a chat bot) are now almost broadly useless.
ChatGPT can already compose excellent real-time response scripts
to video interview questions, and answers can be read out or cut and
pasted into chat boxes.

At a macro level, ChatGPT is incredibly proficient at emulating human

prose. It also has zero commitment to the truth. As the MIT Technology
Review put it in an article entitled ‘Why you shouldn’t trust AI search
engines’, chatbots are ‘notorious bullshitters’. Unfortunately criminality
and disinformation do not always rely on truth either. ChatGPT will be a
game changer in virtually every area of life. Included in that is the negative
aspects of generating better fake reviews, or comments, or convincing
profiles. The CEO of the Atlantic recently put it this way: ‘GPT-4 is here,
and we’re about to enter a world where everything written is a blur—
where we have great new powers but almost no idea who wrote what.’

The skills of the future

‘Any job of the future is going to have a digital component.
It doesn’t mean everyone’s got to be a computer scientist.’
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft at the 2016 World
Economic Forum Annual Meeting held in Davos

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For the human species, this rampant and incessant technological

advance is unusual. In the past, technological change was extremely
slow – technologies that our ancestors got used to in their childhood
remained central to their lives in old age. Today, technologies that
were common in our youth are spurned ten years later. When the iPod
launched in 2001 it was utterly revolutionary. I am confident that most
readers had one, or two, maybe four versions. When was the last time
you used any of them? Technologies that were unimaginable in our
youth become redundant in later life.
This pace of change means we cannot predict the jobs of the future,
but we can predict the skills that will be valued.
According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), areas including
Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (so-called ‘STEM’)
will see the majority of new jobs created. Competition for talent in
high-growth areas such as computing, mathematics, architecture and
engineering, and other strategic and specialist roles ‘will be fierce’.
Outside these, it seems to me that other contenders for future work
opportunities include renewables and climate change, education,
leadership and management, automation, healthcare and medical
sectors. As we continue to urbanize, roles associated with city design,
planning and infrastructure will be critical, and as we seek to create
solutions for billions of urban city dwellers, areas like anthropology
and behavioural science will come into play. AI will create massive
demand for roles like prompt engineers and those around ethics.

Top 15 skills
In 2020, the WEF updated its report The Future of Jobs. In it, they list
the ‘top 15 skills for 2025’. In their order, they are:

1. Analytical thinking and innovation

2. Active learning and learning strategies
3. Complex problem-solving
4. Critical thinking and analysis
5. Creativity, originality and initiative

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6. Leadership and social influence

7. Technology use, monitoring and control
8. Technology design and programming
9. Resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility
10. Reasoning, problem-solving and ideation
11. Emotional intelligence
12. Troubleshooting and user experience
13. Service orientation
14. Systems analysis and evaluation
15. Persuasion and negotiation

Intriguingly the list is very similar to that published by the WEF in

2016 when they were looking forward to 2020.
Reflect on these skills. They broadly fall into three categories:

Group 1 Group 2 Group 3

1. Analytical thinking and 2. Active learning and 7. Technology use,
innovation learning strategies monitoring and
3. Complex problem-solving 6. Leadership and social control
4. Critical thinking and influence 8. Technology design
analysis 9. Resilience, stress and programming
5. Creativity, originality and tolerance and flexibility 12. Troubleshooting
initiative 11. Emotional intelligence and user experience
10. Reasoning, problem- 15. Persuasion and
solving and ideation negotiation
13. Service orientation
14. Systems analysis and
evaluation

In summary:
• Group 1 consists of skills around thinking, creativity and problem-
solving.
• Group 2 is people and leadership skills, people management and people
support.
• Group 3 contains skills around technology use and development
skills.

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It is reasonably obvious why these skills will be so critical in future.

Technology, AI and automation will take over jobs or elements of
jobs that can be codified. Wherever work is uniformly repeatable,
where it follows a linear, definable process with minimal uncertainty,
where the process reliably defines what to do and the order in which to
do it – ABCDE, ABCDE, ABCDE, ABCDE, repeat – this work will be
taken over by the machines.
Moving forward, business will not need process followers – machines
will do that work far cheaper and more reliably. Repetitive jobs that
add minimal value will go. Rather, businesses will need to hire skills
that are uniquely human and which smart machines cannot copy (or
cannot yet copy).
This is the reason why roles such as accountants and auditors are
most likely at risk of automation. Technology has automated away
significant parts of the role. Company accounts are, for the most
part, entirely digital. Working out what tax or VAT or payroll to pay
is a calculation, nothing more. I do not value my accountant for the
transactional side of things – I can get anyone to do that, and I can
definitely find someone in the world who would do it cheaper. I value
my accountant for the service and for his advice on all affairs financial.
The critical skills that business will need moving forward fall into
these two areas:

Creativity
The first and biggest group of skills are those connected with creativity
and sense-making. Sense-making is the ability to determine the
deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed. As a simple
example: ask a computer if it wants to play pool and 50 per cent of the
time it will consider billiards; the other 50 per cent, swimming.
Included in this broad set of skills is innovation, thinking, problem-
solving, seeing the hidden meaning in things, visualization, thinking
on your feet and the ability to respond to unique unexpected
circumstances in the moment.

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In this context it is interesting to see the educational switch from STEM

to STEAM. A decade ago, parents were unrepentant in pushing their
children down the STEM educational path. This will absolutely remain a
key growth area for future roles, but it will be tempered. As an example,
as one Medium post put it in 2022, ‘Being able to code is no golden ticket
to a good job anymore.’ Simplistically, coding has increasingly turned
from the actual writing of code into creating programmes by dragging
and dropping packets of pre-written code and linking them together.
The STEM has morphed into STEAM. The A is for Art.
Art is the important additional element because it provides the spark
for creativity. This is where the storytellers reside. In future, we will be
swamped by data even more than we are today, so a cherished skill will
be the ability to assimilate and present the volumes of data in a way
that others can then absorb it. This is the rise of the artist engineers.
The irony of course is that this turns the clock back 550 years to the
most well-known artist engineer of them all – Leonardo Da Vinci.

It is all about the people

The second biggest set of skills is related to people – leading, managing
and ensuring that all of your staff work effectively and productively
together. People management will become increasingly important, for
three overwhelming reasons.
Firstly, automation will make us more productive and slowly destroy
jobs. That is a given. What some commentators fail to point out is
what that means to those who are left still working for you. The more
we automate, proportionally the more important each of those who
remain working for us becomes.
Secondly, in the vast majority of businesses today, total people costs
(salaries, expenses, training, taxes, etc) are likely or be the largest or
second largest line item in the profit and loss (P&L) statement. Given
this, an increase in their productivity of 10 or 5 or even 1 per cent
would, in most cases, have a significant impact on the company’s
bottom line.

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Third, I hope that I’ve already at least partially convinced you that
creativity and problem-solving will be critical going forward. The
interesting question is: Who will manage all these creative types?
Business will truly value managers who enable teams to quickly
storm, form, norm and be productive. As we increasingly become
more and more diverse, we will value those who have the ability to
engage with people from different backgrounds, geographies and
experiences. Social intelligence, cultural awareness and emotional IQ
will become even more important to enable you to work with people,
assess their emotions, calculate and regulate your impact and enhance
their output.
This analysis should come as no surprise to the reader. Reflect
back on Chapter 5 and The Great Migration. We are experiencing a
migration of workers from companies where they do not feel valued,
appreciated, respected or developed to companies where they do. What
is the biggest cause of these sets of feeling? The employee’s manager.
It cannot be underestimated how important this area is. A study in
2019 by Britain’s Industrial Strategy Council concluded that current
trends suggest that by 2030 the second-biggest skills shortage faced by
businesses will be in management, behind only digital technology. This
deficit of management and leadership is already having an impact –
according to Brandon Hall Group’s ‘State of Leadership Development’
report 71 per cent of companies do not feel their leaders are able to lead
them into the future.
On one level you can argue it was ever thus. In 2015, John van
Reenen, director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the
London School of Economics, argued that more than half of the
productivity gap between Britain and America can be attributed to
poor management. But, for too long, people management has been
considered an adjunct to someone’s role where promoted people
‘inherited’ a team. No longer. People management is the job and it is
one of the most critical and important skills your business will need
in order to remain successful.

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While on this topic, a final point. Let’s seek to move the conversation
on from so-called hard and soft skills. These devalue what is one of the
most critical skills of the future. There are technical skills and there are
human skills. Both are hard.

Hire that!!
The previous section identified the most critical skills of the future.
Those are what your business will need to survive and thrive. An
important question remains: How will you hire them?

Top performers everywhere. Hopefully.

In an ideal world, every single employee in our business would be a top
performer, a star. Some employees would be HIPOs (HIgh POtential),
being groomed for future promotion, but everyone would be a HIPE
(HIgh PErformer).
Of course, this is what we would want and the research backs up why.
McKinsey has noted that top performers are 4 times more productive
than average ones and, intriguingly, found that ‘this gap rises with a
job’s complexity. In highly complex occupations – the information- and
interaction-intensive work of managers… – high performers are… 800
percent more productive.’
This impact is meaningful. Paraphrasing McKinsey’s research –
imagine you have a business plan that is scheduled to take three years
to implement. If a competitor used 20 per cent more great talent than
you in similar efforts, ‘it would beat you to market even if it started a
year or two later.’
There are many books and articles written on selecting candidates
and unlocking individual performance. This is not one of those books.
Success is situational. How well people perform likewise. Personally
I embrace the positive philosophical choice that everyone has talent
(it may be latent or expressed, but it is there) and that people come to
work to do a good job. Given this, the question becomes – if success

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is situational, how do you create the right situations for everyone

to perform? We are individuals, with different motivations, desires
and talents – how do you engage your people in the context of one-
size fits one? Many management books cover this theme, I want
to consider the very front end of the process – knowing what it is
that we actually need – as this is less talked about and is where the
problem commences.

The failure statistic

A key challenge to having top performers across our businesses
is that we are often not very good at identifying them at the outset.
Research shows that a significant number of the hires we make fail.
As an example, one report defined a new hire as a ‘failure’ if one of the
following four characteristics was met:

1. Their contract was terminated.

2. They received significantly negative performance reviews.
3. They left under pressure.
4. They received official disciplinary action.

After a three-year study of over 20,000 hires, they found that the
average failure rate for most jobs was 46 per cent within 18 months of
hiring and, for executive hires, can be as high as 60 per cent. Only 19
per cent of hires were defined as an ‘unequivocal success’.
The research continued by considering why the new hires failed.
Through their analysis, the top reasons identified were a lack of:

• Coachability (26 per cent of failures) – the ability to accept and

implement feedback.
• Emotional Intelligence (23 per cent of failures) – the ability to
understand and manage your own and other people’s emotions.
• Motivation (17 per cent of failures) – sufficient drive/desire to achieve
full potential and excel in the job.

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• Temperament (15 per cent of failures) – attitude and personality suited

to the particular job and work environment.
• Technical Competence (11 per cent of failures) – functional or technical
skills required to do the job.

Three-year study of 5,247 hiring managers from 312 companies as they hired
over 20,000 employees analyzing why employees failed. Source: LeadershipIQ

In summary, 89 per cent of hiring failures were for attitudinal reasons

and only 11 per cent of hires failed due to lack of skill. The data proves
the old adage – we hire people based on their skill and fire them due
to their behaviour. Put another way, people don’t underperform due
to their lack of technical expertise; they underperform because of
everything else.

The failure cost

These hiring failures all come at a cost.
According to a study by the Society for Human Resources
Management (SHRM), when factors such as employee disruption,
lower employee morale, customer dissatisfaction and lost sales are

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included, a bad hire can cost a business up to five times that individual’s
annual salary. SHRM also found that the higher the person’s position
and the longer they remain in that position, the more the damage
caused and thus the greater this multiple. The Recruitment and
Employment Confederation (REC) in the UK broadly agrees with this
figure, and echoing SHRM – that the higher the person’s position, the
higher this figure – states that ‘the cost of a bad hire at a chief executive
level could be as much as 40 times their salary and can actually break
your business’.
Combining this data:

• The median annual pay for full-time employees in the UK in April 2022
(ONS’ latest release) is £640 per week or £33,000 annually
• The cost of a bad hire = 5 × salary = 5 × £33,000 = £165,000
• The failure rate is 46 per cent making the overall cost to the business of
each hire made: £165,000 × 0.46 = £75,900

If your business is simply average – paying average salaries and average

in terms of hiring success (or failure) – then for every 100 hires you
make £ 7.5 million is lost due to hiring failures. You can’t point to
this number as a line item but this is the intangible impacts of hiring
failures in your business.
We would never tolerate a failure rate like this anywhere else in our
businesses, but few measure this and few hold managers to account
for it. Given this, few change the system and as ‘nobody ever got fired
for buying IBM’ people reasonably take the safe, justifiable solution of
hiring prospective employees based on their skill.
You may, or may not agree with the research, but this data reflects on
our (in)ability to hire the right person for the jobs we have today. But
the challenge is even bigger. If we fail this regularly and expensively
with today’s jobs, how will we manage to hire the right person when
the jobs of the future require skills and capabilities that add another
dimension to the complexity required?

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Why is the failure rate so high?

The reason for such a high failure rate was summed up by the Wall
Street Journal when they said: ‘Though hiring is a crucial business
function, conventional methods are remarkably short on rigour.’
Research backs this up. Schmidt and Hunter published a meta-
analysis based on 85 years of research detailing how different types
of selection and assessment methods predict a potential employee’s
future performance.
The single best predictor of how someone will perform in the job is
a work sample test – and it scored 29 per cent.
The second-best predictors are general cognitive ability and
structured interviews. These each score at 26 per cent. Put another
way, if all you do when selecting employees is a ‘proper’ structured
interview, your success rate will be one in four.
From here it just gets worse. An unstructured interview has a
predictive power of 14 per cent. An article on LinkedIn suggested that
if all you do is unstructured interviews… just stop. Instead, pin the CVs
on a wall and throw a dart to select your next hire; you are more likely
to hire great people. To quote: ‘unstructured interviews increase the
likelihood of a bad hire.’ A candidate’s previous work experience had a
predictive power of just 6 per cent and years of education a predictive
power of just 3 per cent.
Notice what this is saying. Broadly, if you remove graphology
(handwriting analysis) and phrenology (feeling the bumps on the head)
as tools by which you select candidates, then academic performance
and previous work experience are the least reliable predictors of future
performance. This means that the CV (which lists experience) and the
school/university the candidate went to are the least reliable data points
in predicting whether someone will be a great hire in your business.

A new approach: Hire the right people

Almost endemically we view the world as a ‘war for talent’. Personally,
I hate this phrase as it infers that there are great candidates and bad

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ones, and we must fight over the great ones. Given the statistics, it’s too
simplistic a soundbite.
Instead I would take Jack Ma’s approach when he said, ‘Hire the right
people, not necessarily the best people.’
There is a right person for each job. The secret to your success is
being able to identify what right means for you and your business. The
answer is in really thinking about what you need from your people;
knowing what predicts success in your organization; and in measuring
the attributes that make your employees top performers.
A key point here is that the answers will be different for each
organization. What predicts success in each business is unique to that
business. Each has their own culture, history, processes, customers and
people. You need to hire someone who will thrive in your organization.
That may, or may not, be someone who thrived in a similar organization,
but that is not the point.
To continue Jack Ma’s quote ‘if you hire the people who are very good
but not suitable to you, it’s just like you are putting a Boeing 747 engine
into a poor tractor.’ The worst mistake you can make is hiring someone
because they over-performed somewhere else. A talented person who
simply won’t fit into your business culture will underperform regardless
of their ability.

A word of warning
Some readers may think (or fear!) that I may be about to launch into a
discussion about why you should hire on attitude.
I’m not. Personally I think there is a lot of merit in hiring on attitude,
especially when we consider the skills that tomorrow’s jobs will require.
My word of caution, however, is that attitude, like success, is situational.
We cannot always get the perfect hire and in failing to appreciate the trade-
offs we revert to hiring on skill or experience or academic performance.
As a simple model, consider this graph. On the vertical axis we show
the level of cultural alignment or attitude the candidate exhibits and on
the horizontal we show the level of technical alignment.

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Ideally everyone would be in the top right-hand quadrant – a

perfect cultural and technical fit. Whilst desirable, practically this
may not be possible as you may not be able to afford them, or they
may not exist. Equally however, what you absolutely do not want are
people in the bottom left-hand quadrant as these are not aligned to
you in any way.

Where does each role in your business lie on the diagonal line?
Source and ©: ImagineThinkDo

The opposite two quadrants are where you will realistically find
yourself. Roles in the bottom right quadrant are those where you hire
based on technical experience. A level of cultural or behavioural fit is
needed, but the lack of available technical skills makes these the most
important criteria – examples may include back surgeons or actuaries.
Then there are roles that sit in the top left quadrant where cultural fit
and behaviours are critical – call centre or hospitality roles maybe –
where you can take people who have the right attitude, and mould them
in what they need to do.
Whilst simple, it prompts the question where do each of your people
sit in their roles and what trade-offs are you prepared to or have to
accommodate?

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Know what you are looking for

To hire the right people, we need to know what we are looking for.
Ideally for each role in question, we should be able to prove whether
the presence or absence of a trait, or a behaviour, or a competence will
predict the success or failure of someone in your organization. It is a
simple proposition, but without being able to answer it, how do you
know who to hire?
Luckily there are things you can do to help. You already have
employees – some will be high performers, some average, some below
average. Spend time observing them to consciously see what it is that
they do and how they do it. Seek to identify the differences – what is it
that your top performers consistently do and how do they consistently
behave that your bottom performers do not?
And the key word here is consistently. You want to hire the
right people. The right people demonstrate exceptional attributes
consistently. An average person may demonstrate those attributes
once or twice a year, but doing so infrequently is what makes them
average.
This will take time. So do not wait until people resign and you are
on the back foot, observe your people now. Seek to identify what it
is that makes people succeed or fail and you will be ahead of most
organizations today. When testing candidates ensure the tests you use
measure an attribute that predicts success or failure. If they do use
them, if you cannot link the test outcome with future performance
challenge why you are using them.

Sor t out the job description

There is a problem with job descriptions (JDs). In no particular
order, they:

• Have a tendency to use language that means different things to different

people.
• Tend to be out of date.

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• Typically start with the previous inhabitant’s job description with a few
extra bits added to the shopping list.
• List activities rather than outcomes.

There are an increasing number of tools, such as Job Canvas, designed

to help create a better and more inspiring JDs. Here are some thoughts
to consider:

Explain why the job is impor tant

Logic makes humans think, but emotion makes them act. We want our
people to do something, we want them to care, so we need to speak to
them and engage with them emotionally. For each job explain, ‘This
job is really important to us because…’ Because why? For example,
what happens if the person doesn’t turn up to work tomorrow… will
anyone miss them? In Chapter 5 I talked about linking each role in
your organization to your purpose. JDs are where you can make that
link real and obvious.

Define the desired output, not the activity

Jobs of the future require thought and creativity so instead of listing
row upon row of activities, list the four or five things that you want the
person to achieve. For each outcome you seek, define your expectations
– what does good, average or bad performance look like? Candidates
can then tell you how they would deliver the success you seek using
their talents – which is one way to enable innovation.
I always find it strange how much we assume that our people know
why each colleague is present and what is expected of them. As an
example, during inductions we often introduce someone as ‘being in
finance’ as if that phrase explains the entire intricacies and nuances of
the role. I would suggest that the outcomes of each role are defined and
shared freely. If you publish what it is you expect of each role, it creates
clarity across the business, it means everyone knows why everyone else
is present and what good looks like for each. The more I know why
you are here, and you know why I am here, the more likely it is that

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we may help each other, enabling collaboration and community and

potentially innovation.

Take this job if…; do not take this job if…

Every job has good bits and every job has bad bits. Your goal is to find
someone who loves the good that you are offering and who doesn’t
mind the bad. Explain this to people on the JD.
As an example:

This job involves considerable travel alone across Europe, meeting our customers
and resolving their issues. It will require you to schedule your time effectively
and to be away from home between six and eight nights per month. As our
representative, you will be responsible for showcasing our company values and
developing customer loyalty.
Do not take this job if… you do not Do take this job if you enjoy being
like working alone or being away from independent, are good at problem
home. solving and will enjoy being the face of
the business.

Get a third par ty to read the JD

Ask an independent person to read the JD and then see if they can tell
you what the job is in detail: what will the employee do, what impact
will that job have on the organization, what value will it deliver? The
answer will tell you everything.

The most predictive question

Schmidt and Hunter showed that the single best predictor of how
someone will perform in the job is a work sample test.
When defining a role, ensure you consider the real-life, day-to-
day challenges or typical problems the person is likely to face on the
job. Then, when interviewing candidates, ask them how they would
solve the job-related problem. Scenarios can include asking the
candidate to outline their 100-day plan; finding an error or problem
in a currently flawed process; outlining how they would deal with a
difficult customer.

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When they answer, and this is the important part, do not measure
the answer itself. The candidate is an outsider, they do not know how
your business operates, they are more than likely to miss nuances that
only an employee would know.
Rather, assess the process the candidate uses to arrive at their
answer. Consider which steps they include or omit in their problem-
solving process. Do they consider (or miss) the people, the process, the
technology, the customer, the financial, operational, sales, marketing
(etc.) impact?
This is critically important. The process the candidate uses will show
you their methodology and style in how they will deal with problems.
It will show where their blind spots are. It will show you how they
think. The challenges a candidate has faced previously will never be the
same as those they will face in your business. You therefore need to see
how they think and what they consider to be important and consider if
that fits your businesses approach.
This is why the work sample test is so predictive of performance.

