What Employers MUST Do to Keep Gen Z Engaged | Workplus Ep. 11

Leadership Gap, AI Skills and Purpose at Work with Susan Hayman

In this episode of Workplus, we sit down with Susan Hayman, Engagement and Employer Solutions Manager at CIPD in Northern Ireland. With deep roots in fashion retail and a passion for building better workplaces, Susan shares her journey from Boston to Belfast and opens up about the urgent issues facing today’s employers. From the looming leadership gap to practical uses of AI, Susan brings a fresh, honest voice to the conversation around purpose, flexibility and rethinking what meaningful work looks like.

• Gen Z values impact over authority and autonomy over hierarchy
• Many millennials feel burned out by traditional leadership roles
• The leadership gap is widening across industries and regions
• Culture must start with a clear “why” that everyone can connect with
• Apprenticeships are underused but powerful talent pathways
• Retail taught Susan fast wins, clear values and purpose through experience
• AI skills are the new baseline, not optional add-ons
• Parents and carers have a powerful support role in career journeys
• Flexibility doesn’t always mean hybrid, it means options
• Education and workplace design must evolve together

BEST MOMENTS

00:02:27. “If you ever want to chat about selvage or twill weave and warp threads, I am your person.”

00:04:42. “If more organizations had a clear outline of their why and their purpose, they would see greater levels of excitement with their employees.”

00:08:00. “The purpose of my role is to improve the working worlds so that my kids have a better experience entering the job market than I did.”

00:11:22. “You don't have to work in HR to be a people professional.”

00:17:21. “If people actually want to walk down them, then we'll be focusing more on mentorship programs or reframing leadership beyond managing people.”

00:21:15. “AI… it's inescapable at this point. The implementation of it is massive.”

00:27:08. “I think the right point to start training people is when we're thinking about entering the workplace. So maybe in 14, 15, 16 plus.”

00:45:02. “You can be what you see.”

