The Rise of Gen Z in the Workplace: Expectations vs Reality

David Brown: 00:00:04

First of all, welcome to the show.

Alice Phillips: 00:00:06

Thank you.

David Brown: 00:00:07

And I know we had a chat last week on your show, which was great, and that was all, you know, kind of talking about AI and stuff like that.

I'd like to have a little bit more of a broader conversation, maybe just about work in general, but I guess the first thing really to ask is, when you were sort of teenage girls in school, did you ever think that you would end up working in the jobs that you work and having a podcast talking about work?

Alice Phillips: 00:00:39

I'm going to say yes, actually, because I always had a really strong desire to tell stories. That was always my background. I was a really good writer from a young age.

I was sort of that nerd at summer camp who started a newsletter for the whole camp. I look back on that and still cringe to this day. But I was that kind of kid.

I wanted to sort of tell stories, I wanted to report on what was going on. I had a lot of curiosity about people, about trends, about things happening in the world around me. And I was also quite a rebel.

So I think I had this sort of entrepreneurial streak from quite a young age. I sort of pushed back and asked questions about everything and was always sort of marching to the tune of my own band.

And so I think the combination of those things, of arriving in a place where I have been working for myself for 12, 15 years and continued to sort of spawn new business ideas and things like that, feels very much like it tracks from who I was in the beginning. The podcast is just the latest expression of my desire to tell stories, worked in brand for years, that sort of thing.

So, yeah, it's really about just finding those interesting nuggets. And actually, I'll say I work in an area of branding that most branding people wouldn't touch.

I'm not in, like, really cool consumer goods kind of markets. I'm in the sort of boring stuff, you know, the B2B, the. The sort of electronics, things like that.

But I actually believe that you can find a really interesting story and a human story in just about everything. So that sort of driven my career.

David Brown: 00:02:08

Where the money is.

Dan Emery: 00:02:10

What did we call it the other day, Alice? Where you brand big boxes or something?

Alice Phillips: 00:02:14

Yeah, it's sort of like I'm going to write a book called like Boring Brands or Brand Boring or something like that.

David Brown: 00:02:21

Sounds good. I've worked in B2B nearly my whole career, so I understand, you know, kind of the B2B market as well.

And I've worked for startups the whole time also. So branding and establishing a brand has always been part of that. And then I was always on the, the, the data analytics side of that.

So then looking at things like web analytics and digital marketing and advertising effectiveness and all that sort of stuff and collecting the data on that. So that's the side of it that I've always been on.

So you would go off and do the branding work with the business, but then I would pick up on the back end and start doing the data analytics and actually really diggin that to see what was effective, what was working, what wasn't working and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, interesting. What about you, Dan?

Dan Emery: 00:03:06

No, really not where I thought it'd be at all.

So I originally wanted to be a vet and followed that dream to be a vet and even went down the A level options of following this veterinary dream not realizing that I'm really not smart enough until I didn't do very well at all in the exams and there's a few bottom level grades in all the science and all of that stuff. And so that, that was my first big experience of failure and had to reassess what I was actually good at.

So I was very, very good at sports and I was like club captain for house captain and stuff like that across loads of different sports which really I think demonstrated my connections and relationships with people for like leadership and facilitating and all that type of stuff. And then I actually got an A without really trying in business studies and marketing.

So it was like, why don't you do that if you've that sort of taken you by surprise, like follow those two passions. So then it was like, am I going to be a PE teacher or does sport become the hobby?

And then I take marketing on to be the higher education study and that's what I did. So I was very basic. After that though, it was just, you know, when I graduate after five years, I want to be a marketing manager.

There was no, you know, because that was what you did. Like it was just, that was the linear, linear route to think I'd be where I am now and you know, hosted a podcast. Absolutely not.

But I think the passion as to why, why we're doing it to like unlock knowledge for people and shine lights on topics to help people. That bit doesn't surprise me. It just probably surprised me that the podcast is the root or the channel.

David Brown: 00:04:53

Yeah, the vehicle for it.

Dan Emery: 00:04:55

Yeah, the vehicle, yeah.

David Brown: 00:04:57

So that raises an interesting point that sort of segues into work. What, what is your feeling or, or how do you feel about the thought that trying to think about how to say what, how to ask what I want to ask.

I think a lot of emphasis in school is put on trying to find out what your weaknesses are and make them stronger, instead of discovering what your strengths are and doubling down on your strengths.

So my opinion is, I think you find what, what, particularly in school, what kids and young adults are good at, and you absolutely drive that as hard as you possibly can to become as good as you can at what your strengths are. If you're a creative person or you're a musical person, there's no reason to force those kids to try and be good at mass, right?

Like it just doesn't if they're weak at mass. Or maybe you're not a good reader, but you're very good at mathematics.

Again, you follow what your strengths are because then when you want to go into a profession or some sort of a career, you know where your strengths are and you can actually get into the right thing. So my question, I guess is, is, is that what you see with people coming into work these days, that they, that do.

Do people even really know what their strengths are and are they doubling down on them or do you think that the schools are not preparing people correctly? I don't know if that's the right way to ask that question, but I.

