Episode 37: How Can Business Keep Workers Continuously Skilled?

  How important will reskilling be to our economic future and what role should business play in making it happen? And what about continuous training? Business has always been reticent about training because there is always the risk that you could lose those trained at your expense to the competition In the tech sector though, […]

Should We Be Worried About the Class of 2021?

Should we be worried about pandemic graduates? If we are to go on the history, those who graduate during recessions tend to have a much harder go of it than ‘luckier’ cohorts, and the disruptions we have seen this time around could make things worse. I drew on a new paper from the International Monetary […]

Episode 33: Will We Ever Change the Mindset Around Remote Work?

Remote work used to be looked at with suspicion, but after nearly a year of trial by fire, everyone knows it is great – right? Actually, not right. Despite having tried it out for months, many managers still view remote work as very much second best and are counting the days until they can go […]

Episode 32: What’s Next for Corporate Culture?

Guest: Bretton (Brett) Putter is an expert in company culture development who is consulted by companies and leaders worldwide to help design, develop and build high-performing cultures. Company culture can be a fairly murky concept. Roughly defined as ‘how we do things’ it should be reflection of company values and it should be well-communicated to […]

Dealing with a ‘Double Disruption’ in the Labour Market

So much attention gets paid to the pandemic and how it is changing the work world that we sometimes forget how much disruption was going on long before we ever heard of Covid-19. The fact is, automation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution were already changing the landscape at a pretty rapid clip, and we were […]

Episode 23: What is the Future of the Gig Economy?

The gig economy gets a lot of negative press, but is it actually a bad thing? Although some think it is synonymous with income insecurity and bad management practices, in fact for many it is the way they choose to work. For professional workers who have in-demand skills, working on a gig basis rather than […]

Episode 22: How Should Companies be Preparing for the World Post-Pandemic?

We are getting close to a vaccine for Covid-19 and a return to something approaching normal in the workforce. But will normal look like for companies? And how should companies plan for the post-pandemic future of work? Our guest today is Cathryn Barnard a Partner at ‘Working the Future’ which is UK based consultancy firm […]

Episode 20: How Should Office Spaces Look Post-Pandemic?

We are re-imagining everything else, so maybe we need to imagine the office as well. The physical office we are familiar with has its roots in designs first imagined a hundred years ago, with a bit of a Dilbert-style reboot thrown in during the 1950s. Now, as we think about physical safety as well productivity, […]

Virtual Speaking is Kind of Cool

  Yes I miss in-person presentations, a lot actually, but cool that we can still keep the conversations going. Here I am on someone’s laptop (you can see his coffee mug to the right) as I speak to the Ontario Municipal Human Resources Association fall conference about the #futureofwork. Great to have been able to present from […]