December 2023
Over the course of this year, we’ve hosted conversations with leading experts and thinkers to explore their perspectives on the future of work and consider the opportunities and challenges ahead for employers and their people as the world of work continues to evolve rapidly.
In this final episode of 2023, our podcast host, Lucy Lewis, Employment Partner at Lewis Silkin, reflects on the conversations she has had this year and draws together a range of insightful perspectives shared by her guests.
Lucy spotlights the key themes that emerged across her conversations - from the role of trust and employee voice in the workplace, to the four-day working week, the importance of organisational resilience, adapting to an ageing workforce, what the future of the platform economy looks like and the impact of automation and AI on jobs and workforce skills.
At the end of each discussion, we asked each of our guests to share their thoughts on what is missing from the current conversation on the future of work. What is not getting enough attention? What are we not talking enough about? Tune in to hear what they had to say!
In Conversation with… Reflections on 2023
Season 3: Episode 11
James Davies: I think sometimes there's too much of a short-termism in organisations and you know we all need to be preparing a more long-term approach to preparing for the future.
Lucy Lewis: Hello and welcome to the Future of Work Hub’s “In conversation with…” podcast. I'm Lucy Lewis, a Partner in Lewis Silkin's Employment Team, and for the past few years now I've had the pleasure of hosting conversations with a range of really interesting guests to explore their perspectives on the future of work, and what that means for employers and their people. As we approach the end of our 2023 podcast series, and as is now tradition, in this podcast, I'm going to be reflecting on the discussions I've had over the past year and revisiting some of my favourite parts, drawing out some of the key insights that our fantastic guests have shared across a range of topics.
It's been a fascinating year for the world of work. As the year has gone on, we've seen exciting opportunities emerging from advances in technology and fresh innovations in relation to new ways of working as organisations respond to evolving societal expectations and reconsider the role of work in their lives, but also what we expect from work and the organisation that we work for. But the world has also felt increasingly volatile and less certain. We've seen extreme climate events including record temperatures, droughts and devastating floods touching countries across the globe and that has had huge impacts on the communities within them. We have geo-political tensions increasing throughout the year with the war in Ukraine continuing and the conflict and associated humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza and Israel. High levels of inflation, a cost-of-living crisis in the UK and in many other countries and profound skill shortages have brought difficult, economic challenges and significant impacts on employers and the people that work for them. We've also seen a resurgence in organised labour activity and strike action in the UK, but also other jurisdictions like the US, and demographic shifts loom large as populations across many countries age. Employers are continuing to grapple with shifting generational attitudes and priorities which promise to remain a feature of the workplace in the years ahead. And last, but definitely not least, in the last year we saw generative AI hit the mainstream and technological advances continue to have a profound, but also disruptive, impact on the world of work and on jobs of the future.
And as I was preparing for this podcast and thinking back to the conversations I've had this year, it was interesting to reflect on the themes that have surfaced from conversations in 2021 and 2022, and how the emphasis on different aspects of the future of work has shifted over this time. As you'd imagine there was a significant post-pandemic focus on remote hybrid working, re-thinking physical workspaces and how the pandemic was shaping employee expectations and consumer trends. And as time has progressed, the focus has shifted to navigating emerging inequalities, whether driven by job role or sector, demographics or technology and obviously the broader focus on diversity, equity and inclusion in reshaping organisational culture. But across all the conversations, the challenges of navigating the impacts of technology on work and jobs, managing skill shortages and the paramount importance of trust in people's relationship with their employers have been common threads. And we've seen new areas emerge from our discussion this year. Those relate to the changing role of managers and leaders as they come under increasing pressure, the need for organisations to adapt a longer-term view in navigating current challenges and preparing for the future. And this shift is reflected in an increasing number of organisations moving to adopt working practices that go above and beyond what is required of them legally.
