Karissa Breen [00:00:14]:
Welcome to KB On the Go. This week, I’m coming to you from Cisco Live 2024 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, where AI is taking center stage in driving the future of technology. Here in Melbourne, we’re surrounded by the buzz of innovation and industry leaders, all exploring how Cisco’s latest technologies are enabling us to work faster, safer, and smarter. Stay tuned for the inside scoop from some of the world’s leading experts presenting at Cisco Live 2024 here in Melbourne as KBI Media brings you all of the highlights. Joining me now in person is doctor Guy Diedrich, senior vice president and global innovation officer at Cisco. And today, we’re discussing enabling the success of the IT workforce in the AI era. So, Guy, thanks for joining and welcome.

Guy Diedrich [00:01:11]:
Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

Karissa Breen [00:01:13]:
Okay. So I’ve seen some of your presentations over the last few days, and I know that you’re presenting earlier today before this interview. Now when I look at your background and your bio, one of the things that was coming in my mind is inspiring the younger generation. And one thing I’ve observed of knowing people who are in the younger generation are millennial. What I’ve noticed is they’re more focused on becoming TikTokers and YouTubers over an IT career. So do you have any insight on that?

Guy Diedrich [00:01:43]:
You know, I I don’t think it’s, an either or. I think it’s an and situation. So we see a lot of TikTokers, a lot of Instagrammers that use that medium to be a gateway into technology or the other way around, where they become very technologically savvy. Maybe they have a degree. Maybe they’ve gone through the networking academy program here at Cisco. And to augment their their IT experience, they become Instagrammers. They become TikTokers. But to me, it’s an and.

Guy Diedrich [00:02:17]:
We don’t we don’t see one really taking away from the other.

Karissa Breen [00:02:20]:
Just more so in terms of the people being more focused on maybe IT taking a bit of a bit more of a backseat perhaps in terms of maybe becoming a TikTok or a YouTuber, etcetera, is this a little bit more desirable in terms of an occupation? Are you seeing that as well?

Guy Diedrich [00:02:38]:
We’re actually not. And and and let me draw the distinction here that that there’s it’s a very difficult thing to become money earner in a in a TikTok world. There’s very few. And yet here at the same time in our industry, there’s almost 5,000,000 open cybersecurity positions. We can’t train cyber professionals, security professionals fast enough. And those jobs start at 60,000, $80,000 a year. It’s an extraordinary opportunity to get in at a ground level and make a great living. It’s not something where you need a 4 year degree.

Karissa Breen [00:03:17]:
True.

Guy Diedrich [00:03:18]:
You can get trained up through Cisco Net Networking Academy or other skilling institutions in a matter of weeks or months and be qualified to fill one of those positions.

Karissa Breen [00:03:31]:
So is it a fair assumption to say perhaps maybe people start out going down the route of a YouTuber figured out there’s a lot of money or maybe they make $5 which, you know, a month that they can’t live off and then they default back to an IT?

Guy Diedrich [00:03:43]:
I think there I I think that’s a fair assumption in some cases. I mean, being a a TikTok or YouTube star is a dream, and the dreams don’t pay the bills. And so, ultimately, there are some that do very well that can make a small fortune that become very wealthy, but it’s such a small group. For most, a traditional job in IT is sitting there waiting for them, and we see a lot of demand. In fact, right here in Australia, for instance, we’ve trained up over 300,000 students through our networking academy program over the last 20 years, yet we currently this year have 50,000 students that we’ve that we’ve trained up. So it gives you an idea of just the scope of demand right now. It’s tremendous.

Karissa Breen [00:04:34]:
You spoke before, Guy, around having a dream. And I don’t know whether when I was younger, I used to watch movies that would help influence, you know, perhaps some of my, path in life. One of which was, you know, looking at films with, like, New York City and then having to go there and see it in real life. And I had this discussion that I’m a cybersecurity practitioner by trade, and when I look around and watch movies, it’s like awkward dude basement in a hoodie that typically is out there in the movie. So maybe Hollywood has something to blame. But the question I really wanna understand is how how can people wake up and go, you know, IT is like that dream. It’s more desirable. If you look at Emily in Paris, like, obviously, she’s living in Paris and she’s fashionable and she’s beautiful and she works in PR, it looks really cool.

Karissa Breen [00:05:17]:
Conor really have that version in IT. So how do we kind of get people there?