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Transcript

0:00

purpose of my role is to improve the working worlds so that my kids have a better experience entering the job market than I did. Gen Z don't aspire to become managers and millennials are burned out by leadership expectations. Because it feels thankless, underpaid and all consuming. this isn't just a generational attitude problem. This is like a wake up call for employers. we're heading into a leadership gap. If companies don't start to Susan. Yeah, delighted to have you with us to talk. You. I do feel like we've been talking about this a long time. We have. I, I actually came to you and I was saying, what do you think the HR professionals need to be to hear as well? So it was helpful. And you gave me a few things. I guess our audience is H.R. Professionals, but it's also parents. And, you know, those are helping young people to make career decisions as well. So we hope this will be a wide ranging conversation today. But, framed from your accent, we've just heard from Ryan Ryan these parts, but, yeah. Tell us about how you find your way from Boston to Belfast. I don't know what gave it away, but, you know, people back home in Boston, they actually say, I don't have enough. I don't sound like I'm from there anymore. And I'm like, well, where do I sound like I'm from? But no. Yes, I did grow up in Boston. My background is in fashion retail in America, so I spent a lot of time, if anyone knows Boston on Newbury Street and then moving my career to New York, which is obviously, you know, the Mecca for fashion retail. Specifically, I worked in denim for a lot of years. So if you ever want to chat about selvage or twill weave and warp threads, I am your person. But yeah, it's interesting. In America, retail and fashion retail specifically. Like, you're earning six figures when you're in your early 20s. Like you're running businesses that are multi-million dollar companies. So working in a flagship in Soho in Manhattan. Comparing that to the, you know, general managers who are working on Regent Street in London, like it's just completely different. And I think the people who are running these shops and in London specifically where I, where I moved to when I first left America, I think they can be massively undervalued and lacking a sense of identity in some of these stores. And in a lot of cases, the labor is quite cheap. Which is where you see this kind of decline in customer service. And I would say that's one of the starkest comparisons between American retail and, British retail, right? Is everyone says the customer service is very different. So when I first moved to London, I started looking at like, where could I build culture? Cultivate teams really work on engagement because those were my core skill sets. I was lucky enough to work in Selfridges. I worked with a brand called Kate Spade, which you might know, but, you know, these are very identifiable brands, and they deliver an experience to their customers. And that, to me, was what drew me in to the people side of it. And being in the people profession. So it's not dissimilar to how HR would deliver onboarding experiences to kind of drive culture within. Yes, within an organization. Yeah. And the thing I like most about retail and fashion, it, it's believing in this brand, this core purpose. Right. So you have very identifiable values. Culture is huge. You buy into the story of that brand, and then you sell that story to customers through your goods and products and services. And I think if more organizations kind of had a clear outline of their why and their purpose, they would see greater levels of excitement with their employees, and feeling like they can contribute to that success. So in retail, it's a very quick win, right? You would hit your numbers. At the end of the day, you celebrate with your team and then you do it all again tomorrow. Whereas I think with organizations it's a longer game for that enthusiasm, but you can still get people to buy into it. And I guess going back to your question, one of the biggest surprises for me in moving from Boston to, how I ended up in Belfast was like meeting my husband. He's British. We, you know, eventually decided London wasn't a long term place for us. He's from Manchester. I don't hate him. And we were kind of looking at, like, long term, you know, where is a good place to be. And we'll talk about this a little in a little while, I hope. But Belfast and Northern Ireland in general is a great place to have a family and to like, raise your kids. I don't know if you were brought up here like locally, but it is just really an experience for my, my children. So we definitely made the right decision looking around the UK for places to kind of end up. And luckily Cipd had opportunities here for me. So yeah. Long, long story short, that's how I got. Yeah. Good good good good. You mentioned develop both going into fashion retail and your the skills that you develop. So like when you were going through you know through school, college or whatever, like did you have a strong sense of like these are the things that I'm good at or were you just like just laughing at some? You didn't really think too much about it. So I think I went to school for business economics. I learned a lot about how organizations work. What makes successful businesses? And so I always knew I was going to work in that sort of area. But of course, as a university student, you're desperate for a part time job. And mine just happened to be in retail, and I loved that. I loved, like chatting to people. I loved having, being on a team. I really liked our, like, combined purpose of having a goal and I really connected with the brand at an early age when I was in university. So I think that just sort of was a natural progression for me. The most sort of influential and impactful person at the early stages of my career would have been an LNG manager or an LNG practitioner. So since they were in development. Yeah, learning and development, they were really engaging. They really sold me the Kool-Aid. You know, I drank at and I was like, all in, and I thought they were a really amazing example of how to communicate to others how to engage people. And it was just, yeah, a really good experience. I would say once I graduated, my jobs varied in terms of level of job satisfaction and how valued I felt as an employee. Which is why eventually working in the air for my, you know, and I I'll say this a million times to everyone who'll listen. The purpose of my role is to improve the working worlds so that my kids have a better experience entering the job market than I did. Because I think for a lot of us, especially back in the early 2000, there was a lot of stuff going on in organizations, in retail environments that was not it was not okay. So, you know, I think working in a position where I have influence to help