Dan Emery: 00:06:34

Totally understand what you're saying because I look back, like GCSE, we did 11 GCSEs right, off a range of topics. And that is an intense period.

Then when I went to, it was four subjects, but I remember there was the week of exams and the stress and the pressure and all of those things. And that point you've made choices, but it's just so, so intense.

And I think I look back to GCSE year especially and everybody's sort of going through the same route. And at that point there were kids who were badly behaved or, you know, not fitting in the mold.

And I look at them now and like, you were 100% neurodiverse, like, or, you know, this, this academic route was not the right route for you.

I think now I'm about to send my son school in September into primary and I just think he's going to have different options on the table that were not there 20 odd years ago for me whenever it was moved 30 years. But whereas I see people coming into the workforce, I actually feel now that it's a blend of both.

Whereas I think there's a lot more self reflection now, just as in, in people, people that do have more Awareness because I think people are trying to, in the digital world that we're in, people are actually trying to create space out of that digital space to reflect on themselves and what they want and their drives and what their strengths are. So I'm not sure it's totally to the point where you say about everybody knows how to double down on what their strengths are.

I actually quite like that as a, an idea, but I think we're not there yet, but we're moving.

David Brown: 00:08:09

And do you think that's a particular strength of Gen Z? Because Gen Z seems to be the ones.

Even millennials weren't so much in touch with their kind of, I don't know, not emotions isn't the right thing, but Gen Z seems to be a lot more into mental health and that sort of thing. So that's almost what I think where you're venturing is they do a lot more self reflection and that sort of thing, which in my opinion maybe it's.

They go, they've gone a little bit too far and they're a bit too sensitive to it, which is creating some of the issues that we see in work. You know, people coming into work these.

Dan Emery: 00:08:46

Days, in a lot of cases in, in managing Gen Z, which I have done, they're very. Boundaries like these are the hours that I work. I take this time for my lunch break.

I was like when I was, you know, at the beginning of my career, it is, I was, I'm the people pleasing millennial age. Like boss says jump, you say how high? And go even further. And it's always going above and beyond. Is that necessarily right? Probably not.

And unpicking some of those traits now, you know, is really, really difficult. But there are, I think again, it's a sweeping statement saying that all Gen Z's are like that.

But a lot that I've experienced are and part of me admires their boundaries in some sense. And then other, other times I think there could be a blend of both worker ethics.

Alice Phillips: 00:09:36

You know, I think, you know, it's always interesting with questions around education because I was educated in the us My only experience of the UK education system is through my own children. And I only have their one school to look at, which happens to be a private school.

So I don't necessarily have the perspective on how education is delivered in this country, except that I was a school governor to a federation of state schools for a number of years. So I did get that kind of glimpse on it.

And I think actually your description of it as trying to figure out what Children's weaknesses are in some ways is generous for what we're facing in the education system. And I don't think there's any lack of good intention. Right. So I think everybody who is in the educational profession is doing their best.

And the people who inform the educational profession are also doing their best to create the best possible outcomes. I think my impression of the system is very much around there is this central kind of core place where all the little fish are swimming.

And the ambition of the system is to push those kids towards that core place where all the fish are swimming. So push them into that mainstream channel.

And I think the challenge of that, as we're learning with this sort of emerging understanding of neurodiversity and things like that, is that not everyone's going to fit in that channel, not everyone's going to comfortably be able to swim along with the fish in that central channel.

So I think because of the focus on results and that sort of thing and trying to get people to learn to just step up to the sort of baseline, we're trying to force many children against what is going to conventionally be the best way for them to learn. But I think that also raises a question around, and this is just opening a whole can of worms, but are we even teaching them the right thing?

Because if we're looking at the sort of changing nature of the knowledge economy, are we actually giving children skills that are actually completely redundant by the time they reach the workforce? And should we be focusing more on those things that are going to develop the human strengths in the future workplace?

education system in the early: 1900

I got those stats wrong, but it's something in those, in that kind of realm.

David Brown: 00:12:03

Yeah.

Alice Phillips: 00:12:03

So it's almost like we need a similar style thing now.

David Brown: 00:12:07

No, I agree.

And we were, I was having this discussion with, with my in laws over the, over the holiday and one of the things personally I think in my son who's 17, who's just coming out of essentially high school, if you're in the us, but A levels in the UK even he was saying, you know, that they're teaching stuff in schools that most kids don't need to know. Right. Most kids don't need to know geometry and trigonometry and subjects like, like advanced algebra.

And they don't need to know how to do statistics. They don't.

I mean, a little bit of an understanding of how statistics work I think is probably really good because, you know, so many ads and everything quote statistics. And if you say, oh, 87 of women like this face cream and it was 8 out of 10, like that's not a sample size, that, that's enough to matter.

Do you know what I mean? It's like it.

So you need to kind of understand a little bit how those things are pulled together, but you don't need to understand how to do it yourself at a, at a high school, you know, by the time you're 18.

And I think that schools would be a lot better and education would be a lot better if they went a little bit slower, spent a little bit more time even in primary school on getting the basics in place.

You know, you need, in math really, all you need to really understand is multiplication and division and addition and subtraction really, for day to day, and maybe understanding, you know, how to do fractions and percentages, because that sort of stuff factors into things like credit card bills and mortgages and that sort of thing.

