Josh Drean (00:00)

Employment is dead, it just depends on if you're looking at the next quarter, if you're looking at the next year or into the next decade. And I will tell you right now that looking at the Gallup poll around employee disengagement it is the lowest it has ever been. Employees are not connected to the work that they're doing. There is a clash between the employer market and returning to the office. There's a myriad of issues that we're facing right now, but disruptive technologies are revolutionising the way that we work.

Not only will it give employees what they're asking for, greater flexibility, ownership over their work, greater autonomy, but it will also provide a world where we are more productive and satisfied in the work that

Siân Harrington (00:42)

Hey everyone, welcome to Work’s Not Working, a show about forward-thinking people leaders, innovators and academics, and how they think we can fix work to make it more meaningful, healthy, inclusive and sustainable. Brought to you by The People's Space. 

Hi, I'm Siân Harrington and today on Work’s Not Working, Let's Fix It, we're diving into a bold idea that the employment contract as we know it is already dead.

My guest is Josh Drean, workplace futurist, HR transformation expert, and co-author of the provocatively titled book, Employment is Dead. Josh argues that we're entering a new era of work, one powered by smart contracts, AI agents, decentralized organizations and a radical rethinking of what it even means to have a job. 

Forget rigid hierarchies and 9-to-5 contracts. This is all about ecosystems of contributors, workers' partnership and people being rewarded for output, not hours. It's a big vision and one that might sound scary to some but for Josh it's not just coming, it's already here. And if you're still framing the return to office debate as the big issue facing work today, well, you're missing the real disruption entirely. 

So later on, we'll explore why Gen Z isn't anti-work but anti the structure of work as it exists today. What Web3, smart contracts and AI mean for the HR function. And why employment might soon be the wrong term entirely. And we'll explore how organizations can prepare to attract and retain top talent in a world where contributors don't want control, they want ownership. 

But first, let me tell you about Josh. Josh Drean is an HR transformation expert and workplace futurist, connecting emerging technologies with practical workforce strategies. He is the co-founder of Dream Media and the Work3 Institute, an AI and Web3 advisory firm, helping organizations rethink work from the ground up. His YouTube channel has attracted millions of views and his new book, Employment is Dead, offers a compelling roadmap for the next chapter of work. One where individuals are empowered, organizations are more agile and traditional employment as we know it gets reimagined. So I start by asking him that big question, is employment dead? 

So Josh, I’m delighted to have you with me on the show today. You've co-written a book Employment is Dead. So I'm going to go straight in with the first question. Is employment dead? Discuss.

Josh Drean (03:48)

It is a bold statement and we wouldn't have made it if we weren't absolutely certain that this is where we're headed. And, to be honest, if you just reflect on our feelings at work around this, I do think that employees know it. I think employers know it. There's something about this drive towards productivity and doing the same things that we've done over decades seems to have diminished returns. So when you really open up the hood and start to look at why are we still running off of this structure for employment? Why are we still working through this nine to five contractual way of work where we pay you X amount of dollars to work for us, you give us Y amount of hours, and hopefully some exchange there will produce productivity. And we're seeing a diminished return on that. 

Yes, employment is dead. It just depends on if you're looking at the next quarter, if you're looking at the next year or into the next decade. And I will tell you right now that looking at the Gallup poll around employee disengagement it’s the lowest it has ever been. Employees are not connected to the work that they are doing. There is a clash between the employer market and returning to the office. There's a myriad of issues that we're facing right now, but the subtitle is important to note of the book, which is disruptive technologies are revolutionizing the way that we work. Not only will it give employees what they're asking for, greater flexibility, ownership over their work, greater autonomy, but it will also provide a world where we are more productive and satisfied in the work that we're doing.

Siân Harrington (05:27)

So we're not talking about the end of jobs per se, but about how we look at what work is, what it means, how it's structured? 