To get us started, I'm going to pick up one central theme that has continued to feature highly in the discussions I've had over the last three years and that's trust. I was really delighted to speak to Penelope Mantzaris, Senior Vice President of Edelman Data and Intelligence about this. Edelman has been publishing excellent data on trust for decades and we talked about their latest Trust Barometer. One striking finding from that report was that trusted organisations can be eight times more resilient than other organisations.
TRUST
Penelope Mantzaris: Trust is the foundation that allows an organisation to take responsible risk and to innovate and, if it makes mistakes, to rebound from them. So, in that way trust is a kind of insurance for a business, beyond, say, just its reputation, because reputation fades in importance if personal experience is discordant with that reputation, but trust is an individual belief and therefore the strongest and most entrenched anchor in the decision-making process.
Lucy Lewis: Interestingly, after we'd had the conversation Edelman published a special report on ‘Trust at Work’ and that confirmed that ‘my employer’ continues to be the most trusted institution by quite a significant margin. And while that presents a great opportunity for employers, the trust that employees place in their employer, particularly during challenging times, brings quite a heightened expectation and increased responsibility on employers. It was clear from my conversation with Penelope that trust is complicated. It's impacted by a range of factors such as workplace culture, brand values, corporate purpose, leadership and the way that people are managed. I thought it was really interesting when Penelope explained how, in times when difficult decisions need to be made, it's really vital to keep channels of communication open and tap into trusted voices at every level in an organisation. According to her the most crucial thing is to place trust in employees themselves.
Penelope Mantzaris: The most important way that leaders can build trust is by placing their trust in employees first. Simply put, to earn their trust, give them yours. Among the 71% who said they feel their CEO trusts them you can see really high employee trust. When people don’t feel their CEO trusts them, the picture changes drastically. They distrust the workplace, and they distrust management.
Lucy Lewis: The importance of trust emerged again when I spoke to Nita Clarke, OBE, Director of the Involvement and Participation Organisation.
Nita Clarke: Respecting the individual and what they can do goes to the heart of some of this, because if you just treat people as widgets and sort of disposable counters on a board, then you’re not going to get the best out of them, you’re not going to get engagement. You have to treat people, as serious stakeholders in your organisation, and you have to trust them and you have to respect them and do all of those things, which is where the broader employee engagement agenda of course comes in.
Lucy Lewis: This conversation touched on something that's been increasingly apparent since the pandemic. As businesses are increasingly managing hybrid workforces and coping with the impact of fast-paced technology changes, skills shortages, shifting expectations from employees, it's clearly a difficult time to be a leader or a manager and Nita picked up on the need for a significant shift in leadership styles.
LEADERSHIP STYLES
Nita Clarke: I do think, again it comes back to management and leadership styles. Those organisations that still believe that sort of, command and control and because I say so, because I’ve got the pips on the shoulder, that still effectively operate in that way, I think are going to lose out because there’s no question that people want respect and fairness, and to be listened to and to have their diverse needs thought about. I mean there’s no question that that operates in workplaces now in a way I genuinely don’t think it did a generation ago.
Lucy Lewis: Another of my guests Paul Miller, Chief Creative Officer and Founder of the Digital Workplace Group and co-author of ‘Nature of work: the New Story for a Living Age’, advocated for a leadership focus on core values of meaning, purpose, empowerment and agility, what he terms a model of servant leadership.
Paul Miller: And the idea of not espousing a version of leadership that is where all the answers are on you, but it is really about the enablement of people across your organisation.
Lucy Lewis: As businesses continue to engage in a period of conscious experimentation in response to the newfound flexibilities driven by the pandemic, it was really interesting to hear from Philip Ross, Founder and CEO of the UnGroup and Cordless Group, and Jeremy Myerson, Director of WORKTECH Academy. We spoke about their concept of ‘un-working’, a concept they explored in their book, ‘Un-Working: the Reinvention of the Modern Office’. As part of unlearning the habits and rituals that have defined our behaviour at work, and really challenging what we know about work and the workplace, one of the areas that Jeremy and Philip identified as ripe to change was the approach that we take to management. Philip explained how we can expect to shift to a more output focused management style.
