Speculating about the future of work is a very popular past time at the moment. This should be no surprise considering the disruptive times we are living through. However I find it very frustrating that there is a distinct lack of sensible debate and discussion about the actual implications of these changes.
My guest this week is Kevin Wheeler. Kevin is a Silicon Valley based futurist with a global outlook who specializes in the future of work and talent. We were both contributors to the same book on the Future of Business last year and I have a lot of respect for Kevin’s work and views.
In the interview we discuss what the future of work is likely to look like in the short, medium and long term. Topics we cover include:
• The debate round the rise of the contingent workforce
• The growth of generalists
• Jobs we currently take for granted which will disappear or shrink in volume with the growth of automation.
• The future role of humans at work
• The importance of creativity in the future workforce
Kevin also shares his opinion on the future of HR and identifies what he sees as the most importantly technology trend for the future of recruitment.
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Broadbean, a smart, innovative global recruitment technology business, which helps recruiters to reach candidates in a fast, effective and efficient way. I recently spoke with their client James Purvis, Head of Talent Acquisition at cern, to find out what he loves about Broadbean. What I love about Broadbean is the ability to take decisions based on data. So instead of having to believe what the vendors provide you in terms of their information of how many candidates they’re going to bring to you, you can really use the metrics of the tool to understand how many of the clicks turn into applications, how many of those applicants turn into interviews, and how many become higher. So it’s all about evaluating the quality and not just the quantity. To find out more, go to www.broadbean.com.
Matt Alder [00:01:05]:
This is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 41 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Talking and speculating about the future of work is a popular activity at the moment. However, there’s a definite lack of sensible debate around the implications of the emerging trends we are seeing. In an attempt to put this right, I’ve invited Kevin Wheeler to be my guest this week. Kevin is a Silicon Valley based futurist with a global client base. Keep listening to hear his views on the future of work, the future of HR, and the future of recruitment. Hello Kevin, and welcome to the podcast.
Kevin Wheeler [00:01:41]:
Hi Matt, Good morning, How are you?
Matt Alder [00:01:44]:
Good morning. I’m very good, thank you. Could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Kevin Wheeler [00:01:52]:
Sure. I’m Kevin Wheeler and I do a couple of different things. I run a think tank called the Future of Talent Institute and we try to look at the trends and the issues that are going to have an impact on how we work and how we recruit people, how we learn and develop people, and pretty much anything that has to do with how we’re going to be employing ourselves in the future. And I also run a consultancy called Global Learning Resources that does consulting on some of these same issues with a variety of companies all over the world. I work pretty globally. About over half my work is not in the United States, and I think I get a pretty broad perspective on what’s happening in different locations around the world. It’s part of how I do my future thinking. We also do research in more traditional ways like the surveys and focus groups, but a lot of what we do is analyzing what we read and hear and then try to amalgamating that and figuring out what that all means through a series of conversations and discussions.
Matt Alder [00:03:10]:
Now, we talked a lot about the future of talent, the future of work. In fact, you’re probably one of the first people I ever came across who was actually sort of speaking and writing on that topic. Over the, over the last few years, the conversation seems to become quite ubiquitous. And at the beginning of 2016, the future of how we work, how we recruit, what talent looks like sort of seems to be on everyone’s, seems to be a topic that everyone’s talking about. And I just wanted to kind of explore this in a sort of a short term, medium and a long term sort of perspective, if that’s okay with you, just getting, getting your thoughts on where we’re going.
