 Right now we're facing a crisis of international proportion. It's a healthcare crisis, but it's also an economic crisis. It's going to have long-term impact for us. And we're going to see that the biggest impact is actually going to be acceleration of inequality. The systematic way that we have been built is not holding up. The foundation is cracking. Our duties remain the same. The fact that we should not leave anybody behind again. Many organizations have seen what the impact is of a sudden crisis and how we're able to better navigate this crisis today with the help of technology. And that means the reskilling and upskilling of your own workforce. Jobs of tomorrow are technologically enabled, but also extremely inhuman-centered. It's in the ability to work with technology easily. On the other hand, with this new way of working and especially remote work, we see that there is a huge need of emotional intelligence. We have really to invest a lot in people to guarantee their jobs, but also to allow them the mobility they need on an ever-changing labor market. 8 out of 10 of the young people who are in low- and middle-income countries are going to have to be entrepreneurs. They're going to have to make jobs for themselves. Having creative curriculums and teaching creativity is enabling your learners to have transferable skills, resilience, mastery, collaboration, asking questions, why, how, when. This is what they need in order to thrive in any profession which they choose. The moment you incorporate marginalized segments of society, it changes the product offering. It changes the way that we think about supply chains. When you cater to the margins, the positive externalities in economic terms are pretty enormous. It is critical that leadership understand that the burden of responsibility of driving change starts at the top of the organization so that corporations can give back to the communities, make them more resilient as we deal with these issues around both economic and racial inequality. We need men and women giving the recovery because there is no way we can ever think that a wealth that is lived by men is a wealth that is good for everybody. Now is the moment that we can think about how we use that possibility, the new ideas, the new technology, the new wealth to really create social systems in which we can all flourish. We have the greatest brains, talent, resources in the world. There's no reason that we can't and no excuses that it's too hard or too complicated. Thank you so much for joining us here today. I'm Heather Landy. I'm the editor of Quartz at Work, which is Quartz's edition about the modern workplace. So I feel fairly well situated to join you all here today for this important discussion about jobs and wages and work coming on the heels of day one of our program here, which will look more at economic growth. Today we're going to be focusing more on what's happening in workplaces and with wages and employees. So we have a fabulous panel to help us get through this topic. I'd like to briefly introduce them. Dr. Hans Paul Berkner is the chairman of Boston Consulting Group in Frankfurt. Sharon Burrow is general secretary of the ITUC in Belgium. Geraldine Matchett is CEO and chief financial officer of Royal DSM in the Netherlands. And Guy Ryder is director general of the ILO in Geneva. And lastly, we have C Vijay Akumar, the president and CEO of HCL Technologies. Thank you all for being here today. We'll just dive in because we have a large panel and not very much time and so many important topics to get through. Sharon, if I could, I would like to start with you to ask, what should be the responsibilities of employers toward workers in this new world of work? So I heard yesterday, in fact, Alan Joke from Unilever say that one of the central ambitions ought to be for employers to have zero jobs policy. So for every job lost or displaced, there ought to be another one created. That would be the ultimate. But we need a new social contract for recovery and resilience. And it must be negotiated with employers, with workers, and of course, with governments. We have that the ILO and Guy has talked about this many times, a system of tripartitism that if ever it was needed, it was now. So we have a recipe for the way we actually transition with the justice, just transition through both the climate and the technological challenges, but now the challenges of investing in jobs and decent work, goal eight of the SDGs. So we need investment in jobs in this new social contract. That's the centerpiece. Every working person and their families want to know that there's the security of jobs and a just wage. But they also want to know that they've got universal social protection. So we must work together across employers and ourselves and governments to make this magic recipe work. And for investment in jobs, can I say, sustainable infrastructure, care, mass transit, manufacturing with industry policy to see that we're meeting the technological challenges but building robust, decent manufacturing jobs, repair of our ecosystem and so much more. We know that 1% invested in infrastructure and there are so many employers who want to actually be part of the infrastructure boom. That can get you 33 million jobs. We can get at least double that by investing in care. These sectors and many others have to in fact be financed and the third arm is financing the recovery. Now some