Reshaping the future of work for a post-pandemic world

Meteoric advances in technologies are changing the nature of employment, education and entrepreneurship. Policy experts and leaders in education, workforce development and entrepreneurship have long been asking how we can best prepare students and those already in the workforce for jobs in a future still undefined.

Now, we have a pandemic that has led to an economic crisis, thrown traditional work norms out the window, and exacerbated the financial, social, and professional inequities that existed before COVID, placing new strains on the persistent barriers that have for too long undermined economic and employment opportunities for underserved populations.

“The pandemic has accelerated the future of work,” said Dr. Kim Hunter Reed, Louisiana’s Commissioner of Higher Education. “And yet, that means the skills and competencies are the coin of the realm.”

Digital literacy is at the heart of that.

“What I see in education is that technology has to be embraced from as soon as they hit school and all the way through K-12 and lifelong learning,” says Jeff Barratt, CEO of Skilled KC Technical Institute. “Not only access to technology, but how to use it and how’s it relevant; not only in the school that I’m learning and in the workforce training, post high school, but how’s it related to the world I’m going to work in?”

Further, he says, the digital divide is real. Economic restraints and inequity are barriers to a high-skill, productive workforce – so too is a lack of employer readiness.

“I think the dominant view has been that workers have to adapt to the way the corporation set the culture,” says Dr. Juliet Schor, professor of sociology at Boston College. “It’s also about those institutions changing and transforming the culture and creating a culture that works for everybody, that respects everybody, that takes care of everybody.”

Giselle Mota, principal consultant on ADP’s Future of Work team believes we need to share a sense of partnership and humanity.

“If we put humanity back as a business priority and we stop only putting profit and our own agendas in front of people – we’ve seen social, racial injustice amidst the pandemic – and that’s the first question everyone should be asking: ‘Is this leaving somebody out?’”

We have the opportunity to change “to not just rebuild, but really rebuild better,” says Kauffman Senior Program Officer Derek Ozkal.

“We should not go back into our silos and think about status quo,” Hunter Reed says. “Giselle’s exactly right, we need to co-create together, we need to think big about things that matter and really see the kinds of changes that will make sure that more people prosper in America in all of our communities.”

Watch the full Kauffman Conversation with Dr. Kim Hunter Reed, Commissioner, Board of Regents, State of Louisiana; Giselle Mota, Principal, ADP Future of Work team; Dr. Juliet Schor, Professor of Sociology, Boston College; Jeff Barratt, CEO, Skilled KC Technical Institute; and Kauffman Senior Program Officer Derek Ozkal, or read it below.

Derek Ozkal: As we begin to envision our post-pandemic world, new questions are challenging policymakers, educators, and employers about what happens next as we imagine a future of work that works for everyone.

Welcome to a Kauffman Conversation on reshaping an equitable future of work, an issue that itself is changing as we address the impacts of the COVID-19 global pandemic. I’m Derek Ozkal, senior program officer in Entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation. Joining me today is a panel of experts who will explain the current trends they are seeing in the future of work and practical ways we can help communities prepare for an equitable and prosperous future workforce. I’d like to start by welcoming Juliet Schor, a professor of sociology at Boston College.

Juliet Schor: Thank you, Derek. Well, I did my Ph.D. in economics and I specialized in labor economics. So thinking about work from the very beginning of my career. I switched into the field of sociology at Boston College about 20 years ago, and I’ve been studying both labor and consumer culture and the linkages between them, which I think are pretty intimate.

Derek Ozkal: Thank you so much. Next I’m going to turn to Dr. Kim Hunter Reed, the commissioner of the Board of Regents for the state of Louisiana.

Dr. Kim Hunter Reed: Thank you so much, Derek, delighted to be with you. As commissioner of higher education here in the State of Louisiana, also leading higher education in the state of Colorado with my good friend, Jeff, as one of my colleagues, we’re thinking all the time about this ed-to-employment pipeline and how do we make sure, as my board members always ask, how do we make sure that the academic programs that we are approving are relevant to the world of work and how do we know that the students are getting real return on investment for their time and money spent in our colleges and universities. They see higher education as a passport to prosperity, for some in Louisiana, a passport from poverty to prosperity. And so how do we make sure that there is a utility and value in the credential?

