Sustainability for the human-centered future of work

Human sustainability—a concept we introduced in our 2023 Global Human Capital Trends report—calls for organizations to focus less on how much people benefit their organization and more on how much their organization benefits people.

Discover what it means for leaders to put people at the center of today’s human-powered economy—and how it can unlock an environment of sustainable, positive outcomes in the future of work. Join host David Mallon, Deloitte’s Sue Cantrell, and Eightfold AI’s Jason Cerrato in this latest episode of the Capital H podcast—followed by a special Deloitte roundtable discussion.

“So what are people doing in your organization in the workplace? What skills are they developing? What training are they taking? What interactions are they having? Are they having mentoring conversations? Are they doing things in your community? Are they doing things with volunteering? What things are they doing to develop in their career? As we’ve been using a lot of technologies that have been built around jobs, a lot of our systems were tracking what it meant for the role that they were occupying, and not necessarily all of the work that they were doing, or all of these things that may have often been perceived as extracurricular, when they’re really not extracurricular, right? So when we talk about what does it mean to be part of that ‘S’ in the ESG, this helps paint a bigger picture to have a more complete strategy and, again, tie it more to the individual and the human and the talent, and not just the role or the job.”— Jason Cerrato, Eightfold AI

David Mallon: Welcome back to Capital H, the podcast where we explore the latest trends and developments to make work better for humans and humans better at work. I’m your host, David Mallon. I’m a managing director in Deloitte’s Human Capital practice in the US, and I’m chief analyst for our Insights2Action Human Capital Research & Sensing team. Today’s episode is part of our series on this year’s Global Human Capital Trends Report. Today’s focus is on the trend on human sustainability. We are operating in a human-powered economy. Organizations are at a watershed moment, many having transitioned from industrial beginnings to a knowledge economy, and now, to an economy increasingly powered by the hearts and minds and essential human traits of our people. In short, our humanity. Today, for many organizations, nothing’s more important than its people, from workers and contractors to customers and community members. For true sustainability, organizations need to create value for all the people that they touch. And it’s not just a nice idea. It’s central to their ability to create better outcomes for themselves and for humanity alike.

In our first segment, we’ll be joined by Sue Cantrell, she’s our US Human Capital Eminence leader at Deloitte Consulting, and Jason Cerrato, he’s the VP of market strategy at Eightfold.ai, and then, of course, our leader roundtable. Sue Cantrell: Hello, I am welcoming you to the Capital H podcast. Welcome, listeners. My name is Sue Cantrell, and I lead human capital thought leadership and eminence at Deloitte and I’m also vice president of products workforce strategies. I’m joined today by Jason Cerrato, who is vice president of marketing strategy at Eightfold AI, to discuss human sustainability. This is a trend from Deloitte’s 2024 Global Human Capital Trends Report. Jason, welcome to the Capital H podcast.

Jason Cerrato: Thanks, Sue. Happy to be here and happy to join Capital H.

Sue Cantrell: So, Jason, human sustainability is the first trend in our 2024 report. And it’s really a core component of the new human performance equation. What is that human performance equation? We really define it as human and business outcomes and the multiplier effect that they can have on one another. And human sustainability shines the spotlight on the human outcomes component.

So we define human sustainability as the degree to which an organization creates value for people as human beings, leaving them with greater health and well-being, stronger skills and employability, good jobs, opportunities for advancement, progress toward equity, increased belonging, and heightened connection to purpose.

Jason, from your perspective at Eightfold, why is this focus on human sustainability so crucial now and in the future of work? Why is it important to leave every human an organization touches better off, not only from the human perspective, but also to an organization’s overall success?

Jason Cerrato: It’s a great question, and I think it’s top of mind for so many of the HR leaders and business leaders that I talk to every day, because we are going through such a period of rapid transformation. I think it’s a continuous progression. But now we’re also feeling the impact of Generative AI coming into our organization as a tool. But increasingly not just a tool—a teammate.

As we think about this, there’s a significant impact on what this means for the work that people are doing, and then the impact for how this reshapes the jobs that’ll be in organizations, and the skills that people will need to develop, and the mix of all of that coming together. If you think about that, this is adding a whole other element to this whole relationship of employer–employee that has been changing over the last few years in organizations. This is why HR is at the center of just about every initiative in organizations these days.

