 Well, welcome to this extraordinary session about setting the new standards for the future of work. My name is Linda Gratton. I'm Professor of Management Practice at the London Business School and I'm also Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Council on jobs which look specifically at the future of work. Now, today's session is going to address some of the principles that we need to be thinking about as we think about the future of work. This of course is a narrative that's going to go on. This is only the beginning of how we think about building back better. Now, at the World Economic Forum, there is a report which is coming out about resetting the future of work agenda. So let me just show you what that's about. So in terms of resetting the agenda for jobs, we think that there are going to be five crucial imperatives. One, of course, is aligning the technology and skills. Remember that even before COVID, we saw a huge change in terms of the technologies. Many of you are doing jobs where at least some of it can be done by a robot or by artificial intelligence and that's only going to increase. Secondly, really, how to build a human-centric leadership culture. So also, what role do leaders play in that? How do we focus on health and well-being? A very big issue that's already arising as we know as we look at the surveys since COVID. And finally, how do we transform organisational design and work design? If we're going to build back better, what does that better look like? And what role can we as individuals play to make sure that we fashion the sort of jobs that are going to be right for us? But importantly, what role can corporations play? And indeed, what role can governments and governmental institutions play? So I'm absolutely delighted today to be introducing our panel, who are going to give us some real insights on that. So let me first of all introduce the panel, and then I'm going to ask each one of them a question to start our discussion. First of all, can I introduce you to Harsh Vendra Soon, who's the C-Chief People Officer for Mahindra, based in India. Secondly, can I introduce Yuli Shupina, who's the Senior Vice President for Spa Bank in the Russian Federation. Can I introduce Tanuj Kapilishama, who's the Group Head of Human Resources for Standard Charter Bank. May I introduce Ravin Jesufan, who's the Managing Director and Global Practice Leader for Willis Towers Watson, based in the USA. And finally, can I introduce Stefano Scopetta, who's the Director of Employment, Labor and Social Affairs at the OECD, based in France. So we have amongst us some real authorities in terms of how the future of work is going to play out. My role is to moderate and also to ask the questions that will start us all off. So let's get straight down to the panel discussion. And let me actually start Harsh Vendra with you. And the question that I think we need to, we can ask as our first question, is how do you see the way that we work change in terms of COVID-19? And what do you think will be the accelerators, particularly from your perspective, in terms of automation? Thank you, Linda. And it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for asking that very relevant question. And let me start by saying this big reset coming in. The new normal is actually become the now normal. Hyper automation is changing the way we work, giving businesses really the access to collaborative intelligence, which was never there. Today, when we talk about alternate workforce, Linda, there are two kinds. One is the talent economy focused on really the high-end skills, which demand a premium price. And then of course, there's the gig economy focused on commoditizing the skill, where price really becomes a key differentiator. The second thing that I clearly see is anytime, anywhere, any device is the new norm. And we see technology really accelerating this big transformation. And as Gene Ross said, clearly the thing that's transforming is not technology, but it's technology that's transforming you. And we all have to live with it. With the advent of the pandemic, there are a few non-negotiables in the new way that we work, whether it's workplace optionality, working from anywhere, not from office, holistic well-being, whether it is physical or mental, and most importantly, meaningful work. And we see that purposefulness and a bigger cause is what's driving talent today and not just brands. And finally, my third point would be that trust, collaboration, and culture have become even more critical in this whole hybrid workplace, communicating clearly and transparently has become paramount. And we've seen in leadership, per se, it has changed from a command and control to really inspiration and resilience. And very interestingly, Linda, the focus is now shifted from skills to capability and from roles to tasks. But having said that, I will end by saying what I always say, while technology will be an enabler, movements of truth are still human. And we may use a high tech approach, but it has to deliver a high touch to our employees. Thank you and over to you. Thank you so much. And already, we've hit on some really crucial issues. Isn't it fascinating? I've been serving people around the world from the very beginning about their feelings about COVID-19. One of the first questions I asked is, how are you feeling right now? One of the options was my technology is not working for me. This was a webinar I did at London Business School on March the 14th. I have kept a diary. 