Derek Ozkal: Thank you, Dr. Reed. Our next panelist is Giselle Mota, principal consultant for ADP, where she helps global enterprise-size organizations navigate the future of work. Welcome, Giselle.

Giselle Mota: Thank you so much. Great to be here. So part of what I do, you just mentioned it, I help organizations, global enterprise solutions-sized organizations, typically, 1,000 employees and up, to think about the future of work, how is the world of work changing? So, given this pandemic, especially, I mean, before this time, we have been talking about the future of work for a long time. And it seemed like there were people who were leaders, and then there were laggards who were just catching up and maybe waiting to see what everybody else was going to do, but the pandemic accelerated the future of work and many have to rethink – what is work? What is the workplace? And what is the worker itself?

And then apart from the corporate space, I work with this MBA streetwise program, it’s called Interise. We help to train up CEOs that own minority businesses, and many of them are minority owners themselves, and we are helping them to take their businesses to the next level. Excited to be a part of this conversation today and add from both lenses.

Derek Ozkal: Our next panelist is Jeff Barratt, CEO of Skilled KC Technical Institute. Welcome Jeff.

Jeff Barratt: Thank you, Derek. And hello to my esteemed panel here. Skilled KC is a nonprofit, a private nonprofit affiliate of the Kauffman Foundation, that was designed to develop non-degree stackable credentials in the most high-in-demand occupations in the Kansas City region. All education pathways are valued.

And we want to create these partnerships and opportunities to reach those overlooked, underserved communities and eliminate those barriers to entry. Another differentiator, I think, with our model is that we’ve created what we call a Skilled 3D Curriculum. It’s an entrepreneurial mindset. So, it’s those professional skills, essential skills, durable skills. So, anxious to learn from the panel today and contribute in ways that I can.

Derek Ozkal: Thanks Jeff. So, in addition to moderating today, I’ll also add in some comments about issues like equity and measurement that occur at that intersection of education, jobs and entrepreneurship. As I mentioned previously, I’m a senior program officer here at the Foundation, and I oversee a portfolio of grants to better understand the barriers that entrepreneurs face. And I do that mainly through a focus on two topics: declining business dynamism and the future of work, both of which end up touching on lots of other topics.

So, when we think about trying to measure and understand the new ways that people are working, it’s important to be really mindful of the data and know that the data is just a proxy for the thing that we really care about and that’s people having a good quality of life.

So, I’m eager to get started. So, thinking through the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had, especially on disenfranchised communities, I’d be curious for the take by everyone on how the pandemic has affected, and in some ways really, I think Giselle mentioned, it’s really sped up that future of work and the way that the companies and people need to respond.

Dr. Hunter Reed: So, let me just say absolutely the pandemic, what we see in the pandemic is what we see in Louisiana every time we have a hurricane or every time we have a disaster, right? It’s an exacerbation of the challenges of people who are haves and have-nots. This time, it’s around health equity, the luxury of being able to work from home and not be a frontline worker because you have income, because you have health insurance, and on and on the list goes. And so, when I think about this acceleration of the future of work, I think about the fact that you’re resilient, you are recession or pandemic proof in terms of economic utility and wealth if you have the skills and competencies, if you have that training.

And so, I’m concerned as I see, one, we turn the battleship in two weeks because of the pandemic at the height of it a year ago and we said, in two weeks, we need to be a 100% online. And people jumped into that as a necessity. But we also recognize there were students who didn’t have laptops, who didn’t have hotspots, who didn’t have access to affordable internet. And so, you, again, see people who are haves and have-nots.

