Changes & Silver Linings with Marc Coleman

Foreign. So welcome Everybody. It is the 19th of August. It's been a wet summer here in Dublin. It's been a hot summer across Europe, if you're in Europe. And I'm not sure what kind of a summer we've had in the US but all I know is there's an election coming. Where not going to talk with the election today. This week on the shortlist, we're going to be discussing what does the future hold as schools begin to reopen, hopefully in September across the world, which has become a big conversation for most of us, we're starting to ask what are the long term effects of the pandemic on the talent world and what will life look like and what are the benefits and what are perhaps some of the downsides? And we're going to try and therefore predict the future, which is always difficult to do. But I've got a really good guest with me this week who I think is going to be probably one of the best people who's in the best position to try and predict that future and try and give us some insight into the world of work and what it might look like. But before I introduce our guest this week, let me just remind you that we are broadcasting live, but you may also be listening to a recording, video or podcast of this. We do have a podcast for those of you on video, you can find it on Spotify, on itunes or anywhere you find your podcasts. We have a number of products, previous shows you can access and you can get links to those on socialtalent.com the shortlist, where you can also find details about our upcoming shows. And I'll tell you a little bit more about next week's show in about 30, 35 minutes or so. We want your questions, we want your comments. This is going to be one of those shows where there is no right answer, not that there ever is, but we'd love to hear what your thoughts are. And please do jump on if you're listening live to our comments on YouTube or LinkedIn and tell us what you think. Tell us if you think we're wrong. We're crazy if our guest is way off or has it spot on or anything else you'd like to bring into the table. We'd love to hear from you. But without further ado, I'd like to invite our guest coming live to us from Budapest, but he's an Irishman from Waterford, County Waterford in Ireland. And our guest today is Mark Coleman, who is the CEO of Unleash. For those of you who are Working the town space and don't know, Unleash. You have been missing out for, gosh, the last seven or eight years. Mark, I. Your event was one of the first big HR events I was ever at. And really, you know, I've always seen it as that event which was annual and then became three different events, events a year. The place I would go to figure out what does the future look like, you know, in terms of tech and what organizations are doing. And as the man who puts it all together, you've always had that insight, but maybe you can tell us a little bit about Unleash and what you've been doing and, you know, what gives you a unique perspective on the world of workmark.

Oh, that's a tough question. So thanks for having me here today, Johnny. For those of you that are not familiar with Unleash, we produce events, market insights and research on the future of work and HR technology. Essentially we showcase case and challenge, what works, what doesn't, and where companies are going. That's our ultimate usp. And I, I think essentially, if you break it down, we build communities that give everyone a platform to share ideas, to network and do business. And there's a lot of, I guess, troublemaking in between because we know people like Johnny Campbell.

That sounds unfair, Mark, but no, it's a good description. I know I, I look at what is your business and to me, the business isn't an events business. It is a place to bring vendors together, tech to give buyers, to give experts a voice and a community to come together. That's what it's been for me, you know, very much a community that's inspired me with some of the talks I've gone to see. Love the kind of meetings and the conversations. And as a business, we benefit massively from being at Unleash and being involved in the Unleash branding community over the last number of years. So, yeah, dying to dig into your insights, but I'm going to basically jump into the news, Mark, and try and bring up our first article to get your opinion on one. I really like this, this piece in the Atlantic, but Nile, let's go with this week's first news article. Quite fond of some of the pieces that the Atlantic. Right, Mark, I don't know if you get to read anything they put they, they publish, but one of their staff writers, Derek Thompson, published this piece there the other week about the workforce is about to change dramatically. Now, you might look at that title go duh. Yeah, of course it is. But he kind of goes one Step further and digs into three predictions which I think are, are quite astute in terms of they're quite focused, they're well considered. And he balances it by proposing a counter argument to each of his predictions as well to try and again bring balance to, to, to the topic. And essentially what, what he's saying here in the Atlantic is that there's, you know, three big, big differences that we'll see or changes. One is kind of what he calls the telepresence revolution, which he says will reshape the US workforce. The second is that remote work will increase what he calls free agent entrepreneurship. And the third is that a superstar city exodus in the US will potentially reshape American politics. So I guess if I could summarize, he's talking about three different levels as such, for those different predictions, kind of going from the workforce to basically more styles of entrepreneurship to the macro economy and everything else there. So I don't know, what did you think about this? Do you, you know, would you see this as a well researched or thoughtful article? How much of this correlates with what you hear from companies, from vendors as well? Is this, is this right? Does Derek have it nailed with his prediction for the future?