Philip Ross: It’s interesting that we’re seeing the idea that watching the backs of people’s heads can no longer be the only way to manage, and I think leaders can respect and understand that. I think that you know what we’re finding is that there’s a kind of re-imagining and a kind of embracing paternalism. The idea that, actually, you need to be intentional. People need purpose, and therefore we're seeing organisations re-imagine why one comes to the workplace and what more one gets out of that commute and that commitment. So, leadership is less around presenteeism and much more about results and outputs and purpose.
Lucy Lewis: Jeremy picked up on the increasing challenges being faced by managers and how companies might be able to respond.
Jeremy Myerson: There was also a report called ‘The State of the Manager’ which said that you know being a leader right now is more challenging and less rewarding than ever before, and more exhausting. So, what are we going to do about it? And I think that we need to move away to a much more fluid organisational structure and there are companies who are piloting this. They’re not thinking in terms of hierarchy or the stratification of the physical workplace as a reflection of the management structures, but they’re looking at a more fluid work environment that is governed by a more self-governing form of practices.
Lucy Lewis: So, leadership and management styles are changing, and this change has come hand in hand with increasing pressure on employers to rethink their culture and employee value proposition to attract and retain the best people. When I spoke to my fellow partner at Lewis Silkin, James Davies, he explained why he thinks that employers will need to create what he calls ‘PREFAB’ jobs to encourage employee commitment and loyalty.
NEW WAYS OF WORKING AND EVOLVING ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE
James Davies: I think employers are going to need to consider how to sort of encourage employee autonomy and flexibility through work design and organisational culture. I think that employers are going to have to work harder to identify how best to connect organisational and employee sense of purpose, building trust, a sense of belonging and responding to the employee activism brand values. I think this all leads to the sort of creation of what I call ‘PREFAB’ jobs: purpose, fair and transparent reward, engagement, flexibility, autonomy and a sense of belonging.
Lucy Lewis: James's view picks up on the increasing need for employers to adapt their organisational cultures to new ways of working, something Philip and Jeremy also highlighted in our discussion about the role of the physical workplace and how that reinforces and supports organisational culture. They described seeing a move away from the idea of modern efficiency, rectangular spaces in box-like buildings, and towards the use of the circle, of curvilinear spaces which allow for more democratic exchange of ideas and views. They also noted how the office experience has become particularly important to organisational cultures as many employers seek to magnetise rather than mandate employees into the office. In Jeremy's view, the office is no longer a place or even a process, it's an experience and I thought he summed that up perfectly when he said:
Jeremy Myerson: There's going to be experience master planning. There’s going to be experience mapping. We're going to take the spatial techniques of retail and hospitality, and already people are saying that the most important document in designing office space is not going to be the space plan, but it's going to be the storyboard. Invented nearly 100 years ago by Walt Disney, this shows animation, this shows the movement of characters through a series of spaces, and this is very important. The idea of storyboarding the future of the office is very different from space planning, which is sitting people down at desks. It's a more dynamic form of design, but it does reflect what we're going to see in the future.
Lucy Lewis: It's undeniable that new ways of working are going to have a significant impact on the world of work for years to come. When I spoke to two other colleagues at Lewis Silkin, Employment partners Tarun Tawakley and Colin Leckey, they highlighted how the increasing desire for flexibility comes from both employers and employees.
Tarun Tawakley: There’s been a real trend towards wanting more flexibility and actually this is on both sides, both on the individual side on a personal level, but also on the side of organisational agility. The concept of the side hustle has grown and pursuing diverse interests and income streams is very much the norm.
