 Hi everyone, I am here in my office today in Crow Park as today we had a conference around the future of Talent 2023 by FRS Recruitment and I had a delightful job of being the emcee and I wanted to share a range of insights that came up through the conversation. So it started off with Stephen Kinslep and he first of all asked us if we had read the book Where Is My Flying Car because he's read it three times and it's a history of future theories, so what people have predicted the future in the past. And he was talking about that in the context of asking us to stand back and to look at where we are today relative to where we were in the past but from the lens of standing in the past. He said Ireland is eight times wealthier than it was 40 years ago and that Ireland as a population is transitioning from being one of the youngest in the OECD to one of the oldest in times to come. He said the future is wealthier, faster, grayer, happier, greener, witter, slower and similar. And he took us to a range of ways in which that was the case. He also pointed out that Ireland is the highest life expectancy in the EU and he compared that to a couple of countries that were surprising in a couple of ways particularly in the developing world sorry developed world. Now he also went on to talk about the opportunity that would be there if Ireland was to develop renewable energy dominance and he compared the output of the country now he was to the output of the country back when Ireland and Croatia was built and compared to what it could be if we really embraced particularly offshore wind energy. I pointed out as well of course that a third of our energy generated in Ireland today is through wind and he was just talking about the point about how this could go and the two particular outcomes of that number one is having almost free energy for people in Ireland and the impact that would have on cost of living and also how we could export it as well. He pointed out that there is huge wisdom from talking to people and we often talk about that in the context of market research but perhaps not in the case of community engagement when it comes to things like net zero or infrastructure particularly green infrastructure etc and he did really say that if he could design his ideal job it would be to talk to everybody in Ireland at least once. He was talking as well about an initiative that's going on at the moment with his own students in UL where he's teaching them to think like economists but to use AI to make the code and also he said AI will absolutely take your job that's procedural but from there we need to figure out how to make AI work for us and also to figure out how reskilling and upskilling can happen as well. He also pointed out statistically speaking that roundabout midlife and I don't want to specifically hone in on the exact age he mentioned but he said roundabout midlife is where we can go from being happy as we are as a teenager and there our happiness can decline and then go right up again and particularly by the time age 84 you're happier. Moving on from there then to Johnny Campbell from Social Talent so he spoke about how we use job titles and qualifications as a proxy for skills and he said if you change to skills based recruitment the whole game changes entirely. He said for a start that your talent pool can expand by 10x and particularly for women because they're underrepresented in the workplace is that can expand by 13x. He also said that if we move people away from jobs and into skills what exactly would that mean? Well he said then we would change our job descriptions to be more skills based, change sourcing, change talent advisory, change skill assessment, change interviewing, particularly standardizing it with a rubric associated with said skills, L&D being learning and development as well as internal mobility and he also pointed out that 77% of organizations have a skills shortage and that's why this particularly needs to change. He also pointed out that we need to be able to identify one's learning quotient because if you are somebody that can learn well well then it doesn't matter what skills you have today the point is is that if you're susceptible to be able to take on more of them tomorrow well then that can change the basis on which one might be hired and he also spoke about the future of talent and specifically skills shortages and how it is only moving in one direction as the world increases its need for people and talent and the skills that they have but he also talked about introducing certain technologies. He spoke about AI and he spoke about different HR tech etc but he said there's no point in bringing in new tech if you haven't got your structure right. Fix that first he says get better organized enable people to know what they're expected to do and so on like that and then introduce your technology and your improvement. He also spoke about the potential implications of the EU pay transparency directive and the speed at which it's coming in and he caught in the audience not to be guinea pig don't do things first let someone else do things first you do second and then see how it works from there. Moving on to Kevin Green then he said 85% of economic value comes from intangible assets and ultimately everybody no I won't say everybody lots of companies say their people are their best asset and yet they're not recognized in a balance sheet and any one of you that come from a financial or accounting background you know why that is the case but he made the point that how do we get out of the way of our people to let them unleash their creativity and thus unlock that intangible value in our businesses. He also pointed out that people want when they're applying for jobs to be able to make an application really simply like one click of an upload of a CV or something that isn't a clunky system something that really has great user experience. He pointed out that AI the gig economy and different trends like that are leading towards a more polarized workforce and that needs to be addressed from one perspective it offers the opportunity that Johnny was talking about and on the other hand it needs to be managed from an employer, political, economic and social point of view as well. He said it's very important to empower leaders and managers to make decisions and he also said that they are super important in the tea and toast meetings is what he calls them in first boss but he talks about having fast feedback loops ask people for their opinion listen to what they say and then go back and show them you said we did that is what builds up trust and if you can't deliver upon what they're asking for say why involve them in the feedback loop bring people with you. He also said use design thinking in order to figure out new ways of doing things and do those with the people that it's going to affect. So then moving on from there I had Laura Doyle from Distilled and then I also had Lynn McCormack from general manager of SRS at Boris recruitment and we Laura spoke about the importance of making commitment to staff to show them what you as an employer is going what you're going to do for them and then hold both of you accountable along the way she said good people want to work with good people. Lynn particularly pointed out the role of the cost of living changes that have happened in the country and of course wider society and how that is affecting career choices whether it might be the cost of energy bills and where people physically choose to work whether it might be the push to renegotiate salary or move for higher salary. And of course the opportunity to get a job closer to home and how that might affect things as well. She said one fifth of people based on their research one fifth of people would move for salary increase of 10% and that is coming from people who've been with their employer for three years or more predominantly and Kevin on the panel then also said that purpose and belonging is really important in a company but he said there's three key things that staff need to know. Number one is why is their job important and who does it affect. Number two how they have autonomy and number three is how they're going to grow and develop. All day we were talking about the role of flexibility and what that means whether it is the timing that people are working the place that people are working from the opportunity to change all day flexibility came up again and again. I also was well the role of feedback loops and wellness days and the understanding that you need to take care of people not just the fact that they are staff and Laura particularly talked about performance calibration where people go through a performance review but also that is calibrated by customer feedback or a respective staff feedback or performance in terms of other metrics etc. And she just said you know good people want to know where they stand. The conversation then arose about retention versus recruitment and Kevin particularly said start with retention. A consistent turn takes a huge amount of energy and takes an awful lot of time and effort away from retention. He said also if there is going to be people who are made redundant and I don't mean that in the literal sense but what I mean by that is if people's jobs are going away by virtue of technology etc. He said first of all be transparent about it and then find the opportunities for those people to perhaps move internally or else if they are not if their jobs or the contracts are not going to be renewed it communicate communicate that early and help them figure out a way forward from there. So then we had a conversation with Colin Donnery and Hannah Terrell and in particular there was five key things came out of that one is the importance of diversity inclusion in the workplace two is communication all day long again they're talking about the role of clear communication. Number three and Hannah really put this forward she said people need to know what does it mean to do what they're doing so what does it mean in her case to play for Dublin or what does it mean to do the job that you're doing know your why and articulate it. Colin also talked about well both actually both of them really spoke about the role of stakeholder management. No that's the term I'm putting on it but is taking care of the people who you need to take care of and communicating according to your audience and bringing people with you and everyone just talked about how it's a busy world. Yes the economy is doing very well people can be very busy that comes with its own challenges and we need to be understanding of that whether it is from a work-life balance perspective or whether it is from the perspective of taking care of oneself or understanding that it's not always easy to keep up with that pace but overall a super day and thank you to Lynn to Erin and to Joe and to Colin for giving me the opportunity to emcee right here at Croke Park.