Josh Drean (05:36)

Yes, so that's an interesting question, What is a job? And the very first thing that we do in the book is we actually define the difference between employment and work, which have become synonymous in this world that we are living in, but it's very different. If you take a look at it, employment is the contract. It's like we are measuring an employee's time, and that's kind of it. But what we should be measuring is output. So how do we get to a place where employees are being productive in ways that feel right to them, that they are using, they are maximizing their skill set in the workplace and all the while providing maximum value. That is where we're trying to get. 

And so we paint this world, not getting too far into the weeds around Web3 technologies, but a world where you can work for several companies at a time. You are more of a project-based worker where you are taking on projects that resonate with your skill set across a myriad of different DAOs or decentralized autonomous organizations. We can just call them companies for now, companies in the future. And we're already seeing this with freelancers working with contractors within the organization. If you need a hyper specialized group of individuals, you can hire that out. 

And so to answer your question, I like to think of concentric circles that there will be full-time employees. What is the semblance of a full-time employee? We call them core contributors. They will be working at the organization, most likely giving all of their time to one organization. But then as you go out, you can start to see the freelance layer and you can see what we call bounty hunters layer where you are chasing projects. Even so much is going out to people getting paid for the data that they are generating for the company. We call that an X to earn model. So I like to think of it as a work ecosystem. It's no longer, are you employed or not? Are you working nine to five or part time? We need to adapt to be more agile in embracing these technologies.

Siân Harrington (07:42)

I like the word the use of contributors. think that's an interesting word to use. We always say employees and then it's anyone who isn't like a full-time employee. Who are they? What are they? But contributors is the core. And then these other layers on top is interesting. And as you said, this is about an ecosystem. It's a word that we do bandy around quite a lot, but what does an ecosystem mean in terms of how rhw company actually functions? What does that look like in reality? And do you have any examples of companies we've been working with who are moving to that approach?

Josh Drean (08:16)

Yeah, that's a great question. I really like your point as well, as it has been a bit black and white of you're a full-time employee so our engagement efforts at the organization geared towards full-time employees looks very specific to them. And often we might neglect our part-time or remote workers. And we have this term ‘employee experience’. I don't think that captures it anymore because employment is dead. We call it ‘workforce experience’. What is the experience that you are offering your workforce? And it's very nuanced. Even today when we're looking at full-time employee experience, everyone has different needs that they need, whether you're a full-time parent or we can discuss all of that, but there is also this layer of what does our distributed workforce look like? It's interesting to see data coming out of some of these recent studies around, sure, you can be remote at our organization, but good luck getting promoted or good luck moving up. And is that something that people even want anymore? Will they sacrifice a promotion and minor pay bump in order to continue to work remote?  

If you look at it from today in the employer's market, we're not even having that conversation. We are arguing over one element of this, which is the RTO. How do we return to the office? Companies for the majority want people back into the office. Employees, for the most part, don't want to go to the office. Each has their own excuse for where they want to work, how they want to work. So the incentive model isn't aligning there. And I think that's the starting point for why companies need to be paying attention to what employees need. I think they need to be paying attention to where we're at in the market. And when you start to tap into that, Siân, I think what we start to see is a new model for not just engagement, but for employment altogether. 

An example of what that looks like could be, I've mentioned this already, a DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization. It might sound like a scary word, but all we're saying is like, hey, this is a group of individuals working on a project together. They have a common goal, but instead of having it managed by a manager or a select few decision makers at the top of the organization we almost democratize the experience. So frontline workers and contributors and freelancers can all contribute to the decision making process. And you reach that goal in a non-traditional way, which is by the collective wisdom of the group, rather than one or two people saying, this is what we need to do. This is how we're going to get it. An example would be Juice Box DAO. This is a company that doesn't hire full-time employees. What they do is they use smart contracts to produce projects. They say, this is where we're trying to go. Here's the scope of the work that we're trying to accomplish. And then they almost outsource it to this group of individuals, these other DAOs who have the skillset and they will run after it. So it's this really interesting model that still has to prove itself. There's an argument to be made. Is decentralization going to work? It traditionally has not worked, but we feel like we will get off of this roller coaster ride of employee market, employer market, employee market, employer market, when we embrace more of a partnership at work over just a contract.