But anything beyond that really should be a specialist knowledge that if you want to go into a profession like engineering, then you start learning advanced algebra and trigonometry and all the other stuff that you need to do. I don't personally think that that's anything that kids need to know.

And we would be better served by spending more time on the basics and then adding some other practical skill stuff in. Like all the kids coming out, I've heard them talking before and sorry, I'm ranting on education, but you open the door.

Sorry, but it's those life skills, right? Like understanding credit cards and how interest works and understanding mortgages and all that sort of stuff.

And investment, not investment, but like savings and, you know, those sorts of things, like how does the stock market work? Because if you want to make an investment and you want to save some money, blah, blah, blah. I guess the question then becomes, so let's, let's.

I want to take this back to work because I know you guys talk about work a lot and I'm interested on your opinions and we've got sort of sidetracked by education, but that's the step before getting to work is how do you see, how are people prepared for work these days? Are the younger people coming through who are going into Work. Now, are they actually prepared for the jobs that are in the market at the minute?

And how do you see that playing out over the next maybe five years?

Alice Phillips: 00:15:11

I mean, certainly the people we've spoken to would say that no, in many cases they're not prepared for the workforce. We can look at the fact that there are entry level positions are stacked with requirements for experience.

So entry level jobs are all over LinkedIn that say, must have five years of experience and you must be able to do 300 different things, which are obviously not going to happen. So I think what's being advertised and expected by organizations is not the same as what you're getting from people coming out of school.

I mean, just one quickly on the education thing, just to kind of close out that chat.

I mean, you look at Finland, right, which is always heralded as the best example of education, and they're starting to teach the four Cs, and let's see if I can remember what they are. But they're communication, creativity, critical thinking and collaboration. And those four things are now part of the curriculum.

And I think if we were actually maybe preparing children or young people more for those types of skills, we'd actually be in a better position than coming into the workforce.

But I think by and large, we read all these statistics around the kind of white collar crisis, the fact that these knowledge jobs are not reflecting or are not needed in the same way they were before. So you've got kids being trained to do knowledge jobs who are not finding the roles open.

We've also got skills gaps in places related to technology, but equally in blue collar jobs. So we're not getting that kind of training coming in.

We've got huge skills gaps in the nhs, we've got lots of open positions in the nhs, no kids coming up and being able to fill those. So there seems to be a mismatch between what is the kind of people who are coming into the workforce and what the workforce is actually looking for.

And that will probably change again and again at hyperscale speed over the coming years. And we'll continue to see a sort of exaggeration of this problem moving forward, I would expect.

Dan Emery: 00:17:05

Yeah. And in 22, it was the great resignation and the war for talent was absolutely huge.

Grads were coming out of uni with no experience, asking for 40k plus base salaries. Insane. Absolutely insane. Whereas now we're on the cusp, I think, of do we even need entry level people?

And I'm talking specifically about marketers now, because of AI, that that will be A discussion I think of can, can't AI just do this entry level type work? So be it. Content production, you know what? Now I'm a big believer that we're going to need the human touch.

But then it does pose the challenge of what's that mean for how do you then get your experience right? How do you, when you're fresh out of uni, how do you get that experience?

So I generally don't know what is going to happen at the future, but it's, it's about to be quite rocky again, I think. And I'm wondering if there might be another big war.

Not war for talent, but war for vacancies for the actual jobs that they're in that entry level kind of first five years of your career type roles. Because I'm not sure whether some businesses will just be like, will get the machine to do them.

David Brown: 00:18:16

And this is where that sort of saying, you know, someone using AI will take your job kind of thing. And it's not that I think people misunderstand what that means and I think they misinterpret.

So the saying is, you know, AI won't take your job, someone using AI will. I think what that really means is it's not that you're going to get fired if you don't use AI and somebody on your team does.

What it means is, is exactly what you said, that those new junior roles, they aren't needed because someone using AI can do more than that junior person could contribute to the team, right?

And it's more cost effective and it's actually easier because that mid level person who's already in that role, right, already knows the stuff, they've already been trained, they're already there. So it's easy for them to use AI to get more productivity and more value out of the system than training someone that's a junior.

And it, it takes just as much time to train the AI as it would to train the junior person. But then in the future you don't need to take the juniors on. And this is where I think the huge problem is going to come in.

Because in five years all the juniors that should have been hired in those roles didn't get hired. All the mid level people are now looking to go a bit more senior and there's nobody to take those medium jobs because they didn't train the juniors.

But actually in five years you're not going to need them either. So the senior person using AI will be able to do both of the roles.

And I think what's going to happen is over the next 10 years, what we're going to see is that the whole bottom of that is just going to hollow out now. I don't know where the. In the future, I don't know where the senior people come from. That's the challenge that I don't see. And, you know, I.

And I don't know if I said this on your show or not, but it's almost like, you know, if you wanted to have a.

If you want a handmade pair of shoes, you can still buy handmade shoes if you want, but they're super expensive and there are only a few places in the world that you can get them, but you can get them. And I think we're going to end up with a lot of the knowledge work is going to end up being the same.

