In the future of work, one of the biggest challenges is getting people to learn: not only to learn and refine their skills, but also to unlearn old mindsets that aren't required any more and to relearn values and approaches that can help them keep abreast of change.

People Matters caught up with Jennifer Dudeck, Chief People Officer of open source software company Red Hat, during the Singapore edition of Red Hat's Summit Connect 2024, and asked her for her take on preparing the workforce, especially younger generations, for the evolving workplace.

We need to be intentional about preparing for the future

Dudeck had a couple of hot takes on the importance of mindset and the role of education. One challenge she flagged out was that people don't wish to leave their comfort zone, and while this is a natural reaction to change, it must be addressed, or society as a whole will face issues in the long run.

"One of the main reasons why the dockworkers went on strike in the US was automation," she said, using as an example the massive strike that shut down 36 ports across the eastern and southern seaboard of the US in early October. The dockworkers' union had demanded a halt on port automation projects and a ban on a number of automated facilities at ports, including cranes and gates.

"I understand the concern they feel around their jobs, that they feel very much threatened by the way the world is changing. And what are we doing to help people become more agile and have the confidence and security that they can evolve with change?"

Not enough, she feels - often, there is a rush to adopt solutions and take action, without doing the necessary deep thinking around what is actually going to happen and how we should respond for better long-term outcomes.

"Let's say we believe that the supply chain will evolve. Then we have to think very intentionally about what that's going to look like, what that will mean for people, what the consequences will be. We have to ask how we are going to get ahead of these changes. But I worry that all we're going to see are the benefits, the opportunities created in productivity and cost savings and all these other good things the change can bring."

"I get it. I feel it every day in my job - there are all kinds of pressures to be more productive. But if we don't apply intentionality, we will end up with unintended consequences that will be worse for us in the long run."

What can education do to help?

The point of education, said Dudeck, ought to be to teach people how to think critically - that, she believes, is the first step to creating intentionality among policymakers and agility among the workforce.

"Being in tech, my first reaction tends to be on the side that asks: do we really need to spend all this money to send people to university? We can teach anyone to code and do a certification. But let me say this: my son is in a public university in North Carolina, and although he's a data science major, he still has to take philosophy and psychology."

"It's not just about using technology to take the short cuts. You have to be able to critically think and figure things out by yourself. You have to be able to have conversations with other people."

And it's not just about universities, says Dudeck, who is a strong advocate of cross-industry shared training and certification. Rewiring people's mindsets - society's mindset as a whole - for future-readiness will take the entire ecosystem.

"Yes, corporations can do some of it, but it's going to require more than just corporations," she said. "It's going to require more than even just universities. I would argue it's going to require changing our broader educational system in general. I fundamentally believe the biggest risk we have is that we do not do this in a collective way, that we do not do this across companies, across countries, because this is hard. We can't just say in the US that we're going to change our academic institutions. I think we need to have global discussions about this. The future workforce is going to need to be different than what it is now. So how do we come together across geographies to build new principles?"

The role of leadership in creating a cultural reset

Leaders and managers play a huge part in determining how well an organisation's workforce can prepare to be future-ready. And with the increasing sophistication of AI, leaders and managers will theoretically have more tools and resources at their disposal to develop and implement future-ready learning strategies.

"If AI takes away some of the operational aspects, it will shift the expectations we have of our managers," Dudeck predicted. "For that to work, we need a system of leadership that can develop managers in a way that leads to the outcomes we want."

Red Hat's own managerial development system, she said, covers three particularly important aspects of people management:

1. Selection. The current practice of moving the best individual contributors into people management is flawed, she believes - it creates a structure where people can only advance their careers by going into management, whether or not they are good at it or even like it. Instead, companies need to be much more precise and intentional about how they identify managers and leaders based on the organisational needs.

2. Expectations. A manager is in the service of their team, said Dudeck. And so the leadership system needs to have accountability measures that clearly identify and track the things managers are expected to do in that role, whether this is development and performance conversations or pay differentiation.

3. Evaluation. Red Hat is in the midst of developing a manager index that shows how effective the company's managers are, both collectively and individually. It is based on how well managers meet the expectations outlined for them.

Most importantly, Dudeck said, managers need to be able to inspire people and deliver compassion to the workforce.

"If someone gets promoted on your team, you'd better show up and tell them congratulations," she said. "The future of leadership has to be about the human side of management. I think for a long time, we've been able to evade that human side because we were so busy just getting the transactional work done. Well, AI is going to solve that transactional work pretty quickly. The human part is going to be where we need to focus."

And what this means, she predicted, is that managers who don't want to do the human part of the work or who are just bad at it will quite rapidly be filtered out of the management pool.

"AI will not give them any room to hide, because they won't be able to use spreadsheets and comp planning as a tactic for avoiding human contact. But it will also help them with that human side."

Using performance management - one of the most common sources of managerial headaches - as an example, Dudeck described how an AI assistant may be able to collate feedback about someone who is not performing, create a performance plan for that person, and even suggest the flow of a conversation for giving them that plan.

"That's an example of where today, if you're a manager, that one simple thing can take days and weeks if you don't know how to do it. Because you don't necessarily have the help. Now think of what it will mean if you just have that guidance, that help so you're not spending hours and weeks just figuring it out. That's where I think AI can really help a lot of managers."