Siân Harrington (11:48)

There's a lot to unpack in that. And interestingly, we've just been doing some work on, we call it the blended workforce. You can call it agile workforce, but it's all these different ways of working. I think a lot of people are still stuck in thinking you're in full-time, part-time, traditional employment contracts, or you're a gig, you're in the gig economy. How is this different to that sort of gig economy? In my mind, the gig economy is part of the different layers that you might have or work towards as a business, but it's not one or the other necessarily.

Josh Drean (12:22)

Yeah, my personal take on the gig economy is it's suffering from the same problem that we're seeing within organizations. We're trying to centralize it. We have this organization that works as a third party. It's a middleman and it's a very expensive middleman. So if you look at the birth of Uber, the birth of Uber and the death of Uber, right? There's a lot happening there or any sort of anything economy creator, economy business that says, hey, you guys are a valuable asset. are generating value by not hiring full-time employees. We have contractors, you will, freelancers. The problem we're running into is that it's very expensive to keep that business running. And so if I am a driver of an Uber vehicle, how much of that money do I actually get to take home at the end of the day? Is it actually better for me to drive in this way? What are my options at this point? And because a centralized business like Uber costs a lot to keep running, you start to see those margins shrink and more money is taken away from contributors to the point where they question, are we going to contribute or not? 

And so a decentralized version of that would be, let's leverage AI, let's leverage smart contracts, let's leverage the blockchain, which essentially is just a digital ledger. And in so doing, we can have more of a peer to peer system. What that means is I can open up my app and get started, but I don't need Uber doing all of the little things in between to make things profitable for them. I want things to be profitable for me.

Siân Harrington (13:57)

When we launched eight years ago or so, we started talking about blockchain and the role that could play in all of this. And we're still talking about it now and not much has come, but the idea of the smart contract, I think is really interesting. I just wonder, talking about a lot of this, we've talked for a while about the productivity issue, it isn't just something that's happened overnight. There's been declining and poor productivity and over here in the UK, it's really at a bad state now, but it's been going on for many years and we've also had new technologies come in during those years and it hasn't actually boosted productivity in the way we might want it to have seen in wider economies. 

Do you think AI is really this big game changer now where the thinking and the talk can actually be the reality because we have a different element in place that's changing it in a very different degree? I think AI is probably the biggest change that I've seen in my very long career in terms of technology. And do you think that as people start embracing, particularly the more generative AI side, this is going to come in more naturally because the role of the full-time job, the job as we know it is changing by default. So it will actually open the gates to thinking a bit differently about the whole idea of employment.

Josh Drean (15:19)

Yeah, man, you open up such a great question and I feel like it's digging into here in terms of my unique take, which is if you are viewing employees as just a data point on a plot spreadsheet, if you look to them as a laptop or traditionally, right, let's go back a little bit here. Traditionally, work is task-based. We have a set of tasks that we need to accomplish.

So if we can have people complete those tasks in an efficient manner and maybe complete them faster, then that is how we measure productivity. And so there is one camp of people who is looking at AI as a solve for that. wow, we can complete more tasks and we can reduce headcount because our people are expensive. And therefore, in that sense, there are a lot of leaders who want to replace employees with AI because it can complete tasks more efficiently and thus be more productive. I am definitely not in that camp because I feel like humans are not just a calculator. They are not just button pressers. They have so much more to offer. And if we can truly unlock their skills and their capabilities, then we can augment their potential and be, and we can 10x productivity, 50x, 100x productivity. 

