Are you a future-ready leader?

“It seems the only certainty is uncertainty” says Debra Lee, Regional Director at HR consultancy People Puzzles, describing the future of work. Because of how the world of work continues to shift, change and evolve, business leaders need to be prepared for every eventuality. 

Back in June, Debra hosted a Vistage event on the topic of “future-ready leadership” to explore some of these challenges. But what exactly is future-ready leadership, and how can leaders ensure that they are truly prepared? Find out below…

Defining future-ready leadership

“We all know that the future is uncertain – and we’ve already dealt with so much change”, explains Debra. “For me, future-ready leadership is about understanding where we are now, what the likely changes are and being prepared for those changes and ready to take your team on that journey with you.”

In doing so, she says, leaders need not be fearful or insecure about the future. Instead, they can grow into the future excited, willing to get involved, and potentially adapt and change. 

Before they can embrace future-ready leadership, though, there are six challenges that business leaders need to overcome. It was these challenges that formed the foundation of Debra’s Vistage webinar in June. 

Attracting, retaining and developing talent

Talent challenges, says Debra, tend to be the top challenges that the majority of her clients face – whether it’s about keeping hold of brilliant people or struggling to attract the right candidates. Alongside the continued high level of vacancies post-COVID, Debra believes that the way people view the world of work is partly to blame. 

“The old concept of ‘jobs for life’ has shifted”, she explains. “The average tenure in the workplace has significantly dropped, down to about 2.8 years. Generation X and Z and Millennials, in particular, are looking for slightly different ways of working, and different experiences.”

In terms of retaining talent, Debra highlights that the market has become very fast-paced, meaning businesses need to be more in tune with their employees than ever. As well as the loss of expertise and experience, a failure to retain talent can have a significant commercial impact on a business. The cost of replacing a team member includes not only the lost time when the position is unfilled, but also the time it takes to get a new hire up to speed and fully productive. All in all, she says, these costs for a single position are estimated to be around £30K. 

The key to strong retention, says Debra, “is creating a workforce that aligns with the values employees are looking for”. While compensation and benefits are, of course, important, the younger generations in particular are also looking for an employer who lays out a clear career development path, who focuses on their wellbeing and whose values align with theirs. “Candidates are looking for something that feels like it’s making a difference to the world or aligns with what they want to achieve”, she stresses. 

Flexibility and technology

The concept of flexibility in the workplace has certainly become more of a hot topic since COVID. However, flexibility, Debra explains, is a two-way street. “It’s about both the employer and the employee being flexible”, she says. “That includes where you can work, when you can work and what’s appropriate for the workforce.”

She notes that while many tech businesses have stayed fully remote post-COVID, others are seeing a shift back to wanting people in the office. Understandably, this may be tricky for some employees who are used to working from home and resent having to start commuting once again. “In these situations, managers have to communicate the benefits of being on-site”, says Debra. “Now, some candidates won’t actually apply for a role where there’s a hybrid working situation. Your team and future hires need to understand exactly why you want to bring people together: is it about collaboration? Is it about creativity and innovation? Is it only certain teams, or every team within the business?”

The goal for businesses is to establish the best way for people to work to deliver what the business is trying to achieve. This, says Debra, is very much business-specific. “People enjoy the flexibility of working from home, but you need to create boundaries and the best ways of working to improve productivity, wellbeing and that sense of belonging that people have really missed”, she explains. 

Technology also plays a part when it comes to flexibility: businesses have had to adopt new technologies to facilitate remote working in recent years. One of the hot topics in technology, though, is artificial intelligence, or AI. With both AI and other technologies, Debra believes that businesses need to do more to map out how they will change things in the future. 

“It’s true that, thanks to AI and other technologies, some jobs are likely to become obsolete in the future”, she says. “However, there will also be new types of jobs and work created – and that’s really exciting.”

She suggests that future planning is the way forward: mapping out the way the business structure may look in three years’ time, and looking at the new skills that might be needed as well as the roles that could be performed by technology. “In that way, you can help people understand where they will fit into the business and the skills they may need to develop”, she says. She also believes that it is important to find the tech-savvy members of the team – those who are already using new technologies, whether at work or in their personal lives – and tap into those people to share their knowledge with the team. This refers not only to AI, but also other emerging technologies. 

“We don’t quite know yet which of the emerging technologies are going to become ingrained into the workplace in the future”, she says. “At this stage, though, it’s important to enable team members to share their ideas, their discoveries and what they are using these technologies for that’s new and different to bring new perspectives to the business. The businesses that do this will thrive, while the others may get stuck.”

Diversity, inclusion, wellbeing and more

Debra’s Vistage talk also covered the topics of diversity and inclusion, as well as wellbeing: further areas that she believes are vital for leaders to focus on to be future-ready. 

Have you future-proofed your business?

For more on these six areas of focus, watch Debra’s webinar in full here.

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