change that for people, fairer work practices is really important to me. Yeah, yeah. So CBD is the professional body for the individuals working in H.R. Talent and roles. Yeah. The world. So I mean, we are global a global organization. And we basically set the standards for what good working practices look like. And for me it's about champion those good working practices. We have something called the profession map which helps people in all different situations. It can, you know, be a gauge to help you progress in your career. It can be a career pathway. It can set good standards of best practice for your organization. And we utilize that all the time in conversations just to, you know, measure where people are being successful and where they have opportunities. And I just think having those sets of standards to say this is okay, this is good behavior, and this is behavior that needs to change. Like that would have been really useful for me, early on in my career, just being able to say leadership skills sets are not where they need to be. This is not the type of behavior we need to see in the organization. But, you know, you don't have those skills all the time early on. So I that's why I love my job, is because I am talking to employers about how we can create more, you know, just better work practices for their people. Yeah. Yeah. And you're obviously doing that through your members. Not, not just there are a lot of small businesses, micro businesses that don't have an the area HR professional yet. There are so many of the jobs across our economy. So it's like how does someone and a micro business, you know manage well when they don't have any HR qualification membership? Okay, they suck or they don't even have like an H.R. person. I mean, yeah, a lot of SMEs that I work with in Northern Ireland will be outsourcing their HR function to, an independent consultant. And Cipd obviously supports independent consultants who work in all different sectors and industry, to help them go in and set good standards of best practice. But I would say for those organizations who can't even afford that outsourcing, like there is a lot of cipd content that's free that you can use to build leadership skills. I mean, look, there's content out on the internet everywhere that can help you do those. But I think the first person that comes to mind is Carol Fitzsimons. She's the chief exec at, Young Enterprise Northern Ireland. She said one of the first times they met her, she said, you don't have to work in HR to be a people professional. And she leads with that example in her organization where if she doesn't have a dedicated HR person, but everyone in her team knows how to have those leadership skill sets to manage people, properly so that they can thrive in their roles. Yeah, and I think that's really important just to have those core behaviors and that core knowledge to have a positive impact. Yeah, yeah. so in terms of what you mentioned earlier by company organizations start really understanding their why and retail do it's a daily thing. You're it's almost like a sprint every day. You can then celebrate at the end of and then you go again the next day you go again. Why do you think a lot of companies don't really have that sense of their of their why? And because if you're you're so inspired by by so many of us are so inspired by what on earth are we here for? And then, yeah, why are we why do we turn up every day? Why is it that so many businesses don't have that? You know, I think it's, you know, part of it is identifying your purpose. And sometimes that can get a bit muddled like that. Story always comes back to me about, you know, John F Kennedy went to NASA and spoke to the janitor and he said, what are you doing? As he was mopping the floor? And he said, I'm putting a man on the moon. And so, like that whole I'm invested in this, I know what our purpose says, and I'm a part of it. No matter what my role is, how small it is, or how insignificant you might think it is. And I think when we're talking about culture and when we're talking about how we, bring people in, talk about our core values, relate to them on their level, because you want people who are working for you that can really relate. They feel like, oh yes, my values are the same as yours. And that's how you kind of build that culture. There are lots of ways to build culture. I won't get into all the events, but I think that you have to be really clear with your purpose. And when you're doing your recruitment and your hiring, you need to be looking at people who share in the same values, have the same interests. And those interests might change over time, and that's fine. That's what turnover is all about, getting fresh perspectives in the door. But initially you want to make sure that the people on your team also have the same passion. as you meet with the people profession and all the people that that includes, what are some of the big, big issues that you're hearing right now? Oh gosh. I mean, that's a big question. There's a lot of issues that I'm kind of hearing all of the time. I mean, first of all, when I speak to our membership, there is there's a lot of grumbling going on right now about the potential costs of this new legislation that's coming in with the Good Jobs Bill. So around it's mostly around pay transparency. There are loads of SMEs. I think it's like 80% of Northern Ireland is SMEs. Yeah, yeah. And you know we've got to start somewhere. But structural realignments and introducing pay bands can be a very disrupt out of process. And it can be very costly. And when employees feel that their work is undervalued, I mean, that's what we're discussing. We've got an event coming up on the 17th, at our reward network, and we're going to be discussing the pay transparency and the legislation that's coming in. But it's definitely at the top of people's agenda, especially when they feel like we don't have the money to change our processes and to do this, reporting that they want or to put in pay bands. And then we might lose some people because you'll be at the top of a pay band and I'll be at the bottom, but we do the same job. Only one of us is male and one of us is female. So, you know, it's it's that kind of apprehension, but, you know, it's coming. And I think it it can be a step in the right direction. And we're trying to support our people through that process. I mean, if I was to talk to you about the biggest workplace shifts that I think no one is ready for is that there's a growing trend I'm seeing, with Gen Zs, millennials who are walking away from the traditional path to management. So, according to a recent article I saw, like, Gen Z don't aspire to become managers and millennials are burned out by leadership expectations. Because it feels thankless, underpaid and all consuming. And I'm completely generalizing here about, you know, this isn't just a generational