Summary and action points

This chapter has considered the impact of AI and technology on
work, what skills businesses will most need in the future and how
those skills could be hired.
In considering this, whilst technology always has and always
will destroy jobs, the difference today is the sheer pace of
technological change and the range of jobs that are now threatened.
What we fail to realize however, is what technology does to work.
Technology is the great leveller. Technology democratizes work,
removing both the uniqueness that got someone the job in the
first place but at the same time opening up talent pools of workers
that businesses may not have previously considered.
ChatGPT will augment and impact white-collar work, much
like robots and automation have impacted blue collar. But the
reality is that the human element will become more important

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than ever. Despite the noise (and hype) around technology,

for the foreseeable future at the very least humans and human
thinking will be a critical success factor moving forward. Systems
are far from infallible and being able to ask the right question
and knowing whether the answer is correct will be critical. In this
context, increasingly whilst the truth may well be out there, it will
become far harder to discern.
The skills that will be most prized in the future will be those
that computers and AI cannot do and here the two dominant
areas are innovation (including creativity and storytelling) and
leadership (including people management). Whilst digital skills
will be most in demand by 2030, leadership and management
skills come a close second.
Companies seeking to thrive will already be ensuring they can
successfully hire the skills they will need tomorrow. They will
be seeking to understand what skills they currently have in the
organization today, those skills they will need in the future and
the gaps they need to close. They will be adapting and altering
their hiring processes to better attract and select the right people
who can bring those more ephemeral skills of problem solving,
creativity and leadership into the business that will be a prerequisite
for future success. Do you have a strategic plan for your workforce
that will embrace the challenges we are facing? It starts now.

Questions for you to consider

Having read this chapter, consider:
• What resonated for you?
• What would you challenge?
• Knowing this, where has this taken your thinking and what is now
possible?

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 CH APTER SEVEN

Sustainability

Sustainability means different things to different people. Often the

word is used interchangeably with ‘the climate’, ‘renewables’, ‘recycling’
or various other environmental, social or economic aspects. In seeking
clarity even Wikipedia states ‘specific definitions of this term are
disputed…’
Given this, I am going to use the United Nations’ Sustainable
Development Goals, the ‘SDGs’, as a framework to define the term (if
you have not come across these before, do not worry – in my experience
most people haven’t – and I explore the SDGs in more detail later
in this chapter). For our purposes, sustainability is an over-arching
term and the SDGs provide a collection of 17 interlinked goals each
of which focuses on a critical social or environmental issue.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Source: https://www​.marniehawson​.com​.au​/journal​/what​-are​-the​-sdgs

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This is not a book on sustainability. The focus of this book is how

we can future-proof our businesses, in essence how we can make
the organization more resilient. This chapter therefore considers
sustainability in this context and to achieve that it concentrates on two
areas – one external and one internal.
The external factor is that of the changing climate and the challenges
and opportunities that this is having and will continue to have on our
businesses. Chapters 2 and 3 highlighted the impact humankind is
having on planet Earth; not preparing for the external threat would be
short-sighted.
The internal factor is that of diversity. Chapter 6 considered the skills
of the future and identified the critical importance of creativity and
innovation. The reality is that creativity and innovation are sparked by
difference, or diversity. But this is not diversity as we typically measure
it today. Rather we are seeking cognitive diversity and to achieve that
we need to create a sense of belonging and community for all. This is
where we start.

Diversity
Diversity matters
The business case for considering diversity is clear, made and beyond
doubt. In fact, to quote the World Economic Forum from a paper
published in 2019, ‘the business case for diversity in the workplace is
now overwhelming.’
In 2018 McKinsey published their updated work on ‘delivering
through diversity’, where they considered the business benefit of a
diverse workforce. They studied over 1,000 companies globally across
12 countries and stated four key findings:

1. The relationship between diversity and business performance exists

and persists.
2. Leadership roles matter.

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3. It is not just about gender: to be successful businesses need diversity

across multiple facets – LGBTQ+, age/generation, neurodiversity,
international experience, etc.
4. There is a penalty for not being diverse. A lack of diversity means
companies were not leading the competition, but were in fact lagging
behind.

There can be little dispute about whether diversity delivers business

benefit. Indeed, there is increasing evidence that, as McKinsey states,
a lack of diversity is detrimental to a business. As an example, John
Brennan, director of the CIA, said in 2015 after an internal enquiry
into the 9/11 terrorist attacks that ‘The study group took a hard look at
our agency and reached an unequivocal conclusion: CIA simply must
do more to develop the diverse and inclusive leadership environment
that our values require and that our mission demands.’ The BBC
reported this somewhat more succinctly: ‘Was CIA “too white” to spot
9/11 clues?’

But what type of diversity?

Before getting into the detail, let’s first consider the bigger question:
Why? Why do we want diversity? Everyone espouses it. Every
organization lauds its own approach to having a diverse workforce,
their EDI policies, their welcoming of people of all types and from a
range of backgrounds.
The raw evolutionary truth, however, is that our brains do not
love diversity at all. Our brains see diversity as unpredictability, and
from an evolutionary standpoint unpredictability can lead to death.
Our brains seek predictability, and prefer known things because that
typically leads to safety. It takes time and mental effort to get used to
diverse people until they become more known to us and hence more
predictable and thus safe. So why do we want it?
Part of the answer is a desire to appeal to all peoples of all types, both
as potential customers and employees and to ensure that everyone feels

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included and embraced by our businesses. This is absolutely right. But

the benefits of diversity to a business run far, far deeper. Chapter 6
considered the skills of the future, and this gives us the fundamental
basis for why diversity is so important. The skills we need going
forward are the skills that technology cannot do for us, and they fall
into two broad camps: people and leadership skills; problem-solving
and innovation.
This is the real point behind the rationale for and benefit from diversity.
What we are seeking to achieve is not diversity as currently measured
by a selection of tick boxes. As Mathew Syed said at the Advanced
World Conference ‘Reducing diversity to a “tick box exercise” fails to
exploit its role.’ Rather, the benefit of diversity is cognitive diversity,
diversity of experience and diversity of culture. Regardless of our ethnic
background, or our age, gender, educational qualifications (etc), if we
all think the same, we will all consider a problem in the same way;
we will all arrive at the same answer; we will all think the solution is
brilliant; and we run the risk of all rushing off the cliff together like
lemmings. If we think the same, we will not have the conflict that is
required as a crucible for innovation and freshest thinking and we will
not refine or develop the idea to its full potential. (Interestingly, most
teams are defined by too little conflict rather than by too much. It is very
rare, for example for a team meeting to resort to blows. It is far more
common for a team meeting to have post-meeting discussions where
true feelings are shared. Whilst this may reflect a culture of political
manoeuvring or lack of freedom to speak up, it may also may reflect a
lack of cognitive diversity.)
Consider AI systems. Before they are allowed to ‘fly solo’, they
are trained on data, lots of data. One of the challenges facing the
acceptance of AI systems is whether they perpetuate or remove bias in
the answers they provide. In this context, consider Amazon’s attempts
to build a Machine Learning (ML) augmented recruitment machine.
To quote a member of the project team: ‘Everyone wanted this holy
grail. They literally wanted it to be an engine where I’m going to give

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you 100 resumes, it will spit out the top five, and we’ll hire those.’ The
problem? Their new recruiting engine mirrored the biases that had
been prevalent for decades and simply taught itself that male candidates
were preferable; it penalized resumes that included the word women’s
(as in ‘women’s chess club captain’) and it downgraded graduates of
two all-women colleges. The project was disbanded.
This is a shame, to say the least. Apart from the obvious, it is a shame
because recent research on 1.4 million users of Github found that
‘software coding changes suggested by women had higher approval
ratings than those from men’. Simply put, women write better code
than men. The kicker in the research, though, is the remainder of that
sentence: ‘software coding changes suggested by women had higher
approval ratings than those from men – but only if their gender was
not identifiable.’ If only Amazon (in the example above) and Uber (and
their ‘toxic bro-culture’ of the mid 2010s) had known! It is astonishing
that the gender identifiers had to be removed to enable people to pick
the best code on the code’s merit rather than on the gender of the coder,
but that is what the data showed.
Outside of technology, a study by the BI Norwegian Business School
found that ‘Women are better leaders than men.’ Echoing this theme
Harvard Business Review released an article in their ‘Defend your
research’ series. The title was: ‘How to make a team more intelligent?’
The answer? Add a woman. The article is a fascinating read because the
interviewer asks the question: ‘You realize you’re saying that groups of
women are smarter than groups of men?’, and extracts the answer: ‘Yes.
And you can tell I’m hesitating a little…’
A challenge to achieving the diversity we need will be whether we,
and increasingly AI systems, choose the optimum outcome because it
is optimum not because our choices are clouded and perpetuated by
our biases.

Cognitive diversity in action

Technology has enabled cognitive diversity to operate on a global scale.

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You may have heard of the global problem-solving platform

Wazoku Crowd. (Wazoku Crowd is the new brand for the platform
previously called InnoCentive.) Wazoku Crowd is an open innovation
and crowdsourcing company that helps ‘Solve the world’s greatest
challenges.’ On one side, organizations post challenges onto the
platform, offering a bounty to whoever solves the challenge. On the
other side, there is a community of over 500,000 problem-solvers
across the world. Challenges are posted, solvers can work on them,
and if solutions are found, bounties are paid.
What is really interesting is the range and specificity of the challenge
posted. At the point of writing the first four listed are:

• Equinor Challenge: Acoustic Detection of Industrial Equipment

Anomalies (reward US$ 2,000)
• Using Openly Available Data to Improve Local Environments (reward
US$ 50,000)
• PFAS Treatment Technologies (reward US$ 50,000)
• Novel Solutions for Fungal Nucleic Acid Extraction (reward US$
15,000)

In my humble opinion these four are incredibly specialist and esoteric.

I consider myself reasonably well educated, but if asked what any of
these meant I could offer, at best, only a guess. This is the gig economy
at the highly specialist end of the spectrum.
Given this, what is most interesting is Wazoku Crowd’s stated project
success rate: 80 per cent.
NASA have used Wazoku Crowd multiple times. In one challenge
they noted that after 35 years of research they had ‘no method available
to predict the onset, intensity or duration of a solar particle event
(SPE).’ Knowledge of SPEs is particularly important because they can
kill unshielded people and equipment in space and can wreak havoc
with systems on Earth – notably disrupting electricity supply or causing
radio blackouts. For NASA, it turned out that the right person was there.

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His theory enabled NASA to predict SPEs with a 75 per cent accuracy
within 24 hours. For his work he won the reward of US$ 30,000.
The solver was not a space or solar scientist nor, perhaps, someone
that NASA would have typically turned to in order to solve the
problem. He was a retired radio frequency engineer. (Author’s note: as
a retired radio frequency engineer myself, I have to admit that I love
this statistic!) But he solved the challenge.
This is an example of cognitive diversity in practice.

Creativity and innovation as a mass activity

Open innovation platforms like Wazoku Crowd enable creativity to
become a mass activity. They offer a diversity of mindset, experience
and knowledge that most businesses could only dream of. As the
future unfolds, it is extremely likely that the people with the skills you
need will be outside your organization; you will need to find a way to
partner with them.

But what about internal cognitive diversity?

Creativity at mass scale is amazing, but we still require diversity within
our businesses, so how can we consciously build this in?
I suggest that we are looking at the kaleidoscope from the wrong
end. Our problem is not diversity. Our problem is not inclusion. Our
root problem is belonging, and it is through creating belonging and
a sense of community that we create inclusivity and enable a diverse
workforce.
Let’s start with some definitions.

The definition of (and thus problem with) diversity

Diversity is about getting people in the front door. Rhodes Perry,
author of Belonging at Work, says diversity exists when the environment
includes a variety of individuals, groups and/or communities with
different cultural and social characteristics, working styles, ideas and
experiences.

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The definition of diversity is to have a mix and the goal is to have

a variety of viewpoints in order to be more reflective of your target
audience. But – and this is the big but – there is nothing in the definition
that says those viewpoints will be heard and be used, or whether each
individual feels they can freely express and use their diverse styles,
ideas and experiences.
A proof point here is the classic refrain ‘Let’s hire someone different’.
You do and then once they start you hear things like ‘I’m sorry we do
not do things like that around here.’ You have created diversity, you
have ticked the box, but that is not the point; the business benefits do
not arise just because you’ve got people in the front door.
Diversity will yield business benefits only if there is inclusion.

The definition of inclusion

Inclusion in the workplace boils down to welcoming, respecting,
supporting and valuing the authentic participation of any individual
or group, ensuring that all employees feel welcomed as part of the
group. Inclusion means that once an individual becomes a part of your
organization, they are invited to the right meetings, given access to
shape outcomes, are provided opportunities for career advancement
and generally have a seat at the table and a feeling that they are part of
the team.
But this reveals a bigger problem. You can be invited to the ‘right’
meetings and invited to ‘have a seat at the table’, but unless you are
heard and listened to, unless your ideas are accepted or rejected
because of the idea and not because of who you are, then it is all a
bit moot.

We need to create belonging

This is where belonging comes into play. Belonging is the feeling that
as an employee your authentic self is welcomed and celebrated so
you can thrive without fear of different treatment or punishment. It
means feeling that you can take your mask off, be yourself and feel

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comfortable contributing. To adapt the definition from the book No

Hard Feelings:

• Diversity is having a seat at the table.

• Inclusion is having a voice.
• Belonging is having that voice be heard.

The business challenge is that to get diversity you need inclusion –

but to get inclusion you need belonging. It is the sense of belonging
that we need to give all our people and it is only when they truly feel
they belong that we can unlock the benefits articulated by the World
Economic Forum and McKinsey.
The opportunity here is that belonging and community are what
our people want. To bring us full circle – and tying it into Chapter 5,
where we considered people and talent – 51 per cent of people left their
employer due to a lack of a sense of belonging.

Creating belonging
Creating a sense of belonging for all your people is hard. It requires
conscious and continual focus on our actions and words and, through
that, what we signal as being acceptable to others. It requires us to take
a stand and indicate what we will tolerate (or not) in the actions and
behaviours of those around us. As Australia’s Chief of Army said, ‘The
standard you walk past is the standard you accept.’
You can consider belonging across the entire employee life cycle.
Here are some suggestions of what to consider from pre-hire to exit:

Words have power

John Paul Sartre said that ‘Words are loaded pistols.’ This is why
they have power. The pen is indeed far mightier than the sword. The
everyday language we use can engage or alienate people.
As an example, I once worked with a team from one of the UK’s
county fire departments. The group comprised the commander –

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resplendent in full uniform complete with peaked cap – and a cross-

section of staff from all levels who were dressed less formally. You
could sense the bristling as the commander was called ‘mate’ and as he
called other members of the group ‘son’.
The collective nouns we use at work can alienate. The easiest example
is ‘guys’. I often work with HR teams who typically contain a higher
proportion of females than males. If I were to use the word ‘guys’ even
generically it would likely alienate more than half of the room. This is
part of the reason behind individuals defining the collective nouns that
they use to identify themselves – so as to create belonging and a feeling
of inclusion.
The language you use directly impacts the culture you promote –
whether consciously or subconsciously. The company Textio uses AI
to analyze the prose, words and language used in job adverts. From
their analysis they found a certain famous company whose job adverts
historically used the following phrases many more times than the next
closest company:

• ‘whatever it takes’ – 30 times more often

• ‘high-performing culture’ – 23 times more often and
• ‘all-star’ – 16 times more often

All of these phrases are proven to statistically result in a higher

proportion of applications from men than women. And not just any old
men but alpha men, competitive, combative, self-professed ‘winners’.
The company in question? Uber. Consider how this reinforced their
‘toxic bro-culture’ of the mid 2010s that I have already mentioned.
Textio analysis is able to predict how your job advert will perform,
who is likely to apply and how long it may take to fill the role. As
examples:

• Women are likelier to respond to a job that mentions developing a team

rather than managing one.

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• Phrases that statistically result in a higher proportion of applications

from women include: lasting relationships, meaningfully, care deeply,
storytelling, comfortably and empathetic.
• Job adverts that use formal or indirect phrasing like the ideal candidate
cause roles to be filled more slowly on average; the most successful job
listings directly address candidates with both you and we statements.

The language you use matters. It matters across everything you do,
from how you describe yourself as an organization, to how you speak
to your people on a day-to-day basis. If you are not getting applications
from diverse groups of people, it may be because you are simply not
appealing to them because of how you are describing what you do and
the kind of people you want to do it.

Put belonging at the centre of your induction

Starting a new job is an exciting and a nerve-wracking prospect. New
joiners will feel like outsiders until they learn all the nuances that
make your workplace unique – and it is unique. Given all the time and
money invested in each employee, you want them to deliver as soon as
possible – you need to help them belong.
After making a job offer, let everyone connected with that hire
know. As an example, I was once offered a job with Google. Post-
offer, over the following days I received emails from each interviewer
saying how excited they were that I might be joining, that they
were looking forward to working with me, commenting on what
they thought I would bring to the team and offering to answer any
questions.
One business I worked with does this on day one by conducting an
enterview (enter + interview). Everyone who interviewed the new hire
writes a card that shares why they’re excited for that individual to join
and what necessary skills they bring to the team. They write comments
along the lines of ‘Dear [new employee’s name], we think you are a big
deal, and here’s why.’

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Where possible, begin to integrate and induce future starters before

they walk through the front door as an employee for the first time.
Invite them to meetings, to meet the team, have lunch or maybe just
to hang out in your canteen or break-out area and use your facilities.
Make them feel part of your family before they even officially become
one. When running team development events, try to include people
who are yet to officially join the team. (On a personal note, I dislike the
term team building because it seems to infer we are going to build a raft
on a lake, and that is not the point.)
Before people start, ask them to complete a survey that finds out
more about them as an individual, what they like doing, their interests,
their go-to snack and drink when it all gets hard. Find out what makes
them unique. The answers can then help you to connect the new hire
to help build that sense of belonging:

• Be proactive in connecting the new person to relevant groups across

the business, whether diversity networks or relevant interests (for
example running) so they quickly integrate into the team. Sort this out
before they join; don’t make it an accidental find several weeks into
their tenure.
• On day one, ensure that their desk has some of their go-to snack or
treat. The first week is hard, so give them some of their go-to snack to
show them that you, as a manager, realize it is hard.

Listen
If I had one piece of advice, above anything in this book, it would be to
listen. Be present, pay full attention and listen. The most important part
of helping people belong is to allow them to be heard. Fully heard. Do
you ever find conversations are on repeat, that someone is asking you the
same question, again? This is most likely because they do not feel heard.
The Dalai Lama said: ‘When you talk, you are only repeating what
you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.’ The
more we talk, the less we learn.
A critical part of listening is to be present. Most of us are physically
present but mentally absent during conversations. We are easily

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distracted and instead of giving the person our full attention we are
preoccupied with a million thoughts going through our heads. Instead,
when speaking to people, don’t think about what you are going to say
next, give them your full attention, listen respectfully and attentively.
Dedicate your time – otherwise why are you bothering?
Be present in the moment. Put down the phone, and always let them
finish their thoughts before jumping in or interrupting, and ask follow-
up questions so they feel heard and listened to. One quick tip to show
whether you are actually listening or not: if you can hear your inner
voice, you are not actively listening.
On a personal level, and I will be honest here, this is far easier to
espouse than do. Despite knowing better, I still find myself interrupting
and attempting to finish other people’s sentences, but listening intently
and not interrupting really does make a difference so I encourage you
to stick with it.
To build connections with others we must learn about them and to
do that we need to listen more. Books have been written on the power
of listening, we run training courses on it, but if you take only one
thing away from this book: be curious, ask questions and listen.

Culture buddy
Assign each newbie a ‘culture buddy’, someone from a different
department/team/location to the new hire but who already understands
the culture. (The departmental distance of the new hire to the buddy is
important because it aids honesty in conversations and integration into
and understanding of the organization.) At the end of the first week,
first month, first quarter, this culture buddy should sit down with the
new hire to answer questions, give feedback (e.g. how the tone of their
emails are coming across), and help them understand that feeling a bit
out of place at first is normal.
This all has a meaningful impact. Research from Google has
demonstrated that ‘new Google employees whose managers give them
a warm welcome on their first day are more productive nine months
down the line.’

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See differences as strengths

We all have strengths and we all have weaknesses. But one person’s
strength can be another person’s annoyance. Consider a pedant – to
some they are a complete pain in the proverbial, but a pedant is also
extremely valuable with detail-orientated work that you want to get
right first time, every time. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so see
people for their strengths and how those strengths can be applied to
make your business better.
As an example, when thanking people (which you should do often
anyway) recognize them for their own unique characteristics, show
them explicitly what you value in them as individuals. You could say:
‘You did a great job designing that website last week; that client was
pretty picky and specific and your attention to detail was exactly
what we needed in order to successfully deliver the project.’ Not only
does this approach acknowledge the employees’ strengths, but it also
stresses the value of those strengths to your company.

