The Future Of Work Podcast With Jacob Morgan | Futurist | Workplace | Careers | Employee Experience & Engagement |

Mary Bilbrey is the Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO) for Americas at JLL, the leading integrated global real estate services and investment management firm. Mary joined JLL in February of 2016. She came to JLL from HSBC, the multinational banking and financial services company, where she was the Head of Human Resources for HSBC USA. JLL is a leading professional services firm that specializes in real estate and investment management. Their vision is to reimagine the world of real estate, creating rewarding opportunities and amazing spaces where people can achieve their ambitions. JLL is a Fortune 500 company with nearly 300 corporate offices, operations in over 80 countries and a global workforce of 83,500 Is there truth to generational stereotypes? Some of it seems to be that with every ‘new’ generation we talk about various traits that they seem to display - but in reality it is simply because they are young. It has been true of every generation – they are more idealistic, more ‘me’ focused.  But much of

With major advances in technology and the talk of AI and automation invading the workplace, the subject of soft skills has become a huge topic of discussion for organizations and individual employees. I think soft skills are very important, however I think that most organizations are asking the wrong question when they address the topic. Most organizations ask the question, what do we need to do inside of our organizations to teach more soft skills. They believe that they need to teach their managers and employees to have more soft skills. But think about the assumption that is made when we ask that question. We assume that our managers and employees don’t have soft skills to begin with. The truth is we all learn soft skills naturally as we grow up, as we learn and as we interact with others. We learn how to be empathetic, we learn how to communicate with others, we learn how to deal with emotions. All of these things come naturally as we grow up and experience different things. The question we should be aski

Jim Kavanaugh is the co-founder and CEO of World Wide Technology.  From St. Louis, Missouri Jim played collegiate soccer, then he played for the U.S. Olympic men’s soccer team in 1984 and finally for the Major Indoor Soccer League. He graduated from St. Louis University and began his business career as a sales manager for Future Electronics. He has been recognized two years in a row by Glassdoor as one of the top ranking CEOs for all large businesses in the U.S. He was ranked #2 in 2017 and #11 in 2018.   World Wide Technology began in 1990 as a company that was a small product reseller. It has moved into a technology solution provider where they help large public and private organizations discover, evaluate, architect and implement advanced technology.  They are headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri with $10.4 billion in annual revenue. WWT currently has more than 4,600 employees world-wide. They are ranked 8 on Glassdoors’ Best Places to Work list for 2018 and 40 on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work for l

Andrée Simon is the President and Chief Executive Officer of FINCA Impact Finance, a global provider of responsible financial services. FINCA’s network of 20 community-based banks offer responsible and affordable loan and saving products that empower low income women and men to take control of their financial future. Previously, Ms. Simon served as VP and COO of FINCA International, returning to FINCA after serving for several years as President and COO of Women for Women International, a humanitarian organization dedicated to financial, educational, and interpersonal support of women survivors of war, poverty and injustice. In 1984, founder John Hatch saw that lack of capital was keeping poor Bolivian farmers poor. Traditional loans were too large and too expensive, and without collateral, the farmers couldn’t borrow. So he came up with an idea; if the farmers formed groups to share a loan and guarantee repayment, they could access the funds they needed to invest in their farming operations. It was the begin

Most parents wonder what advice they should be giving to their kids as they grow up and graduate high school. What should they tell them to study in college, what school should their kids go to, what type of career is safe and what type of organization they should be working for. My advice to these parents and their children, is that we all should be like taste testers when we are young and first entering the workforce. We need to sample different things while we are young to figure out what we are passionate about, what we enjoy and what we care about. Forcing someone to study something that they do not care about and don’t have that connection with isn’t going to yield success in the long run.It is unrealistic to think that students are going to graduate from high school or college before they have ever held a full time job, and that they are going to automatically know exactly what they want to do and they are going to work for one organization the rest of their lives. The expectation throughout high schoo

Mala Singh serves as Chief People Officer for Electronic Arts (EA) where she focuses on developing their talent and cultivating the company culture. In this role, Mala oversees Human Resources, Talent Acquisition, Facilities and Corporate Services. Prior to this position, Mala spent three years as Chief People Officer at Minted where she helped to define the culture and grow the creative and technical teams during a high-growth period for the startup. Mala began her career in the pharmaceutical industry, serving in Human Resources roles in Asia, Europe and North America. Founded in 1982, Electronic Arts is a leading global interactive entertainment software company. EA delivers games, content and online services for Internet-connected consoles, personal computers, mobile phones and tablets. Some of their games include Sims, FIFA18, Maden, and Battlefield. Close to 10,000 EA employees are found around the world. How does EA compete with other organizations for the best talent? Mala says they don’t compete with

Garry Ridge is President and CEO of the WD-40 Company headquartered in San Diego, California. WD-40 Company is the maker of the ever-popular WD-40 (found in 8 out of 10 US households), as well as 3-IN-ONE Oil, Solvol and Lava heavy duty hand cleaners and X-14, Carpet Fresh, Spot Shot, 1001 and 2000 Flushes household cleaning products. With just under 500 employees, they boast a 93% employee engagement rate – with an average tenure of 10 years - which helps keep the number of employees low. Garry has been with WD-40 since 1987 in various management positions, including executive vice president and chief operating officer and vice president of international. He has worked directly with WD-40 in 50 countries.A native of Australia, he received his Masters of Science Degree in Executive Leadership from the University of San Diego, CA, in June 2001. Way back Aristotle said, “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” However, people are slow learners. A lot of companies struggle with this because leaders are