Guy Diedrich [00:05:21]:
I think it’s a really interesting question because what you find out in in our world is that there is fascination around every corner. It it you you you think it’s that person in a hoodie that’s banging away down in in somebody’s basement. It’s not that at all. If you just think about cybersecurity right now, it is one of the most intriguing, one of the most evolving and dynamic environments in which you can work. It is a war that’s going on right now in cyberspace. At Cisco, 80% of the world’s traffic passes through our equipment, so we see an awful lot. We see over 600,000,000,000 cyber events happening every single day. Did you know that if cybercrime was a country, it would be the 3rd largest economy in the world behind the United States and China.

Guy Diedrich [00:06:26]:
Yeah. And and by the way, they’re gonna be threatening China here pretty soon in terms of, of scope and size. So the it’s a constant battle. It’s one of the most exciting environments in which you can work. And, and so it it may be because of Hollywood with that the, you know, the lone wolf, the the black hat hacker with the hood on with the hoodie over his head or her head. It’s, it’s that, but it’s so much more.

Karissa Breen [00:06:54]:
So one of the things that you’ve been speaking about is, you know, training, development. Historically, you know, people would leave school, go to college or university, depending on which part of the world you’re in, you do like a typical 3, 4, 5 year degree. Now, as you would know, that if you’re going to university nowadays and you’re learning, like, an IT degree, your skills are sort of, like, atrophying by the time you’ll finish that degree. You know, what I was doing when I was at Alice in the bank, like, my skills have that was a decade ago. So I would have to go back and reskill. So what are you sort of seeing in terms of the curriculum is one thing, but then in terms of going and doing this full year long degree for this, you know, in ITs more specifically. I can’t speak for the other, you know, other areas, but it doesn’t seem practical. So what’s what’s your view on how do people turn their thinking to more shorter courses that are perhaps more frequent?

Guy Diedrich [00:07:47]:
Yeah. So full disclosure for the 10 years prior to joining Cisco, I was vice chancellor at a university. I taught there. And I I think that universities will serve a purpose moving forward, but it won’t be to prepare you for a professional life. What I mean by that is that technology is churning so quickly. It’s churning faster than we’ve ever seen it. You’re familiar with Moore’s law. Right? It’s, every 18 months to double even the processor speed and and having the cost.

Guy Diedrich [00:08:20]:
Well, that used to to be relevant to just one sector of our industry. You now can apply Moore’s law to our entire industry. Everything is churning every 18 months, and there’s no such thing as an age anymore. So remember we used to have the the the in industrial age. So it was like 2 or 3 decades. And then we had the information age. And now we’re in the digital age. But what’s happening now is with, say, AI, it’s more like an AI moment.

Guy Diedrich [00:08:52]:
It’s a micro age because technology now is turning so quickly. We’re we’re in the middle of AI at the moment having a presence and the culture, but it’s going to be supplanted pretty soon with quantum. And it’s not gonna be 2035 or 2040 when that happens. It’s gonna be the late 20 twenties, early 20 thirties. So we’re gonna have these AI moments and then we’re going to have a quantum moment. It’s because of the churn of technology. And the point there is in relation to your question is that getting a 4 year degree to be prepared for the workforce, it’ll only be good for 18 months. If even that that’s a good question.

Guy Diedrich [00:09:39]:
I mean, it it it depends on what you wanna study. So, for instance, if you wanna be an engineer and you wanna be a professional engineer, that’s certification. You need to have certain credentials in order to do that. You wanna go into medicine. Again, it’s credentialed. There are certain things that you have to do, certain course you have to take. But I but if we’re talking about cybersecurity, you can take 2 to 3 months of networking academy training and get a cybersecurity certificate that makes you qualified to be a cybersecurity technician in our industry. That does not require a 4 year degree.

Guy Diedrich [00:10:16]:
In fact, related to cybersecurity, it’s really a, an 80, 10, 5, 5 proposition. Of those 4a half to 5,000,000 open jobs, 80% of them are technician jobs. They don’t require a 4 year degree. 10% require a 4 year degree, 5% masters, 5% PhD. So the vast majority of those jobs you can be qualified for in a matter of months. That does not require a university education. University education will absolutely be critical for certain professions.

Karissa Breen [00:10:49]:
But not this one. Do you think people know that?

Guy Diedrich [00:10:53]:
I think they’re learning. I mean, it it there are when when you look at our networking academy program here in Australia and you see that one sixth of the entire population that has ever taken the course in the last 25 years are all taking it this year. Mhmm. It gives you an idea of the demand. And they’re realizing that they can do that instead of a university degree, but they can also supplement their university degree with that additional certification.