This spring, as we look at our enrollment numbers, more African-American students than not chose not to re-enroll in our colleges and universities, our community colleges, like those across the country have double digit declines in enrollment. And normally, as you know when the economy is soft or challenged, more people than not rush into the community colleges. And so, we’re seeing the opposite of that. And so that’s exacerbating this cycle because now you have individuals who’ve lost multiple part-time jobs, who are student parents, who are working with their children doing Zoom, or who just have chosen to not participate in education at this moment, pausing. And we know when you pause, sometimes you don’t come back. And yet, we also recognize that if you’re not able to get the skills and competencies to afford them to be able to get them, you’re much more likely to be a challenged, even more challenged when the next disaster comes around.

And so, I think about all of this in terms of system redesign, thinking about, as was mentioned, having to be nimble in the work, having to recognize the digital divide and trying to erase that, trying to make sure that individuals who have less means have affordable pathways to prosperity in our state. The governor provided $10 million to our Community Technical College System to provide for what we call Reboot Louisiana, short-term, high-demand credentials to try to move people into an opportunity to get the skills that they need to be employed. Remember, Louisiana is a state where almost 50% of our population pre-pandemic had a high school diploma or less.

And so, the opportunity for us is it’s a necessity to be urgent in this work, because, as Giselle has mentioned, [the] pandemic has accelerated the future of work. And yet, that means the skills and competencies are the coin of the realm. So, we had so many people who didn’t have them pre-pandemic and now we’ve got to make sure we’re leaning in aggressively to try to make sure we have affordable, accessible, equitable pathways for individuals who have been displaced or who are more likely to not pursue those credentials.

Jeff Barratt: So, the pandemic illuminated a lot of things. One, it illuminated the fact that the digital divide is real, and not only do people need equipment and other resources, but colleges were more reactionary and hadn’t prepared very well for this type of event, right? I mean, and who did? But the reality is that even if you had the best equipment and maybe internet connectivity, we found out students that we flipped to a virtual and hybrid environment for our programs underestimate their digital literacy as well.

And we supplied hotspots, we supplied computers, et cetera, for all of our students. And when you’ve got students at home and other people working at home, it drags down that bandwidth for that household. And it creates a lot of issues in the learning process. And then from an employer-partner perspective, what happened is that internships and work-based experiences dried up, or they switched to a virtual for those.

And I think a lot of the institutions in higher ed that did pretty well during the last year in the pandemic are those that were pretty nimble and agile to begin with, but it also illuminated that business model within higher ed that is based upon traditional business practices and models and is not really as nimble and agile as we would like, to be quite honest, and those that were able to adapt more quickly and be able to serve students and get things up and running pretty fast.

Derek Ozkal: I’d be curious, Giselle, to get your thoughts on this in a related way in the sense of thinking through like this, the immediacy of the change with the pandemic, knowing that you work across all kinds of sizes of businesses, thinking through like, in some ways, large established companies would have the resources to be prepared for a remote workforce, but also lack the nimbleness of a smaller, newer firms. So, just curious if you could share a little bit more about that need for responsiveness and the challenges based on size of business.

Giselle Mota: Absolutely. When Dr. Kim Hunter was speaking, as well as Jeff, I was thinking about that digital divide that they’re mentioning and what’s needed in the space of education. It’s very much the same in the corporate world.

There’s actually this trend that I’m seeing now that’s happening, where we’re democratizing the access to certain tools that people didn’t have before. So, when, for example, the pandemic created this larger need for artificial intelligence, data analytics, even our government here in the United States was calling for people with the skillset and the talent for AI and for analytics because they wanted to be able to get to the bottom of certain solutions for the pandemic. So, what we’ve seen are more organizations leaning into tools that already embed AI insights, artificially intelligent driven insights, so that the data can be made intelligent.

We’re seeing more self-service tools, more mobile, more access to information and embracing more technology. So, CTOs and CIOs across these spaces have had major investments in technology. Even our organization, ADP, we had to send over 58,000 people home to work remotely in a week. That’s crazy with the size of our global organization, but we did it. There were also issues with like, what do you do with security and breaches and now all of this data is being transferred and more people are online than ever before? So, that’s another area.

