HR Seminar Singapore: Futureproof Mindset

On the 20th of February Elliott Scott HR Singapore held their first seminar of 2019 in partnership with Arcadia Consulting and LinkedIn.

Arcadia is a professional services consultancy specialising in sustainable, behavioural and cultural change.

Following an introduction from Meghna Kumar at LinkedIn, Mark Weston, Arcadia’s Managing Director, APAC, delivered an interactive presentation on ‘Futureproof Mindset’ to our network of HR professionals at the LinkedIn offices in Singapore. Many industries are changing, new sectors are emerging and as a result of this a host of new job roles are being created. This will require the workforce to re-skill in order to stay relevant.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) and McKinsey Institute say that about 65% of future job roles are not yet in existence. Most new roles today are coming from emerging technologies such as drones, 3D printing and changes in agriculture. LinkedIn and WEF say that by 2022 about 54% of the global workforce will need to be significantly (up to 6 months of training) reskilled and upskilled. This raises concerns with the current workforce who feel nervous of the future and staying relevant.

How do we prepare ourselves and our teams? Do we have the right mindset? What are we doing to get there? Mindset is the pattern of your thinking that effects the quality of your action. To futureproof your mindset and consequently be more resilient and happier we have to implement a coping strategy that can be deployed in times of stress and change.

Here Mark introduced the 4G’s model:

Goals – Human beings are goal orientated in their behaviour and goals are essential for us to move forward. Organisations should work with their employees to set goals based on their strengths, values, behaviours and passions. Start by looking at where your employees want to be in a few years and work backwards from there.

Growth – Understanding and assessing whether you have a Growth or a Fixed mindset is key. Humans are driven to be negative and, out of the 60,000 thoughts we have in a day, 90% of them are negative. If you have a fixed mindset you want to protect yourself and are likely to; dodge challenges, not feel the need to improve upon your skills, deflect criticism and feel threatened by the success of others, culminating in early plateau. Those with a growth mindset want to learn so they welcome challenges, bounce back from setbacks, are keen to put in effort, believe in skills improvement and learn from the success of others which results in their ongoing improvement.

Grit – Developing resilience, grit and perseverance to challenges is also important. Break your challenges down into manageable chunks and keep pushing through with mental toughness. Organisations should help people to understand their empowering and limiting beliefs – what holds them back and stops them from doing things. Fundamentally, try to get people out of their comfort zone for a complete mindset shift. Then keep practicing to drive muscle memory, this helps to design behavioural patterns ahead of setbacks.

Giving – Aim to move your mindset to the reciprocity style of being a giver. From a corporate perspective, ‘Giving’ helps break silos and creates a better work environment. Most successful people have talented people around them, they collaborate, coach and mentor each other, getting their results through the power of people.

Organisations can use this methodology not just to develop individuals but to drive cultural change and create a resourceful mindset to enable their employees to get up, accommodate change, bounce back from setbacks and help them be more resilient and resourceful.

The evening closed with further networking over drinks and canapés where the guests mingled with the Arcadia, LinkedIn and Elliott Scott HR teams.

If you would be interested in attending any of Elliott Scott HR’s future events, follow us on LinkedIn and keep an eye on our events page.