So that's the second camp of people leveraging AI in my mind, which are how can we upscale our people to use AI first and foremost? How can we implement AI learning models to provide these micro lessons in ways that employees want to learn so that they can be more productive? And that's when we get back to the system itself. Look at how we upscale today. It's go to college for four years into this world that honestly is separate from business and separate from getting a job. Go for four years, learn from professors who might not be up to speed with these emerging technologies. And then here's your piece of paper, you can go get a job and learn the rest of the skills that you need. That model has fractured completely at this point. However, if we can leverage humans for what humans are good at, which is the creativity, which is the innovation those are the companies that are going to win as we implement AI.

Siân Harrington (17:44)

We could go into a long debate here about the role of education and universities, but as AI does take some of the repetitive tasks and augment us, the ability to see things differently, to think critically, to be creative, all of these, that actually does come from learning to learn. So I think in terms of the role of institutions to do with learning, be it from early school education to university to in-house learning in companies that's really vital. But as you're saying, how we're looking at learning and education at the moment doesn't sit with those skills particularly, or in some courses you do have to do that, but it's not approached with that thinking of us really opening our brain so that we can look at things in a different way. 

Josh Drean (18:34)

Yeah, and that is a huge part of what I think we're going to see over the next five years, right? Is will AI, will we outsource our critical thinking to AI and return to a monkey state where we don't have to think so hard because a computer is going to do it for us? Or are we going to learn how to leverage this new tool in ways that we've never seen before and take our intelligence to the next level? It's not an either or and, I know there's going to be some combination of that, but that's when you start to see some of the fear with AI and some of the excitement. So it's yet to be decided, unfortunately. 

Siân Harrington (19:14)

Yeah. I guess I think that the need to continue learning is key here, but also that's actually the interesting thing for us as humans. That's the bit that starts you exploring ideas you hadn't really thought about and bringing in those new ways of thinking about things into businesses. And by having a diverse range of people who are coming from different areas. So as you said, sometimes your project people, sometimes people highly embedded in the culture because they work in the organisation full time, bringing that very wide ranging, different questioning perspective into an organisation, which is what we're going to want to see for innovation going forward, surely.

Josh Drean (19:56)

Yeah, tin he book definitely we try and raise the red flag a little bit to highlight some of these systemic issues that we are facing that are holding us back and that will continue to hold us back until there's this launching point.  

I think a good example is how are we treating the emerging workforce? How are we transferring knowledge to the emerging workforce as we see a majority of the boomer generation retiring. it's to me it's unfathomable to see that 79 % of leaders say they won't hire Gen Z because they are lazy or entitled or they don't want to work. They don't they want everything now they feel entitled. And my question is do you really feel like they're that entitled? Are they the least hireable generation? Or are we on the brink of redefining the modern workforce? Because they see the structural issues, they see these promises that were made to their parents of retiring handsomely, and it doesn't seem to be the case. They have challenges of trying to make ends meet. Most of them are working two jobs just to make it work. And they're not pushing against work itself, they're pushing against the structure of work. And we need to evolve.

When you pull Gen Z and you ask them, 92% of them say they would like to discuss mental health at work. That's something that wasn't even a thing, even a couple of decades ago. 60% expect managers to care about their well-being, and 97% of Gen Z want to show their personality in work communication. 

So what I'm highlighting is, as an HR leader, if you want to embrace all of the change that's happening, you don't have to run out and buy the shiny new technology. I think it starts with asking your workforce what they want, what they need, how they can do their best work, and then approach it as a relationship. It's not, during nine to five, you're mine and you have to work for me and leave everything at home. And I also am not advocating for bring your whole self to work. And that's the only way that we can be productive. But there is a middle ground where we find a partnership where both parties can benefit.

