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Transcript

The Hidden Cost of Global Talent: When Your Workday Never Ends · Edan Haddock - Total Talent

• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everyone.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Eden Haddock Total Talent.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Eden Haddock, Head of Talent and People Experience at Movember.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: This week isn't about skills.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about AI.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about workforce planning.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, it is about workforce planning, but not in the way most people think.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: This week I want to talk about something I've been feeling.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And judging by the discussion that exploded in our Facebook community last night, something a lot of you are feeling too.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Exhaustion.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Not because the work is bad.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Not because we don't love what we do.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Not because we aren't engaged.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, quite the opposite.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is we care.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is we're ambitious.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is we've built careers that span the globe.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere along the way, nobody stopped and asked a really important question.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Just because technology allows us to work across six countries, should we?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: For years, the talent profession has been obsessed with scope.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Talent acquisition wasn't enough.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: We added employer branding, then workforce planning, then succession, then engagement, then talent intelligence, then mobility, then employee experience, then organizational design, then culture, then skills, then AI, then everything else.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: The profession became bigger, broader, more strategic, more influential, more valuable, and rightly so.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: But while everyone was staring at the width of the role, nobody noticed the length of it.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because something else happened.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: The geography exploded.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly we weren't supporting Melbourne, we were supporting APAC.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Then North America.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Then Europe, then the United Kingdom, then APAC, whatever it looks like for your organization, and then global.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And every time another country got added to the portfolio, we celebrated.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody asked what happened to the human behind the portfolio.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think Australians have a unique challenge here.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you're sitting in London managing a global remit, you can generally catch Europe.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can generally catch North America.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's manageable.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you're sitting in New York, you can generally catch Europe.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And again, it's not easy, but manageable.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Australia, well, it's a different story.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Australia is the awkward middle child of global business.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: To speak to Europe, you start early.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: To speak to North America, you finish late.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: To speak to both, you do both.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this changes depending on season, depending on time of year.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly your day starts before sunrise and ends well after dinner.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not occasionally, repeatedly.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Week after week, month after month, year after year.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Last night I posted a simple question in our community.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: The response was immediate.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And what stuck what stuck with me, it wasn't the advice necessarily, it was the consistency.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: People talked about years of this lifestyle, not months, years.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: People talked about twelve hour days, fourteen hour days.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Some actually talked about much longer.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: People described burnout, physical symptoms, exhaustion, the inability to switch off, the constant feeling that someone somewhere in the world needed something.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the comments all shared something interesting.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody was complaining about the work.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody hated their company.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody regretted building these global careers.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: I certainly don't.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: They simply acknowledge the reality.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is hard.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Really hard.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And yet we rarely talk about it.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've started to wonder whether global remits have become a status symbol.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: We proudly announce I look after APAC.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: I look after EMEA.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: I look after global.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: I support six countries.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I support twenty countries.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone nods impressed.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because bigger must be better, right?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: But imagine if somebody said I work 14 hours a day.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody would clap.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine if somebody said, I haven't had dinner with my family three nights this week.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody would celebrate.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine if somebody said I start at 5 30 AM and finish at 10 30 p.m.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: People would be concerned.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yet often that's exactly what sits underneath this shiny title.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: We designed the role, and now the role is designing us.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is where it gets really interesting.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: As talent professionals, we spend our lives designing jobs.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: But how often do we redesign our own?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Many global talent roles were designed for a different era, a pre-AI era, a pre-agent era, a pre-automation era, a pre-intelligence layer era.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: We are still operating as if every meeting requires every person.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Every update requires attendance.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Every discussion requires participation.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Every decision requires synchronous calibration.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just madness.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about meetings.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because meetings are often the real villain.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of global meetings aren't actually decision-making forums.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: They're information sharing forums, status updates, project updates, steering committees, governance meetings, working groups, alignment sessions, the same ten people listening to the same information across three continents at ridiculous hours.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we've normalized this.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think future generations will look back and think we were insane.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: So enter a gentic AI.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is where I think the talent profession is about to change dramatically.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And as I always say, not because AI will replace us.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've said it a thousand times that I don't buy the AI replaces talent narrative.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: What I do believe is that AI will replace enormous amounts of coordination.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's different.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine an agent attending a meeting for you, listening, taking notes, capturing actions, highlighting decisions, flagging risks, producing a summary, recommending follow-up actions, and doing it better than a human note taker.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now imagine that across fifty meetings, one hundred meetings, five hundred meetings.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly attendance becomes optional.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Information becomes asynchronous.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: The work continues.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: But the human doesn't need to be present.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's a very different future.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of the biggest shifts we'll see over the next five years is the move from synchronous talent to asynchronous talent.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Today the expectation is attend the meeting, join the call, be available, respond immediately.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow, the expectation may be review the output, validate the recommendation, approve the decision.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: A completely different model.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: And one that could dramatically improve quality of life, particularly for global professionals sitting in Australia.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now boundaries are not a weakness.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: The other lesson from the community's discussion was boundaries.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: The professionals who seemed to survive the longest had something in common.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: They became ruthless.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Not rude, not difficult, just deliberate.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: They blocked recovery time, skipped unnecessary meetings, shared coverage responsibilities, created regional ownership, rotated meeting times, protected sleep, protected family, protected themselves.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's important.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because burnout doesn't usually arrive dramatically, it arrives quietly.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: One late meeting becomes two, two becomes five, five becomes normal.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Then one day you realize you haven't switched off properly in months.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: So the future of global talent.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Here's my prediction.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: The future isn't fewer global roles, it's more, much more.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is a great thing.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: I love my global role.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: The centralization trend, it truly isn't slowing down.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And technology will accelerate it.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Companies will continue consolidating functions.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Talent teams will continue supporting multiple regions.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Global operating models will continue expanding.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's happening.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: The question isn't whether global roles disappear.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: The question is whether we redesign them before they break people.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where Workforce 5.0 comes in.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because Workforce 5.0 isn't just about AI.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't just about technology.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't just about productivity.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's about designing work that humans can actually sustain.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: So this week I leave you with a question.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: We've spent years talking about expanding the scope of talent.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: But if the bigger challenge isn't scope at all, what if it's reach?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: What if the biggest workforce design problem sitting in front of us isn't skills or succession or engagement or AI?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: What if it's time?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: What if the most finite resource in the entire workforce is the one thing we're quietly asking global professionals to sacrifice every day?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sleep, presence, recovery, life.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because the irony is this the talent profession exists to help people thrive.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's time we made sure we're thriving too.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think we need to rethink the design of our roles.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think we should be resisting global.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Global is the future, and it's wonderful.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: But we need to rethink.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: If this episode resonates with you, jump into the Eden Haddock Total Talent Facebook community and continue the conversation.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to know how many time zones do you support?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: And what boundaries have you put in place to make it sustainable?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And until next time, keep challenging the way work works.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's important.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Keep designing the future.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: And please, keep looking after yourselves along the way.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.