Karissa Breen [00:11:23]:
Well, I asked that question because if you go online like LinkedIn or Seek or Indeed or whatever platform, it’ll say, like, you need to have x amount of years of, you know, college. I don’t I don’t have a college degree at all. I’ve got 15 years of experience though. So you’ve you can look at you got college degree, you got x amount of years in cybersecurity, but it’s like these people don’t exist. That skill set that you want to hire for didn’t even exist 10 years ago. So it sounded it kind of sounds counterintuitive, and I know I’m potentially opening up a whole can of worms in terms of talent acquisition and hiring and recruitment, but that is the challenge that I see that students come and ask me. Hey, I’ve gone into the course, but then I can’t get a job. People are saying that there’s all these deficit of skilled workers that companies need, but then they go into a course whether it’s through Cisco or whatever, then they’re like, I can’t get a job.

Karissa Breen [00:12:11]:
Where is that gap would you say if you had to sort of? Why is that the case?

Guy Diedrich [00:12:17]:
Well, it’s not my experience and I and I’ll explain what I mean by that. The experience that we see because I I run our networking academy at at Cisco. I also run all of our skilling, all of our learning and certification programs, internal and external. And I can tell you that if you come in with the skills necessary to perform a job, you will be competitive. Let me also talk a little bit about AI because AI is going to really change the way people experience skilling and the experience you just described. So we’re using right now AI to train people on AI.

Karissa Breen [00:12:58]:
Okay. Walk me through it.

Guy Diedrich [00:12:59]:
Right. So fundamentals of AI, brand new introduction. You know nothing about AI. You’ve heard about it, but you really have no formal education in it. You’ve had no real exposure to it. We have built into our AI basics course an AI tutor. That AI tutor is the ultimate expert in every bit of content in that training. So and it’s conversational.

Guy Diedrich [00:13:27]:
So say you’re going through and you’re doing a bit of code and the code didn’t result in the beta of AI output that you were expecting it to and you’re confused and you ask your AI tutor, what did I do wrong? The AI tutor being conversational will take you back just like an expert would and say, okay. Well, let’s do some remedial education here. We’re gonna go back to that module again. Let’s take a look and, oh, and here’s what you did wrong. So you have that capability of having AI trained people on AI. You can install an AI tutor into any education. You can have the world’s expert on a topic right next to you all the time ready to answer questions that you might have going through. Similarly, we will have an AI instructor set.

Guy Diedrich [00:14:14]:
So as you are the instructor and you’re putting together an AI training module that may be customized for a particular population, you will have an AI instructor expert, an AI assessment expert. So if you wanna train for certain things, you wanna make sure that people understand this and are have a mastery of some subject matter before they come and take a job, you can use your AI instructor and your AI assessment to help you do all of that. The point is is that that AI is it can be very, very powerful, especially for the student that needs to free themselves up from a university environment.

Karissa Breen [00:14:57]:
So as you as you were talking, one of the things that was coming to my mind is when when when I was at school doing mathematics, which I hated, mine here, I was definitely more of a an English person in terms of writing. But they had to, you know you could use a calculator for some things, but majority of it was look at your working out on how you got to the ends in terms of your critical thinking in your path. Do you think now with AI that’s going to be removed? So if we don’t have the copilot there, will people be able to think on their own or will people be so reliant now that we need the resurgence of Clippy? That’s what I was thinking when you were talking.

Guy Diedrich [00:15:34]:
I’m gonna quote the semi controversial Sam Altman.

Karissa Breen [00:15:38]:
K.

Guy Diedrich [00:15:38]:
So AI may not replace your job as someone who understands AI probably will. And that speaks to the the fact that that AI will augment. AI will be hopefully additive in many ways. There are cases where AI will literally replace the job because the job is rote. It is repetitive. It doesn’t require a special skill. And, ultimately, what we have to do with those people, they’ve done nothing wrong. Right? They their their job is just being replaced by technology.

Guy Diedrich [00:16:16]:
It’s incumbent upon us then as technology professionals to retrain them, to reskill them so that in 6, 8 weeks, they have some basic AI skills that then can be applied to this new AI domain that we’re building within our company. So it’s not in it it the whole idea here, and then I think this is actually one of our obligations as as leaders within companies, is to create a condition whereby you can have many careers inside the same company. One company, many careers, which means that skilling is gonna be should be at the core of your culture. You should have a learning culture regardless the size of your organization.

