The Secret of Success in the New World of Work

As talent professionals preparing for the start of 2020, we know that what we do has never mattered more. It’s not just that talent is increasingly recognised as business-critical by the C-suite. It’s not just that the skills our organisations need to grow are often scarce and that competition for them is intensifying. It’s the fact that the impact of overcoming these challenges and finding the right person for the right role has never been greater than it is right now. We are living through an era when technology is transforming the impact any one individual can make. The ability to find, hire, nurture and develop just one person can impact the lives and fortunes of many more.

Because the impact of one individual is so great, the challenge for talent teams is to look at our audiences, our candidates and our colleagues through an individual lens. We need the ability to see and understand people – not just generic talent pools. We need to embrace individual experience, circumstances and success in a way that hasn’t been possible in the past.

Last month, LinkedIn’s Talent Connect on Tour arrived in London, bringing together talent experts and thought leaders to explore this era when business success is completely synced to people success. We heard new ideas, inspiring stories of transformation and change – and in the process, we spotlighted some of the key features of this challenging, exciting, new world of work.

Here are my key take-outs – a guide to building sustainable talent strategies that can enable organisations and people to thrive in 2020 and far beyond:

Success means overcoming the Network Gap

New research from LinkedIn has shown that if you grew up in a high-income area, went to a top university and went on to work at a top company, you are 12x more likely to benefit from the kind of strong network that regularly unlocks opportunity for you. This Network Gap existed long before the age of the social network. However, thanks to the rich data that we now have available on the skills that people possess, we’ve never been better equipped to help overcome it. LinkedIn is developing talent solutions that are designed to help recruiters broaden their searches, and find the hard and soft skills that they need, regardless of network strength or other distorting factors. It’s the essential foundation of success for both teams and businesses – helping organisations overcome skills gaps by diversifying their view of the people with those skills.

Success means broadening your vision of potential

In the early 1960s, Dame Stephanie Shirley built a revolutionary software business with a workforce of women who had left the computing industry to have children. In an inspiring closing keynote, she explained how she did so by innovating a new, remote way of working that brought an overlooked group of people, and previously neglected skills, into play. It was highly skilled women working from home around the country who designed the black box software for Concorde. 

It’s incredible to me that a pioneer like Dame Stephanie Shirley was innovating ways to broaden talent pools and embrace diversity over half a century ago – but that it remains so challenging for businesses today. 

Tapping into diverse and often neglected talent pools doesn’t just involve innovating new ways of working. It also means appreciating the value of people with different backgrounds, who might approach a problem in different ways. This was the point passionately made by Paralympic gold medal-winning swimmer, Liz Johnson, the founder of The Ability People, which aims to overcome the barriers to opportunity facing people with a disability. As Liz pointed out, this includes many of, “the most resourceful, resilient, dedicated and motivated people on the planet.” They may approach tasks differently through necessity, but they strengthen the flexibility and adaptability of organisations as a result.

As Dame Stephanie put it when discussing her own work overcoming barriers to employment for those with autism: “If you look at work that can be done as distinct from work that can’t, diversity ceases to be a problem to be solved but rather a valuable commodity to be harnessed.”

Success means letting your people be the human beings you hired

This was the inspiring message of Patagonia’s HR Director, EMEA, Evelyn Doyle. It comes through in the experience of working at a business where employees can bring who they really are to work - which can mean walking around barefoot or accompanied by their dog. However, it’s not just about the environment in which you work. Evelyn has defined a role for herself and her business in supporting colleagues around what matters most to them. Patagonia’s purpose of being in business to save our planet found her supporting colleagues joining climate change protests, including providing legal counsel at the end of a phone in case of anyone being arrested.

Shell’s Head of Global Marketing for Employer Brand and Talent Attraction, Debbie Foley, spoke of the transformative impact of inviting employees to express their personal purpose and motivations as to why they chose to work for an energy company, rather than expecting them to repeat the purpose of a corporate brand. This has driven a step change in engagement with Shell’s employer brand content on LinkedIn. 

For Tesco’s People Director for the UK and Ireland, Emma Taylor, it’s about living an employer proposition as “a place where people can get on.” She’s committed to translating this into a policy of identifying people who will need to develop their skills for a disrupted retail landscape – and ensuring they have the opportunity to do so.

People success means prioritising happiness

If I had to sum up the ideas that we explored for building successful organisations, I couldn’t have done it better than through Dame Stephanie Shirley’s closing remarks, quoting the renowned, early 20th century scholar and theologian, Albert Schweitzer: “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.”

Understanding what drives that happiness isn’t just the key to enabling your people to thrive. It’s also essential for building a business that thrives in the new world of work.