He does. And for me it's, well, it's the happier of the two articles that you sent me, Johnny, to be fair, I think this is what we're all about when we talk about making our customers dream about what the future of work is going to look like. I think the first one is a long time coming in this crisis. We've seen the future of work fast forward by five to 10 years in all of this. So digital learning, remote working, all of this stuff has kind of played into our hands. So never has HR had the spotlight more than it has today. So a lot of our customers that have gone through HR, digital HR transformation projects over the last four or years, their CEOs are turning around, giving them a big hug and saying thank you for saving the day to our customers like Microsoft and Zoom. Where would we be without these guys? They're the unsung hero in all of this. I mean, you talk about the market economy falling out of it. Where would we be if we didn't have these tools at our disposal? You know, so, and I think if you consider like he's talked about telepresence, so when I hear telepresence, I think of companies like Avaya or Cisco or Intel. So if you, if you think back to John Chambers doing a hologram of Richard Branson I think it was back in the day, I think it was like 15 years ago that technology has not come on since then. And of course we sit in the world of events and I think, you know, to our audience out there, to our customers, you know, it's not that we've been asleep in all of this, but you know, we've, we've had to go through canceling three major trade shows with governments that have been pretty naive and stupid through all of this. So when you, when you get into the crux of it, the tools that we're being asked to use for the outcomes that we deliver as a live event experience, that is take the Paris show and bung it on a software. And even if you add in or bake in layers of interactivity, it's still not giving my, my customer what they need. So, so I've been very divided on that and I'm kind of, my approach to all of this is a small steps and get the small stuff as we move forward. But I thought within our industry, yeah, it's probably top of my list. What he's actually called out here, he called it telepresence. I probably call it faceless technology or con tools that are going, you're going to see a lot of AI and powerful bi that's going to be baked into, into this over the next year. It's going to be fast and furious. The HR mental activity, not just the M and A activity that's going to tie up the end of this year, but an acceleration in the tools that they need to be more productive. I'll give you one example from a Monday conversation with Chro, who's got an employee population of 2 and 30,000. They've discovered they have 25 productivity tools or, you know, conversational tools and they don't know which ones to use. They all have different. So it's whether it's interactivity, project management, virtual leadership, you know, there's so much engagement, there's so much going on and they haven't answered the. They've bought, they've bought these tools but not answered no. You know, they've no reason for, for why they have these tools and why they have so many tools inside the business. And I would say going into this as well, the radar that most companies have had for the world of work and the world of doing business, it's gone. All models are broken. They're upended. Whether you're talking about leadership or culture, learning everything. So companies are going to need new tools, new systems and I see a lot of casualties in all of this as well. So I think, you know, I think he's spot on. I call it faceless technology. I call it the democratization of work in my business or our business in the events world. It's the democratized democratization of events as well. And it's good, it's good for business. I think there's a lot of, there's been a lot of waste going on. So, you know, instead of, I know you and I love to fly, you know, fly over to Vegas, fly over to Silicon Valley and do our business and so forth, but there are easier, faster ways of doing it now and there's a, there's a faster economy coming out the back of this.

I agree that there's a great quote at the end of the article which says the plague is not an inventor. It is a time machine pulling us forward into a future that was perhaps already on its way. I think when it comes to HR tech and the processes around people, I don't think there's anything new per se out there. It is just the acceleration of things that have been trying to make, break into mainstream. And maybe some of the high growth unicorn companies were the first to embrace types of processes and cultures and ways of working in tools and technologies. But I was on a call this morning with one of our customers and they were the, the, the global head of talent was telling me how in their organization, which is an engineering organization, which would be quite conservative, are known to be conservative. Their, their incoming CEO announced that the 140,000 individuals that are kind of professional workers in their business, office workers can work three days a week from home if they'd like to forever from now on. And it's not five days a week. Right. Because politically it just wouldn't have gotten over the line, I suspect. But you know, the impact of that was you gotta go, oh, it's just about remote working. It's not, it's about remote leadership, it's about culture, it's about how do you performance manage. The impact of all of those things is massive. You might make a statement like we're going to move remotely or we're going to have half the time working, working from home, et cetera. The impact is just massive. And in some ways I hope big organizations don't think about that because they might not go ahead and do it, but it just has this trickle down effect which I agree with you. It's just so exciting to, to, you know, you got to have a positive lens to go the world of work is going to look much better, much faster with, it's not without its challenges. Right. It's not better for everyone equally all the same time. I'm not saying that, but you do have, I get an opportunity there which is massive. And I know, I know what you think about. Maybe I'll come back to it. I'll come back to the Atlantic article in a second because I want to contrast that maybe with our second article from the Guardian. Now you might bring up their second article here from the positive Guardian. So John Nocturn is writing, you know, working from home was the dream, but is it turning into a nightmare? And this is the counterbalance. You said yourself, Mark, you prefer the Atlantic perspective than the Guardian. Right. But the Guardian's perspective here is, is fair and they point to research in the US for example, that they analyzed. I think they claim that the study that they looked at was looking at 3 million workers. A large scale study by the National Bureau for Economic research, data on 3 million workers found the number of meetings per person had gone up 13% and the number of attendees per meeting increased by 13 and a half percent. Right. So that, that, that found and has increased the length of the average workday by 8.2% which is basically 50 minutes, nearly an hour. Right. Along with short term increases in email activity. So, you know, whilst the promise is that it's going to be more balanced, more equitable work, you know, that study suggests that, you know, everyone's working an hour longer every day. So how do you balance that? Right. Because that's if it is a correct empirical study of 3 million people, it's probably fairly accurate. Right. So how do you, how do you balance that with what we've just discussed about all the positivity in the future of work?

