HEALTHCARE ESTATES 2024 KEYNOTES
Above: On average, EY’s survey suggests, employers and employees think workers have gained 8 percentage points in ‘the balance of power’ in the job market since the pandemic.
Above right: Another recently undertaken EY survey – in partnership with Oxford Saïd Business School – around Humans@Centre – focuses on ‘why some transformations are successful, and others fail’.
workforce. However, very few of my clients have really cracked their hybrid working policies; there’s still the perception that staff that are not visible are less productive. We do see benefits, however, if that flexibility is productive, with a shift to bringing teams back together to share knowledge, develop, and put back what we’ve lost from some of the Teams and Zoom interaction.” The EY speaker’s view was that there was ‘largely optimism around Gen AI,’ with many business leaders ‘very excited’ about the associated opportunities to be more productive. However, there was also some nervousness, – particularly among employees – over whether it would replace their job. Katherine Savage said: “Will growing AI use require upskilling to ensure that the workforce can adapt? I believe it will require leaders to be testing and learning about AI themselves, and using the technology as it evolves, to demonstrate to the wider workforce that human and machine can combine pretty productively in a work setting.” She continued: “There’s definitely been an employer / employee power shift. While the labour market is starting to pick up, securing top talent can be very market-competitive. Recently we have seen a real trend in a return to office – with 2-3 days on site becoming the norm. Understanding your approaches to flexibility – in workplace location and type, how you as a people manager lead, and what is and isn’t acceptable within your operation, will be key in engaging and motivating top talent.”
Gen AI Returning to ‘Gen AI’, Katherine Savage said there were many tested iterations and pilot use cases where the technology had been shown to increase productivity, remove effort, and generate more capacity. She said: “Our survey suggests that employees are generally pretty positive about AI’s potential. However, both employers and employees recognise the need for significant investment in associated learning and skills development.” Businesses looking at increasing their AI use would, she said, need to determine where to focus the most attention and money to develop the skills needed for a new scenario where part tasks could be automated, ‘handed off’ to a human, and then reviewed by somebody more senior, and what this would mean in their particular field. With ‘an ever more complex work ecosystem’, EY advises clients to think about ‘segmenting’ their workforce, with a ‘one size fits all’ approach to talent, initiatives, development, learning, and ‘hybrid’ working potentially no longer appropriate, and with a series of clear indicators of success. She elaborated: “We know, for example, that organisations that thrive through disruption usually have staff that trust their leaders, feel they can speak up, know their views will be listened to, and that associated action will be taken. Indeed, if we look at future leaders’
30 Health Estate Journal January 2025
top priority skills, empathy is key. That doesn’t mean soft leadership – but rather understanding the complexities outside and within work, and empathetically leading your people to motivate and engage. “We know,” she added, “that if employees feel less connected to their team, their leader, and / or their business unit, they are less likely to be engaged, and more likely to think about moving. Similarly, we always support our clients in developing communication strategies. Newer entrants to work are often hungry for information, and more frequent access to data; thus how you communicate and ensure transparency will be critical as your workforce demographics change.” Katherine Savage said that, ‘like other sectors’, engineering would be striving for a more diverse workforce – requiring differing leadership, ways of working, and ‘talent interventions’. She said: “But how do you avoid that ‘group think’ where you’re all pulling from the same talent pool? Organisations will be more successful if they’re really thinking about future skills now.”
Culture and ways of working The EY speaker’s message was that to attract the best staff, organisations would need to think carefully about ways and patterns of working. She said: “For example, ‘How do you balance that workload, and create time to innovate and collaborate?’ “A lot of the work I do currently around organisational re-restructuring and driving fungibility requires multidisciplinary teams to collaborate, but how do you break down some of the silos in your practices today, and prioritise culture?” Culture here wasn’t, she emphasised, ‘just a strapline and a series of values posted on your internet site’, but rather ‘what it feels like day to day to be in your teams’. Katherine Savage said: “Provide clarity around your values and purpose – so staff can then understand how their day-today contribution aligns with the broader purpose and vision, and you’re more likely to motivate and engage. Similarly, how do you remain nimble – continually evolving roles and responsibilities, which is more likely to retain talent?” As she neared her presentation’s close, Katherine Savage
highlighted another recently undertaken EY survey – in partnership with Oxford Saïd Business School – around Humans@Centre. She said: “This global cross-sector survey focuses on why some transformations are successful, and others fail. As an HR practitioner, I’d always argue that placing humans at the centre is critical, and shouldn’t be an afterthought when planning transformational milestones. This thinking has now been endorsed by Oxford University research – which suggests that by prioritising the human agenda in transformation exercises, you’re 2.6 times more likely to succeed. The EY speaker explained that there are six ‘transformational levers’ that if performed on an above
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