Kevin Wheeler [00:03:52]:
All right, well, let’s just start with the short term and talk about the next year or two. And I think I’m an evolutionist, not a revolutionarist. And I think that most of these things happen a lot slower than we think they are going to happen. I think that the trends are very clear about where we’re going. The only question is how fast it’s going to take us to get there or how long it’s going to take us to get there. So I think the big things that we’re going to see this year are a continuing debate over the role of the contingent worker. And I mean, I think that we all realize that part time consultants and outsourced workers make up a big, big portion of the employee base of many companies. And the question is, is that temporary, is that permanent and what’s going to happen in that space? And of course, almost every country has had some legal issues over the status of these workers and how they’re classified for tax purposes and so forth. And this kind of frustrates a lot of futurists that we just gotta, gotta get rid of all this crap and move forward with it. And I think the reality is we’re gonna have to live with a very messy, confused state of affairs for the next three to four or five years before we’re really going to get a reasonable resolution to what the role of a contingent worker is. Is there really going to be such thing as a permanent worker or is that really a term that’s going to disappear from our vocabulary? So I think in the short term we’re going to see all of those things happen. I think we’re going to see a huge focus on more diversity in the workforce, not just by Race or ethnicity, but by gender, by diversity of thinking. And I think that, you know, I think there’s a realization in a lot of firms now that groupthink is very easy to fall into. That when you get everybody who’s 25 to 30 years old and a techie, you pretty much look at the world like a 25 year old techie looks at the world. And you really need to bring in a more variety of people into these organizations so that you have a better chance of making a successful product. And I think having a wide variety of ages, ethnicities, genders helps to make that happen. I know in Silicon Valley we’ve seen a big impetus to hire more women to look at things in a more diverse way. And it’s very slow to happen, but it is a trend that is clearly going to grow. And I also think we’re going to see the growth of more generalists in the workplace. By that I mean people who have a wide variety of skills and abilities and interests, who maybe aren’t a specialist or a master in any particular area, but have familiarity and competence in a variety of areas. And this is sort of counter to what we’ve seen for the last 30 or 40 or 50 years, where we’ve increasingly specialized the workplace. And we’ve got people that have incredibly narrow job descriptions and have incredibly deep functional expertise, but are really not very competent outside of that expertise. And I think we’re going to see companies looking for more people. So that’s sort of my immediate thoughts for the shorter term.
Matt Alder [00:07:37]:
Okay, just sort of picking up on a couple, a couple of those. What is it that you’re seeing that leads you to believe that the generalist thing is an issue or something that, or something that companies are addressing? Because a lot of the talk that I see is that actually people are getting, you know, people are only going to get more specialized. What are you seeing that makes you think differently?
Kevin Wheeler [00:08:06]:
Well, I think I look at the companies that are poised to do well in this emerging sort of volatile world that we’re moving into, the so called Vuca world of volatile, uncertain, ambiguous and complex world. And the kind of people who are successful in adapting to that world are absolutely not the specialists. If we take a lesson from evolution, the more highly specialized animals are usually the first to go extinct. And one of the reasons the human has been successful is our tremendous adaptability and really lack of specialization. We eat anything, we’re omnivores, we can live in a variety of climates, different altitudes. We adapt, we change our environment. If we can’t live in it. Well, that’s an incredibly powerful thing to have. And I think organizations are beginning to see the value in that. And I look at what they’re kind of hiring now for CEOs and you look at CEOs in a lot of companies today, they have very few what I would call traditional credentials. They may not, they probably don’t have an MBA, they didn’t work for one of the big Fortune 100 companies. They have very eclectic backgrounds. I look at entrepreneurs like Elton Musk and Steve Jobs, ultimate generalists. They don’t really have any particular skill except ability to be very articulate, very adaptable, very creative and to think differently than other people. You know, you have Richard Branson in the UK and a hundred other so called British eccentrics that are all really generalists that have been inventors and the pioneers of many things in the future and in the world. So I’m a huge believer that smart companies are already recognizing this. And while we’re going to continue to see the focus on the specialists to execute, I don’t think you’re going to see the focus on the specialists to innovate. And I keep hearing from everybody, we need to innovate, we need more innovative products, we need to be more creative. And believe me, that never comes from specialists.
Matt Alder [00:10:39]:
Okay, that’s, no, that’s, that’s very, very, very interesting. So looking out, say five years, what can we sort of expect to see in. When’s that? So 2021. What does the world of work look like then?
