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

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

Since we are starting the week with a holiday, I thought we could do something a little different. I have interviewed a lot of fascinating guests over the years ranging from the CIO of IBM to the Chief People Officer at McDonald’s to the CHRO at Allstate and many, many others. And towards the end of most of my interviews I ask the guest to give us some advice in the area of their expertise. We have received a lot of great advice over the years and so I thought it would be fun to compile a full episode of advice from past podcast guests. I hope you find it interesting and helpful, there are some great tips and thoughts in these clips. The first clip is from my interview with bestselling author Jon Gordon. Our conversation for this episode revolved around his newest book, The Power of Positive Leadership. The section that I chose from this interview was when Jon gave us 3 key principles to focus on from his book in order to help us be more positive leaders and transform our organizations. His three key points w

Technology is a vital part of our organizations today, but a lot of times we neglect the technology problem and focus solely on the human problem. The truth is both are connected and we have to learn how to fix them both. Employee experience, corporate culture and effective leadership are all a huge focus point in many companies today, and rightly so. However, most companies are focusing solely on the human problem, when they should also be looking at the technology problem as well. Think about technology in your workplace. When you don’t have the tools and technology needed to complete a task or project it can become extremely frustrating. You may become resentful or even angry because of the outdated technology you are being forced to use. Technology is part of creating a positive employee experience. If you want your employees to be happy, successful and productive, you have to ensure they have access to the resources they need to complete their projects and tasks. Technology plays a huge role in how we co

Trynka Shineman is the CEO of Vistaprint, a 20 year old global company that provides online custom printing, marketing materials, and a lot more. She brings more than 20 years of experience in market research and analysis, strategic planning, database marketing and e-commerce to her role. Prior to her current position, Shineman held a variety of roles at Vistaprint including president, chief marketing officer, and chief customer officer. Before joining Vistaprint, Shineman was a director and senior manager for PreVision Marketing, an Inc. 500 and Software 500 innovator in direct marketing where she developed programs for several major accounts. Vistaprint is an online supplier of printed and promotional materials as well as marketing services to micro businesses and consumers. With 7,000 employees, their focus is on helping business owners market themselves. They focus on small businesses - with less than 10 employees. Working to help with the small businesses’ branding - from outfitting a store, advertising

Frances Hesselbein is the President and CEO of The Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute, founded as The Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management and renamed in 2012 to honor Hesselbein’s legacy and ongoing contributions. Mrs. Hesselbein was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States of America’s highest civilian honor, by President Clinton in 1998 for her leadership as CEO of Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. from 1976–1990, as well as her service as “a pioneer for women, volunteerism, diversity and opportunity.” Her contributions were also recognized by the first President Bush, who appointed her to two Presidential Commissions on National and Community Service. At 103 years young, she is one of the most highly respected experts in the field of contemporary leadership development. From 2009–2011, Mrs. Hesselbein served as the Class of 1951 Chair for the Study of Leadership at the United States Military Academy at West Point, in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership. S

I constantly hear stories about how people feel they are working for an organization where they feel like they don’t have a voice or where they don’t feel like they can be themselves. It doesn’t have to be this way! We have to learn how to speak up at work. It is so important for every employee to participate in group conversations, to give feedback to managers, to be honest and to give their opinions and point of view. Not only will it make employees feel heard and appreciated, but it will also help the organization to be the best that it can be. Many people find it intimidating to speak up at work and to voice their opinions, but the truth is most of the time it will be met with a positive response. Speaking up could bring up issues, challenges or ideas that your managers and coworkers have never considered before. It could spark change or at least start a dialogue. If for some reason you get a negative response from speaking up, then maybe that isn’t the organization for you and you need to think about mak

Harriet Harty is the CHRO for Allstate Insurance Company Harriet Harty is the CHRO for Allstate Insurance Company. She is responsible for developing their talent strategy and the tools and programs to enable the enterprise to attract, develop and retain engaged and talented employees. Since joining Allstate in 1995, Harty has held a number of key human resources positions. She was senior vice president, with responsibility for executive, broad-based and sales compensation; benefits; communications; finance; talent and leadership effectiveness; and home office client partnership. Previously, she led the human capital solutions function, which included strategy, employee value proposition, workforce relations, workforce insights, workforce technology and the AskHR call center. Harty began her career in the compensation area, working her way up to leadership of the compensation and executive compensation function. Allstate was founded in 1931 and is the largest publicly held property and casualty insurer in the