Siân Harrington (22:15)

It's very interesting at the moment, isn't it? Because as you alluded to earlier, some of the trends we're seeing, and you said, it seems to be focused about return to office. But I think in a way that's become shorthand for an outdated way of thinking, an outdated leadership approach. So you have got a tension at the moment between some of, in a way, we were going down the right path post COVID, you could argue, forced upon businesses. And now they're trying to control and bring it back again. And RTO is just one way they're doing that. B

ut I think it's, as I said, it's symptomatic of a need to feel back into control as the leaders of the business or the owners of the business. How are we going to move beyond that? What will be the thing that sort of this bullet that makes people have to start embracing these dinosaurs, start embracing these new ways of working? Do you think it will literally be a talent issue? They cannot attract the right talent now because they're not offering what lots of people want today. Will that be the sort of burning question that caused it or do you think it will be they won't get the productivity gains they think just by replacing everybody with AI or whatever? Any flags you see there and things that you think might really push this?

Josh Drean (23:32)

Yeah, I think what you're touching on for me, and this is not talked widely in the news right now because we focus on what's happening right now, which is a looming recession and political tensions and everything that's going on there. There's a lot here. But I do feel like the core of my work is not even calling them talent. What do people want and need in order to do their best work?

I do believe that fundamentally we are industrious. We want to be a part of something bigger. We want purpose. And we've tried to find that in this industrial age type model for work, which once upon a time worked fairly well to drive productivity. In the age of AI and information, it doesn't. So how do we evolve the entire model? And that's why we call it the Work 3 Institute, the work that we do at our organization is to marry emerging technologies with workforce strategies. It's to help bring them into the now of work. And the pendulum always swings. It's an employer market now. What does great resignation 2.0 look like? I can tell you it's not going to be very pretty. It's like trust is at an all-time low. Hope is at an all-time low. Engagement is at an all-time low. And we just are OK ignoring those numbers. It feels like most companies are, okay, ignoring those numbers and I do want to point out that there are organizations that are not following the trend of the RTO or the 'let's pay our employees as little as possible'. Let's mass lay them off without thinking about it and then passing bonuses on to our leaders. 

A company like Spotify who is very Gen Z focused. They are doubling down On their work from anywhere program saying our employees are not children. We don't have to treat them like children as long as they are doing their work, they can work from wherever they want. There's obviously boundaries there, but it's more forward thinking or Costco has become this poster child of this movement of retaining their DE&I efforts. They are now paying a minimum wage of $30 an hour, which is unprecedented in some companies. They are very consumer centric. 

So I do think that some of these traditional practices that we are trying to force back into the box. We can't do that Pandora's box is already open. So those companies that are adjusting and embracing these technologies will win the top talent. And we're already seeing that, right? Verizon's another great example of being like, you don't want to work for AT &T anymore, come work for us remote. Like that is going to be a huge benefit that costs a company nothing. So I hope that's enough to paint the picture of the dichotomy.

Siân Harrington (26:10)

Yeah, yeah. And it's great that they can literally just do what you said, which is compare themselves to another employer who's going the other way. yeah, probably the easiest way to attract good people. So you talked about the decentralized autonomous organization and I love there's a bit in your book where you talk about building a one billion dollar company with just one employee. That's where we could get to. So we're going really down to a micro level of the extraordinary opportunities people have got here. And again, with Gen Z, more and more people are thinking, I might not want to work in a company. I want to do my own thing a lot earlier in life. So tell me, how can that happen? How could we get to the place where I could be running a billion dollar company and building it from scratch all on my own? What would I need?

Josh Drean (27:01)

In simplistic terms, this kind of comes from Sam Altman from OpenAI who said, AI is going to allow us to have the first $1 billion company run by one individual. And I think we might think of that in traditional terms of, wow, yeah, all of the people, all of the sources that you need in order to do this job can be outsourced to AI. So you can just do it all on your own. And there might be a time and a place for that in the near future where we see great companies coming out like that, but I think if we expand it into this workforce ecosystem idea, we start to see it a little differently that an entrepreneur, an individual who has a skill set and wants to share that skill set can do it in a way where they are the sole core contributor in their DAO and they are linked through a web three technologies like blockchain to other companies that offer all of the skills that they are lacking or are completing projects in a very highly specialized way.