Summary and Action Points

• Diversity is critical for business success. It is cognitive diversity we
need, diversity of thought, of backgrounds, of experiences as the
inclusion of people who think differently offers unique perspectives
and different styles of problem-solving.
• To harness diversity, we need to create inclusion. To create inclusion
we need to instil each employee with a sense of belonging.
• Belonging unlocks the benefits of diversity and creates retention in
our people.
• Be conscious of the words you and those around you use: are you
being inclusive or exclusive?
• Embed belonging across the entire employee life cycle, from how
you describe your business to how people apply, are interviewed,
inducted, managed, appraised, developed and then ultimately how
they leave.

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Climate
The second and the external aspect of sustainability that I want to
consider is potentially the biggest crisis facing the human race in the
twenty-first century, that of the climate. It is not an understatement
to say that climate is an existential threat to our way of life. As a
result, businesses are under increasing pressure from consumers, the
public at large, governments, NGOs, investors and even insurance
companies to take an active and positive role in protecting people
and the planet.

A business rationale
Scientists have named the current geological age of Earth the
Anthropocene age. The term means the Age of Humanity and its origin
will be backdated to the 1950s to mark the point at which humans
started to substantially alter Earth’s surface, atmosphere, oceans and
systems of nutrient cycling.
Most people accept that humankind is impacting the planet and
impacting it in ways that will have long-term consequences. The most
prominent example of that impact is on the climate, but even in that
single word there lies a multitude of issues: pollution, acidic seas killing
corals, deforestation and poverty.
Outside of a broad moral justification for taking action, there are
some hard business reasons that make considering sustainability
worthwhile.
Economic. Repeating a statistic from earlier in this book: ‘Today,
only about one-fifth of global emissions are covered by a price on carbon
and as a result the global average price is just US$ 3 per tonne of carbon
dioxide. To meet the ambitions of the Paris agreement, the IMF says
the global carbon price needs to rise to US$ 75. Some are advocating
for an even higher price.’ There is a fundamental underlying economic
imperative to understand and drive to net zero in our business, or run
the very real risk of not having a business.

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As the Economist said:

‘If governments agreed, sooner or later, to commitments serious enough

to limit global warming to 1.5–2.0 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial
levels, it would send shock waves through entire business models.’

Sales and profitability. There is an undisputed changing trend

among consumers toward supporting businesses that offer sustainable
products and solutions. Euromonitor has noted that 61 per cent
of consumers are worried about climate change and 54 per cent of
consumers think they can make a difference in the world with their
purchases. Nielsen studies show that 66 per cent of consumers would
spend more for a product if it came from a sustainable brand, and 81
per cent of global consumers feel strongly that companies should help
improve the environment.

Brand reputation and share price impact. Grant Thornton have

looked to ‘put… a price on reputation damage’ caused by scandals
impacting a company’s sustainability or environmental impact. Using
examples including the LIBOR rate fixing scandal and the Deepwater
Horizon spill they quantified the reputational losses at 5.49 per cent
of sample firms’ market cap or ‘£1.15 billion loss for [the] average
FTSE 100 firm’.

Business resilience and increasing efficiency. According to McKinsey,

a sustainability strategy can help reduce resource costs substantially and
can affect operating profits by as much as 60 per cent. Puma published
data on their water use and the carbon emitted through its supply
chain. Making it visible and making people aware helped identify ways
to reduce water, energy and fuel consumption by 60 per cent.

Create new opportunities and partnerships. A strong sustainability

proposition can help companies tap new markets and expand into

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existing ones. At one end of the scale, China’s initiative to fight air
pollution is estimated to create investment opportunities worth more
than US$ 3 trillion in the period through to 2030. Sustainability also
offers business opportunities through novel partnerships – Gousto
(who supply recipe kit boxes) partnered with Xampla, the natural
packaging experts, to create the world’s first edible stock sachets made
from peas. One example I love is that of a public swimming pool in
Exmouth, England being heated by a data centre the size of a washing
machine. As the BBC states, ‘the computers inside the white box are
surrounded by oil to capture the heat – enough to heat the pool to
about 30 degrees centigrade, 60 per cent of the time, saving Exmouth
Leisure Centre thousands of pounds.’

Legislation. As pressure and expectations from the public increases,

governments will take meaningful action. Policies like banning the
sale of internal combustion engine cars from 2030, banning plastic
microbeads and plastic bags are all examples of this, but this is just
the start. The imposition of meaningful offsetting programmes and a
carbon tax are increasingly likely to be a matter of when, not if.
A well-worn method for governments to force through change is
to target big firms by legislation which, in turn, causes them to drive
change through their supply chains. An example of this came during
COP 26 when the UK government announced that ‘Most big UK firms
and financial institutions will be forced to show how they intend to hit
climate change targets under proposed Treasury rules.’
The UK government is legislating to ensure large companies announce
their climate change targets and is relying on them to force change in
smaller companies through the network of partnerships and supply
chains that are in place. A major criterion ‘big firms’ will use (and in some
cases already are) to select suppliers will be that supplier’s commitment
to the climate and sustainability. The UK’s National Health Service
has already stated that by April 2024, ‘All suppliers [the definition has
some caveats] will be required to publicly report emissions and publish

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a carbon reduction plan aligned to the NHS’ net zero target for their
direct emissions, irrespective of contract value.’ If you wish to continue
to be a supplier, you will need to prove you are a sustainable one.

Sustainability and talent

Previous chapters have highlighted how talent, or the scarcity of
it, will be a critical success factor businesses will face. Anything
businesses can do to enhance their appeal is therefore worth
considering. Demonstrating a commitment to sustainability may be
one of those ways.
Being sustainable chimes with what is considered to be a key driver
for younger generations:

• Millennials are already the largest segment of the working population

and ‘81 percent of [them] … expect companies to make a public
commitment to good corporate citizenship. By almost any measure,
Millennials place a premium on corporate social responsibility
(CSR) efforts.’
• 40 per cent of Millennials have taken a job because of the company’s
approach to sustainability.
• Taking a stand on sustainability can lead to increased motivation as
your people see greater value in what the company is doing (linking to
Cause from the 6 Cs) and the impact it is having.
• Nearly 70 per cent of employees say they wouldn’t work for a company
without a strong purpose.

Intriguingly, most commentators believe that sustainability is the

domain of the young. This is not true. Sustainability resonates across
all generations:

• The average age of an Extinction Rebellion activist in London in 2019

was over 41.
• 32.2 per cent of those arrested were over 56 – the highest of any
generational group.

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A commitment to the climate and sustainability seems to make a

business more sustainable from almost every angle.

A framework to move forward

The key question then becomes: How can we take this forward?
When considering any vast subject, especially one as vast and
impactful as sustainability and the climate, I always look for a tried-
and-tested solution. Luckily I found one.
Cutting to the chase, remember the UN’s Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs):

The United Nations ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs).

Source: https://www​.marniehawson​.com​.au​/journal​/what​-are​-the​-sdgs

The SDGs are a collection of 17 interlinked global goals that promise

action on each critical social and environmental issue. They range from
and include no poverty and quality education to life below water and
climate action. They are designed to be a ‘blueprint to achieve a better
and more sustainable future for all’ and were adopted in 2015 by the
United Nations General Assembly. They are intended to be achieved
by the year 2030 and each goal is underpinned with a set of targets and
measures to gauge progress towards success.

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At present, 193 world leaders have signed on to tackle the SDGs,

but governments can’t achieve them alone. So the 17th goal is a call
for businesses and citizens to step up – to collectively and systemically
solve the world’s biggest issues by Partnering for the goals. This 17th
goal is a clever way to engage all parties to come together to collectively
succeed.
You may or may not have seen the picture above, or indeed you
may not have heard of the SDGs. If you have not, you are not alone.
When running many workshops from late 2021 (when I first came
across them) to early 2023 (when this book was written), I have asked
roughly 500+ people at senior and CXO level if they had seen this
diagram before.
Less than 5 per cent had.
At the same time, from my somewhat limited research, the SDGs
are likely to be familiar to younger generations. My daughter recently
moved from primary to secondary school in the UK, a process that
included visiting five secondary schools. Every single school we
visited had the SDGs on display in at least one classroom and it
formed an active part of some lessons. In one school the SDGs were
displayed in French.
Given the UN’s goal is to deliver on the SDGs by 2030, the level
of public awareness of these is likely only to increase the closer we
get to that date. The SDGs offer a framework on which to construct
your sustainability policies, and it is therefore no surprise that
many companies have already aligned their business practices and
approach on sustainability to these goals. As a first point in building a
sustainability policy, this is exactly what I would recommend.

Make it local
Before you dive straight in, let’s first consider nuance.
Let’s do this by way of example. Consider goal number 1: No poverty.
Think of the word poverty, and you might think of slums, beggars, food
banks, debt and stress.

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It would be truly amazing if we could erase such poverty, but where

to start?
My suggestion is to focus on the application of the goals in the local
community where your business works and operates.
Localize the goals. There are many reasons for doing this. For one, it
makes all the activity you do on dealing with that goal more meaningful
to your people – an effect amplified if you have multiple locations and
allow your interventions to be localized to each. Localizing also makes
it far easier for your people to join in and support the goals that they
individually care about, and makes it real.
You can apply localization to all of the goals, but continue with the
goal of No poverty and consider your approach to pay. In the US the
federal minimum wage for covered non-exempt employees is US$
7.25 per hour (some individual states have specified higher figures).
In the UK the National Living Wage mandated by the Government
for those aged 23 and over for the tax year ending April 2023 is £9.50
an hour.
Your localized approach to ending poverty could be your
commitment to pay above the national legally mandated minimum
wage. In the UK, the Living Wage Foundation is a charity that
advocates for employers to pay the ‘real Living Wage’, a wage based
on the actual cost of living experienced by employees – and which
currently stands at £10.90 outside of London and £11.95 per hour
inside.
As a business, you realize that you cannot solve poverty everywhere.
But you can help your people in your local community and pay not the
mandated minimum wage but the real living wage.
This may sound like a play on words. In reality it is a difference of
£1.40 per hour outside and £2.45 per hour inside London, but it does
have an impact and is a commitment that is part of your sustainability
policy.
There are many ways that you can bring a chosen goal to life. Here
are some other examples:

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Goal 3 – Good health and well-being. Localizing this could include

showing how you care for your people. How did you support them
through COVID-19, what mechanisms do you have to encourage them
to be fit and healthy – both physically and mentally? How do you support
them to get better sleep outcomes? How do you promote good eating –
do your vending machines offer chocolate or do you provide fruit?
Some companies pay a small bonus to employees who achieve
seven consecutive nights of good sleep; others invest in Conqueror
Challenges, where different activities count towards undertaking a
virtual journey (I am currently completing LEJOG – Land’s End to
John O’Groats – with each walk or run counting towards the 1,083.3
mile challenge).

Goal 4 – quality education. Localizing this includes demonstrating

how you support the training and development of your own people.
This links to one of the 6 Cs: Career. How do you support their
development? Do you offer courses that give them independent
accreditations and transferable skills (membership of industry bodies,
for example). Some companies give each employee an annual budget
to self-direct their learning and choose areas they believe will help
them perform better.
Outreach programmes that your business may operate locally tie
into this goal. Whether supporting local schools or colleges – or even
broader offerings like Barclays Digital Eagles initiative which is offered
to the public at large to raise awareness of digital skills – it all counts.
The Barclays story is fascinating. Consider it at the basic level – a
bank training the local community, not in financial knowledge but in
digital skills. You might consider this to be an ambition tangential to
a bank’s purpose. It has been a big investment, but it has been wildly
successful – in 2019, the Digital Eagles helped 113,000 people across
the UK at Tea and Teach events and 37,000 children through Code
Playground. A fascinating side aspect to this initiative is that Digital
Eagles was part of the overall corporate strategy to drive the internal

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digital transformation of the bank. The initiative gave significant focus

to digitalization externally, which was used to reflect back and support
the change project internally.
Goal 5 – gender equality. And this of course links back to the first
half of this chapter. Of all the goals, one would hope that this would
be the easiest to sign up to. Localizing an approach to gender equality
would of course mean a commitment to equalizing pay regardless
of gender. But this can be broadened to cover all people policies. Do
you equalize paternity and maternity benefits? How do you ensure
opportunities – whether training or promotion – are freely and fairly
open to all rather than to the usual suspects?
Once you start to consider these goals on a local basis, they open up
a tremendous opportunity. They help you realize that sustainability is
more than the climate; they give you a framework to go and find out
what you are already doing within the business in a broader context
and their breadth enables you to take a more holistic view on what and
how you do things.
Most interestingly, when considered holistically, they enable you
to define your businesses culture and your values. It helps show what
you consider to be important, and it differentiates you. Considering
the goals in this broader context helps define your approach to people,
your employer brand and your Employee Value Proposition.

Make it real – next steps

To help embed change, below is a seven-point plan on how to take this
forward which was inspired from work by Euromonitor:

1. Talk with people and talk broadly. Who in your business knows
more about sustainability than you? Harness them and get them
on board by forming a task and finish group.
2. As with any initiative you want to have an impact, you will need
active engagement and support from senior leadership. Whether
you hold this level of responsibility or not, the support is critical

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as according to one survey from 2019, ‘the lack of commitment by

senior management or the board was one of the most significant
barriers to investing in sustainability.’
  To engage leaders, you may need a business case. This is where
‘the rubber hits the road’ and conflicts between competitiveness and
sustainability face off. The sections above on ‘A business rationale’
and ‘Sustainability and talent’ will hopefully help here.
3. Engage your people in the conversation. What do they think or
want? What motivates them, what would they like to champion
and be part of? This is where the SDGs become very useful because
the framework gives you a structure for conversations; what is
already being done today and where people would like to focus
tomorrow? Focus on a subset of three or four of the goals and
challenge people to think more broadly than volunteering and
donation (though they have a place), and to consider the art of the
possible: are your processes sustainable, what is the overall impact
of the operation, do we do things a certain way because we always
have? To drive engagement, you could offer to give a percentage
of the savings made from internal initiatives to create a pot for
external ones.
4. Once engaged, consider where to focus your time and energy. Be
very transparent about investment and what you expect to achieve
from it. You do not need to invest a lot, but you do need to invest
with targets. Identify some little steps, a few bigger ones and one big
hairy audacious goal that would make a real statement of intent.
5. Operationalize your approach. You could run several mini campaigns
focused on different goals to boost year-round participation. There
are many noteworthy days or events that could help (a Google search
will identify these) against which you can align what your company
and people want to support. Global dates include Earth Day, World
Refugee Day or International Women’s Day, but there are local ones
such as Veganuary, Big Garden Birdwatch, and one I avidly support
each year – No Mow May.

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6. Measure and report your achievements, no matter the outcome.

There is no point in setting goals if you will never know whether
you achieve them or not. One 2019 survey revealed that only about
‘a third of the professionals [who responded] were aware of their
company engagement with the SDGs’.
7. Seventh and finally, disclose your results and learnings, both
internally (with colleagues and shareholders) and externally (with
investors, customers, business partners and local communities).
Doing this means you will be perceived as being more transparent.
This is not about hyping it up, but rather about celebrating what you
achieve and acknowledging what would be even better if…

Summary and Action Points

• Humankind is doing nowhere near enough to limit global
temperatures to below 1.5˚C of warming from pre-industrial levels.
• There are many sound business reasons for considering sustainability,
seeking to be net zero and being more environmentally conscious.
• If you wait until you are forced to act, the shift required will be so
great that it may break your business model.
• The UK government is forcing big companies to outline their
path to net zero; they will force this down their supply chains and
net zero will be a non-negotiable if you want to work with these
organizations.
• The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) give an accepted
and widely recognized framework on which you can drape your
sustainability objectives and goals.
• Whichever goals you chose, localize them. Make them yours, in your
business and in your community.
• Do not mandate, but engage (and then support) your people so that
they will become your advocates and take your thinking far further.

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Summar y
I said at the start of this chapter that sustainability is an over-
arching term that means different things to different people. This
book is considering the world of work and so I concentrated
on sustainability in terms of businesses and organizations,
concentrating on the two areas that I believe will make business
more resilient. These were the internal challenge of diversity and
the external challenge of climate change.
In discussing diversity, my goal was to move away from the
classic way we think about things and to challenge you with a
different approach. Diversity is an achievable and worthy goal,
but what we are seeking to achieve is cognitive diversity.
It is only by taking a step back that we understand that diversity
in and of itself is not important. It is possible to create a diverse
team, but unless everyone is included and unless they all feel
they can say what they want to without fear of repercussion you
will not realize the benefits. The focus needs to be on creating
belonging for each of our people, where they can be their
authentic selves at work. By creating belonging, we will achieve
inclusion and from this we will get the benefits that having a
diverse workforce brings.
In a similar vein, whether you personally believe that climate
change is man-made or not (and some people do not accept it
is), it would be naïve to think that the different stakeholders
whether governments, customers, employees, shareholders or
even insurers will want to see action taken by your business.
The example of the UK’s NHS mandating that all suppliers
must have a carbon reduction plan in order to remain being
a supplier is potentially just the start. For the future viability
of any business it is important to take action. The Sustainable
Development Goals give a framework upon which you

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can focus your activities. Being responsible resonates with

consumers and employees and in an age of talent scarcity, this
can only help.
The longer we put off any decision, the harder and stronger
the action required. My recommendation is to make the decision
now and act.

Questions for you to consider

Having read this chapter, consider:
• What resonated for you?
• What would you challenge?
• Knowing this, where has this taken your thinking and what is now
possible?

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 CH APTER EIGHT

Future-proofing our careers

So far, this book has concentrated on how the future world of work
will play out and how you can future-proof your business. This chapter
switches focus onto the more personal side and considers how you can
future-proof your career.
We have already seen not only is change coming, but that the pace
of change will increase and that this is inevitable. At the same time,
technology will always get better, faster and cheaper, and globalization
and interconnectedness means we will increasingly be competing on a
bigger and bigger stage for work.
On a basic level therefore, we need to be willing to embrace that
change in order to succeed. Those who approach the future with an
adaptable and resilient mindset will have the potential to find more
success than those who don’t.
This chapter does not focus on mindset changes. Rather, the goal of
this chapter is to give practical advice on things to consider and act upon
now. Hopefully, by even starting to read this chapter, you already have
the appreciation that things will not stay the same and have some part
of the mindset to want to look forward and prepare for what is coming.

Average is over
The first aspect of protecting your career is the realization that work
– whether permanent or as work packages – will increasingly become
global with the resultant potential competition from hundreds, or even
thousands of people.

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This realization leads to an inevitable conclusion. Stop being

average. As New York Times columnist and winner of three Pulitzer
Prizes Thomas Friedman put it, ‘average is officially over. In the past,
workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an
average lifestyle.’ Historically, work was a highly local affair, you were
competing for work only with people in your local community, who
all likely worked in the same (or a similar) factory, and who were all
likely doing similar jobs. This was exemplified by manufacturing or
mining which is why when those trades closed it decimated the local
communities. Going forward, being average simply will not enable you
to earn what it used to, or what you want to. It’s worth saying again:
today, ‘average is officially over’.
This change is possibly best brought to life by reconsidering the
old adage ‘knowledge is power’. That is no longer true. Arguably,
in fact, it is dangerously wrong on many levels; increasingly so for
the jobs of today and absolutely so for the jobs of the future. Going
forward, business will not care what you know; Google already knows
everything, which is why so many of us use it as a short-cut to search
for anything.
The challenge is that knowledge is no longer power. Today power
comes from two aspects: firstly, being able to confirm that what
you have found on the internet is indeed ‘truth’ and then, secondly,
what you then do with that knowledge. As discussed in Chapter 7,
AI will merely turbo-charge the truth problem identified by New
York Times critic and Pulitzer winner Michiko Kakutan in her book
The Death of Truth. In the world of work tomorrow, businesses
will not pay you for what you know, rather and, most importantly,
they will pay you for what you can do with that knowledge, its
application.
To succeed we need to find and define our extra, what Peter Drucker
calls our ‘unique value contribution’ that makes us stand out in our
chosen field of employment. To better understand this, consider the
T-shaped career.

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The T-(and V-) shaped career

The concept of the T-shaped employee was introduced in the early
1980s. Lynda Gratton from London Business School wrote at length
about it in her book The Shift. The model reflects the need for people
to be both specialist and generalist at the same time. They have
deep knowledge in one area (the vertical bar of the T) and shallow
knowledge about a broad range of other areas (the horizontal bar).
The first is needed to do one’s own work, the second to collaborate
and communicate with others. It could be argued that the depth is the
technical skill and the breadth the human side of the skills, enabling
you to apply the technical.
A more recent model has moved along the alphabet and focuses
on the V-shaped career. Like the T-shaped employee, a V-shaped
employee has deep knowledge in one area, and shallow knowledge
about a broad range of other domains. The key difference is the part in
between – what Jeroen Kraaijenbrink describes in his book The One-
Hour Strategy as ‘adjacent knowledge’, knowledge that is related to the
employee’s core expertise, but which is neither deep, nor shallow, but
in between, hence the V-shape.

The T-shaped or V-shaped career. Reproduced from a post on LinkedIn.

Original visual via @Visual Jeroen Kraaijenbrink.