Kevin Wheeler [00:10:58]:
Well, I think you’re going to see a lot of jobs that you and I take for granted today disappearing or shrinking in volume. That includes things that are really hot right now, like coders. And I think you’re going to find a lot of coding becomes automated. I think you’re going to see a lot of scripts and modules that can be plugged in to make things work. I think you’re going to see simplicity in that space that’s going to reduce the number of people required in the coding space. So I think the world of work tends to get on a fad and I think we’ve seen this numerous times in the past where suddenly we need everybody to be something and then in a short time later we automate or become more efficient and we no longer need that many people in those occupations. And I think that’s clearly indicated in the case of coders. I think in general you’re going to see a lot of discussion and focus on where should we apply Automation and how. And I’m not necessarily a doomsayer that says everything is going to become automated or roboticized, but many things will. I think the question is, if you automate something, what’s the role of the human in that automation process? And I think we will find there is a role. I’ll give you one good example. It’s pretty clear that an airplane pilot can be replaced with automation. There’s clearly many articles, many experts out there who are predicting the end of commercial pilots. And while I think that definitely technically is possible, I’m not sure we will ever see a commercial airplane without a pilot. Because I think as human beings, we want someone up there to talk to and communicate with. So that pilot may become more of a generalist, more of a person who can communicate effectively, who can calm fears, and there may be one instead of two up there in the cockpit. So we’re going to see changes like that in the changes in the role that people have. We’re going to see a lot more augmented people, meaning people that use technology to do things that they couldn’t do before. Doctors using robotic operating equipment to operate on you. All sorts of devices that will come out that make us smarter, wiser, able to see further. But they’re not necessarily going to just replace us all. But the reality is a lot of jobs are going to become automated and new jobs will emerge.
Matt Alder [00:13:48]:
Interesting and comforting. I suppose at the same time that by that point we’re not sort of automated out of existence. Difficult question. If we go sort of five years further forward, so we’re sort of 10, 10, even sort of 15, 20 years in the future, where do you think this is all going? Because it’s increasingly obvious that we’re in a kind of a real phase of transition at the moment. There’s going to be a lot of disruption in the next few years in terms of things that. Things that we know and how they’re. How they’re going to change. Where do you think the end game for all of this is?
Kevin Wheeler [00:14:26]:
Well, as they say, predicting that far out is like shooting a dart and trying to hit something a mile away. Most likely you’ll miss. But I think that the trends, the trajectory, if you want to call it that, of where we’re going is a far more creative workplace. Smaller companies, more people employed in small enterprises, doing more things that are satisfying to them. I think you’re going to see large companies still existing, but I think we’re going to have almost a bipolar world. We’re going to have a world of large, large, mega, large companies. Not necessarily large in terms of employees, although they’ll have far more than their opposite. But they’ll be big in terms of financial size, scope, impact. I think things like telecommunications, transportation. While there’ll be a small entrepreneurial segment, there’ll still be the large infrastructure pieces of that that are going to be carried out by large companies. But around the other side of the world and the opposite side are going to be hundreds of craft industries, small mom and pop operations that all coordinate and collaborate and connect through the grid, through the Internet, through a variety of ways. So that you could literally book a flight on one of these large international carriers, let’s say to go from, from here to China. And when you get to China, there might be a host of smaller entrepreneurial firms that would take you to wherever you wanted to go within China, all coordinated through a central organization or agency or methodology. We’re seeing the beginnings of that with the various travel networks, the orbits and the other expedias and so forth of the world, but just that on steroids and much bigger, coordinating a lot of smaller operations. So more people working in small organizations doing entrepreneurial things, I think is an inevitable outcome of where we’re headed. I think fewer people opting from their teens to work for an IBM or a Phillips or some other large entity. Some will, but more and more will opt not to do that. I think we’re going to see a fairly rapid retreat from our materialism. Materialism will always be there, we’ll always want things. But I think we’re not as fixated on it. I guess the right word would be as we have been for the last post World War II era. And I think it was for the first time in human history we had the ability to get stuff that we really wanted affordably. We could mass produce everything and we went out on a spree. I want everything. And I think the younger generation is that we’ve had it all. You know, we, we, we, we’re stated. And I think we’re going to see kind of a more realistic, practical approach to things. Smaller homes, smaller cars, less stuff and less focus on consumer economy in our traditional sense. And that’s going to be a huge issue for the economy. That coupled with people working differently, working from home, working more dispersed has a big impact on property values potentially in cities and tax base. But there’s all sorts of implications of these things and it’s not going to happen without a fight on the part of existing institutions. And it’ll be big changes, not Only for how we work, but for government, for cities, for many other places. Because one thing, it’s like ripple effect changes many, many other things.
Matt Alder [00:18:31]:
I completely agree. And I think, you know, one of the, one of the big issues about all of this is I don’t think there’s enough sensible debate about, you know, how, how change will take place, what’s disruptive and all those, you know, and all the stuff that comes with it. A couple of, a couple of final, final, final questions. Sort of slightly more specific. One of the, I suppose one of the things that’s the reality in our space when it comes to innovation and change and disruption is that HR and to a certain extent recruiting have been kind of very slow to embrace change, very slow to innovate in some ways, kind of perhaps almost holding things back. Do you think that’s something that’s going to change? Or will HR and recruiting always kind of be at the kind of further end of the adoption curve?