attitude problem. This is like a wake up call for employers. Speaking to recruiter, I have really good relationships with recruiters locally, but they're trying for months to place executives and advising organizations that we're heading into a leadership gap. If companies don't start to rethink how they build teams, how they incentivize and really support people leadership. So, yeah, I think where we're really heading into this big leadership gap and nobody's talking about it but young professionals today, right? So if you think about, people who are joining the workforce, they want impact over authority. They want autonomy over hierarchy, they want flexibility over rigidity. So these are things that they're asking for. But we're like pushing people to get promoted up the corporate ladder. In a way that seems really outdated. But actually, see, if we redesign leadership paths and, you know, if people actually want to walk down them, then we'll be focusing more on, like maybe investing in mentorship programs or reframing the leadership beyond managing people and kind of looking at how those leadership paths would align to more modern values. And I think that's the key is we need to think about what they want, because what they don't want is the responsibility of being a manager. And that's what report after report is telling us. You know, where yeah, even in my own organization and, and, you know, Cipd has very fair working practices. But if you think about a few a couple of years ago, even we were talking about the four day workweek and flexible hybrid working, and, is what's this doing to productivity? And now there's all this talk about like return to the office and everybody needs to be in the office three days a week. And if you want the senior management job, you need to be in the office. And so it's like, well, okay, where where are we shifting? It just seems to be moving away from, the hybrid models that we were all kind of aspiring to do you think is the reason for that, though? Moving back to the office? Yeah, I mean, I think that in the productivity studies that we saw from organizations who did four day work weeks, there was no real evidence that showed productivity was so much better than, people who were working five days a week in a hybrid situation or working in an office three days a week. So think it depends on the person. I think it depends on the role. But I also think if we're seeing this gap in leadership, we need to be widening our nets, not narrowing them. Yeah. Yeah. But like you talked about and I know it's retail is by Ben and and a place with, with a group of people and a team, being inspired each day to hit your targets and then celebrate at the end of it, are we missing something if we're not going to have people coming together and and teams rather than just using teams? No. Yeah. No, I absolutely think there's like a place for, having that face to face. But I think back to my days in retail in Manhattan, for example. I mean, I was up, I was working about 70 hours a week, 80 hours, sometimes during Christmas. So the quality of your work life balance is completely skewed. And that's the responsibility of a senior manager in that sector. But if the option for job sharing or if the option for me to flex my own hours, or if there was an option for me to work nights over a certain period and then have 2 or 3 days off, like if there were options for me. That's what I mean when I say flexibility. It doesn't necessarily have to be hybrid work at home. It doesn't necessarily mean four day work week. It's not rigid. What I'm saying is we need to open up the opportunity for flexible working, which could be a range of things. Yeah. I think my experience tells me I would have been so much more productive if I had more autonomy over when I was working in the impact that had. Yeah. Retail's a hard business. You're open 12 hours a day, you're not going to work that whole 12 hours. The person who did the morning shift isn't going to be celebrating with you when you close the doors, but they still know that they contributed to the day and that, I think, is the message that organizations need to hear is how am I contributing even if I'm not seeing the end result immediately, do I still feel like I was successful in enabling that to happen? Yeah yeah yeah there's a lot of not good jobs, bill, as you say, this huge piece of legislation, it's been costed though hasn't it. The impact I think has been costed, but what you're saying is there are costs that your profession are saying. Yeah, people are still nervous about it. They're still nervous about the disruption that it could. You know, I also the cost of disruption, so to speak, rather than actually the cost of implementing, implementing them. Yeah. I mean, the last thing that people are really going on about and you own, this won't be a surprise to you because it's at every conference and it seems to be on every podcast I listen to is, AI. Right. So it's inescapable at this point. The implementation of it is massive. The first thing I would do if I was a student, a young professional or an old professional like anybody, is to learn AI skills. You have to learn AI skills like everyone needs to learn this, and they just need to be interacting with it every day. You know, it's reshaping industry workflows. It's impacting hiring decisions. It's like changing career pathways for people. And it's not about, you know, being a coder or really understanding the ins and outs of it, but it's just being AI literate, learning prompt engineering, for example. And how to use AI as a real assistant. I don't know if you write the script conference last month, but we saw at the conference how I can be your personal assistant, how it can help you with your work, how it can just be your tasker. And it's, you know, formed on the screen as this real person, but it doesn't need to be, but, yeah, I would say the landscape is evolving so fast. Start small. You know, get your hands on tools like ChatGPT, perplexity, Gemini Pro like, play around with them and experiment. I mean, do you have Alexa? don't have Alexa, and I have all. I've never really wanted to have Alexa in my life. Like, I don't know what I would do without Alexa is really fine. Okay? I literally don't know what I would do it. So that's that's at home. You're using it? Yeah. Like as soon as I walk in the door, Alexa is there to help me. Right. Okay. It's like, set the timer. Do you know, check on this. Who dropped off? What was the deliveries today? Like? Who came to the door? Like, all of it. And it's really. I don't know how I did before. Okay. Using the we using it in an at work context, but, not not an island home. Like, I've started to turn off my microphones on, on all my apps. Have you? Oh, yeah, I don't. Yeah. Is that not China? Well, it's whenever the suggestions are coming in. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's really what we were just talking about. Oh yeah. Yeah. Me. See I love that. I think that the suggestions are like some of them, some of them are spot on. I'm like, yes, thank you. But no, I think it's it's really interesting because these AI tools in work related instances, like just ask them to help you write something, research something, help you get organized, help you brainstorm. The real advantage of someone who's really good at prompting AI is someone who knows how to frame the right questions and guide the tool. I mean, this isn't different. This is no different from the skills you need to lead a high performing team. These are the same skills. Okay. So what? Yeah. What are those skills? So if you think about it, let's say you you graduated from university and you didn't know how to use the internet or email or Excel spreadsheets like you would be unemployable. And AI is the next evolution of that baseline skill set. The professionals who know how to work with AI, they know how to think critically. They know how to prompt effectively and lead AI and the AI supported team. So they're not just staying relevant, but they're like pulling ahead. And those are the same critical thinking skills that you've got. And the team leader an effective one anyway. Yeah. But I also think, yes, it's going to take some art and science to use AI really effectively, but if you can master it, you're going to be working faster and thinking smarter and making yourself indispensable. And at the end of the day, you just need to be asking yourself, how can this help me do my job better? Because that's where the real advantages, I think, for people. So how you talked about AI, let us say how far back in the in someone's life let's, let's should that extend like, yeah, you've got like we've both got children. Right? So like, how far back. Like when should you start to become literate? Like I asked, like from the kids who are using a accessed and that's okay. Yes. So my children know how to, speak to Alexa. They only have Alexa in the kitchen, right? So it's not in their bedrooms. They can't say to Alexa, like, are you right? Are you my friend? Do you like me? Those are the kind of the scary questions you don't want your kids to to be prompting. I would say my kids will ask Alexa in the kitchen to read them an audiobook or play a Disney song that they like. Like they know how to do that. And my children are five and seven. My kids don't have screens, so they don't have tablets. The only TV time they got and my husband will back me up on this unless I'm not home and he's turning it on. But my kids get a movie night during the weekend and they'll wake up on a Saturday or Sunday and watch, like, cartoons that we've selected for them. So apart from that, there's no TV during the school week. And yeah, they don't get screen time, which means they probably are behind a lot of kids when it comes to technology. Yeah. That's where we I personally stand on that, whether that's right or wrong, I don't know. But I don't believe my kids should have access to AI tools. I think the right point to start training people is when we're thinking about entering the workplace. So maybe in, in like 14, 15, 16 plus, I think that's when you have to start building things for your career longevity. Apart from communication, apart from confidence and presentation delivery, apart from those skills that we we you're putting much earlier on, you're applying them and you know so they're they're developing communication listening teamwork. All those core transversal skills. They're just not applying it and not being sucked into technological device at that stage. But yeah, once they get yeah, I'm starting to think about careers. I definitely think there's a place for it in schools. But like, even now, my kids school, they, they like teach them things on a, on a screen. And I'm like, why are you doing those? Bring back the chalkboard. But you know, I think, some there's lots of debate amongst parents and teachers as well as to like how effective digital learning is. Yeah. I personally well, the reason that there were green chalkboards was because green is a color that's soothing on the eyes. Like, that's why I say no, no. Well, and now we're, like, putting on these bright, flashy lights. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I know you know what? There's a future in optometry. I it could be a robot that comes to your eyes. So. Yeah, well, we'll, you know, we'll peel away from our dystopian future there, but, but one of the things that we've picked up on where we're talking to people and talent are our rules is the tight labor market right now. So really tight, like single figures, like two, 3% unemployment rate. But yet there's this high level of skill shortage vacancies, which I think in the latest report was up to 36%. So over a third of employers are saying we've got vacancies that are vacant because we can't find people, but we can't find the people with the skills, qualifications or experience to do the job, you know? So what are some of the ways your members are maybe trying to address their skills? Shortage vacancies either give a sense of the alternative pathways or not. Yeah. I mean, look, I've been a huge fan of work for years because I believe more employers need to look at adding more routes to employment to their portfolio, like we have to get more people into or just open up the opportunities. Like I said earlier, widen the net and let's bring people in. Let's look at the actual criteria that we're asking people to have, for jobs, because some of them I mean, I remember when I first moved here, I was working with an employer and they, were asking for, like a bachelor's degree for a job that did not require a bachelor's degree. And I was like, why is this, you know, something that is a non-negotiable for you? You're missing a trick here. Or I would even when I first moved to London, I would apply for different roles, looking at different retailers and every job opportunity that I wanted was asking for a Cipd qualification. Now I had a society of HR management qualification from America, but I didn't even know what Cipd was back then. I mean, we're going back to 2013, but I was like, why I could not get a job, whereas if those employers had hired me and said, we'd really like you to have a cipd qualification, could we partially fund that for you, or would that be something you'd be open to? I would have been over the moon. Another piece of my learning and development. Absolutely. Let's do it. But they just I didn't even get through this EFT. And this is like a huge problem. So I think employers need to really look at what they're asking for. And in terms of like looking at routes to employment as a priority. Apprenticeships and apprenticeship degrees are such a good way to engage those people who are economically inactive. We heard last week from