And the reason why I bring those two pieces up about democratizing certain technologies, as well as certain other areas that crept up because of being remote and distributed, there’s an opportunity for those skills to be developed. So, now you can take a workforce, you can take your students and say, you don’t really have to be a data scientist yourself, but learn how to use these tools that are giving you these intelligent insights or learn a little bit about AI ethics so you can oversee some of the issues that are coming up with biases, and you can be that person, or perhaps it’s an app development, or maybe it’s entering into the world of cybersecurity. So yes, there are soft skills that can be developed during this time and we can help people with, but a lot of technology, in my opinion, is going to be opening way for more job opportunities and more skillsets than what we’ve seen before, maybe new ones as well.

Derek Ozkal: Professor Schor, I was curious to get your take on how quickly you can change, like companies that had to suddenly be remote, realized that it could work. And in the same way, it, I think, brought to light all the various ways that different people work and the different levels of job protections they have and thinking through all of your research on the gig economy that covers a really wide spectrum of work and workers. And I was wondering if you could just share a little more detail about how the varied experiences have changed both for good and bad as a result of things accelerated by the pandemic.

Juliet Schor: Yeah, absolutely. I do want to just echo the point that everyone has been talking about, which is how the pandemic laid bare and exacerbated inequalities. And of course, I’ve seen that in the gig economy as well. There was a wonderful sort of quip I read early on, which said, the rich went off to their second homes outside of the cities, which had a lot of infection. The middle-class went into their homes where their jobs were secure, but the child care work and elder care, but just that conflict became completely untenable. It just, there’s such a stark class divide in how all of this played out. And we’ve definitely seen that in the gig economy, too.

For workers, it’s been again like a story of real differences. And this is what we have found in our work all along, which is big divergence in how workers experience these platforms. So, one big problem has been way too many workers for the amount of work. I mean, we’ve been surveying and interviewing workers since the pandemic began. Instacart’s an example of a company that hired huge numbers of workers. And so, the long-term workers saw their ability to get work just dried up, more savvy workers are using bots to get tech tasks.

In our research, from the beginning, we found a real divide between workers who are using the platform to pay their basic expenses. So, we call them dependent workers, but basically, they don’t necessarily work long hours, but full time, and people who are using it to make supplemental earnings. And for the second, these platforms work really well because they have another job or they’re in school, they have other kinds of stability and so forth. And some of them have done really well. They may have gotten some unemployment or kind of government support during this time, stimulus checks, et cetera. And they did really well. Those who are dependent, as we’ve already talked about, are disproportionately black, brown, immigrant workers have really suffered an increase on the lower wage platforms. That group has become really dominant in some areas.

And I’ll just say one more thing, because I think we’re going to come around to it, but what’s what I think in addition to education, which is so key, there’s another set of policies that we need, government policies that we need to talk about to really make what’s happening as the future of work becomes the present viable for all of our citizens and non-citizens, but all of our residents.

Derek Ozkal: I think that’s a good segue to maybe very closely related, how do we think about the programs and policies to make sure that we can take advantage of the opportunities that are offered by technology platforms without some of the consequences, the negative sides? And maybe even to be more specific, thinking through to what degree do we need more targeted solutions and assistance? And as an example, programs implemented last year like the Payroll Protection Program, the first rounds of it did not reach entrepreneurs of color, as we think about this sudden change and the long-term consequences, the desire to not return to normal, but to rebuild better, what are some of the things that we have an opportunity now to change, and not just rebuild, but really rebuild better?

Dr. Hunter Reed: Happy to jump in, because one thing that I think about that was a pre-COVID challenge is that we really do not help individuals understand how to apply their aptitude and interest to the world of work. And so, when you think about individuals, workers, future workers who are first in family to work, first in family to go to college, the question remains, I think, in terms of system redesign and build, how do we make sure that we have pathways, but that more importantly, we help people to understand which pathway? How do you get on the pathway? How do you pay for the pathway? So, I do think that that was a pre-pandemic challenge or just a gap in what we do.