Karissa Breen [00:17:04]:
So do you envision now as you move forward, we’re gonna have more shorter courses, like you said before, a couple of months that people can do more frequently? Because like you said, things are evolving a lot quicker than they ever did historically. Is that what we’re going to see more of in companies need to adapt that way of upskilling and retraining their people to stay relevant and move them away from trivial mundane tasks to perhaps a banal and then move towards strategic roles perhaps.

Guy Diedrich [00:17:34]:
I’ll even take it to a little bit more granular level. I don’t even think it’s necessarily gonna be multiple months to take a course. I think that skilling is going to be module based. So there is a learning object, a learning module that you’ll take that may be 30 minutes, but it’s going to extend your skill set in that moment. It’s gonna be on demand when you need it, and it’s going to perhaps be something that your company has told you, gosh, we really need you to learn this in order to go to the next step, but it’s going to be instantly available there. And I I do think that as quickly as technology is churning, that learning is gonna have to be personalized, on demand, when and where you need it. And anything short of that, and you’re gonna be lagging behind the technological churn that’s happening.

Karissa Breen [00:18:37]:
Joining me now in person is Anupam Trehan, vice president, people and communities at Cisco. And today we’re discussing AI and the workforce of the future. So, Anupam, thanks for joining and welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Okay. So AI is obviously a big topic. A lot of people in the media talk about artificial intelligence, specifically mainstream media, who perhaps can position it in ways that is a little bit doom and gloom. So what’s your view on the future workforce for AI, and what does that sort of look like from your perspective?

Anupam Trehan [00:19:11]:
No. Absolutely. And I think it’s fascinating because if you take a step back and look at it, AI has been in existence for many decades now. So AI isn’t new, But it has definitely picked up conversations and has become the topic of conversations in the recent past, especially post chat gbt. If you ask me what does the future look like with AI, I think there are implications across the work. There is implications across the workplace, and then there is implications across the individual. And the way that I look at it is we will continue to see tech enhanced work. So if I take a step back and look at the journey that we’ve been on with technology and the evolution over the last decades, it started off with automation, digital digitization, and now AI.

Anupam Trehan [00:19:57]:
And I think the future will continue to see technology enhancing work, And that could be from the lens of productivity. That could be from the lens of efficiency, optimization, and also potentially experience. So we will continue to see that happen. The second implication is going to be from a tech powered workplace. We’ve all seen a shift in the way work happens. Work used to happen in an office previously. Work today happens anywhere the pandemic has kind of changed it. I think the flexibility of doing work from different locations will continue to be there, and technology will continue to power that, whether that’s from collaboration spaces to actually the infrastructure and connectivity to security.

Anupam Trehan [00:20:35]:
I think we’re gonna continue to see tech powering workplaces. And I think the last is on the individual as well. And what we’re gonna see there is tech invested individuals. And what I mean by that is as individuals, we will have to continue to invest in our own technology development and learning and upskilling, but there’s an element of technology acumen and coupling that with problem solving, with creativity and innovation to really make an impact. And the future is actually gonna be, like, as we look at roles and as we look at skills, you will look at skills, you look at experience, but one of the things that’s gonna start to show up in a big way is what I call TQ, and that’s technology quotient.

Karissa Breen [00:21:17]:
Okay. So just to jump in there real quick, you made a point around, you know, people aren’t working in offices. So what I’ve seen is, obviously, I started working 15 years ago. It was like 5 days. You’d come in and leave this time. Then through COVID, as you would be well aware, people didn’t come in at all. Now there’s this hybrid, but now I’m starting to see a shift of people. Oh, I’m not gonna say the word force, but encouraging people to come back a lot more because they’ve got these nice fancy offices that it’s quite expensive real estate.

Karissa Breen [00:21:44]:
What do you think happens now? Is it going to be I’ve even heard of people saying they will take a pay cut because they do not want to go into the office 5 days a week.

Anupam Trehan [00:21:52]:
Talk to me about that. I think it’s an interesting inflection point that we find ourselves in. Right? So if you look at the way work happened pre pandemic, it was literally in an office space. Right? And so everybody went to an office space to do work. The pandemic kind of changed that for most industries and most organizations. And either way, it was forced, right, because we were in the middle of a pandemic. And then when we came out of the pandemic, I think everybody appreciated the flexibility. And and I think we’re a little bit in that phase where the pendulum went from absolutely working in an office to working anywhere, and I think there will be a normalization that will happen.