Well, first of all, I think you should look at his photograph and he doesn't look like a very happy human in the first place. And I kind of, I did look at some of the articles alongside and they're not happy either.

Guardian, you know.

Yeah, well, no, I don't know actually. I mean they do, they talk about zoomed out commutes, child care, distractions, family, resentment to work areas, living in a small apartment. No, no connectivity, loneliness, noise, no air conditioning, heat, demo. You know, it's heat for the people in Southern. There's a long list, but I think the list is just as long on the other side. In a quote, somebody we all know in the industry, but I talked to Mike Etling a couple of months back and He CTO was kicking him. He was like saying how there was an increase in productivity by 19% within their business because you've got people working from home. So those numbers are really, you know, those numbers make a huge difference to the number of people you need to hire. So. Or, you know, it just. I found most of this for everything. He said you can kind of like the meetings thing. You can just have as many meetings in the workplace as well. There are more distractions in the workplace. Or I bring it home for myself. We've just hired somebody on board for our London office. And she was talking about, you know, preferring to work from home and not having to go into London every day. Because the commute into London was three and a half hours, whatever, an hour and a half each way plus a bit of walking. I didn't know this. Actually. Just to get on trains in London costs about 5,000 pounds per year. So you're talking about cost savings, your cost savings. Okay, three and a half hours. These are cramped. You know, the commute in London, apparently it's not, not. It's not nice. People, people don't apparently like going, I don't know, I haven't had the experience. But it's crowded. And so the idea of maybe even doing a bit of work on the way to work. Yeah, it's just there's. And there's distractions everywhere you go. So I think it's also like the.

Time of this study. Right. This study was published more than a month ago. The first three, four months were different to now. Like we're in summertime in most of the world. Right. The northern hemisphere anyway. And you know, people are taking their breaks because you need a break, you get burnt out. We all just got burned out. And nobody expected that the increased productivity of the first few months would last. That's. That's okay, right? It was just a kind of reaction. There was an element of presenteeism in terms of putting in the work. Are we seen to doing it now it's settled into a routine? I think it's, you know, I think it's probably premature to say that the first three months will be like the next three years. So the environment might be the same, we might all work from home. But it's different when it's brand new to you than when it's just what you do and you've got used to it and you've balanced and we. Again, I think the 48.5 minutes extra work time, we'd nothing else to do. We weren't allowed to leave our homes in many parts of the world, so why not work an extra 48 minutes, right? But now we can go for coffee or hopefully can, in most of our countries are go to the store, you know. So, yeah, I think there's element to that. But a good comment here from Gunja Kumari and, and she's saying the change in the way the work is done has changed for good. I agree with that. But what to do with lost jobs and frozen openings and this does come. Come through with the gu. It's saying that, you know, it isn't everyone. Like there's a. There's a. One of the predictions actually in the Atlantic article was that jobs in the, in the service sector might disappear. That's been the growth area, particularly in the US Economy that we've had this, you know, basically most days you've got two places you spend your time. You've got your home and you've got the work. And therefore you need kind of coffee shops and grocery stores near your home and supplies you need through your work. When you kind of consolidate that into one place, maybe just don't need as many places like, I know I used to buy my lunch every day. I make my lunch for me and my four boys every day because, you know, I just kick it out of my supermarket shop because it's much less expensive, it's tastier, it's fresher because it's just, it's not convenient for me to go out for lunch because I'm in my house, right? It doesn't make sense. And the coffee, I don't buy the porridge I used to buy on the way to work, I don't buy and make it downstairs. Like, I don't think I'm unusual. So even those office workers, someone's losing out, right? Someone's not making money. Their business has gone on because of this. And it's not that there's an alternative way for me to make money out of that, but do you see that there's for, you know, do you think over time, for every lost business that way there's another business who said, hang on a second. But maybe Johnny needs something in his house that he never bought before now, and I could sell that to him or provide that service. Do you think there might be an equal number of new opportunities that come out of this that could balance out some of that stuff?