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From a personal viewpoint, I suggest that whether a T or a V, the

actual letter is a bit moot. The point is that to succeed we need two
things:

1. To know, truly know, what our specialism is.

2. To know how to apply that specialism to deliver unique value.

This leads to some natural conclusions. Firstly, no matter the domain

within which your specialism lies, to truly protect your career: aim to
be the best. Protect your area of expertise, mine its depth to extend and
maximize the vertical length of the letter so that you are not considered
‘the average Joe’ but are acknowledged as the expert, the go-to person.
Secondly, as technology starts to automate or dull your specialism, use
the accumulated knowledge and expertise of your field to identify and
then morph into adjacent aligned verticals or adjacent specialisms.
This morphing is what London Business School calls serial mastery.
Let me bring this to life with my own personal example. My degrees
and training were all as an engineer. My first career, in the mid to late
’90s, I spent designing mobile networks (as they were called back then)
across the world. The dotcom crash destroyed that role as stalwarts
of the industry, including Nortel Networks, Marconi and Nokia,
fell. I used my engineering knowledge to move to a small telecoms-
focused recruitment business. They could source people but did not
understand the technology – I was the opposite. I gained knowledge
of the recruitment side, and coupling the engineering with the
recruitment enabled me to get the role as European Head of Talent at
Yahoo! This enabled me to get the business knowledge which allowed
me to move into a number two position in a recruitment outsourcing
and consulting business. Being the #2 gave me management skills
which enabled me to become Managing Director of a £120 million
turnover outsourcing company. Growing that enabled me to become
head of consulting focusing on people strategy and their development.
That enabled me to become a director in my own company becoming

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an international public speaker, delivering leadership development

programmes, and helping unlock the value of leaders and their people.
And now I am an author. And so the morphing continues...
This may be where the V-shape lends itself to a greater understanding
of what is required. The pace of change is such that we may no longer
be able to wait until our primary area of specialism is threatened. If
we wait too long, we may find we are too late. Rather we need to be
packing a parachute and considering what the adjacent areas may be
and preparing a few, deepening our experience in them in case we
need to make that jump.
From an individual’s career perspective and from an organizational
perspective, we need people who are versatile and agile and who can do
more than just their primary job. This requires them to have adjacent
expertise in areas close to their core.

Life-long learning
The desire to mine our specialism and ensure we are the go-to expert
means we need to develop a lifelong love of learning.
Life-long learning has been a cliché since well before I was born.
Indeed, in 2012, the author Lori McWilliam Pickert said: ‘Lifelong
learning is a phrase so trite it makes your teeth hurt.’ Maybe. But the
point is, it’s true. We just rarely do anything about it.
Consider our parents, who faced 35-year careers, during which novel
technologies adopted at the beginning of their career would still have
been in use at the end of their careers. I face a 45–50-year career and
any technology that is more than a decade old is no longer considered
a technology. My daughter faces a 50- or 60-year career, but one where
ChatGPT improved 600-fold in just five months.
If you took the entirety of your lifetime to spend on your own skill
development and training, what percentage of it has been spent by the
age of 25? Or, put it another way, what percentage is spent by the time
you commence your 50-year career v. the percentage spent during your
50-year career?

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The brutal truth is that for the majority of us, some 90 per cent (or in
some cases even more) of our lifetime learning budget is spent before
we actually engage in paid gainful employment. That is strange. The
opportunity to develop our skills, in almost any domain conceivable, is
literally at our fingertips. The range of platforms to access information
and courses from providers in every corner of the world is unparalleled
in human history. In Chapter 5 I discussed Coursera as an example. In
Chapter 6 I have highlighted the skills of the future and those that will
most be in demand (digital and leadership/management).
Everything is out there and available, it is just a question of choice.

Career profiles
Building on this point about career duration, this increasing need to
learn, adapt and change specialism while we are working, coupled with
the increase in work packages and the gig economy, will change the
very nature of how we consider careers.
Many of our parents would have spent 10–12 years in education. When
they started work, they would likely have joined a company and stayed
with that company for 40 years. While they would have had some choice,
more often than not the company had a greater say in dictating what
they did, where and how. Maybe they would have changed job, but it is
unlikely they did so more than once. They would have gained on the job
skills throughout their lifetime and then, likely around the age of 55, have
taken early retirement and gone from 40 hours a week to zero overnight.
Just consider how astounding that loss of skills is, that instantaneous shift
from hero to zero, when considered in today’s environment.
My generation (Gen X) spent longer in education. Likely we went to
university (often as the first in our families to do so). We then worked
for multiple companies in our lifetime, changing jobs 6, 8, 10 times in
order to further our careers. Each time we shifted, we honed existing
skills or developed new ones (new specialisms), which we would then
exploit in that new role, before jumping to the next. Our profile would
thus be a repetition of learning (mainly on the job) and exploiting. Early

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retirement would likely never happen; rather it would mean working

for far longer than our parents (often, in most cases, our father) or, if
affordable it would be a slower decline into retirement, moving from
40- to 30- to 20-hour weeks, slowing down with consulting work, non-
executive directorships, coaching and mentoring.
For today’s younger generations (Gen Y, Gen Z and Gen Alpha), it is
highly likely they did go to university (and thus are now saddled with the
associated debt). Their career profile will be a smorgasbord of learning
and developing skills, while having a job, but while doing it they may
take a gig on the side, be searching for their next gig, be running their
own niche business deploying their specialist skills, while marketing,
while… It will be a complex, constantly changing environment. It
would fry the minds of their parents – in the same way as it would fry
our minds to consider working for the same company for 40 years – but
for them it will feel natural. They will earn money in ways their parents
could not comprehend – but again it will feel natural for them.
On the latter point I am reminded of a story of a close friend with a
17-year-old son. My friend had been badgering his son to go out and get
a Saturday job in order to earn some money and pay his way (i.e. to do
exactly what he had himself done at that age). The conversations went
along the lines of ‘You are always upstairs in your bedroom playing on
that damn computer. Go out and get a job and earn something rather
than lounging around all day.’ I am not at this stage myself yet, but I
suspect many parents have experienced variants of this conversation.
One Saturday evening the conversation kicked off again and at one
point the son replied: ‘But I earned £1,000 today.’ My friend enquired
how was this possible; his son had not left his bedroom all day. It turns
out that his son is good at computer games. So good, that he knows the
shortcuts to develop an ‘expert level’ character. There are people who
want to avoid wasting their own time and effort in generating such a
character and so they pay good money for someone to do the hard
work for them. His son had found his specialism, he was being well
paid for it, and his parents were left agog.

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Gigs – from a personal perspective

In Chapter 4 I considered how workforces of the future will be holistic
and comprised of many people all engaged in many varied ways to
suit the needs of the organization. I noted that this will challenge
the very nature of what it means to work and the potential societal
impacts when working has classically been interpreted as meaning 8
hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year and not working means
doing nothing.
On a personal level, however, the rise of work packages or gig work
has distinct benefits.
Gigs will drive tremendous flexibility. Karl Marx said ‘we would hunt
in the morning, fish in the afternoon and rear cattle in the evening.’ He
was almost inch perfect. A more accurate statement for today’s world
would be: ‘I will be an Uber driver in the morning, write a blog in the
afternoon and build a website in the evening.’ The very nature of gig
work will enable us to choose where we apply our talents. It gives us far
greater access to and choice in what we do and when we do it.
Gigs will also redefine what it is to be working. When pay is
linked to time, the only question left after agreeing to work is: How
much? With gig work, remuneration is output-based. This gives us
the amazing ability to change how we value what we do. What, for
example, do you value in your life? Do you want to earn some money?
Then go and get a gig. Equally did you do a gig yesterday and want to
go to the gym today – then go to the gym. Gigs change the very nature
of work. The flip side is that it drives massive opportunity – want to
earn some more money? Got a mode of transport, a car, a moped, a
bike? Then take a Deliveroo shift this weekend. I acknowledge that
was a glib comment, but replace taking a Deliveroo shift with, a
marketing, SEO, web design, presentation, proofread (etc) gig from
Fiverr or the multitude of other platforms available. This massive
flexibility and opportunity might challenge the minds of Generation
X and Baby Boomers, but it will feel entirely routine to the naturally
multitasking Generation Z.

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Have a personal brand

‘Your brand is what other people say about you
when you are not in the room.’
Attributed to Jeff Bezos. Source: Forbes

This is equally applicable to businesses and to individuals. To

paraphrase, ‘your personal brand is what other people say about you
when you are not in the room.’ Moving forward, to stand out from
the crowd, individuals will need to build, maintain and protect their
personal brand. In a simple way, we will each need to define: Why ME?
Antiques Roadshow is a British television show currently in its 45th
series – it has spawned many international versions throughout Europe
and North America. On the show antiques appraisers travel to various
regions of the country to appraise antiques brought in by local people.
One of the programme’s appeals is seeing the disparate items brought to
the experts, hearing the stories and history behind the items – which range
from cherished family heirlooms to odds and sods bought at jumble or
car-boot sales – and of course hearing the value that the experts ascribe
to them. Many items brought before the experts are without commercial
value. Some, though, are worth life-changing amounts.
In relation to personal branding, however, it is the stories that I want
to concentrate on. Picture a scene: someone has brought to the show
a chair, a simple chair. The expert wanders over and as they get closer,
they pause, stop, look, consider. They change position, look again –
this time slightly more quizzically. Then they make a pronouncement:
‘This is amazing. This chair was likely made in the Queen Anne period,
inspired by the great designer [blank], probably on the banks of the
Avon, in the warehouse owned by…’ and so they continue. They haven’t
even touched the object, yet they seem to know all about it.
How?
Craftsmen of old had a mark, a swirl, a uniqueness which identified
their work, which identified that this piece was theirs and was created
by a master craftsman.

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So very simply, what is your mark, what is your swirl, what is your
identifying feature? We go to work 5 days a week, 220 times a year. So
what? In that time what happened, what moved, what changed, what
impact did you have? What are you the master at? Too often we describe
what we do rather than the outcome we achieved. Too often CVs and
LinkedIn profiles, much like job descriptions, list activity. Know what
impact you had and build your personal brand around it.

The 4 Ps
Building a personal brand is to some extent the same as building
any brand. An approach to help consider this is the model of the 4
Ps, first proposed in 1960 by E. Jerome McCarthy and popularized by
Phillip Kotler. This model is also known as the ‘marketing mix’ and is
classically applied to a product or service. Here I want to consider its
application to ourselves.
Taking each in turn briefly:

Product
In relation to your personal brand, your product is quite simple: why
you? You can consider this in a number of ways, but what is your offer,
what output will you deliver and what makes you uniquely placed to
deliver it?
In considering your ‘personal product’, you should consider not
only what you are, but what you are not. What, for example, are your
strengths? Marcus Buckingham defines a strength as ‘an activity that
… you look forward to doing. It’s an activity that leaves you feeling
energized, rather than depleted. We all have things that we’re good at,
but that we hate doing… Those are called weaknesses.’
Define your unique strengths and the work you want to do. But also
know your weaknesses and the work that you do not want to do.

Positioning (also called placement)

Positioning considers what type of companies you work with. Is
your offering mass market, like a product found in Walmart,

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Poundland or Lidl, or is it niche, boutique and exclusive, only

available in a Hermès store? What type of client are you targeting
and where can you add most value – a multinational employing
tens or hundreds of thousands or one employing one thousand. Are
you global or local? Do you work at executive CXO level, senior or
mid-management?

Promotion
Promotion is the answer when someone asks: ‘What do you do?’ What
is your elevator pitch and, possibly most importantly, what is your
story? Humans learn and remember most from the stories we are told.
In terms of your personal brand, what are the stories you will tell others
that let them know who you are and what you do?
Promotion also reflects your personal brand values. What do you
stand for, what will you accept and what would you fight for? When
promoting yourself, consider the company you keep, who you are
quoting and referencing, who you are talking to and which groups you
are active in. All reflect back onto you and your brand and how people
will perceive you.

Price
The final P, Price, is the simplest of the four. What do you charge –
premium prices or budget? Do you discount and if so, to whom, why
and by how much? What do your competitors charge in comparison
to you? Your pricing is likely to be influenced by your depth of
specialism; the greater your depth of specialism the higher the price
you can likely charge.

Seek endorsements
One aspect of building your personal brand is to seek endorsements.
Almost every service or product today comes replete with
Trustpilot ratings and quotes from satisfied customers. Individually

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we will need to take the same approach. We will seek to become

recognized, seeking endorsements, ratings and feedback on the
work we have done. Consider it like LinkedIn endorsements
combined with TripAdvisor star ratings; the internet will make our
professional achievements accessible across the globe, so look to
exploit opportunities to digitally showcase your talents and define:
Why YOU?

Have a network
A final aspect of future-proofing our careers is to ensure we have a
support network.
In Chapter 4 I stated that in business we tend to do too much
ourselves, we say ‘yes’ to too many things. The same is true in our
personal lives. We do too much ourselves. To be successful going
forward we cannot be average, we need to be ‘in our V’. By definition
this means we will be a specialist, not a generalist, so we will need a
network to support us, to complement our specialism and so that we
may complement theirs.
Films are good examples of this. To make a film, a producer
assembles a team including a director, actors, stage designers, script
writers, editors (etc) all come together for a specific project, they
complete it and then go their separate ways, maybe to work together
again, maybe not.
To be successful we will need the ability to team with other masters
who have complementary skills, who come together, work together to
solve a problem and who then disperse.
There are many ways to network – it could be around common
themes and interests; professional or industry centric bodies; people
from university; work colleagues; LinkedIn groups; alumni from
training programmes; peer-to-peer networking/membership groups;
an executive coach. But whatever method you chose, going forward,
you will need a network.

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Summar y
The world of work is changing. Our careers will look entirely
different from those who have gone before. For one thing, they
will be significantly longer; for another, pace of change means
that we will need to adapt and flex, morph from specialism to
specialism simply to have a career.
Do not be average. Be fully aware of two things – know what
your specialism is and then mine it to ensure you are the best; and
know how that specialism fits into the wider business context.
Then as your specialism becomes dulled, whether by technology
or by time, morph into aligned verticals and seek to exploit and
dominate those.
Build your personal brand. What is your uniqueness? What
impact did you have? Build, protect and maintain your brand in
the way your business builds, protects and maintains theirs.
Finally, ensure you have a support network. The higher up in
any hierarchy you find yourself, the lonelier that position. Ensure
you have a network to support you technically – in order to
deliver projects – but a network to support you emotionally and
to provide support, to act as a sounding board and for advice.
The future will be a challenge, but it is also one full of remarkable
opportunities. Our ability today, and in the future to work with
anyone, anywhere, on anything is remarkable.

Questions for you to consider

Having read this chapter, consider:
• What resonated for you?
• What would you challenge?
• Knowing this, where has this taken your thinking and what is now
possible?

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When I first posted on LinkedIn that I was writing a book about

the future world of work, I received many, many messages. Friends,
colleagues and connections, some I’d known for decades, some I barely
knew at all (it was LinkedIn after all!) messaged and commented on
my post. Hundreds were looking forward to reading it, many offered
help or support, and one comment stuck in my mind: ‘Man, that is
some ambitious project.’
You are now over 65,000 words through that project. Ambitious?
Maybe. Useful? Hopefully.
Writing about the future is fraught with danger. Peter Drucker once
said: ‘Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country
road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.’ He
may be right, but I trust that regardless of the dangers, this book has
challenged your thinking.
Hari Seldon, the hero of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series and
mathematics professor at Streeling University on the planet Trantor,
developed the theory of psychohistory. Psychohistory depends on the
idea that we cannot predict the actions of a particular individual, but by
applying the laws of statistics to large groups of people we can predict
the general flow of future events. He used psychohistory to predict the
fall of the Galactic Empire and ways to minimize the length of the dark
ages that would inevitably follow.
Predicting the future may be fraught with difficulty, but in a similar
vein to Asimov’s thesis, understanding the trends that are already
influencing current events and shaping future events makes it possible
to evaluate what could play out, and thus present options on how to
best prepare.

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

Chapter 1 gave a rationale as to why considering the future is a

worthwhile endeavour. From a personal perspective, there is no easy
way to say this – but, quite simply, the vast majority of us do not have
enough money to retire on. The impact is obvious: if we cannot afford
to retire, we need to continue working. But how do we plan for a career
that will need to last well into our seventies? We have all become
accustomed to our standard of living (or indeed to desire a higher
standard; rarely do we aspire to a lower one), yet how can that continue
when technology and globalization threaten swathes of industries and
hundreds of thousands, if not millions of jobs? At the same time our
businesses are facing disruptive threats, seemingly from everywhere,
seemingly constantly. No one and no firm can hide. We can stick our
heads in the sand, but that would do a disservice to ourselves, to our
families and to our businesses.
Taking a cue from Hari Seldon, Chapters 2 and 3 looked at the six
trends that are creating the current and shaping the future. Chapter
2 looked at this from a ‘fascinating facts’ perspective. This was my
collection of nuggets that expanded what I thought I knew and what
I thought was possible. Some I found inspiring, marvelling at the
ability of humankind to create and develop; some were scary; some
were just left-field. But, like the YouTube videos of years ago which
gave statistics on the world at large, all of the data made me stop and
think and challenge what I thought I knew and how I thought things
operated.
Chapter 3 then delved into the detail behind each of the six trends
underpinning what is here and what will come. Writing this conclusion,
I am struck by how each of the six have impacted the world in the time
it took me to write this book. Taking each in turn, just consider what
has happened in the five months since I first put finger to keyboard:

• Urbanization and the rise of the East – in May the IMF projected that
Asia will contribute around 70 per cent of global growth in 2023 as its
expansion accelerates to 4.6 per cent, up from 3.8 per cent in 2022.

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 Conclusion

• Technology – ChatGPT 4.0 was launched.

• Demography – India became the most populous country in the world,
overtaking China. At the same time, the Prime Minister of Japan told
lawmakers at the opening of the 2023 parliamentary session that the
country will cease to ‘function as a society’ if population decline persists.
• Globalization – in Chapter 2 I gave the story of Silicon Valley Bank
(SVB) as an example of interconnectedness. As I write this conclusion,
that story is still unfurling with JPMorgan Chase announcing on 3 May
that it would take over First Republic Bank for US$ 10 billion – less than
half its value six weeks previously. In broadly a three-month period we
have faced the second, third and fourth largest banking failures in US
history and of Credit Suisse in Europe.
• Climate – The global average temperature for July 2023 was confirmed
to be the highest on record for any month and is estimated to have been
around 1.5°C warmer than the average for 1850-1900.
• Politics – Ex-President Trump has been indicted three times and was
found guilty of sexually abusing columnist E Jean Carroll. He remains
the front-runner to win the Republican Party nomination for the 2024
election.

The book started with a quote from Justin Trudeau: ‘The pace of change
has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again.’ If you only
half believed it before, you really need to heed this advice now.
Having laid the groundwork, Chapters 4 to 8 considered the all-
important question: So what? What do these trends mean? How will
they influence our businesses and careers? How can we effectively
insulate and protect ourselves?
Chapter 4 considered the question from a business perspective.
Globalization means competition will become constant. Businesses
will respond to this by defining their purpose more narrowly. They
will focus on that purpose, seeking to achieve dominance of that space.
This will cause companies to decide what is core to them and what is
chore. By hunkering down, they will keep the core close and engage

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externally with multiple bodies – businesses, freelancers, independent

contractors, gig workers, outsourced partners – to deliver their chore.
Companies will thus become smaller but, due to the extensive
network of relationships they have in place to enable them to deliver,
will appear to be larger. This will change the nature of managing as the
focus shifts from managing people to managing partners. These trends
will all amplify the gig economy, enabling us to source specialists with
deep knowledge to deliver packages of work. This will impact the
concept of the where and how work is done – the office and flexible
working. To my mind, the overriding question is not whether people
are ‘pretending to work’. The better question to ask is: What is the point
of the office? – and then designing it appropriately for that purpose. The
underpinning challenge is that of trust. We need to set clear goals and
expectations and manage people on the outcome of their efforts not on
the location of them.
Chapter 5 looked at the dearth of talent and the impact on our
people strategies. Going forward there will be the volume of people
that we want to hire, but most just won’t have the skills that business
needs. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the situation causing the
Great Resignation but this was merely heightening the situation that
already existed. Talent – anyone with a skill – has a choice in who and
where they work. The question is how businesses will respond in order
to ensure that they have the skills available to them to deliver. Pay, or
Compensation, is absolutely a key part of the solution. I considered five
other equally important Cs – Community, Career, Cause, Company
and Culture. Only by considering all six will companies be able to build
a sustainable people and talent strategy. To quote the World Economic
Forum, your people strategy will become the most important element
of your business strategy. If this is not the case for your business, you
will struggle to attract and retain talent.
Chapter 6 looked at the skills that will most be in demand by
businesses in the future. Broadly the key skills of the future fall into two
categories, those of innovation and creativity, and people management

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 Conclusion

and leadership. These are not so much a surprise because these are
the skills that technology and artificial intelligence find difficult to
copy. A challenge for organizations is that typically we find it hard to
hire the skills we need today. So how will we hire the skills we require
tomorrow which are more intangible and harder to discern? The
chapter considered various ways to help overcome this problem and
enable you to maximize the number of great hires.
Chapter 7 considered sustainability from the internal perspective
of diversity and the external perspective of climate change. Diversity
will be critical for organizations as we seek to innovate and create. The
challenge is that we are not looking for diversity in the way that it is
classically measured today. What we require is diversity of thought,
diversity of background, diversity of opinion. However, to enable such
a diverse mix to co-exist, we need to create and facilitate a sense of
belonging in our people so that each person is not just included, but so
that they can say what they want to say without fear of repercussion. It
is only by creating belonging and community that companies will be
able to harness the benefits of inclusivity and thus of diversity.
The external aspect of sustainability is the ecological one; the
impact humankind is having on the planet. When people decide that
action on the climate needs to take place – and the time will come
– it will send shockwaves around most business models. The chapter
looked at the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as a mechanism
to focus a business and their people’s efforts into an overarching and
known framework. Sustainability is a key consideration for customers,
employees and prospective talent, so focusing in this area can alleviate
other challenges.
Finally, Chapter 8 considered how we can future-proof our careers. It
looked at how being average is no longer enough. Rather, and much like
the business strategy aspects discussed in Chapter 4, to be successful,
individuals will need to be specialist. We will need to embrace the
T-shaped career – know how we fit, but be a specialist and the best in
our chosen area. As technology removes our uniqueness, we need to

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shift, morph into aligned verticals. To ensure our ongoing success, we

will need a personal brand. What is unique about us individually as a
specialist? What is our mark, our swirl, our true value added? We will
collect endorsements and star ratings and protect our brand much like
organizations do today. Finally, we will need a network to support and
complement our skills, enabling us to team up to deliver a project and
then go our separate ways to maybe work together again, maybe not.
This book was ambitious, but given the subject area, it needed to be.
Throughout I have posed questions in an effort to help you localize what
I have written to your own specific and unique situation. This, though,
is one person’s perspective. Hopefully there are points I have made that
resonate with you and which you agree with, though there are equally
likely to be points you do not agree with. As I said in the introduction,
both responses are good if they caused you to think consciously about
what is happening and inspired you to make a decision.
Above anything else, one thing is clear. For all the talk about robots
and automation, the future is human. More than anything else, what
will differentiate businesses is their ability to attract and retain the
skills that they require in order to innovate and deliver. Successful
organizations will adapt, realizing that ‘one size fits one’. They will
create environments where people want to work and where those
people can do their best meaningful work each and every day. It is
interesting that leadership and management are the skills that, along
with those in the digital domain, are and will remain most in demand
in the future. The one thing that struck me more than anything else
in all the work I have done is that it is the people side of things that
will make the difference. As William Schutz said, ‘Trust is the great
simplifier. If people in business told the truth, 80 to 90 per cent of their
problems would disappear.’
In writing this book, I do not have all the answers, but I have
highlighted a way forward, I have shown you what is happening, and
where it is already happening, and I have helped prepare you for what
is coming. What I have presented may or may not come true, but there

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is one thing I can guarantee. To quote the late, great David Bowie: ‘I
promise it won’t be boring.’
As my final point. I said in Chapter 8 that knowledge is not power.
Knowledge in and of itself is useless because knowledge does not always
cause action. I have outlined where I believe the future lies. You may
agree or disagree, but after everything else is said and done I leave you
with one final question. Given what you have read, given everything
you agreed with and what you disagreed with:

What will you do now?