In America, we just don’t do a good job of career exploration, career exposure, helping people to understand how to navigate into the world of work. And I think that’s an area that we absolutely have to think about if we’re going to erase [in]equities. If you ask the child, and we’ve talked to many students, high school students and others, tell me what you want to be, their response for many of our low-income students is relationship-driven, my mom is this, my uncle is that, that’s what I’m going to be. It’s not based on high-demand jobs, high-wage jobs, what my own interests are in math versus science, my awareness around coding or cybersecurity. And so, I think we have to recognize that it’s one thing to say, “We aspire for equity; we aspire for equity of opportunity,” but if we don’t build foundations that allow people to navigate and get good consumer information to make decisions, regardless of your base of knowledge, then it’s just lip service to a vision, it will never happen.

Jeff Barratt: Yeah. I would agree with that, Kim. And thinking about funding and policy, where we create barriers with our Pell Grant funding still, we’re not rewarding for that micro-credential upscaling or rescaling, or the stackable credential model. Hopefully, that’s going to change soon. We keep thinking it is. And then you think about the funding mechanisms, why don’t we fund more ecosystem approaches, to your point, to where we create that on/off ramp? And then finally, how do we create more mentorship opportunities to where, to your point, and others will raise, is, if we want to get more people of color into IT, for instance, where we know there’s a gap, or a female, women in IT as well, create more mentorship opportunities and connections to where we can show those opportunities and highlight them and best practices on where to get the resources to enter into these training programs and what type of jobs are there?

When we do our intake processes at Skilled KC, we talk about companies from day one. If you want to work at a Cerner Corp, which is a 14,000-employee company in Kansas City, you have to think about what does that culture look like? I mean, what are the type of people that I’m going to be working around? And then remote work, remote work’s here to stay. When I talk to CEOs, they’re changing their whole business model. And even up to 60% of their employee staffing might be remote forever. And you hear about IT companies talking about the same thing. Some companies are saying, no, we’re going to come back to work, everybody’s going to come back to work. I question that. So, those are things that we need to do a better job in training from that durable skill, professional skill aspect, as well.

Giselle Mota: I question that too, Jeff, I think. I think from paying attention to corporations that are trying to make a difference, especially in diversity, equity inclusion, there are many systemic and there are several layers to why those issues are the way that they are. If you start, many organizations start at the recruiting phase and they’ll say, oh, we just don’t have enough diverse talent for this specific role over this specific department. We can’t access the people that we need. So, we can’t be diverse because the pool doesn’t exist. I would challenge that.

And I would start saying that we can start looking at different ways to access that talent. For example, if you do create more remote work and more opportunities for people to join your organization without having to be a part of, for example, in Silicon Valley, you had your group of people who everyone knows each other and they just keep recycling from org or to org, or you’re part of some type of a social club, if you would. In the case of opening up those doors and removing those barriers, all of a sudden you have somebody who lives in Compton who can work in a place that’s headquartered in San Francisco, who would have probably never had the opportunity to work because of their commute and the location.

So, I think opening up the workplace means to be more diverse and then rethinking what teams look like on purpose; bring talent together from across different spaces, even within the organization and maybe even to, Julie’s been talking a lot about the gig economy. So, what about organizations creating internal gigs getting more people to have opportunities, but also rethinking what your workforce looks like to blend your full-time workforce with gig workers and making that more of a normal thing.

So, there are many ways that we can learn. Even during the pandemic, we saw a lot of partnerships happen, and overnight, people’s roles dramatically just changed because they had to. I think we can learn from that and say, well, where do we meet? Where are the skills located that we need? And then let’s make it happen. I think we need to be more intentional about it.

And Jeff, you mentioned one more point that I thought was interesting about the culture. So, if I go to an organization and I see that people don’t look like me in the organization, absolutely that might deter me from wanting to join that organization. So, in addition to mentoring, I think we need to just hold people more accountable and say, well, why is it that typically you only have a homogenous group of people working in this particular department or location? And start to use the data to pinpoint holes and opportunities and gaps of look, this is how you’ve historically functioned, why? And then what else can we do to bridge some of those gaps.