When an organization gets to a point where they realize they need to change things up, they typically start by looking at people in leadership and management positions. They feel that the issues in the company can be solved by changing the people at the top. But the truth is, instead of starting with people we should first take a look at the system. The system that you build is typically more powerful than the people who are within that system. Just bringing in a new manager or a whole new team does not guarantee things will change for the better, in fact things may just get worse. It’s not the people that are directly impacting change, it is the system. You have to change the system in order to have change in your organization. Once you figure out that the system needs to be changed, that is when you need to turn to people. You need bold, visionary people in leadership positions who have the will and the ability to change the core system of the organization for the better. People who are not going to just se

Alan Trefler founded Pegasystems and as CEO has built the company into a $750 million provider of customer engagement solutions with 4,000+ employees based in Boston with 30 global offices, growing about 20 percent annually. Trefler’s life’s work has been to design a platform for living applications that businesspeople can evolve to manage the constant disruption and change in today’s customer-centric economy. Trefler’s book, Build for Change, describes a new generation of customers with unprecedented power to make or break brands and changes businesses must embrace to succeed. Pegasystems (aka Pega) is the leader in cloud software for customer engagement and operational excellence. If you’ve driven a car, used a credit card, called a company for service, opened an account, flown on a plane, submitted a claim, or performed countless other everyday tasks, chances are you’ve interacted with Pega. For the past 30 years, their technology – CRM, digital process automation, robotics, AI, and more – has empowered t

Arun Chidambaram is the Global Head of Talent Analytics at Pfizer. His main area of focus is building and sustaining analytical capability within HR for large global corporations. Chidambaram has deep experiences in quantitative and visualisation methodologies, advanced analytics and research, experimentation and modelling, building collaborative and strong relationships across matrix organizations, and driving key business strategies and organisational change initiatives through workforce insights. He recently co-authored an article on TLNT titled “The Challenges in building a strong function around People Analytics function”. Chidambaram has a background in Industrial Engineering & Operations Research with 20 years of experience in management, consulting, and human resources in positions of increasing responsibility. Prior to joining Pfizer, he held several leadership positions at Harley Davidson, Merck, and ESPN. What is the role of leadership in People Analytics (PA)? Be patient -  but efficient Holi

We spend a majority of our lives working, therefore work and life are not separated. What kind of life do you want to have? In the past there has always been a clear distinction between a person’s work and their personal life. A person would leave work at 5pm and drive home and they would push work out of their minds so they could focus on other things. Nowadays that clear distinction isn’t there, the lines are blurring between work and life. We hear people talking about work-life balance and work-life integration. But the truth is, work is life and life is work. We spend a majority of our adult lives working, which means what you do is not just a job, or a career--it’s a part of you. We have to do a better job of blending our work and life together into one instead of splitting them up. If you don’t like how an organization is treating you, if you hate the projects you are working on, if you are miserable where you are at, it’s time for you to take control and to build the life you want to have. Don’t just s

Mike McDerment is the founder and CEO of FreshBooks, the world’s #1 cloud accounting software for self-employed professionals. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, it was built in 2003 after he accidentally saved over an invoice. McDerment spent 3.5 years growing FreshBooks from his parents’ basement. Since then, now with around 300 employees, over 10 million people have used FreshBooks to save time billing, and collect billions of dollars. McDerment mentioned that an employee at Freshbooks told him that the culture of the company feels like summer camp and that is something McDerment is thrilled about. Why? When a child comes home from summer camp, they are mentally and emotionally fit. They have been challenging themselves all week – both physically and mentally. This produces a very high level of self-esteem and excitement. This is what they want employees at Freshbooks to experience each day. They believe it will lead to a sense of personal growth and self-esteem. The culture of Freshbooks works to be like t

There is no question about it, AI and Automation have been at the center of many debates and discussions in the workplace. Many people are asking what the role of AI and Automation will be in the future of work. Will they create more jobs than they replace, or will they replace more jobs than they create. If you look back at history, you can see that new technology, such as electricity or steam power, has always created more jobs. But today there seems to be a lot of fear surrounding this topic. I think there could be a solution to alleviate this fear. Unlike times in the past when new technology was introduced, we have something at our fingertips that could be the solution. We have the internet which allows us to have continuous discussions around this topic. We are able to see the impact of AI and Automation around the world at the click of a button. We can read articles, see it on TV, and search for discussions on the internet. We’ve never had access to all of this in the past when new technologies were in