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 Acknowledgements

A book like this is never created in isolation. I am of course indebted

to many, many people, places and institutions.
There are two upon whom I cannot heap enough thanks.
The first is Jeremy Kourdi. I was introduced to Jeremy by a mutual
friend during one of the first UK lockdowns. We struck up an
immediate friendship which, post lockdown, was strengthened after
realizing we only lived eight miles apart. Jeremy is an accomplished
author (is it currently 26 books JK?) and he (in the nicest possible
way) persuaded me to write one. You are reading the result. Jeremy
supported me extensively in the early stages – proofing the book
proposal – and it was Jeremy that connected me with Bloomsbury.
Always a gentleman, I value our friendship each time we speak.
The second is my wife of 28 years (and happily still counting!)
Alison. In the dedication at the start of this book I said that I would
be a shadow of the man I am if it were not for her. It is true. Always
supportive, she grounds me and makes me the best version of myself
that I can be. In writing this book, she has been my bedrock. Her
endless help, the proofreading, the bouncing of ideas, giving me
examples and challenging my thinking mean this book is as much
hers as it is mine. It would not be as good, I would not be as good, if
it were not for her.
I am of course, indebted to everyone at Bloomsbury Business who
took the proposal and enabled me to turn it into what you are holding
in your hands today. As a first-time author, without their ongoing
support and patience I would never have made it.
I would like to thank the researchers, authors, writers, consultants
and organizations who generate the data that I have consumed and
used to weave my story. Without their work, this book would not have

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 Ack now ledge me nt s

been possible. The facts and statistics I have used throughout the book
have been collected over many years and the references pay tribute to
their work. Any omissions are entirely unintentional.
I would like to thank the coffee shops up, down and across the land
who put up with the guy, headphones on, banging away at his keyboard
whilst buying cup of coffees to keep him going. I’ve written elements of
this in places from Launceston to Sevenoaks, Tavistock to Manchester,
Gatwick Airport to Dublin. I thank you all.
Finally, I want to thank my daughter. Without her inspiration about
the future and her questions about what it may hold, I would never
have attempted this challenge. She constantly amazes me. This book is
for her and I hope it inspires her as much as she inspires me.

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 Author’s note

So, this is it, the end. At least for now maybe.

I hope you enjoyed the book. Whether you did or didn’t, I would
love to hear from you. You may have some ‘fantastic facts’ of your
own that you want to share, you may have questions or comments,
but whatever the reason connect with me and engage with me via my
LinkedIn profile at: https://www​.linkedin​.com​/in​/russellbeck/
Following me on LinkedIn will also notify you of the many webinars,
events and conferences where you can hear me speak, meet me and
discuss the many and varied themes contained in this book.
I look forward to connecting.

206
 References

Synopsis
After all, to quote… https://twitter​.com​/ArtSciMuseum​/status​/684548224787562496​
?lang​=en [Accessed June 2023]

1. Introduction – scene setting and background

Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada… https://www​.weforum​.org​/agenda​
/2018​/01​/pm​-keynote​-remarks​-for​-world​-economic​-forum​-2018/ [Accessed June
2023]
Almost wanting to prove… https://parispeaceforum​.org​/en​/events​/riding​-out​-the​
-multicrisis/ [Accessed June 2023]
According to Forbes... https://www​.forbes​.com​/sites​/tracybrower​/2023​/01​/29​/
managers​-have​-major​-impact​-on​-mental​-health​-how​-to​-lead​-for​-wellbeing/​?sh​
=55d34e7d2ec1 [Accessed June 2023]
The MacLeod report found… MacLeod, David and Clarke, Nita, ‘Engaging for Success’
(also known as the MacLeod Report) (Department for Business, Innovation and
Skills [BIS], 2009). Crown Copyright.
The Stress Institute... ‘Bullying Their Way to the Top’ – https://www​.hoganassessments​
.com​/wp​-content​/uploads​/2013​/07​/Bullying​_R1​.pdf [Accessed June 2023]
The reason for this is simple...
• https://countryeconomy​.com​/demography​/life​-expectancy​/uk​?year​=1970
[Accessed June 2023]
• https://www​.health​.org​.uk​/news​-and​-comment​/news​/latest​-data​-shows​-that​
-a​-child​-born​-in​-the​-uk​-today​-will​-live​-nearly​-5​-years​-less​-than​-previously​
-predicted [Accessed June 2023]
This landmark was not reached...
• https://countryeconomy​.com​/demography​/life​-expectancy​/uk [Accessed June
2023]
• https://www​.ons​.gov​.uk​/peo​plep​opul​atio​nand​community​/bir​thsd​eath​sand​
marriages​/lifeexpectancies​/articles​/mor​tali​tyin​engl​anda​ndwales​/pas​tand​
projecte​dtre​ndsi​nave​rage​lifespan [Accessed June 2023]

207
 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

In January 2023... https://www​.ons​.gov​.uk​/peo​plep​opul​atio​nand​community/personal​

and​hous​ehol​dfinances​/incomeandwealth​/datasets​/pensionwealth​ingr​eat​britain
[Accessed June 2023]
The Retirement Living Standards... https://www​.ret​irem​entl​ivin​gsta​ndards​.org​.uk/
[Accessed June 2023]
As one article says... https://www​.nutsaboutmoney​.com​/pensions​/average​-pension​-pot​
-uk [Accessed June 2023]
The maths shows... https://www​.nutsaboutmoney​.com​/pensions​/average​-pension​-pot​
-uk [Accessed June 2023]
Indeed from that data... https://businessnewswales​.com​/millennials​-believe​-they​-will​
-never​-be​-able​-to​-retire/ [Accessed June 2023]
In 2011, Dr Carl… https://www​.oxfordmartin​.ox​.ac​.uk​/publications​/the​-future​-of​
-employment [Accessed June 2023]
If you follow... https://www​.bbc​.co​.uk​/news​/technology​-34066941 [Accessed June
2023]
As an example... https://www​.theguardian​.com​/business​/2015​/nov​/12​/robots​-threaten​
-low​-paid​-jobs​-says​-bank​-of​-england​-chief​-economist [Accessed June 2023]
When COVID-19 struck The… Article: ‘The pandemic and the triumph of the
Luddites,’ Economist, 20 December 2022.
Separately, The IMF published... Sedik, Tahsin S., ‘Pandemics and Automation: Will
the Lost Jobs Come Back?’ IMF Working Papers 2021/011), International Monetary
Fund.
According to a PEW Research Centre... https://www​.pewresearch​.org​/fact​-tank​/2019​
/04​/08​/how​-americans​-see​-automation​-and​-the​-workplace​-in​-7​-charts/ [Accessed
June 2023]
While everyone broadly agrees... https://www​.pewresearch​.org​/fact​-tank​/2019​/04​/08​
/how​-americans​-see​-automation​-and​-the​-workplace​-in​-7​-charts/ [Accessed June
2023]
New competitors are upending established…
• https://companiesmarketcap​.com​/automakers​/largest​-automakers​-by​-market​
-cap/ [Accessed August 2023]
• https://www​.factorywarrantylist​.com​/car​-sales​-by​-manufacturer​.html [Accessed
August 2023]
• https://www​.google​.com​/search​?q​=number​+cars​+made​+by​+ferrari​+2022
[Accessed August 2023]
• https://www​.google​.com​/search​?q​=number​+cars​+made​+by​+porsche​+in​+2022
[Accessed August 2023]
• https://www​.google​.com​/search​?q​=number​+cars​+made​+by​+byd​+in​+2022
[Accessed August 2023]
The great sage and philosopher... Rowling, J. K., Harry Potter and the Prisoner of
Azkaban, (Bloomsbury, 1999).
So, for me, the… https://www​.azquotes​.com​/quote​/31963 [Accessed June 2023]

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 Refe r e nces

2. The changing world in numbers and data

Mahendra Modi was elected... https://timesofoman​.com​/article​/128392​-india​-getting​
-a​-big​-transport​-upgrade​-the​-economist [Accessed June 2023]
Between 2012 to 2018... https://www​.statista​.com​/statistics​/258207​/number​-of​-civil​
-airports​-in​-china/ [Accessed June 2023]
By comparison the UK… https://www​.telegraph​.co​.uk​/finance​/newsbysector​/transport​
/10501891​/The​-UK​-hasnt​-had​-a​-new​-runway​-in​-60​-years​-that​-could​-soon​-change​
.html [Accessed June 2023]
Berlin’s new Brandenburg Airport... https://www​.euronews​.com​/2020​/10​/31​/berlin​
-airport​-opens​-10​-years​-late​-and​-three​-times​-over​-budget [Accessed June 2023]
China plans a further... https://edition​.cnn​.com​/travel​/article​/china​-new​-airports​/
index​.html [Accessed June 2023]
ASEAN (the Association... https://www​.aseanstats​.org​/wp​-content​/uploads​/2017​/08​/
ASEAN​_economic​_progress​.pdf [Accessed June 2023]
According to Population Connection… https://pop​ulat​ionc​onnection​.org​/blog​/
megacities​-population​-growth​-climate​-change/ [Accessed June 2023]
In the book… Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind’s Greatest Invention, Ben
Wilson published by Penguin Random House, October 2021
The centre of innovation for mobile... https://www​.vox​.com​/future​-perfect​/21420357​/
kenya​-mobile​-banking​-unbanked​-cellphone​-money [Accessed June 2023]
In the year to March... https://www​.pd​.co​.ke​/business​/m​-pesas​-transactions​-hits​-sh30​
-trillion​-126812/ [Accessed June 2023]
J P Morgan Chase is... https://www​.statista​.com​/statistics​/727548​/market​-share​-top​
-banks​-thrifts​-usa​-by​-assets [Accessed June 2023]
Frugal innovation or frugal... https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Frugal​_innovation
[Accessed June 2023]
To give an example from... https://www​.financialexpress​.com​/archive​/indias​-mars​
-orbiter​-mission​-the​-frugal​-innovation​/1301279/ [Accessed June 2023]
More down-to-earth examples... https://www​.cam​.ac​.uk​/frugalinnovation [Accessed
June 2023]
Swiss coffee machine manufacturer... https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Frugal​_innovation
[Accessed August 2023]
The Fold-Illuminator... https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Frugal​_innovation [Accessed
August 2023]
The James Webb Space Telescope… https://webb​.nasa​.gov​/content​/observatory​/
sunshield​.html [Accessed June 2023]
If the sunshield could be... https://www​.esa​.int​/Science​_Exploration​/Space​_Science​/Super​
-tough​_sunshield​_to​_fly​_on​_James​_Webb​_Space​_Telescope [Accessed June 2023]
Averaging a launch a... https://www​.fool​.com​/investing​/2023​/01​/16​/spacex​-ended​
-2022​-with​-a​-bang​-and​-2023​-could​-be​-ev/ [Accessed June 2023]
The Organization for Economic... https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/OECD [Accessed June
2023]

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

According to the World Bank... https://www​.oecd​.org​/els​/family​/SF​_2​_1​_Fertility​

_rates​.pdf [Accessed June 2023]
In 2022, only… https://data​.worldbank​.org​/indicator​/SP​.DYN​.TFRT​.IN​?end​=2020​
&locations​=OE​&start​=1960 [Accessed June 2023]
With about 213 million... ‘The world’s peak population may be smaller than expected’
Economist, 5 April 2023,
In 1950, the average… https://ourworldindata​.org​/life​-expectancy [Accessed June
2023]
It’s true the Kingdom... https://www​.investopedia​.com​/ask​/answers​/010915​/what​
-country​-worlds​-largest​-oil​-producer​.asp [Accessed June 2023]
The second largest... https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/List​_of​_countries​_by​_oil​
_production [Accessed June 2023]
Here, Russia is again... https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/List​_of​_countries​_by​_natural​_gas​
_production [Accessed June 2023]
Shein was founded in 2008... https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Shein_(company)#cite_
note-:9-1 [Accessed June 2023]
In 2020, it reportedly... Vara, Vauhini (May 4, 2022). ‘Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control:
Inside Shein’s Sudden Rise’. Wired.
In January 2020, Shein... https://secondmeasure​.com​/datapoints​/fast​-fashion​-market​
-share​-us​-consumer​-spending​-data​-shein​-hm​-zara/. [Accessed June 2023]
Shein is now the largest... https://www​.retailgazette​.co​.uk​/blog​/2022​/12​/shein​-biggest​
-fashion/ [Accessed June 2023]
As recorded by… https://www​.wsj​.com​/articles​/bank​-collapse​-crisis​-timeline​
-724f6458 [Accessed June 2023]
The average annual electricity consumption... https://www​.economist​.com​/middle​
-east​-and​-africa​/2022​/11​/03​/africa​-will​-remain​-poor​-unless​-it​-uses​-more​-energy
[Accessed June 2023]
As a comparator... https://www​.confused​.com​/gas​-electricity​/guides​/appliances​-how​
-much​-do​-yours​-cost​-to​-run
New York City… The Rest is History podcast, episode 313: Climate Apocalypse,
featuring Peter Frankopan, Professor of Global History, Worcester College,
University of Oxford
The comic John Oliver… https://www​.theguardian​.com​/tv​-and​-radio​/2018​/mar​/12​/
john​-oliver​-last​-week​-tonight​-cryptocurrency [Accessed June 2023]
The process by which... https://www​.simplilearn​.com​/bitcoin​-mining​-explained​-article
[Accessed June 2023]
If it were a country... https://ccaf​.io​/cbeci​/index​/comparisons [Accessed June 2023]
In doing so it... https://www​.bbc​.co​.uk​/news​/technology​-63872983 [Accessed June 2023]
According to Bloomberg... https://about​.bnef​.com​/blog​/global​-low​-carbon​-energy​
-technology​-investment​-surges​-past​-1​-trillion​-for​-the​-first​-time/ [Accessed June
2023]
…up to US$ 800... https://www​.economist​.com​/business​/2023​/04​/10​/americas​-800bn​
-climate​-splurge​-is​-feeding​-a​-new​-lobbying​-ecosystem [Accessed June 2023]

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The International Energy Agency... https://www​.economist​.com​/finance​-and​

-economics​/2023​/02​/13​/war​-and​-subsidies​-have​-turbocharged​-the​-green​
-transition [Accessed June 2023]
Churchill once said… https://blogs​.fcdo​.gov​.uk​/petermillett​/2014​/03​/05​/the​-worst​
-form​-of​-government/ [Accessed August 2023]
According to the... Foa, R.S., Klassen, A., Slade, M., Rand, A. and R. Collins. 2020. ‘The
Global Satisfaction with Democracy Report 2020.’ Cambridge, United Kingdom:
Centre for the Future of Democracy
According to Peter Frankopan… The Rest is History podcast, episode 313: Climate
Apocalypse, featuring Peter Frankopan, Professor of Global History, Worcester
College, University of Oxford
Many small, high-income… Foa, R.S., Klassen, A., Slade, M., Rand, A. and R. Collins.
2020. ‘The Global Satisfaction with Democracy Report 2020.’ Cambridge, United
Kingdom: Centre for the Future of Democracy
Fascinatingly, according to… https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/World​_Happiness​_Report
[Accessed August 2023]

3. The megatrends playing out in the world today

As Sherlock Holmes once … Sherlock Holmes in Chapter 3 of A Scandal In
Bohemia by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published 1888. Sourced via: https://www.
oxfordreference​.com​/display​/10​.1093​/acref​/9780191826719​.001​.0001​/q​-oro​-ed4​
-00003796​;jsessionid​=B1D​B092​37AD​4787​5B6B​A8D1​ECAB6BFD1 [Accessed
August 2023]
It may well not… https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Great​_Moderation [Accessed June 2023]
According to McKinsey… https://www​.mckinsey​.com​/featured​-insights​/innovation​
-and​-growth​/outperformers​-high​-growth​-emerging​-economies​-and​-the​
-companies​-that​-propel​-them
{Accessed June 2023]
Pre pandemic, economists… McKinsey Global Institute analysis using data from
Angus Maddison, University of Groningen
The underlying maths are… https://www​.economist​.com​/graphic​-detail​/2012​/06​/28​/
the​-worlds​-shifting​-centre​-of​-gravity [Accessed June 2023]
Evolution of the Earth’s economic… https://www​.reddit​.com​/r​/MapPorn​/comments​
/4yola6​/evolution​_of​_the​_earths​_economic​_center​_of/ [Accessed June 2023]
The book … No Ordinary Disruption by Richard Dobbs, James Manyika and Jonathan
Woetzel
S&P Global Ratings… https://economictimes​.indiatimes​.com​/news​/economy​/
indicators​/india​-to​-be​-fastest​-growing​-economy​-for​-next​-three​-years​-sp​-global​
-ratings​/articleshow​/101276724​.cms​?from​=mdr [Accessed June 2023]
Having the 5th largest… https://www​.livemint​.com​/news​/india​/india​-will​-become​
-world​-s​-third​-largest​-economy​-by​-11681191872156​.html [Accessed June 2023]

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

When Fortune released… https://www​.csis​.org​/blogs​/trustee​-china​-hand​/biggest​-not​

-strongest​-chinas​-place​-fortune​-global​-500 [Accessed June 2023]
In the late 1990s… https://www​.economist​.com​/interactive​/business​/2023​/01​/14​/
investments​-in​-ports​-foretell​-the​-future​-of​-global​-commerce [Accessed June 2023]
Global urban population... https://statisticstimes​.com​/demographics​/world​-urban​
-population​.php [Accessed June 2023]
Today 56 per cent... https://www​.worldbank​.org​/en​/topic​/urbandevelopment​/overview
[Accessed June 2023]
• … rural households living within . . https://www​.economist​.com​/middle​
-east​-and​-africa​/2023​/03​/09​/the​-growth​-of​-africas​-towns​-and​-small​-cities​-is​
-transforming​-the​-continent [Accessed June 2023]
• … people living in cities enjoy ... No Ordinary Disruption by Richard Dobbs,
James Manyika and Jonathan Woetzel
A McKinsey study ... https://www​.ft​.com​/content​/24dbcc0f​-7974​-48d7​-9824​
-ab86b58a3a29 [Accessed June 2023]
Tianjin is a metropolis... https://www​.china​-briefing​.com​/news​/investing​-in​-tianjin​
-china​-city​-economy​-profile​-key​-industries​-zones​-policies/ [Accessed June 2023]
In 2010 Tianjin... https://www​.visualcapitalizt​.com​/countries​-by​-share​-of​-global​
-economy/ [Accessed June 2023]
Moore’s law states that… https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Moore​%27s​_law [Accessed
June 2023]
The iPhone 6’s clock was... https://www​.zmescience​.com​/science​/news​-science​/
smartphone​-power​-compared​-to​-apollo​-432/ [Accessed June 2023]
In 1997, the world’s… https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/ASCI​_Red [Accessed June 2023]
It started in 1990... https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Human​_Genome​_Project [Accessed
June 2023]
CRISPR-Cas9 has the... https://www​.whatisbiotechnology​.org​/index​.php​/science​/
summary​/crispr#:~​:text​=In [Accessed June 2023]
Today there are just... https://www​.bankmycell​.com​/blog​/how​-many​-phones​-are​-in​
-the​-world [Accessed June 2023]
In the fiscal year 2022... https://www​.thestreet​.com​/investing​/heres​-how​-much​
-amazon​-takes​-from​-every​-third​-party​-sale#:~​:text​=Seller [Accessed June 2023]
It took 14 years… https://medium​.com​/techtoday​/reaching​-50​-million​-users​-the​-journey​
-of​-internet​-and​-non​-internet​-products​-7a531d36f4ea [Accessed August 2023]
ChatGPT reached… https://www​.reuters​.com​/technology​/chatgpt​-sets​-record​-fastest​
-growing​-user​-base​-analyst​-note​-2023​-02​-01/ [Accessed August 2023]
The UN christened… https://www​.un​.org​/en​/dayof8billion [Accessed August 2023]
There are then two projections...
• https://www​.un​.org​/en​/desa​/world​-population​-projected​-reach​-98​-billion​-2050​
-and​-112​-billion​-2100# [Accessed June 2023]
• https://www​.un​.org​/development​/desa​/pd​/sites​/www​.un​.org​.development​.desa​
.pd​/files​/wpp2022​_summary​_of​_results​.pdf [Accessed June 2023]