Lucy Lewis: What could be more ‘of the moment’ when talking about flexibility than the idea of moving to a four-day working week, something that’s really gained momentum over the last year. It was really fascinating to speak with Joe Ryle, Director of the Four-Day Week Campaign, about the results of the UK’s four-day week trial. The trial was hailed as a breakthrough moment for the move towards a four-day week and the vast majority of companies, about 95%, choosing to continue with a four-day week following the end of the trial. Joe and I discussed how the four-day week can be part of a much wider cultural change in an organisation, allowing employees to improve their work-life balance and distribute caring responsibilities more evenly between men and women, as well as having an impact at a societal level when it comes to childcare and when it comes to elder care. And we went on to consider the key learnings from the trial and looked at some of the most common concerns held by employers when considering a move to the four-day week. He gave some really helpful practical tips for organisations looking to undertake a trial and reflected on what made those trials more likely to succeed.
Joe Ryle: One of the more interesting lessons for us was that companies that used a bottom up approach, so very much empowering staff to be very involved in the delivery of it, the smoothness of the transition and the overall impact tended to work a lot better than the top down implementation where it’s very manager-led, staff being directed and told what to do. It was kind of a bottom up, trusting your staff you know, because ultimately, staff know their jobs better than anyone else and so trusting them in the process to look at concerns and hopes and fears that come up beforehand, those companies did best.
Lucy Lewis: And there it is again: the important role of trust. Joe and I went on to discuss how the government could play an important role in making the four-day week a reality.
Joe Ryle: We do think there’s a role for government to play in this, if we’re talking about an economy-wide transition to a four-day working week, which we do think is possible by the end of this decade, then we need to have government involved in that and the government coordinating this across the different sectors. We need industry leaders, business leaders, trade union leaders working with the government to make this a reality because, as we’ve already been saying in this conversation, there’s lots of different ways of implementing it. It’s going to look quite different in different sectors, but without any overall coordination, it’s all going to get quite messy. So, we do think there’s a role to play in that and there are some key bits of legislation the government could introduce now. For example, a kind of trial in the public sector, it could also give workers the right to demand a four-day/32-hour working week though the flexible working legislation, workers currently don’t have that. In the longer term, there could be laws around reducing the maximum working week to 32 hours to enable us to have that period, we’d suggest something like five years, to make the transition.
THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT AND FUTURE REGULATION
Lucy Lewis: James picked up on the role of government intervention and regulation when I spoke to him about his new report on the ‘Future of Jobs in 2050’, and the possibility that we might find ourselves in a position where there are too few jobs for the number of workers.
James Davies: I do think though, whatever steps we take to prepare for the changing world of work in the future, the potential of having too few jobs, and the potential of not having the skills for the jobs that are there, that we do need to start thinking about how we manage society with insufficient work to go round, and whether that's the shorter working week that I've talked about, mentioned earlier. It might also mean that we are re-visiting concepts like the universal basic income. We need to be thinking about and preparing for the world ahead. Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.
Lucy Lewis: Of course, the responsibility to act to address emerging challenges is not just on government, it's also the case that employers can and actually in fact are taking the initiative, for example, introducing the four-day week without waiting for legislation. The idea of employers taking the lead also came up when I spoke to my fellow partners Colin and Tarun about the future of the platform economy. They explained that, while the approach to regulating platforms varied between countries, with some governments taking a light touch approach and others taking a more draconian approach, some employers are just choosing to get ahead of the regulation when driving innovative working models.
Colin Leckey: Well, of course, platforms are regulated by the environments within which they operate, they have to comply with applicable laws, so that's not something that can be avoided or ignored. But at the same time, and again Tarun has touched on this, there's the opportunity to be ahead of the regulators and not wait for the regulation to catch up with you, but be the ones who are innovating and taking the lead when it comes to developing the models that are most attractive for the people who want to work with you, for putting in place the insurances, the benefits, the sort of social protections that the people that you are engaging with, going back to the previous question, the way in which different platforms are doing that, are calling for because you are seeing that visibly within your organisations, you know that’s really the way to do it.
