Are you leaving employees better off or burned out?

Steph: Okay, I’ll try and ground us then in this idea of human sustainability. You know, in recent years there’s been an increasing focus on wellbeing and COVID was definitely an accelerator of that.

And I think the thing that’s really fascinating right now is that human sustainability is much more about something broader and more long term. It’s really about autonomy, growth, and employability. I absolutely love this topic because for me, human sustainability is so fundamental to making sure that every time we have an experience with an employee, whether that lasts for a year or decade or even longer, that they’re feeling that they’re being left better all of the time now.

The thing that’s fascinating in the research that we did is that only 43% of employees feel their organization have left them better off than when they started. And I find that absolutely staggering ’cause I think it, it just goes to the heart of what we’re trying to solve for in human sustainability.

And it’s not good enough. In my opinion.

Rick: Yeah. And again, this is the second time in this conversation that you’ve just shocked me because how on earth could organizations that are designed to drive continuous improvement have people walking away from that experience going, yeah, I might be worse off than I came in.

That’s a tough one. Obviously, there’s not a focus on sustainability at all in that environment.

Steph: It’s roughly half of workers, right? So, it leads us to, I think, really examine that really deeply held value of, you know, here for good, here for making a difference in the lives of the people that we touch in our employees, you know, in our consumers, in our customers.

All of those things are just so important, but it’s similar to that previous point where the thing that’s also disrupting the space is of course AI and it’s another turn of the screw, uh, really because digital has been disrupting the, uh, experience of workers automation and now we’re in the age of AI.

That too is also creating a disrupt in terms of that sustainability, quite literally, of humans and people are nervous. People are definitely scared and wondering what it will mean for them.

Rick: Wow. So how do we begin, Abi to build human sustainability into our fabric so that we don’t end up in the type of situation that Steph was just describing?

Abi: Mm, yes. Yeah, no, and I guess the thing is we can’t predict the future, and we’re not used to this speed of pace. You know, with AI. I think it’s akin to, I guess when we got the internet, when we got emails, you know, in the workplace with when we got calculators. It’s technology helping our lives. There is that moment where you go, you know, when will the robot take my job?

The World Economic Forum reported some statistics just in January where they suspect that 85 million jobs could be displaced by the end of 2025 due to AI. But on the flip side of that, the good news at 97 million jobs might be created because of AI. So, I think it talks to the nature of work changing.

I think it’s about working out how can we work alongside the bots? How can we get the bots to help us?

Rick: Yeah, so help me think about what else our listeners, what actions they could be taken. Again, whether it’s enterprise wide or even within my team and who I work in day in and day out to help create a.

More focused organization when it comes to human sustainability.

Steph: Yeah, well, I mean, this is like my favorite topic, so I should get onto this. Like, I’m just so passionate about technological advances like this, and I love the age that we’re living in, and I think it’s really about how do we enable this?

To be one of the most spectacular periods in human growth that we could possibly imagine. And that really excites me. So I think, for example, if I think about, you know, picture yourself as a leader operating in a business today. Great news is that you have content help now, right? So that’s helpful. And that should take some things away from the burden of leading people and the challenges of that and instead focus on the wonderful opportunity.

And that means, you know, creating community in the workplace so people feel they belong, helping individuals grow and having more time to apprentice them. Creating experiences in the work that. So memorable and special that you become the place that people wanna be. I think there’s some amazing things that can be done in terms of your personal leadership and refocusing your attention.

And it does require conscious refocus because like most things, it’s a change in routine and discipline. I think the other thing that really excites me about this is the ability for the organizations who are brave to start to have really proactive talent conversations. How is our workforce and the shape of our workforce changing as a result of the advent of AI and HR really need to be leading on that conversation.

I know we’re a little scared and we might get disrupted too, but we have the ability to be really transparent with people and to start to look at re-skilling people in proactive ways. In the banking industry. It happened probably about 10 years ago. Branches were shutting everywhere and we were moving to digital and there was this real question of whose responsibility is it to re-skill?

Well, that’s not really coming out as loudly now, but. The beauty is that AI will disrupt us, but with fantastic tools like conversation tools for AI, we will be able to re-skill people in the flow of work. We’re just transparent about how is this changing? How will you be impacted? How do we keep you growing?

How do we keep you employed? How do we bring forward your beautiful human skills to sit alongside these incredible technology capabilities we now have.

Rick: Ah. So now my worlds are colliding. I’ve got trend one, I’ve got trend two. The thing that I often say about AI is we have to focus on our leadership and culture ’cause tools are gonna change faster than we can deploy them. And I think you’re saying something relatively similar. And so how am I transparent? How am I building trust when I don’t know? So, you know, as we talk about the sustainability and building trust kind of in the same breath, how does that work in this AI specific case?