There are going to be a few experts that you will be able to get humans to do it. But 99% of all of that work is going to be done by AI in probably 15 years. So where do all those people go?

Dan Emery: 00:20:50

Yeah, yeah. And there is already a gap. So it's the neat gap. So people not in education.

We're speaking to somebody who's really driving the whole apprenticeship piece to get people prepared for work. Because the start is like at a million people in the UK are not in education or work and that's then a risk.

If you're then talking about what we've just mentioned, how big can that number grow? So it's what actually needs to happen then. What upskilling do people need to do? What do education need to do?

Because we were talking about this over the weekend. I'm very new to using AI. I'm using it because we've had to.

My husband, since the past two weeks started to use it and, you know, we were saying that if you don't, you get left behind, so you have to learn and go with it. And I've lost my train of thought. Sorry. There was a point I was going to make about, oh, this was it.

Kids doing their homework on a Monday morning on ChatGPT, on the bus. There was no. So in my day, it was all the dog ate my homework, you know, like, whatever, if it wasn't done.

But kids are just doing it on the bus now in seconds. So what th. This is. I. What are people in education establishments going to do?

Alistair, who was on our first AI episode, said that they submitted a doctorate paper that was produced by the machine and was rubber stamped. You know, so what. What does this mean? For high schools, what does it mean for universities? And higher, even higher than that.

David Brown: 00:22:28

I think the nature of it is that the way they exam is going to have to change. I think a lot of the, particularly the higher level examinations.

Sorry, I've got like all sorts of warning stuff popping up on my screen and I don't know why.

At the higher levels I think they're going to go back to a lot more oral exams and I think they do that for languages still, because that's really the only way you can test it. But I, I think, you know, we're going to have to change the way people think about education and, and knowledge and using the tools.

You know, it's the same as calculated. This is the same argument that we had over calculators back in the day.

You know, it was like, oh my God, you can't give someone a calculator because it's going to mean they can't do anything. And it's like, well, not actually, you know, it, it just made it faster and easier to be able to do that.

Um, but yeah, I think like, I think the whole thing is, is going to have to, it's going to have to just get flipped on its head, you know. And so going back to apprenticeships, I think, you know, my son and a lot of his classmates are planning on doing apprenticeships.

They don't want to go to uni because they just don't see the value in it. You know, they're like, what's the point of going and racking up student debt for, you know, that really doesn't have any benefit in the workplace.

You know, you've got, like you mentioned before, I think it was Alice, I think you mentioned it, but it was, you know, entry level jobs where they want like a master's degree and they're paying 15, you know, 15 an hour. £15 an hour. It's like, are you joking? You know, but, but this is the knock on effect of everyone going to uni.

So if everyone goes to Unique, then that degree becomes meaningless basically because that just becomes the baseline. So if you want somebody that's gone above and beyond, you now have to ask for a master's degree, right?

It's the same, you know, as 30 years ago when you just asked somebody to have a degree because most people didn't have it.

So you wanted that person, you wanted somebody who went above and beyond, right, to show a little bit of initiative and to, you know, to show that they had some extra knowledge and all that. Well, with everybody has A degree. Now you have to go to the next level.

And I think everybody's just pushing back against it and you know, they don't see the value of the knowledge work. And I think the kids also see that knowledge work is going away.

I mean, I'm telling my son to just, I think he should be an electrician, honestly, or, you know, get in a studio. Like I'm, you know, I've got this studio here, I'm like, you can get some hands on skills being an engineer.

You can learn how to use cameras, you know, you can learn how to do that stuff. And yeah, AI can create videos and all that.

But again, you know, if, if, if you lay just wanted to go out and you wanted to do a video, you can, of course you can go and get AI to do it. But if you want it to have that kind of emotional grab and you wanted to have that extra bit, then you need a human in the loop.

And so, you know, that's kind of where we sit. So I can give him that skill maybe. But you know, other than that, it's, I'm not, I'm not optimistic.

Alice Phillips: 00:25:39

I think we, I think it's, we have to be careful not to equate education with knowledge acquisition.

David Brown: 00:25:46

Exactly right.

Alice Phillips: 00:25:46

Because I think I'm looking back at my own university experience and I went to graduate school.

And so much of what I take from that today, and I'm now in my mid-40s, is about the reasoning, critical thinking, those types of things that I acquired during that experience.

And maybe I had a positive experience, but I think the benefit of higher education is that you learn how to learn, which you don't necessarily do in primary and secondary school education. Because at the moment it seems to me like a lot of that is around knowledge acquisition.

So actually it's almost like if you move it down the stack, right, you start teaching those skills to younger children, then actually we sort of. Because learning is still really vital, I think, to the future of humanity.

And if you look back at the, the origins of the word school, I think the word means leisure. So I think back in ancient Greek days it was about learning and discussing and debating was a really important part of the human experience.

It was a leisure activity and I think we can't lose that. But I think it's just the conventional way that it's being delivered is not working for the world we find ourselves in.

David Brown: 00:26:48

Yeah. So what's the biggest challenge facing work in the next few years, do you think?

Alice Phillips: 00:26:57

I think certainly AI and automation has to be up there.

