Ravin Jesuthasan
Most organisations are still running a work operating system designed for a labour market that no longer exists. Jobs are fixed, careers are linear, AI is bolted on at the edges, and the skills the business actually needs are nowhere on the org chart. The question senior leaders now face is structural, not cosmetic: how do you rewire how work gets done before competitors rewire it around you.
Ravin Jesuthasan helps senior leaders redesign the operating model of work itself, moving organisations from a jobs-based architecture to one built around skills, tasks and human-AI collaboration.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Ravin Jesuthasan
- He gives boards and executive teams an actual blueprint for moving from jobs to skills, not a slide about why it matters. The Work Without Jobs framework, developed with John Boudreau, is the reference text on the subject and is taught inside MIT Sloan and Kellogg.
- His day job is doing this work. As Mercer’s Global Leader of Transformation Services, he advises some of the largest employers in the world on workforce redesign, so the keynote is built on live engagements, not theory.
- He sits where AI, automation and human capital actually intersect. His four-step framework for applying automation to work, from Reinventing Jobs, has become a standard tool for HR and operations leaders trying to decide what to automate, what to augment, and what to leave alone.
- He brings institutional authority that buyers can verify. World Economic Forum Steering Committee on Work and Employment, Thinkers50 Radar, FT Book of the Month, fifteen pieces in HBR and MIT Sloan Management Review.
- His material is built for the CHRO and the CEO in the same room. Many future-of-work speakers pitch to one or the other. He frames the work redesign question as a board-level operating decision, which is how it now needs to be sold internally.
Biography highlights
- Global Leader of Transformation Services at Mercer.
- Executive Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer of Executive Education, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.
- Author of five books including Work Without Jobs (MIT Press, 2022) and The Skills-Powered Organization (MIT Press, 2024).
- Wall Street Journal bestseller; Financial Times Book of the Month, October 2024.
- Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2020; shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Talent Award 2023.
- World Economic Forum Steering Committee member on Work and Employment.
- Over 200 published articles, including 15 in Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review; regular Forbes contributor.
- CFA charterholder and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).
Biography
The job, as a unit of organisational architecture, is starting to look obsolete. Roles are static, skills inside them decay in months rather than years, and AI is now capable of doing chunks of work that used to define entire functions. Most large employers know this. Very few know what to replace the jobs-based model with.
This is the territory Ravin Jesuthasan has spent two decades mapping. As Global Leader of Transformation Services at Mercer, he advises multinational employers on how to rebuild their workforce architecture around skills and tasks rather than fixed job descriptions. The same body of work runs through Work Without Jobs, written with John Boudreau and published by MIT Press in 2022, and its 2024 follow-up, The Skills-Powered Organization, written with Tanuj Kapilashrami and named Financial Times Book of the Month in October 2024.
The institutional credentials match the intellectual claim. He sits on the World Economic Forum’s Steering Committee on Work and Employment, holds an Executive Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer appointment at the Kellogg School of Management, and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2020 before being shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Talent Award in 2023. He has written more than 200 articles, including fifteen pieces for Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review, and contributes regularly to Forbes.
For boards now being asked how AI will reshape headcount, productivity and capability, his contribution is not a forecast. It is an operating model: a structured way of deciding what work gets deconstructed, which tasks get automated or augmented, and how the organisation acquires the skills it will actually need next year, not the jobs it posted last year.
Key speaking topics
- The skills-powered organisation
- Reinventing jobs through automation and AI
- The future of work and the work operating system
- Workforce transformation and human capital strategy
- Human-AI collaboration in the enterprise
- The future of the Chief People Officer role
- Sustainable digital transformation
Ideal for
- CHROs and Chief People Officers rebuilding the workforce model around skills and AI.
- CEOs and boards making capital-level decisions on AI, automation and headcount.
- Transformation, operations and strategy leaders responsible for redesigning how work gets done.
- Executive teams preparing for skills-based talent markets and post-jobs operating models.
Audience outcomes
- A working definition of the skills-powered organisation and how it differs from a jobs-based model.
- A four-step method for deciding what to automate, what to augment, and what to leave to humans.
- A board-ready argument for treating work design as a strategic operating decision, not an HR programme.
- Specific case examples from global employers already deconstructing jobs into tasks and skills.
Talks
A walkthrough of how organisations move from a jobs-based architecture to one built around skills, tasks and AI capability, drawing on the 2024 MIT Press book co-authored with Tanuj Kapilashrami.
Key takeaways:
- Why the job, as a unit of organisation, is breaking down faster than HR systems can adapt.
- The operating shifts needed to make skills the primary currency of work.
- What CHROs, CEOs and boards each need to own in the transition.
An applied framework for deciding which parts of a job to automate, which to augment with AI, and which to leave to humans, based on the Harvard Business Review Press book co-authored with John Boudreau.
Key takeaways:
- How to deconstruct a job into its underlying tasks before automating anything.
- The four-step decision logic for matching work to humans, machines or both.
- Why automation strategies fail when they start with technology rather than work.
A senior-leadership view of how the operating system of work is being rewritten by AI, demographics and new talent markets, drawing on Work Without Jobs (MIT Press, 2022).
Key takeaways:
- The structural forces dismantling the traditional employment model.
- How leading employers are already building post-jobs operating systems.
- What boards should be asking their executive teams now.