The title of the seminar read: The Future of People at Work. Excellent, I thought, strapping myself into an imaginary silver De Lorean, and giving a pre Parkinsons Michael J. Fox and the evergreen Doc Brown a quick glance before screeching off into time.
I have to say that I was a little disappointed when I got there. In fact I felt like we never arrived, the future we were promised by futurist Anne Lisa Kjaer, of Kjaer Global was really only a look at where the global workforce is already heading and probably more than half way there.
Kjaer told delegates on the last day of the CIPD conference in Harogate: "The future is not some place we go, but something we create!"
She added that we were currently living in an 'emotional decade'. "It's nolonger enough to offer material benefits to your workforce, you also have to stimulate the emotional and ethical dimension of tomorrow’s people," she enthused.
Kjaer said companies in the past wanted the facts and ignored "feelings". "Today companies recognise the value of empathy," she said, a perfect environment then for the emergence of her so called Yeppies (young experimenting perfection seekers), who unlike Yuppies, their aim is not to collect worldly goods, but as many experiences as possible.
Further crystal balling has Kjaer believing that the most successful companies of the future will be those companies who think from the outside in, "rejecting internalised corporate speak in favour of a cool-headed assessment of the whole picture".
Admittedly, there seemed to be a lot of holistic, left brain, right brain, whole brain talk, but Kjaer also reached into the future and hauled out a few frightening statistics. She said that the average EU resident will spend 60 hours per week consuming media by 2010! Stop the car, show me the reverse gear?
But in a conference where much of the focus seemed to be on business practice and aligning the HR function with the bottom line and turnover, it was quite refreshing to get a more human approach and an emphasis on the importance of the wellbeing of the UK workforce.
So what then are the challenges for Human Resources in the future? According to Kjaer, initiative, creativity and contributing to a meaningful community will rank high up on the dream job list in the future, with salaries and tangible cash benefits not enough.
"Social sustainability and ethical values" will be the key words, said Kjaer, along with health and wellness of the workforce and spiritual awareness.
"Within a few years, going to work will be meaningless," she said, concluding that work will be what we do and not a place we go to.