I think that is probably actually for me anyway, Dan, you might disagree, but for me that sort of sits at the heart of everything because it probably will be the biggest, most seismic shift in work coming up in the next 10 to 20 years. I think there are so many things that are also facing work that relate to that. So we're looking at things like sort of hybrid work models.

And again, this will all be irrelevant if, when automation AI replaces us.

But I think if we're looking like that is a big issue facing work right now, how do we get people to not see going back into the office as sacrificing the flexibility they were afforded during the COVID years? I think we've got employee well being and mental health is a massive issue.

We've got stress levels through the roof again, probably related to and exacerbated by the threat of AI and automation. So I think that is something we have to see in context. But it's certainly a massive issue. Work is fundamentally flawed and broken.

It's not serving people. Right now, even if you take the AI thing out of the equation, we've got this sort of diversity aspect.

So diversity, equity and inclusion has been a big topic for a while. We know that organizations, that companies work better when they have a more diverse workforce.

We know that leadership teams are more effective when they're more diverse.

And yet we have massive government initiatives, particularly in the US trying to move away from some of the more structured aspects of bringing De and I into the workplace. We have mass entrepreneurialism, which we've talked about on our podcast as well.

Basically, people are leaving, working for companies in a sort of salaried way and we don't necessarily have the social or corporate infrastructure to support those people. And then as we said, we have the kind of upskilling, reskilling gap that we talked about before. Yeah, I think those are the big ones.

What about you, Dan?

Dan Emery: 00:28:56

Yeah, probably just echoing everything that you said, really. AI is going to be, I don't want to keep banging on about it, but it is going to be the driver of that.

And I don't know if this is me wanting to believe or actually believing, probably both. There's still got to be the human element in there around connection and the human touch to all, you know, this digital world.

So I think that I don't know what it is yet, but there is still something that needs to be done around that. I think there will still continue to be a big focus on people. More, more than ever.

I think companies are Looking at employee wellbeing programs, EAPs, all that's what they offer is like a package to go work for. But I actually think there might be something else that they go and that they offer in addition to around connection so that there is a loneliness.

Like I say, it's not an epidemic at the moment, is there? But it's definitely a rising issue. But what's going to happen there? Why is that happening?

Is that happening because of COVID and isolation, all those things? Not, not sure. Probably stems from some of it. But I think there will be a big human piece of work to be done as well as the AI piece.

David Brown: 00:30:16

On the remote working. Do you think people who are coming into the workforce now, do you think they're missing something with the connection part of it?

Because I think a big part of working in an office is it's the community and the team and that sort of thing. And I think personally that you need that, I think you need the, the, the personal connection to then make the remote working work.

I don't think remote working works as well if you haven't already established an in person relationship. And I, I think this is what some people miss. And this is my Xgen coming out where I still think that that is hugely important.

And so I, you know, I'm hopefully going to start building a team for myself, right for the studio. And it's fine, you know, we have a physical location that people need to be in to come in because people are going to be here.

But outside of that, I'm quite happy. If people work remotely.

If they need to do editing or they're doing anything else, that's totally fine if somebody wants to work from home to do that. But I also think that part of an onboarding process of bringing someone into the team is going to be.

You need to be in all the time because we need to build a personal relationship and we need to have some rapport before you then start going off and working on your own.

And I'm curious to know, do you think the same, do you think that's important or do you think these days it's fine that you can build a team remotely and that it really doesn't make that much difference.

Alice Phillips: 00:31:49

So I'm going to agree with you.

I think that in person collaboration and connection is vital and it's certainly one of those skills that if we talk about the future in AI, one of those skills that humans can uniquely bring is a sort of social authenticity piece.

We understand people better when we are in the room with them because it activates all of our senses and we're able to respond to people and mirror their emotions and things like that that you simply can't do remotely. So I agree with you that human connection is, is really important in team building.

What I take issue with is the tail wagging the dog in terms of these companies trying to get people back into the office. They've got long leases on real estate. They need to justify the existence of this real estate.

And so they're saying we need to go back to the office instead of acknowledging that actually there's a new world order. Now, we all know that the cat's out of the bag. I'm mixing lots of metaphors here, but the cat's out of the bag.

We all know that, that we can do the work that we need to do remotely. And so to suggest that we somehow need to go back to the way we were before, I think is the wrong terminology and the wrong way to message it.

David Brown: 00:32:55

But shouldn't employees understand that? Right, like that that is a huge consideration for a business.

And it's like the business needs to be able to say to employees, look, I'm really sorry, but we had, you know, when we set this up pre Covid, we signed a 10 year lease for this, you know, office. We've got this office space, we have to pay for it. So we need to use it because we can't get out of it.

So if, if we had to get out of it, I'm going to have to fire half of you.

So would you rather lose half the people in the company because we can't afford to pay you anymore, or would you rather actually come into the office so that we can keep going? Now we won't renew the lease when we get to the end of it.

And when we get to the end, then everybody, you know, we can look at how we're going to make it work differently.

But until then, we have cash flow considerations in the business that you need to be mindful of because I don't think that this is, you know, and even as an employee, if, if a company came to me and said that, I'd be like, yeah, okay, that's fair enough. But I'm a business owner, so I understand that side of it.

