It's all about people , stupid.

In the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign between incumbent President George H.W. Bush and challenger Bill Clinton, the Clinton campaign famously coined a phrase and hung a sign at campaign headquarters that was to become very famous. It simply said: “The Economy, Stupid.” The message it was sending with this simple phrase was basically the economy was something that affects every American and needed to be at the forefront of the campaign.

My paraphrasing of it and tweaking it from "Economy" to "people" , comes at a time when the economy in most parts of the world seems to be doing well and so here in Malta , where I live. In the past couple of years its been about unbridled growth and that other source of buzz and hype - crypto and blockchain.

I won’t discuss the latter as that’s not the point of this article. What I will discuss is people and the economy and for those international readers, I’ll beg forgiveness in advance and concentrate on what’s happening in a small island nation context – using Malta as the case. There are some insights which I wish to share,  that my esteemed international colleagues, may still find interesting, in the context of their organisations anyway. In such a case I invite them to read on….

So here’s the context – Malta an island nation with about 400,000 native inhabitants and a growing contingent of expat inhabitants from a broad variety of nations, probably in a short while to account for another 25% equivalent of the population stat I listed above. We’re visited by about 2 million tourists a year.

This is an island which by my rough estimate is about 17 miles long and 9 miles wide. A veritable leaf and city-sized state in the middle of the Mediterranean. Our economic growth, I believe has been approx. 5.9% per annum or thereabouts.

The challenges , which I will controversially condense into a handful are:

• Political – the populace is highly polarized and tensions are rising;
• Environmental – there is a lot of unbridled construction and development in a relatively dense area – open spaces are few and under threat;
• People – like many other countries , immigration is becoming controversial and this controversy seems to be exacerbated due to the influx of illegal immigrants arriving from Africa. But this aside, the influx of legal immigrants from the EU and elsewhere is rising rapidly as more economic growth seems unmanaged and demands ever more resources. This influx has itself driven a building boom and housing prices & rental rates spiraling upwards.
• Traffic/Congestion – this is linked to the environmental challenge above, the influx of new cars on the road seems unstoppable (I suspects it not just driven by the influx of expats , but also by the Maltese fetish for multiple car family ownership). Public transportation and investment in alternative modes of transport is negligible. There seems to be a distinct lack of political will to taking hard, but necessary decisions to deal with this. The government’s only (expensive) solution is to make more roads and widen existing ones – whilst destroying arable and what little green areas exist.

As one can work out , the above are all interconnected in one shape or form. Getting back to the people and workforce in particular, every organization I visit and every CEO I speak to, sings the same song “We need people, we can’t find the people to grow our business…”. This applies across the entire spectrum from construction workers, to waiters, nurses , accountants, IT specialists to business executives. To add to this, I was recently told by one company in the recruitment business that according to surveys they found that the annual mobility rate (ie the percentage of the workforce that changes its job inside an average year) was around 37%.

If you think that’s staggering, try some of the industry stats – Hospitality a whopping 90% !

So we can simply keep throwing people at the problem of growth , but doing so is contributing to the above issues. So we need to get smart fast and look for other sustainable solutions, which don’t drive more people on the streets or result in the destruction of the handful of trees we have left (its starting to sound like Easter island , when the natives cut down the last tree).

So my call is for CEOs and leaders to get moving and look at technology to drive their business growth. But that’s not all , we , as leaders should be husbanding and nurturing our existing workforce.

This means a radical rethink of how we make their lives better and happier and set a pact with them , that in return for loyalty (in terms of staying with the organization) & productivity ,  we in turn give them trust and empower them with the right tools and technology that will help prepare them for the days when the economy won’t be sailing at high speed like it is today – and those days will come , whether tomorrow or a few years from now, the normal cycle historically shows that a boom is followed by a bust.

So leaders need to not only think from now, they need to act now. The technology to manage their people and to enhance the productivity of the workforce is here – whether its workforce management or artificial intelligence – our people need to learn to work alongside and with these technologies , because long after the economic boom is gone and the bust arrives, its these technologies which will survive intact and those who mastered them will be those who sail through the next crisis.

There is a conference coming up on the 5th December, in Malta, that will discuss these and other issues, relating to how the workforce needs to look in the years to come. Better be forewarned and prepared. Change is coming.

I hope to see you at Futuris – Workforce 2030 (www.futuris.work) and to have a dialogue about what is already starting to be “the new normal” in the world of work.

PM.