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 Refe r e nces

The birth rate in…

• https://www​.google​.com​/search​?q​=number​+birth​+per​+woman​+in​+uisa​&rlz
[Accessed June 2023]
• https://www​.ons​.gov​.uk​/peo​plep​opul​atio​nand​community​/bir​thsd​eath​sand​
marriages​/livebirths​/bulletins​/par​ents​coun​tryo​fbir​then​glan​dandwales​/2021
[Accessed June 2023]
• https://ec​.europa​.eu​/eurostat​/statistics​-explained​/index​.php​?title​=Fertility​
_statistics#:~ [Accessed June 2023]
• https://www​.economist​.com​/graphic​-detail​/2019​/08​/30​/south​-koreas​-fertility​
-rate​-falls​-to​-a​-record​-low [Accessed June 2023]
China’s birth rate is...
• https://www​.google​.com​/search​?q​=number​+birth​+per​+woman​+in​+uisa​&rlz
[Accessed June 2023]
• https://www​.indiatimes​.com​/news​/india​/fertility​-rate​-falls​-below​-replacement​
-level​-in​-india​-555149​.html [Accessed June 2023]
In 1950, global child mortality… https://ourworldindata​.org​/child​-mortality​-in​-the​
-past [Accessed June 2023]
According to the UN… https://www​.un​.org​/en​/development​/desa​/population​/
publications​/pdf​/ageing​/WPA2017​_Highlights​.pdf [Accessed June 2023]
It faces the very real problem… https://www​.japantimes​.co​.jp​/news​/2015​/05​/16​/
national​/social​-issues​/japan​-becoming​-extinct/ [Accessed June 2023]
A study by the Institute... https://cordmagazine​.com​/world​-news​/2060​-more​-than​-five​
-million​-fewer​-workers​-in​-germany/ [Accessed June 2023]
This is due to... https://abcnews​.go​.com​/International​/story​?id​=5667781​&page=1
[Accessed June 2023]
the average age of a lorry driver… https://www​.getreading​.co​.uk​/news​/uk​-world​-news​
/lorry​-driver​-jobs​-now​-pay​-21437969 [Accessed June 2023]
and engineers is… https://quantumsas​.com​/the​-uks​-engineer​-shortage​-what​-you​-need​
-to​-know/#:~​:text​=Ageing​%20workforce​,and​%20a​%20distinct​%20knowledge​%20
gap. [Accessed June 2023]
almost half (47… https://www​.citb​.co​.uk​/media​/2bylp3yw​/fuller​-working​-lives​-in​
-construction​.pdf [Accessed June 2023]
In June 2021, France… https://data​.oecd​.org​/socialexp​/pension​-spending​.htm
[Accessed June 2023]
According to the Economist... https://www​.economist​.com​/europe​/2023​/03​/20​/emmanuel​
-macrons​-government​-survives​-but​-more​-trouble​-lies​-ahead [Accessed June 2023]
where by November 2022... https://cgfa​.ilga​.gov​/Upload​/1122​%20SPECIAL​%20
PENSION​%20BRIEFING​.pdf [Accessed June 2023]
The BBC Bitesize website... https://www​.bbc​.co​.uk​/bitesize​/guides​/zxm3srd​/revision​
/1#:~​:text​=Globalization [Accessed June 2023]
According to the World Trade… https://www​.wto​.org​/english​/res​_e​/statis​_e​/trade​
_evolution​_e​/evolution​_trade​_wto​_e​.htm# [Accessed June 2023]

213
 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

In the course of production... https://www​.marketplace​.org​/2017​/03​/24​/when​-it​-cones​

-nafta​-and​-autos​-parts​-are​-well​-traveled/ [Accessed June 2023]
Consider finance and, more… https://www​.forbes​.com​/sites​/investor​/2011​/09​/28​/debt​
-defaults​-have​-greek​-history/​?sh​=3a5cda1e4f2f [Accessed June 2023]
On 11 March, 2011, one… https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/2011​_T​%C5​%8Dhoku​
_earthquake​_and​_tsunami [Accessed June 2023]
Apple faced a sudden... https://appleinsider​.com​/articles​/11​/03​/28​/japan​_disaster​
_causes​_shortage​_of​_lithium​_ion​_batteries​_for​_apple​.html [Accessed June 2023]
The impact of the tsunami… https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Nuclear​_power​_in​
_Germany [Accessed June 2023]
Between 1995 and 2019… https://ourworldindata​.org​/tourism [Accessed August
2023]
The IPCC report... https://www​.ipcc​.ch​/assessment​-report​/ar6/ [Accessed June 2023]
By 2050 the IPCC … https://climatechampions​.unfccc​.int​/carbon​-removals​-cop27/
[Accessed June 2023]
Currently, as an entity, Planet Earth … https://www​.euronews​.com​/green​/2023​/01​/19​
/scientists​-calculate​-how​-much​-co2​-is​-being​-removed​-from​-the​-atmosphere​-for​
-the​-first​-time [Accessed June 2023]
The continued destruction of forests… https://ourworldindata​.org​/deforestation
[Accessed August 2023]
According to Reuters, based... https://www​.reuters​.com​/business​/environment​/cop27​
-world​-faces​-28c​-rise​-after​-woefully​-inadequate​-climate​-pledges​-un​-says​-2022​-10​
-27/ [Accessed June 2023]
To quote the Economist... https://www​.economist​.com​/business​/2021​/10​/09​/what​-if​
-firms​-were​-forced​-to​-pay​-for​-frying​-the​-planet [Accessed June 2023]
Today, only about... https://www​.imf​.org​/en​/Publications​/fandd​/issues​/2021​/09​/five​
-things​-to​-know​-about​-carbon​-pricing​-parry [Accessed June 2023]
the IMF says the... https://www​.imf​.org​/en​/Blogs​/Articles​/2021​/06​/18​/blog​-a​-proposal​
-to​-scale​-up​-global​-carbon​-pricing [Accessed June 2023]
Reuters reported in... https://www​.reuters​.com​/business​/environment​/cop27​-world​
-faces​-28c​-rise​-after​-woefully​-inadequate​-climate​-pledges​-un​-says​-2022​-10​-27/
[Accessed June 2023]
According to the Economist… https://www​.economist​.com​/films​/2021​/10​/30​/this​-is​
-what​-3degc​-of​-global​-warming​-looks​-like [Accessed June 2023]
A report in Science... https://priceofoil​.org​/2022​/09​/12​/new​-study​-suggests​-we​-are​
-heading​-for​-2​-3​-degrees​-warming​-making​-climate​-tipping​-points​-irreversible/
[Accessed June 2023]
The Guardian noted... https://www​.theguardian​.com​/world​/2020​/dec​/29​/could​-covid​
-lockdown​-have​-helped​-save​-the​-planet [Accessed June 2023]
United Nations Environment Programme… https://www​.bbc​.co​.uk​/news​/science​
-environment​-53681096 [Accessed June 2023]
with eight countries recording… https://www​.economist​.com​/graphic​-detail​/2023​/01​
/12​/europes​-freakish​-winter​-heatwave​-breaks​-records [Accessed June 2023]

214
 Refe r e nces

Houston has experienced… https://www​.washingtonpost​.com​/news​/wonk​/wp​/2017​

/08​/29​/houston​-is​-experiencing​-its​-third​-500​-year​-flood​-in​-3​-years​-how​-is​-that​
-possible/ [Accessed June 2023]
MunichRe registered 820… https://www​.statista​.com​/chart​/22686​/number​-of​-natural​
-disasters​-globally/ [Accessed June 2023]
China has built a high… https://multimedia​.scmp​.com​/infographics​/news​/china​/
article​/3200811​/high​-speed​-railway​/index​.html [Accessed June 2023]
Britain may manage… https://www​.hs2​.org​.uk​/the​-route​/london​-to​-west​-midlands
[Accessed June 2023]
Going forward it will… https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Mos​_maiorum [Accessed
August 2023]
In the 2020 US... https://www​.census​.gov​/newsroom​/press​-releases​/2021​/2020​
-presidential​-election​-voting​-and​-registration​-tables​-now​-available​.html [Accessed
June 2023]
Age was a strong indicator of how… https://www​.statista​.com​/statistics​/520954​/brexit​
-votes​-by​-age/ [Accessed June 2023]
In France, President… https://www​.france24​.com​/en​/france​/20220416​-will​-older​
-voters​-be​-enough​-to​-carry​-macron​-to​-victory​-over​-le​-pen [Accessed June 2023]
a veteran firebrand of… https://www​.bbc​.co​.uk​/news​/world​-europe​-61737537
[Accessed June 2023]
In Ireland, according... https://www​.thejournal​.ie​/sinn​-fein​-most​-popular​-party​-age​
-groups​-4998864​-Feb2020/ [Accessed June 2023]
In the UK, 3.2… https://commonslibrary​.parliament​.uk​/house​-of​-commons​-trends​
-the​-age​-of​-mps/ [Accessed June 2023]
whereas 16.2 per cent… https://www​.ons​.gov​.uk​/peo​plep​opul​atio​nand​community​
/birthsd​eath​sand​marriages​/livebirths​/bulletins​/par​ents​coun​tryo​fbir​then​gland​
andwales​/2021 [Accessed June 2023]

4. What does this mean for business?

As noted by McKinsey… https://www​.mckinsey​.com​/industries​/public​-and​-social​-sector​
/our​-insights​/the​-chips​-and​-science​-act​-heres​-whats​-in​-it [Accessed June 2023]
As a result by November…:
• https://www​.tomshardware​.com​/news​/new​-us​-fabs​-everything​-we​-know
[Accessed June 2023]
• https://www​.semiconductors​.org​/wp​-content​/uploads​/2022​/11​/SIA​_State​-of​
-Industry​-Report​_Nov​-2022​.pdf [Accessed June 2023]
Their goal is to double… https://www​.consilium​.europa​.eu​/en​/press​/press​-releases​
/2023​/04​/18​/chips​-act​-council​-and​-european​-parliament​-strike​-provisional​-deal
[Accessed June 2023]
As noted by the Economist... https://www​.economist​.com​/business​/2022​/10​/24​/the​
-end​-of​-apples​-affair​-with​-china [Accessed June 2023]

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As noted by the Economist… https://www​.economist​.com​/business​/2022​/10​/24​/the​

-end​-of​-apples​-affair​-with​-china [Accessed June 2023]
According to a survey by… https://www​.jetro​.go​.jp​/ext​_images/​_News​/releases​/2021​
/69b41fe59a5b2299​/rp​_firms​_asia​_oceania2020​.pdf [Accessed June 2023]
Yet in May that… https://mashable​.com​/article​/new​-ford​-ceo​-self​-driving​-cars
[Accessed June 2023]
As reported by The… https://www​.theverge​.com​/2017​/11​/7​/16615290​/waymo​-self​
-driving​-safety​-driver​-chandler​-autonomous [Accessed June 2023]
Six years later… https://www​.standard​.co​.uk​/tech​/ford​-self​-driving​-car​-uk​-release​
-launch​-b1073823​.html [Accessed June 2023]
But in 2019… https://www​.pymnts​.com​/news​/delivery​/2022​/fedex​-woes​-show​
-amazon​-gaining​-ground​-in​-ecommerce​-logistics/ [Accessed June 2023]
This, of course, merely... https://medium​.com​/lightspeed​-venture​-partners​/the​-essence​
-of​-strategy​-is​-choosing​-what​-not​-to​-do​-c676f004f3e2 [Accessed June 2023]
As Red Adair... https://www​.linkedin​.com​/pulse​/extraordinary​-times​-call​-problem​
-solvers​-story​-red​-adair​-ward/ [Accessed June 2023]
In research published... https://sites​.google​.com​/view​/lorenz​-ekerdt​/research/
[Accessed June 2023]
In March 2015… https://www​.pmlive​.com​/blogs​/the​_editors​/archive​/2023​/march​/gsk​
_and​_novartis​_asset​_swap​_a​_tale​_of​_two​_companies​_677593 [Accessed June 2023]
The FT described… https://www​.ft​.com​/content​/35d41c52​-c0e0​-11e4​-9949​
-00144feab7de [Accessed June 2023]
Four years later, in… https://www​.gsk​.com​/en​-gb​/media​/press​-releases​/gsk​-completes​
-transaction​-with​-pfizer​-to​-form​-new​-world​-leading​-consumer​-healthcare​-joint​
-venture/ [Accessed June 2023]
Their specialism will... https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Economic​_moat [Accessed June
2023]
In Apple’s results... https://fortune​.com​/2023​/05​/04​/apple​-q2​-2023​-earnings​-iphnoe​
-sales​-shares/
‘One man draws…’ https://www​.johnkay​.com​/2019​/12​/18​/adam​-smith​-and​-the​-pin​
-factory/ [Accessed June 2023]
I have seen a small manufacture… https://www​.johnkay​.com​/2019​/12​/18​/adam​-smith​
-and​-the​-pin​-factory/ [Accessed June 2023]
According to the Detroit… https://detroithistorical​.org​/learn​/encyclopedia​-of​-detroit​/
model-t [Accessed June 2023]
two of over 500 platforms that… https://www​.linkedin​.com​/posts​/barry​-flack​_fra​ctio​
nale​xecutives​-fractionalhr​-sourcing​-activity​-7089713227265134593​-eJyd/​?utm​
_source​=share [Accessed August 2023]
In 2022 they noted… https://www2​.staffingindustry​.com​/Editorial​/Daily​-News​/
Number​-of​-US​-contingent​-workers​-totals​-51​.5​-million​-temps​-assigned​-by​-staffing​
-firms​-at​-8​.5​-million​-SIA​-report​-58836 [Accessed June 2023]
According to OnContracting​.c​om… https://www​.oncontracting​.com​/client​/company​/
microsoft​-contract​-jobs​-staffing​-agencies​-reviews [Accessed June 2023]

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 Refe r e nces

SIA’s research published… Staffing Industry Analysts Contingent Workforce Strategies

Council seminar, SIA Workforce Solutions Buyer Survey 2020 (EMEA)
In the year 2022… https://www​.globaldata​.com​/data​-insights​/technology​-media​-and​
-telecom​/apples​-Number​-of​-employees/ [Accessed June 2023]
At the same time… https://www​.apple​.com​/job​-creation/ [Accessed June 2023]
In a single Foxconn… https://www​.wsj​.com​/articles​/apple​-china​-factory​-protests​
-foxconn​-manufacturing​-production​-supply​-chain​-11670023099 [Accessed June
2023]
Consider who works in… https://www​.cnbc​.com​/2017​/10​/09​/how​-much​-every​-inch​
-of​-apples​-new​-5​-billion​-campus​-cost​-to​-build​.html [Accessed June 2023]
The second challenge is… https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Piece​_work [Accessed August
2023]
According to one survey… https://www​.businessleader​.co​.uk​/28​-brits​-planning​
-freelance​-next​-five​-years/ [Accessed June 2023]
Whatever the cause… https://www​.sidehustlenation​.com/ [Accessed August 2023]
The recent allegations of… https://www.leighday.co.uk/news/news/2023-news/
mcdonalds-staff-subject-to-sexual-harassment-in-a-toxic-workplace-according-to-
bbc-investigation/ [Accessed August 2023]
In 2010, reports started… https://www​.theguardian​.com​/technology​/2017​/jun​/18​/
foxconn​-life​-death​-forbidden​-city​-longhua​-suicide​-apple​-iphone​-brian​-merchant​
-one​-device​-extract [Accessed June 2023]
In fact, back then… https://money​.cnn​.com​/2010​/03​/29​/technology​/apple​_valuable​
_companies​.fortune​/index​.htm [Accessed June 2023]
Indeed, as noted by the Guardian … https://www​.theguardian​.com​/technology​/2017​
/jun​/18​/foxconn​-life​-death​-forbidden​-city​-longhua​-suicide​-apple​-iphone​-brian​
-merchant​-one​-device​-extract [Accessed June 2023]
In February 2012 … https://www​.apple​.com​/newsroom​/2012​/02​/13Fair​-Labor​
-Association​-Begins​-Inspections​-of​-Foxconn/ [Accessed June 2023]
Tim Cook visited the… https://www​.dailymail​.co​.uk​/sciencetech​/article​-2122129​
/Apples​-Tim​-Cook​-makes​-visit​-Foxconn​-iPhone​-factory​.html [Accessed June
2023]
‘The competition to…’ https://www​.inc​.com​/marcel​-schwantes​/bill​-gates​-said​-you​
-must​-offer​-this​-perk​-in​-order​-to​-hire​-best​-workers​.html [Accessed June 2023]
Pre-pandemic workers wanted… ‘Presentism over productivity: why flexible working
needs a rebrand’ Guardian 6 July 2015
Research in 2022 of 35,000… ‘A new era in the #howwework revolution. Workmonitor
2022’ Randstad, Global corporate affairs
According to data from…
• https://www​.ons​.gov​.uk​/emp​loym​enta​ndla​bour​market​/peopleinwork​/emp​loy​
menta​ndem​ploy​eetypes​/articles​/cha​ract​eris​tics​ofho​mewo​rker​sgre​atbritain​/sep​
temb​er20​22to​janu​ary2023 [Accessed June 2023]
• https://www​.theguardian​.com​/commentisfree​/2023​/feb​/14​/working​-from​-home​
-revolution​-hybrid​-working​-inequalities [Accessed June 2023]

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

As an example, under the Fair… https://www​.nyc​.gov​/site​/dca​/businesses​/

fairworkweek​-deductions​-laws​-employers​.page [Accessed June 2023]
Recent research by Harvard… https://www​.hks​.harvard​.edu​/faculty​-research​/
policy​-topics​/social​-policy​/research​-finds​-more​-predictable​-worker​-scheduling
[Accessed June 2023]
Another study published… https://hbr​.org​/2017​/12​/how​-the​-gap​-used​-an​-app​-to​-give​
-workers​-more​-control​-over​-their​-schedules [Accessed June 2023]
Yet another published in… https://sloanreview​.mit​.edu​/article​/toxic​-culture​-is​-driving​
-the​-great​-resignation/ [Accessed June 2023]
But if you move… https://www​.washingtonpost​.com​/business​/2023​/03​/24​/starbucks​
-union​-shareholder​-howard​-schultz​-bargaining/ [Accessed June 2023]
As a comparator, in … https://www​.cipd​.org​/uk​/knowledge​/factsheets​/zero​-hours​
-reality​-report/#:~​:text​=In​%20May​%202015​%2C​%20the​%20government​,hours​%20
contract​%20from​%20working​%20elsewhere. [Accessed August 2023]
The late David Graeber… Bullshit Jobs: A Theory published May 2018 by Simon &
Schuster
Language from that period … https://www​.phrases​.org​.uk​/meanings​/the​-devil​-makes​
-work​-for​-idle​-hands​.html [Accessed June 2023]
in the UK, laws… https://www​.hrmagazine​.co​.uk​/content​/features​/from​-the​-front​-line​
-the​-past​-is​-not​-a​-foreign​-country/ [Accessed August 2023]
it is partly the reason … Hands of Time: A Watchmaker’s History of Time by Rebecca
Struthers, published June 2023 by Harper
Part of any solution… https://www​.economist​.com​/business​/2023​/03​/23​/how​-to​-get​
-flexible​-working​-right [Accessed June 2023]
As an example, Slack… https://www​.economist​.com​/business​/2023​/03​/23​/how​-to​-get​
-flexible​-working​-right [Accessed June 2023]
They have also instituted… https://slack​.com​/intl​/en​-gb​/blog​/news​/focus​-fridays​-and​
-maker​-weeks​-at​-slack [Accessed June 2023]
Working today may… https://www​.linkedin​.com​/pulse​/workplace​-flexibility​-hamid​
-mirzaei/ [Accessed June 2023]
As an example, a… https://www​.telegraph​.co​.uk​/news​/2023​/08​/01​/4pm​-6pm​-break​
-flexible​-working​-from​-home/ [Accessed August 2023]
We shape our buildings… https://www​.parliament​.uk​/about​/living​-heritage​/building​/
palace​/architecture​/palacestructure​/churchill [Accessed June 2023]
In 1992 research in… ‘Sense of belonging: a vital mental health concept’ – Bonnie
Hagerty, Judith Lynch-Sauer, K Patusky et al. The Archives of Psychiatric Nursing
volume 6 issue 3 June 1992 Pages 172–7
Research by Harvard and… ‘The impact of the open workspace on human
collaboration’ Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Published 2 July 2018
Leesman measure and analyze… ‘The rise and rise of Activity Based Working’
Leesman – www​.leesmanindex​.com
Russell Foster, Professor… https://officexpress​.co​.uk​/10​-office​-optimisation​-hacks​
-proven​-boost​-productivity/ [Accessed June 2023]

