Ep 155: Employee Experience, Preparing for the Future of Work, The Importance of Building a Human Company, and more

Jacob Morgan is an author, speaker and futurist living in the Bay Area. He recently started a new Facebook group called, The future if. This group is a global community of business leaders, authors, and futurists who explore what our future can look like IF certain technologies, ideas, approaches and trends actually happen.  

Jacob is also working on a new course called The Future of Work Crash Course. This will go live in a few weeks. It is a companion course for his newest book, The Employee Experience Advantage.  

He is looking at writing another book, sometime in the next few years. In addition, Jacob is looking at creating more interesting podcasts and interviewing new, fascinating guests. 

What themes have stood out for Jacob from hosting this podcast? 

First of all, Jacob says he’s learned a lot in the past 3 years and it turned out that a lot of people also enjoyed learning along with him. The podcast gets about 4000 – 5000 listens per episode, about 30,000 downloads per month.  

One thing Jacob loves about the podcast is that the guests are honest. In conferences, events, etc. the information that comes across is often sanitized. The guests don’t get an advanced list of the questions, so it feels like it is a coffee shop conversation.  

Jacob shares that he is amazed the future of work and the employee experience is getting so much traction. From HR to IT, a lot are paying attention to this. Jacob likes to think he  had a hand in driving some of that. He is pleased that companies are thinking about this. Jacob is always amazed to hear how far companies have come along. From workspace design to corporate culture and where employees want to show up.  

What is Jacob’s vision for the future of work? He believes that in 5 years – 10 years out, not much will be different. There will be some evolution but it won’t be unrecognizable. In 50 years, he feels there will be a heavy and strong emphasis on AI. Perhaps androids. Maybe. 

What should Jacob encourage leadership to think about? First of all, remember it’s People 1st, Technology 2nd. There is no substitute for people. No company can exist without people 

It is also important to build a company that people want to work for.  

How do you create systems to prepare people for the future of work? Jacob says you have to start by understanding the purpose of schools; schools don’t do a good job of preparing people for the future of their work. The purpose of schools is changing.  

What threats will companies face in the future around the subject of compliance and integrity? One thing is transparency – companies need to be aware that both positive and negative information is out there. Another threat is the pace of business (for example, Uber). And also putting the right people in positions of power 

What does Jacob feel is hype and what is reality? He says the most hype is around augmented and virtual reality and AI. He doesn’t believe we will see massive job displacement. Wearables are cool but they are on the fringes.  

There are some things that Jacob feels are likely to happen and the ideas and technology are there but we are the barriers to these changes. In 10 years or so out - Jacob expects scalable virtual assistants, autonomous vehicles (10 years or so out). Also, we will rely more on voice commands. But Jacob sees that there is a lack of discussion around timelines for these things. 

What You Will Learn In This Episode:  

• What Jacob is working on now 
• What things are hype and what is reality 
• How to create systems to prepare people for the future of work 
• What Jacob has learned during his time as a podcast host 
• What threats will companies face in the future around the subject of compliance and integrity?  
• Jacob’s vision for the future of work