Preparing For The Future Of Work: John Morgan of LHH On The Top Five Trends To Watch In The Future Of Work

An Interview with Phil La Duke

Culture will be the hottest currency. Culture over perks and benefits is what will attract and retain employees. Culture isn’t formed by bringing people back to an office or by throwing money at them to stay. Culture is formed around a company’s mission and vision and gives meaning to work. Increasingly, employees want to work for companies that are mission driven and are aligned with personal values.

There have been major disruptions in recent years that promise to change the very nature of work. From the ongoing shifts caused by the COVID19 pandemic, the impacts caused by automation, and other possible disruptions to the status quo, many wonder what the future holds in terms of employment. For example, a report by the McKinsey Global Institute that estimated automation will eliminate 73 million jobs by 2030.

To address this open question, we reached out to successful leaders in business, government, and labor, as well as thought leaders about the future of work to glean their insights and predictions on the future of work and the workplace.

As a part of this interview series called “Preparing For The Future Of Work”, we had the pleasure to interview John Morgan, President of LHH.

John Morgan is an experienced Management Consultant and Executive in the Human Capital and Talent Development industry. John has more than 20 years of experience in professional services and is currently the President of Lee Hecht Harrison (a division of The Adecco Group). In his role at LHH John has overall responsibility for meeting the firm’s global revenue growth and profitability goals and is responsible for strategy development. Prior to assuming the President role, John served as Chief Operating Officer for three years and helped grow revenue to all-time highs. He holds a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A. in Industrial/Organization Psychology from Montclair State University. John Morgan also holds an Executive MBA certificate and Executive Leadership certificate from INSEAD Business School in France and has completed Executive Leadership courses at IESE in Spain.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers like to get an idea of who you are and where you came from. Can you tell us a bit about your background? Where do you come from? What are the life experiences that most shaped your current self?

I’m President of LHH, a global career solutions and talent development company that is a division of The Adecco Group. We help companies and individuals prepare for and thrive in the future of work, which is a personal passion of mine. I also serve as a mentor to HR technology start-ups through my affiliation with AKT Labs in Tel Aviv, and I’m a member of the World Economic Forum’s committee on strategic redeployment.

Throughout my career I’ve led large-scale human capital solutions for companies across industries and have built expertise in employee training, change management and organization development.

On a personal level, I am happily married with two children, a 10 year-old son and 12 year-old daughter. My spare time is largely devoted to watching my children play competitive sports and coaching them, especially in softball and baseball as I played baseball competitively through college. My family also enjoys traveling together around the world to experience different cultures. Growing up in the NYC area you got to experience a lot of diversity, and so from a young age I learned the importance of understanding people, their beliefs and backgrounds and the value that diversity plays in moving our society and workforce forward — something my wife and I take great pride in instilling in our children.

What do you expect to be the major disruptions for employers in the next 10–15 years? How should employers pivot to adapt to these disruptions?

One major disruption will be continued shakeups in the war for talent. What many are calling The Great Resignation is what I refer to as The Great Reevaluation. We know that a lot of salaried employees are currently considering career changes as they see more possibilities available to them and increasingly seek out opportunities for both more work-life balance and career advancement. We’re at a tipping point now, and things will only heat up as jobs and whole industries continue to evolve and change with technology advancements that will bring about the need for new skills. My advice to companies is to invest in their culture, which is what truly attracts and keeps good talent, and to invest in their employees with a big focus on coaching and skill development.

Another major disruption will be AI, which will have big impacts on the workforce. See my responses to Question 12 for more info on this.

I think we’ve all seen in the past two years that many disruptions can’t be foretold, and that we always have to expect the unexpected. We’ve also learned how to be more resilient, and that will likely be a critical asset in the future. Employers need to keep adaptability, flexibility and resilience top of mind.

The choice as to whether or not a young person should pursue a college degree was once a “no-brainer”. But with the existence of many high profile millionaires (and billionaires) who did not earn degrees, as well as the fact that many graduates are saddled with crushing student loan debt and unable to find jobs it has become a much more complex question. What advice would you give to young adults considering whether or not to go to college?

It’s great that there are so many options for young people starting out in their careers today. You see a lot of companies out there offering a variety of flexible programs including many that combine full-time jobs with company-paid opportunities to pursue college degrees. There are a lot of factors that impact whether someone pursues a college degree, and ultimately that’s a personal choice that has to be right for the individual. What’s critical for any person starting out in their career is to embrace a lifelong view of learning. People should be learning at every stage of their career, and if they’re not, their company is not making the right investments in building their skills and preparing them for the future of whatever field they’re in. It’s incumbent upon both employers and employees to carve out regular learning opportunities.

Despite the doom and gloom predictions, there are, and likely still will be, jobs available. How do you see job seekers having to change their approaches to finding not only employment, but employment that fits their talents and interests?