Gordon at the Green Skills Action, Gordon Parks. Yeah, we heard that, you know, there's a staggering numbers of people who are economically inactive. But once we can get them to buy into the brand and what we're doing, and we began growing our own as garden, Gordon would have, say, then you have that commitment to purpose very early on. And once you've got that commitment to purpose, the skills can be taught. The qualifications can be part of their learning and development and their ongoing training, but we just need to get them in first. And I think there's a big pool of people who would rather work in a job that they find meaning and purposeful ness in. Then, you know, just go somewhere because they've got the right qualifications. Yeah, it's oh, I got that. I got that when mentioned Gordon Parks and Ed Gordon has been a huge advocate of, of growing their own talent, and they've been invested in a very technical apprenticeship for decades. A lot of their new senior managers came through that route. Yeah. But they've also looked at higher level apprenticeships and in different areas like finance and cyber and all those things as well. So but yet Gordon does talk about the stats around that, in that less than 10% of employers here use apprenticeships as talent pathway, but 32% say they want to. So there's just there's this gap between the what's happening now and what could possibly happen to even the context of what you've just said around the specification of a job description and pathways and all of that. What do you think needs to change with HR? Managers or managing directors of small firms start to change their mindset. we're going to get to a point where the demographics are a problem and people are going to have their hands tied. They won't really have a choice. I mean, you only need to look at how many primary schools have closed in the last, you know, decades. To know that people are having less children and there's less going to be less talent out there. But I think for HR practitioners that I speak to, like putting someone through an apprenticeship to them is like either an outlying cost or it's complicated or they just don't know how to do it. And if they could understand a bit more about the benefits of that route to employment, I think they would have much more of a case study to go to the board and say, look, this is what we need to add. But yeah, when it comes to, you know, the demographics, I just want to, as a side note, say, what surprises me most about living in Northern Ireland is the amount of people I meet who do come back when they come back. So what I mean by that is I have hope that there will be, more because young people, right? They tend to graduate or leave or, you know, leave before they go to university and they just don't come back straight away. And so we're seeing this outpouring of young talent leaving. But in America, when I pick up my kids from school, who's there to pick them up? It's either parents, babysitters, nannies, like after school care. Clubs are a really big thing over there. When I pick up my kids from school here, it's the grandparents, the aunty. It's the it's the support network that that family has or the parents. And so I think that there's something to be said about that village vibe that Northern Ireland gives off, right? I mean, people are shocked when I tell them that I've had my kids and I've raised my kids, and I've done all this alone with no family support around. And the only support I do have is the afterschool clubs in the nurseries. And, you know, the child care facilities. But virtually in America, I don't know a single person who lives in a neighborhood close to their family, their parents. I don't know anyone who lives in a neighborhood the same neighborhood they grew up then. Certainly not. But being here is such a lovely place to raise their kids. I see why people do come back to it. And, you know, that does give me some hope that if the employers are asking the right questions, we're going to start to see those roles being felt, especially the senior roles where those gaps but yeah, back to your question. I was listening to a podcast yesterday on skills. As I do the Cipd one, just to plug that. And the question was, are we more inclined to invest in skills when you know what the future requirements will be? So where does this onus set around skills? Is it the profession that needs to drive it? Is it to be driven by education? Like where do we think that sits and how do we create work environments where people can actually thrive? And Doctor Adrian Waite, who is the head of talent and leadership, he's really well known. I'll quote him because it was really interesting what he said. He said by looking at skills outside of the context of application, you're looking at skills and you're not looking at where they're being performed. You're not looking at the systems in which they're working. You're not looking at the context and the work flow and the crosses between teams. And you're not looking. You're just looking at skills in isolation, which is a huge mistake. We aren't colleges. We aren't in the education business. We are in the performance business. So let's look at skills within the role taxonomy. We don't develop skills outside of the context of performance. Developing skills needs to see outcomes of performance, and we need to we need that performance in order to do the reflective practice so that we can then again develop the skills. So it's this cyclical cycle. But yeah, it was really interesting because I thought we're focusing so much on what, what skills do our young people need in order to do jobs of the future. But if the organizations with the jobs of the future don't have that infrastructure set up, how do we actually know what the skills are going to be? And so it's this catch 22 that I kept going around with. And my thoughts are there is going to be a shift required and capability. And more HR practitioners need to be looking at apprenticeships as a route to employment so that they're getting both the practical hands on knowledge in the workplace as well as the education. But you need a strategic plan to provide people with new skills to succeed in the role. And employers should really be focusing not just on how we can get more employability into the workplace, but the systems and building that infrastructure to support that. And I do remember at the green skills launch last week, they did mention we need to get the infrastructure right, and we talked about that as well. Yeah, I think it was really summed up really well by Jonathan Martindale from Phoenix who talked about three things. And he said, first of all, we need to understand what the skills requirements are. Then we need to design the pathways that people can get to that destination, and then we need to get the people. Yeah. So there's, you know, it was really I just thought it was a