Understanding genuine diversity

14th October 2020 Smartworking Summit

Every workplace related conference, event or seminar these days features a presenter droning on about the ‘war on talent’ – dire warnings of a looming crisis in labour availability.

The one thing in common with all of these ‘expert’ commentators is that unanimously none of them offer resolution to this impending apocalypse. We have undertaken quantitative research into the potential magnitude of this looming talent Armageddon and, importantly, how to address the challenge.

Working with the UK’s Department for Work & Pensions (DWP), we studied how many jobs have been publicly advertised over the last twelve months. Extrapolating this forward over the next decade, this equated to 13.5 million jobs. We then took publicly available data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) on the number of people leaving schools and universities over that same decade … and this equates to less than 7 million people.

Work is a hugely complex ecosystem with massively complex interactions between HR policies, IT technologies, real estate, management cultures, and ‘messy people’. Each of these silos have massively diverging objectives, KPIs, metrics, timelines, and even different languages. Furthermore, people are messy, not because we spill our coffee or leave yesterday’s sandwiches on the desk, but because we have 7 billion entirely unique individuals sharing our planet.

There are no two individuals who are alike. Every last person has different likes and dislikes. And there’s no one single commonality between any of us. Some of us find the office environment too noisy, others don’t care, some find it too hot, others find it too cold, some struggle with the quality of light…etc. etc.

Consequently, accommodating this new workforce by expanding diversity and inclusion cannot be confined to mere policies and HR initiatives.

It must also take into consideration the design and configuration of the physical workplace.

Summit Speakers

Steven Wichery

President Europe, Dyson

Discussing everything from the Dyson Institute – providing the university level skills required by Dyson and the challenges of creating the ground-breaking Dyson electric car.

Ros Kerslake OBE

Chief Executive, National Heritage Fund

Discussing the importance of preserving our heritage as we rapidly introduce new working practices.

Gillian Tomlinson

Director of Data & Analytics, Three

Awarded Chief Data Officer of the Year 2017 by IQPC, Top 20 innovators in Data 2019, ranked No. 2 on the DataIQ Top 100 most influential people in data-driven business 2018,profiled as one of the top 20 women in data by The Female Lead in 2017 and voted as one of the UK’’s top 50 data leaders and influencers by Information Age.

Intimate afternoon round table sessions

The afternoon features four intimate round table sessions offering deeper dives into the issues challenging all organisations, including;

Round table 1

Understanding productivity – According to ONS, UK productivity is down 19% over the last decade. This provokes 4 questions – why is productivity down – what can we learn from each other – what needs to change – how to manage the changes? Simply, what are the positive steps going forward?

Round table 2

Owning mindset change – Consider, if women took part in UK economy as much as men, it would add £600 billion GDP by 2025, equal to 0.7% extra GDP growth. This mindset change needs a new co-creating leadership style. Co-creative leadership drives the conditions for successful work performance. How can leaders become “co-creative?”

Round table 3

Workplace Sustainability – Digital technology is helping companies sweep barriers aside. Sustainability platforms capture all types of data, from energy and social value and apps help engage employees, measure team performance and maximise workspace utilisation.

Round table 4

Workplace Evolutionaries – are a coalescing of thought leaders & disruptive thinkers in the workplace arena to identify a higher strategic value from work. The community is formed of emboldened individuals to shape a formula for improved work interaction and integration. If you're a disruptive thinker or innovator in the workplace field, then join our community.

In conjunction with industry partners

Leading provider of integrated meeting room booking software, desk booking software and space utilisation technologies.

Providing facilities management, consultancy, project management and specialist services that connect people with innovation and technology; helping clients move beyond FM.

Global Cyber Alliance works together as a community to eradicate systemic cyber risk and unite organisations for a common good.

Supported by the leading professional industry bodies

The four leading professional bodies, BIFM, CIPD, IFMA, and RICS are advocating the Smartworking Summits to their combined 300,000+ members. Plus, we are supporting the inauguration of the UK Workplace Evolutionaries Community.