At Eightfold, what we do is we help with talent intelligence and understanding kind of a deeper level of what’s happening in organizations through a skills-based lens using advanced technology to read and react to data in real time to help prepare for this fast-approaching future. And with this understanding, it helps kind of make headway around this ability to have greater agility to prepare for how both employees can help develop themselves and adapt and be agile for future careers and future development, but also how organizations can be more agile and prepare for what’s happening in their industry—but also know what’s happening in their organization and how their talent is evolving in real time as they’re still operating for today.

So things like tracking emerging skills and maintaining market competitiveness—and all of this while still trying to keep the lights on and not get distracted with delivering day to day. So I just think with the pace of change that we have a front row seat to, this is ever top of mind for the HR leaders that I’m talking to, and we’re all trying to solve this together.

Sue Cantrell: It’s such a great illustration you just painted of how Eightfold’s talent intelligence enables those human outcomes, which we define as human sustainability. Jason, I think part of the challenge organizations are facing around achieving true human sustainability is that interactions with people are typically grouped under the “S” component of ESG [environmental, social, and governance]. And sometimes that can be limiting because social metrics, in comparison to at least environmental ones, are often difficult to quantify and often lack clear definitions. So I’m wondering, Jason, how can organizations start to solve this challenge, and what are you seeing organizations do to tackle this issue?

Jason Cerrato: Yeah, it’s a great question. And I think part of it is we have an abundance of data, but we, in the past, haven’t had places to collect that information to then connect that information. So as we now have systems, like in Eightfold, that can track data in real time, it allows us to see a more complete picture and start to understand our talent in ways broader and more complete—and not just for what they’re doing for our organization, but for what they’re doing day to day in a variety of different capacities, which allows us to think beyond the job. So what are people doing in your organization in the workplace? What skills are they developing? What training are they taking? What interactions are they having? Are they having mentoring conversations? Are they doing things in your community? Are they doing things with volunteering? What things are they doing to develop in their career? As we’ve been using a lot of technologies that have been built around jobs—you know, a lot of our systems were tracking what it meant for the role that they were occupying, and not necessarily all of the work that they were doing, or all of these things that may have often been perceived as extracurricular, when they’re really not extracurricular, right? All of this advanced technology and these new datasets can allow organizations to better track these things that had previously been, number one, kind of hard to visualize and hard to track or may not have had a home in previous systems, but also allows for a more complete understanding of the talent you have in organizations to then have better visibility to make better decisions through a more complete lens. So when we talk about what does it mean to be part of that “S” in the ESG, this helps paint a bigger picture to have a more complete strategy and, again, tie it more to the individual and the human and the talent, and not just the role or the job.

Sue Cantrell: I just love that, Jason, how tech advances, for the first time, enables us to have that visibility and to track metrics related to human sustainability. I wanted to continue to pull on this thread. So, often we see that human sustainability outcomes are additive for organizations. And it really begins with the outcomes—those human outcomes for employees. Those are really the people that the organization cares for most closely, but then it really continues to build throughout the extended workforce. All of those people who might not be employees, but create value for your organization, like contractors or gig workers, and even into society. So what do you think are some of the most important human sustainability outcomes organizations should be striving to achieve to make human sustainability a core focus on a broader perspective versus additive?

Jason Cerrato: It’s not just your employees; it’s total talent. It’s all the people that potentially walk through your doors or interact with your organization. And through some of the capability that we have now people are not just expanding the data that they’re looking at, they’re expanding the audiences that they’re considering. And as a result of that, it gives them a chance to look at, “Who are the talent we’re interacting with? How are we engaging with them? How are we able to capitalize on that talent when we need them, and what are the skills that they’re bringing into our organization? How are they able to deliver to our business in ways that align with what we want to invest in, and then how does this help provide some agility as our business may be changing or shifting?” We’re seeing the world of work change with automation and Generative AI. And when we think about this new world of work, the work that people are going to be doing is changing significantly. So, expanding the lens to this kind of total talent audience and having this greater visibility gives business leaders and HR leaders a variety of levers and strategies and buttons to push to then have multiple approaches to deliver to the business and to customers and to their employees. So, again, as we think about it, it’s not just optimizing what you’re doing for today; it’s building a whole new future.

