Change happens

Change Happens Podcast

Insights from Leaders in a Changing World

Hosted by
Jenelle McMaster

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Few have the ability to tell the human stories of driving change in business like EY Regional Deputy CEO and People and Culture Leader for Oceania, Jenelle McMaster.

In the Change Happens podcast series, Jenelle reveals how to apply the unique lessons learned by top leaders, who harness the transformative power of change, to tackle the biggest issues businesses face today.

Through story and conversation, Jenelle highlights the importance of workplace culture, and how leaders are using technology to address their biggest strategic challenges and drive change.

Jenelle McMaster

EY Regional Deputy CEO and People & Culture Leader, Oceania

Season 6

Dom Price
Work Futurist. Technologist. Founder.

Jenelle McMaster
The nature of work has always evolved.
From pen and paper to typewriters, from fax machines to the internet.
But this moment we're living through now feels different.
Faster, messier, and far more demanding on humans.
News bites
AI's reached into zones where people didn't think computers would ever reach.
They're freaking out.
With new technology comes new risks.
Only 1% of CEOs have a fully formed AI strategy.
Jenelle McMaster
Technology is accelerating at a pace most of us can barely absorb.
Employees want different things from work.
And the rules about how we work keep shifting under our feet.
The result?
Workforces that feel anxious and leaders who feel overwhelmed and sometimes even paralysed.
I see this every day in my own role.
Leaders asking, how do I lead when everything is changing at once?
And employees asking, where do I fit in all of this?
So today I've brought in someone who's been making sense of this chaos long before it hit the mainstream.
Dom Price is a futurist, a thinker, a provocateur, and someone who has a remarkable ability to cut through the noise and help leaders move from talking about change to actually doing something about it.
Dom Price
It's not about having the fastest toys or the fastest tools, right?
It's the old adage, a fool with a tool is still a fool, you've just made them faster, right?
So instead of creating faster idiots, how do you upgrade your human operating system?
Jenelle McMaster
Together, we're unpacking what's really happening in the modern world of work, the speed of change, the widening disconnect between leaders and teams, the promise and the tension of AI, and what it takes to not just survive disruption, but thrive in the middle of it.
Hey, Dom.
Dom Price
Hello there.
Jenelle McMaster
Great to have you on the podcast.
Thanks for joining.
This is a focus on leadership in particular.
One of the things I've been thinking about, Dom, is that every generation before us has faced shifts.
That's a truism, right?
But the challenges that we're seeing our leaders are facing today, I have to say, does feel heavier.
It feels almost existential.
I'm wondering, do you think it is different?
If so, why does it feel that much harder right now?
Dom Price
I'm with you on the truism.
I don't know.
I liken it to, I became a parent a few years ago, right?
And I think before as a parent, I had an idea of what a parent would be like.
And then you become one, you're like, oh, I wish I'd known earlier, right?
And I think it's the same on leadership.
From the outside in, you're like, why don't they do X?
Why don't they do Y?
Why don't you?
And then you get into that seat and you're like, oh my God, there's a lot, right?
So, if you think right now as a leader, you've got still headaches post-pandemic, right?
Supply chain stuff, work from home, work from office, a whole lot of challenges in the workforce.
You've got technical challenges like AI and whatever comes next, 6G coming out of China, quantum computing.
However, paranoid you are about AI, it's not the thing.
There's plenty of other things coming down the pipe.
You've got this conflation of generations in a workforce that have very different upbringings.
You've got a pace of change in tech, in business.
The fact that most businesses now are borderless, but we used to be able to carve out a protection zone.
Now you can't.
Competition from everywhere.
And in the midst of that, the expectations of everyone has lifted.
You've got to have amazing customer service.
Your reviews are all online.
Everything's viral.
Like if you’re hated, you’re hated in an instant.
If you're popular, you're popular in a millisecond and then forgotten about again.
So, this is like, these moments are suddenly condensed, and you've got leaders sat there going, how on earth am I meant to navigate this?
And for a lot of them, the rhetoric that they were raised on is no longer true.
So, I don't know about you, but there's a whole lot of, let's say later in life leaders that I work with.
There's one I worked with last year and they were like, but you know, Dom, I started as a graduate in this company and here with my experience, why can't I just do that now for these graduates?
It worked for me and I'm now CEO.
And I'm like, yeah, that world 35 years ago is fundamentally different to the one today.
So, I understand your nostalgia.
It's not going to pay you a dividend if you try and deliver on that now because the entire environments changed.
So, I think when I was growing up, certainly younger in business, it felt like there was so many reference points of best practice.
And now that doesn't exist.
There's practices, but there's no best anymore because you have to create your own best.
So, the expectation of the breadth of that leadership role just seems a lot bigger than it used to be.
Jenelle McMaster
Yeah.
Because I think that there's a couple of things in there.
There's probably a truth that you just talked to that anyone who steps into the leadership role for the first time is like, whoa, it's actually a hell of a lot harder than I thought.
This is the first time seeing it.
But even of those who are seasoned leaders, this is not stepping into a space.
This is the space feels different.
I've been a leader for a long time.
I'm telling you, I've been a leader for a long time, and it feels different for me too.
Dom Price
So, I think there's something in that, which is, I'm sure you've seen the neuroscience, like the longer you've lived, the harder it is to unlearn the things that you know and learn new things.
And so, when you talk about all that ambiguity and change and we're like, that all sounds superficial.
You're like, hey, if you've got 20, 25, 30 years’ experience of doing something and that thing is no longer relevant, letting go of that’s really hard.
I've had to learn more in the last year than the previous three, and the previous three than the previous 30.
My learning curve is going up.
And I don't think we've necessarily set up our system for that.
Jenelle McMaster
I agree with you.
And actually, it's a nice bridge to the next question I was going to ask you, which is, I do feel like there's this sense of, you know, people waiting for things to settle down.
Things are all up in the air, wait till it settles down.
Worst case we're saying, go back to normal.
I'm not sure if normal was ever a thing, but I'm wondering if normal doesn't exist.
And as you say, this pace keeps changing.
What are the anchor points that leaders can really, and employees can really hold on to?
Dom Price
I love that phrase, anchor points.
Like if there isn't a normal and we accept there isn't, by normal I mean constant, right?
And I think me and you've been around enough businesses to go ok, even if you get elements that feel more stable, it's not constant, right?
Anchor points, I think of like a jigsaw, right?
You need a piece to slot in, right?
And once that piece is in, you can start to put pieces around it.
The weird thing is right now is picking that piece.
Is it my business model? Maybe? AI might change that.
Or my customers, I've got loyal customers.
I've had them for how many years?
Yeah, there's a lot of competition coming out.
Like your customers have got so much choice right now.
Are my staff?
No, they're really traversable.
If in a world of work from anywhere, they're universally employable.
Oh great.
So, what is my anchor point?
And I think what it comes down to is the best businesses or leaders that I'm working with right now will land on either a product or a space, right?
A belief, right?
A product is a moment in time that I think this has value today and I can evolve it.
And so, they're very product led.
And if you think about the most famous people that have done that, Steve Jobs, right?
Even Elon Musk to some point at Tesla.
They're like, if I can get the product right, the rest of it will work itself out.
The others that go, I'm going to, I'm going to ride a wave.
I think the wave is AI.
Or I think the wave is people.
Or I think the wave is humanity and society, right?
Or wellness.
There's a lot whole waves out there.
Waves for me feel like gambling, right?
You just like, you pick the horse based on the name or its form or the jockey.
I'm like that, that feels dangerous, but doable.
I think the leaders I work with that land on a product or a service, they're like, they're understanding the demand that's out there, the reality of demand.
They're understanding their capability and they're understanding their ability to connect the two.
I can make something that other people want to buy, but the anchor point requires belief that you have to some level of product market fit in a world that's changing quite fast.
So, your product market fit has to change.
Jenelle McMaster
If I'm just to push on your analogy of the jigsaw and the way I fill a jigsaw in actually, is I get the edges. I figure out the edges.
Dom Price
You're a boundaries person. Once you've got the boundaries, you play within the boundaries.
Jenelle McMaster
That's right.  
Maybe I have a vision of the, I can see what the box, what I'm trying to build here.
But if you put it in leadership parlance and the kinds of values behaviours, are there some jigsaw pieces on the outside that will be truths, enduring truths for us, no matter how much the list is changing?
Dom Price
I think yes, and it depends.
I think it depends on what time horizon you look over.
So, when you go over a really long time horizon, I think there's so much inherent uncertainty.
It's hard to find those edges.
I think if you go short to medium-term, the vast majority of businesses I'm working with in Australia and globally are heavily people focused still.
Their biggest asset, their biggest IP, their biggest investment often, as well as their asset is their people.
It might not be the one they invest the most in, but I think there's a truism in there that, that actually, whatever you spent on technology, if you were to match that dollar for dollar and say, I'm going to build a human system of how I work, that's fit for purpose in 2025, and I'm going to refresh it. So, it's fit for purpose in 2026.
It's not about having the fastest toys or the fastest tools, right?
It's the old adage of a fool with a tool is still a fool. You just made them faster.
Right?
So, instead of creating faster idiots, how do you upgrade your human operators, your leadership styles, the way you communicate, the way you manage your culture, the way you make decisions, your ways of working and how you build rhythm and cadence and flow across an organisation.
I can sense that the minute I walk into an organisation, I'm like, when you see that and you see it's not static, it's evolving.
Whatever challenge comes your way, you got it.
Jenelle McMaster
What does it feel like?
You sense it.
What does it feel like?
Dom Price
It feels like it's a weird level of humility.
I should not reinvent every time, nor should I always follow the 10 steps.
It's these guardrails and saying to people, when you have a complex problem to solve, get a diverse group together and play with it, like solve it together.
It's not that the senior most leaders should have the answer.
The senior most leaders should be curating and choreographing the moves of the people in the room but not demanding those moves.
There is organisations that have that fluidity.
They tend to actually have one thing that I spot really early on.
They don't care so much for the org chart.
They work horizontally.
I've been in so many organisations that externally look amazing, but when I get in there are very functionally based.
Marketing, we're doing amazingly well with marketing.
Cool.
Do sales know?
Sales are like, we're doing amazingly well.
Ok, are you two working together on the same thing in harmony with alignment?
Jenelle McMaster
Is that a product of size though?
Is it achievable in massive organisations?
Dom Price
I think size gets blamed when actually it's an inadvertent craving for efficiency.