of that will come from employers rebuilding their own companies and indeed their supply chains. But it must also come from a renewed financing that has a tax base that actually finances the recovery. It can't come from the previous burden that's been put on people. We need hope and that means that if we work together with jobs as a centrepiece, then we know that we can actually construct a better future. But my last point is we need to support both workers and their rights but also employers, good employers. And so impunity must end. And that means we may mandate a due diligence or risk analysis around finance and investment but around workers and their rights with grievance procedures and remedy. So we build that trust. But investment, investment, investment. It's absolutely critical. Yeah, the World Economic Forum is out just yesterday with its Future of Jobs report. It finds that the workforce is automating even faster than previously anticipated with 85 million jobs expected to be displaced in the next five years. But they're also finding that the robot revolution will create 97 million new jobs. But even still, if those numbers pan out, that's still a huge amount of disruption and a need for reskilling that we're going to see that arguably needs support, not just from business and the private sector but also from governments. And so I'd like to ask Guy, what are the opportunities that you see for new policy initiatives so that we can achieve better outcomes for jobs, wages, and work beyond what the private sector is prepared to do voluntarily? Yeah, thanks very much for the question. What I think is undeniable, however optimistic or pessimistic one might be about the impact of technology, COVID or anything else is that massive changes already taking place are going to accelerate in the future. And here's the bad news. A lot of people have become very reticent in the face of change, not because they're necessarily irrational or ignorant, but because change has been bad for too many people. It's not been managed in a manner which shares the benefits in a fair way. And we've got to overcome that and how can we do that and take advantage of the real opportunities which are ahead? Well, I'm going to follow Sharon in talking about investment in this regard. I put it under three headings, really. We've got to invest in people themselves and that means the skilling, the re-skilling, the upskilling agenda, which I think is a very familiar and central part of this dialogue. We have to invest in social protection. It's the most effective lubricant of change. People can change if they're not going to fall through the cracks whilst they're in the process of change. Secondly, we have to invest in the institutions of work. We're talking, in many cases, of a real rethinking, a re-engineering of workplaces and work organization. And if we're going to make that work in the way that we wish it to, then we simply have to put in place the types of institutions that correspond, the regulation, the laws, the practices, the collective agreements that protect people in these new environments. And lastly, the third area of investment, of course, and Sharon's covered them, are those particular areas where we know there is enormous employment potential in the future, the care economy, the green economy, infrastructure. I'd add the rural economy, which remains fundamental in so many countries as well. And two thoughts just underlying all of that. The first is this notion of a social contract. It's out there. Everybody talks about the need for a new social contract or a renewed social contract. We've got to give some meaning to that phrase. It speaks to everybody. It responds to a perceived need. Now we have to start putting together the components of such a contract. And the last thing I want to add to the conversation is, you know, each country can have a go at all of this, this enormous agenda on its own. Good luck to them. Some will do better than others. But if we really want to move on a common front and move as far and as quickly as we need to, we need very much greater common international purpose, particularly in the face of this global challenge of the pandemic. Thanks. Thank you very much. Geraldine, Guy talked about the new social contract. As you think about that from an executive perspective, what are the things that CEOs and their teams can do to create sustainable working practices as part of that new social contract for workers and whatever this next normal turns out to be? Yeah, thanks, Heather. Now, the way that we look at it and think about it as an employer is that the challenge really has been that over time there has been an increasing separation between the value of work and the value of everything else that we do in our lives. And if you think about it, it's been very much that either you're in or you're out. You know, either you're completely focused on work, but then you normally have issues taking care of the family of society, of communities, et cetera, or you're out of work. And it's been extremely polarized. Now, if we think of a change of mindset in what is work actually about, it's also about valuing the contribution that humans bring not only when they work, but the family contribution, the community contribution, even the environmental contribution. And therefore there needs to be a different mindset around what do humans actually bring and where do they