Conference Presentation, Panel
The 21st Century Workplace
- The workforce demographic is projected to shift significantly, with Hispanics becoming the largest U.S. group by 2050 and the combined female and multicultural professional talent pool reaching 83% globally as of 2014.
- Life expectancy for healthy 65-year-olds is approaching 100 years, yet the U.S. faces a paradox where four million classified unfillable jobs exist alongside over 10 million unemployed individuals.
- Organizations face a competitive necessity to become nimble and innovative to counter global giants and small international startups, requiring a cultural shift from backward-looking performance management to forward-looking "feedforward" models.
- Leadership structures must evolve from rigid, metrics-focused hierarchies to empathetic, inclusive environments where diverse ideas from women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ individuals receive equal endorsement.
- Future leaders must be identified through succession planning slates extending three to five years out to prevent the reappointment of conformed individuals, with a specific risk that current senior executives lack the capacity for necessary innovation and growth.
- Employee retention and engagement are driven by the feeling that opinions are heard, while young workers face a reality where job security is absent and organizations must foster self-sustaining learning mechanisms rather than providing a "secret map" for careers.
- EY has set a target to cultivate 175,000 inclusive leaders, though a risk exists that heavy investment in young talent may result in employees leaving for competitors, necessitating a daily effort to remain the "employer of choice."
- Structural changes include removing traditional titles in favor of task-based project assignments and addressing potential literacy gaps among millennials through explicit instruction rather than assumption of inability.
- Companies must overcome a "very disruptive" environment to create new institutional models, as current approaches cannot lead to future success, and must raise diversity and innovation standards to match global bests.
- A cultural transformation is required to shift young employees from merely connecting to genuinely relating to organizational causes, while ensuring they do not feel entitled despite being more hungry than counterparts in developed nations.