Functional leadership is very efficient.
I've got my lane.
I've got my budget.
I've got my scope, my goals.
I'm in control of that.
Did I achieve a customer outcome?
It doesn't matter.
I did my thing.
I think sometimes size is maybe not a determinant.
It's probably a coefficient.
It's an influence factor.
I think what's interesting is organisations that have a strong sense outside and they look outside and work in, they, for me, tend to be more relevant because they've got that eye on where's the market going, where's the customer going, where's the evolution there.
The ones that look in and go, I need to make this monolithic beast more efficient.
They will make a very efficient thing.
And me and you would walk in there and ask them, are you still doing the right thing?
And they're like, we managed to get 6% cost reduction and whatever more efficiently to you.
I know I get that you're going faster, but have you stopped to check?
Are you doing the right thing rather than just doing the thing fast?
And we flipped the rules.
We've now said, it's not about efficiency.
It's about being effective, relevant to your customer and evolving fast.
Jenelle McMaster
I think you might be touching on one of the things that I think it does feel differently.
And in fact, an Oxford professor said this when I asked him a question, why does it feel this different?
And he said, there's something about the need to, you know, you're talking about looking outside much more.
If you're connecting, there's so much change happening outside.
So, because of that pace of change happening outside, we need to be up and out, but these things are happening to us in our organisation at the same time.
And I think the analogy uses, it's like shooting at a target when you're in a fast-moving car yourself.
You know, it feels so different, that high level of connectivity and orchestration is happening.
Dom Price
But also, this, this belief that we need a high fidelity shot, like there is one shot and I've got to hit the target bullseye versus going actually, as a leader, I think you've got a few shots, and I think you need to be close.
I don't think you have to get 100% of the target.
So, I think one of the, the killer profiles I've seen in a lot of the leaders I'm working with right now is still this need for perfection.
Right.
And it comes out in many different forms.
Sometimes it's, I must be right.
Or if I'm in this workshop, I'm the senior most person, I must be running this.
And it's like, no, you don't like you're just a participant, but that need to be right or perfect is right now is an absolute killer for progress in a world that we've just accepted is inherently uncertain.
Jenelle McMaster
Dom, we at EY recently did a survey, quite an extensive survey, it was 15,000 people we interviewed.
It's called our Work Reimagined survey.
But one of the findings from that survey was that 88% of employees now use AI.
Great adoption.
The depth of that adoption is very shallow, but whether or not it's deep or shallow use cases, what we're seeing is that employees are telling us that AI is making them more productive and more stressed.
Dom Price
Yeah.
Jenelle McMaster
So, workloads going up.
Dom Price
Yeah.
Jenelle McMaster
I've been thinking about this.
Are we unintentionally using technology to accelerate the treadmill?
Dom Price
Probably.
We've been around systematic change long enough to know when you take a new phenomena at an old organisation, you jam it in and you go, well, it doesn't change because you didn't change the overall system of the organisation.
And so those stats for me, even if I didn't know them, I'd say given where we're at in the hype cycle and the adoption curve, those stats feel about right.
Because what we say to people is carry on doing your job.
We're adding this thing in that will save time.
We're not being that prescriptive on what to do with your free time.
Most of the articles and the celebration I see is the celebration of the time saving.
It's not the celebration of the time invested.
If I'm an organisation, I go, I saved an average of eight hours a week across all my employees.
And I invested that.
So, of the eight hours, two went into mental wellness, health and wellness.
Two went into new projects and innovation.
Four went into whatever.
And so, here's the dividend that I've got, which is a portfolio dividend.
I think what we're in now is this, the equation's changing.
So, we're adding in AI.
We're saving time.
We don't quite know what to do with the time.
We feel awkward.
We're petrified about losing our job.
Self-preservation kicks in.
We take on something else and we're creating this whack-a-mole.
And it's not even treadmill.
I think it's just like, yeah, we're just thrashing, right?
Versus going, pause.
What needs to change to the system?
And how do we do that systematically?
How do we do that methodically so that the system now matches the new demands of the work and the new demands of the technology?
Jenelle McMaster
It's really interesting because we think about this one a lot.
In fact, we talk about the, we haven't used the words of the dividend that we pay out, but we sort of redirect time saved into the thrive time.
You can choose to put it into your study, into wellbeing, into community impacts, which is great.
One of the things though, that I have seen, even if you put the words out there, it's not quite taking off as much as I would have thought or imagined.
And one of the things I've observed as well is we can get locked into ways of thinking.
So, you talked about smart, faster idiots.
Faster inefficiencies are a way I think about it as well.
And I'm wondering about what does that look like to unlock imagination?
Dom Price
I did an exercise with a few senior leaders the other week and someone shared a story, and it was pertaining to this, which was our job is to throw a ball a metre.
We do that every single day.
We can use AI to do that faster and more efficiently.
Or we could use AI to go, instead of it going a metre, do you reckon we could make it go a thousand metres?
And the next question was, what would need to be true for that to happen?
And suddenly the thing that happened was creativity, imagination and play. Without ever using those words, right?
So, we were like, well, God, a thousand, that's, that feels unachievable.
That's, that's never been done before.
Here's what we'd need to do.
And, and, and the constraints lifted there, the mojo in the room completely changed because the new target was a new target.
This is going, how do we do the old thing faster?
So, I've got a very simple framework I've been using, which is we can use AI or any form of technology to do minus one things, zero things and plus one things, right?
The minus one things are the things we do right now that are broken.
Let's do them a little bit better, right?
The zero things, risk and compliance, right?
We still want to do them.
How can we use AI to do them more broadly, higher coverage, higher fidelity, but at the same price. We can get a better product for the same investment.
And the plus one is net new business, brand new opportunities.
I don't know if it's the sale cycle or the hype cycle or just sentiment in markets right now and a little bit of short-term thinking. But most people are doing minus one, a tiny bit of zero and very few are doing the plus one.
I genuinely believe everyone still has that fire in the belly.
I feel like we’ve set up environments where we've put that fire out and therefore is that our job as leaders is just to reignite that.
There's probably a sprinkling of psychological safety.
There's a sprinkling of reward and recognition, right?
You've got to incentivise it.
There's a sprinkling of storytelling, right?
As we do these things, how do we tell the stories about innovation, creativity, imagination?
How do we train people on it, right?
If they don't feel like they have that skill and capability, how do we tap into it and how do we make it part of our operating model, right?
And I think when you do that and you normalise it, it will become seamless.
What I fear, you can do the theater of this really easily.
You can do the, oh, we're innovative.
We do a hack day.
We're innovative.
We've got mass, mass.
We're like, we can do the paraphernalia really easily, but the building into the core of what you do, that takes a different level of stewardship.
And I think a longer-term mindset, which always brings me back to tenure.
We've inadvertently created shorter incentives.
So, if you think about the platform play, we as a society need to make right now, the investment we need to make for the generation coming through the ranks, for the generation, there's this frozen middle that I'm petrified about between probably 30 and, what am I, 47, 30 to 47-year-olds who have still got a career where they're expected to work, pay taxes, earn, but they might become irrelevant.
So, retraining of that middle bit, the next generation, how do we build a platform where there's enough time to invest and get that payback?
When instead of planting seeds, I mean, a lot of the CEOs I work with are like, I just need to chop down more trees.
I need to make more money.
I'm going to chop down trees.
And you're like, yeah, the trees came from seeds.
At some point we need to plant a seed and nurture a seed.
I think that's your job as a leader.
If we don't give them that tenure, will we ever get the investment and the longer-term payback?
Jenelle McMaster
One thing that keeps coming up in conversations with leaders and employees is, in various guises, saying they don't feel seen.
And leaders, in various guises, saying they're listening harder than ever.
And not going to lie, but both those things do actually feel true to me.
Where do you think that disconnect is coming from and how do we bridge it?
Dom Price
If I could give you a factual answer to that, I think I could probably bottle it and retire.
I've become abundantly aware of that truth with a few customers I'm working with right now with that exact statement.
Staff going, I don't feel seen, I don't feel valued, I don't feel heard.
And leaders going, how many more ways, right?
There was one where actually we just sat them all around and had an honest conversation.
We're like, you know what?
Let's not do any more surveys, not a focus group.
It's not anything other than an honest human-to-human conversation.
And the question to the employees was, you tell us, what would it take for you to feel seen or feel heard?
Because we've tried and we've clearly not got it right.
And then those employees then asked back saying, what have you done and what haven't you tried that you'd be willing to try?
And it was a very honest conversation.
Now, it'd be lovely to say they ended up with a joint plan roadmap equally. 
They didn't.
But they left with far more empathy for each other's position, right.
So, essentially what was happening before that was the leaders were like, God, these lot are needy. What a pain. We just need to get rid of a few of these needy people. Entitled. They're entitled, that's what. Lots of finger wagging, right? And the people there are going, I'm working my arse off. I'm at the coalface. I'm doing all this work. I never get anything. Yeah, I get a pay cheque, but I never get any recognition and thanks.
So, one of the things this company used to have was an informal recognition system where people said, well done and thank you.
Can you acknowledge me?
And they roll up and in a monthly newsletter, your name's on a list. I feel seen. Wow.  
Okay. So, it's weird.
Jenelle McMaster
And it is big things and little things like that, right?
Dom Price
This is what blows my mind every time. So, people are, oh, do we need to, we need to buy some new recognition software. We need this tool. We need to monetise it and gamify it. Or when Jenelle does something good, just say, well done. And you're like, what do you mean? I'm just in the moment, live, right? It's like feedback.
Like every time I go to the airport and someone else has brought a book out on feedback, it's not changed. We've just got really bad at it. So, I don't think we need a new book on value exchange and recognition. I think we just need to go back to those human basics.
And again, I want to call out something that happened in the pandemic. There's a whole lot of leaders that I've been working with recently. They've mistaken broadcast for communication because in the pandemic, they couldn't physically reach people in person. So, they did broadcast. I will record a video. I'll send it out to the entire organisation. So, these leaders are like, no, no, we had a change. I've communicated it, Dom, but no one's listening. So yeah, no one's listening. I agree. So why are you sending it out again? Right? Literally definition of insanity.