Kevin Wheeler [00:19:26]:
Well, I mean, it’s a huge question. We could probably have another 15 minute podcast on that alone. I think number one is that HR is going through some very profound changes. I think there’s a bifurcation of HR for sure from the service side of hr, meaning payroll, benefits, processing at paper, compliance, legal issues, et cetera. All of that is one side of hrr and that’s the more familiar traditional side of hrr. And that without any dou, is being heavily, heavily automated and probably will be outsourced to specialist firms that really do that, leaving what’s left within a corporation to be a minimal person or two that coordinate those activities. On the other hand, the other side of hr, the learning and development side, the recruitment side, the tell talent side of the equation, is likely to grow and become bigger than it’s ever been before. Now that also will be impacted by technology and I think some of it may actually end up being outside the organization. I look at it this way. If I was going to start my own company today and plan to grow it into something fairly significant, hundred people or something, I don’t think I would create an HR function at all. I think I would use external services for everything. And I think it’s all available out there. It’s all available with the right sort of internal coordinator to bring that together. So the internal role for HR will be a coordinator, a project manager role, I think with a generalist with some expertise, but not a depth in depth expertise. As far as technology goes, I think there’s no question that technology is going to be the backbone of both HR and recruiting. Could you recruit, I mean, could you automate recruiting today? Depending on what you mean by that? I think the answer is largely yes. I think you could certainly use technology that we already are to find people. We can screen them using technology very effectively. We can match them up to positions that are most suitable for them, easily, automatically. We can present them to the hiring manager through video interviews and so forth, remotely and virtually quite effectively. And we could theoretically hire people without ever seeing them or actually talking to them. And I think we could do. I think we can do a good job at that. Now, whether we want to do that or not, whether that’s something we choose to do, gets back to my earlier question about how do we use automation and how do we really decide what we can automate, what we can’t? I think we confuse the argument with automation around what we can do with what we want to do. And I think you have to be very clear, we can do all of these things now. Let’s decide what we really want to do and have good reasons why we either do or don’t want to do those things. And I think that’s a conversation that every company has to have. I think HR gets caught up by not being clear about what’s going on out there. You can’t deny the automated tools exist. They are, they’re out there every day, hundreds of them. To not use some of them is silly and to use some of them is probably equally silly. It’s what we need is a dialogue and a conversation about where we automate.
Matt Alder [00:23:10]:
I totally agree. And I think the biggest problem with the automated conversation when it comes to recruitment is people aren’t actually having it sensibly. It’s kind of. I describe it as a bit of a bit of a pantomime in terms of, you know, some people are like, no, this will never happen, and some people are like, yes, this will happen, and no one’s actually talking about what, what, what should happen. And I think that’s a really interesting point. You also somewhat preempted my, my last, my last question, but I’ll kind of ask it anywhere in a slightly different way. So I think four or five years ago I did a video interview with you and you were very bullish about predicting the role of mobile technology in recruitment. In fact, probably more bullish than anyone I spoke to at that time. And, you know, broadly speaking, although there’s still a way to go, it’s pretty clear that what you were saying was, was. Was absolutely spot on. For the sort of next four or five years. What, what one sort of technology have you got your eye on in the recruitment and HR space that you think you think will make as big an impact as mobile is at the moment?
Kevin Wheeler [00:24:24]:
Automated assessment, the end of the interview, I think without any question that’s going to dominate the next three or four years. We have such wonderful tools today. We can analyze personality, culture, fit, skills, competencies, all without ever even seeing a person, basically. And I see less and less reason to spend time in an interview other than as a way to sell a candidate on a position.
Matt Alder [00:24:53]:
Fantastic. Thank you very much for talking to me, Kevin.
Kevin Wheeler [00:24:57]:
Thank you, Matt. It’s been a pleasure.
Matt Alder [00:25:00]:
My thanks to Kevin Wheeler. You can subscribe to this podcast on itunes and on Stitcher. To listen to past episodes, get email updates and find out more about me, go to www.rfpodcast.com. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