Juliet Schor: But I just jump in here for a second, which is, I really love Giselle’s last point. And it, to Jeff’s point, I think the dominant view has been that workers have to adapt to what the way the corporation set the culture. And one of the things that’s going on now in the conversation about how schools and core businesses and industry and so forth can both become more diverse and inclusive, but also really deal with issues of racism and white supremacy is to say, let’s, we’ve got to think about the culture that these institutions have, and it’s not just about people of color conforming to the culture of predominantly white institutions. It’s also about those institutions changing and transforming the culture and creating a culture that works for everybody, that respects everybody, that takes care of everybody and so forth.

And I think, to me, that’s really one of the exciting things that is being talked about in the conversations that we’re having now in this country about racism and inclusion because we’re really moving beyond just, okay, who are the faces in the room? But everybody has to conform to the way we’ve structured society, which we know has tremendous casualties, whether it’s people who were unemployed, people who never get into the workforce, people who are overworked, burned out, people who are at the bottom and don’t have a say. I mean, there’s just a lot about the way we’ve organized our society that isn’t working.

Giselle Mota: I’d add to that point. People with disabilities, as well, are such a great source of talent. So, we’re thinking about where do we get the skillset that we need? Well, it’s students, it’s people with disabilities, it’s the spouses of military. There’s so many places where we can look, but to Julie’s point, how do we create atmospheres and truly challenge a culture that has been, in many times, it has excluded those groups of people and not been welcoming? It’s something I speak about a lot, because when we talk about diversity, we tend to think about race and ethnicity, but there’s so many ways where we can reach out to several people. And, in fact, a lot of the skills that we’re looking for for the future of work, whether it’s thinking outside of the box, being agile, researching, being able to adapt and pivot … a lot of that actually comes from underserved and underrepresented people. They innately have a lot of those skillsets.

Derek Ozkal: I would add the key silver lining to the pandemic is that it has highlighted how poor our system was for many people and how much better off we all would be, especially many of us, specifically, it would be, if it was designed with everyone in mind instead. And so it forces an opportunity to do better, but that’s not the default case. I think there’s no reason to expect that we will return to a world that is better just because we have gone through a drastic change. In fact, in some ways, it could be worse because it can concentrate wealth, as, I think, Professor Schor was describing the very class level of the way that this pandemic has been experienced.

I’d be curious to get some more thoughts on some of these very specific things, like Jeff has mentioned, the importance of that entrepreneurial mindset in terms of preparing people, and then thinking through, like maybe there are ways that gig workers are able to, they should be thinking about building out their portfolios of work, and companies need to really implement new hiring practices in order to take advantage of non-traditional work experiences and backgrounds. But I’m wondering if there are other precise things that others have in mind that might be helpful in getting at some of what we hope will be a better environment for everyone.

Jeff Barratt: I loved your point, Derek, about hiring practices. So, I pushed companies all the time, whether it’s a diversity initiative or you say you’re hiring on a talent scarcity model, but you’re really not. You’re still hiring off the same old model. And you’re thinking about, well, we need more people of color in our organizations. Well, guess what? Your baccalaureate degree as a placeholder is eliminating a lot of African-Americans and Latinx population. So, when you think about hiring practices, I think collectively as a country, we need to continually push core companies. And I know I do, even if you’re drinking from a fire hose, trying to hire people, I get that, but at the same time, you’re missing out on a tremendous amount of talent, not just from a race, ethnicity. And Giselle, thank you for talking about those with disabilities, because there are so many populations that could serve the talent needs of this country. And we’re not tapping into all of those as an ecosystem.

Dr. Hunter Reed: I think Jeff is exactly right. I think that intentional design and early exposure is also very important. Work-based learning, internships, apprenticeship programs, as Jeff mentioned, those went south with the pandemic or they went online. And so, that was a challenge. But paid apprenticeships so that individuals who really need those resources have the opportunity to participate, not just the wealthy kids who don’t need the money, but do want the experience, do want to network. So, if I had a magic wand, I would absolutely have a work-based learning experience for high school students and tie to every discipline in colleges and universities, so that they can understand how to connect the dots between their time and money in the world of work.