really succinct way of, of laying it out. But it's, but the, the difficult that is actually a green, you know, like, you know, if we're, if we've got this, you know, we've only got I mean we've got a level of confidence about what we need. Let's assume with every, well, every decision we make. Yeah. It's only a decision because there's imperfect information that we're having against. Exactly. It's just, you know, do you have your how you want to have your eyes or how big is a dartboard? But, there's a yeah, there's a, there's a real challenge there. But but I like the way I'll, I love the way he articulated that and that and that podcast as well. We've just caught it there. It was really interesting because I often think about, oh, we need, you know, these young people who are even my children who are in school, like, what skills do they need? Like, we don't know yet. We don't know half of the jobs that you see on, you know, the the job posts right now. They're not even gonna exist in 20 years time. They will not like who knows what it's going to be. you know, don't get into the truck driving business or anything like that. That was my next career move. And thank you for the advice. But, you know, I see more and more things like automation, this automation that you know, I had a, a plumber come round because we had a leak and this is back in Boston and my cousin's house, and the plumber came round to check the leak. He didn't pick up a tool, a single tool. But you know what he did need to know how to do was manage a drone to go up on the roof and look at the damage, assess what needed to be done. Like never got up on the ladder, did not like this is the job of the plumber of the future. You need to be handy with a drone and you need to be handy with like being able to use optic lasers to fix things like this is the this is how we're progressing. Yeah, but there's still that need to be personal with, clients. Yeah, yeah, there's that part of it. I know that there was a, like, podcast that I was watching a few days ago by AI and it talked about, the Tesla Optimus, which is this humanoid, thing, which terrifies me, but, but it's he talked about plumbing being on, you know, this is this is going to be able to plumb. Yeah. No, there are greater mines out there than mine, but I, I'm saying to myself of high like, you know, it's all going to need to have a person. But suppose it comes back to like the reason why truck drivers are under threat is they're doing a task, so to speak, you know, and gas lighters, you know, our baby would be lit gas lights. That was a that was a task. Yeah. You know, that's one of the one of the slides that, my colleague Lizzy would use when we go to school and we're talking about jobs that don't exist anymore. It's just this sort of grubby faced man in his 60s and black and white. We can maybe put it up on the sold off at this point, but he's got this metal rod in his hand. So again, like, you know, this job was called a wicker upper. So genuinely he'd score on top of the windows. But that guy in my neighborhood now. Yeah. So we still there's, there's still this, alive and well that heritage is being crafted. But the reason why, you know, his job is not theirs, because his job wasn't. Well, it was a job, but it was a task. Yeah, it was a it was to wake people up. And I think that's where, like in what you talked about earlier about kids and learning lit creativity, building the lesson to communicate, to work as part of a team. All those things are going to be really helpful in any generation. And you've got this chance then for them to, because they develop these wider life skills to be able then to adapt and go, well, this is why I'll use this technology or this tool to, to do X, y, or Z for that particular problem that, that you and I don't even like. I not agreed, I don't want to think about the future. if there was one thing like if we were sitting here in 20, 35, and there was one thing that you'd want to change about working practice or skills or whatever, and if you had the power to be able to do that, what would it mean so hard? Because you're it's almost like one a knock on effect. Right? So once you can implement, once you can make change in one area, it's just going to hopefully make change in the in the rest. Like at first would think education is going to be the fastest way to get people thinking about jobs of the future. But I think it needs to be both workplace design and education. So one of the one of the fastest growing industries in Northern Ireland at the moment is, film and media. And we offer zero creative industries courses for like children in schools. Right. And, you know, I just think that jobs of the future need to start in early years education and, you know, a personal opinion. I think the CRT exam needs to go. I think it's not, a good it's fundamentally not a good time to do testing. I don't see the results as being, like, relevant or useful, but I do think education needs to change. I'd love to see more education around jobs for the future where, you know, I do a lot of volunteer work. I said, with Carol and Young Enterprise Northern Ireland and the career aspirations of young people are shocking. It's like, you know, they think stewardesses on flights are glamorous, you know, travel jobs. And it's instead of, you know, life saving support workers in an office in the sky, that's really what they are. And you know, if I hear one more 14 year old kid tell me he's going to be a famous footballer, I'm like, you, the odds are against you, mate. And I don't want to I obviously I'm volunteering. I would never say that to a child but like in order to succeed in their career, like you can, you can be what you see, right? And that is a motto I've always that is, you can be what you say. We need to see more, you know, digital film technicians coming into schools. We need to see people who work in robotics come into schools. A very good friend of mine, from school, another school mum, she is a thorax tech surgeon. She is the only thoracic tech surgeon in Northern Ireland who uses robotics to do the surgeries, and she is a fully trained PhD and she is brilliant, but she is using this robotics, skill set to do the surgery. So even though she's a trained practitioner, my cousin America is the same way. She's a physician's assistant. But she started off, you know, in her early education as a paramedic. And now paramedics have these, like, robotics, assistants to lift patients because she really ruined her body doing all that physical work. So it's really interesting. I mean, I think these kids need to look at Stem careers. They need to be looking at like, what researchers are doing. And we need those people to come in and talk to them about how cool their job is. Like, those are the jobs of the future. So, you know, I don't want to hear about footballers and airline stewardesses. Not that there is