And so you have almost this web of companies all working together, all creating billion dollars of worth within each company. And it is run by an individual who has figured out that entrepreneurial piece of it. And maybe I will just highlight that. think that the creator economy, let's start there. The creator economy is YouTube. Anyone can make it big. Anyone with a camera who has an idea can go on there. In theory, of course, there's an argument to be made that YouTube is a centralized organization that takes a lot of profits away from creators, decentralization. But there will be a point where it's not just the creator economy where you create videos, it's the anything economy where you can monetize your skills and you can pay people for their skills. And we're all working in a decentralized kind of way through smart contracts where there's more peer-to-peer generation. And I will say that this is the vision of Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, who says that jobs will be obsolete by 2034. I've seen a lot of TikToks go around of, AI is coming for our job. That's what they think. But what he's really saying is, there are going to be new ways to generate value that puts more money into the hands of an employee. And can you imagine, that world where all of a sudden you can make more on your side hustle than your full-time job, and you're more satisfied with the work that you're doing? It's a no-brainer.

Siân Harrington (29:32)

Yep. So for those listeners and viewers who may not know much about the blockchain, can you very quickly just in a simple way, explain where that fits into this, what you mean by the smart contracts and how that works in this new world.

Josh Drean (29:47)

Yeah, so right now, again, there's a lot of middlemen when it comes to being productive. Let's take a look at some of these freelance platforms like Fiverr and Upwork and a slew of companies that say, look, you can work for yourself. You can be a freelancer. You can go out and do it on your own. However, you highly need us in order to facilitate the contracts. We have an escrow account. If there's ever a human to human dispute on the work that was accomplished, our legal team can jump in and advocate. It's a mess. 

So what we say when we are saying the Web3 world, we are saying this is like the next iteration of work where you can leverage a smart contract. Smart contract simply means that the terms and conditions of your quote unquote employment or the work that you're doing is already written and it's already on the blockchain. Again, a blockchain is a digital ledger. So it's very- it's, we call it trustless trust in the book. Essentially, trust but verify used to be the thing. I trust you, but I'm going to verify that the work got done. Now it's just verify. So I, as an individual, don't have to work so hard to get the perfect resume and put it up on Upwork and hope that people will see it and like it. My skills are already verified, my credentials are already verified. You already know what tier of an engineer that I am, a developer, a creator. And because of that, now AI can match you on certain projects. It's pretend like you open up an app and you say, hey, I'm stay at home mom, so I only want to work like four hours a week. I work really well with these kinds of people. This is the skill that I have. I don't want to do anything outside of just this thing. And AI will be able to go out and find like passionate individuals, it will find projects that match your preferences, and you start that work without any human interaction. Now you are doing the work, you are submitting the work, AI is verifying that, you get paid through a smart contract, and we could go on, I don't want to go too far into the weeds, but maybe I can give an example of a company that has already started a Web 2.5 version of this.

So Talentpair is in the recruiting space and recruiting tends to be cutthroat, especially right now. It's this is my employee, this is my asset. I'm the one that brought them into the pipeline. I'm the one. And there's a lot of, stole my asset or I brought them into the organization, but you finished the deal. So how come I didn't get my cut? They are leveraging smart contracts and the blockchain to fix all of that. There's a weighted portion of the commission for the individual that brought them in, for the individual that ran the interviews, for the individual that eventually placed them within an organization. And the minute that person is placed, that smart contract executes and everyone gets paid automatically without argue or fuss, in theory. So it's more of a collaborative approach than this cutthroat corporate.

Siân Harrington (33:03)

So you and I, both know we see the future like this and we're passionate about it, but words that come up often, tech, creator, entrepreneur. What about ‘normal workers’, if I can call them that? The people who do the jobs that we need every day, the nurses, the teachers, the people who are on that front line. How do they adapt to this shift? How do you see it for them?

