What got us thinking week #22

The World Economic Forum weighs in on the big 2024 workplace trends

No surprise, the biggest trend they foresee is the adoption of AI. But, taking a global view, they fear the gains in productivity and innovation maybe spread unevenly, with the majority of the benefits accruing to rich world economies - especially the knowledge-heavy industries such as IT, financial and professional services, and medical and healthcare services, among others. Next, they forecast the return to the office which is well underway, with only 8% of job postings now offering full remote working - down from 20% in 2022. Read the full report here.

The EU approves the AI Act - what you need to know

After three years of political wrangling, endless rounds of voting and marathon debates, the EU voted overwhelmingly to adopt the AI Act, which will now come in to law over the next 2 years. Organisations that deploy AI systems that violate the act face fines of up to 7% of global revenues. Yikes. Rather like with the introduction of GDPR, the EU clearly hopes this will become a de-facto global standard for AI regulation, as the extra territorial reach of the rules means that most global companies creating or using AI will have to comply with the act.

So what's in it? It's main goal is to protect citizens rights, with AI models likely to cause harm to society subject to strict rules or banned outright. For example, mass scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage will be banned, while police forces and security services can only use biometric identification systems if they adhere to certain safeguards such as logs outlining when it was used and ensure human oversight is in place. There is also a big emphasis on transparency. Developers will be required to publish detailed summaries of the content used for training their AI models, and comply with EU copyright law. Meanwhile, AI-generated audio and visual content will also need to be labeled as such.

What does this mean for us? Companies using AI models in HR - e.g. screening candidates, or monitoring productivity - will need to tread carefully to ensure they abide by the regs. Using Chat-GPT to help you write your job adverts? You're probably still OK. Watch this space.

The wisdom in saying no

In the NYT author Leslie Jamison tells us her personal story of how she changed her perspective, and her life, by claiming her right to start saying no. She decided to make something I called the 'Notebook of Noes'. Leslie says "On every page, I wrote down an opportunity I had decided to decline: a speaking gig, a magazine commission, an invitation from a friend. Then I drew a line across the page. Underneath, I wrote what saying no had made room for: more time with my partner. More time at home. More time to write. More time to call my mother and ask about her day, and tell her about mine." It made us wonder, how many organisations have a culture where people feel safe to say "no"?

In the Loves Corner

Last week we went to In House Recruiter Live in Birmingham. There we spoke to hundreds of talent acquisition professionals and listened to excellent panel discussions. A few trends in Talent Acquisition for 2024 came out loud and clear. Check out our summary here.