I do. But you've got to be very careful with this. The, the market economy is not designed to switch, switch off. We're all reliant on, you know, you talk about the U.S. the U.S. is 70% service industry. You know, Vegas is in ruin at the moment. So, you know, you've, you've got to take these things on board. It's hard. ILO had some really interesting numbers out last week, I believe, you know, they were talking about 1.5 billion people being on margin and 2 billion people going into poverty and all of this and just a difference in, in reduced hours I think was 14%. And that 14% equated to 14, sorry, 400 million jobs. The numbers are ridiculous. And you know, as part of our, what we do at unleash, we've talked about, I don't know if you remember this before we got to San Francisco three, four years ago, I interviewed Vivek Vadva on, in NASA research part was really interesting. I had to go through three layers of security and he talked about, you know, the, the Star Trek world Utopia versus this kind of Mad Max world. We weren't trying to be very Armageddon about it, but you know, he's very serious about, you know, what AI and machine learning means for us. Even the person I've talked about that we've recently hired, she and 600 other staff for the last two years have been feeding an AI kind of everything about their jobs, their lives, what they do. And they got a wake up call a few weeks ago to say that those 600 jobs were being replaced by machines. So you've got a bit of a double whammy. It depends where you get your numbers from. Talking about stripping out, this is before virus world and what, you know, second wave, third wave, whatever's going to happen over the next foreseeable future is anyone's guess at this point. Yeah, but when you start going back to what Vivek and I were talking about all those years ago, the numbers are significant. So. And I know Trump and Al are given out about what's his name, Mr. Wang's Freedom Dividend, but that seems to be the only solution going forward in my mind, um, that you got a new market economy on one side or whatever you want to call it, globalization, and alongside it you've got universal basic income in some shape or form. I know governments have piloted it and so forth and there's been some successes and not, but it's very real. And I, you know, guys in America said they would never do universal basic income. Yet what happened? The biggest project of universal basic income has actually happened over the last few months and there's more Bad news to come. I mean, I know we were going to say we're going to talk spin positive on this conversation, but furloughing. I think the furloughs come to an end in the uk, for example, next month, or at least I've not heard anything to say otherwise. But yeah, we've got to wait and see what happens from that as well. So, you know, you've got America not designed to switch on and off. You've got Canada in the worst financial crisis it's had since the war. You can go south. There's not much to talk about and we obviously know what's going on this side. So, so to your, you know, to, to the viewers comment. Yeah, I don't, I don't think there's any good news. There's a kind of reality check here.

So we've got a. Jerry Crispin's chimed in. He agrees the Guardian guest does not look too happy. But the reality is each of us has to take responsibility to embrace the hand we've been dealt, take responsibility for our own happiness and tell your boss to F off if they're overreaching on a 24. 7 job. Right. And I, I, I do, I do get your point, Jerry. And Jerry just also mentioned the US has a huge furlough end in September. So I think September is uk, September is, is the US in Ireland, we extended it to October. Different parts of the world of different furlough ends. But yeah, that's like, it's the look.

At they're on, that's like, just on that note, it's 50 million, 51 million unemployed against, you know, 160 million working base. So just take that on board because some of the numbers are being not real and you've got five generations in the workplace, so the boomers being the biggest on an exodus. And then you've got the digital natives or whatever, whatever we're going to call them or label them, but, you know, they're good. Just like they have been in Southern Europe off the back of the 2008 crisis, largely forgotten. They're going to find it extremely difficult.

Yeah. And you know, it's, it is different. It's, it's often, you know, when you look at the global world we're in, you know, you forget the perspective of other countries and other politics and different markets and what they can and can't do. You know, I was in a, somebody was saying to me recently that they're, it's great. You can now hire for any, anyone in any part of the world. And you can you get a job anywhere in the world? No, it's not that simple. Like you, probably you, you know, legally can't be employed unless you have that company's illegal entity there. You've got taxes dep pay in different markets and different jurisdictions. It isn't, you know, this kind of utopia of, it's great, so we'll have mass equality because the right person will just get the job no matter where they are based in the world because they work virtually and it's going to be all fair and equitable. It doesn't quite work out that way. You know, I think the promise is that there's, it's leaning towards that direction, but it's going to be messy and lumpy for a few years, Mark, isn't it?

It is, but there's, there's some positives to that as well. So to, to Jerry, he's spot on. It's a choice, you, choice. It's all about choice. Life is a choice. So, you know, it's a chance for most people if they're, if they're furloughed or find themselves on the wrong side of employment, upscale. It's what we've been saying on stage for years. You're, don't trust your company that you work for, go away and do it yourself. And skills is the, you know, is the way forward. Your point there, which is an interesting one. I've had two, two staff in our company, one in London, one here in Budapest. So they started looking at what their salary does for them in Bali. So, you know, this geographical mobility. Because we could work anywhere in the planet, our business, at least we're good in this. We're a little bit like IBM and Yahoo. We've, we've pretty much, you know, we can do our jobs from any parts of the planet. We've been doing it for a very long time. It's not for everyone. I know, but some of the staff were looking and even asking me, you know, what would it be okay if I did my job if I lived in Bali? But I still have my job, Mark. So people are thinking differently in all of this. To you guys in Ireland who are suffering the rain all the time.