But a lot of people who've never run their own business don't understand all the other stuff that goes with it. So it again, I think, you know, personally I like to have sort of radical openness.

So I'm quite happy to share all of the financial Information with the employees I like, I want them to know where we are at any given minute because it helps them understand what's going on and it helps them understand the decisions that are being made. But I do think there's a responsibility on the employees to actually understand some of that stuff and then to.

They need to be able to work within that framework.

Alice Phillips: 00:34:31

I agree with you to an extent. I think I fully support radical transparency. And I agree with you that a lot of problems in corporate life would be solved by leadership.

Being more open and transparent about the challenges of running a business so that employees understand the reasons behind the decisions that are being made. That said, I think ultimately we know that what motivates people to some extent, to a large extent is autonomy and being in choice.

The second you take those choices away and you have leadership that mandates things, you, you take that choice away from people, they feel like they don't have autonomy over their own work styles.

And if I were in that situation, if I didn't like the message that was being given to me, I would go look somewhere else that provided more flexibility. So I think, yeah, so I think that's the situation we're in. It's always good to be open and honest about those things.

But I think ultimately people want to feel like they have a choice about how and when they work in a style that works best for them. And I think if we can create the messaging to support that kind of reality for people, then you're much more likely to get them to engage.

Dan Emery: 00:35:28

Yeah, I'm going to add a few things in here.

So I've experienced it where there's been a whole back to work mandate and it creates the friction and the tension and it really is people losing choice and that feeling of losing choice. I do understand it from the business side as well. And it does boil down to like costs of real estate and those things.

I've worked in corporate real estate for quite, quite a while to the point about building teams and doing that in person.

Yes, I totally believe that being together just builds synergy, builds connection, builds relationships, builds all of those things making hybrid and remote working a lot easier. But I currently work at my in house role in a global team. Well, global business. I'm a team of one.

But I have to build connections with people who are in Dubai or Singapore or wherever. And the chances are I'm never going to see them in real life. So you've got to work really hard to build that connection through from the waist up.

You know, in this current environment. And it. Is it possible? Well of course it is. Like of course it's possible.

So I'm totally, I'm understanding on, on both, on both sides like and I'm not trying to be a non fence person here. I do truly get it. I've personally experienced it where I've, you know, gone into the office and been like, oh thank God I came in.

You know, it just, it sometimes when you're here at this desk all day it's, it can feel quite silent but it's up then down to you to I think to figure out what works for you and how you get the best out of yourself by you know, making sure you get outside or you know, connecting with people and all of things. Sorry, I've gone a bit, a bit waffly here. There is a point that I want to come back to.

I don't know if it's relevant for this bit but it was going back to one of the challenges that we're seeing.

It came upon one of the pods the other day and I think the challenge for kind of middle senior management at the moment and this could be down to being in person, I don't know.

But we've almost the millennial era have got one of the biggest challenges because they're managing, Jen said, who are very different in nature than opinion to Gen X, who are probably at the top of, you know, on the boards and things like that.

So I think there is a huge leadership piece of work to be, to be done because I think it's people like me are managing two very banging up and managing down very different types of personalities, opinions, beliefs about work and there's a lot of tension that and to think the person that will grumble will be the person in the middle. So for me I think there's going to be a lot of, there is a requirement there to support that transition as well.

David Brown: 00:38:34

What do you think is going to happen as Gen Z starts to become into more leadership roles and they get confronted with the, the practicalities of running a business and they then start to understand and learn those lessons that the reason that business runs the way it does is because there are practical considerations around things like cash flow and some other things.

And so they're going to start to, I think they're going to start to struggle because they're then going to realize that the way they want to manage doesn't necessarily work for a business and they're going to have to then sort of square that circle. How do you think they're going to react to that.

Alice Phillips: 00:39:19

I think we all learned those lessons as we grew up through management. I think we didn't expect to uncover the things that we uncovered as we became managers. And we learned a lot of lessons the hard way.

And I'm sure it will be the same for Gen Z.

I think Gen Z is in a great position that I think they're actually really naturally entrepreneurial and a lot of the things that we're looking for from leadership today is around emotional intelligence and you try and shoehorn that into a generation that's not used to that sort of thing and it's been difficult.

You're met with some pushback and actually we've got Gen Z, which, Gen Z, Gen Z which has had grown up with, with developing a lot of that emotional intelligence from a very young age. So I think, you know, it's, it's, for me it's leadership evolves as do generational preferences for what leadership looks like.

And the reality is whatever we make it as leaders.

Dan Emery: 00:40:11

Yeah, I imagine that it's what they said about us before, you know, I don't think you can really pin anything on that. It would be exactly what was said about us, you know. Oh, they're gonna, they're gonna really learn like. Yeah, I'm sure.

What was interesting when we spoke to Holly Ho of Apprentiva, we're interviewing her in a week.

So we asked her what she thought about Gen Alpha right now and she said they've got a whole fresh new perspective, that they're really coming at it from a very positive angle. So it's, it's going to change again, you know. It will, it will change again.