bring it in society? Now, this is going to be even more true and you refer to it with technology because technology is going to start making it's more efficient and faster to do some of the repetitive rule-based work actually via computer technology. So the value of the human part of what we're doing, which is all about ingenuity, creativity, innovation, empathy needs to start being included in what do we consider work? Now, the way I see hope is that with COVID, it's opened our eyes in my view to two things. One is how quickly things can change when it's needed. And also the fact that we notice that contributing to a goal can be done in very different ways from very many different places and in different form. And I think it's opened up a different mindset of what is work, how do we remunerate it, how do you bring value? And I think the social contract is effectively reintegrating work with the broader societal development and that's how we look at the direction of the next normal. That's really fascinating. And in many ways, we've been forced into that, that bleeding of work and everything else in our lives in a way that we haven't had to handle before. Maybe in the abstract, we were thinking about the barriers and the boundaries between those things. But now when you're working in the same place that you're living and perhaps you have children running around and other distractions, we're all the more sort of appreciative of how these things intersect. You also mentioned technology and so I think that's a really good place to bring in CBK from HCL Technologies. Tell us a bit about technology CBK and the role that you see it in shaping this future of work. Technology has a major role, if not the most important role in shaping the future of work. Technology can create more diverse, more equitable, more inclusive workplaces as well as create new jobs and also modern management practices. The way I see the future of work will be about six things, working from anywhere, work for all, work by choice, smarter work, newer work, and modernized management. Let me take a few seconds to explain each one of them. Starting from work from anywhere, all of us have seen work from anywhere has become the de facto in the current pandemic situation, modern tools, collaboration technologies, the telecom network, all of them have provided the ability for workers to work remotely. And Gartner predicts that 30% of employees will work from home permanently by 2024. I personally believe the future of work is going to be more heterogeneous. It's a combination of home, hybrid, and on location working. And the reason is two-fold. There is a lot of roles that will still require physical presence due to the nature of interface required or due to the compliance and privacy requirements in some segments. And more importantly, the social and the emotional health and the motivational aspects of employees in the long term can be better ensured in the hybrid formats. Talking about work for all with greater number of roles enabled for remote delivery, a large section of the population can have access to newer job opportunities, not necessarily in the economic hubs, which was the old normal, here people can live anywhere in the world. They can choose jobs, choose projects, and employers have a wider access to employees. For example, getting, today we have to take work to people rather than bring people to work, right? This is going to be the real change. And working at will would mean some of the digital technology platforms like Upwork or TaskRabbit or Kaleido, which allows individuals to take on short-term and on-demand positions or freelance work. And it is believed 40 by 20 end of this year, 40% of American workers will be independent contractors. And the reason is quite simple. The new Jenga generation, the millennials, like having the flexibility of choosing when to work and where to work. And they also enjoy the freedom of improving work-life balance by having more control on their schedules. The work will get more smarter, artificial intelligence, machine learning will continue to become more prevalent, both in our personal lives and professional lives. These technologies, while they take over some of the manual tasks, they also free employees to focus on more meaningful work and open doors to a lot of new opportunities. I believe we will see more augmented collaboration with humans and robots increasingly working together side by side. There will be a number of new roles. I think we should not underestimate the potential of new roles that can get created. The jobs that drive sustainable living will be at the center of the 21st century. I do believe this segment will grow enormously. Like 19th century was marked by the industrial economy. 