I talk to job seekers about a concept I call ‘skill and will.’ On the skill side, a trend is that AI is playing a bigger role in helping people understand their adjacent skills for a new job and figuring out the types of jobs and skills that companies will be hiring for in the next five years. You can really go deep these days with labor supply and demand tools that show data such as hot geographic markets and salary information that can help people map out their specific career paths across industries. These tools can also predict how many of today’s jobs will evolve in the future. For example, we know that many traditional jobs in accounting can be automated and that these skills are very transferable to emerging job growth in the cyber-security space.

On the ‘will’ side, I advise job seekers to find a career coach who can help them evaluate their current skills and how those match up with job opportunities as well as the skills they need to hone to get to where they want to be in the future. Coaching is an underutilized resource that can have huge payoffs for job seekers, employees and employers alike.

The statistics of artificial intelligence and automation eliminating millions of jobs, appears frightening to some. For example, Walmart aims to eliminate cashiers altogether and Dominos is instituting pizza delivery via driverless vehicles. How should people plan their careers such that they can hedge their bets against being replaced by automation or robots?

While it’s true that AI and automation will replace many tasks that humans used to perform, they will never replace the human element. Humans skills — those like emotional intelligence, relationship building, collaboration and problem solving to name a few — are even more necessary in the age of increased technology adoption. Many of the tasks that AI replaces are repetitive tasks that when taken over by a machine, actually open up new opportunities for people to take on more challenging and rewarding work. No matter what industry they’re in, people should embrace technology and build their digital skills and technology acumen to get ahead. The future of work will be about humans and technology working together.

Technological advances and pandemic restrictions hastened the move to working from home. Do you see this trend continuing? Why or why not?

Yes, I think hybrid work is here to stay. People adjusted to working from home, they adjusted well, and they have built a system that works for them. We did a recent study called Resetting Normal: Defining a New Era of Work that found that 53% of workers globally want a hybrid working model where more than half of their work time is remote. It’s also important to point out that productivity has not suffered with remote work, with 82% saying they feel as productive or more productive than before.

Overall, what we’re seeing is that most workers are not opposed to coming back to an office on some level, but they want to do so on their own terms.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of companies out there mandating a return to offices, and I think it’s a mistake if company plans don’t factor in employee choice and flexibility. This could have some big unintended consequences, especially for underrepresented groups. In our study, nearly half (49%) of leaders and 42% of non-manager employees said that they have felt, or are feeling, anxiety around returning to the office, and 41% are considering moving to jobs with more flexible working options. Companies cannot ignore these statistics if they want to retain workers and attract new talent.

What societal changes do you foresee as necessary to support the fundamental changes to work?

The biggest societal change that needs to happen around work is that society as a whole needs to prioritize wellness, including both the physical and mental wellbeing of employees. People are quitting their jobs because employers aren’t meeting their needs when it comes to wellness and work-life balance. Our study that I alluded to earlier found that 38% of workers globally have been suffering from burnout over the last 12 months, with 32% saying their mental health has declined as a result. The toll is the heaviest on younger workers, with 45% of Generation Z and 42% of Millennials reporting burnout.

We’re reaching the point of crisis when it comes to worker wellness, and a lot of that has been driven by the pandemic and the burnout that workers suffered trying to balance work and personal needs. I mentioned earlier that workers reported being very productive in the pandemic, and while that sounds like a positive, those increases in productivity like came at the expense of employee wellbeing. People are burned out, and managers are failing to recognize and address the signs of burnout. In many cases, managers themselves are experiencing burnout, which compounds the issue.

As a society, we’ve got to prioritize and invest in worker wellbeing, including teaching managers how to spot and address the signs that their employees are suffering and how to build healthy and resilient teams.

What changes do you think will be the most difficult for employers to accept? What changes do you think will be the most difficult for employees to accept?

For employers, I think it will be to let employees operate in a space and way in which they feel most productive and most comfortable. It’s hard to let go of the old ways of doing things, and for employers, a lot of that is likely tied to a traditional office schedule where teams are together in person. Employers will need to make a lot of adjustments to build a successful model, and as I alluded to earlier, a lot of that will go back to culture.

For employees, I think they’re struggling to communicate their needs and goals to their employers in a new environment. There’s a lot of data that shows a pretty big disconnect between employees and their managers when it comes to views on how companies are doing around critical areas such as career development and attention to employee wellbeing.

The COVID-19 pandemic helped highlight the inadequate social safety net that many workers at all pay levels have. Is this something that you think should be addressed? In your opinion how should this be addressed?

Absolutely, and I think a lot of the answer ties back to what I said before about the need to focus on employee wellbeing and also the need for employers to be more flexible and listen to their employees and give them choices in how they want to work.

Despite all that we have said earlier, what is your greatest source of optimism about the future of work?

