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            [post_content] => IMI Members recently had the chance to join a highly informative webinar, hosted in partnership with Deloitte. We heard from Jon Kelleher and Anusha Monga, who are Managers on the Deloitte Human Capital Team. Deloitte has recently undertaken a report of Gen Z and Millennial workers, across a number of countries. In this article, we’ll share some key insights from the webinar.

The world of work is constantly changing and reinventing itself. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve come to understand that work will never be the same again, and additional factors like the war in Ukraine, inflation, and the energy crisis have continued to influence ways of working this year.

A global shift in worker values and expectations

Covid gave workers the unique opportunity to pause and consider what was important to them. For example, the focus has shifted to time with family, a change in values, new career goals, and people looking to avoid long commutes, low wages, and burnout.

This year alone, 4.25 million people in the US quit their jobs. That’s up from 3.3 million in 2021. So, who is leaving? Resignations are highest amongst mid-career workers (aged 30 – 45 years); women; and people of colour.

41% of the global workforce were likely to consider leaving their current employer within the next year. With 4 in 10 Gen-Z workers planning to quit their jobs in 2022, better flexibility, greater opportunities for advancement, and purposeful culture were cited amongst the top reasons. Looking forward, 56% of Gen-Z and 40% of millennials in Ireland would like to leave their job within the next two years, with almost a third of Gen-Z being willing to leave their job without another one lined up.

65% of workers said that the pandemic has made them re-think the value of their job, and workers believe they have more agency than ever when it comes to securing a new job.

The push for flexibility is a key driver. 75% of Gen-Z and 76% of millennials would prefer a hybrid working pattern. Employers have a responsibility to ensure that this is equitable. New generations are pursuing non-traditional work, like start-ups and gig work.

An Irish Perspective

From an Irish perspective, cost of living concerns are key, followed by mental health factors, workplace culture, and career progression opportunities and rewards.

From the standpoint of the organisation, there is a need to do more to prevent burnout. Unsurprisingly, there is still a stigma around mental health, with around half of Gen-Z and Millennials not feeling comfortable talking to their direct managers about mental health concerns. On top of this, the time they are taking off due to anxiety-related issues is increasing.

People in senior positions are also now rejecting jobs based on their personal values. For example, only 20% of respondents in the Deloitte survey believe that their organisations are committed to environmental causes, like sustainability.

So how can organisations work towards flipping the Great Resignation to the Great Reimagination? The answer falls into three pillars: work, the workforce, and the workplace.

Benefits are changing with the times

When it comes to work, the key is to re-focus by optimising processes, eliminating low priority work, and re-designing towards achieving new outcomes. In terms of the workforce, organisations should explore new talent pipelines, leverage workforce ecosystems, create new opportunities for existing employees, and work towards re-skilling the workforce. Finally, organisations should work towards improving both the physical and digital workspace, and focus on culture and collaboration by bringing staff together to create the right environment for work.

At a more granular level, organisations should think slightly out of the box. For example by introducing more relevant perks like paid family leave, home office stipends, or childcare assistance funds. When it comes to skills and training, organisations should look at the human skills needed to develop leadership potential and eliminate entry-level qualifications which are not longer relevant to the job at hand.

When we talk about a workforce ecosystem, organisations need to rethink their workforce strategy to explore untapped talent. Allowing workers to flex their skills leads to stronger performance and higher satisfaction amongst the staff members. Furthermore, the physical and digital workplace should be designed to facilitate automated or completely remote tasks. Technology should be implemented in ways that work towards specific goals, rather than for the sake of it.

Leadership also has to shift in this new world of work. In years gone by, leadership would require identifying a problem, assessing for gaps and building a solution to fill those gaps. Nowadays, leaders need to understand where you are and where you need to go, lead in an adaptive way, and innovate and maximise long-term value through strategic partnerships.

In summary, it can be said that a paradigm shift is occurring – and if organisations don’t move with the times, they’ll be stuck with the great resignation, rather than moving forwards to the great reimagination.

--

IMI Corporate members can enjoy access to webinars, in-person events and other benefits. You can find out more about Corporate Membership here.
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            [post_date] => 2023-01-24 09:15:16
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            [post_content] => IMI recently welcomed Dr Sinead Kane, international speaker, blind athlete, Guinness World Record holder, and lawyer amongst other accolades. Sinead has faced adversity throughout her life, due to being visually impaired. However, Sinead has chosen to be a victor rather than a victim of her disability, and has used her life and career to bring disruption to the status quo in a number of areas.

During her hugely inspirational talk, Sinead went into depth about resilience, and how we can achieve the mindset to thrive in tough times.

So, how can we work towards this mindset? According to Sinead, the answer lies within yourself. It’s all about showing leadership, and developing specific techniques that work for you. For example, when faced with adversity, Sinead enjoys taking a walk in nature, but that won’t work for everyone. You need to understand yourself before you try to develop these techniques.

The first key to achieving the mindset for success is to develop techniques that help you keep calm. Resilience is almost directly related to stress, but you can turn stress into strength through your attitude, and your daily habits.