Anupam Trehan [00:22:31]:
I think the way to look at it is what is the value that an office space and I think that is the disconnect that we see with respect to return to office mandates and employees demanding flexibility because I think the whole question is around the value of the workplace. So I do think that what’s gonna happen is, is the workplace still gonna be relevant in the future? Absolutely. Yes. But will it be a place to just do work? Probably not. So the office space will evolve. So it could become a place for innovation. It could be a place for social connection. It could be a place for collaboration.

Anupam Trehan [00:23:10]:
But would I necessarily go into office just to be on calls every day? Probably not. Like, I can do that elsewhere. So I will also look at it with respect to the value that the office is going to bring me vis a week when I feel that I can be at my productive best. So I feel like there is going to be a normalization that we will start to see. And flexibility is going to be, is going to be huge as well. It is something that most employees are looking for, and it is a value proposition for employers.

Karissa Breen [00:23:39]:
Okay. This is interesting again. So when I started working, you had, like, a designated desk. Then we saw the influx of hot desking to try to reduce, well, we’ve got people working at different, you know, different locations, etcetera. We don’t wanna have a desk for everyone because I’m not here. Do you think it’s gonna get to a point where we just abolish desks, Not completely, but not as many as there probably are that we see on floors today? Because there are some people that I know that they never even met certain people after years because they are in a remote location. They have the flexibility that I don’t want to travel in because they live in a regional areas, maybe. What does the future like workforce floor look like in your eyes? It again depends

Anupam Trehan [00:24:22]:
on what we’re trying to achieve. So if you go back to the problem statement, what are we trying to achieve? And again, depending on the industry or the organization, that could start to look very, very different. So if you do have a space where, you know, somebody actually needs a desk and, you know, multiple screens to do their job, you will see that infrastructure being provided because it is necessary to do the job. But I think more and more like, and and we see this at Cisco as well. Like, in a lot of our offices, yes, do we have, like, desks and chairs? And in some cases, we actually just have beanbags in a room where people just come in and sit, and it becomes more of an open space where people just come in, you sit down, you work, you’re comfortable, you collaborate. It’s not designed like your traditional office was designed. So I do think that the design of the workplace is gonna again shift into the what and what are we trying to achieve out of that. So for example, if your workplace is a workplace that showcases your products or your services for your customers, the way that you design it is gonna be very, very different.

Anupam Trehan [00:25:23]:
If it is a place where you wanna drive more collaboration, more innovation, the way that you’re gonna define, you know, design it is gonna look very, very different. If you’ve got certain very traditional roles or something that is very confidential or privacy related, you will design it very differently. So I think it starts to go back to the why and what is it that we’re looking to gain from the office space. I think that’s gonna start to drive the design, and that will also implement the experience for the employees that come in.

Karissa Breen [00:25:48]:
Okay. So let’s look at face to face meetings. So when I started my own business 7 years ago, I started from the inception of working from anywhere, which was probably, you know, now that people are already doing that, but this was a fair few years before that. People didn’t understand the concept of doing deals and, you know, meeting people, like, remotely or virtually, which is what is so ubiquitous now, as you would know. Do you think those meetings in terms of virtual meetings have more weight now almost in person? And I only say that because a lot of my clients specifically are based in the United States. So it’s a bit hard for me to sort of just, you know, travel on over there casually. But what are you sort of seeing there? Because now I feel like it virtually sort of feels like it has still the same weight as meeting someone in person. But I mean, like, back in, like, the 19 fifties, like, you would never do a deal without shaking someone’s hand and signing on the dotted line on a piece of paper.

Karissa Breen [00:26:40]:
It’s interesting, right? Because in a lot of ways, you have

Anupam Trehan [00:26:42]:
to look at the role that technology is now playing in the way that you just designed. The way work used to happen previously to the way that work happens now. Let’s look at this. So let’s take a step back. Depending on whether you’re an independent worker or whether you’re working with an organization, everybody’s looking at efficiency. Everybody’s looking at cost. So like you said, your in your situation, a lot of your customers are based in the US. When traveling to the US takes time, it is expensive.