20th century is marked by the knowledge economy. And I firmly believe the 21st century will be marked by what I call as a sustainable economy. And technology and tech companies have a huge role to play to create these new jobs in the intersection of climate change and public services, as well as in consumer products. Lastly, there is going to be a new management methodologies. As these disruptions really take shape and become firmer, technology will play a crucial role in supporting and modernizing management. Using new tools, new applications, new platforms, reconstructing workplace processes, redefining productivity. Some of these are today a little more kind of in the favor of more on-site teams, but in the hybrid model. Some of this will change significantly. So I do believe this is an opportunity to transition from workplaces for efficiency to designing workplaces for effectiveness, resilience and sustainability. And the best part is we don't need to wait for this crisis to be over. All of this can start now. Thank you very much, CVK. A quick note to our audience. If you have a question for any of our speakers, we welcome you to drop that into the Zoom Q&A function. And we will do our very best to get through those. But Guy or Sharon, CVK talked about flexibility and freelance. And we know that there's evidence that those kinds of jobs become part of the safety net for at least in some countries when people are furloughed, laid off, outmoded. How do you feel when you hear about the forecast for that to become a bigger part of the workplace situation? Does it make you nervous? Is it our governments and employers reacting or responding quickly enough to those kinds of changes? It makes me want to say it's a bit more complicated than that. Undoubtedly, technology is a driver if not the principal driver of change in work. That's quite clear. It's always been true. It's always been true. It's always been true. But we have to, of course, take the benefits that it brings. But let's be a little bit careful. Let me sort of say it in a very simple way. The fact that technology is potentially allow us to work anywhere, anytime sounds extraordinarily attractive in many regards. But if it similarly would allow someone to tell me that I must work anywhere, anytime, regardless of my own choice, it's somewhat less attractive. So I think we have a sea change move towards independent contracting as a way work is to be done in the future. Should make us pause for thought. The gig economy, and this is something COVID-19 has shown us, has created extraordinary precarity and vulnerability in the world of work. I'm not just talking about the developing world. I'm talking about people in attics in Manhattan. Their employment status is entirely unclear. They fall down the gaps of social protection systems, and they end up really in a very difficult place. And you see, when we see this as the 21st century employment model, it looks a lot like the 19th century. It looks a lot like the 19th century. The old putting out system where everybody's an independent contractor, it took us a century to build the institutions to put some sort of decency into that business model. So proceed with caution would be my reaction to that. And I would add to that. Guy's absolutely right. But I would add to it by saying it's not the technology. You know, unions working people, they know that they have to work with technology. Although there are technologies that should be very clearly scrutinized because of the dangers of the surveillance economy, and of course the privacy for the public. But it's the capacity, as Guy says, for exploitation through the technology. And if you think that those jobs, internet mediated platform jobs are absolutely breaking down wages and conditions. And they are effectively informal jobs. When unions went to work at the beginning of the COVID to make advances in protecting jobs, incomes, keeping business continuity, advancing the social protection floor, what they found is already those excluded had no access to any of that. And so while some countries put special measures in place, very many didn't. So when 60% of the global economy is in informal work, because we're seeing a breakdown, and even a third of those formal jobs are precarious, you add to that the growth in the informal internet-based jobs. And you ask why? Why don't business want a social license to operate? Now last year at the ILO Centenary Declaration debate, indeed this was dealt with very clearly. It said, irregardless of the employment contract, every worker should have a labour protection floor. It should in fact be fundamental rights. It should be occupational health and safety. And we must now see that as a fundamental right. And indeed adequate or evidence-based minimum wages and maximum hours of work. And I'll leave you with this thought. Even as people see the opportunity for mixing, you know, home-based virtual and physical work, it's women who are telling us overwhelmingly that the stress of working from home with family is causing them in droves to leave the workforce. That's not a consequence of that choice. That sounds good when young people say it. But when they move into a more responsible environment with family and indeed with partners, that's got to be considered, as Guy said, in a more holistic way. And what are the labour institutions we invest in to make sure exploitation is not the jobs model? Absolutely. Hans-Paul, I'd like to bring you into the discussion. You were talking all the time to people in boardrooms. What are you hearing them saying? And what do you think the role of corporate boards should be in planning out this workforce of the future? Well, you know, let me go back to what CBK has started and also what I think the other panelists now have taken up. I think we are talking about a very heterogeneous workforce around the world. And of course, at the one end, you know, in Europe and in Japan, where we run out of people before we run out of jobs because of the demographics, you know, of course, companies and including boards are