10 – 13 August 2021 Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre

FUTURE-THINKING IN 2019: WHAT WE NOW KNOW (PART ONE)

Written by Sebastian Pesenti Friday 29 May 2020

It’s a heavy ask predicting the future. It doesn’t involve crystal balls, or magic cards; It’s about finding past trends that informed our present, and following that trendline into possible futures.

When 2020 began, we were on track for many of those trendlines: 2020 was going to be another year just like the last – with the possibility of a downturn – and the hot topics on everyone’s minds was organisational culture, the future of work, diversity and inclusion and automation.

How relevant are these topics now as we head into a post-COVID-19 world?

Let’s look back at Convention 2019 and see what the Future Thinkers predicted was to come – and are these topics still relevant today?

Here’s the top 10 workplace trends (so far) of 2020.

1 / Flexible working is now a must have-for almost all organisations– and productivity remained the same, if not improved. We had seen the stats, we had been shown the profitability of flexible working arrangements; and yet, when COVID-19 forced many workplaces to expand their working from home arrangements company-wide, they were left without enough infrastructure to support it.

Wade Fuller, a speaker during the Public Sector Conference in 2019, said in his presentation about human-centric design, “We know what we have to do. But we nevertheless have trouble doing it.” He was speaking about systems that we know will improve our efficiency – flexible working as an example – and yet inertia continues to hold us back.

We knew flexible working was important for so many reasons including employee wellbeing, organisational sustainability and productivity: and yet, when the virus forced us into our homes, we were so ill-prepared for it we will likely be feeling the aftereffects for years to come.

1# A H R I N CA H R I . C O M . A U / C O N V E N T I O N

2 / People have always been the backbone of their organisation. Now it’s incredibly obvious.

David Thodey, keynote speaker for 2019’s Public Sector Conference, said during his session that “the public sector is nothing more than people. And great people give great service.” This could not be more obvious now, and especially true not just of the public sector, but all organisations in general.

Renowned professor Stewart Friedman was interviewed us after his presentation during Convention 2019, and was asked ‘if you could change one thing about how all the big businesses in the world are run, what would it be?’

His answer is spine-chillingly relevant: “That’s a good question: I want organisations to take seriously that their people are full human beings that have a wide-range of interests and talents and passions, and that its in everyone’s interests to take all of those seriously, and invest in them – and to honour them.”

We’re in the midst of seeing the importance of people not just as ‘staff’ but as ‘contributors’, with the work persona and the personal persona being merged. 78% of us spend more time

at work than at home with friends and family, according to Jay Munro from Indeed during his Convention 2019 presentation: it’s likely this stat is much more blurred than before.

2# A H R I N CA H R I . C O M . A U / C O N V E N T I O N

3 / Mental wellbeing is just as important as physical wellbeing.

During the Public Sector Conference in 2019, Rachael Jackson CPHR from the Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation and Science shared a startling statistic: one in five people aged 16-85 will have lived experience with mental illness in their lifetime.

With the now-understood relationship between isolation and mental illness, it’s highly likely this number will have jumped up tremendously – moreso, we understand the correlation between mental wellbeing and psychological safety. Keynote speaker and psychologist Susan David importantly spoke about this topic: “When we have compassion, it creates psychological safety… this is the space in which people are able to be more honest with themselves.”

During their session at Convention 2019, Dr. Peggy Kern and Beck Melville, co-founder of the Wellbeing Lab, discussed the 3 Fs – fruit, fitness and flu shots – as the ancient ‘makings of a comprehensive workplace strategy’ that no longer worked in the modern age: organisations had to delve much deeper than this.

Importantly, they touched on the subject that surviving is not thriving. In fact, the lack of a negative is not the presence of a positive – something we are now applying in our day-to-day work lives as we battle a constant state of anxiousness during a volatile time.

"I want organisations

to take seriously that

their people are full

human beings... and

invest in them, and

to honour them."

10 – 13 August 2021

4 / Human interaction and connectedness is more important than we ever imagined, and employee engagement is crucial for our organisations to thrive in a crisis.

An entire session was devoted to this very concept back in Convention 2019: Dr. Dimitria Groutsis and Rhonda Brighton-Hall FCPHR spoke about ‘belongingness’, drawing on two years’ of investigation into practice. It turns out belonging is about taking the concept of inclusion and going one step further: viewing it from ‘the external’. Culture, contribution and connection were the key to employee engagement, not just the rewards and remuneration program, or competitive score metrics.

We’re still coming to grips with what employee engagement will look like in the future. But it’s very clear it will be very different to the past, and perhaps taking Dimitria and Rhonda’s research into account will help.

3# A H R I N CA H R I . C O M . A U / C O N V E N T I O N

5 / We had to rethink what was ‘essential’, and it is up to our leaders to guide that.

For this, we go back to Wharton Professor Stew Friedman and his ‘Work/Life Integration’ session during Convention 2019. Stew pointed out that work-life balance is bull&*$@ - we should be striving for work-life harmony instead, where our work is as meaningful as our interactions in our ‘life’.

With our work-life lines blurred, we started to rethink what was ‘essential’. What ‘matters’ is very different, yet meaningful work is still on-trend. Going back slightly to the employee engagement piece, Stew pointed out that true leadership was the capacity to motivate people towards goals that matter – in this case, their very survival. “Leadership can’t be just about work,” he said, “It has to be about life.”

As a future-thinker, Stew said during his presentation that the “world is different now, and it requires a different way of thinking about leadership.” No truer words have been spoken about the current situation either.

We’ll continue looking at the next 5 trends of 2020 - and who predicted them - in the next part, coming soon!

10 – 13 August 2021

Feeling inspired? Discover what learnings

await at Convention 2021 ahri.com.au/convention

"The world is different now,

and it requires a different way

of thinking about leadership.”