Lucy Lewis: The scope for businesses to go above and beyond what is required of them legally enables them to respond to shifting expectations about work, and also seek out competitive advantage. This is something that's come up many times during my discussions this year, and I found Penelope's insights on this were particularly interesting.
GROWING EXPECTATIONS ON EMPLOYERS
Penelope Mantzaris: People also overwhelmingly want more engagement from business on a range of societal issues which is where the opportunity is. People are six times more likely to say that business isn’t doing enough on climate change or inequality compared to doing enough. What that tells us is that there is a mandate for business in general to do more.
Lucy Lewis: We've been seeing for quite a few years now that employees’ and consumer expectations of business and work itself are shifting. When James and I spoke, we reflected on how the core liberal progressive international values of younger generations, including concerns around sustainability and climate change, diversity and equality, will remain with these generations as they continue to become increasingly influential in the workplace. There are no shortage of examples demonstrating employers increasing willingness to include social and political issues as part of their values proposition. We also discussed how identity politics are increasingly straying into the workplace and how these divisions are seemingly coupled with a decreased tolerance of other people's views, and that's creating friction in the workplace and posing a challenge for employers. In this context, it’s no surprise that DE&I was a significant focus of our discussions this year, and that focus will no doubt continue for the foreseeable future. I thought that Philip's take on this was very interesting.
DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION
Philip Ross: Real-time real estate is now with us, and the data that that creates allows us to shape experience, but also make more informed decisions. I think also we’re seeing, as you mentioned, diversity, people embrace true diversity and inclusion. We had before a very homogeneous workplace; you know, one size fits all. I think now with choice and variety, we can really truly celebrate difference. That to me is the missing ingredient, a workplace that's no longer homogeneous but truly heterogeneous and that provides choice and variety.
Lucy Lewis: There's no doubt that organisations are facing a complex and challenging environment, but the focus on DE&I alongside demographic shifts impacting the workforce are creating opportunities too. Like lots of countries around the world, the UK's population is ageing and to consider the opportunities this presents for employers, I spoke to Shruti Singh, who is the Senior Economist focusing on ageing and employment policy at the OECD, and it was a really interesting discussion. We explored the potential benefits of employing a multigenerational workforce and considered a range of practical steps that employers could take to support older workers. Shruti talks about the need for employers to move away from focusing on what certain generations might want and focus instead on life stages and in supporting the whole life cycle at work.
Shruti Singh: There are lots of myths and perceptions around workers of different ages, especially around what they want when it comes to the workplace or their attitudes in the job market, but our work has shown more similarities than differences that are often reported in the media. So, among other things, all workers equally value a job that is secure for instance, meaningful, a job that pays well and offers flexibility to help workers better combine their work, personal and family obligations. But really beyond the average, there is substantial individual variation in the support that is needed within age groups and at different life stages. So, for instance, younger individuals also have chronic issues and therefore employers who can successfully combine the talents and diverse outlooks of their employees, whatever their age, generally find that their workforce is enriched and more productive as a result.
Lucy Lewis: Shruti shared some examples of the practical ways in which employers were supporting multigenerational workforces such as offering comprehensive and integrated workplace health programs that focus on changing the overall culture of the organisation. In her view, the approach had to be integrated and had to take into account job quality, health and flexibility components of the workplace and embed that right into the company culture. She also emphasised the vital role that recruitment could play.
Shruti Singh: Old-fashioned and discriminatory attitudes in recruitment really needs to be thrown out of the window. They really make no business sense. If we discriminate in hiring, whether that's older workers or younger individuals, this ultimately disadvantages employers who fail to draw on the experience and abilities of a significant talent pool and really is an unfair practice and damages employment opportunities for individuals just because of their age, at all ages.
Lucy Lewis: James agreed with this when we were discussing the significant challenge at the moment for many employers to attract and retain the best people. He shared his thoughts on how this might necessitate shifts in recruitment practices going forward.