And so, what actually happened with them was they had a metric problem. They measured the number of broadcasts and the reach. They didn't measure who listened and what they did differently. So, when we sat down, I was like, I know which data points are easier to measure. You did it. It went out live. It was available to 5,000 people. So that metric, easy, gold star, go for your life. No impact. How many people listened to it and what changes happened because of that?
Way harder to measure, but what you care about is the effect that you had from that communication. Did they get the message? Have they changed their behaviour?
And so, I think, again, this is like back-to-basics moment of going, what behaviour changes will make your organisation thrive and how do you reward and recognise those? And how do you role model them yourself?
Jenelle McMaster
So, I was going to ask you, what does it look like to be a thriving leader in this today, in this environment? I think you've touched on a bunch of things there, but how would you kind of distil thriving leadership in this modern world?
Dom Price
There's two core aspects that I'm seeing as a red thread and I'm not, this isn't research-based. I've not got stats on this. 
Um, one is they are looking ahead at future signals. They're looking around the corner at future signals that may or may not affect them in their business. And they're trying to get an insight from that signal early and adapt early. So, the alternative to that is I've built a plan. I'm delivering this plan regardless, right?
So, they've gone from, I've got a plan and all I need to do is deliver to I've got a rough plan, but what I really need to do is look around that corner. The second part is they have balance. They have balance in life. They have hobbies, loved ones, children, travel, whatever it is, they have something that gives them an identity other than their job.
Um, and that for me,
Jenelle McMaster
Why does that matter?
Dom Price
Because that is the human anchor point. We talked about anchor points in a work context. If all you've got is a work anchor point, I don't know if that's what, I mean, for some people that might be worth it. That's not enough, right?
My idea of hell is my gravestone going like “was productive”. Dom, like I just like “was efficient on Thursday”. Like, like that's not anything to live for or live by. So, so those thriving leaders have this way of going.
I liken it to, um, if you ever like seen elite athletes, how much they recharge and relax and you're like, but you're the top like naught point, whatever percent, why aren't you playing more?
And they're like, because more playing isn't going to get me to my goal. Being rounded is going to get me to my goal. I'm like, they're like, if we could take a little bit of that roundedness from sport and put it into business and go actually write your, your thrive moment, right? Reinvest in thriving. When we have give people spare time and we get them to invest in them, they become better employees. We know this cause there's plenty of books about it, but it almost feels counterintuitive. The flip of it is the number of leaders right now.
And this is really bad in the U S not so bad here with this hustle culture, chest beating, you know, who can burn themselves out the fastest moment. I actually think the more rounded leaders and there's a handful I'm working with right now.
I'll look at them and I go, I admire you. They've got lots of things in abundance, but it's those two that shine out for me, the ability to look around corners with humility and the ability to have a balanced life.
Jenelle McMaster
Love, love, love that.
You talked about one of the challenges of leaders who have been established leaders navigating change is there's much more to unlearn. I'm going to get it personal now. What about you? You've been a leader in the game for a long time. What, what's something that you've, you've had to unlearn?
Dom Price
I would say the, uh, the hardest on learning maybe for flip the question for me is my dominant style in workshops. So, I, I thrive in a workshop moment, but I would say the mistake I've made in the past and I've had to unlearn this. I thought my role was to get the workshop to a specific outcome and I would normally arrive with the outcome in mind.
Jenelle McMaster
Oh yes.
 Dom Price
That's otherwise known as manipulation. This is going, my job here is to facilitate. I'm a choreographer. I'm a curator and I need to navigate these people, but they own the problem. They own the solution. It's my job to help them get there, but I almost need to abstract myself out from having an opinion on what the solution is. That dominance in meetings, that dominance got me places fast, but it got me places fast through not hearing other people.
So, on my, I have two post-it notes on my machine at home. One is, argue like you're right, listen like you're wrong.
Jenelle McMaster
I like that.
Dom Price
And the other one is less furious, more curious.
Jenelle McMaster
Okay.
Dom Price
Because I need reminders of both.
Jenelle McMaster
It's a really interesting one because I was, I've got similar sorts of things there and how might I hear counter views as data?
It's data.
That's a really interesting thing.
It's telling me something.
My reaction to that data, it's instructive about me, but the data itself is instructive about the situation.
Dom Price
So, the phrase a friend gave me is like every now and then you're going to get something you don't like, let it marinate.
There's a power of pause, isn't there?
Oh, power of pause.
It's not my strong suit.
Not easy for extroverts.
Jenelle McMaster
There's one thing that I'm going back to this survey that we did, and there's a whole lot of rich data in there.
One of the things that talked about, we talked about what we saw in the data that is this real need to properly invest in training to upskill on a significant amounts training factor.
81 hours is the magic number that came through of AI learning a year.
Huge to unlock meaningful productivity gains.
But what we also saw that's super interesting to me is that employees with the most AI training are 55% more likely to quit.
Dom Price
It's a bit of a bummer, isn't it?
Jenelle McMaster
There's something.
Dom Price
Not surprised, yeah.
Jenelle McMaster
Right?
Because I feel like you've probably unlocked something.
Is this a retention risk that becomes a turning off point for organisations?
Is it healthy talent mobility?
Is it a call to action to do things differently?
This is the first time we've heard that data point.
What's your reaction to that?
Dom Price
I've got a guess. Okay. And it is a guess.
You know, if you take someone for an offsite and you talk to them about psychological safety and humility, you train them on all these things, and then you return them to the office and nothing's changed.
Jenelle McMaster
Yes. Yes.
They're angrier.
Dom Price
Your engagement scores don't go up, they go down.  
Because you've shown them the light and then gone, I'm not giving you the light, I'm just letting you know light exists.
The training lens on AI might be the same.
I'm going to equip you to be a superhuman.
I'm going to equip you to be amazing.
And then I'm going to put you in a really mediocre environment where you get frustrated every day.
Because we're investing in the learning, we're not investing in the system change.
I think if we could get those three things in congruence and go, human operating system of how we work, how we make decisions, how we operate, ways of working, all that jazz, I'm going to train you and make you more capable.
I'm going to give you a chance to practice it and tools that amplify that behaviour.
You've got me. I am staying. I'm loyal. I'm growing. I'm learning. I'm over the moon.
You take any of those three out and you're like, this is weird.
You've given me the technology, but you're not trained me.
Well, now I feel stupid, right?
Or we've got the operating system, we've got the tech, but I've not learned anything, right? 
Those three have to be in harmony.
And I think right now, companies are grappling at one or two of them and not doing the three in concert.
Jenelle McMaster
You know, we've talked about the criticality of, you know, at the end of the day, everything we do is about people.  
It's about creativity. It's about their energy. It's about their growth. 
And we're operating in an environment that's increasingly digital, increasingly remote, increasingly transactional.
And I'm thinking about how leaders need, what are ways in which leaders can really build that connection, that human connection, given the changes of the environment that we're operating in?
What comes to mind for you?
I know you talked about rituals.
Dom Price
Yeah. There's a few.
So, I'm a firm believer that the most important relationships I have to this day, work, personal, whatever, were formed in person. A lot of them I maintain in a virtual world, in a remote distributed world, but that moment of connection, of trust, of rapport, of all the things was in person.
The first time we met was in person, right?
And so, there's a whole of those where I'm like, there's some kind of like a value exchange in that moment where you're like, we're similar enough where there's something here, don't know what it is, but it's something here.
And you don't need to name it or codify it, it's just something there.
And that happens in person. I feel trusted. I feel seen. I feel safe. I feel like I could speak up, right?
If you feel those things, then they're true. So, I get that in person. I can then maintain that online.
One of the practices I've been using too, I've been using with leaders recently, one is the my user manual. Every single person I've ever hired in my career does not come with a user manual. So, I don't know how you work, so I'm going to guess. Which is just silly. Instead of guessing how Jenelle works, I'm like, Jenelle, draw me, write me up a user manual.
How do you like feedback? How do you operate? What are your values? What are your behaviours? And what are your triggers that make you angry? What are the things that make you sad? What grounds you like? And now I know a little bit about you. I understand a little bit more about how you operate and how you're motivated and how to work best with you. So that works as like a setup.
The second part is the reflection.
So, there's an exercise I've been doing for eight years now called the five L's.
I do it every 90 days.
I look back at the previous 90 days.
Me as a leader, not the project or the teams, not out.
It's in. What have I loved? What have I loathed? What have I longed for? What have I learnt and what have I loved?
Jenelle McMaster
So, what have I loved, loathed, longed for, laughed at and learnt.
Dom Price
So, I do that every 90 days, reflect, project, reflect, project.
And then I've got a cohort of two or three really trusted advisors that I share my five L's with when I do them to hold me accountable.
I want to be honest with your listeners.
If they're not doing some exercise to reflect on their leadership style and changing it, they are the anchor slowing everything down.
So, I think we need a moment of intellectual humility where we admit if we're not changing, we're not allowed to expect the world around us to change.
Jenelle McMaster
It starts with us.
Dom Price
If you can help yourself and you evolve how you work, you lead with humility.
If you do those things, good things will happen around you.
Jenelle McMaster
Dom, thank you so much.
In the spirit of offering up those little moments, I would like to give you feedback.
That was excellent.
Thank you so much for giving so much richness and so much of yourself to this conversation.
You know, whether it's the five L's, the creation of the human user manual and really taking the time to understand, recognising the criticality of those human connection moments, the power of the thank you to let people feel seen and heard and understood.
I really liked the letting go of the need for perfection.
We will get catatonic in a world that's moving too fast.
Celebrate time invested over time saved.
I love that.
I think that makes a massive difference here and really being thoughtful about our human operating system.
And unless we are able to unlock that plus one thinking, you know, the psych safety, the storytelling, the training, the incentives, it's all been so powerful and actually also the reminder to pay attention to the signals.
I said never before have we needed to look up and out much more to inform what we do within and a reminder about the power of balance, a critical human anchor point for us all.
Dom, thank you so much for your time.
The Change Happens podcast from EY.
Insights from leaders in a changing world.
Discover more where you get your podcasts.

