This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. I would say one of the top two or three topics that we're talking about just about every day on air off Eric Carroll, is how do we get back to the office, What does it look like? And how has work fundamentally changed. On the other side of this, well, we have someone an expert who's been on this show before, who has She has
all the answers. So you need look no further than our next guest, Erica Volini, back with us global human capital leader at Delat Consulting, joining us on the phone from Phoenix. So no pressure, Erica, but you're here to solve all of our problems and to answer all of our questions about everything related to getting back to work. So um, you know you've got seven or eight minutes to accomplish this. Um. But in all seriousness, like we are starting to now think about this, but we're thinking
about it through a lens. I think for many of us that is fundamentally different from when we went into
this ten or eleven weeks ago. What are you guys hearing? Absolutely, I mean we're seeing major organizations right now make announcements around the return to work, and I think fundamentally, at the core, organizations are trying to understand, um, what work should they be doing, how can that work be done, what work can be done remotely, what work requires the need to be done on site, and what whatever way
work being done. How is the organization going to prepare its leaders, it's infrastructure to be able to support work moving forward, because it is going to look fundamentally different. Yeah, you know, I was thinking about it, and actually our producer Paul Brennan was reminding us. You know, you talked to us about these surveys you do every year, and I think last time we talked about the robot apocalypse
and how AI can work in concert with humans. And I do think even more than ever before, we're going to need technology right to especially in big cities, to kind of help us get back and feel comfortable about our work settings exactly. And Deloitte just produced Human Capital Report. We just released it a few weeks ago, and the title of our report is all about the integration of
humans and technology. And to your point, Carol, technology is absolutely essential, but there is a recognition that technology is not enough. In fact, Our survey, which UM surveyed over nine thousand people around the world, found that only twelve percent of organizations are planning on using technology like AI
to replace workers. Instead, we're seeing a shift of integrating humans and technology into what we're calling super team and really leveraging the power of that technology to augment what human are doing. I actually think a perfect example in the context of the pandemic is contact tracing. Everyone is talking about all these contact tracing technologies, but in the US we're currently looking for between a hundred and three
hundred thousand human contact tracers. So it's a recognition that even though the technology is there, we need humans with empathy, with listening skills, with the ability to relate to individuals in times of stress to actually make that technology work. And that's really the mindset that we think organizations need to have as the enter this next decade. I think people don't understand AI, and maybe we've done you know, everybody hasn't done the best job at explaining how it works.
Like we've talked to We've had some great stories in the magazine and Business Week magazine about AI and hospitals. How you can make it possible for workers to do even more by using kind of AI screening UM with patients, and I just think maybe maybe we've got to do a better job of explaining it. Yeah, AI is is a tremendous technology that will transform the way that works getting done, but it will not ultimately replace those essential
human skills. And I think we've actually learned a lot through the pandemic about how agile, nimble, and adaptable, and how important those essential human skills are. If we think about going to the grocery store, going to the pharmacy, interacting with UM with customer service representative, that ability to empathize, to listen, to understand the customers needs, and to interact with them differently, that's not something that technology is going
to be able to do alone. So I think now is the time for organizations to even double down more on investing in those human skills. And one of the statistics that really worried us in our survey this year is that only sixteen per cent, so that one and six of our respondents said that they're going to significantly invest in reskilling and focusing on continual reinvention of the
workforce over the next three years. Despite the fact that the majority of our respondents said that between half and of the workforce are going to need to fundamentally change their skills. So there's just a huge disconnect there. I feel like, Jason, we talked yesterday Erico with pare yillen Hammer, long time CEO of volvo Um, you know, a few
decades ago. But nonetheless he's got a book out and he was talking about leadership and integrity but the importance of the blue collar worker, kind of a responsibility of a company to workers. And I do wonder if that, you know, I don't know if this comes up in your surveys, but I do feel like companies don't necessarily feel responsible to workers, maybe like they used to. And I don't want to make a blanket statement because I don't think that's fair. And I work for a great
company UM that takes care of of its workforce. But I do wonder is there something missing? More broadly, well interestingly enough, the number one and two trends in this year's survey were belonging and well being, and I think that's big scarle exactly to what you're saying, which is and their acknowledgement by the way of our respondent said that it's an organizational responsibility to focus on the well
being of its workers. So there's acknowledgement that it's a responsibility, but the execution is not quite there because only our response and said they're not even measuring the impact of their well being programs. So took to me the missing piece is how do you actually take what you um, what you're stating in these mission statements that you're making, and translate it to the day to day worker, translated into the work themselves. And the best way to do
that is design work for well being. Make sure you're investing in reskilling programs and helping workers build new capabilities, give them an understanding of how you're rewarding them, what's the basis for your compensation strategies. Be more open and
transparent around what's going on. And that's the the execution part is what's not happening right now and not translating Based on our survey Erica, how much do you worry that in the midst of a job crisis and a health crisis some of these things that maybe we're committed to in theory fallback in practice when we are on the other side of this and We're in an economy that's tough. People are happy to just have a job only about a minute left. But how much is that, uh,
factoring into how you look at things. I worry about it a lot, and I think you know. One of the phrases we're using is let's return to work in the future of work, because what we're trying to communicate organizations is that we can't just think about returning to work the same way we did before. We have to keep an eye towards the future, and we need to
make sure we're investing for the future. The war for talent has never really ended, and it will pick up again as the economy picks up, and employees and workers will remember how organizations treated them. And there's a real opportunity right now for organizations to set the tone that's going to be not just as they dam but for the next decade. All Right, we're gonna leave it. They're great to catch up with you. Thanks so much for the time. Erica Velini is Global Human Capital leader Forward
Deloitte Consulting, joining us on the phone from Phoenix. A really interesting conversation and an important one as we all think about returning to the office, not returning the office, and what work is going to click