We all have many relationships throughout our lifetime; relationships with friends, family, significant others, etc...Some relationships we have thrive, they make us happy and encourage us to be better. But some relationships are unhealthy. They stress us out, cause depression and wear us out. We have relationships that we would fight for and relationships we would not fight for. Working for an organization is very much like being in a relationship. The question is--is it a relationship you would fight for or not? If it is one you would fight for, that is great. You are lucky and you should fight hard to keep that relationship going strong, just as you would for a relationship in your personal life. If it is not an relationship you would fight for, and so many of us fit in this category, then you should get out of it. So many people are unsatisfied at work, but they don’t do anything about it. If this is you, do something! You owe it to yourself to be at an organization you are willing to fight for and you ar

This week’s episode is all about creating meaningful employee experiences and a thriving corporate culture. We are taking a look back at some clips from CHROs, Chief People Officers, and CEOs who are helping their organizations excel in these areas. This episode features: Chairman, President and CEO of Rosetta Stone, John Hass on the corporate culture at Rosetta Stone, how he manages, how he deals with complacency and the importance of a clear company mission David Fairhurst, Chief People Officer at McDonald’s explaining why a huge, iconic brand like McDonald’s is going through a transformation and how culture plays into that VP of Enterprise Social Responsibility at Chick-fil-A, Dee Ann Turner on how to create an amazing corporate culture and how does extraordinary talent impact that Chief People Officer at GSN Games, Peter Walmsley on how to scale employee experience in a large company with offices across the world Kimberly Samon, CHRO at Weight Watchers gives an inside look into what it is li

We are obsessed with Employee Engagement in our companies today, but we give employees surveys to fill out with 50-100 questions on them. There has got to be an easier and more direct way to find out if our employees are engaged at work. Have you ever had to fill out an employee engagement survey that was 50 to 100 questions long? I think most people these days have. Organizations are obsessed with measuring employee engagement and they feel that in order to get a true picture of how they are doing they have to ask hundreds of questions once or twice a year. But does this really give an accurate picture of engagement? In a marriage you and your spouse have a good idea of whether or not the relationship is healthy. You could ask your spouse directly, “are you happy with our relationship”, and they would be able to answer you immediately. You wouldn’t have to give them a form with 50 questions to get that answer. In the same way, employees know if they are engaged at work and enjoy their job and if you ask them

Tim Munden is the Chief Learning Officer at Unilever. Tim has worked there since 2000, holding roles such as Senior European HR Manager, VP HR – Unilever Food Solutions Americas and VP HR for their Global Business Services. Unilever is found in over 100 countries with more than 160,000 employees. Seven out of every ten households around the world contain at least one Unilever product. They produce more than 400 items - including household-name brands such as Lipton, Knorr, Dove, Axe, Hellmann’s and Suave. Tim’s career started to have focus when someone asked him two questions: What do you really love? - he answered human beings What do you want to learn about? - for Tim it was how companies and communities can allow people to be their very best What are your big challenges at Unilever? Unlocking the characteristics of learning Unlocking agility. Encouraging people to be constantly curious and courageous. Getting rid of the stigma around mental health. The goal is that people would feel free to share this

Corporate culture is really hard to define, but I think it can be defined as the side effects of working for your organization. Take the example of some well-known prescription drugs that are out on the market today. You see advertisements for them on TV and they list off a huge list of potential side effects that could happen to you as a result of taking the medicine. Some side effects include hair loss, weight gain, bleeding from the eyes or even death. You may sit there and watch those commercials and think, who would take these medicines when they have all of these potential side effects. But the fact is, many of us experience these same side effects from the organization we work for. Due to work stress, burnout, bad leaders etc… we experience hair loss, weight gain, arguments with our spouses and sometimes even death. The question I pose to executives is, if I were to bottle up what it’s like to work at your organization into a pill form, would you swallow it? If the answer is no, how can you expect your

Welcome to another episode of The Future of Work Podcast. With this week being a holiday week in the States, the format for this episode is a little bit different. Instead of the usual format where I interview one guest every episode, for this week’s episode we are going to hear clips from multiple past guests on the topic of Big Data and Analytics. You will hear from the Chief Learning Officer at SAP, the CTO of Dell EMC’s Services in their Big Data Practice, the Global Head of People Analytics at PayPal, the President and CEO of Humanyze and others today. I get a lot of questions about this topic, so I hope that this episode is helpful, interesting and motivating and I hope it will inspire you to think about how you can leverage these concepts and ideas inside of your organization.   What You Will Learn In This Episode: How to define Big Data How to start using People Analytics in your organization How companies like Humanyze use sensors to gather data in real time and how companies leverage that data Impo