anything wrong with doing those job, but yeah, if I had to change one thing, I think it would start with education and then go back to looking at like how we're organizing systems in, in, in companies to, to support these like new initiatives. Yeah, yeah. So if you like, if you were talking to a 14 year old who didn't want to be a professional footballer, but you wanted to encourage them to do something better, which is to work in the air, right? Okay. So, like what? What are the what are the messages you're trying to you try and share with with someone at the age of 14 thinking about a career or their parents, if you were at a parents evening, what would you say to them to say that? It's a brilliant job. I mean, that is what I would just say. I mean, I don't have to sell a child to most of the people listening, I'm sure. But for me, working in H.R. Is it is impactful, right? You've got the power to have a positive impact on somebody's working life or a not so positive impact on somebody's working life, and that is huge. We work in organizations. Most people, more than they spend time with their own families and friends. More than personal time. Right. The only thing that beats us on, time span is sleep. So. So if we're going to spend all of these hours in a place doing a job, being productive, there needs to be that purpose and that value there. And I think that as HR people, it's the best job in the world to remind everyone of how we're doing collectively and how we're achieving collectively and really supporting people through difficult times. He chose there. Yeah. I think it's a brilliant job and it's really impactful. There are not many jobs out there that are as diverse as HR. You know, one day you could be doing, dealing with, I don't know, an Eddie issue. The next day you're working on recruitment, retention strategies. There's so much variation in the role, you never get bored. You also never seem to catch up. I think. But yeah, it's a very varied role. If you're a person like me who kind of the mundane doing the same task day in and day out, that can get really, sort of like I get really anxious when I'm bored. My mind kind of wanders. I'm not as productive as I could be. But when you've got this, like, varying role and you've you're being inspired by people all the time. That for me is is what sells. H.R I love it. Oh, great. What are some of the some of the skills that even, like, someone at school could be developing AI that would be useful. Oh, gosh. Yeah. Like transferable skills. Yeah. It's like like what's like, what would be the kind of standout ones that you, you see in your members. You think, oh yeah. Actually young people could be developing those. Di when I first started working in London retail, one of the initiatives was we wanted to identify the customers that came into the store, and I was working in LNG at the time, and I thought, how can I ask these sales associates to identify traits about a customer when they're not really self-aware about their own traits? So I brought everyone on the team and I made them all do a Myers-Briggs test, right. This was the first time some of these kids, I mean, let's face it, they were quite young. Some of them still working and, still going to university. Some of them foreign. And this was like the first time they'd had that sense of, like, self-awareness. But But I thought if I expect them to communicate effectively to someone, they need to understand what kind of communicator they are and having some, like, awareness of this is really important, and Myers-Briggs is a good indicator of your communication style. So we did this and then they were very quickly like shocked at how accurate the results were about who they were. They'd never done anything like this before. And so I think for kids today, even the younger ones, like having that sense of self-awareness about how they prefer to learn, how they prefer to communicate, what their communication style is, and then how they can adapt that to other people because they recognize in another person what their communication style is, what their personality is like. And then once you start adapting your communication to match your audience, I mean, that is a transferable skill that will work for you in any sector, any industry. And certainly in Air France. Good. So you've you've got a busy, busy job with COPD, a lot of traveling about going to events, organizing huge conferences. Yeah, that's gone I it's it's too soon after the last name is it. Scars are still fresh but but you that like I just get that since I've known you that it's really life giving for you. For you. But what do you what you know, when you do, you get a bit anxious or burned, either a bit repetitive and you just kind of like, how do you how do you just enjoy yourself when you're not working? What are the sort of things? So as we talked about before, when I pulled up in my beach van, I am an avid sea swimmer all year round, so there is no, stop for me. I'd love to go see swimming. It clears my mind. I think there's something about the near death feeling you get of being in subzero freezing waters. And just breathing. Just breathe. That's the only thing you can do. Really? So. Yeah, that's. That's how I would, you know, unwind, sort of decompress. And actually, it gives me real clarity of mind. So it's very good. Yeah. It good. You have you been in the sea? In the Irish Sea. Oh I have, I have, but I don't try to make it harbor. But so yeah. Yeah. It's just. No, it's, it's, it's just like a Boxing Day thing for you. Not even a Fox a day thing. Even even the middle of July on something like Portstewart Strand. It's it's still tough to get past your, I guess. But, Yeah, I know I'll, I'll leave it. I'll leave it to people who are much, much braver than than I anyway. But, but it's as we wrap up today, Susan, we love hearing what's so great about work, for you and the impact you had, like, like, just tell us what what's so great about work for you? I mean, I think the diversity of the work, again, is inspirational people that I work with. But really, what's so great about work is I have such flexibility that when my kids are this young, I have the time and the opportunity to watch them grow up and to give them that attention when they need it. So I think that's really important for me at at this point. But also, like, that's why I do this job right, is make it. I don't want my kids to face the same challenges that I had when I entered the world of work, and I really aim to make this a better world for them. So yeah, doing this job really enables that mission. My purpose is really clear and square well, and not just for your children, but for for every child. The better working world will be good for them and they may prepare to leave school. And I feel on that. So thank you so much for your time. Credit the child. That's great. Thank you, thank you, thank you.