Okay we're gonna get started.So thanks for joining me today, my name is Simone Fenton Jarvis, I am the cofounder of the Human Centric Workplace, and also the the author of the Human Centric Workplace book as well. So a little bit about my background, but today we're gonna talk about why the future of work is human. So a little bit about me. I started a bit, a bit different than probably most. I started as a p teacher, and then didn't like PE teaching and worked my way up instead into facilities management. I've worked for four very large technology companies delivering workplace consultancy. Now part of my role at them consulting companies was about how to bring the human into the technology.

So I'm gonna be talking a little bit about that today. My you know where I've arrived today, lots of different experiences with lots of different global technology companies but also a lot that are not tech based as well. So I'm gonna probably, bring quite an holistic view to to the conversation today. So the most unused asset in the twenty first century at work is simply being a human being. Now if you think back to the early days of our three hundred thousand year human evolution, Work was simple. You know, we we work to eat and avoid being eaten. Meaning and purpose came from different areas and it might have been spirituality, art, religion, science.

And obviously, as we've evolved, what's what's going on here is we've evolved but we've now started multitasking and, you know, if you listen to most things, there are lots of common. But work is no longer about survival, it's an extension of our reality, our identities, social connectedness, culture, belonging, purpose, the ability to think. They're not they're not things that stop as soon as we arrive at work and somehow we have kind of been hooked into diminishing our humanity and appearing more robotic in the workplace. So we're going to pick a little bit of that today because it's simple. People are not coaxed in the organization machine there to just drive money for the organization and you know the financial success of the organization. People don't want to be controlled, they don't want to be managed, they don't want to be worn down and the employee experience has evolved and it will continue to do so because that's what human nature is about.

Now when we talk about culture we talk as if it's something that kind of naturally evolves in an organization, but it takes a lot conscious and consistent effort. It takes intent and it it it really needs that health nudge in the right direction because otherwise it will quite ease and form toxic workplace. So why why the future of work is human and why why the human bit? Because actually when I when I first started writing my book and if you just missed it at the start there's human centric workplace. But when I first started writing my book, it was in the middle of a pandemic and I really sat and thought well I know that the future of work is is about being a human being but what what does it mean to be a human being? And I asked lots of questions to lots of different people and because we was in a pandemic, I thought they thought it was having a bit of an existential crisis, and maybe maybe I was.

But what I really uncovered was wanting to understand who we are, where we come from, and how we've all is part of what makes us human beings. And I looked at poets, philosophers, anthropologists, religious bodies, scientists, politicians, artists, anybody really of what does it mean to be a human being. And despite the efforts the answers were really diverse, they're non conclusive and because actually if we believed in a single answer it would actually create that silo between the brain, our emotions, the body and and so on. And we need to con consider that there's many angles that make us up to be a human being. But some of my favorite kind of things that came out of this was looking at anthropologists and philosophers. So we've got Aristotle there on the left. Now he said that to be a human being meant having a goal, a purpose, to belong, to live a happy life.

Now if you think about that in a work context, I'm sure that I'll give you a flavor of, you know, where where the workplace is today, where it's heading. I've got a message saying that my slides aren't moving. If are they moving for anybody else? Does the look alright on my screen? You just put a message in the chat if if there's a problem, and, I'll see if the model can step in. Hopefully. Oh, they're not moving. Oh, brilliant. Okay. Thank you very much. That's so I need to move the view tab at the top rather than slideshow. Okay. Thank you. Let me see what's going on. Slideshow. I'm in presenter mode. Right. You can see the slides you're talking about now. Oh, okay. Right. Okay. So here's what I'm gonna do just to make it really easy. I'm just gonna make this one bigger here. Okay. I'm not sure what was going on there. Right. Okay. That seems to now be okay.

So I'm gonna revert to that. Okay. So this is where this is where I've got through. Yeah. It's good. Thank you. Sorry, Amber. Okay. So where I got to there was what what made us human beings is that ability to think about simply being a human being. So Aristotle, it was the ability to simply think about culture, think about belonging, think about purpose, and then it was, into Calmarks. Now Calmarks, it was we must have a purpose, a shared belonging, a community to move forward and to thrive. And then finally you've got Clifford Gertz on the right hand side. He's an anthropologist and he said that simply without a culture we are not being a human being. Now if you don't if you think about that in that work context, without culture, we're not being human. K?

So human beings within our organizations, we've got one in four people with a mental illness. You've got one in two people parents, one in seven are neurodivergent, one in five have got disability, one in ten LGBTQIA plus, five generations, and 16 personality types. Simply, we are a diverse bunch, and not being human isn't an option because if you think about your organizations, that is a lot a lot of organization. So how do we create workplaces that caters for the human beings? Because actually people need to fit in not feel like misfits. And actually, when we go to the office, for me it's become this kind of jack of all trades, master of none. You go to the workplace and you're like you're looking for a sense of routine. If you're lucky, you might try and get through to your to do list.