Anupam Trehan [00:27:08]:
Maybe not the most productive as well, like, you know and so you would travel to the US unless it was anchored in a really, really strong business reason. Like, you would not travel. Like, there’s there’s an inconvenience element to it as well, which technology is able to glide over from a convenience perspective because you are able to connect with amazing video quality right now. You are able to read body language as well, and it may not be necessarily 1 on 1. You could also be in a room with people and you still have, because what technology didn’t have a couple of years back, whether that was audio quality or video quality or even security, Technology wasn’t that advanced, but we’ve made so much of progress in a lot of the collaboration tools and platforms today. So when you look at security, when you look at quality, when you even look at meeting minutes or just summarizing. Like, there’s just so much that your collaboration platform offers. So in a lot of ways, it is you know, the debate will always be which is better, face to face or and and I think that debate will always be there.

Anupam Trehan [00:28:13]:
I I don’t think it ever goes away because the value of meeting somebody face to face will always be there, but you will always continue. Yeah. You will always continue to look at what tech offers and what it can replace from a convenience, from a value, from an experience perspective, and then similar rules will apply for face to face as well. So this

Karissa Breen [00:28:32]:
is interesting because there’s people that I know that I speak to. I mean, I speak to a lot of people, but some of my friends that are like, their their employers are now encouraging them to come back in because they wanna see like, oh, like everyone’s in the office. Doesn’t mean they’re being productive. Whereas if I’m on calls, I could do more calls in a day from my house than I can all traveling in the office and sitting down or if I would do face to face. How many face to faces can you do? I can’t teleport. So unless they’re all in the same vicinity, which is rare, then you can’t get through as much stuff. The part that I I mean, look, I’m very, you know, modern on that front, but there’s there still seems to be companies that don’t get it. They want to see people physically in the office.

Karissa Breen [00:29:12]:
Whether they’re reading, you know, things that are not relevant to work or they’re actually doing work is another question. But why do people or employees seem to feel that people are here, they must be productive?

Anupam Trehan [00:29:23]:
You know, it’s a really interesting question, and it begs the question around how is productivity being measured? And what does productivity mean? And if the organization has the right tools and platforms to measure productivity. Like you said, just having somebody in an office does not necessarily mean that they are being productive or doing anything at all. Absolutely. Like, you know, just presence in an office does not naturally mean that. So I think there’s a little bit of that. I will also be a little controversial and say there’s the element of trust.

Karissa Breen [00:29:58]:
So by saying we can oversee that Carissa’s here doing the thing?

Anupam Trehan [00:30:03]:
It’s the it’s the ability to trust that your employees are doing the right thing by the organization, whether they’re in an office space or not. And I think there’s the element of trust that is that is absolutely there. I will I will say this because what has also ended up happening in the last couple of years for a lot of organizations with everything that’s been happening in the globe is that you do have an influx of new members in organizations. Right? And so when you you have, like, almost 20 or 30 or 40% of your organization that is new, you wanna kind of create a little bit of cohesion. You wanna kind of create something that drowns and anchors them. And so sometimes organizations may be like, hey, I need you to come into office because I need you to get familiar with who we are, what our culture is, what we stand for. Now that is very, very different from saying, hey, listen, I want you to come into office to do your work. Right? And so I think I think it’s an, it’s a very interesting space and I think you would have seen enough and more articles and research and voices that are out there with to the employers and with respect to the employees and what prospective employees are looking for in organizations and well.

Anupam Trehan [00:31:08]:
And this is one where it’s very interesting to see there’s very differing points of view, and we’re not yet being able to align on what’s the best way forward.

Karissa Breen [00:31:17]:
I repeat. I agree with you. And I think, like, I get all the the point around, like, you know, it it depends what the outcome is. I think still there are some organizations out there that haven’t gotten past its outcome base. So But I I

Anupam Trehan [00:31:31]:
will also say that depending on the industry part of, there could be certain industries where you might need work either because of statutory reasons, regulatory reasons, or maybe even proprietal information or privacy reasons where you might need somebody to come into a workplace. So I think that will continue to remain because, again, depending on which industry you are a part of or what the role is, will we see all jobs completely being done anywhere and everywhere? Probably not. There will still be some roles that might require to be done in a physical presence, but but I think it’s a more broader question around the value of the office space, the question around trust, and the bigger question around productivity and what that actually looks like.

