Top of the agenda will be discussions around adapting to new ways of working, supporting assignees and employees in the new hybrid working model and how to prioritise wellbeing and engagement.Adjusting to new ways of working poses significant challenges for all organisations, but for companies whose workforce is globally mobile, the issues are even more thorny. How do you balance ensuring employee wellbeing while keeping control of costs? What does the need to demonstrate ESG credentials mean for your business if a large number of your staff need to travel for business? How do you onboard colleagues in parts of the world which are still in lockdown? What if the roles of some employees do not lend themselves to hybrid working, or working from home?The Future of Work Festival, which has a variety of keynote speakers and interactive hubs and workshops, will debate these challenging questions and the experts will add their insights to the discussions. Among the exciting and stimulating discussions will be - how we support employees and international assignees going forward? What are the skills that leaders and managers need? How will the culture of organisations need to change to embrace these changes?Sponsored by Santa Fe Relocation, KPMG, edyn and AltoVita, the Festival has a distinguished keynote panel comprising Marc Burrows, Head of Global Mobility Services and Partner at KPMG International; Kerwin Guillermo, Global Head of Employee Mobility for Hewlett Packard Enterprise; Dr Linda Holbeche, independent coach, developer, consultant, researcher and author in the fields of HR, strategy, organisation design and development and leadership; and Sarah Rozenthuler, a chartered psychologist, leadership consultant and dialogue coach.

How to find purpose and promote meaningful dialogue in organisations

Sarah Rozenthuler will be discussing how to create a high performing team that combines remote and hybrid working.“Dialogue plays a real part in that,” she says. “I'm noticing amongst clients a real appetite for authentic dialogue that links to the movement around purpose-driven business. There is less and less tolerance for the heroic style of leadership and towards a leadership that's more collective.“Companies will need to look at how to retain talent and recruit the best talent against a background where younger people are looking for work that is genuinely meaningful and energising for them and aligns with their purpose,” she says.“There's lots of evidence showing that employees that find their work meaningful and more resilient are more likely to stay and become champions for their organisations.”

Kerwin Guillermo will look at the challenges involved in creating jobs that can be carried out on the new hybrid model.

“There are some components of work activities that may provide challenges, compliance challenges, when done remotely,” he says. “How can we deconstruct the job and reconstruct it to make that possible?” He will also be looking at engagement, benefits and employee support and how this fits into a globally mobile workforce.Many organisations are struggling with the dilemma of how to combine employee requests for flexibility with managers’ need to build and nurture teams.KPMG’s recent report Current Trends in Remote Working, found that the telecommunications and technology sector is leading the way in remote working with 64% of companies surveyed having moved to the implementation stage, compared to 27% who are still in the consideration stage of remote working. Marc Burrows will be discussing the implications and management of remote working and how organisations are affected by it.

A raft of acclaimed and insightful speakers

In order to make the day as interactive as possible, attendees will be able to explore themes on the future of work in designated hubs, run by a panel of experienced speakers.Teresa Boughey will be talking on Inclusion 247, brought to you by Jungle HR Ltd, a National Award-Winning Consultancy.Rob Fletcher has over 30 years of mobility experience having worked with global clients setting up and delivering mobility solutions and is a Co-Founder of Heart Relocation which has focussed wellbeing as an equally important factor in relocation as the physical move. He will debate how to provide the emotional support and wellbeing checks that assignees need at a time when many mobility and HR departments are trying to introduce digital solutions in order to lower costs.John Rason is the Group Head of Consulting at Santa Fe Relocation. Santa Fe’s recent research Redefine: An extraordinary time – GMS 2021/22, argues that organisations will need better data. Analytics will become the key to assignee and remote worker management. Priorities will be on efficiency, compliance and cost; and data collection, collation and analysis will be crucial to success.Vlatka Ariaana Hlupic is founder and Chief Executive Officer of Management Shift Solutions Limited and will discuss her research which explains that we are all part of the process of change, and those companies that don’t make the switch from the old “command and control” management models to a business that is more collaborative and inclusive, will fail to thrive in the future.

Putting wellbeing and communication at the centre of progress

Gina Lodge is the CEO of AoEC, and an accredited Executive Coach. She will be examining Effective Decision Making and Empowerment.“Many attempts have been made to remove layers of management, by companies large and small, without success, and it seems to now be accepted that having good managers and leaders is essential for business large and small,” she says.“How do you become an empowering leader who makes effective decisions? It is only possible to empower your team if there is clear direction on the high level goal they are looking for and the teams have the necessary skills and training to be able to undertake the tasks being asked of them.”Claus Springborg is a leadership consultant, author and lecturer at Copenhagen Business School. He will be looking at research that shows the greatest predictors for employee engagement are linked to wellbeing and a sense of purpose sense. Personal empowerment is also very important, as it thinking about the value of time and how you use it, both in your time at work, and outside your working hours. This is increasingly becoming a consideration for employees as they re-examine their work-life balance and professional and personal priorities following lockdown.Kellie Noon is the founder of Onno, who specialize in global communications and business. The Festival of Work will be hosted by Jayne Constantinis, an experienced broadcaster who has previously worked for the BBC.

Embracing ambiguity and creativity

A key theme of the hubs will be looking at how managers and leaders redefine their role in this new world. Not only do they have a potentially disparate workforce to manage, but the world of business has become more unpredictable and fast-moving. New skills and new ways of thinking are needed to future-proof your leadership qualities and your business.Peter Moolan-Feroze  trained as an artist at London University and then at The Royal Academy of Arts, London. He will be talking about Creativity and ambiguity and how to cope with and adapt to change.“The world is changing at a rapid pace and managers are facing huge uncertainty,” he says. “When I work with managers and leaders, I encourage them to embrace the unknown ambiguity by using their imagination, something that artists naturally embrace. More and more business managers are starting to see the benefits of that.“It’s about being able to react in a more spontaneous way that combines experience and inexperience, intellect and emotion, observation and imagination and intuition and empathy. If you don't give managers time to explore themselves, how can they be creative and how can they respond to uncertainty? Picasso is quoted as saying that even a small piece of thread offers a significant role in a future picture. The smallest thing can suggest or inspire an important development and that can be as simple as changing or adapting language or making small changes.”

Creating safe spaces and meaningful dialogue

Paul Williamson heads up learning and development at The Ambassadors Theatre Group (ATG), a global live entertainment business.“It's not unusual for teams to have periods of stress, but during the pandemic worry and anxiety turned into a more chronic form of stress,” he says. “Managers need to look at having conversations and giving people the opportunity to speak about their experiences, and to create psychological safe spaces.“We used to call these soft skills but now I call them essential skills. The command and control model of leadership is over. Those organisations that still have that in operation are creating detrimental effect on their staff.“At ATG we have been trying to create more of a coaching environment within the organisation. That means training line managers to become qualified executive coaches and helping to boost talent, looking at where talent lies, and investing in those people. In the future we will all need to be more resilient, creative and flexible and people need time and space to work that through.”

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To explore more widely the new ways of working, why not join us on 9 June for the results of the Think Global People and Relocate Awards and the Future of Work Festival?

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