Adam Jacobs
Co-founder and CEO, Hatch

Jenelle McMaster (JM)
It's an age-old question for businesses. Where can I find the next generation of talent? What can I do to attract them? How are their needs changing?
Voice over 1
They're actually less equipped to deal with stress than previous generations.
They would rather change jobs every year from now until they retire.
Voice over 2
I don’t think any of us want to work 100 hours a week? We have no piece of the pie. To work with someone you don't respect, to do something that you don't believe in.
JM
Well, joining me to unpack this is Adam Jacobs, Co-founder of Hatch. Hatch is an AI-powered Australian job platform that matches candidates and employers based on values and skills, not just job titles. With millennials and Gen Z set to make up 66% of the workforce in the next decade, that future is coming faster than we think.
AJ
Gen Z are less likely to want to stick it out. You know they're not there to work their butts off until some future unknown date, but we're definitely hearing that if those factors are present, that they are loyal and they're dedicated and they will show up in a very applied way.
JM
From job security, impacts of AI, changing workplace cultures and everything in between, we’ll uncover exactly what these emerging talents are looking for and how businesses can keep up with these rapidly shifting expectations.
Well, hi, Adam and welcome back to Change Happens.
AJ
Yeah, Jenelle, it's so good to be back here again.
JM
And we say back because I interviewed you for season 2 of Change Happens. We're now at season 6. It was COVID at the time, so the world has changed a few times over.
AJ
Yeah, it feels, it feels a long time ago someone said to me the other day, COVID started five years ago and it's incredible it's been that long.
JM
Pretty wild, isn't it? Now we're here to talk about a few other things today. I work in an organisation, as you know, that employs around 9000 people here locally, that employs around 400,000 globally. The average age of our workforce is around 26. I also spend a lot of time talking to other employers across private and public sector. And it would be fair to say that no matter what I go in to have a conversation about, inevitably it finds its way towards the changing demands of the workforce, where to find talent, the impact of AI on work or some version of that. So that's where I'm really keen to dive in with you today. So, Gen Z, hang on, let's call it Gen Z for international applicability! Gen Z and Millennials are now the biggest generation in the world, and by extension, they are shapers of the future of work. So, keen to understand in what ways are you seeing them influence the workplace?
AJ
It's a big question. At Hatch, we spent a lot of time speaking to Gen Z Australians about their sentiment and attitudes towards work. We run a annual survey as part of that, that we call the Hatch Hotlist where we asked them about where they want to work, why what's driving their job seeking preferences and we asked several thousand young Australians every year. And so, we've just released this year's report. And so, there's a few themes that have come out that I think are impacting how they're showing up at work. I would say the overarching theme is one around what we're calling security. It's a bit different to previous years, actually. What we're seeing in 2025 is that the world is changing very quickly under the feet of young Australians.

JM
Sure is.
AJ
They're experiencing that in a few different ways. For sure the AI revolution is changing not only their experience of day-to-day work, but also the design of their career paths. And then you layer on top a cost-of-living crisis, it's still impacting them and geopolitical concerns and risks and it just feels like a risky, uncertain time. And as a result, Gen Z Australians are really prioritising pathways to security at work and what that means is a few different things. Means that they're looking for opportunities for growth and development in their career so that they know they're going somewhere. It means that they're prioritising financial stability through healthy salaries. It means that they're prioritising organisations that see AI as an opportunity more than a threat and it also means that they're prioritising balance and side hustles in their life. I think coming back to your question ,Jenelle, what that means in terms of what they're bringing into the workplace and the influence they're having on it is that they're bringing a more, I want to call it whole of human approach to how they show up at work rather than just only caring about the 9:00 to 5:00 and putting all of their effort into their one full time job. They care about a lot of parts of their life outside of work just as much, and they're bringing that more balanced approach into the workplace.

