Technology is continuously changing the way we live, work and learn.

The Fung Academy partnered with McKinsey, MIT Sloan Executive Education, ICEDR to host the 2018 Global Talent Summit in Hong Kong this past April. The full two-day event focused on how the role of leadership and the organization are both evolving and will impact our next generation.

Over 100 senior business leaders, human resource professionals, talented individuals and academics from companies such as JP Morgan, UBS, Alibaba, JD.com, Tencent and Esquel Group attended.

Our Group Chairman, Victor Fung, started the day off with raising a question about how technology will change the workplace. There is currently a lot of discussion around how technology will eliminate manual labor. At the same time, technology has also created a lot of new jobs and therefore, it is important to consider the net increase and decrease of jobs affected by technologies, as well as the different job types.

He also said leaders and organizations should invest in speed. As an example, we should use rapid-prototyping to launch products quickly in order to stay relevant in our fast-moving and unpredictable world. For such experimentation and experiential learning to take place, companies should explore different ways to foster human interaction, and one example could be collocation.

Later in a panel discussion, Victor mentioned that he foresees that the intangibles of a company, things that people feel attached to, will be seen as more important in the future. Building a culture that encourages learning and collaboration is crucial and companies should create a work environment that will help their employees learn and grow.

“The culture of an organization will guide its future, and future workplaces need to create a culture that will be able to deal with the unknown. Such unknowns cannot always be dealt with by robots and AI,” said Victor.

During the event, there were also discussions around what young people need to perform well at work. Flexibility and collaboration were most common themes throughout. In addition, young people value flatter organizational hierarchies because it brings top management closer to frontline employees. Managers who are inspirational and high in empathy are also what young talents look for. Reverse mentoring and two-way conversations are also good ways to maintain trust and build healthier relationships.

The event concluded with a speech by Doug Ready, Founder and President of the ICEDR, who extended the invitation to all the participating organizations to continue the discussion around talents and organization transformation.

Tags: Event and Conference , FA Corporate , Fung Group , Leadership