Josh Drean (33:27)

Yeah, it's a great question. So in the book, we write about the 10 operating principles of Work 3. These are what we call the non-negotiables of the modern workforce. And if you take a look at them, it's flexibility, autonomy, ownership, interoperability, community. And so all of these elements are things that we should be doing within organizations to provide the ability to do their best work. 

I think the healthcare industry is a great example to look at frontline workers during the pandemic just were beyond burned out. They were ashes in the wind. But there's always been this like, but my purpose here is to help other people. And so that's going to drive me forward. But when we start to see people dropping out of the industry altogether, you start to question if that, if there's more that they need and it's not just a longer break or a bigger paycheck, it's some of these other elements that we talk about. 

One element that we talk quite a bit about is ownership. Being compensated based off of your contributions in the workplace, not just over the time that you spend within an organization, because there are employees who slack off and do nothing. And we place a lot of blame on them for the productivity issues. But there are also employees who are generating immense amount of value for an organization, and all they get is a paycheck out of it. They get paid the same. So beyond an ESOP, an employee share exchange program, how do we, how do we compensate them based on the work that they complete? Because an ESOP essentially is here's some arbitrary stock in our organization. It's tied to time again, like it's going to vest in three years. So just be with us for three years and then you'll have these stock options that still doesn't tie to the work that they do. what, what incentive do they have to actually work hard. They're incentivized to sit there and take it. 

But again, that model is fractured. Employment is dead. And what we are saying is that if you can get to a contribution-based compensation model where you are giving them at least a portion of compensation for the work that they actually generate, now you're compensating the people who work really hard. Now you're compensating the people who don't work really hard. it's not a full-time employee thing where I'm paying both of these people. What do I do? It's now I can have a thousand people working for me and they are our top 1% is crushing it. That's great. Bottom 1% it's terrible. That's okay. It doesn't really affect business operations. So that's another workforce ecosystem within a DAO kind of Web3 world.

Siân Harrington (36:06)

It's such a change and I think that's very hard for people to get their heads around. If I drill down a little bit, firstly, we're so used to a structured approach where, know, as you said, you leave university, you leave school, you go in, you learn your ropes, your talent, all of this stuff. What does this mean as a worker, as a potential contributor, in terms of our own development of our own skills, our own career, do you see in this world that there's going to be more emphasis on us to take control of that ourselves, invest in ourselves and not just rely on organisations to put us on that training, etc?

Josh Drean (36:46)

Yeah, 100%. If that is not your mindset today, jump on that train now because you can't rely on your company to take care of you like they once did. It's very apparent now that a company will lay you off if it's for the benefit of the company. It has nothing to do with you. It has rarely to do with the work that you do. 

It's almost laughable to me when we say this is performance data because what is performance data at the end of the day? How are those metrics being viewed? Are employees, are they an active participant in that? Do they get a chance to prove themselves? Like you just subjectively chose X, Y, Z, and you've made your excuses. I totally understand that. But for an employee, that should be a warning sign that you cannot trust your company to take care of you like they once did. And that's something a company needs to consider. That’s definitely something that an individual needs to consider.

Siân Harrington (37:47)

And what about the, from the perspective of the employer and in particular HR, because this totally upends the way we've structured HR as well. And you know, what's their role now in this world where we are talking about more fluid work, we are talking about project base and we're talking about having to look completely differently at the way we're rewarding, as you said, and structuring organisations. How can they prepare for this shift and what do see HR's role being?

Josh Drean (38:16)

Yeah, first off HR has such a critical role to play in the future of work here. We saw how important they became during the pandemic as companies who weren't necessarily people-centric had to figure out how to go remote fairly quickly and keep people healthy, not just productive, but also healthy. And so I think we saw a huge upgrade to the way that HR is run and the work that they do. I think especially as AI will continue to automate some of those base functions of HR, that HR will continue to evolve into terms are being thrown around all over. 