Poor Irish, with our rain, if that's the least problem we have, then that's not the end of the world. But yeah, I think I do look at it. I look at it with optimism like yourself, and say, well, directionally it's going to be better for a lot of people. They were in industries that were Just slowly dying. And this accelerated the death, which is really hard to, to, to realize, but it forces you to do something about it and go, okay, I need to fix this right now. I need to upskill. I was listening to a podcast last night, I think it was a Planet Money podcast if I'm not mistaken. And they were talking about on NPR and there was, they were interviewing a woman who'd. It was working three jobs in the US and still only coming out with like 1500 dollars a month, you know, trying to feed her kids and stuff. It was like, it's horrible. And you know, the story is how she got a drive, the job was a trucker and you know, she got trained up and reskilled and how the trucking company took advantage of her, which is a bad story. But the outcome at the end is that two years later she found the right trucking company and she earns $85,000 a year now and she's saving up to pay off her mortgage. So you know, like choices, like, you know, so she made that really hard choice and she suffered for three months and had no income. And that she shouldn't have done had that, that was terrible. But she found her way out of it. She found a company who pay her an income that is infinitely bigger than what she was on. And she's working very hard for it. And you know, you find this, you can find opportunity here. Not everyone can do it, but you can find a new way of doing it does require you to perhaps say the skills I have and the job I used to have, they just, they're not relevant anymore. And I gonna have to change. And not everyone can, but most of us can. And you know, information and education is usually quite freely accessible these days. What you don't maybe have is time to put into it. But we were given the benefit of time. Most of us, much more time. You know, even if you're working 48 minutes more per day as the guardian claim to your point, you maybe were doing a three and a half hour commute. So you're net up two hours 40 minutes. Go learn something. You know, go. It's not necessarily how to code, it could be how to drive. Like the number of Amazon jobs and Tesco jobs here in say the UK and Ireland and Europe. There's you know, there's, you know, whilst, whilst, you know, I mentioned, you know, I'm not between my home and my office anymore, like you aren't and stuff has to come to me and someone now has to be employed to get it to me. And there's, there's, there's a logistics flow that's, that's growing like crazy here. So that's just one example, I think, of an industry that has seen grow crazy growth and I think will continue to grow because, you know, because we're not going to those retail outlets. So there are winners and losers. It's not equal, but I think, you know, it does balance out over. It has always balanced out in all of these shifts in, in our economy.

Well, agreed. And I think, you know, to my point earlier, we're kind of bottom of the barrel, so the only way is up. It's a great time to be starting something new. And like, even for us, you know, we're in the events business, we be nine years out of. Kind of learned as much as you can learn. So you know, when you're, when you're forced into a corner and you have to pivot, you have to pivot. So whether it's at an individual level or a team company level, you got to make the magic happen. So. And I'd look to some of our biggest customers. You know, they haven't been able to deal with supply and demand. Parts of the business have been frozen. Parts of the business, we go through the roof. And they've managed to save jobs at scale. I know one that saved 10,000 jobs by moving them from part of the frozen business across to, I mean, just a massive undertaking. I think HR has been an absolute hero in this crisis. It's really put, it's really put the spotlight on HR and talent management. I think everyone, everyone in the world knows who we are now or the industry that we serve. So. And I think you, you've got to look at as well, Johnny, you know, societal change, behaviors that normally take decades, it's in a few months. And I know, I know humans have the, you know, it's, we, we have the ability to go back to normal very, very quickly. So I tend to get a little bit pissed off when I'm hearing the buzzwords. I'm getting over. It's part of our industry. I get overdosed on buzzwords. So the next normal, the new normal, the not, we've been talking about it for a long time. So we, this was going to be a new, new normal or the, the big reset or the great reset and stuff.

I remember the next normal was when I was reading recently is like, okay, that's what we're going to call it. Well, I heard a great story. You're talking about the positive ways We've done things fast, right? And change fast. I can't remember the names of the companies, but I was a friend of mine who works for a big company in our industry. Mark actually is married to an Irish woman. It seems everyone has an Irish connection these days. He was telling me of, I think one of the big French manufacturers. It could have been aerospace or defense or aviation. And anyway, they were faced with the potential of laying off like thousands of workers. But instead what they did was they did a deal with Amazon and they loaned their workers to Amazon because Amazon had this huge need to hire and this organization helped them do it. And the deal was like, you're not being, we're not making redundant. You're going to go work for these guys for three months, maybe six months. We're going to figure out our business and hopefully have you back then and means we don't have to deal with all the crap. And this was in France with all the unions and all this stuff that it's a headache to try and exit staff and nobody wants to do it ethically. I was like going, that's genius. And it happened in a couple of weeks. You managed to go, here's several thousand staff to solve your problem. Because we just don't have an immediate need for them right now, but we want them back in six months. So are you cool with that? Because chances are by the time we need them, it might mean that you guys don't need them. So let's do that. This, that was just ingenious. Like it's just common sense and you get past all the bureaucracy and all the red tape to go, yeah, let's just do this. Let's just transfer them over and make it work. And people get to reskill. Like, like, I think Amazon had to retrain people on the jobs they had to do there. So people are acquiring brand new schools skills when they eventually come back to their manufacturing employer. They've learned new things in a different environment, in a different culture that hopefully makes them better. Like there are real positive things like that. But like Jerry Crispin is made a couple of really good points. You know, I'm going to bring up one that I go to your events, Mark, and the one, one room that I always hate going near. And always I'm like, oh God, it's gonna be just boring. And I make jokes about it like, you know, the talks on comp and bends or payroll are like, oh, kill me now. It's actually a really exciting topic right now because Jerry's making the Point around, you know, how do you. The fairness for a firm needs to properly evaluate the value of a job job so they don't overpay in Silicon Valley or underpay in Bali. You know, Aaron Dillard jumping in saying this is key. And same with Gunja Kamari. And it's really, really important. I heard again from an employer who does this on scale with hundreds of thousand people yesterday saying what they've done is that they'll hire a role and they'll let, they'll hire the person in the local jurisdiction. They have an entity where the person wants to be based, but they'll be guided by the local jurisdiction on how much to pay them. And you know, this client was saying, I won't overrule them because they, there's a balance of how much other people in that jurisdiction earn and it's got to be fair. Otherwise they'll have issues with other people in their organization who maybe are servicing the local business, but they'll find out the beneficial comp band. So they're kind of going like, we'll hire a role and then the person wants to be in a certain location. We'll look to the local office to go, what should we pay somebody in your office? And we'll just go with what they say. So it's not like, you know, the, the engineering manager in San Francisco is saying, you know, she's not going out there and saying, well, I pay, you know, 150 grand, so I'm happy to pay 100 grand upwards, you know, and the person who baddies going, our CEO doesn't earn 100 grand. This is crazy. You know, I think you got to have, have sensibility. And from what I hear, companies are beginning to solve this. What are you hearing around that comp and bend debate and where you put people?

