Jeremy Scrivens
Director at Emotional Economy at Work
Jeremy is an Appreciative Futurist & Collaboration & Innovation Catalyst. He is a Director of The Emotional Economy at Work and a global thought leader and consultant on building collaboration in a digital world for innovation, social good, and the future of work. He deploys the principles and methods of positive transformation, including Appreciative Inquiry and Brilliant Fit, to engage enterprises and communities to collaborate, re-imagine and co-create desired futures for growth and vibrancy at scale.
Jeremy has recently featured in Onalytica's Who's Who in The Future of Work report.
How did you get to become an expert in your key topics?
Thirty years in Human Resources Management involved in setting up the Mobiles business and then the internet in Telstra in Australia led to developing innovative ways to engage, retain and develop talent. I was also involved in significant large-scale transformation / change projects in the nineties driven by technological change. Many of these projects failed to engage people on the journey.
For a long time this didn’t matter but today it matters a great deal because the pandemic has created a greater desire for people to have more purpose in their work and to feel great ownership of the changes in the workplace. In 2008, I switched my whole approach to transformation/change projects by looking to develop the tools and the conversation which put people first in change and transformation and which put the technology in the hands of the employees themselves. I switched the focus from doing more with less to do more with more.
What do you think the future holds in this space?
We are in the midst of a technological revolution that is fundamentally changing the way we live, work and relate to one another. At the heart of this revolution is a convergence between increasingly powerful capabilities, including Internet of Things, Digital, 3DPrinting, Autonomous Vehicles, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics, Gene Editing, Social Media, and other New Tech. At the heart of this new capability is the joining up of this tech and data to give us the power of convergence i.e., the ability to connect all things together from the whole, not the parts, and to make huge impacts at scale.
These converging capabilities are transforming society, life, and work for individuals, organisations, and for humanity. This technological convergence is of such disruptive magnitude that as organisational brands and leaders we have to understand what this convergence means. We also need to take a stand about whether we use the new tech for good or for bad. There are two streams that we can take in our work futures. In 1st Stream, the ethos is on automation and efficiency at the expense of people. People are assets on balance sheets, human capital, and the factory or the process is the center. But 2nd Stream has an ethos where technology exists to serve and augment people in their work, not to make them redundant but to enable them to flourish and grow.
2nd Stream sees people as the reason for the investment in the New Tech. It sees work as a noble thing, as something essential to what it means to be human. 2nd Stream sees tech as serving people in ways that elevate the experience of work as something meaningful, something fundamentally good. In essence, 2nd stream is about putting People First. And by putting people first, brands can discover they can release more passion, energy, and creativity in their people to do more with more, not more with less.
So, brands have a choice as to which stream they take. The good news is that if they choose to put people first the tools and methods are available to assist brands to engage their people to shift from the Great Resignation to the Great Awakening or re-emergence or so both businesses and people can flourish.
And the research is telling us what people want from their work now. I call this the Five Topics that Matter. People want more meaning and purpose in their work, they want to work with companies whose values and practices align with theirs. People want to experience kindness and care in their workplaces and they want to be appreciated for their contribution. And finally, they want meaningful technology which will eliminate the mundane tasks, releasing people for more human connectivity, collaboration, and contribution -in short, to help them leave a positive legacy they can share with their grandkids.
If a brand wanted to work with you, which activities would you be most interested in collaborating on?
What would be the best way for a brand to contact you?
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