JM
This is the third hot list that you've put together - the survey that you've done. And you mentioned that security sort of takes a different form. Has that been one of the shifts that you've observed over the course of the three surveys that you've done, or is there anything else that stands out to you as a shift?
AJ
Yeah, I mean each, each survey, we look really closely at the results, both quant and qual, and we try and understand what's really going on, like what's the underlying context that's driving behaviour each year. And so, the first year we ran it, three years ago, what we heard a lot from young Australians was that culture and values alignment were driving their job choices more than cheap perks and, and cheap benefits. The second year, last year we ran it, was very informed by the cost-of-living crisis and we heard that young Australians were making choices based on mostly financial stability. This year it's all about the fast-changing world around them and finding paths to security within that change. I think what we can sort of take away when we when we look at that trend is one of the questions we ask each year is how are you feeling about your future career? And optimism is actually been going up this year. I think nearly 80% of respondents said they were feeling optimistic about their future career. I think that was up from about 70 to 75 percent last year.
JM
I was surprised to see optimism as a higher as it was, what do you put that down to given all of those conditions that you just outlined?
AJ
Yeah, I I think that the response to AI by young Australians is a very positive one. You know, we ran another survey about six months ago where we asked about their attitude towards AI and 90% of them said it's not a threat in my career. I see it as an opportunity. I see it as a way to grow faster, develop new skills, have impact faster. And so, you know, I think young Australians are bringing a very value-centric mindset to their careers. They, they want to show up not just because they're trying to do a good job for their organisation, but because they want to bring their own personal values into their life and they see AI as an accelerant for that and they're looking for organisations that share that belief.
JM
Can you elaborate a bit more on that? How do they see AI as being an enabler for them, bringing a more values-based mindset to the organisation?
AJ
I think that it's new tooling that allows them to have impact in faster ways basically. You know, generally speaking, this is a generalisation, but I think it's true younger generations adopt new technology faster than older generations. You know, they're less established in their ways of working. The delta in technology and tooling between the the, the modern LLM age that we're now in and where we were five years ago is vast. It's really, really big. And so, I think young Australians are feeling like they have this leg up, you know, they're the first to adopt this new technology that is so much better than what we had even five years ago. That allows them to have impact in their career even faster.
JM
So, I'm really loving the level of optimism about that and I don't want to bring us down, but conversely, what are some of the concerns and anxieties they have around that?
AJ
There's a lot of discussion around how will AI impact the junior workforce in general? Will it reduce the number of jobs out there? Will it replace jobs? And I would say there's more fear than answers like in terms of that conversation and so the impact that's having on Gen Z Australians is they're very wary of organisations, is what we hear from them. They're very wary of organisations that don't have a firm answer to that question. You know, if the organisation’s answer is “we don't know and maybe it will reduce the amount of junior jobs on offer here” that presents a uncertain career path at that organisation for a young person. If the answer is no, “you know what we won't be replacing junior jobs, we'll be changing the job design and what it means to start in our organisation will look differently” then, that presents a more firm career path.
JM
I was going to ask you about that because surely, they also value transparency and authenticity, and if we don't, I mean the reality is no one does have all the answers. So, I'm sort of a bit torn by that because I try to lead as an employer with honesty about we do not have all the answers. But I guess what you're talking about is being clear around the pathway to navigate through that.
AJ
Yeah, I mean. I think that if we if we just step back and think about AI as an arc of technology for a moment, you know my view and I and I think it's the, the general view is that this arc of technology will be the single largest influence on any of our lives and is far greater than the arcs beforehand. You know, 100 years ago we had no real digital technology in our ways of working. And then we had server-based computing. Then we had personal computing, then we had mobile computing. Then we had sort of the rise of social media. And now we have modern, large language models and the, the jump to, to, to the impact that LLMs will have on the workforce and the time scale that will play out on, I think is far greater than those waves before. And so, it's natural that we don't have the answers. I also don't think we're gonna have the answers next year or the year after. Like, I think this is a change that will play out over decades. And so, I'm not sure, an organisation needs to have a definitive answer. I think they just have to have a point, a point in time, point of view that they clearly express. They say we don't know what you know what's going to look like three, four, five years from now. But today, here's how we're handling bringing AI into our junior roles. You know this, these are our expectations. These are our policies. This is, you know, this is our approach to it. And, and I think that goes down really well with Gen Z Australians.
JM
You talked about this incredible landscape of geopolitical uncertainty, AI exponential cost of living crisis, - all of that stuff that people are, are navigating, but also the desire for purpose and growth, and career development. How do you see this generation reconciling the needs for both of those elements?
AJ
I think it's hard. I think it's hard for them, you know, they're coming into a fast-changing world and they're trying to, they're trying to figure it out. What we've heard in terms of what young Australians are prioritising, so if we look at the top three factors that's driving their work choices, the top factor is opportunities for growth and development. I mean, that's really what they care about more than anything else. They want to know that they have a future path, and that future path is going to grow career value and career capital for them. The second priority is salary stability. That there be a healthy salary there that can grow. And then the third is balance. It's the ability to spend time, invest time outside of work, into their hobbies, into their interests. And so, I think what, what young Australians are trying to do is they're trying to bring a mindset to their work, which is I'm more than just my fulltime job. I have interests, I have values, I have family, I have friends, and I want to bring a balanced approach to my career. But at the same time, I want this central pillar of a stable job that has a future where I can grow, and I can learn. I can develop and I can also build my financial independence. And so, yeah, they're trying to fashion this more dispersed or balanced life with a very dependable job in the middle of it.
JM
So, you mentioned in the takeaways from the survey - side hustles. So, when you think about that salary stability and I want this certainty of income, talk to me about the relationship of side hustles in that picture.
AJ
Yeah, it was a really interesting question and I think the response, we didn't expect. So, what, what we heard was that 80% of young Australians either already have or want a side hustle and a side hustle could be a whole range of things. It could be a small ecommerce store you run on the side. It could be a second job you have on the weekends. It could just be like a hobby you're pursuing. When we dug into it, if you look at that 80% about half of them already have a side hustle, and about half of them want a side hustle. If you look at the ones that already have a side hustle, about two-thirds of them, their side hustle is more about a hobby where they're trying to express their creativity and do something fun. And one third is a stream of income that they hope to become a fulltime job. And so really what we're hearing is side hustles are about ways for people to express themselves and build skills and pursue curiosities outside of their main job that also gives them a plan B. It also gives them a second income stream just in case they need it more than somebody trying to build a portfolio career from the get-go.
JM
Understand. So, what do you think that means for employers?
AJ
I think side hustles are awesome from an employer perspective. You know, I think I think what, what they allow an individual to do is build a whole set of new skills outside of work that they invariably then bring into the workplace and they bring into their job. I mean, just thinking about it, you know, for my team at Hatch, we have someone in our team, Bella, who outside of work is a marriage celebrant and, and so that's an independent business she runs. And running it as a business means she's gotta learn a whole lot of skills around how do you, you know, generate clients? How do you run your business model? How, how do you communicate and sell? And she's bringing all those skills back into her job at work. It's always been my personal belief that when as individuals, when we're able to live a more balanced life with different interests, we show up better at work. I think that's what we're certainly seeing from young Australians, that they, they, they want to bring those side hustles in terms of skills development back into their main job.
JM
You know, just listening to you now, it's making something sort of ping in my brain, because you talked in the beginning about people bringing their human self to work or whole self to work. And I can tell you as someone who sits in a management role and works with a lot of leaders, that's vexed to language when we talk about whole selves to work, because what people hear is a lot of issues and mental health challenges and cumulative stress that comes into the workplace, which actually transfers a lot of load onto a manager to have to know how to manage. And I can see some of those challenges landing in more challenges upstream. But I'm actually thinking, listening to you, has the whole self to work, morphed a bit or broadened to include whole self as in I have other skills, interests and hobbies and that could be to the advantage of the organisation, not to the burden of the organisation?
AJ
Yeah, it's a great question. And, and there's a couple of points I'd love to make here. The first is I think what bringing your whole self to work means has changed across generations. If I think about millennials and above, really sort of Gen X, I think it's more about bringing your passions and values to work. You know, historically if we think 100 years ago a career was never a way to express yourself in terms of your values or never a way to pursue meaning. Like originally a career really was something that you were born into and you didn't have a whole lot of choice around. And then over the 19th, 20th century we developed choice and career mobility. And so, we started rethinking careers and it was more about a way to generate meaning in your life outside of just an income. And I think particularly for Gen X and into millennials, this was a generation where bringing your whole self to work meant I want to bring my ambitions and values and sense of purpose. It was really about purpose beyond just generating an income into my career. I think Gen Z are thinking about it differently again and, and, and it's closer to what you mentioned. I think they're thinking about it more as, you know, my, my life is multifaceted. My life is not just about my 9-to-5 job. It's also about my hobbies. It's also about my friends. It's also about my travel. It's also about my mental health, and I want all those things to be good in parallel. You know, I think we used to have this picture of an ambitious career where you know the ambitious individual effectively had a two-step plan in their career. Step one, work their butts off, get to a point where they're really senior and they've generated a whole lot of financial independence. Step 2, make a change and shift your priorities to family or hobbies or wherever you want to put yourself. But like you can't get to Step 2 until step one's like resoundingly complete. I don't think Gen Z thinks about that life anymore.
JM
Hmm. I was gonna ask you about the evolution of ambition here, what that means.
AJ
Yeah, I think from the get-go, Gen Z Australians are directing their ambition in a more multifaceted way than before. It's less about, let me put everything into my career and then later on, let me reprioritise. And it’s more about no, I want my priorities from the get-go to be more balanced, to be more spread across the different aspects of my life and I want those different aspects to develop in parallel.
JM
What’s, and I know that you’re coming from the position of representing Gen Z and millennials on here, but I guess as you think about the employers of workplaces and how they need to evolve to understand this shift and these expectations. What's your guidance or steer or reflections there?
AJ
Yeah. I mean, the first thing I'd say is I think it's uncomfortable. I mean like just speaking personally. Yeah, I'm top end of millennial, bottom end of Gen X, but it's just on the millennial side and...
JM
Me too. OK, OK, that hearty laugh means you don't agree, and I wouldn't lie.
AJ
I think you're young, but anyway this is this is dangerous territory.
So, you know, I personally I probably have influences in both directions and I certainly grew up in the school of thought of the two step plan like work your butt off and then eventually you can, you can reprioritise.
JM
Yep.
AJ
And so, for me as an employer, it is often uncomfortable thinking about a different approach and a different mindset. However, what I've seen play out is that you also get from that more sustainable, more balanced, more happy employees that build more sustainable, more balanced, more happy cultures. And I don't think it means that everything has to be wrapped in cotton wool, right. I think that that's a that that is a misunderstanding of the opportunity here. I think there are still times in any teams life cycle across a quarter or a year where you gotta hustle and then other times that it's a bit quieter like those peaks and troughs still occur within an organisation. I just think it means that the general expectation is it's not just your work life that's important, it's also things outside of work. And if we share that sense of balance together, then we can build an overall stronger culture.
JM
One of the challenges, and it is uncomfortable, I have to say as someone who prides herself as being really connected with all generations, but then feels that tug of sometimes I'll be honest, frustration when it feels like, you know, you just started this particular project. How come you're already ready to move on? Sometimes you feel like you've got to do some time here. And there's this kind of faster, faster. next, next, next. What? What? What's that about and how do we navigate this together? Because we all want for the same things. For people to feel engaged, bring their whole selves to work, working sustainably, purposefully. The pace seems to be just ever faster and expectations moving with that at that same pace.
AJ
Hmm. That’s interesting. That's what you're seeing like in your own teams around. Yeah, I suppose, I mean, if I think about what we heard from the survey we, we heard, so just coming back to the to the data point, that growth and learning and development is like the number one factor driving an individual. I think where an individual is in a role or a project and they see that opportunity for growth. What we're hearing is that they, they will apply themself consistently over a long period of time to access that growth. If they're in a position where they feel like they're not growing or they're not achieving some of those factors that really important to them and the top three being growth, financial stability and general life balance, then they're going to look elsewhere to where they can get it from. I think that is a bit of a shift to previous generations. I think previous generations will just stick it out. I think Gen Z are less likely to want to stick it out. I think, again, it's a reframing of their priorities at work. You know, they're not there to work their butts off until some future unknown date. They're there to achieve those three factors from the get go. But we're definitely hearing that if those factors are present that they are loyal and they're dedicated and, and they will show up in a very applied way.
JM
I want to turn to the intersection of humans within processes where AI is playing a really large role and this is something near and dear to your heart when it comes to recruitment and selection. But we know that candidates are using AI to generate applications in bulk. Also, recruiters are using AI to screen those applications. And so, you've got this kind of weird dynamic of machine to machine. And something about that human touch can and does seem to be getting lost along the way, And then your survey points out, you point out a whole lot of interesting things in that disconnect. What happens is there's more ghosting, there's more candidate burnout, there's poor hiring decisions. So, what do you see as the antidote to that? Because I can definitely see the upside of being able to use AI here. But how do we use AI meaningfully and still put people at the centre?
AJ
Yeah, I mean, it's such a great question. I think, I think what is being lost a little bit is human connection and as you mentioned we, we saw it come through the survey. We heard that over half of candidates are using AI in their job application processes. We heard that about 80% of people feel ghosted. They're using automation to send out a lot of applications, but they're often just not hearing back. The ghosting feeling is really interesting because I think where that lack of human connection shows up is often around ghosting. You know, it's I'm being treated like a number. I'm being treated transactionally. I'm never actually hearing back from a real person. From a Hatch perspective, we believe there are two schools of thought around how you apply AI when it comes to the job space. The first school of thought I'm going to call it the bad school of thought in my personal view, OK is, is. just automate everything and I think that is leading to that sense of a lack of human connection and very transactional experience. The second school of thought is use AI to help people get to the moment of human connection with less effort. And so rather than just automating everything, like help you identify the right job, the right manager, help you identify the right candidate and then make it easier to connect with them and have a human touch point. That touch point might be a video introduction where a candidate’s sharing a intro of who they are over video that obviously hasn't been written by ChatGPT because you’re hearing directly from the person. Or it might be just being able to get more quickly to the right candidate that you want to jump on the phone with and spending more time as a recruiter speaking to people in real life rather than just flicking through lots of pieces of paper. The organisations that are able to do two things are really standing out. One, get back to all candidates and not ghost them. It's really important. It's hard to do as a company because you often get inundated with so many applications more than you can get through but it really hurts your brand in market if you're not letting people know the outcome.
JM
There must be some sort of, I mean, whether it's explicit or implicit, if I'm going to get all of these resumes that are generated by AI, I don't feel as indebted to having to respond to that because I can't feel the human in there. And therefore, I don't feel as guilty about that, you know, like, you can also see the reverse of that. It sort of feels funny, doesn't it? This whole machine to machine? At what point do you go OK, you know, let's bring ourselves back into this?
AJ
Yeah. I think the machines play a role, but they're not a proxy for having a genuine human touch point. You know they play a role in generating more efficiency to get to the right touch points, but they should - a machine talking to a machine should never make a final decision about somebody's application to job. They're just helping you get to the right potential matches to then make a decision on. And yeah, I think the companies that are doing this well, they're, they're the ones that are not outsourcing, you know, all of their decision making to AI. They're the ones that are using AI to make better decisions. But those are human decisions that include human touch points.
JM
I know you spend a lot of time speaking with organisations about how they attract and retain early career talent. Tell me what are some of the biggest mismatches that you're seeing between what young people expect and what companies are offering?
AJ
There's a couple of ones that we often hear, particularly from, from young people and you know in the survey we asked about like what really turns people away from a job, the top factor was lack of opportunity for growth and development. And so, if an organisation isn't able to articulate the career path for an entry level staff member, it's really hard for them to attract top talent. Another one that shows up a lot is salary transparency, and so we know that salary is the number two factor. Candidates really want to know as early as on the job description what the salary range is, and employers are really reluctant to provide it, that is a mismatch that does turn off a lot of, a lot of candidates. I would say the third we talked a bit about earlier, attitudes towards AI and young people's attitudes towards AI tends to be optimistic and employers’ attitudes towards AI tend to be fear based. That attitude mismatch can come out in early conversations in the job application process, and you know what's on a job description around AI or like how are the conversations in a screening call playing out. So, say that's another area of mismatch we're hearing about. I think the underlying need from young Australians is not that different to people 10, 20, 30, 40 years older than them. The underlying need is I'm looking to grow and develop as a person. I'm looking for human connection and a sense of belonging and I'm looking to be happy and healthy in thinking back to when you were at that age, what did you need and how can you give that to someone today in the world that we're living in, then they're always going to be able to win.
JM
I absolutely love that answer, Adam, because I think ‘same’, I always wanted to grow. I always wanted to have financial security. I always wanted to be able to balance those things. Generationally. I think there's more that unites us than divides us.
AJ
Yeah, absolutely. But you know to, to provide an example of how those core needs show up differently, I think a really clean example is around hybrid work policies. So, when I was starting my career, it just wasn't a thing. I mean, you just you worked five days in the office. That was just the standard, you know, today post COVID. we're in a really different world when it comes to workplaces. And so, what we heard from the survey was about 90% of people want time in the office, but the vast majority, I think 80% of people want a hybrid model. Most of them want three days a week. Most of them want those three days to be dictated by the company so that everybody's coming in at the same time, and so you know that need for human connection, you know, want to be able to connect with people is showing up differently in 2025 than it was 10/20 years ago and it's showing up for this preference to have a flexible work model that still allows for reliable, consistent, human connection and so employers need to be able to articulate, this is how we do that. Like this is our policy. These are our boundaries. This is when you'll be in the office. This is when you have flexibility and the way they do that is really different to before.
JM
So, you've talked about a lot of things there for employers who are feeling like they're struggling to keep up, what's the one thing they could do differently tomorrow to better connect with their early career talent?
AJ
Find ways to communicate how a young person can grow in your company, and there's lots of ways to do that. Use a case study. Take someone who, who started a couple of years ago in an entry level role and wherever they’ve gone to now. Point to some more senior folk. Here are some different roles you could end up in. You know, in terms of career paths in our company. Do a bit of a skills matrix, here are different skills you'll develop as you move through and where they can take you or just tell a story like as the manager, here was my background. Here's how I got to where I was today. I think those stories can be communicated in different ways - social media, job descriptions. And if you're using Hatch, certainly your Hatch company profile. And so, finding those ways to connect with a young person on what the career path opportunity is in your environment is, is really going to talk to them.

