No Rules the Netflix Way With Erin Meyer

The 4-day work week has gained momentum in recent years, but has not yet entered the mainstream. Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Global Programs Director at 4 Day Week Global, joins the Talent Angle to explain why organizations should consider experimenting with new ways of working. He highlights the importance of rest for human creativity and problem solving, and outlines how a shortened work week can unlock human potential to benefit both employers and employees.

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang a leading voice in reduced hours working. He is the author of three books exploring how companies and individuals can better integrate rest, creativity, and focus into digital-age lives and work. Before joining 4 Day Week Global, Alex was a research director at the Institute for the Future and senior consultant at Strategic Business Insights, and lectured at Oxford University, Stanford University, and UC Berkeley. Alex received a Ph.D. in history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania.

Brent Cassell is a VP, Advisory at Gartner, where he has worked for the past 18 years in both the HR and CIO Research Groups. His job is to help clients find the research they need, to help them understand that research, and to coach them through the implementation of those best practices in their own organizations. Currently, his research focuses on the Future of Work and Total Rewards. In 2022, he won Gartner's award for Outstanding Thought Leadership for his work on Redesigning Work for the Hybrid World. He is also the Contributing Editor of HR Leaders Monthly and the Co-Host of the Talent Angle podcast.

Technology is advancing at a breakneck speed, presenting both new opportunities and challenges for organizations. Ismat Duckson Aziz, Kemper CHRO and Chief Administrative Officer, joins the Talent Angle to discuss how CHROs can shape the technology strategy of their organization. She explains how CHROs can overcome the anxiety that comes with diving into the rapidly changing environment of technology, and assert themselves as drivers of enterprise innovation.

Ismat Duckson Aziz is the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) and Chief Administrative Officer of Kemper. Ismat has more than 25 years of HR experience, most recently serving at U.S. Bank as Chief Advocacy Officer. Previous roles include CHRO for Sprint, CHRO for Sam’s Club, and senior HR roles at Sears Canada and MDS Pharma Services. Ismat earned a master’s of business administration from Ivey Business School at Western University in Canada and completed her undergraduate work at the University of Toronto. Ismat holds certifications in board governance and HR internationally.

Jessica Knight is a vice president of research in the Gartner HR practice. She leads research teams to identify best practices and new opportunities to address HR executives’ most urgent challenges. Her areas of focus include employee experience, organizational culture, change management and the future of work.

As the global workforce continues to age, it is increasingly vital for organizations to have both efficient succession plans and effective knowledge sharing between their employees. Julie Berko, Director of the Office of Human Resources at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), joins the Talent Angle to discuss how organizations can leverage data to enable knowledge sharing and simplify succession planning. She also explains how organizations can identify future skills needs and build strategies to develop them.

Julie Berko boasts more than 30 years of human resources experience, honored with the 2022 Presidential Rank Award. A Hodgkin’s lymphoma survivor, she champions workplace flexibilities and employee well-being. Julie pioneered the FAA's Work/Life program and geriatric care management. At NIH, she instituted the Leave Bank program, Maxiflex, and telework expansion, meeting 100% employee needs. Her initiatives fostered diversity, inclusion, and swift response to COVID-19, enabling quick transition to maximum telework for 75% of the workforce. Julie served on the NIH Child Care Board, Health and Wellness Council, and co-chaired the 2023 Federal Human Capital Collaborative Forum. She holds a master’s degree in public administration from American University and a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Howard University.

Peter Aykens is the chief of research for Gartner’s HR practice. Peter is responsible for building and leading research teams within the practice to address clients’ key initiatives. Before his current role, he spent over 25 years at Gartner leading research teams focused on banking and financial services strategy, producing numerous studies that addressed business strategy, channels, marketing, customer experience and product challenges. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from St. Olaf College, a master’s degree in international politics from Aberystwyth University (formerly known as the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth) and a master’s degree and a doctorate in political science from Brown University.

Dart Lindsley, the head of global process excellence for people operations at Google, joins the Gartner Talent Angle to share why he thinks work is one of the least designed products on the market today. Dart argues that if HR leaders applied design principles to work they would view employees not as inputs to production but rather as customers buying the experience of work. This reframing of the relationship between the organization and the employee can help managers rethink how to approach their roles and help HR more precisely shape the employee experience.

Dart Lindsley leads Global Process Excellence for People Operations at Google. Before joining Google, Dart led the Human Resources Transformation Planning and Analysis organization for Cisco Systems. While at Cisco, Dart founded the business architecture and experience design teams. By focusing these two very different disciplines on questions of talent, Dart and his team came to an important insight: employees can be framed as customers of work, and employers therefore must sell work as a product. Ever since, Dart has been using tools from marketing and product design to delve into what people really want from work and ways in which companies can build and deliver an extraordinary work-experience product.

Aaron McEwan is a behavioral scientist, psychologist and futurist. As vice president of research and advisory for Gartner’s HR practice, Aaron provides strategic advice to the world’s leading companies on the future of work and talent and helps leaders manage their most critical relationships across the c-suite and board. Alongside his current role, Aaron is a Fellow of the Australian Human Resources Institute, serves on the national committee for the Australian Psychological Society’s Interest Group in Coaching Psychology and is an Associate of Macquarie University’s Centre for Workforce Futures. He was recently named a Top 100 Global HR Influencer and one of 5 HR Leaders to Follow in 2022.