You want recognition, you want to be seen by your bosses, by people around. You want that collaboration with people, creativity, you're gonna do some thinking, you're gonna be doing lots of communicating. Now concentration, contemplation, more of these these spaces have crept into our workplace over the last few years. I don't know about anybody else but I think I concentrate and contemplate that better right on the queue looking out the train window. I'm not sure like for me, it's it's the the headspace, but I'm introvert so, you know, I think everyone's different in that way anyway. And then you also want that community feeling. You wanna feel like you're part of a team and that you're there having that purpose and you've got that.

So the key challenges in today's workplace, right, things that have been spoken about a lot at the moment, we've got sustainability, communication, engagement, ways of working, culture belonging, EDI, costs and value and well-being. The big thing that obviously that is coming down definitely down the track quite fast is AI. Is that cost the key challenge at the moment? Some may think it is, some may think it's not. So I I don't think it's a key challenge at the moment. I think it's gonna give us some challenges in the future. But right now, I I'm not a believer that it's a challenge. I think there's a lot of benefits, to come from AI at the moment. And I think we need to learn how to use them responsibly. But yeah so if you think about human needs and if you go back to what I was saying about the philosophers and the anthropologists, human needs and you can think of Maslow's hierarchy needs.

The things that people talk about, if you take a human being, we've all got desires, we've all got our intentions and then we've all got actual behaviors. If you think, give you an example okay, I'm gonna go to gym because I've got a desire to be fit and healthy. So my intention is to go to the gym, my desire is to be fit and healthy. My actual behavior, you've had a crappy day at work and you head home and you think I'm not going to gym, I'm not eating that salty either, I'm gonna watch some Netflix and I need to just chill out. And actually that kind of pyramid of desires, intentions and actual behaviors, we're constantly kind of shifting around, going from side to side going, oh, I want that but and I need to do that but I'm not gonna do that And why is that? And actually if you look at all the challenges at the moment, you know, relaxation, belonging, friendship, family, creativity, autonomy, purpose, our hobbies, trust, expression, a stable environment, choice.

These are all things that are currently challenged in in the workplace. Why is that? Because throughout that evolution as humanity, our workplaces have also been evolving. We've gone from that utility, nine to five, copying the machine you know and then it moved into productivity where we're in rows of desks to make us more productive to pass pieces of paper to the next desk as quickly as possible, essentially to make more money for the big bosses and the owners.

Then we started looking at engagement, and this is over there's obviously you know tens and and kind of a couple hundreds of years anyway, but we started looking at engagement. How do we make sure that people want to be there because then they will work better? And then it turned into more of the experience and this is where you saw the rise of beer taps in the office, table tennis, things like you know we've got really nice coffee come and work here. And it was how do we make sure that people have that kind of hospitality experience in the workplace that they want to be there and they're having a great time. I think the future is about being a human being. I think we need to start looking at our actual purpose in the workplace. We need to start looking at what it means for the planet. I think this is also coming through even in AI.

There was a report that came out just last week and it was saying that last year compared to this year, the biggest thing that people are now using AI for is to have a conversation, to look at uncover their purpose, and to have therapy. And that is what AI is being used for by the average person now most, based off all prompts that have had a chat to you PC have started looking at. And that that for me is is probably a little bit alarming that we're turning to AI to connect and have a conversation to uncover our purpose and to have therapy. That signals to me that there's a bit of a problem. Now if you think about that desires, that intention, that actual behavior again, and you think about the hybrid workforce. Okay? Our desire, how, when, where do people actually want to work? You've got the intentions of the organization. How, when, where does the organization want and need people to work?

And then you've got the actual behavior of the leadership on the ground, managing things day to day. What are they asking from their team? What are they letting go? What are they measuring? What are they rewarding? Now I, you know, I keep seeing this, and it's essentially a gap between what people want and then the gap of what the organization are are providing and there's then frustration building. You know, people are saying I don't want to go into the office, organization may be forcing them in. There's a gap there and it's creating frustration. You've then got another gap between upper management and middle management, lower management, and that is creating distrust because the organization is saying we want people in the office three four days a week, okay, And the actual leadership going oh god I don't want to be there that many days, I trust my team, I can manage my team effectively, I'm not forcing people back in, and then it's building mistrust.