really pushing hard to invest in people. And very much as Geraldine has said, you know, we need to invest in work-life balance, inclusion, contract for lifelong learning. But that's the one end. The other extreme is, and it already came up a bit, is that, you know, in South Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, 70%, 80%, 90% of the jobs are informal, you know, and even more than are in small and mid-sized companies. And so I think, you know, we have on the one hand, you know, a very, very extreme effort in investing in people and investing in security and learning and so forth. And the other hand, we have enormous amount of insecurity. And I think, unfortunately, you know, in our discussion about, you know, home offers and, you know, how things going to be different after the pandemic, we focus too much on the developed world and on the top companies and what they can offer to top talent. But we need to really see how we can really help. And that's also a job, of course, of the larger companies in the developing countries in South Asia, in Africa, Latin America, and so forth, to really create more jobs to make sure that more people are getting training and that more people are really getting into formal jobs that allow them also step-by-step to build, you know, a good living and more security. And clearly, their technology plays a very important role. Technology is not about replacing people, but really increasing productivity and helping to improve standards of living. And companies, you know, the big companies from the Northern Hemisphere, but also all the other companies need to embrace this and need to change the business model in order to stay competitive and thus to create also jobs and growth that allow us to really make sure that more and more people are gainfully employed. But I would really worry if we focus too much on a very narrow band of talent that we are employing in certain sectors of the world and forget about 90% of those people who really, you know, need to become really a more stable participant in the global economic development. Thank you. We have a question from our audience asking that Internet-mediated platform jobs are often the only source of income for many workers in developing countries, which Hans-Paul just alluded to, and particularly for youth and women. Rather than vilifying the gig economy, should we be working on better regulating and improving it? I wonder if any of our panelists would like to hear. I will take that, Heather. I would absolutely agree with that, right? I mean, gig economy, it is today called gig economy, but if you really reflect on what Hans said, even today in most of the, most countries, there is a significant part of the labor force who are in the informal sectors. It is more pronounced in some of the developing countries than developed countries. So even today there is a need to get better social contracts and better regulations on how we handle that. And whatever we do there is only going to help the whole gig economy model. And while we are talking about the, some of the issues related to gig economy and flexible workforce, we should also keep in mind there is a generation shift. Millennials are different. It does not matter whether they are from well-developed nations or from developing nations. It is just a psychological thing. They need more flexibility. They like more freedom. So we should not ignore those aspects as we develop frameworks and support mechanisms to really strengthen this informal or the contingent or gig economy kind of solutions that are evolving. Flexibility doesn't mean exploitative work. And I don't think you're saying that for a minute. But we can put a flaw under all workers. And if you think about, people think about, you know, the so-called gig economy. We try not to use that because it's not very much fun. But it's not just Deliveroo and Uber and others. This is now underpinning a whole range of professional and technical roles. And when you think about a profession like journalism, even in Europe, you can earn as little as 15 euro a day the price of a going article. Because collective bargaining around fair contract price flaws is almost non-existent. So when guys say we need to invest in the institutions, we do. And can I say, this is on wages. So let me just say one thing on wages. 75% of people say that their income is stagnated or fallen behind. And indeed, we know that the labor income shares been like a roller coaster since the late 80s. In that context, when 76% tell you that the minimum wage is not enough to live on, and we see collective bargaining collapsing, there's no way unless we rebuild those commitments. We will share prosperity and build the basis of a genuine economy where people can actually live independently within an economy where they make choices. So I would just say, flexibility is not the problem as long as it's chosen. And there are two pieces of legislation already, and there'll be more, one in Argentina, one in Spain on digital work. And they actually start to preserve that flaw we're talking about. I wish we had more time to unpack this issue, but I feel that our panelists have left the audience with plenty to chew over as they go about their day and hopefully listen to more of these sessions. Thank you so much to our panelists and to the World Economic Forum for putting this together. And thank you to all of you for joining us today.