Elena Donio has been Chief Executive Officer of Axiom Global, Inc. since November 2016. Prior to this role,  Donio served as President of Concur Technologies, Inc., from 2014 to 2016. She has also served as a Senior Manager at Deloitte & Touche and as a Senior Consultant at Andersen Consulting (Accenture). She holds BA in Economics from University of California, San Diego. Axiom is the global leading alternative legal services provider. With over 2,000 employees across three continents, they provide talent and technology to help legal departments adapt to a demanding new era. More than half of the Fortune 100 use Axiom to deliver legal work. What is the role of a CEO? Donio’s time is mostly allocated around communication. They have a distributed workforce, 1400 attorneys around the world. They have 15 offices; in addition, many work in home offices, or at client sites. She makes it a practice to think about how to make sure at a leadership level that people understand the organization’s priorities. Donio

Why is it that we are so shocked when companies shut down or are slow to adapt to change? We shouldn’t be surprised, because we create organization that do what they are supposed to do. We as humans are good at building things that do what they are supposed to do. We have clear intentions when we build or create something like a car engine, a computer or an office building and we make sure they are built to fulfill their intended purposes. We also build organizations. But a lot of times we seem shocked and surprised when an organization fails or is too slow to adapt or faces major challenges. We look at companies like Kodak or Tower Records, for example, and see how they disappeared or we look at United and see the major issues they are facing. These things shouldn’t surprise us because we create organizations that do what they are supposed to do. Organizations are built to not anticipate the future or to not withstand change. If you want hierarchies to be flattened or managers that act more like coaches and

Jeffrey Puritt serves as the President and CEO of TELUS International, Inc. Puritt has international experience in communications and technology sectors including mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, strategic planning, corporate reorganizations and asset and contract management. He joined TELUS Communications Inc. in 2001 and served various positions including Vice President of Mergers & Acquisitions at TELUS. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from York University in 1984 and a Bachelor of Laws degree from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1987. TELUS International is a subsidiary of TELUS, a national telecommunications company in Canada. TELUS International provides multilingual customer service outsourcing and digital IT services to global clients. Clients include corporations in travel and hospitality, financial services and fintech, consumer electronics and gaming, telecommunications, and healthcare industries. TELUS International is found in 10 countries with over 30,000 employees.

Tim Ryan is the US Chairman and Senior Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Previously he served as the Vice Chairman, having responsibility for the firm’s strategy function and stakeholder relationships including investor relations, regulatory affairs, public policy, corporate responsibility, marketing and sales and human capital. PwC is a multinational professional accounting services firm. It has 55,000 employees.　 Tim has over 25 years of diversified experience serving clients in the financial services industry in the U.S. and internationally. Prior to his current role, Tim led PwC's Assurance practice and before that, he led PwC's U.S. Financial Services practice and PwC's Consumer Finance Group.　 Tim is a certified public accountant in Massachusetts and New York and a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. He graduated from Babson College where he studied accounting and communications and remains an active and proud alum. A Boston native, he joined the firm after graduatio

A lot of people ask the question, “What is the future of work”. But that is not the right question we should be asking. Why? Because it leads to two major assumptions. First, we assume that there is one single future that could happen. Second, we assume that the future is something that happens to us and that we have no control over it. But both of these assumptions are incorrect. There is not just one singular possible future, there are multiple potential futures that could happen based on the decisions and actions we take. And the future is not something that simply happens to us without our control. What we need to do is flip the question, what is the future of work, around and instead of phrasing it that way we should ask, what are the potential futures that might happen and what are the factors that we need to influence today to get to the future we would like to see. Phrasing the question this way allows us to be more active in creating our future than we would be if we just sit back and wait for the fu

Patty McCord is the author of the book, Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility and starting in 1998 she spent 14 years at NetFlix, serving as Chief Talent Officer. She has more than 15 years experience in Human Resources with high-tech companies. She was the Director of Human Resources at Pure Atria, now Rational Software Corporation. She served as Human Resources Manager at Borland International. McCord also ran the Corporate Diversity Programs department at Sun Microsystems. Currently, she is frequently in the media with interviews and articles from Harvard Business Review, NPR, Fast Company and The Wall Street Journal. She speaks at CEO Forums, Business schools and for large groups around the world. When NetFlix began they were small, did not have money for perks. The perks were not something they focused on. Instead, they emphasized good salary, hard problems and good colleagues. Later, they added extras like unlimited maternity leave. In 2001 1/3 of the Netflix employees were let go –

There is a big debate these days about whose responsibility it is to create a sense of purpose for employees at an organization. Is it up to the employee or the employer? Many people believe that in order to create a workplace where people actually want to show up the employer needs to give employees challenging, exciting and inspiring work that creates a sense of purpose. But, the truth is, the employee controls the work. It is the employee who picks which jobs to apply for, whether or not they want to go in for an interview, if they say yes or no to the job offer. The employee has a choice in what field they want to study in school and at most jobs they are told up front what they will be expected to do. What you do in an organization is not usually a surprise after you get hired. If you apply for a sales position, for example, you are going to be doing sales work. The employer simply controls the environment in which the work gets done. They can control three main environments: culture, technology and phys