And then the people on the ground that's running kind of the base employees, there's a massive confusion because then they're saying well the bosses are saying this, my leader is saying this, now what can I do? So I think we've got a bit of this hybrid working whole paradox going on where there's confusion, frustration, mistrust. And for me it all goes back to what do you mean to be a human being, how are we communicating with people, how are we empowering people and how are we trusting people to do their best work, are we giving them that culture where they can fly as a human being in the workplace.

If not, we need to really look at what we're in. And we use so many different terms talking about workplace. You know, you've got flexible working, agile working, you've got hot desking, you've got activity based working, smart working, and for me let's just get rid of all them kind of definitions because they often keep being the same like recreating the wheel almost. Let's focus on flexible working practices, having the agile mindsets, activity based working because then people have got the space that they need, and the smart technology. The smart technology has to underpin everything about the workloads and the future of work because otherwise people are not going to be there. There's nothing worse than going into an office and finding that simply even, like, the WiFi is worse than what you've got in your home, people don't wanna experience that, and it creates frustration. And if you think about your homes, and feel free to count how many of these are in your houses and put put something in the message because I did this at a conference a few weeks back and, I just asked people to sit down when I got to the number of how many of these they've got in their houses.

And one person had 46 smart devices in their house. 46. Now if you think about that, it's because we were doing things and having things in our home, not because the gimmicks, but because they're improving our lives and they are adding value to our lives. So why is it that then we put technology in the workplace, people don't know how to use it, they don't know that they want to use it, they they don't know that it's there for them to add value. We're missing a massive gap in what the technology in our workplaces means for the average person in the actual workplace. Okay so if we move maybe I still have to stop working again, that's helpful. Right, if you look to the office then, talking about the home, when you think about all of them, smart technology devices they've got in the house, And now you start looking at the office and you've got all of these things in the office and you've got people bypassing some of these things, you've got people complaining about some of these things.

If we get this right, this the technology that we have in the workplace should be enabling that human experience to do our best work and to obviously help the planet. And then there's AI. Okay? A 185,000,000,000 spent on development just last year. 33% believe that they were using AI platforms. Actual usage was more around 77%, and that's because we're using AI in items we didn't even realize was AI. You've got 500 plus AI enabled workplace tools in the marketplace at the moment. And the integration of AI in workplaces is gonna add around 347,000,000,000,000 in productivity growth potential over the long term. But the challenge of this is the fact that one prompt into say chat g p t or any any of the AI tools there, one prompt is using around 500 mil of water.

K? You've now got data centers, the AI data centers have got more emissions than all of Russia. K? There is a cost to using AI and I don't think we're really truly understanding and uncovering that cost right now. And then there's a privacy, security, these the whole thing of robots taking over the world. And we have to remember that where AI is right now is where the Nokia and Snake was on that phone. This is scary because if you look at your mobile phone now and see how that's evolved, this is the rate that AI is going to evolve. So we need to approach it with responsibility.

And when you've got some of these clever minds in the world saying things like AI has got could spell the end of the human race, It is gonna be biased. It is gonna be harmful. It's a massive ethics conversation. When people like Elon Musk say the AI is summoning the demon, that is a little bit worrying. And then you've got the fact that you've got Bill Gates thinking, okay, it's actually gonna help inequality. You've got, you know, Mark Zuckerberg saying that it's gonna improve the quality of life. And then you've got AI is gonna make things easier for us. Okay. As long as we approach it with the human first. And we talk about all these things and yet the average office still looks like this. How many of you have seen recently these things in offices?

You know, manual paper signing forms, dead plants, just meeting rooms you just don't want to spend any time in because they're hot and stuff there. There's not enough space. You've got people, you know, poor IT teams crawling around trying to sort their cable in our in the server rooms. We talk about AI in the world moving on, but we can't forget that most offices still have these things going on. So understand the why before prescribing the what. Think about the data that you are using within the workplace to drive decisions. If you're looking for desires, look at surveys, workshops, one to ones. If you're looking at intention data, think about space booking data, calendar data. And if you want actual behaviors, look at bad swipe, sensors, Wi Fi. And just mind the gap between these things. There's no perfect side here. The perfect bit is in the middle. Remember that connecting with people is what work is about.

This is some of my favorite things, from the past workplaces that I've been. One of my favorites is definitely the bottom right which is where my, my wife actually met her colleague working in the garden during COVID because obviously they couldn't spend time in the same room together. They decided to sit in the garden in the rain and in these that that's what the workplace is about. That's what the workplace brings. The future of work is human. It's all about people, powered by technology, underpinned by data and connected through purpose. Let's not forget that. I've got to wrap up because another time is moving on and we've got other sessions to go to. So thank you very much. This usually is like an hour talk so please like connect on LinkedIn you can see more about what I'm about and let's just carry on the conversation and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.

Thanks everybody.