David Brown: 00:40:48

Yeah. That's my, my son again. I talk about him a lot because he's 18 or just about to be 18 and he's just coming into the workplace.

And another thing that's really interesting about his cohort is they're almost like the anti woke group. Like I think they realize that the needle got pushed for the pendulums swung way too far in that sort of overcompensating for all of that.

And they're bringing it back a little bit. So you've got sort of this echo that's coming back around all of this stuff. You know, it's the dei everything.

They're, they're like, yes, that needs to happen and yes, there needs, you know, we need to, we need to have a good work life balance.

But they're a bit more practical and I think even they're kind of annoyed by the group in front of them because they're almost like you guys are ruining, ruining it for us because you took it too far and they're bringing it back. So, yeah, I don't know if he's alpha or if alpha's the. The younger group even behind him, or he may be on the cusp. But you're right.

I think it's going to be really interesting to see what the next group. Group does. And I guess this is always the same, right?

I mean, Plato, 5,000 years ago, wrote that he, you know, he thought that he couldn't understand how the world was going to continue with the way the kids were. So.

Dan Emery: 00:42:02

And here we are.

David Brown: 00:42:03

You know, this is. This is a constant, you know, thing that we talk about. I'm conscious of time. I did want to touch on one other thing, though, which is ageism.

And I think I don't know what the US is like anymore. I've been gone 25 years.

I haven't really had to work in the US, but in the UK, as I've got older, what I've noticed is it's very, very difficult to find a job. Very difficult.

And so I've had to go off and maybe do a bit more entrepreneurial stuff than I necessarily wanted to out of pure necessity because I have bills, I have mortgage, I have family to support and all this stuff. And at this point in my life, I find it. I'm, you know, I've been quite open. I'm in my mid-50s and I've worked in tech.

I've worked in, you know, for startups my whole life. I can't even get anybody to respond to me. I talked to another guy who's my age. He's put out a thousand applications and had no one come back to him.

And, you know, he's like people, you know, really in their. In their middle ages now. We, like, literally, we can't find work anywhere. People won't even come back to us.

And I didn't know if you had any thoughts on sort of what it's like, as those of us who are getting older, how we're going to find our position in the workplace moving forward.

Alice Phillips: 00:43:20

I think this is a real challenge. It's certainly one that I'm aware of. My husband and I, I'm 47, he's 50 next year, and we are.

I've been working for myself for 15 years, which basically makes me unemployable.

He has been working a corporate job, and I would struggle to answer whether or not either one of us is in A better position than the other, because once we're in our 50s, if I'm going to struggle to find work for reasons like AI is challenging the kind of creative professions and things like that, so I'm going to have to constantly reinvent. But it is something I'm used to doing, so therefore maybe I'm better positioned. If he lost his job in his 50s, he'd struggle to find another one.

And I think that is maybe even more alarming because he hasn't had the skills and experience to have to go out and hustle to the same extent that I have. So I'm not sure which one of us is in a worse position, but I do think work is challenging right now in general. Right. It's hard to.

For a number of different reasons that we've discussed. I think the other thing is, I think we can assume that we're all going to be living longer, right? Living longer and better.

And so actually we're going to have men and women in their late 50s, 60s, 70s, who are perfectly capable of working. And in fact, the number of people working over age 66 is increasing every year.

So we know that people are finding work or working in some capacity through their later life. And so I think we're going to have to find a way to deal with these people.

But then again, we're going to have to find a way to deal with all people to find meaning and purpose in their lives as we progress over the coming years.

So I think, yes, it's a challenge, but I do wonder if it's a challenge of the moment and will become and morph into something else over the next 10 years.

Dan Emery: 00:45:03

I think my take on this, I immediately thought of your words, Alice, because you've said it a few times of I'm unemployable.

Whereas my personal take on this, I would look to somebody mid-50s and above as somebody who's so well experienced and look to them as coaches, mentors, consultants, type roles and be perfectly aligned for that. That would be my go. Go to.

And actually more personal notes, not me exactly, but had ageism on the other side of haven't done your time yet, earn your stripes has been. Has been said to somebody very close to me. And that's a different type. Type of it, which the minute you said it, I.

I went back to that, to that experience.

I'm like, oh, that wasn't that long ago, you know, And I wonder now how that type of comment around ageism would sit in this current world that we're in and throw that one back out there, I don't know. But yeah, that would be my response to Asia in the uk.

I can't personally comment, but I would actually really value somebody in that era of their workspace on a consultancy basis and coaching basis for sure.

Alice Phillips: 00:46:27

And yet we have seen stats that say people refer AI coaches and mentors to human ones. So who knows, maybe there won't be any room for that kind of work either.

David Brown: 00:46:36

Yeah, it's a tricky time, I think. And it's a good point that you made, Alice, that I think, you know, 30 years ago we didn't have this problem.

If you look at pictures and like, what people were like in their 50s, like 30 years ago, they were like, like you were written off, you know, your, your late 50s, your, you know, 60 year olds were like, you look at them and they look, they look like they were, you know, 70 or 80 years old. They, you know, and they retarded.

And I guess maybe that's a part of the different workplace and a lot more stress and, you know, technology has changed a lot of that. But we're much more health conscious now. You know, again, the kids coming behind us are even more health conscious.