Sinead’s next piece of advice it to find techniques that make you feel confident. With confidence, you can overcome adversity and anxiety. Sinead suggests that you perform a short exercise – draw a grid like you’d do to play X's & O's. You should have nine squares in front of you. Fill eight of them with things that make you feel confident, and one that makes you feel anxious. See how confidence can overcome anxiety?

So, how does all of this tie into effective leadership? Rapid, disruptive change is today’s normal. To cope, leaders need to be agile, adaptive, and resilient. Resilience brings with it a lot of fear, and even as you grow, you’ll still experience fear. The only way to rid yourself of it is to go out and do something! Everyone experiences fear in unfamiliar territory.

Leaders need to overcome five key fears to be successful:
  • Making the wrong decision
  • Being criticised for your approach
  • Speaking as an authority
  • Taking responsibility
  • Failing entirely
Resilient leaders all share certain characteristics, and you can make an effort to work towards these in order to boost your own resilience. These kinds of leaders stay optimistic, even when they don’t feel hopeful inside; they respond to setbacks and move on, adopting an attitude that allows them to control what they can, while letting everything else go. A resilient leader cultivates an open culture by seeking the views of make time to invest in personal renewal; cultivates networks; welcomes feedback; and perhaps most importantly of all, always stays authentic. By channeling these traits, Sinead believes that you can become a visionary when it comes to resilience.   IMI Corporate members can enjoy access to webinars, in-person events and other benefits. You can find out more about Corporate Membership here. [post_title] => Webinar Insights: The Mindset for Success with Sinead Kane [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => webinar-insights-the-mindset-for-success-with-sinead-kane [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-01-24 09:15:16 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-01-24 09:15:16 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.imi.ie/?p=60072 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) )
Ade McCormack

Ade McCormack

27th Jan 2023

Event Insights

Related Articles

From Great Resignation to Great Reimagination: An Irish Perspective – Webinar Insights
Webinar Insights: The Mindset for Success with Sinead Kane

Event Insights: Talent Management in an Increasingly Unpredictable World

The IMI People Strategy Network kicked off a series of in-person events, due to take place throughout 2023. The series represents the return to in-person events, after a pivot to virtual during the pandemic.

This year’s first speaker was Ade McCormack, a former technologist, with a background in astrophysics and software engineering, who today advises leaders on transformational matters.

Ade started off by talking about disruption. It’s a buzzword that has certainly gained a lot of traction in recent years, but what does the word “disruption” actually mean? Firstly, it’s all about challenging the status quo.

Covid definitely shook things up, sometimes in a positive way. But while the majority of leaders most likely think they’ve responded well, that’s not the case at all. As soon as we got back to a relatively steady state, we could see leaders and organisations slip back into their old habits. This has even been evident in organisations that we look to as cutting edge, for example those which have begun to force staff back into the office. But the truth is that there is no “new normal”. From here on out, our lives will be characterised by large amounts of disruption.

In fact, humans are not particularly wired for this modern world. We’re wired to live in tribes, and in situations that cause short bursts of anxiety (like a life or death situation), not chronic anxiety like we tend to experience in the working world.

Ade moved on to talking a bit about how organisations haven’t really progressed from the factory model that worked well during the industrial revolution. The factory model is about rigid processes – something goes in at one end and comes out at another, after being processed in some way. Efficiency is very important here, but efficiency stifles innovation!

Humans are used as tech placeholders in the factory model – people are cogs in the machine, needed to perform a specific task. When it comes to technology, today is the fastest day we’ve ever experienced, and the slowest day we will ever experience. So, in a world full of disruption, it’s not enough to simply sprinkle your organisation with “tech pixie dust” and hope that technology will save you. The new definition of talent is doing something a robot or algorithm can’t, which is of value to the market. Our ability to be creative, bring diverse things together, and pick up on weak signals in small data sets is what set humans apart.

The industrial era was about creating synthetic certainty. While this may have been good for the factories and the government, but it wasn’t necessarily good for the citizens. Thanks to disruption, the world has shifted from the state of synthetic certainty to a new state of hyper uncertainty. Whereas in synthetic certainty, past successes were indicative of future successes, this is no longer the case.

How has industrial era shaped our lives, and how might that change with further disruption? The most obvious answer to this is that the Monday to Friday, 9am – 5pm model might erode fully. Already, younger generations are working more flexible hours, which don’t adhere to this. The next is the commute to work, and the need to be in a big city to get the job you want. Remote working can facilitate employees from a much wider geographic range, and cut out the commute all together.

The factory model is dystopian, and no longer effective. But Covid has shaken us up from our slumber, and we can now think about exactly what the role of humans in an organisation should be. Our strength lies in the fact that we have creativity and the ability to perform tasks that AI and other technology just can’t do.

In summary, we need to get to a model where leadership is contextual. Think of a football match – the captains don’t run next to each player, telling them what to do next. In the moment, the player closest to the ball acts as the captain. As we enter this new, post-strategic planning world, getting through each day is the primary job.

IMI Corporate members can enjoy access to webinars, in-person events and other benefits. You can find out more about Corporate Membership here.