*This episode is an excerpt taken from our 2022 interview.

Mark C. Crowley joins the Gartner Talent Angle to discuss why today’s unparalleled workplace challenges prompted him to release a second edition of his book, “Lead from the Heart: Transformational Leadership for the 21st Century” more than a decade after it was first published. Backed by scientific findings on employee motivation, Crowley outlines common misconceptions about leading from the heart. And drawing on examples from his own experience, he shares practical advice for how to effectively implement this type of leadership at an organization.

Mark C. Crowley is the author of “Lead From The Heart: Transformational Leadership For The 21st Century.” The second edition debuted in August 2022 as an “Amazon #1 Release,” and his book has been taught in nine American universities. Mark is a regular columnist for Fast Company Magazine and has been published in USA Today, Reuters, Forbes, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the Huffington Post, Gallup & the Seattle Times. Mark spent over 20 years in the world of Financial Services. He held two national level positions at one of America’s largest financial institutions where he was named “leader of the year”. Mark proved that deeply caring about and supporting people, and thereby positively affecting employee’s hearts had a profound effect on motivating their sustained engagement, loyalty and productivity.

*This episode is an excerpt taken from our 2022 interview.

As many organizations struggle to keep pace with technological innovations, digital transformation is a top priority. Gerald Kane, professor of information systems at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, joins the Gartner Talent Angle to explore the opportunities these digital disruptions create and to inspire HR leaders to approach digital transformation with confidence. He explains how people and processes, not just technology, are crucial to successful digital transformation, and emphasizes the need for leaders to have growth mindsets and to continually learn while building adaptability in their organizations.

Dr. Gerald C. Kane is a Professor and the C. Herman and Mary Virginia Terry Chair in Business Administration at the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia.  He researches and teaches about how companies can understand and respond to digital disruption to undergraduate, graduate, and executive education students worldwide; and he has published over 100 papers, articles, and reports on these topics. He has written two books for MIT Press: The Technology Fallacy: How People are the Real Key to Digital Transformation and the The Transformation Myth: Leading Your Organization Through Uncertain Times.

*This episode is an excerpt taken from our 2022 interview.

Author Caleb Gardner argues that while change has been constant for some time, organizations are still unprepared to address it. In his latest book, “No Point B: Rules for Leading Change in the New Hyper-Connected, Radically Conscious Economy,” Gardner lays out his vision for how organizations should approach change in the new environment. The founder of the consulting firm 18 Coffees joined the Gartner Talent Angle Podcast to share examples of organizations undergoing transformation, and he extols the virtues of effective communication, adaptive capability and revised assumptions.

Caleb Gardner is the co-founder of innovation consulting firm 18 Coffees and author of the new book, “No Point B: Rules for Leading Change in the New Hyper-Connected, Radically Conscious Economy.” Caleb’s career has spanned from working at Edelman and Bain & Company to running U.S. President Barack Obama’s Twitter account. Caleb’s insights about building more ethical and effective companies have been featured in publications such as NBC News, Wired, Crain’s, BBC News and Cheddar News.

*This episode is an excerpt taken from our 2022 interview.

Entering 2024, executives face a volatile business environment, sustained talent shortages, rapid technological advancements and a workforce with intense change fatigue. As organizations seek to capitalize on new opportunities in the year ahead, CHROs must help navigate unforeseen challenges and difficult tradeoffs. In this episode of the Talent Angle, Gartner’s Peter Aykens and Emily Rose McRae share nine future of work trends that will shape HR in 2024. 

To access the full future of work trends research, see: https://gtnr.it/FOW24

Peter Aykens is the chief of research for Gartner’s HR practice. Mr. Aykens is responsible for building and leading research teams within the practice to address clients’ key initiatives. Before his current role, he spent over 25 years at Gartner leading research teams focused on banking and financial services strategy, producing numerous studies that addressed business strategy, channels, marketing, customer experience and product challenges. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from St. Olaf College, a master’s degree in international politics from Aberystwyth University (formerly known as the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth) and a master’s degree and a doctorate in political science from Brown University.

Emily Rose McRae advises CHROs and other c-suite executives on the future of work and workforce transformation. While Ms. McRae works across all issues that can lead to the future of work, her core areas of focus include emerging technologies (such as GenAI) and their impact on work and the workforce, new employment models, evolving employee expectations, flexibility for frontline workers, and the aging workforce. She also helps executives with workforce planning to anticipate and prepare for these changes, creating an enterprise-wide future of work strategy, and creating and iterating on hybrid work strategies and the role of the office.

Caroline Walsh is a managing vice president in Gartner’s HR practice. Her teams help HR leaders build and execute talent, diversity, rewards, and learning strategies and programs. Caroline has also led Gartner research teams on commercial banking strategy and leadership. She holds a bachelor’s degree in East Asian studies from Columbia University, and a master’s degree in public affairs from Princeton University.