Karissa Breen [00:32:11]:
I think productivity is seeing that’s really that I’m honing in on here. Because I remember even 8 years ago, which technically wasn’t that long ago, I remember coming into the office and it was 3 past 9, and my manager said, good afternoon. And that really infuriated me because it’s like, yeah, but I’m here till 6 30 every day when I’m supposed to leave at 5. So I felt like, again, that it’s getting people already offside. Again, if it’s a meeting, it’s very different. You should be punctual. However, when you’re coming in the office and someone’s saying that, and again, it didn’t feel like, well, you’re here, therefore you must be productive. And to that, it’s probably I wasn’t because I was already annoyed by getting in the door saying accused of being late or afternoon.

Karissa Breen [00:32:53]:
So I think that now I’m still seeing a lot of that theory in companies saying, well, we’ve got people in the office. People are productive.

Anupam Trehan [00:33:02]:
Yeah. And and it, Karissa, just goes back to what we just spoke about, which is trust. I mean, to the example that you just mentioned, I think at that moment, what would have gone through your mind is do you not trust that I’m doing the right thing? The fact that you’re staying in late, the fact that you’re doing your all, just that you were that 9:45, it’s a little bit of like, it is, it is not trusting you as a professional. And I think it boils down to, to just that a lot of

Karissa Breen [00:33:28]:
times. In terms of what would be your hypothesis around the future of work? What does that look like? Even if it’s a couple of years, it can be as out there as you, you know, as you think about in your role. But I’m just curious though, I get inside your mind on what can we sort of expect moving forward?

Anupam Trehan [00:33:43]:
For me, the future of work is flexible. I’m not even using the word hybrid because I’ve now realized that everybody looks at hybrid and has their own definition of what hybrid means. And for some people, it’s like 3 days in office and 2 days that’s hybrid. And I’m like, no. No. No. Hybrid was never meant to be bad. But the future of work is going to be flexible.

Anupam Trehan [00:34:01]:
And there are a couple of reasons why it needs to be flexible. Number 1, if you start to look at where we are, the way technology is evolving, and the very real problem that we have with talent and scale gaps, your workforce is going to become more and more global in nature. That’s that’s just going to be the reality of the workforce of the future. So you need to have a model that is a lot more flexible. That’s number 1. The second one is when you start to look at whichever, whichever industry you are a part of, like if you look at consumer buying and spending patterns, everybody today is looking at diverse representation. Everybody’s looking at inclusivity. Like, it is driving a lot of spending patterns, a lot of buying patterns.

Anupam Trehan [00:34:47]:
It is driving a lot of alignment with organizations as well. In order to be able to address what your consumers are looking for, you need to have a diverse workforce to be able to bring that voice into your products and your services. Now the minute you wanna build a diverse workforce, you will obviously use technology. And with diversity, you will need to offer that flexibility as well because everybody has different needs. So when you start to look at both the implications from a workforce perspective, but also technology, like technology has evolved so much. It’s a little bit of a dichotomy where we would trust technology to do a lot, but we do not trust technology internally. And I think we need to place the trust back in technology. We need to place the trust back in our employees.

Anupam Trehan [00:35:33]:
And if flexible working is the way forward, The work the office is not going to be a place where you go to do work. The office will be there, but the office will evolve. It will become a place to innovate. It’ll become a place to collaborate. It could be a place for experiences, but it is not gonna be a place like you said, which is I’m just gonna go there and attempt 6 meetings in a day. Like, no, because I don’t see the value in that. It just doesn’t make sense.

Karissa Breen [00:36:01]:
And is there any sort of closing comments or final thoughts you’d like to leave that audience with today?

Anupam Trehan [00:36:07]:
The role of technology now and in the future is gonna continue to evolve. And I think technology is gonna take a bigger space, I think both in work as well as our lives. And I think it’s it’s a really interesting one because as individuals, on one hand, we get excited about technology. But the flip side of that is we also get anxious about technology. And my only closing comment would be as individuals

Guy Diedrich [00:36:32]:
and as professionals, whether that’s in work

Anupam Trehan [00:36:32]:
or whether that’s in life, I think one professionals, whether that’s in work or whether that’s in life, I think one be curious. I think the second is lean into the world of technology, not blindly, but lean in responsibly, ethically. Lean in to see what technology can do. And I think it’s a little bit of how do you keep the anxiety aside, but let curiosity overtake the anxiety because I think that would lead to a lot of innovation. That is going to really help us see what the potential with tech could be in the in the future.

Karissa Breen [00:37:07]:
And there you have it. This is KB on the go. Stay tuned for more.