10,000 people answered that. I don't know if you can imagine how many people said the technology wasn't working for them. 3%. Isn't that amazing? For all of us, all of you in technology companies, I think it's a big thank you really. I don't think even a decade ago, I don't know how others feel. That just would never have been possible. So I think we've been amazed at how technology is held up. And as you say, collaborative technology. I was just asking the panel before you joined us. Everyone's been on Zoom all day, I guess, or whatever we're using. And that collaborative technology has been going through incredible experimental points. And then, of course, you also raised an issue which I think we're going to come back to, which is, what's the purpose really? What's the purpose of work? Why do we work as we do? Why are we doing what we do? And as you say, that purposefulness is becoming an important issue in terms of building back better. But also, in terms of leadership, what role does leader play in terms of purpose? Now, thank you so much for setting that marvelous agenda for us. Tanuji, it must be fascinating for you because you sit at the heart of Standard Charter Bank, one of our largest financial institutions with a footprint that goes right across the world. So you probably have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of employees that you've had to move to hybrid, probably within a week or two. I mean, how did you approach that shift? Can you hear me now? Thanks, Linda. It's a great, great question. And I'll really build on what Harshwinder started off, started us off with. There are four key points for me. One is to really dial up the focus on employee listening and taking decisions at the back of data. So we have been through across our 60 markets, various phases of this crisis. And while it started off with full remote working, full working from home to hybrid, out of necessity, very early on, we positioned this as an opportunity for us going forward. So continuous employee listening, not just how they are feeling, but their experience of this crisis and how has that shaped their thinking about how they see working in the future. The last survey we did, 74% of our 100,000 colleagues told us that post the crisis, they'd see themselves working minimum 50% from home. And a very large percentage said they see themselves working from home more than 50% of the time. Interestingly, it was a low single digit percentage of people who said they want to work from home all the time. And actually that led to us coming out very clearly with our position around hybrid working. The fact is, we do believe in greater flexibility. It's a big talent play. It's a big opportunity around innovation inclusion. But we also believe that workplaces will continue to have a role going forward, but that role will evolve. So I think the first thing for me is employee listening, leveraging data as opposed to basing decisions on the basis of our personal experiences. The second is, and it's a point you make in a lot of research you've done, is hybrid working is not just about extending flexible working or cutting down property. This is about fundamental redesign of work. And while we have, it starts off with an employee lens, we've got a formal employee expression of interest across our 10 biggest markets now asking people for how they want to work post the crisis. We have supplemented that work with a very detailed piece of work on looking at job families. So really breaking down work on how does work get done? So this is not just about more flexibility, it's about redesigning work fundamentally. And really, interestingly, for a bank like ours, we found that 80% of our jobs can be done with significantly more flexibility than it was done before. So giving it that really strong business lens was important. Two other quick points for me. This is an opportunity, not just a threat. What started off as dealing with a crisis, we believe is a massive opportunity for inclusion and innovation going forward. And to fully leverage the benefit of that, we need to co-create the solutions with our workforce. It cannot be top down. We are currently in the middle of a campaign, which we are crowdsourcing ideas from all our employees on how to create water cooler moments in a hybrid world of increasing inclusion, innovation, collaboration. And even within the first two weeks of the campaign, we have generated some fantastic ideas from our workforce. So this cannot be a change that is done to our people. This has to be a change that is done with our workforce and with our people. So I will dial up the theme around collaboration. Last but not the least, for hybrid working to be successful, it will have to be done at the back of dialing up purpose and culture of companies. So as we are redefining leadership for the future, we are coming back to our core purpose as a firm. And how does that purpose and culture become the glue that holds all of us together? So onboarding, hiring, reimagining leadership development for the future are all aspects that we are covering. That's just just fantastically interesting. Thanks, Tanu. And one of the things that you're beginning to talk about, and I think we'll bring this up in the discussion later, is the simple truth is we really don't know what people want. And they don't know either. And we don't know what's going to be best. And that's why, as you say, listening and data are so important, you know, when we came into COVID and people said, oh, the experience of home workers is that they're more productive. That was based on one piece of research. You probably all know that now famous Nick Bloom research, I'm sure when he did that, he never realized how famous it would be. And it was based on call center workers in China, half of whom stayed at home, half of them went to the office. And he found that the ones who stayed at home were more productive. By the way, they were more productive because they worked