JM
I like that. It's a real level of specificity that I think makes a more authentic, honest response to that. Yeah. Yeah. There's career development opportunities. Join us like those vagaries aren't going to cut it.
AJ
Yeah.
JM
Great. So, if we get this right and we build the kinds of workplaces that Gen Z and Millennials are asking for, what do you see as the biggest opportunities for them and for employers and for the broader economy? I'll finish with the big question.
AJ
Yeah, it's a big, it's a big question and like, I mean, you know me Jenelle, you know I'm going to take this in an esoteric way because this is way more fun, right?
JM
I'd be disappointed if you didn’t.
AJ
I wanna talk about capitalism. Take a sip of water. I think that the way this generation, Gen Z, are wanting to show up in a capitalist system of work is different to previous ones. I think capitalism as a system has tended to breed career paths that are really driven by financial and reputational gain. You know, my career is about building capital. Personal capital in terms of wealth and personal capital in terms of reputation. I think Gen Z are thinking about capital in a different way. I think they're thinking about it not just as let me become wealthier and let me become more prestigious, but also like the capital of the balance of my life. Like I want to live a good life, and a good life is multifaceted. It's not just about putting all of my energy into one job. It's also about investing into my personal relationships. It's about investing into my creativity. It's about developing new skills. They're taking a more rounded view as to like what is, what does capital mean, what capital are they trying to build in, in their, in their life as they move through their career? And so I think if we get this right, there is an opportunity where that generation, Gen Z, take that mindset and, and as they move into leadership roles, they bring it into the core of a company's culture. And a company, and then by proxy society at large starts being built on this platform of let's not just all work ourselves to the bone because we're trying to get somewhere for the hell of it. Like, let's, let's actually, live a good life along the way. And I think that is a different way of living and as employers, that might sound scary, but if we were to think about it as individuals for our own lives actually, probably sounds pretty exciting.
JM
Ohh, let's just finish on that optimism. I absolutely love that. Thank you so much. As always, I take a lot from our conversations. I'm going to wrap here. But Adam, a few things that you've left me with to think about is the top three things that matter to this generation. I think at the top of the tree, the growth and learning opportunities, as you say, a level of specificity. Be transparent about what do organisations offer to people to allow for that growth and development. I really like the evolution of the whole self as you've talked about and you know, understanding other skills, interests and hobbies and actually, how they can be additive to the workplaces as we know today, amongst other things. AI what I hear from that is how can we use AI with intentionality to accelerate the human-to-human interaction? So, not to replace it, but actually to make it more meaningful and bring that forward. And for employers and organisations to have a point in time point of view. I think that's an honest place to play. I love the recognition of the reframe of ambition. It's much more multifaceted now. But with that goes, I guess the understanding that capital and its definition has changed. And if we think about understanding this generation’s view of life capital and what that looks like, what could that mean? Not just for, for the individual, but for organisations and our society as a whole. Plenty to think about here. Thank you so much for not just your insights, but for the survey as well. Where do people find the survey, Adam?
AJ
There's a link we can drop, but if they just Google Hatch hot list 2025, they'll find it.
JM
Thank you so much.
AJ
Thanks, Jenelle.
Speaker 4
The Change Happens podcast from EY. Insights from leaders in a changing world. Discover more where you get your podcasts.

Sarah Carney & Tim Allen
National CTO & AI National Skills Director
Microsoft

News Reporter 1
The world had like a two week freak out with GPT 4, right. There are no jobs by the end of the year and now people are like, why is it so slow?
Jenelle McMaster
When generative AI tools like ChatGPT were first being introduced, everyone expected there to be a huge surge of rapid adoption. And whilst to some extent that has been the case. It does still feel like we're collectively holding our breath, waiting to see how much this will fundamentally transform our workforce, or whether it's just another tool.
News Reporter 2
I think we are seeing the most disruptive force in history here.
News Reporter 3
China has proposed a global organisation on AI cooperation. We are making a tool that is impressive, but humans are going to do their human things.
Jenelle McMaster
Today I'm joined by two brilliant guests from Microsoft who are at the coalface of this shift, Sarah Carney, National Chief Technology Officer, someone who sees it on the ground with organisations every day. While, Tim Allen, AI National Skills Director, is focused on the macro picture asking organisations leaders the all-important question, how do we as a nation build the skills and confidence to move forward?
Sarah Carney
Well, it's changing and now it was generative and now it's agentic and I can't keep up and I'm just going to wait until everything stops to workout where I start.
Jenelle McMaster
Together, we'll explore this seemingly limitless potential of AI and its impacts on our nation, our workforces, and our future.

Hi, Sarah and Tim. Thank you both so much for joining me. I'm doubly excited today, not just because we are face to face, but because there are two of you, something I haven't done. I think six seasons in and I haven't had two at the same time. So I'm looking forward to double the number of insights and I don't think I'm alone when I say that it feels like all anyone can talk about is AI.

Given your unique positions witnessing this, and in some ways in many ways leading the shift in that regard, how are you seeing it all play out? And is it happening as you would have expected perhaps Tim, I'm looking at you, I'll start with you. From a macro perspective and Sarah, maybe you from an organisational perspective, yeah.
Tim Allen
Yeah, thanks. And really excited to be here and really excited to be here with Sarah as well, whether you're at a BBQ, whether you're at a school grounds, whether in a work setting where you're reading a newspaper, it feels like these two letters are really prominent and having a profound impact and like before we go into like what we're seeing, I think it the the question is like why does this feel different? Like is this something that's a hype cycle or is this something that's gonna be a significant and profound impact on everything that we do? I like to kind of look back at history. Not that history will predict the future of what we're on, but we can definitely learn from histories.

You know if we look back at what's happened in the economy over the last, you know, 100 or 200 years. And we look back at the significant moments or the industrial revolution. First, industrial revolution with steam. We think about electricity and the role that that played, you know, progressing a lot of societies. If we think about computing and the role that that played, the reason why I think this is you know in conversations all the time is because it's going to be a similar technology like those we're on the precipice or the, you know, the edge of our next industrial revolution. Where this general purpose technology or GPT will have a significant impact in everything we do. The way that we live, the way that we work and the way that we kind of think about. Future.

The big part is like there's more in front of us with this new technology AI than what there is behind us. And so we're just at the start of it. But in saying that, I do think that we need to ensure that we seize this opportunity and it's very much about this transition that we have in our economy, around social, that we not only absorb that change so you'll absorb these new things and understand and predict where we want to go. But we shape, especially in Australian economy, what we want from that, and what that looks.
Jenelle McMaster
Like excellent set up there, Tim. I'm going to unpack a lot more of that. But, Sarah, I'm interested in your observations at that macro level.