I have a lot of optimism about the future of work! Before the pandemic, there were cracks in the foundation of several workplace issues that became further fractured during the pandemic. In a way, having these issues come to the forefront was a positive thing, because now we’re talking about them and addressing them with a level of attention we haven’t given these issues before. If we continue down this path of tackling the challenges, we’ll see workplaces that are built around people’s needs and that truly set people up to succeed and thrive. This will benefit everyone from individuals to companies to society as a whole.

Historically, major disruptions to the status quo in employment, particularly disruptions that result in fewer jobs, are temporary with new jobs replacing the jobs lost. Unfortunately, there has often been a gap between the job losses and the growth of new jobs. What do you think we can do to reduce the length of this gap?

Two things: reskilling/upskilling and personalization. Focusing on internal mobility can solve a lot of challenges, and companies will need to be creative in how they assess and re-evaluate their workforce. Employees today need more specialized and technical skills as well as development of soft skills like collaboration and emotional intelligence. Investing in training your employees will always pay off, especially in times of disruption.

Okay, wonderful. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “Top 5 Trends To Watch In the Future of Work?” (Please share a story or example for each.)

The future of work will look very different across the board from how companies compete in the war for talent to how they build culture to how they train their people. Top trends to watch are:

The Great Reevaluation (my alternate take on what others call The Great Resignation) will bring challenges and opportunities. The trend of employees seeing more career possibilities available to them will bring both challenges and opportunities. The challenges are fairly obvious in terms of employers struggling to retain talent. The opportunities are that employees are looking for more meaningful careers, which can lead to higher levels of engagement and loyalty for new hires.

AI is the disruptor that will continue to affect the workforce. More and more jobs will continue to be automated and/or digitized and employees will have to acquire digital skills to further their careers. We see this in functions like Marketing, Finance and HR for example where expertise in software applications is a must for emerging roles, and we see it across industries. Just look at automotive where one million jobs are at risk over the next five years as companies shift production from typical combustion engine vehicles to electric. Jobs will change dramatically in this industry, and employees will have to acquire new skills to be competitive. And this is the case across many industries: life sciences, logistics, etc.

The wellness crisis will get worse before it gets better. Companies haven’t fully gotten the message on employee burnout and how to recognize and address it. There will also be an increased need for managers to not only identify burnout but to become better at organizing workload across a dispersed workforce. Managers are not trained to be mental health professionals but there is a growing expectation that managers must be effective coaches and that includes helping their employees balance work-life issues. For many managers, this is still a weak muscle.

Flexible work will just be work. Hybrid work will become the norm to the point that we will no longer need a term for it. There are still improvements to be made in perfecting the hybrid work model, including the amount of time people are working (this goes back to the wellness crisis) and how employees want to be measured going forward. Our Resetting Normal survey I mentioned earlier found that 73% of workers globally want to be measured on outcomes and not hours. Meanwhile, in the U.S., two-thirds of respondents (66%) reported logging more than 40 hours a week over the past year, yet just under half (49%) believe that such hours are necessary to get the job done. So there is progress left to be made here and some inherent disconnects between employees and their managers about what workers really want and need to be successful.

Culture will be the hottest currency. Culture over perks and benefits is what will attract and retain employees. Culture isn’t formed by bringing people back to an office or by throwing money at them to stay. Culture is formed around a company’s mission and vision and gives meaning to work. Increasingly, employees want to work for companies that are mission driven and are aligned with personal values.

Overall, the future of work is bright. Disruption has led to discussion, which is now leading to a lot of positive changes in the workplace.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how this quote has shaped your perspective?

One of my favorite quotes goes back to my days in competitive sports and has to do with getting comfortable with failure. Babe Ruth said it best: “Don’t be afraid to get advice, there is always something new to learn.” As a competitive baseball player, you fail much more than you succeed. You kind of get desensitized to failure and learn to not let it bother you or affect your confidence, and you use it as motivation to continuously work and get better. Even on days when you’re great, you still swing and miss and you always can find little things you can improve upon. I have a continuous improvement mindset, and it shaped me as a leader over the years. It helps me coach others to stay motivated and also motivates me to be a student of the game — always looking to learn, evolve and coach others.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

So by now you know I draw a lot of parallels between sports and my work in the HR arena. Being from NYC area and a baseball fan, Derek Jeter would have to be the one person I would love to connect with. I always admired him — mostly because he was easily the most successful person, top of his sport but with no ego. He had a lot of great leadership attributes: team first, outwork the competition, honest and open feedback. And of course he used failure as a motivator, never letting it slow down his growth.

Our readers often like to follow our interview subjects’ careers. How can they further follow your work online?

I’m a Forbes Council member and you can see a lot of my authored pieces here covering many related topics to the ones we’ve discussed. I also post often on our LHH company blog and on LinkedIn.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this. We wish you continued success and good health.