  Mary Czerwinski is the Research Manager at the Visualization and Interaction (VIBE) Research Group at Microsoft. She worked in computer-human interaction for Bellcore, the Johnson Space Center, and Compaq, and also held an adjunct position at Rice University while at Compaq. She moved to Microsoft in 1996, as a usability tester in product development. Czerwinski’s research focuses primarily on emotion tracking, information worker task management, and health and wellness for individuals and groups. Her background is in visual attention and multitasking. She holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Indiana University in Bloomington. Her research group of 10 has very diverse talents. One area that they work on is information visualization – how to see patterns in large amounts of data. Another area is to look at tools for programmers as well as making the environment better and more productive for them. What is an intelligent system? It is a system that uses algorithms to characterize your behavior. It is a

Employee engagement is at the center of a lot of conversations inside of organizations these days. The problem is, investment in employee engagement has never been higher while the employee engagement scores have never been lower. So what is causing this disconnect? Most organizations want their employees to be happy while working, however they are going about it the wrong way. Instead of redesigning the core workplace practices around the employees, organizations are keeping their outdated workplace practices while trying to give the employees special perks, thinking that will make them happy. To truly impact your employee experience you must start by redesigning your core workplace practices. When organizations decide to forgo this step with the employees in mind and they choose to simply throw some perks at the employees, it can feel like employee manipulation. If you want to have engaged employees, start with redesigned core workplace practices.

Gordon Wright is the Senior VP and Global Director of HOK’s Workplace Practice. Based in Chicago, he leads diverse project teams that solve clients’ business and organizational challenges related to real estate business process, strategic planning, workplace strategy and change management. HOK has about 1,800 employees across a network of 23 offices on three continents. HOK is a global design, architecture, engineering and planning firm. Their mission is to deliver exceptional design ideas and solutions for clients through the creative blending of human need, environmental stewardship, value creation, science and art. Some of their designs include the Atlanta Falcons stadium in Georgia (the first retractable roof of its kind) and the Crick Institute in London, England (used for medical research). Current trends in design: The employee experience – How do we create a space that people want to go? Providing Choices - Giving people just a desk and chair isn’t enough anymore Agility – so people can work anytime,

Running a business used to be all about revenue, profit, metrics and power. That is not the case these days. So what is it that you need to focus on to succeed? In the past running a successful business was all about revenue, profit, quarterly metrics and being more powerful than other organizations in your field. But the game of business has fundamentally changed and it’s not enough to run your organization the old way. Now instead of being all about outperforming the competition, it is all about outlasting the competition. You have to figure out how to stay in the game long term while all others fall behind. So how does this change affect the way we get work done? It requires us to look at the bigger picture and to invest in more long term things. This includes looking at your people in a different way. It requires you to look at your workspace in a different way. Organizations that understand this shift will be better off than those who try to keep playing the game the old way. We are in the long game, if

Martin Ford is a futurist and the author of the New York Times bestselling "Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future" (winner of the 2015 Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award) and "The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future," as well as the founder of a Silicon Valley-based software development firm. He has over 25 years experience in the fields of computer design and software development. He has written about the implications of future technology for publications including The New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, The Financial Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post. Ford is a frequent keynote speaker on the subject of accelerating progress in robotics and artificial intelligence—and what these advances mean for the economy, job market and society of the future. Check out his Ted Talk on the topic. Ford’s perspective on what is going on in the world of work: He believes there will be impac

In order to go above and beyond, you must learn how to unlock the true potential of your employees. Companies that learn how to do this will stay on top. There are some companies that just seem to stand out above the rest of their competition. Why is that? Why is it that, even though there isn’t that much of a difference between one bank and another or one grocery store to another, there are a few companies that are able to go above and beyond for their customers? The answer is the companies who go above and beyond take care of their employees. They invest in the experience of their people which in turn unlocks the discretionary effort of their people. When employees feel that they are being invested in, cared for, and respected it makes them want to go above and beyond for their customers, co-workers and the company. The problem is most companies don’t generally put in the time and effort needed to create a unique employee experience that fits their company. One of your company’s most important assets is you