218
 Refe r e nces

Workers who toil near… 3Chueng I. (2013) ‘Impact of workplace daylight exposure on
sleep, physical activity, and quality of life.’ American Academy of Sleep Medicine 36
Expose workers to nature… https://www​.forbes​.com​/sites​/adigaskell​/2017​/02​/15​/a​
-green​-office​-equals​-a​-productive​-office/ [Accessed June 2023]
Adam Alter in his wonderful… Drunk Tank Pink: The Subconscious Forces that
Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave by Adam Alter published by Oneworld
Publications, September 2013
According to a University of … https://www​.corporatesuites​.com​/how​-colors​-affect​
-office​-productivity/ [Accessed June 2023]
To quote two sources:
• ‘Colour in Office environments’ published in ‘Implications – A newsletter by
InformeDesign’ – Nancy Kwallek
• https://www​.fastcompany​.com​/3044601​/why​-you​-should​-never​-paint​-office​
-walls​-white [Accessed June 2023]
The artist Kandinsky once… https://www​.goodreads​.com​/quotes​/90420​-colour​-is​-a​
-power​-which​-directly​-influences​-the​-soul [Accessed August 2023]
Allowing workers to… https://www​.blueface​.com​/blog​/office​-space​-increase​
-productivity/ [Accessed June 2023]. This research was also referred to in Tim
Harford’s podcast ‘Cautionary Tales – Office Hell: The demise of the playful
workspace’ 17 March, 2023
To quote The World… ‘Building the Business case: Health, wellbeing and productivity
in green offices’ October 2016. World Green Building Council

5. What does this mean for our people and talent?

The World Economic Forum… https://www3​.weforum​.org​/docs​/WEF​_Future​_of​
_Jobs​.pdf [Accessed June 2023]
The update in May… https://assets​.publishing​.service​.gov​.uk​/government​/uploads​
/system​/uploads​/attachment​_data​/file​/806331​/28​_05​_2019​_Full​_Review​_SOL​
_Final​_Report​_1159​.pdf [Accessed June 2023]
The Open University has… http://www​.open​.ac​.uk​/business​/apprenticeships​/blog​/uk​
-skills​-shortage​-costing​-organizations- per centC2 per centA363-billion [Accessed
2023]
PWC’s 2020 annual… https://www​.pwc​.co​.uk​/premium​/ceo​-survey​/pwc​-23rd​-annual​
-global​-ceo​-survey​.pdf​?WT​.mc​_id​=CT2​-PL200​-DM2​-TR3​-LS4​-ND30​-TTA5​-CN​
_CEOSurvey2020​-downloadpdf​-completer [Accessed June 2023]
The first inkling that… https://www​.businessinsider​.com​/mcdonalds​-pays​-50​-for​-job​
-interviews​-highlighting​-hiring​-struggles​-2021​-4​?r​=US​&IR=T [Accessed June
2023]
Using data from the… https://data​.bls​.gov​/cgi​-bin​/surveymost [Accessed June 2023]
Simultaneously, as noted by… https://www​.economist​.com​/business​/2022​/02​/05​/how​
-americas​-talent​-wars​-are​-reshaping​-business [Accessed June 2023]

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

according to the New York Post, https://nypost​.com​/2022​/11​/02​/disturbing​-rise​-of​-the​

-nilfs​-men​-not​-in​-the​-labor​-force/ [Accessed June 2023]
according to Forbes … https://www​.forbes​.com​/sites​/stuartanderson​/2020​/07​/21​/
trump​-cuts​-legal​-immigrants​-by​-half​-and​-hes​-not​-done​-yet/​?sh​=4f9bc31d6168
[Accessed June 2023]
according to the Federal Reserve… https://www​.stlouisfed​.org​/on​-the​-economy​/2021​/
december​/excess​-retirements​-covid​-19​-pandemic [Accessed June 2023]
The UK faces a similar situation… https://www​.lbc​.co​.uk​/news​/life​-doesnt​-just​-have​
-to​-be​-about​-golf​-jeremy​-hunts​-message​-to​-over​-50s​-as​-he​-tr/ [Accessed June
2023]
As the Economist noted… https://www​.economist​.com​/business​/2022​/02​/05​/how​
-americas​-talent​-wars​-are​-reshaping​-business [Accessed June 2023]
In April 2023, the Economist Today – 5/4/23
Below is a graph showing… https://www​.ons​.gov​.uk​/emp​loym​enta​ndla​bour​market​/
peopleinwork​/emp​loym​enta​ndem​ploy​eetypes​/bulletins​/job​sand​vaca​ncie​sintheuk​/
january2023 [Accessed June 2023]
A Korn Ferry report… https://www​.kornferry​.com​/insights​/this​-week​-in​-leadership​/
talent​-crunch​-future​-of​-work [Accessed June 2023]
According to Harvard Business… https://hbr​.org​/2022​/03​/the​-rise​-of​-the​-corporate​
-nomad [Accessed June 2023]
According to Travel Weekly… https://travelweekly​.co​.uk​/news​/air​/airlines​-that​-made​
-most​-job​-cuts​-were​-hit​-hardest​-by​-cancellations [Accessed June 2023]
According to People Management… https://www​.peoplemanagement​.co​.uk​/article​
/1799487​/two​-five​-planning​-leave​-jobs​-within​-year​-majority​-citing​-lack​-career​
-prospects​-survey​-finds [Accessed June 2023]
as reported by… The Great Resignation: How employers drove workers to quit – BBC
Worklife
McKinsey put the figure… The Great Renegotiation and new talent pools | McKinsey
As the HR guru… https://cdn2​.assets​-servd​.host​/tcpsoftware​-vv​/production​/uploads​
/documents​/strategic​-remedies​-for​-the​-great​-resgination​.pdf [Accessed June
2023]
what Deloitte calls… https://www2​.deloitte​.com​/content​/dam​/Deloitte​/at​/Documents​/
human​-capital​/at​-is​-your​-organization​-simply​-irresistible​.pdf [Accessed June 2023]
That is why, according… https://www​.office​-angels​.com​/jobseekers​/advice​-for​
-jobseekers​/job​-counteroffer​-tips [Accessed June 2023]
As an example,… https://www​.bbc​.co​.uk​/news​/business​-64861175 [Accessed June
2023]
This might sound soft… https://www​.mckinsey​.com​/capabilities​/people​-and​
-organizational​-performance​/our​-insights​/great​-attrition​-or​-great​-attraction​-the​
-choice​-is​-yours [Accessed June 2023]
According to a 2018… https://www​.marketwatch​.com​/story​/half​-of​-lgbtq​-americans​
-are​-not​-out​-to​-co​-workers​-2018​-06​-27 [Accessed June 2023]

220
 Refe r e nces

Likewise, a study by… https://www​.catalyst​.org​/wp​-content​/uploads​/2019​/02​/

emotionaltax​.pdf [Accessed June 2023]
Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy… No Hard Feelings: Emotions at Work and How
They Help Us Succeed by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy published by Portfolio
Penguin June 2019
As an example… https://www​.mylondon​.news​/whats​-on​/shopping​/marks​-spencer​
-adds​-more​-skin​-20879992 [Accessed June 2023]
A study of social pain terminology… https://www​.scn​.ucla​.edu​/pdf​/Pains​
&Pleasures(2008).pdf [Accessed June 2023]
Research from the University… https://www​.scn​.ucla​.edu​/pdf​/Pains​&Pleasures(2008).
pdf [Accessed June 2023]
Our strong negative response … https://www​.sciencedirect​.com​/science​/article​/abs​/pii​
/S1364661304001433 [Accessed June 2023]
According to a study … ‘The value of belonging at work. New frontiers for inclusion’
Betterup
According to the British… https://www​.britishcouncil​.org​/voices​-magazine​/how​
-overcome​-fear​-public​-speaking [Accessed June 2023]
According to a study by … https://www​.scn​.ucla​.edu​/pdf​/Pains​&Pleasures(2008).pdf
[Accessed June 2023]
A meta-data analysis… https://www​.iflscience​.com​/health​-and​-medicine​/loneliness​
-is​-as​-bad​-for​-your​-health​-as​-smoking​-15​-cigarettes​-a​-day/ [Accessed June
2023]
In the 1990s Gallup… https://www​.gallup​.com​/workplace​/356063​/gallup​-q12​
-employee​-engagement​-survey​.aspx [Accessed June 2023]
A 2022 study by… https://www​.gallup​.com​/workplace​/397058​/increasing​-importance​
-best​-friend​-work​.aspx [ Accessed June 2023]
Having a best friend… https://www​.gallup​.com​/cliftonstrengths​/en​/406298​/why​
-having​-best​-friend​-work​-important​.aspx [Accessed June 2023]
and workers who… MacLeod, David and Clarke, Nita, ‘Engaging for Success’ (also
known as the MacLeod Report) (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
[BIS], 2009). Crown Copyright.
And yet, while … https://joshbersin​.com​/2021​/12​/from​-the​-great​-resignation​-to​-the​
-great​-migration/ [Accessed June 2023]
The somewhat depressing… https://welltraining​.co​.uk​/2022​/09​/01​/3​-3bn​-of​-unspent​
-apprenticeship​-levy​-funds​-returned​-to​-treasury/ [Accessed June 2023]
The data analytics firm Burning… https://www​.economist​.com​/business​/2022​/02​/05​/
how​-americas​-talent​-wars​-are​-reshaping​-business [Accessed June 2023]
Note: This is a good thing… ‘Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform
How You Live and Lead’ by Laszlo Bock published by John Murray April 2015
To quote Kent Walker… https://version2​.medium​.com​/is​-googles​-new​-6​-month​
-career​-certificates​-equivalent​-to​-a​-4​-year​-degree​-for​-related​-roles​-b299c190cf8b
[Accessed June 2023]

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

Subjects supported include … https://www​.click2houston​.com​/news​/national​/2020​

/07​/14​/google​-will​-offer​-career​-certificates​-equivalent​-to​-4​-year​-degrees​-in​-data​
-analytics​-project​-management/ [Accessed June 2023]
As an aside, https://www​.coursera​.org​/learn​/the​-science​-of​-well​-being [Accessed
August 2023]
Dan Pink, in one… https://www​.ted​.com​/talks​/dan​_pink​_the​_puzzle​_of​_motivation​
?language​=en [Accessed June 2023]
He who has a why … From Twilight of the Idols (1888) – Götzen-Dämmerung (1888)
sourced at: https://en​.wikiquote​.org​/wiki​/Friedrich​_Nietzsche [Accessed June 2023]
In his semi-autobiographical novel… https://www​.online​-literature​.com​/dostoevsky​/
house​-of​-the​-dead​/3/ [Accessed June 2023]
the invention of the treadmill… https://daily​.jstor​.org​/treadmills​-were​-meant​-to​-be​
-atonement​-machines/ [Accessed June 2023]
A pre-pandemic YouGov… https://yougov​.co​.uk​/topics​/society​/articles​-reports​/2015​
/08​/12​/british​-jobs​-meaningless [Accessed June 2023]
A Deloitte survey published… https://www2​.deloitte​.com​/uk​/en​/pages​/press​-releases​
/articles​/majority​-of​-employees​-consider​-an​-organizations​-purpose​-before​
-choosing​-to​-join​.html [Accessed June 2023]
In his book… Give and Take by Adam Grant
As reported by McKinsey … https://www​.mckinsey​.com​/business​-functions​/organiza-
tion​/our​-insights​/making​-work​-meaningful​-a​-leaders​-guide [Accessed June 2023]
The UK’s National Health … https://www​.england​.nhs​.uk​/6cs​/wp​-content​/uploads​/
sites​/25​/2015​/06​/12​-hour​-shifts​-report​.pdf [Accessed June 2023]
‘In 2022 Walmart stated…’ https://www​.economist​.com​/business​/2022​/02​/05​/how​
-americas​-talent​-wars​-are​-reshaping​-business [Accessed June 2023]
Sleep has been described as… Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams by
Mathew Walker published by Penguin, January 2018
For shift workers, predictability… ‘Effects on employees of controlling working hours
and working schedules’ T. Kubo, M. Takahashi, F. Togo, X. Liu, A. Shimazu, K.
Tanaka, M. Takaya published in Occupational Medicine, Volume 63, Issue 2, March
2013, Pages 148–51,
In this context, it is interesting… https://www​.peoplemanagement​.co​.uk​/article​
/1822807​/rights​-request​-predictable​-working-​%E2​%80​%93​-organisations​-know
[Accessed June 2023]
Period poverty impacts… https://www​.independent​.co​.uk​/news​/international​-women​
-s​-day​-period​-girls​-missed​-school​-uk​-sanitary​-products​-menstruation​-a8244396​
.html [Accessed June 2023]
Consider an experiment conducted… https://www​.npr​.org​/2008​/01​/03​/17792517​/
hotel​-maids​-challenge​-the​-placebo​-effect [Accessed June 2023]
Research from Donald Sull… https://sloanreview​.mit​.edu​/article​/toxic​-culture​-is​
-driving​-the​-great​-resignation/ [Accessed June 2023]
A classic example here… https://www​.shortform​.com​/blog​/netflix​-expense​-policy
[Accessed August 2023]

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 Refe r e nces

6. Future skills
According to a report published… https://www​.linkedin​.com​/pulse​/85​-jobs​-exist​-2030​
-havent​-been​-invented​-yet​-leo​-salemi/ [Accessed June 2023]
To be fair, there… https://www​.voanews​.com​/a​/most​-of​-2030​-s​-jobs​-haven​-t​-been​
-invented​-yet​/4778002​.html [Accessed June 2023]
It is their research from… https://www​.oxfordmartin​.ox​.ac​.uk​/publications​/the​-future​
-of​-employment [Accessed June 2023]
Later research published… https://www​.bbc​.com​/future​/article​/20170510​-why​
-automation​-could​-be​-a​-threat​-to​-indias​-growth [Accessed June 2023]
One does not have… https://edition​.cnn​.com​/2023​/07​/22​/media​/hollywood​-strike​
-economy​/index​.html [Accessed June 2023]
In American naval shipyards… https://www​.economist​.com​/science​-and​-technology​
/2015​/12​/19​/full​-metal​-jacket [Accessed June 2023]
The Knowledge was introduced… https://tfl​.gov​.uk​/info​-for​/taxis​-and​-private​-hire​/
licensing​/learn​-the​-knowledge​-of​-london [Accessed June 2023]
According to one source… https://www​.linkedin​.com​/posts​/garygoldsmith​_chatgpt​
-activity​-7040783833121574912​-x​_oz/​?utm​_source​=share​&utm​_medium​=member​
_ios [Accessed June 2023]
Researchers at Stanford University… https://www​.computerweekly​.com​/news​
/252475371​/Stanford​-University​-finds​-that​-AI​-is​-outpacing​-Moores​-Law
[Accessed June 2023]
As one observer noted… https://simonwillison​.net​/2023​/Feb​/15​/bing/ [Accessed June
2023]
When Google’s launched Bard… https://www​.economist​.com​/business​/2023​/07​/30​/is​
-there​-more​-to​-alphabet​-than​-google​-search [Accessed July 2023]
The system claimed incorrectly… https://www​.theverge​.com​/2023​/2​/8​/23590864​/
google​-ai​-chatbot​-bard​-mistake​-error​-exoplanet​-demo [Accessed June 2023]
The full weirdly science… https://simonwillison​.net​/2023​/Feb​/15​/bing/ [Accessed June
2023]
To quote just one report… https://thehill​.com​/policy​/technology​/3901479​-5​-things​-to​
-know​-about​-gpt-4 [Accessed June 2023]
As the MIT Technology Review… https://www​.technologyreview​.com​/2023​/02​/14​
/1068498​/why​-you​-shouldnt​-trust​-ai​-search​-engines/ [Accessed June 2023]
The CEO of The Atlantic… https://www​.linkedin​.com​/posts​/nicholasxthompson​_most​
int​eres​ting​thin​gintech​-activity​-7041772586300493824​-kZ​_6/​?utm​_source​=share​
&utm​_medium​=member​_desktop [Accessed June 2023]
‘Any job of the future…’ https://www​.weforum​.org​/agenda​/2016​/01​/11​-experts​-at​
-davos​-on​-the​-future​-of​-work/ [Accessed June 2023]
According to the World… https://www3​.weforum​.org​/docs​/WEF​_Future​_of​_Jobs​.pdf
[Accessed June 2023]
In 2020, the WEF… https://www3​.weforum​.org​/docs​/WEF​_Future​_of​_Jobs​_2020​.pdf
[Accessed June 2023]

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

As an example, as one… https://medium​.com​/geekculture​/the​-death​-of​-programming​

-upon​-us​-or​-isnt​-it​-2443221cc457 [Accessed June 2023]
A study in 2019 by… https://www​.economist​.com​/britain​/2023​/01​/31​/for​-britain​-to​
-grow​-faster​-it​-needs​-better​-managers [Accessed June 2023]
This is deficit of management… https://trainingindustry​.com​/blog​/leadership​/legacy​
-leadership​-is​-not​-about​-what​-leaders​-do​-its​-about​-what​-they​-drive​-their​-people​
-to​-do/ [Accessed June 2023]
In 2015, John van Reenen… https://www​.economist​.com​/britain​/2015​/11​/28​/end​-of​
-the​-accidental​-boss [Accessed June 2023]
McKinsey has noted… https://www​.mckinsey​.com​/capabilities​/people​-and​
-organizational​-performance​/our​-insights​/attracting​-and​-retaining​-the​-right​-talent
[Accessed June 2023]
One report defined… https://icma​.org​/sites​/default​/files​/6135_​.pdf [Accessed June
2023]
According to a study by… https://www​.linkedin​.com​/pulse​/whats​-cost​-bad​-hiring​
-decision​-brian​-fink/ [Accessed June 2023]
The Recruitment and Employment… ‘Perfect match. Making the right hire and the
cost of getting it wrong.’ REC published 2017
The medium annual… https://www​.ons​.gov​.uk​/emp​loym​enta​ndla​bour​market​/
peopleinwork​/ear​ning​sand​work​inghours​/bulletins​/ann​uals​urve​yofh​ours​and​
earnings​/2022 [Accessed June 2023]
The Wall Street Journal… https://www​.wsj​.com​/articles​/SB1​0000​8723​9639​0443​8903​
0457​8006​2520​19616768 [Accessed June 2023]
Schmidt and Hunter published… https://www​.researchgate​.net​/publication​/232564809​
_The​_Validity​_and​_Utility​_of​_Selection​_Methods​_in​_Personnel​_Psychology
[Accessed June 2023]
An article on LinkedIn… https://www​.linkedin​.com​/business​/talent​/blog​/talent​
-acquisition​/if​-you​-want​-fewer​-bad​-hires​-dont​-interview​-candidates [Accessed
June 2023]
Jack Ma said… https://www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=x0v7Paptj0w [Accessed June 2023]

7. Sustainability
Sustainability means different… https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Sustainability [Accessed
June 2023]
In fact, to quote… https://www​.weforum​.org​/agenda​/2019​/04​/business​-case​-for​
-diversity​-in​-the​-workplace/ [Accessed June 2023]
In 2018 McKinsey… https://www​.mckinsey​.com​/capabilities​/people​-and​
-organizational​-performance​/our​-insights​/delivering​-through​-diversity [Accessed
June 2023]
As an example, John… https://www​.bbc​.co​.uk​/news​/world​-us​-canada​-49582852
[Accessed June 2023]

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 Refe r e nces

As Mathew Syed said… https://www​.oneadvanced​.com​/news​-and​-opinion​/reducing​