James Davies: I think employers need, for starters, to be looking at their recruitment and to be looking outside their traditional pools geographically and demographically, and review how they select people. I think people are going to need more to move away from selection based on experience and qualifications, and I think the role of predictive recruitment where you are seeking to identify recruits based on skills and potentials will become increasingly important.
Lucy Lewis: I picked up on exactly this when I spoke to Nimmi Patel, Head of Skills, Talent and Diversity at techUK, and Advisory Board Member to the Digital Futures at Work Research Centre. We explored the DE&I risks associated with AI and the need to take action to mitigate algorithmic biases when leaning on AI to inform for example, decision making, particularly decision making around recruitment. And, of course, I couldn't speak to Nimmi without asking her view on the opportunities and challenges that we could face when developing the metaverse.
IMPACT OF AI AND AUTOMATION ON JOBS AND SKILLS
Nimmi Patel: It’s interesting because now that generation is having more of a say in its creation, so we can really build a world on the internet, through the metaverse, to experience Web 3.0. That includes both positives and negatives; we want to make sure we get rid of all of societal biases so, for instance, racism, sexism within these worlds and we want to make sure that the internet and the metaverse are better reflections of humanity.
Lucy Lewis: Nimmi went on to highlight insights from McKinsey which found that women were more likely than men to have their jobs partially automated, leaving room for women to work alongside machines. I thought this was really interesting and agree with Nimmi's assessment that more needs to be done to explore the impact of automation on women. We also explored the impact of automation and AI on jobs more broadly, something that has continued to dominate the headlines this year. The launch of ChatGPT towards the end of last year really ignited the debate. We know at a simple level, that technology can eliminate routine jobs and routine tasks, but we also know it can create new roles and it can improve the quality of existing jobs.
Nimmi Patel: I think people have legitimate concerns about what the impact will be on those industries that are disrupted, and how we implement these new technologies as they become more widespread and how the nature of work will change and the fact that new industries and roles will be created. It’s really important for us to explore how we can take advantage of these opportunities and prepare the workforce of today and tomorrow to adapt to these changes. I think it’s one of the most crucial policy discussions facing us today.
Lucy Lewis: Later on in my conversation with Nimmi we touched on how the impact of technology will be felt in the world of work is going to be dependent on the actions of government and of employers and, of course, of employees and workers. I picked up on this with James when I spoke to him again to discuss his new report for the Future of Work Hub – the need for government, employers and individuals to take action to meet the challenges in the longer term. In his report, ‘The Future of Work in 2050’, James explains that, whilst it's always difficult making predictions that far in the future, he thinks that the combination of emerging technologies and AI, together with other interconnected drivers of change such as sustainability, demographic, social change, globalisation; those things mean that there is a significant risk that the future of work could be characterised by too few jobs for the number of workers. However, the resulting high levels of unemployment are likely to be coupled with continuing skill shortages, where there are then too few workers with the skills needed for the occupations of tomorrow and according to James, the skills required for the jobs of tomorrow are going to be very different from the skills of today and employers, policymakers, individuals all need to take steps to prepare for that.
James Davies: I think my position would be there is a significant risk that there will be too few jobs, and that we need to start preparing for that and that is both preparing to mitigate the drivers that will lead to the potential for too few jobs, but also ensuring that we have, as we have said before, the skills for those jobs that exist. It's going to be preparing for the jobs of tomorrow, so that we do have the skills to do those jobs that are going to be critical. And I think that one area in which the UK has fallen short recently is skills. Now, that’s got to change and got to change quickly if we are going to be in a position where we have people with the skills equipped for the jobs of tomorrow.
Lucy Lewis: This need for active participation in building the future of work was also picked up in my conversation with Paul, who called on organisations to take a longer-term view when planning their strategies.
RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS AND LONGER-TERM THINKING
Paul Miller: I think we live in a world with a lack of vision. If you look at the organisations, they tend to have a two- or three-year perspective, but thinking in a clearer way about, what do you want it to be like to work here in 2035/2040? What's the vision for the organisation? When BMW celebrated its 100th anniversary, they set up a project called ‘The Next 100 Years’ and they got younger people in the company just to kind of play and imagine. I think one of the things by having articulated visions of a more distant future gives people hope that we're actually going to get there.
Lucy Lewis: So, we've got broad agreement that there's sometimes too much short-termism in organisational planning and that a longer-term approach is needed to prepare for the future. So, to see if we can help with that, we asked each of our podcast guests this year to give their take on what they think is missing from the current conversation in the future of work. What are the big issues that we should be considering but we're not talking enough about at the moment? And here's what some of them told us.
James Davies: First there's climate change. This seems to have slipped down the agenda a little over the last year with the pressures that everyone is facing, arising from the cost-of-living crisis, but I suspect the future is going to see the climate emergency re-emerge as perhaps the most significant driver of change. I suspect that we'll see workplace decisions being taken always with regard to the environmental impact and to an extent we don't see today.
Jeremy Myerson: I think the whole issue around inclusion and diversity is coming up the agenda but rather slowly. There's a wonderful definition of diversity as, you know, counting the people and inclusion about making people count, and I think we're doing better on diversity, but we've got to make the people count.
Joe Ryle: I want to see more attention on the kind of smartphone addiction and overuse and the way work drives that. Without any kind of thought or legislation, almost overnight really, or over a period of a year or two, kind of everyone has a smartphone which has their emails on it, and it means that the boundaries between work and the rest of our lives is very blurred and so I do think there should be more of a spotlight on that.
Nimmi Patel: I think what’s left out sometimes from the conversation is how new technologies can impact segments of people. So, how are these technologies going to impact those who, for instance, aren’t digitally connected or don’t have connectivity, such as 4G or 5G, or live in places where those services are unavailable, for instance? I’m really all about making sure that we include people in that conversation as we have conversations about growth and progression, because we don’t want to leave anyone behind.
Tarun Tawakley: I'm going to flag the potential impact of the metaverse, and this interesting concept that I think is going to start to become more and more in the public consciousness of the difference between virtual and hybrid worlds in what the future of work might look like.
Paul Miller: And my other thought, which is more of a one for us to think about almost as a society is that we see that technology will be replacing jobs but what about the idea of a tax on technology? An AI tax? What about a tax on the technology on the tax that replaces jobs? Because the money has got to come from somewhere and just because this is a difficult problem to solve it doesn’t mean it’s one that can’t be solved. In fact, Bill Gates was the person who started talking about a ‘robot tax’ five or six years ago.
Lucy Lewis: So, there you have it. A range of really interesting insights to help us steer a path through very uncertain, but also really exciting, times. This year, in particular, we've seen how the trust that employees and consumers are placing in businesses mean that there is a growing mandate and expectation for employers to do more. There are significant opportunities to evolve culture, organisational purpose and the working experience to attract and retain the best people and to drive forward innovation and business outcomes. As emerging technologies, such as generative AI, continue to promise significant disruption, the central role of leadership and managers in navigating this disruption is becoming increasingly clear.
Whilst we can't predict what the future will hold, these discussions have highlighted that it is more important than ever for organisations to adopt a longer-term view. Here at the Future of Work Hub that's what we hope to help you do. We want to help you see ahead. We want to share a wide range of insights and perspectives on the future of work to help you with that planning. So do have a look at the materials on our Hub website, listen to our podcasts. Keep an eye out for our next report in January in which we're going to be spotlighting our thoughts and those of a range of experts on the key issues and trends for organisations to consider and prepare for in the coming year, and beyond.
So, on that note, a really big thank you to all our wonderful guest speakers who appeared on the 2023 series, and thank you to all of you, our listeners, for your support. The Future of Work Hub podcast series will be back 2024, bringing you more insights and perspectives on the future of work. Thank you.