Sarah Carney
Yeah, and I love that Tim set us up with the other GPT, so general purpose technology, but it was ChatGPT that's brought us to this moment, this consciousness that we have right now around artificial intelligence that was just over 2 years ago, which is fascinating. The question you asked, which is, is this playing out the way we thought it would? For me, the answer is no. You know the uptake of ChatGPT and generative AI was phenomenal. Fastest adoption of technology we've seen. And yet, we're not seeing that at scale across the economy. And so when we come down to that organisational level, I think there is something there, something that's holding us all back and there's this sense of people waiting for someone to explain the rules of the game to them, perhaps or holding their breath, waiting for someone else to step in first. And there's some great leaders. We see lots of organisations taking bold steps, but if we look at it at that national scale, it isn't where I would have expected it to be and often feels like we're almost going back to the start. Again, lots of people have tried those proof of concepts, and perhaps they haven't gone as far as they expected. Those pilots haven't taken off and we're going back through the cycle. Again. Something is stopping them from stepping in more fully.
Jenelle McMaster
I think that's right. If I feel that too, it feels like, you know, Tim, you talked about this being a bit of a precipice that we're on, I guess, related to that precipice, it does feel like we're in some kind of strange limbo. Like, are we searching for it? And then are we at a grinding halt waiting, as you say, Sarah, for the rules of the game to be written? And you know who's writing them? I don't know, because we're all learning at the same time. There are people and I'm one of them, who on any given day will feel this tremendous excitement and this tremendous trepidation and fear. It's a real tug of war of emotions. Do you think that, that hesitation, that collective limbo that it feels like we're in is putting us at risk of falling behind globally, Tim?
Tim Allen
Yeah, it's a really good question. I the collective limbo or cautious optimism, we feel like we've got, you know, our feet in both camps here. The risk of us falling behind is us staying in that state for too long and not moving forward. Does it make us fall behind? So I think that's comparative to how we see where we sit in the world at the moment. We definitely know that there are other countries and other economies that are a bit more progressed and and adopting this at faster rates. In Australia, we love an underdog story that we hate to lose. So you know with that is, I think we're the underdog at the moment, but we don't want to get in a losing position, so we still want to be able to win. I think there is an absolute risk for us not to achieve our potential and I think that's where it comes back down to is, can we use this technology on a national level to to achieve the greatness that we know is here in our country from our people, our resources to our innovation.

On an organisational level, can we use this technology to achieve the greats that we know that is connected into our workforce and to our businesses? And then it actually comes on an individual level as well. You know the absolute risk here is like can I extract the most value from me on a personal level? And I think that goes across to every person here in, in Australia. But we do need to act and we need to stop talking and move forward.
Jenelle McMaster
Well, I'm going to come back to what does that action and the right step actions look like, but I'm going to perhaps stay since you've taken us to the national psyche and the national identity of Australians, whether it's the underdog who doesn't want to lose, it makes me think about a study. That we recently did at EY, which is a global sentiment survey, and we looked at the attitudes towards AI and what was really startling to me at least, was that Australians and New Zealanders are amongst the world's biggest AI sceptics. We sit near the bottom of the table - the global trust table. And just to give you there's plenty of stats around this, but 37% of Australians and 28% of New Zealanders believe that the benefits of AI outweigh the risks, which is far below the global average.

So, we've got high levels of scepticism and we're also more likely than most around the world, to worry that AI will harm vulnerable people. And I looked at those stats and I had a range of reactions, but one of those was actually, maybe there's something inherently positive about the DNA in Aussies and Kiwis. Maybe there's not all badness in that level of scepticism. Maybe it's not about us being anti AI and maybe it's much more about us being Pro Accountability Pro inclusion, pro ethical decision making. Maybe the scepticism is instructive. We should follow that not to become cynical and hold back, but to lean into what those concerns are and take some actions, right actions around that. Put that out there for either of you, any comment or reaction to that? Am I being Pollyanna or do you think there's something in that?
Sarah Carney
I think Tim has been a wonderful AI optimist, so I'm going to be your AI pragmatist, and I love the way you're framing tha,t, and I want to believe that that is the case. But I love doing this with audiences who's concerned about AI risk. Every hand in the audience goes up who's worried about AI security, who's worried about their data, who's worried about bias? Everyone has their hand in the air, but the minute you ask who has taken the opportunity to do some form of AI education, there are barely a single hand up in that room. And so I talked about how people are waiting for the rules of the game and you asked like who's who is making the. Rules. It's a really good question.

I think the people who are making the rules of the organisations that are stepping in and starting something because you can't possibly work out what the guard rails need to be unless you've started playing with it. So you've got to play the game to then be able to write the rules feels it feels a bit counterintuitive. Normally you need the rules to know how to play the game, but in this case it's complex and it's ever changing, and if you're not playing with it, you're not starting doing something, then you can't possibly work out. What? Where the opportunity lies and what the rules of that game need to be. So organisations I see doing this really well are the ones who've been bold. Who create sand pits or playgrounds where they can play with it and test it and see what's possible without impacting their business. Creating parameters that mean that people can step in and share and try things. Without that fear of failure, because we do love to cut down a tall poppy as well. Straight in there.
Jenelle McMaster
Really have built up the archetypes.
Sarah Carney
We bring them all out for you.

Letting your people play is such a great way of finding the real use is the real opportunity in the space where AI can make a difference to your organisation.

Jenelle McMaster

You tell me more about what does creating safe spaces to play look like and then how do you come out of play mode to scale mode because that's another challenge I see around me.

Sarah Carney

Definitely the scale piece is really challenging. So when I talk about play space as part of it is a physical space like actually carving out tools and a space where people can test out AI programmes, AI tools they can see. What they do without all those concerns I talked about, data security, privacy, bias, all of those things creeping, and they can have a safe physical space to actually go and play.

But there's a piece of that play that comes from leadership, the most successful organisations are ones where there is leader LED transformation where you have leadership standing out the front talking about why we're using AI in this organisation. What we expect you to use it for and what we expect you to do with any spare time that might be. Created out of using this technology and in doing that they're creating psychological safety.
Jenelle McMaster
I think they're really good examples at an organisational level, but as you say, there are also those very real concerns about data privacy and the rules and all that. So I'm going to turn to you, Tim, if you think about nationally what we're doing or educationally, what we're doing, what are some of those things that. We at a more macro level need to be doing in order to drive greater adoption.
Tim Allen
Yeah, and I think this is a collective game. What we probably need to do and then what we will do, I'll speak about. But what we need to do is have a coordinated effort across all levels of society. So, you know, even if the rules aren't all defined at this moment, we need to have shared alignment about where we want to go. So, you know, key involvement from government on many different levels including like education through civil society and you know general direction of our economy. To go, we need to bring together, you know, those civil society organisations as well. The real human ones, our nonprofits, our unions, our federations, our associations, the people who represent the people of our country and then industry, I think, plays a really important role in that kind of collective ambition and what we need to do. Then if I drop down a little bit on the like, what do we need to do like what are these things cause like they're all? Great. That's all great talk. But how do we turn that into action? And, I think there's a really, you know, there's a really big role of education here. So how do we support our current workforce to transition from where it is now to where it needs to be in an AI enabled economy.
Jenelle McMaster
Does it know where it needs to be though.
Tim Allen
Well, this is maybe the it's a great one. It's like we're building on shifting sands at the moment. And so like how do we move people forward? So I think and then you know, if we think about that, there's probably technical skills that we need to develop. So things like AI literacy, you know, these kind of fundamental skills that we're going to need to integrate AI into everything we do. Applied AI skills, so how do we use AI within our specific workforce and that could be you know, how does a teacher use AI? How does a nurse use AI? How does the salesperson use AI? How does a small medium business? And they're all different ways that you apply the same technology. And then these advanced AI, you know, skill sets that we need to kind of think through, like the machine learning and AI engineering. It's kind of like. But if we flip on the other side, how do we navigate this uncertain transition? I think it's going to be a more human approach and so I love this thinking around that our human skills will be our soft skills, are going to be the most prominent. Yeah, the and I know that word gets thrown around a lot, but I think it's going to be more prominent.
You know, if we just. Take a step back and get away from all. The you know the productivity, the macro things and if we think about how do we always shift from one spot to the next, it's really our human skills, things like communication, critical thinking, you know creativity, these are the things that we can lean on to be able to help us transition into this uncertain future. And I've, you know, I've got this. Saying which is. You know, AI is going to allow the demise of the engineering student and the rise of the art student, and the reason why I say that it's that the skill sets that we're going to need to help, you know, businesses and our economies transition are going to be the skill sets where we can see lots of different things. And integrate AI into in into those visions that we see and that's very much, you know, a broad skill set, which is an arts students rather than a deep technical skill sets from an engineering component. But if I come back to the plan that we need on a national level, the skill sets that we need.

It really is going to come down to education systems. Our education systems need to be OK with this and working through. That's our K to 12 education systems, our vet and our higher eds. We need to have a really coordinated effort across all areas of industry about what this looks like and being able to make that go skilling and training accessible to all. And then we. Really need to push into our innovation space, our R&D space and be able to lock as much intellectual potential as possible.
Jenelle McMaster
Fantastic. So that's at that coordinated approach at the macro level. Sarah, I wanna get you to build on that. So, taking it to organisations, leaders, individuals. What should we be doing?

Sarah Carney

What I'm gonna be controversial - that's why you have the two of us.

Jenelle McMaster
I'm not sure I signed up for that.
Sarah Carney
But you said double trouble. That's what you signed up for.