Well, I think the, the first one was companies like ServiceNow were, you know, if I look at what happened through the crisis, the first thing where I saw comp and Ben or the vendors getting it wrong was, you know, the, the hard sales pitches that were going on to close deals. And then a couple of months later they suddenly everyone was epidemiologists and, and then the third round was everyone was giving away free shipping. So I, I've seen a lot of bad behaviors and those companies will be remembered for that. They, you know who you are. Some people have been a bit lost and caught out, but I've seen companies like ServiceNow shine through all of this. I think they launched six apps within, you know, a few weeks of, of the crisis hitting things around, well being and pay payroll and stuff like that. People, some people have had to get paid much quicker. You know, like for, for the last three days work, I've got bills to pay, I'm being kicked out. So, so you're dead right. It's, it's an interesting space right now. So that's kind of.

I actually remind you I saw an awesome solution being backed by an Irish company, hence why he came to me. And they're looking to put a solution in that usually pays people per day. So you know, it accrues your wage on a daily rate because certain workers, you know, they can't wait till the end of a week or certainly at the end of a month to get paid. And so it's trying to fulfill that market and say, you know, you literally have your, you finish your day's work and it's there in your account and you can use it and spend it and so on so forth. And, but, but you know, if I look at, you know, one of the areas of expertise, expertise you, you imagine have gained in the last few years, Mark, is how do you make all this stuff work? Right. Because you, you are, you know, unleashed very much has been the intersection of the technology and solutions and then the, the, the companies who have the pain and want to try and solve the pain, right? You, you, you have to listen to both sides and sides, right? There's gonna be, I imagine, a massive need beyond just putting in zoom and giving people better Internet access and laptops, which is the first three, four months of this. Right. Structural changes around how we communicate, the tools we use to do that, performance management that are gonna have to be built for this, this, this next normal, if you like. Right. You know, what lessons can you share with us from your, what insights can you give us around, you know, the project management of that? Because that's a whole, you know, you can have the tech, some goes, there's a solution for that. Yeah, there's a solution and there's a need, but it goes horribly wrong. A lot. Like what insights have you got over the last decade of how do you actually make sure that no matter what solution you're planning to, in to implement to solve whatever problem you think your organization has coming out or opportunity coming out of this. What's your general advice? Perhaps long standing advice to any organization looking to implement change, implement new new systems, get involved in HR projects.

Oh, there's a lot of questions in there, buddy.

Sorry.

