Stop Focusing on Job Credentials. Start Fitting Work to People: Josh Bersin

Companies today are failing at a record pace. In 1958 the average age of a company on the S&P500 stock index was 61. Today it is 18. It is predicted that within the next five years three-quarters of S&P500 companies will have disappeared.

Artificial intelligence and automation is everywhere. But, rather than automating us out of work, these technologies are taking the more repetitive bits away from our jobs. The result is that more and more jobs are becoming hybrid – they combine skillsets that never used to be included in the same job.  To keep up with the pace of automation we need to keep upskilling. 

Meanwhile, while we may be hearing about large scale layoffs in some companies, many organisations are struggling to fill roles. 

Global future-of-work thought leader Josh Bersin discusses:

• Why we should be talking about work, not jobs
• Why humans are the only appreciating assets in a business so just cutting staff is a false economy
• How companies are tearing up the traditional job descriptions and entry paths to work, such as degrees, and what they are doing instead
• What do we as workers need to do to keep our skills up to date?
• Where human resources fits into this debate

Josh Bersin founded corporate learning, talent management and HR research and advisory company Bersin & Associates in 2001, selling it to Deloitte in 2012. On retiring from Deloitte in 2018 he went on to launch the Josh Bersin Academy for HR and learning and professionals. In 2020 he brought together a team of analysts and advisors to form The Josh Bersin Company, which undertakes research and advises companies in areas such as HR technology, employee experience and diversity equity and inclusion. 

Josh is a prolific blogger with more than 860,000 followers on LinkedIn and frequently appears in top business publications. He recently published a book Irresistible: The Seven Secrets of the World’s Most Enduring Employee-Focused Organizations which is based on thousands of interviews with innovative leaders at the world’s best-run organizations, revealing the secrets of success of more than 5,000 companies he and his team have been researching.

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