-diversity​-to​-a​-tick​-box​-exercise​-fails​-to​-exploit​-its​-role​-in​-strategic​-decision​
-making​-and​-innovation​-matthew​-syed​-tells​-business​-leaders/ [Accessed June
2023]
To quote a member of… https://www​.reuters​.com​/article​/us​-amazon​-com​-jobs​
-automation​-insight​/amazon​-scraps​-secret​-ai​-recruiting​-tool​-that​-showed​-bias​
-against​-women​-idUSKCN1MK08G [Accessed June 2023]
Apart from the obvious, it… https://www​.bbc​.co​.uk​/news​/technology​-35559439
If only Amazon… https://www​.vox​.com​/2017​/6​/21​/15844852​/uber​-toxic​-bro​
-company​-culture​-susan​-fowler​-blog​-post [Accessed June 2023]
Outside of technology, a… https://www​.independent​.co​.uk​/life​-style​/women​-better​
-leaders​-men​-study​-a7658781​.html [Accessed June 2023]
Echoing this theme Harvard … https://hbr​.org​/2011​/06​/defend​-your​-research​-what​
-makes​-a​-team​-smarter​-more​-women [Accessed June 2023]
At the point of… https://www​.wazoku​.com​/challenges/ [Accessed Feb 2023]
NASA have used Wazoku Crowd … https://www​.innocentive​.com​/wp​-content​/
uploads​/2019​/09​/nasa​-case​-study​.pdf [Accessed June 2023]
Rhodes Perry, author… Belonging at Work by Rhodes Perry
To adapt the definition… No Hard Feelings: Emotions at Work and How They Help Us
Succeed by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy
As Australia’s Chief of Army… https://www​.deloitte​.com​/au​/en​/services​/consulting​/
analysis​/the​-leadership​-shadow​.html [Accessed August 2023]
John Paul Sartre said… https://www​.brainyquote​.com​/quotes​/jeanpaul​_sartre​_155420
[Accessed June 2023]
The company Textio … https://textio​.com/ [Accessed June 2023]
Textio analysis is able… https://csnews​.com​/what​-do​-your​-job​-postings​-say​-about​
-inclusion [Accessed June 2023]
The Dalai Lama said: … https://www​.goodreads​.com​/quotes​/7062036​-when​-you​-talk​
-you​-are​-only​-repeating​-what​-you​-already [Accessed June 2023]
Research from Google has … https://qz​.com​/work​/1545508​/how​-to​-foster​-a​-culture​
-of​-belonging​-at​-work [Accessed June 2023]
Repeating a statistic from … https://www​.imf​.org​/en​/Publications​/fandd​/issues​/2021​
/09​/five​-things​-to​-know​-about​-carbon​-pricing​-parry [Accessed June 2023]
To meet the ambitions … https://www​.imf​.org​/en​/Blogs​/Articles​/2021​/06​/18​/blog​-a​
-proposal​-to​-scale​-up​-global​-carbon​-pricing [Accessed June 2023]
As the Economist said: … https://www​.economist​.com​/business​/2021​/10​/09​/what​-if​
-firms​-were​-forced​-to​-pay​-for​-frying​-the​-planet [Accessed June 2023]
Euromonitor has noted that … ‘How to Become a Sustainable Brand’ report by Maria
Coronado Robles Euromonitor International [Accessed via https://go​.euromonitor​
.com​/rs​/805​-KOK​-719​/images​/wpSustainableBrand​-v0​.2​.pdf in June 2023]
Nielsen studies show that … https://www​.forbes​.com​/sites​/for​besb​usin​essc​ouncil​/2021​
/02​/10​/why​-corporate​-strategies​-should​-be​-focused​-on​-sustainability/ [Accessed
June 2023]

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

Grant Thornton have… ‘Putting…’ https://www​.grantthornton​.co​.uk​/insights​/esg​-how​

-a​-bad​-rep​-can​-seriously​-hurt​-a​-firms​-value/ [Accessed June 2023]
According to McKinsey… https://www​.mckinsey​.com​/capabilities​/sustainability​/our​
-insights​/sustainability​-blog​/how​-the​-e​-in​-esg​-creates​-business​-value [Accessed
June 2023]
Making it visible and … https://www​.environmentalleader​.com​/2022​/12​/puma​-is​
-cutting​-co2​-and​-saving​-water​-across​-its​-supply​-chain/ [Accessed June 2023]
At one end of the scale, … https://www​.chinadaily​.com​.cn​/a​/201804​/18​/WS5​ad69​dc6a​
3105​cdcf​6518f2c​.html [Accessed June 2023]
Sustainability also offers business … https://www​.gousto​.co​.uk​/blog​/the​-worlds​-first​
-pea​-based​-edible​-stock​-sachets [Accessed June 2023]
As the BBC states, ‘the …’ https://www​.bbc​.co​.uk​/news​/technology​-64939558
[Accessed June 2023]
An example of this came … https://www​.bbc​.co​.uk​/news​/business​-59136214
[Accessed June 2023]
The UK’s National Health Service… Presentation: ‘Achieving net zero carbon: savings
& innovation through sustainable procurement’ delivered by NHS England and
NHS Improvement and HFMA Thursday 11 November 2021; 11:30am – 12:30pm
Millennials are already… https://csic​.georgetown​.edu​/magazine​/corporate​-social​
-responsibility​-matters​-ignore​-millennials​-peril [Accessed June 2023]
40 per cent of Millennials … https://www​.fastcompany​.com​/90306556​/most-millenni-
als​-would​-take​-a​-pay​-cut​-to​-work​-at​-a​-sustainable​-company [Accessed June 2023]
Nearly 70 percent of employees… https://online​.hbs​.edu​/blog​/post​/corporate​-social​
-responsibility​-statistics [Accessed June 2023]
The average age of … https://www​.cusp​.ac​.uk​/wp​-content​/uploads​/WP25​-XR​-report​
_final​.pdf [Accessed June 2023]
The SDGs are a collection … https://sdgs​.un​.org​/goals [Accessed June 2023]
In the US the … https://www​.dol​.gov​/general​/topic​/wages​/minimumwage [Accessed
August 2023]
In the UK… https://www​.gov​.uk​/government​/news​/millions​-get​-pay​-rise​-as​-national​
-minimum​-wage​-and​-national​-living​-wage​-increase [Accessed June 2023]
You might consider this … https://home.barclays/news/2020/04/barclays-digital-
eagles--keeping-older-people-connected-through [Accessed June 2023]
A fascinating side aspect … https://diginomica​.com​/at​-barclays​-digital​-transformation​
-begins​-with​-its​-people [Accessed June 2023]
To help embed change… ‘How to Become a Sustainable Brand’ report by Maria
Coronado Robles Euromonitor International [Accessed via https://go​.euromonitor​
.com​/rs​/805​-KOK​-719​/images​/wpSustainableBrand​-v0​.2​.pdf in June 2023]
According to one survey… https://www​.therobinreport​.com​/eco​-policy​-gets​
-mainstreamed/ [Accessed August 2023]
One 2019 survey revealed… ‘How to Become a Sustainable Brand’ report by Maria
Coronado Robles Euromonitor International [Accessed via https://go​.euromonitor​
.com​/rs​/805​-KOK​-719​/images​/wpSustainableBrand​-v0​.2​.pdf in June 2023]

226
 Refe r e nces

8. Future-proofing our careers

As New York Times … https://www​.nytimes​.com​/2012​/01​/25​/opinion​/friedman​
-average​-is​-over​.html [Accessed June 2023]
As discussed in Chapter… The Death of Truth: Michiko Kakutani published by
William Collins July 2018
To succeed we need to… https://www​.reliableplant​.com​/Read​/29098​/your​-value​
-contribution [Accessed June 2023]
Lynda Gratton from London Business… The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here
by Lynda Gratton published by HarperCollins February 2014
A more recent model … https://www​.linkedin​.com​/pulse​/unlocking​-secrets​-t​-shaped​
-v​-shaped​-employees​-how​-position/ [Accessed June 2023]
The key difference is the… The One-Hour Strategy by Jeroen Kraaijenbrink published
by Fast Company Press Jan 2023
This morphing is what … https://www​.london​.edu​/think​/the​-future​-of​-work
[Accessed June 2010]
Indeed, in 2012, the… https://www​.goodreads​.com​/work​/quotes​/21430764​-project​
-based​-homeschooling​-mentoring​-self​-directed​-learners [Accessed June 2023]
Karl Marx said ‘we…’ Karl Marx, The German Ideology / Theses on Feuerbach /
Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy
Your brand is what… https://www​.forbes​.com​/sites​/williamarruda​/2016​/09​/06​/the​
-most​-damaging​-myth​-about​-branding/ [Accessed June 2023]
Antiques Roadshow is a … https://en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Antiques​_Roadshow
[Accessed June 2023]
An approach to help consider… https://www​.linkedin​.com​/pulse​/4p​-rule​-marketing​
-philip​-kotler​-still​-applicable​-now​-madhu​-ns/ [Accessed June 2023]
Marcus Buckingham defines a… https://www​.marcusbuckingham​.com​/invest​-in​-your​
-strengths​-2/ [Accessed June 2023]

Conclusion
Peter Drucker once… https://www​.brainyquote​.com​/quotes​/peter​_drucker​_129870
[Accessed August 2023]
Urbanization and the… https://www​.imf​.org​/en​/Publications​/REO​/APAC​/Issues​
/2023​/04​/11​/regional​-economic​-outlook​-for​-asia​-and​-pacific​-april​-2023 [Accessed
August 2023]
Demography – India…:
• https://www​.un​.org​/development​/desa​/dpad​/publication​/un​-desa​-policy​
-brief​-no​-153​-india​-overtakes​-china​-as​-the​-worlds​-most​-populous​-country/
[Accessed August 2023]
• https://news​.yahoo​.com​/japan​-pm​-warns​-country​-cease​-224757801​.html
[Accessed August 2023]

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

Climate – The global… https://public​.wmo​.int​/en​/media​/news​/copernicus​-confirms​

-july​-2023​-was​-hottest​-month​-ever​-recorded [Accessed August 2023]
Politics – Ex-President:
• https://edition​.cnn​.com​/2023​/05​/09​/politics​/e​-jean​-carroll​-trump​-lawsuit​
-battery​-defamation​-verdict​/index​.html [Accessed August 2023]
• https://www​.politico​.com​/interactives​/2023​/trump​-criminal​-investigations​
-cases​-tracker​-list/ [Accessed August 2023]
As William Schutz said … https://www​.azquotes​.com​/author​/19640​-William​_Schutz
[Accessed June 2023]
To quote the late… https://www​.brainyquote​.com​/quotes​/david​_bowie​_384309
[Accessed June 2023]

228
 Index

Note: page numbers in bold refer to diagrams, page numbers in italics refer to information contained
in tables.

4 Ps 193–4 Career 98, 98, 106–10, 125–6, 178, 200

6 Cs 97–126, 98, 174, 200 future-proofing 184–96, 201–2
profiles 189–90
accountants 129–30, 142 T-(and V-) shaped 185–8, 186, 201
Africa 16, 17, 19, 22 cars 9–10, 10, 54–5, 127, 132
age factors 38–9, 47–9 Cause 98, 98, 110–15, 125–6, 200
agile practice 82 change 9, 49, 51
Amazon 55, 116, 125, 160–1 pace of 1–2, 6–7, 9, 11–12, 14–25, 26–8,
Anthropocene 171 32–5, 127–8, 133–4, 140, 184, 188, 199
Apple 41, 53, 58, 66–7, 70–1 ChatGPT 133–9, 155–6, 188, 199
Apprenticeship Levy 106 child mortality rates 37–8
Artificial Intelligence (AI) 7–8, 13, 128–42, China 15, 23, 29–32, 37, 45, 47, 52–4, 57, 66,
129, 155–6, 160–1, 185, 201 70–1, 128, 173, 199
artist engineers 143 CHIPS & Science Act 52–3
ASEAN 16 chore work 58–60, 62, 64–6, 68, 72, 200
Asia 16, 24, 27, 30, 52, 198 CIA 159
assembly lines 62, 63 climate 22–3, 42–6, 50, 70, 158, 171–83, 199,
ATMs 132–3 201
auditors 129–30, 142 tipping points 44–5
automation 7–9, 69, 128–30, 142–3, 155–6 coachability 146, 147
autonomous vehicles 55, 127 cognitive diversity 158, 160–2
‘average’, end of 184–5, 187, 196 collaboration 82–3
Community 2, 98–105, 98, 101, 125–6, 165,
B2B 69 177, 200
Bank of England 8, 63 Company 98, 98, 115–19, 125–6, 200
banking 17, 21–2, 41, 132–3, 178–9, 199 company reach 65–7
Barclays 178–9 Compensation 97–100, 98, 117, 125–6, 177,
BBC 8, 40, 96, 99, 129–30, 159, 173 200
belonging 81, 100–5, 101, 163–5, 167–8, 170, competition 9–10, 51, 54–7, 184–5, 199
182 complexity 2, 17, 55
birth rates 35, 37–9 computing power 32–3
Bitcoin 22–3 contractors 65, 66
blockchain 22–3, 128 core work 56–60, 62, 65–6, 68, 72, 199–200
blue-collar workers 47, 63–4, 67, 74–5, cost-of-living crisis 63, 69
155 Costa Coffee 99
boundaries 77–8 Coursera 108, 189
BPO 60 covering letters 135, 138
brain 102, 104 COVID-19 1, 8, 12, 18, 45, 53–4, 63, 72–3,
brand reputation 172 89–90, 92, 95–6, 178, 200
brands, personal 192–6 creativity 140–4, 156, 163, 200–1
Brexit 48 cultural alignment 150–1, 151
Culture 98, 98, 120–6, 200
Canada 21, 37, 40 culture buddies 169
carbon 42–5, 70, 171–2, 174, 182 CVs 135, 138–9, 149, 193

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

deforestation 43, 171 Great Resignation 12, 26, 89, 200

democracy 24 Greece 32, 41
demography 18–19, 35–9, 48–9, 199
depth 56, 57, 59 health 3, 175, 178
development 106–9, 116 hiring 94, 96, 145–56
digitalization 34 and the 6 Cs 97–126, 98
diversity 10–11, 13, 158–70, 182, 201 and AI 160–1
DNA 33–4 and attitude 150–1, 151
and ChatGPT 138–9
e-commerce 34–5 and failure 146–9, 147
East, rise of the 15–16, 27–32, 198 hot-desking 81
economic centre 28–30, 28 Human Capital 10–11
EDI 100, 159 hybrid work 11, 66, 72, 74
education 175, 178–9 hygiene factors 97–8
efficiency 62, 65, 68, 172
electric vehicles 54–5, 132 I know, I need Post-it wall 109–10
electricity 22–3 IMF 8, 44, 171, 198
emerging markets 16, 27 immigration 88, 91–2
emissions 43–5, 171, 173–4 inclusion 163–5, 182
Emotional Intelligence 141, 144, 146, income 4–5, 5
147 India 15, 17, 29, 37, 54, 128, 199
employment, full 92, 94, 125 inductions 167–8
endorsements 194–5 industrial action 97, 130
ethics 138, 140 Industrial Revolution 27, 29, 62, 69
Eurozone crisis 26, 41 inflation 6, 26, 63
exoskeletons 130–2, 138 innovation 140, 141, 142, 153–4, 156, 158,
exports 30 160, 200–1
external environment 9–10, 13, 158, 171 frugal 17–18
see also climate mass 163
interconnectedness 15, 20–2, 40–2, 49, 51–3,
fashion industry 21, 54 60, 184, 199
fertility rate 19, 37 interest rates 63, 94
flexibility 11–12, 72–9 internal impacts 51, 72–86, 158
Fold-Illuminator 18 investment 63
Ford 54–5, 62, 63–4 Ireland 48
Foxconn 66, 70–1
France 30–1, 37, 38–9, 48 Japan 38, 41–2, 199
freelancing 65–6, 69, 72, 200 job advertisements 166–7
friendship 104–5 job descriptions 152–4
future, prediction 11–12, 197–8 job interviews 149, 154–5
job vacancies 63, 89–94, 90, 93, 125
gender issues 91, 159, 161, 175, 179 jobs
generalists 56–7, 61, 62 benefits of 118
Germany 30, 38, 39, 42–3 complexity 145
gig economy 66–9, 189, 191, 200 creative roles 128, 133
GlaxoSmithKline 57 failure rate 146–9, 147
Global Financial Crisis 2007-08 26 of the future 127–8
global warming 43–6, 172, 181, 199 impact of technology on 7–9, 128–44, 129,
globalization 20–2, 40–2, 46–7, 49, 52–5, 63, 155–6
69, 91, 184–5, 199 loss of 7–9, 125
Google 54–5, 107–8, 136, 167, 185 quitting 89, 91–2, 91, 95–8, 100–1, 109,
Great Migration 96, 144 116, 120, 137, 144
Great Moderation 26 repetitive 63–4, 112, 118, 142
Great Recession 1, 95 starting new 167–9

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 I ndex

JOLTS report 90–1 OECD 19, 39

JWST 18, 136 offices
design 81–6
knowledge 185, 186–7, 186, 203 green 83–4
knowledge workers 74, 76–7 purpose 72, 79–81, 200
offshoring 46–7, 52, 53–4
labour 90–5 oil 9, 20–1
demand 90–1 ONS 4–5, 74, 93, 93
division of 61–2 outsourcing 59–60, 59, 64, 66, 68–72
supply 91–5
see also workforce Paris agreement 43, 44, 171
language use 165–7 partnering companies 66, 70–2, 172–4, 182
learning, life-long 188–90 pensions 4–5, 5, 39
legislation 173 average size of 4, 4
life expectancy 3–4, 19, 20, 35, 37, 39 DB 4, 49
lighting 83 state 5, 47, 49
LinkedIn 135, 138, 193 performance 145–7, 147
listening skills 168–9 Pfizer 57
living wage 99, 177 piece work 69
local, the 176–9 platforms 34–5, 54, 64, 69, 108, 162
loneliness epidemic 104 politics 24, 46–50, 52–3, 199
Luddites 7, 128 population 18–19, 31, 199
growth 36–7, 36
M-PESA 17 see also demography
McDonald’s 70, 89 populism 26, 47–9
McKinsey 27–8, 31, 52, 96, 100, 112–13, positioning 193–4
145, 158–9, 165, 172 poverty 117, 175–7, 175
Macleod Report, The 3 power 185, 203
management/leadership skills 3, 70, predictability 74–6, 159–60
123–4, 141, 143–5, 156, 160, prediction 11–12, 197–8
200–1 present, being 168–9
manufacturing 40, 46–7, 52–4, 57, 61–3, Pret 99
70–1, 130–1, 135, 185 price 194
marketing mix 193–4 problem-solving 140–1, 160, 162–3
mastery, serial 187–8 product 193–4
meaning 110–15 productivity 103, 105, 113, 117, 145
megatrends 26–50 and automation 131, 143
mental health 3, 81, 104, 178 and offices 83–5
Microsoft 96, 136 and specialism 61–2
migration 39, 88, 91–2, 96–7, 125 promotion 194
Millennials 5–6, 174, 190 public speaking 103
minority groups 100, 101 purpose 56–8, 110–15, 199–200
Mitticool fridge 17
Moore’s Law 32–3, 134 qualifications 107–8
‘mos maiorum’ 47
motivation 146, 147 renewable energy 23, 42
reshoring 29
NASA 84, 114, 162–3 retirement 4–6
nature 83–4 age of 6, 39, 47
needs 102, 104, 119 early 4, 92, 189–90
net zero 45, 171, 174, 181 as unaffordable 5–6, 198
NHS 116, 173–4, 182 RLS 4–5, 5
Novartis 57 robots 7–9, 133, 135
nuclear power 41–2 Russo-Ukrainian War 52

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 The Wor ld of Wor k to 2030

sea level rise 44 trade, global 40

sense-making 142 training 106–8
September 11th attacks, 2001 1, 26, 159 travel 42
Shein 21, 54 trust 76, 77, 202
shift work 115–16 truth 138–9, 185, 202
SHRM 147–8
SIA 64–5 Uber 116, 161, 166
side-hustles 69, 128 UN 19, 36, 36, 38, 45
skills SDGs 157, 157, 175–9, 175, 181–2, 201
future 13, 127–56, 200–1 unemployment 92–5, 93
knowing which you want 106–7 unions 75, 130
shortages 10–11, 39, 88–9, 94–5, 144 urbanization 15–16, 27–32, 47, 49, 198
top 140–5, 141, 156
sleep 117, 178 values 120–1
smartphones 33, 34, 58, 67 ventilators 18
social exclusion 102–3 voting 47–8
social inequality 67
societal challenges 67, 69, 133 Walmart 116–17
space exploration 17, 18 Wazoku Crowd 162, 163
SpaceX 18 WEF 1, 88, 95, 140–1, 158, 165, 200
specialism 56–9, 61–6, 186–90, 186, 196, 200–2 well-being 117, 175, 178
spending, business 63 white-collar workers 47, 64, 74, 135, 155–6
Starbucks 75, 116 work
STEAM 143 duration 3–4, 6, 9, 39, 188–90, 198
STEM 88, 140, 143 nature 2, 7–8
stories 120–1, 194 psychological impact 2–3
strategy 51–60, 200 work ethic 76–7
Stress Institute 3 work sample tests 149, 154–5
support networks 195–6, 202 work stress 2–3
sustainability 13, 70, 157–83, 201 work-life balance 78–9
SVB 21–2, 199 workforce 60–72, 88–126
age 38
talent 88–126, 132 costs 63
scarcity of 94–5, 107–8, 115–17, 200 demands 10–11
and sustainability 174–5 distant 64
war for 149–50 diversity 158–70
taxi drivers 131–2 and the employee life cycle 70
technical alignment 150–1, 151 engagement 104–5, 180
technical competence 147, 147 gig workers 66–9, 189, 191, 200
technology 16–18, 32–3, 47, 49, 60, 63–4, 76, holistic 62–5, 191
184, 199, 201–2 in-house 70
adoption rates 35 needs 119
as democratizing 131–2 permanent 63–6, 69–70, 116–17
and diversity 161–2 retention 97–125, 98
as great accelerator 133–4 shortages 99
impact on jobs 128–44, 129, 155–6 shrinking 38
skills and 141–2 temporary/flexible 63–6, 72, 116–17
as work creator 132–3, 140 see also labour
temperament 147, 147 working conditions 97
TESLA 9–10, 10 working hours 74–6
Textio 166–7 World Bank 31, 128
Thermoplan 18 WTO 40
thinking skills 140–1
time 76 zero hours contracts 76

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