Russell Beck

Unlocking the Future: Navigating the changing uncertainties to future-proof your business and your career

Consider two headlines that we face on a regular basis. Firstly, that the financial reality is few of us can afford to retire and, secondly, that robots and AI are destroying the very jobs we need to make a living. How are these two realities compatible?

At the same time, the business landscape is full of hazards, with globalization, technology, talent shortages, changing consumer choices and politics all making it harder to create and maintain success. Competitors seemingly arrive from nowhere overnight, challenging and upending our markets.

It is all up in the air, it is all happening at once and it is happening to all of us. From any perspective – personal or corporate – shouldn’t we seek to understand what is happening and prepare ourselves for what is coming next?

This session puts this all into context. Backed up with extensive research and real-world examples, it will show how the world is changing and through a series of lenses – business strategy, people strategy, future skills, sustainability and our careers – the practical steps we can all take to future proof our businesses and our careers.

What Russell will give you:

• A practical understanding of the megatrends playing out in the world today and their potential threats and opportunities
• Given the megatrends, a series of actionable measures you can implement to future-proof your business, examined through the perspectives of:
  • How business can adapt considering strategy, size and focus together with the complexity of flexibility, hybrid working and the office
  • How, given the future realities of talent attraction and retention, organisation’s people strategies can respond
  • With technologies relentless encroachment, a smart analysis of the skills business will need in the future, and how selection methods can adapt to identify them
  • Business sustainability considered from the internal context of innovation and creativity and the external context of the climate
• Finally, given everything else, the actionable steps you can take to seek to future proof your career

Revolutionising attraction and retention: A blueprint for talent sustainability in the post-pandemic era

30 months into the cost-of-living crisis and UK job vacancies remain 15% higher than pre-pandemic levels. In America there are two unemployed people for every three open vacancies. It is without doubt a seller’s market and it is going to stay this way. By 2030 it is estimated that 1 in 10 jobs could remain permanently unfilled. If your business is in any way reliant on people to get things done, this is an existential threat.

Talent strategies need a rethink. The pandemic fundamentally changed people’s view of work and life forcing everyone to consider what is “worth it.” Compensation is one of the 6 C’s © and is of course part of the solution, but humans crave more than a financial transaction they crave interaction or Career, Cause, Community, Culture and a Company that understands them. This session will give you practical tips on how you can create a sustainable, future-proofed talent strategy where people want to stay and do their best work every day.

What Russell will give you:

• Insight into the reality of the employment market and why it will remain a sellers’ market for years to come
• An overview of our 6C © model that enables talent strategies to be future ready
• Practical and tangible tips on how to implement each step

Unlocking Meaningful Work: Leveraging Purpose-Led Leadership to Drive Productivity, Innovation, and Wellbeing in Your Organisation

Dostoyevsky noted that it is never the hardness of a task that destroys a human, it is far, far easier – just make the task futile “to the point of absurdity.” Dostoyevsky though was just building on something the gods had known for aeons. Since Zeus condemned Sisyphus to an eternity of useless, unending futility we have known that doing something we know to be pointless is a punishment worse than death.

Hopefully employees can tell you what they do. Hopefully they can tell you how they will do it, but can they tell you why they do it? 40% of workers across Europe believe their job makes no meaningful contribution to society whatsoever and they know it. In a world where there is always someone willing to pay more than us, “meaning is the new money” and those who find meaning in their work are more productive, healthier, have greater retention and are more innovative.

What Russell will give you:

• An overview of why humans crave meaning and the benefit to business of providing meaningful work
• Considerations on why creating meaningful work is so hard
• A business case on the benefits of creating meaning and purpose
• Practical steps you can take to help everyone find their golden thread at work and embed meaning into the workplace