But it’s the exposure that makes such a difference, the networking, the opportunity to see people who look like you, who are doing the work that you want to do, and it erases the belief gap in students, right? So, you can say, I know now that I can do it because I see someone who’s doing it, or I believe that I can do it, or more importantly, someone who is a professional believes that I can do it. And so, I think that is important as well as we think about this work.

Giselle Mota: I love that you said the belief gap in students. I love that. And when I look at organizations, a lot of people are even afraid to self-identify and afraid to raise their hands and say anything because they are afraid of disrupting systems. And I think that if organizations, because I hear what you’re saying, Dr. Kim, is from this student perspective of what they can aspire to enter into these opportunities, but organizations also need to work on fixing what’s happening inside so that they create that environment for students to enter and for others to come in from the outside.

So, even when you look at an organization, a lot of change management just has to happen. And I can get super geeky and tell you to use data and organizational network analysis to start understanding your gaps and understand where the talent is, and who’s working in silos, and we can really dissect that way. Then I just have to go straight to the human side and say, but if you identify all of these things and you have all your management and leadership in place who are of one type, and that’s what you’ve done for years and years, are you willing to make changes and let someone else take an opportunity? Are you willing to speak up? Certain very human basic things need to start happening in organizations to create an environment of true change.

So, accountability, allowing for more budget to come into spaces, I’ll tell you quickly, there was like a 60% increase in chief diversity roles over the past few months. So, organizations who never had that role, all of a sudden, that’s been a priority, but true change has not happened yet. A lot of them report, I don’t have the budget, I don’t have the support, no one is allowing me to make true changes. So even if we implement some of these things, and we put these great ideas into place, if there’s not change management and accountability within organizations, things will remain the same. So, I’ll throw that out there, Derek. I know you’re looking for specifics out there.

Derek Ozkal: Well, we covered several topics, and so many more things that we weren’t able to cover today, thinking through all of the implications that this has, and certainly, the future is unknown and unknowable to a degree, but also we get to help shape it with the actions we take today. So, I guess I believe it, maybe for any last comments as we think about some of the other things that we should think about when we think about this nebulous topic, the future of work, as we come through hopefully with a vaccine and a changing role for the pandemic in our lives, any last takeaways or things to keep in mind. Professor Schor, I’ll start with you.

Juliet Schor: There’s some things we can do at the macro level that would really help the kinds of changes that everyone’s been talking about here today. And there are two that I have particularly in mind. One is something like the universal basic income and some universal basic services. And what that would allow us to do, it’s both humane that everybody in society should have enough to eat and decent housing and access to education. One of the things we’ve seen now with all the new research on minimum wages is it improves productivity and increases retention, people get a decent wage, they stay in the job longer, they do it better, and so forth. So, I think a lot of that actually pays for itself.

And the second part of this is to come back to the issue I started my career with, which is working hours, because in a world with the levels of incredible technological change that we’re seeing from AI, robotization, both in manufacturing services across the whole spectrum. Also, now we’re seeing in agriculture the possibility of producing our given level of output with so much less labor. I mean, that’s what this technological transition is doing for us. And from a climate and ecological point of view, we can’t afford to do what we’ve done over the last 50 years, which is just use all of that productivity to produce more and more and more and more. And we also have burnout and stress and work-family conflict. And we’ve seen that that’s one of the things that pandemic has laid bare.

So, the Spanish government just announced a major pilot, 200 companies going to a four-day workweek. Let’s start talking about that in the United States. It’s a key component of the agendas like the Movement for Black Lives, which are all about care and community care. And I think making sure that everybody has time in their life and doesn’t have to work these crazy long hours, it’s really fundamental to our social fabric, to our political life, to our ecological future. So, I think those are two really big things – when you give people security and also get a lot more flexibility in your labor force, as we know from the Northern European governments. And that’s how you manage what could be really disruptive transition, like what the future of work could be.

Derek Ozkal: Giselle, any other parting thoughts from you?

