In this new episode of our Outpacing Change series, Australian futurist Dr Ben Hamer offers a glimpse of the future of work and explains how business leaders can rise to an array of strategic challenges and opportunities. This entertaining conversation between Ben and Andy tackles generative AI, climate change, hybrid working, career planning, and much more.

Climate change. Geopolitical conflict. Artificial intelligence. Rising energy costs. The list goes on. “This is arguably the most challenging environment that business leaders have ever had to work through,” reflects Australian futurist Dr Ben Hamer. “A lot of leaders are coming to me asking ‘Where do I start? There's so many things coming at me, where do I focus?’”

In this episode of Outpacing Change, Ben provides some strategies to help leaders answer these questions. He discusses how to balance short-term and long-term challenges and, along the way, he explores:

• Low unemployment and employee value propositions: Why the factors that make people join an organisation are not the same as the factors that make them stay.
• The next wave of generative AI: How ChatGPT is only the tip of the iceberg, and why organisations will be hiring more AI managers in the years ahead. (“If there was one specific thing that I would encourage people to do after listening to this podcast, it would be to watch a YouTube video on Prompt Engineering.”)
• Future careers: How professionals need to “hack” their daily routines, to prepare for the multiple careers they will have tomorrow. (“We need to be spending 15% of our working week upskilling and reskilling in order to remain current. Not to get ahead of the game – but just to remain current.”)

While acknowledging the many challenges that business leaders will face in the coming years, Ben remains upbeat about the future. “There's a lot of talk at the moment that ‘the robots are coming to take our jobs’. And the thing to really remember with this is most of the jobs that exist today are still going to exist in 10 years’ time. They're just going to look very different because of technology ... I see the exciting potential of technology and automation, and how it help us do our jobs better, rather than necessarily replacing and displacing us.”

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