longer hours because they didn't commute. But he also found exactly to your point, Tanu, that after six months, 50% of the people in call centers, even though they had long commutes wanted to come back to the office. And so one of the things I've been saying to see is when I've advised them is don't make decisions too quickly. We really don't, it hasn't been long enough for people to know yet what they want. And as you say, this question of serendipity is absolutely crucial. It's something I'd be writing about as you perhaps know, a lot in the last month, which is to say, you know, one of the things that happened in offices is that you bumped into people, didn't you? You had coffee with people, you met somebody in the corridor. And that's not the same. Now, as you say, you can build these virtual platforms that allow you to do that. And we're certainly doing that through our own work. But is it the same? I don't know, which, which, which gets me on really to you, to you, because, you know, the question that's been on my mind is how do we change the practices that are going to support this new way of working, particularly in terms of talent? Because one of the points that people are saying, and you'll be, you know, can't wait to hear your response, is that, look, this is okay for people like me who know their job, who know lots of people who consider it in my lovely study in Primrose Hill. But what happens for people that are just joining Spurbank and desperate to understand the culture? And how do you attract talent in this new hybrid way of working? Jula, what's your view of that? Thank you very much, Linda. And it's a pleasure to be at this panel with these distinguished speakers. You're very right. We are very big organizations, 300,000 employees, and we hire around 50,000 every year. So, of course, we had to change quite a lot at the beginning of the crisis. We were lucky, I think, because we did a huge agile transformation in our headquarters just before the crisis, bringing 30,000 people to agile. So we had many instruments prepared, like online learning platforms, online adaptation platforms, we started to recruit online as well. And that was a huge help, because what we can see now, I think on one hand, technology, it's great that it's helping us. But as you said, it's not everything. And people who know how to use the technology and bring quickly a good product to the market are in deep demand. We have even more than before for IT skills, for data skills. And for attracting this kind of talent, obviously, we have to offer very flexible workplace, but also a culture and purpose, as was said before, that is interesting to them, and that they see attractive. We also see differences in junior and senior hires. I think for senior hires now, they're more thinking than before, whether they want to change organization or country, because there is a lot of uncertainty. And obviously, it's more difficult to take the decision. But we are very concerned of what is happening to the junior guys, especially those who are coming first into the workplace. And I think this is where both private sector and government and university have to walk together because we might face a very serious problem of youth unemployment. So what we are doing with Sberbank, we actually started to walk with university, trying to help them to build the skills that we will be requiring. Because otherwise, our education system is usually much slower to transform. And when we talk about which skills we need, Sberbank was talking a lot about this at Davos, we're still looking for technology skills. But I think that the soft skills are becoming even more important in these days, where there is so much collaboration needed, but so little is known, because all of us are learning how to be a team, just seeing each other virtually. So for young people, it's very important to learn things like decision making, like collaboration, like self motivation, how to manage your personal health and energy, because all of us are going into over walking as the first response to the digital walk. And then go ahead. Sorry, you like, because I'm just looking at our time, and I wanted really to bring to bring in Ravin at the moment, at this moment, because, you know, the question that you that you're sort of bringing up is, you know, how do we value human capital? And of course, Tars Watson have been doing a great deal of that, that type of work. I mean, Ravin, do you see there being a change in how we value human capital in terms of this? Yeah, thanks Linda, and such a pleasure and privilege to be here with you all. Yes, I certainly do. And I've just pasted a link into the chat feature for the attendees to click on, because I do think there is a massive opportunity to level the playing field, as it relates to how we measure and value both work and the workforce. And I think as Tanu just talked about, you know, the growing number of options related to how, where, when, who, what, and why of work make this a true imperative now. And when we talk about leveling the playing field, what it means, I think in part is removing the distortions that come about from varied accounting and governance practices associated with how we tap into these various work options to more accurately reflect the role and value of the workforce in evolving business models. The link, if you looked at it on pages 27 and 28, we've got two metrics that we proposed in this last report with the work called human capital as an asset. The one related to the total cost of work, I think represents a significant step forward in getting out of some of the distortions we have in looking at the value of work, you know, eliminating the differential treatment for the capitalization of