Giselle Mota: Yeah. I think the two things that I’d share and leave with, I think we need to get back to a sense of true partnerships and also returning to what humanity means. And I’ll explain that. So, during the pandemic, we saw so many different stakeholders influencing what the future of work can look like. So, we saw organizations that, and I think I mentioned it before, they had to furlough and lay off people. Certain hotels groups, for example, that weren’t getting as much demand, they shared their talent with other groups that did need those skillsets. I saw oil and gas companies start producing things that they never had to produce before, PPE-related equipment, all kinds of things like that, and sharing their talent and skills across the way as well. I saw public transportation partner with government to get children’s school supplies and food to areas. I saw certain people send out school buses with WiFi spots to try to get into rural communities that didn’t have access to internet. So, there was so many different things happening, we should probably continue.

The other thing is returning to humanity. And to me, this is the most important thing. I hear it as a theme of our conversation today as well. If we put humanity back as a business priority and we stop only putting profit and our own agendas in front of people – we’ve seen social, racial injustice amidst the pandemic, and that’s the first question everyone should be asking: Is this leaving somebody out? How does this impact certain groups of people? If I enact this policy, if we make this certain decision, where’s the bias? How do we get in touch with, again, how do we build networks of people? How do we get people the right resources? If we start thinking more like that and just becoming more human, I think it’ll help us, it’ll go a long way.

Derek Ozkal: Dr. Reed, would you like to go next?

Dr. Hunter Reed: Sure. I’ll build on Giselle’s point about collaboration. Obviously, I’m excited to be sitting here having received my two vaccines, the power of science, the power of research to say, we are going to kick COVID, and we’re going to put on a full-scale approach across the world to try to make this happen. And so, I think it reminds us of the power of innovation and entrepreneurship when we focus on something big together, not individuals competing, but really co-creating solutions together. And, so, I think that is an important lesson for us that we should not lose. We should not go back into our silos and think about status quo. Giselle’s exactly right, we need to co-create together, we need to think big about things that matter and really see the kinds of changes that will make sure that more people prosper in America in all of our communities.

And one thing that I would certainly say that will help with that is universal access to credentials of value, making sure that we’re thinking about if it’s the affordability barrier, if it’s the academic preparation barrier, if it’s the, I’ve got to work three jobs and I can’t take a breath to really move on to a credential that is a living wage, plus, I think we’ve got to really bring together the best thought leaders to really focus on how to braid resources, thought leadership, policies, practice to get universal access to credentials of value, that will make a huge difference in this country.

Derek Ozkal: Jeff, any last words?

Jeff Barratt: Yeah. I will just build upon the great comments before me, but the Kauffman Foundation believes that economic prosperity is gained through education or entrepreneurship. And what I see in education is that technology has to be embraced from as soon as they hit school and all the way through K-12 and lifelong learning, not only access to technology, but how to use it and how’s it relevant, not only in the school that I’m learning and in the workforce training, post high school, but how’s it related to the world I’m going to work in? And then secondly is, to everybody’s point, we have to figure out how to continually erase these economic constraints that happen. I mean, it’s not the things that happen inside my classrooms that keep people out of my programs, it’s the things that happen outside of my classrooms.

So, when you think about students that have to take on that second job, because their partner or husband or family member was laid off, and now they’ve got to go back to work and drop out of a Skilled KC program, we have to think about our scholarship program, even. This country needs a skilled workforce, individuals that live in this country want to be that skilled workforce. So, how do we rethink the scholarship process to be a bundled approach where you cut down on attrition by maybe building a few more thousand in there to help them live while they’re going through your program, and not have to rely on taking that second job, so they’re going to be successful and complete that training and come back and get more and more as they earn while they learn, to Kim’s point earlier? So, those are two big keys for me. Technology is only going to get bigger and the need is going to grow to attain it and learn it, but the economic constraints is, in my mind, one of the biggest fundamental crises right now.

Derek Ozkal: Thanks. I would also, just continue to echo what everyone else has said as well, too. I mean, there are tremendous challenges ahead, but also tremendous opportunities here too. And I just want to thank everyone so much for sharing their thoughts as we think about how important it is to invest in this future that works for everyone and providing some really clear and specific practical insights for how we can move forward. We hope our viewers will keep the conversation going as well, too. Thanks for watching another Kauffman Conversation.