Yeah, look, I think there's a reality Here. Remember earlier I talked about radar and I think it's an important analogy for me, at least in terms of looking at my customer base. The tech radar that they've built over the last 10 years has been very good. It's all been about the cloud, sole, service, talent as a service, software as a service. It's been absolutely, we've ridden that wave. It's been fantastic because when I entered The HR industry 10 years ago, it was all about HR for HR. So of the last 10 years it's been about the employee, HR for the employee. Now it's about HR interventions that work on business outcomes and those of the employees as well. So, you know, it's the productivity. I think some of the analysts, I've kind of talked about automation, all this kind of stuff. So I don't, you know, I don't think there's a short answer here, but what I would say is companies are going to have to build a new radar. Some, some tech is going to be stuck in the mud because just think about it like, you've got economies switching on and off. You've got parts of businesses that are frozen or going through the roof. You've got, you know, massive shifts in supply and demand regarding, you know, engineers, you know, you can't, you can't find creative talent for love nor money at the moment. You know, people with certain digital skills, you know, they're top of the food chain right now. So talent is, you know, that war for talent is, is worse than ever before. So, so I think there's no, there's no short answer to that, Johnny. I think companies are going to have to figure it out because as said, the all models are, are broken in this. So what does culture look like? I know a CEO of a big telecommunications company in Germany that is freaking out because, you know, they, they've invested in, you know, the most expensive office space on the planet. So if you go to their Singapore office or their, their Hungarian office or, you know, in America and stuff like that, you know, it's, it's a huge, huge investment. And I, I think you saw message I sent recently on another channel which was an IT company of 35,000 people. You know, they're, the, the CEO has turned around and said we only need 15% of our office space going forward. Massive, massive shift. So what does that mean to culture? You know, and the German situation for me is, you know, you've got an older guy who feels like culture is you need to walk in and I need to give you a Hug Johnny. This is what it's all about. This is our culture. We're happy working together in the telecommunication communications industry. And then there's the other side, which is the digital natives, but not really. It's kind of me, you and everyone else and that's a kind of 55 percentile. And then the pain in the ass or the difficult person is the, the hybrid worker or what we're calling the hybrid mode of working. So what you were talking about earlier, I'm going to come for two days a week or three days a week or four days a week for companies to figure that stuff out, you know, just at security level, it's kind of customer information, gdpr, your vpn, all this kind of stuff. So just think of the scale of that in terms of redesign and then you kind of bake in to the same conversation. We consider only 25% of our company to be digital workers. Virtual leader. I just, it's, yeah, it's a, it's a new economy. What are you, what are you, you know, everyone gets a vaccine by Christmas like they are in Russia. I, you know, and again, I know people get back to normal fairly quickly, but I just can't see, I can't see our world or I can't see the business world certainly getting back to normal anytime soon that in a negative way.

Way. No, it won't. And like, as Jerry's commented there again, remote working will need new approaches to building community in the workforce to maximize engagement levels. I think that, you know, you're so, so, so right. But we have to like stop waiting for it to go back. You need to just address these issues now and they are addressable. You know, I know we, we've looked at it internally to go, you know, can we have more meaningful monthly get togethers and not have to meet up every day because we tell ourselves a story that isn't always true. It's like in the office place, we get to have these connections and bump into each other at the water cooler. Many people walk in, put their earphones on work and go home and talk to nobody. That happens, right? So what about those people? They weren't benefiting from an office. They aren't getting a cultural connection from that. You might be the person who's loudmouth walking around the office with your coffee cup trying to have conversations and 90% of people are going, keep your head down, he's coming, just avoid him. He just bores me and he talks too much. You know, I'm talking about myself here. So so maybe, maybe, you know, it's. Maybe maybe we have this false idea of what it used to be like as well, you know, and, and that, you know, if we, you know, I. Again I talked to a good friend of mine but this year, the weekend he was saying that, you know, maybe we just get to sit down and break bread, have lunch once a month and have a good meaningful conversation for two hours with each other other and go home. And maybe that interaction is actually more meaningful once a month than it will be if we were in the same office every day casually ignoring each other. So I think there are, you know, it's, we always kind of remember the past with, you know, rose tinted glasses and talk about the fantastic way it was and how we're losing all this stuff and we kind of go, was it really brilliant? Like was it that good for everyone? You know, maybe it was. And maybe, maybe we can make it better for more people people in this new way. And maybe it is more democratized and maybe it is more involving and you know, you can't hide, but that's okay in a good way. Will give you an opportunity to just connect with the people you want to connect. But yeah, I think you need, you're going to need a new world there for, for this next, next, next level. Mark, we're nearly at time, right? And, and we've flown through a bunch of stuff and we could chat about the future forever. Right. So what's on your radar, Mark? Now? What, what do you work, what are you thinking of? What are you working on? What can we expect from unleash over the next few months?

So yeah, we've, we've had the, well, probably I have not just my team. It's been very, very tough on the team. But we've, we've obviously gone through having to cancel three major shows this year. It's been impossible or monstrous dealing with UK government and, and venues and similarly in the US it hasn't been any better. Um, but we've gotten through those that, so at the same time or parallel to all of that, we've been working on Digital Pivot. So we're behind the scenes. Absolutely. Doing all the stuff from the Guardian or the guy from the Guardian is complaining about. We're working long hours, we're spending extra time on meetings, we're having an occasional drink to spice it up and stuff like that. But yeah, we're, we're, we're getting ready for October and you will see, you will see a different unleashed to what you've obviously Seen, we're working hard on figuring out how do we deliver the outcomes that we've delivered on stage or inside our exhibition hall, which is obviously content. And the context of that content is what's working, what's not working and going out there and finding those stories and celebrating them digitally. And then the second to that is the kind of fallout from all of this. I think your viewers will appreciate that the deal making, the demand generation, the networking that we can't achieve face to face, how do we deliver on that digitally? So I'm kind of. I'm terrible. I'm Irish in every way. I'm useless with secrets. My father's always saying, don't tell anyone. If you want it to be a secret, don't tell anyone.

