Andrew Spence 

We have chat-bots handling our customer queries, contract workers being paid in crypto-currencies, and robots doing our recruitment screening.  Organisations face a future driven by mega-trends shaping our workforce and our societies.  The winning organisations will be those that understand these dramatic shifts and design workplaces and organisations that are transparent, empower their workforce and sharing the benefits.  Andy Spence describes how HR can lead by challenging existing frameworks and assumptions about work, embracing technology, using insights from behavioural science and adopting an evidence-based approach. 

This course is more than digital, HR and transformation – it is about achieving your business goals.   Although HR is the focus, the outcome is about improving People Management in organisations. HR is well positioned at the crux of workforce, productivity and human beings.  This is really about ‘Workforce Transformation’. As business models and economies evolve, successful organisations will optimise the contribution of people and technology.  Many of our current people management practices belong in the last century and need to be redesigned for the digital economy. There are key questions on how we increase transparency and trust, focus on team output rather than individuals and manage a more diverse workforce.   HR can take a lead role in this transformation by better utilising technology, people analytics, behavioural science and evidence-based management. The emphasis is very much on the practical and interactive exercises and real-life case studies. In addition to presentations of the subjects, participants will be challenged in actual case studies and project exercises to apply the principles discussed. It will also encourage the attendees to develop the tools to implement change upon returning to their work place 

Much of our current organizational paradigm is defined by the early models of industrial capitalism, in which human beings were stripped of their complexity and utilized for their basic labour skills to meet rising consumer demands via increased factory output. Efficiency and productivity were the hallmarks of industrial capitalism, motivated by a fear of competition and an aggressive drive towards growth and market dominance. Since then, the predominant metaphor for an organization has been ‘the machine’. The organization-as-a-machine mentality has justified success at all costs, leading to economic prosperity for some, often at the cost of ethics, human happiness, and social and environmental awareness. This talk offers an alternative template for organizational success by drawing on Eastern philosophy and research in the field of contemplative science. In this talk, Anahita highlights the positive potential of organizations by first identifying the obstacles and dysfunctions that hinder organizational success at individual, interpersonal and organizational levels. Anahita examines the notion of an organization as a living system with a mind of its own; namely, its culture. She invites the audience to identify the attributes of an organization that is awakening to its positive potential, along with the impact it can have on its members and the world at large. With this talk, the audience will receive a provocative template for organizational success and practical instructions on how to foster bottom-up transformation by continuously shaping the mind of an organization. Anahita will offer a new definition of success, inspired by a world view that sees phenomena as interdependent, happiness as a key ingredient for sustainable success, and leadership as a responsibility towards increased awareness, ethics and social transformation. The audience will receive takeaways on how to harness the latent potential of organizations and leaders as forces for social and environmental transformation, while cultivating positive cultures internally and achieving bottom-line success.