automation, for example, eliminating the differential treatment for the off balance sheet treatment of alliances. And then I think equally something that Linda, you and many others have talked about for a long time, just the notion of reflecting the work for the value of the workforce, you know, treating it as a capital asset that is capitalized, amortized over time and adjusted for its impairment in much the same way we've been doing with oil with accounting conventions like PV 10 for decades. And so if we can do that for natural resources and that those are universally accepted standards, as work continues to be reinvented and re-envisioned. And Harsh Vendor, I think you said it really well, beyond the notion of just the matching of jobs and job holders to the matching of skills and skills and capabilities to be matched to work, I think an opportunity for us to use some of these new metrics to really advance the science of how we take into account the changing value of work in the workforce. Thank you. And Stefano, I know, you know, one of the things that Harsh Vendor said at the very beginning was, you know, we've got the highly educated people and the people in the gig economy. And I know from an OECD perspective, that's a real concern, isn't it, that actually we don't build back better. In fact, the recession that we're all facing with high youth unemployment, notions of inclusivity are going to somehow get lost in that. And I wondered how did you see the sort of social dialogue developing around this issue? Thank you very much, Linda. It's a really great pleasure to participate in this conversation. Building on your question, I want to make three points. One, I think that from the points of view of policymakers, there is an immediate challenge. In my sense, it's that for all of us, how we play with the still ongoing situation with the pandemic still being out there is going to be essential, not just in the short term, but for the next few years, I would say. So the big challenge that policymakers face in all countries is how to adjust this massive measure that we put in place during the emergency phase in a situation which is much more difficult, is much more diversified. There are some sectors that are reopening activities are actually ongoing and others which are still severely affected. So how you basically diversify target support to those sectors, keeping job, helping workers while actually allowing economic activities to go. The second is precisely what you said. These guys are fortunate as reinforced even further the inequality we have seen in our economies and our liberal markets in a deep way. We have been talking about telework. The evidence we have from the SD suggests that 40% of the workers in the OCD countries have been teleworking. But when you look at who are those, you see that those with low skills were not able to telework as much as those with high skills and high level of pay. Actually, many of them stopped working or actually working in the essential services, taking also some risk in terms of contracting the virus itself. These guys are shown very clear that there are still, even in the OCD countries, large gap in social protection. Not all the work actually got even the minimum protection in terms of having minimum income support if they lost their job. So we had to fix this if, again, building back better, as you said, really is put in practice. I think the issue of skill is going to be fundamental. We don't yet have a lot of evidence, but it's like at this crisis, it's simply accelerating the changes that were already very well present in our economies. So we were not going to go back to the situation we had before. The penetration of the visual technology would be much stronger after this crisis. How do we make sure that people, workers, are equipped? Again, one statistic which is fighting in my view, when you look at access to formal informal training, there is a gap one to three between the low-skill and the high-skill. So lifelong learning is a reality for many of the high-skill workers. It is not a reality. Even in the OCD countries, for a number of those with low or intermediate level of skill, guess what? These are the ones who need training between the most, precisely to make sure they can adapt their competences to the task that a new job will require. Let me just conclude that given the size of the challenges, I don't think government, by themselves, frankly speaking, can address them in an effective way. Things are changing so rapidly and the change is so deep that I think the business sector has to play a major fundamental role. We have to rethink about the public-private partnership, also because the speed of change is so fast. Basically, regulations tend to actually follow with some delay and they might not be adequate when they're put in place. So we have to really rethink a good collaboration between the public, the government, those who actually set up rules and regulations. In the private sector, we've seen the changes in the role of the operation. So Stefano, thank you. The live stream portion of this session is ending now. So I wanted to say first of all, thank you to all of you who have joined on the live stream. Thank you to our panelists for really sharing what I think is an in-the-moment conversation about what individuals can do, what companies can do, but also I want to finish with Stefano's plea, which is to say, we all have to do this together. We all have to do it together and at the where we're committed to building back better. So thank you all of you for joining. Thank you also for your questions, wonderful questions that I'm seeing in the chat function. And look forward to seeing you again at another session. Thank you very much.