Don't reveal too much. We're excited about October. Watch this space. I'm sure all of us in the community are going to hear more about it as the next few weeks unfold, Mark. So I'm confident it's going to be pretty awesome and you're going to iterate your way to a faster success than anyone else trying to do something in the same space. So I'm looking forward to hearing that. I'm going to ask to close. Mark, I'm going to read one last comment and then ask you to think about your piece of advice you'd like to share with our audience. Whether it's a piece of advice that you have been given over the years or you want to give to our audience that one single piece of advice to leave our talent community here. Listen, listening. While you're thinking about what that might be, Mark, I'll take one last comment from Aaron Dillard. It's great to have you on the show, Aaron. Community and culture is important. Would love to see personal and professional communities merge a bit more. This could help to bridge the gap between those that think the office is the only way to be and those that can already see that close connection can be made in other ways. I think that's right. You know, I think there was a he mentioned in the Atlantic article about, you know, that the, you know, churches were in decline, community halls are in decline, but the workplace was the last place we all went to meet up for five days of the week and now that's in decline. So I think there is a need. There's a need for something in there and we'll find it. Like the one thing that human societies always do is they find a way. So that's really, really, really cool. So I'm gonna, I'M gonna ask you to close maybe with your piece of advice for our shortlist Mark, that you want to leave our talent community with today. Today.

I would probably suggest it goes to one of our friends across the Waves in San Francisco. You are who you hire. I love that from Jerome and the team at Smart Recruiters. And I've probably learned the hardest way possible over the last two years. It's cost me. You know, I'm going gray as a badger very, very quickly. And, you know, my position right now with headhunting and sourcing is very, very clinical. You know, I, I, I, I go back to what Jerome says. You are who you hire. So we spend, we spend so much time making sure we have the right sourcers, the right headhunters, and very specialized. It's something we don't keep in house any longer. It's something that we, you know, we go to market. So again, we're agile. It works much better for us. And I think that's the secret to business is knowing somebody or something that nobody else knows. The celebration of this crisis is a celebration of talent and hey, Jar. So, you know, there's a profound shift in what's going on to your point. It's more meaningful and it's going to be really interesting how the global economy is going to reshape itself. So I say, you know, you're in a crisis. I've been through many of them. I've been through SARS. I've been through September 11th in my industry, so I've had a fair few of them. Now, even the volcano in Iceland caused a lot of havoc for the, for us in events. I know it didn't cause too much damage elsewhere, but, but for us who had scheduled events across Europe, it was an absolute nightmare.

Shut down aerospace.

Yeah, it did. And so it's a great place to be upskilling right now. It's a great place to be building a new business. It's exciting times. So I know there's a lot of, there's a lot of turbulence still ahead of us, but there's great opportunity out there at the moment. There's a massive, profound shift that's going on, you know, in terms of people, how people do work and where they do work.

I think it's going to be a tough couple of months ahead as the furloughs end and as the economies of the world get to grips with that, what that means. But once that's over, I think we'll wake up and start rebuilding the future workforce, which hopefully is going to be exciting. Mark, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us this week. I can't wait to hear what unleashes plans for October. And we'll be watching closely to see what's coming up and how you're going to rebuild that community and bring that community back together because I think the industry wants and needs needs it so much. Mark, thank you. And for those listeners and and viewers who've been online live, we'll be back next week and you can find out more on the short on socialtown.com forward/the shortlist where you'll also find a recording of this and all our previous shows and our lineup for next week. Next week will be joined by a great friend of mine, Jenny Shepard, who's VP of talent acquisition for Sunrun and sunrun for those who don't know, the energy market in the US has kind of pioneered the solar energy market in the US and brought good value clean energy in the form of solar panels to consumers across North America. They've been a darling business in terms of growth. They were hit hard by Covid in the early days because they couldn't install, they couldn't sell. Their CEO responded fantastically with great initiatives to turn the business around, get them back on track. And Jenny only had joined the business last year. And Jenny's going to share with us the challenges that she and her team have had with high volume hiring because their business is mainly, you know, more but in a less professional white collar more but installers or on site putting up a solar panel so remote but not in the way you think it. And sales folks, folks out in retail outlets and other outlets trying to trying to basically sign up new consumers. And Jenny's going to share her insights from what she seen in high volume hiring before COVID and post depths of the lockdown. Do join us next week for that Wednesday, August 26th, that's 4pm UK Ireland time, which is of course 11am in the east coast of the US which is 8am on the west coast and around 11pm in the evening in Singapore. It's going to be a great show. It's been a pleasure. Hope you've enjoyed the show this week. Don't forget you can subscribe on our website@socialtalent.com the shortlist. You can subscribe on our podcast which is available on itunes and Spotify anywhere you find good shortlists or good podcasts, I should say. And you can also find us on YouTube or on my profile on LinkedIn. Same time every week. I'll see you next week. Take care there.