The Adaptive Workforce: Competing on Experience & Wellbeing

Dr. Kristine Dery is a Research Scientist at MIT Sloan School of Management in the Center for Information Systems Research (MIT CISR).

Kristine leads MIT CISR’s research on the Future-ready Workforce that provides leaders with insights into what it takes to equip employees with the digital tools and the skills, capabilities and ways of working to be effective in a digital world.

Her previous research has explored the employee experience in the context of Agile Ways of Working, Virtual Connectivity, and also what it takes to attract and retain the Talent with the digital skills to successfully deliver on the challenges of new digital business models. She works closely with research colleagues at MIT CISR to ensure that her research is integrated into broader conversations around digital transformation.

In addition to her research portfolio, Kristine works closely with senior management teams and boards of large organizations in AsiaPac to capture value from MIT CISR research as they wrestle with the challenges of digital transformation.

Alistair is an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company and a leader of the Firm’s Organisation Practice.

From his base in Sydney, he advises and serves clients in Australia across a range of sectors, including financial services, defence, food, energy and public and social institutions on organisational transformation and change.

His areas of expertise include: culture transformation, growth transformation, change management, talent strategy, leadership development, operating model design and organisation design.

I am Emma, Founder of Emjoy. Emjoy is about stripping away the big words, the fancy diagrams and standard frameworks. It’s about real human leadership. It’s about remembering what it’s like to be an employee at all stages and what that means to people. It’s about giving people a reason to get up every morning. Giving them something to believe in. It’s simple, its inspirational, it’s the future and it delivers joy in spades.

And what do I know about Culture and Experience? I’ve spent the last 15 years of my career at the global leader in creating epic Cultures, the Virgin brand, Virgin Australia. I began my career in early days of Virgin Blue and experienced the unique challenge that comes with aviation. My last role as the General Manager of Culture and Employee Experience gave me the opportunity to lead a 9,500 employee base. From hiring the best of the best, to having to let go thousands of employees during COVID that loved what they did. It was a role that encompassed the breadth of human emotion.

Throughout the most challenging year globally, I made a push to implement Workplace by Facebook to all employees. In a time of extreme stress, anxiety and sadness the roll out of this tool transformed the way we approached our people and allowed us to do something extraordinary. Proving that communicating with your people as real, raw humans will always triumph.