They take care of themselves, you know, that sort of thing. I saw a thing on Instagram, maybe I'll, I'll drop it in just so people can see it.

But it was a picture of, I think it was Jack Nicholson at 30 years old and then some, some current star who's 30 years old as well. And like, he looks like he's about 50 and this kid looks like he's about 13.

But they were both 30 and it's like, you know, this is the difference of, you know, just the times and taking care of yourself and, you know, maybe not smoking and not drinking as well, whatever. So there are a lot more people. Like you said, you know, I'll, I mean, I'll be 70 unless I have some sort of weird health problem.

I'll still be wanting to work when I'm 70 because I, you know, the stuff I do doesn't require a massive amount of physical strength or stamina.

And you know, again, as long as I don't, you know, start to get Alzheimer's or something like that, then I imagine I'll still want to be working at that point. And I certainly haven't, you know, I don't, I don't have millions of pounds in the bank, so I'm going to have to.

And it's a situation that I think again, the workplace hasn't had to deal with. We haven't had this surplus of older people who are willing and able to work this long. And, yeah, it's going to be interesting, let's say it.

Alice Phillips: 00:48:29

Yeah. We had a discussion with Jess Rat about women in the workplace and menopause and hormones.

And actually, we have this funny moment where we all sort of realize that postmenopausal women who are not conventionally in the workplace, who are much tougher, are not kind of influenced by estrogen, you know, way less Fs to give by the time they're, you know, if we extend their lives and they're working for longer, we actually have a whole new force to be reckoned with in the workplace as well, which is kind of interesting.

David Brown: 00:49:03

So, yeah, 100%. Right. Again, conscious of time. I know we have a hard stop today, so final thoughts from each one of you.

Alice Phillips: 00:49:12

I think there's a tendency to be quite pessimistic right now. Right. For all the reasons that we've named, I think it feels very insecure. We as human beings, like certainty. We like to know what's coming.

We like clarity. We like to be able to plan our lives. We like to be able to try to game the system to get ourselves ahead and things like that.

And I think we're missing a lot of that right now. So we don't necessarily understand the landscape. Nobody knows what's going to happen.

There are a lot of questions that actually go down to the very threat of our existence kind of stuff. So big, heavy subjects.

But I think we have an opportunity to choose to be optimistic here, to think about what makes us human, to think about what those skills are, to think about what's been broken with work for a long time and actually look at how we can reinvent and reimagine a world that allows us to enjoy work in the way that we're supposed to enjoy it.

That gives us fulfillment, that gives us connection, that gives us, you know, all the things that we would seek from work if we were designing it as a child for what we wanted our future to look like. So I just want to put a little bit of. Infuse, a little bit of optimism into the conversation before we go.

Dan Emery: 00:50:17

Yeah, I agree. I think work is weird now. That's, you know, it couldn't be a more aptly named podcast Work is weird now. But I do believe there is hope.

And with change, there will be things that we don't even know exist that are created yet. And I think that's the bit that we've really got to hold onto.

But then also figuring out with the rapid advances in technology, how can we learn from it and hold on to the human connection side of it? How are we going to make that even better? I think we need to do some focus around that.

David Brown: 00:50:50

Brilliant. So that was a great segue, Dan. So do you want to tell everybody where they can find your podcast?

Dan Emery: 00:50:56

Sure. We're on Apple and Spotify. Work is weird now. And you can also find us on LinkedIn and Instagram. There may be a TikTok coming to.

Alice Phillips: 00:51:06

Figure out how to use it.

David Brown: 00:51:09

My. My advice from someone who did data analytics around that stuff for years is to pick one platform, maybe two at the most.

Maybe one sort of socialist, social ish platform like a TikTok or an X or something like that. Stick with one of those and then maybe do LinkedIn or whatever. But if you try and do everything all at once, you tend to.

You just spread yourself too thin and you can't do any of it well. And so what about you guys personally? If people want to find you, to follow you, where can they find you?

Maybe Alice, you go first and then we'll finish with Dan.

Alice Phillips: 00:51:42

Yeah, LinkedIn's probably the best place. Then you can see our various initiatives and companies that we work for and you can find out more about us on our websites and things like that.

David Brown: 00:51:51

So yeah, brilliant, Dan.

Dan Emery: 00:51:53

Sure. LinkedIn as well. Danielle Emery.

David Brown: 00:51:56

Brilliant. Okay. And I'll put links to those in the show notes as well.

So if anybody wants to reach out and have more of a chat, you can find the links in the show notes. Ladies, thank you very much for today. It's been an interesting conversation.

We could probably go about three hours if we really wanted to and, and dig in and do a Joe Rogan ish type episode and maybe we'll get a chance to do that at some point in the future because I think it'd be.

There's a lot of these topics we could drill into individually for an entire show and really just have a focused conversation, particularly education. I think that's a massive one. But no, it's really interesting. So thanks again for your time and we'll speak to you soon.

Dan Emery: 00:52:31

Thanks for having us.

David Brown: 00:52:33

Bye Bye.

Dan Emery: 00:52:48

Al.