Sue Cantrell: Love that, the whole new future. And coming back to something you said earlier about how the worker–employer relationship itself is changing so much as we think about this future—and it’s fraught with a lot of disruptions, both in business and in society. So a piece from our research, for example, shows that only 43% of workers say their organizations have left them better off than when they started, adding value to them as human beings. I’m wondering, Jason, what are some of the biggest current challenges to creating a stronger worker–organization relationship? And what do you think are some of the biggest worries for workers, or relationships, as it relates to the future of work itself?

Jason Cerrato: Yeah, and I think part of this speaks to having this dynamic capability to understand what’s happening in real time. And the better equipped organizations are to understand what’s happening to their organization and what’s shaping their audiences with their talent and their workforce, the greater possibility there is for those two things to come together for the future. I grew up in an organization where there were leaders that said, “I can’t guarantee you employment, but I can guarantee I’ll do my best to help you maintain employability. And I’ll work to develop you.” And what we’re talking about now is using technology and data to try to bring those things together. So maybe your employability stays at the same employer, right? So if you think about it, dynamic talent combined with dynamic technology creates this development tech. And what’s happening now is we’re shifting the mindset and expanding this concept of talent management to talent enablement. And leaders are thinking, “How can I enable employees versus enforcing programs or driving compliance?” And I think part of this is helping address this misalignment of skills and work. There will be jobs impacted by AI and automation, but there will also be jobs created and discovered by AI. You know, increasingly hybrid roles that are mixing skills in new ways. And when you’re using technology like ours—talent intelligence—there’s the ability for employees to develop skills and see how their skills map to potential career paths, but there’s also the ability for organizations to plan for future business strategies compared to what’s happening in their industry. And as these two things are happening in the same environment, there’s a greater likelihood that these two futures can potentially meet at the same place. Again, you have this combination of talent intelligence creating a win-win for both the worker and the organization. I think it really speaks to that human outcomes and business outcomes coming together to create human performance.

Sue Cantrell: You know, you mentioned this misalignment of skills and actual work. You know, how can organizations solve for this issue? What’s happening that we can bring those into alignment now?

Jason Cerrato: I think, we touched on it a little bit, but moving beyond this historical focus on the job to use technology like AI to take a closer look at how talent is moving through their organization and how work is evolving as a result. You and I have talked about the HR trends report, and one of the pieces of the report is how work is increasingly decoupling from some of the historical benchmarks and fence posts that we’ve used to organize jobs in organizations. Job descriptions have always been a lag of how the work has been done. They’ve always been lagging data compared to leading data, but today with the rapid pace of change, that lag is getting broader faster, right? So if you use technology where it’s more focused around the talent profile and leading data, you can understand skills and how skills map to other opportunities and how people can learn adjacent skills. “And then what can I learn based on my current skills?” And this opens up opportunities to include broader audiences, potentially removing barriers that may have previously been in place. So ultimately, this has other compounding effects for opportunity and equity and inclusion and diversity. So again, I think all of this is what a lot of organizations are trying to wrap their head around and put into operationalization, but it’s the promise of technology. There’s a lot of people that are saying, “We’ve never had technology this good in the HR space.” But it also requires thinking differently, managing differently, and measuring differently because this is built for a future that looks very different than the way we’ve operated historically.

Sue Cantrell: Yes. I just love that focus on the future should be looking at business outcomes and human outcomes together and how they multiply one another. Business outcomes like agility you mentioned; human outcomes like equity and growth and development. So I think what you’re doing at Eightfold is really helping us pave our way to that future. Jason, I want to thank you for joining me today. Any final parting thoughts you’d like to leave with our listeners?

Jason Cerrato: I appreciate the work that you do at Deloitte, and I love the trends report. I’ve read it over now a couple of times. I know we’ve had some ongoing discussions. I really think it’s important for people to come together and have these discussions because “what got us here won’t get us there”—it’s a common phrase in this space. I spend a lot of time at executive round tables and conferences and webinars, and we’re building the future of work together. So I appreciate the opportunity to join you on the podcast and look forward to continuing the discussion.

Sue Cantrell: Thank you, Jason, for your partnership in building the future of work together.

David Mallon: Thanks, Sue and Jason, for joining us.