Steph: I guess, you know, like most change, we have to start with ourselves, right? What’s my readiness for it? How do I feel about it? Am I looking to ride this thing out or am I gonna get out there in the front of it and get curious and start experimenting? Okay, so none of us are perfect in this and none of us.

Know all the answers, but I think it does start with experimentation and I think it starts with partnering up and, you know, challenging into our people functions to help us to get there. You know, this could sit in no person’s land in an organization unless, you know, it’s really claimed by the leaders and by our executives and our HR functions and everyone, you know, the beauty of AI is at everyone’s fingertips to, to get going, start experimenting.

Call a friend. What do you think, Abi? What do you reckon?

Abi: I totally agree. At BTS, we talk about, you know, executing strategy is about alignment, mindset and capability, and that relates to AI, you know, like how aligned are you as an organization towards. AI and new technologies, I guess, because it’s not just AI that will have an impact.

What mindsets do you as a leader have? What do your team members have? What’s the organizational mindset and then what skills do people have around AI? Internally at VTF, we’ve got stories of partners who are being apprenticed and mentored by very young talent who have extreme expertise in AI. Also as well, major upskilling programs so that we know how to better utilize AI in our work.

So, I think leadership does become more of a partnership model overall. So it’s okay for the leaders not to have all of the answers. Um, you know, you problem solve, and you work through it as a team and, and as an organization. So, I wonder that’s a little bit of a shift perhaps in how we might work going forward.

Rick: That’s great. That’s great advice. So again, I kind of want to continue down this road of tying these two trends together, so to speak. I also sit here and think, alright, most leaders, most organizations, hopefully all, but I can’t say all are going, you know what? We don’t really care if our employees trust us.

We don’t really care if they feel like talent development’s a black box. What we really want to do is build a completely unsustainable organization where people feel like they’re being run into the dirt. If no one wants to do that, I’m always curious as to, you know, what your research might say of the well-intentioned folks that are doing anyway.

How are organizations breaking trust? How are organizations potentially making choices that. Aren’t promoting human sustainability but instead detracting from it. So, what’s the shadow side, so to speak, of what we’ve been talking about right now?

Steph: Look, I think the thing that organizations are doing that breaks trust, that I think we need to get really honest about is where we, as the owners, founders, operators, executives, whatever, in an organization, are not doing the hard yards to really define what we mean.

In a transparent and explainable way. So, it’s my opinion that any policy, any approach to talent, any approach to, you know, things like the working from home and all that stuff, it needs to be simple, clear, and transparent and explainable and. That is a responsibility we all have to employees. So how is it we can go from highly productive workforces during COVID when they worked from home to now an assumption that you are more productive if you’re in the office.

You know, we need to be evidence-based. We need to be clear and transparent about why we know that is better. After COVID, there was a lot of, uh, studies and questions done about how do you define productivity and white collar workers, right? Knowledge workers, easy and blue collar, but not so much in white.

Well, that’s never really been answered very clearly. And still we persist with policy changes that are confirmed on a hunch. Right. Same with hiring, same with succession, same with high potential, same with promotions. And I think we’ve all gotta do the hard yards to make sure it’s clear, transparent, explainable, and if it is great, go for it.

Abi: Yeah. So, if a leader can understand. Each member on their team, if they know what motivates that individual, if they know their preferences are ways of working, then you know, you obviously gotta make sure that the processes are, are fair and equal for all, but being able to tailor communication, tailor ways of working to that individual to get the best out of each individual.

There’s something in that and I wonder whether during COVID. We were more focused on individual differences and the needs of each person in our team. And now we’ve just gone back to this sort of whole of organization cohort level approach.

Rick: And that’s actually very interesting observation that we were, so again, everything was so wellbeing focused and so individualized.

We possibly, like I was saying earlier, possibly have swung too far back the other way. Well, I want to thank you so much for spending this time with me today, and I also want to thank you for doing this great research and narrowing it down to two things that we go do. So many times, everything’s over complicated.

So very, very much appreciated both your time and your thinking, and I’m sure we’ll have you back again soon.

Abi: Thank you for having us, Rick.

Steph: Appreciate it.

Rick: Thanks for joining me today. It’s always a pleasure to bring to you are fearless. Thinkers. If you’d like to stay up to date, please subscribe. Bios for our guests and links to relevant content are always listed in the show notes.

If you’d like to get in touch, please visit us at bts.com and thanks so much for listening.