People love to find new terms for certain things. But I think the one that we landed on that I like the best is people operations. It is how do we do all things people? It's not just, can we give them a paycheck? Great. Can we not get sued? Great. It's what skills do we need for these individuals to upskill to AI? How can we, a fun one is how do we use AI agents to simultaneously work alongside our workforce? That's HR's role. so there's a lot more leadership that is going to be coming. There's a lot more leadership that's already happening, but definitely there is a shift in the way that HR departments look and how they run.

Siân Harrington (39:37)

Yeah. It's an exciting time, I think, from that perspective for people in HR and leadership. So taking all this together, we always, as you probably know, anyone who listens to the podcast, we like some sort of takeaways at the end. So let's start as me as an employee, as somebody new coming into the market, as a worker, a freelancer, whatever. What sort of three steps or three things do you think we need to focus on thinking about how work is changing in this way. So from the employee type of a perspective.

Josh Drean (40:10)

Yeah, I love that. So from an employee's perspective, first and foremost, take your own career, quote, career, if we're still calling it, into your own hands, because a company can remove you from the organization but they cannot remove your skills. Upskill however you need to. That includes AI. If you are not using AI today in your daily work routines, and obviously there's some safety concerns there, but use it as much as possible. Learn its limitations. Learn this human robot symbiosis that we've fallen into and you will become extremely valuable. 

The second thing is hope is hard to find within an organization right now. An interesting Gallup poll just came out that said the number one thing that employees need from employers right now is not trust. I thought it was trust. It's been trust forever. It's actually hope. They need hope that things are going to be okay. So if you feel like you don't have hope right now I would encourage you to find ways to be hopeful in your own way, because it's a valuable asset to help you to continue to build those skills. 

And then I would say, keep an eye out for emerging technologies. There are a lot of great and amazing things happening right now that are happening under the surface. And trust me, once they become mainstream, you will want to be on top of this world. This, what should we call it? The gig economy 2.0, the gig economy on steroids, there will be a place for you to use your skills and be compensated for it.

Siân Harrington (41:40)

And then finally, let's just flip that and say, from the perspective of the employer, and in particular, leaders, directors, CEOs, HR leaders, what three things do they need to do aside from reading the book, obviously, and getting up to scratch through what's going on, but preparing themselves now for this change? What's the top three things you advise to do?

Josh Drean (42:01)

So the first thing is listen to your employees. That's a non-negotiable, even though it might not feel like it right now. You need to understand the needs of your workforce because employment is dead, work is a partnership, and if you aren't paying attention, you will be left behind because they will leave for better opportunities. 

The second is adopt AI technologies to support your workers rather than replace them. We are not trying to replace workers who are completing tasks. We are augmenting their potential so that we can be more agile, we can be more innovative and thus more productive. And finally, work is not a contract anymore, it is a partnership. So how do we develop that two-way communication with employees? How do we empower them? How do we compensate them fairly? How do we give them the flexibility that they want and they need? And I think you'll be just fine.

Siân Harrington (42:54)

I love that work is a partnership. I think that's a really good point to end on. So thank you so much. I'm going to ask you one quick question. Where do you see yourself in five years? How is this going to impact you?

Josh Drean (43:06)

I will be a solopreneur billion dollar company owner. I'm going to be one of them.

Siân Harrington (43:13)

That was Josh Drean on why the future of work won't be about employees, but about contributors, ecosystems and empowered individuals? If you take just one thing from today's conversation, let it be this. Work is no longer a contract, it's a partnership. And if you're still trying to control your workforce, like it's 1995, well, you're going to be left behind. 

Thanks for tuning in to Work’s Not Working... Let's fix it. If you found this episode helpful or thought provoking, please subscribe and share it with someone rethinking how they lead. You can follow me on LinkedIn at Sian Harrington, The People Space and discover more resources and insights at www.thepeoplespace.com. This episode was produced by Nigel Pritchard. I'm Sian Harrington and this is Work's Not Working,.. Let's Fix It. See you next time.