I think the piece that was missing in what Tim talked to and is the hardest piece for Australia and New Zealand for nations to navigate is those who are not in education, employment and training, the neat people because how do we make sure we're not marginalising more people as we introduce technology like this.
So I think, that is a really big challenge. We've seen some countries step in and do that really nicely. But I think those are the communities that we perhaps need to address more effectively as we move into this space, if we want to see that scaled dispersion of technology across.
Jenelle McMaster
And to make sure there isn't the opportunity divide that happens.
Sarah Carney
Exactly. So back to organisation. Sorry. I will answer your question, I promise. At an organisational level, actually Tim touched on some of the things we need to be thinking about. We've already seen this shift. So, in using generative AI, one of the skills you need is to be able to coach it because it doesn't give you the perfect answer the 1^st time over. So, we are used to using prompt and response systems. We put a search, you know our three search terms into a website search and that comes to the solution. Generative AI is not like that. But, we didn't hire people for that skill set, and so it's one of those things that we do need to focus on training people with, is how do you build coaching skills to use these systems and tools more effectively. How do we build communication skills? The rise of the art student I love it. But how do you help build communication skills because clarity, communication and coaching are the skills of the future for managers, particularly as you will have teams of humans and agents that you will be managing and being able to build those skills is really hard. That's not what we hired people for. So, it's a conscious choice at organisations need to make.
Jenelle McMaster
I'm interested as well where you see it going with leaders, we already have and I I face into this all day, every day with our leaders. We've got extraordinary load on them. Whether it's because they now manage hybrid work forces, you know, massive geopolitical shifts, changing market, we've got to know how to manage people with their whole selves to work and all of that, now we will most probably be finding ourselves leading teams of agents and humans. Do you think that there's an emerging set of skills for leaders that will come off the back of. That well, what does that look like?

Sarah Carney

Yeah, definitely, and I think it's that classic capacity challenge you're talking about, which is I have so many other things. How am I going to focus on this one thing in front of me right now? So some of those things, those skills for leaders will be those things I just talked to around the ability to actually coach and have clarity. What does performance? What does good look like? How many leaders are good at really being clear on what good looks like both for my people, but also for the systems that are part of the team now?
Jenelle McMaster
I've been wondering again whether I'm being too pollyanna in this view, but I have been wondering whether or not there is the ability to allow or to tap into AI helping us be more human. Because we very often say I wanna spend more time with people, I wanna give them coaching. I wanna give them feedback. I haven't got time. But if you've got AI as a releaser of time because it's doing things that you normally get bogged down, could technology allow us to be more human?
Sarah Carney
Absolutely. There's some beautiful use cases out there. In fact, we've got customers, some superannuation funds who've actually tracked exactly that. They use AI to help with tasks, which means they can spend so many more hours with their members. So that's exactly what they want to do is how do we give more time back to the elements that matter to us in the moment, and so same in teams, by having time back, I can invest that in the people. I will also be a bit controversial on that, which is I'm finding people are able to relate more effectively cause they can use AI to help them. Like I have a difficult team member. I'm not getting through. Can you give me some suggestions of how I could do that more effectively? It's actually creating better teaming through the use of AI. So you're getting both the benefit which is more time to spend with the team, but actually perhaps more effective interactions through a bit of coaching that. Wasn't available before.
Jenelle McMaster
Right. And some nudges on how you might deliver that message a little differently.
Tim Allen
When we go to work, especially no one decided what they wanted to do for a job to spend 6 hours in front of a computer replying to emails or being on a teams call. Like if I think about education and teachers like, you know, people getting to teaching to grow young people, to be the best version, people get into nursing to be able to help, you know, people get better managers, usually getting to management to be able to grow their team in and around them. And so how can we spend more time on the activities that matter to us? I think is useful, but we need to identify what we do with that time spend and spend it on the things that matter the most and the things that we care about the most.

Jenelle McMaster

Yeah, because we do run into that habit where you just fill it up with more busy stuff. So, I think the intentionality point is good. And in fact, Tim, I was going to ask you that question, cause right at the top of the conversation, you talked about the risk being here is that we don't realise the potential that we could be unlocking and you've talked about some of that potential being, you know, teachers can actually teach or managers could actually manage. What are some of the other places of potential that you would say this is something we absolutely don't want to not realise, really. What's your vision?
Tim Allen
Yeah. And before get into the question, I'll actually talk through like a few different components. because I think there's actually potentially many different layers, not just one layer. And so I like to think about this as like these three behavioural shifts that we need to go through to unlock our greatest potential and I think these are important shifts, it's because if we if our eyes on the biggest prize here which is you know I can now set up my own organisation with no staff and extract as much potential out of myself. I think it can be really hard to make that leap, you know, from going I don't know anything about this technology and now I'm expected to go and you know extract as most potential. So I think there's like 3 behavioural shifts that your individuals, organisations and economics, they go through the first one, I'd like to talk about is like for you to FOMO. So it's like, how do I move past this kind of, you know, fear of technology? FOMO. But the really it's a really big important shift so that the unlocking the potential there is moving us from no action to some action and that's a really important thing that we need to move through. The second one is around, hype to habits and that's really the value we see from that is productivity gains like that what we just spoke about time. And the third one then gets and once, we go through those shifts is exactly to this unlocking potential is I like to call it like great to GOAT, not goats. Like on a farm. Yes, yes. Like Michael Jordan, greatest by time type approach.

But and that's kind of I think where we unlock our potential. So, when we can start to you know see the value in this technology, how do we use it to expand our own capabilities and you know, and I'll put myself in it like I'm not a technologist, I'm a tech enthusiast. But now I'm able to like, build my own website with my kids and be able to code in a in a better way and I'm not a marketer, but I've been able to do that.

So I'm kind of exploring areas where I can expand my capabilities. So what I can think and.
Jenelle McMaster
So you're becoming the goat in your world.
Tim Allen
well, well, well, not no, no, there's no 23 on my back just yet. But now if we come down to a teacher, I think it's a really good example. I've come from a teaching background and when you have 30 students in a classroom and you have so many, you know, educational dot points that you need to hear and you've got different learners, at different stages, are different things. The hardest thing to do is to be the teacher you want to be for all of those individual students because you have a short amount of time. So can we use this technology to allow your teacher to have an individual learning plan for each student in each moment so that you can spend time on extracting their potential and be the best teacher rather than spending time on writing lesson plans or identifying extension activities or being able to find things and so. That's just kind of one example where I think if you know we can, we can move towards using this technology to extract our own potential, but then also how that can support others as well.
Jenelle McMaster
Absolutely love that. Sarah, did you want to add that your version and what your vision is here?
Sarah Carney
I love the way you've painted that and I think there are two really beautiful things here. There's the personal, and then there's the world changing. So for me, the answer to that question is - Inclusion. We've seen the fundamental shift, which is generative AI can translate things in real time so that you have people who have English as a second language who can participate far more fully in conversations and workplace. People who are vision impaired, who can use AI to now explain what's actually happening on a screen or an image, or even we use a lot of memes in our chats. To explain what the memes are that are popping up in a chat that they can't use and their screen readers can't understand, but generative AI can do that for them.

So I see this incredible inclusion, actually one of the leaders in our business posted something yesterday on LinkedIn that just resonated. He has both ADHD and dyslexia, and he's said AI has fundamentally changed how I can now learn and participate. He can turn everything into a podcast. Because he is an auditory for visual learner and that is a really powerful opportunity for inclusion. But on the flip side, there is this world changing opportunity, Glaxo Smith Kline announced this week that they are now putting into testing drugs that were discovered using generative AI, like that is in a matter of years. So these are things that take decades, yes.
I've got goosebumps talking about it. You think about the fact that in just a few short years they have managed to discover new drugs that are actually able to be put into testing, like that to me, the health outcomes and what that could change for us on a global scale is the real opportunity that we're facing into? If only we can step in more fully.
Jenelle McMaster
Love that. I'm going to take it to a more personal level. Maybe it's life hacks, work hacks. What's one thing that you've done in the space AI? I know it permeates all parts of your life that that you would say there has been a major unlock for you.
Sarah Carney
Well, I just came back from leave and I actually used AI to help me. While I was away, I actually was like we're driving from Geraldton to Denham Bay today. Like, what should I do on the way? And it would come up with a curated itinerary. It suggested great places to stop Carnarvon Space Museum. Great recommendation. Seriously. It was fabulous. So I used it really personally. But I also get chronically seasick, so I was like, hey, can you tell me which is the fastest ferry from Perth to Rottnest Island so I can spend the smallest amount of time. Like silly little things, but it makes a big difference. Yeah, I couldn't. It would have taken me ages to work that out by going through all the different ferry services and different terminal. Great. So I did that. Obviously my work life, I cannot live without researcher now. The work I do every day is so different. It's so varied. It requires depth. It requires analysis, and I love using researcher to get graph with those really big questions to find the information. To summarise it to then add in my own thinking contexts to, you know, do thought starters so.
Jenelle McMaster
So, you to draw much deeper on analysis and ask deeper questions because you've been fuelled by more of a starting point.

Sarah Carney

Absolutely. Yeah. And I still love doing the search myself to see what else comes up, but I just love that paper. The research, the format. It puts together. It researcher it to me, is just gold.
Tim Allen
On 2 levels. So on a work level like what Sarah saying, I'm dyslexic and so it's allowed me to work in the way that I can work the best. And so being able to absorb information even before we're coming to talk to you, I got the agent to take on your persona and kind of interview me as a way to trying to understand what you were doing.

Jenelle McMaster

Was she dazzling and charismatic as well?

Tim Allen

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It was. I'll, I'll. I'll share the readout afterwards, but just even that it's like, you know, how be that persona be that person. And then the talkative approach that you know works better for me rather than writing and reading is because I that's not the best way that I can learn.
But the most amazing thing on a personal level actually happened last night before I came. I've got two young boys. I've got a seven year old and a five year old and they're both being like really creative recently, like lots of story writing and drawing and our dinner table has been a lot of like expression. And I was like, OK, this is great. And they both came home from school and daycare with drawings. And I was like, well, let's play with this a little bit, Let's see how far I can go. But I'm not a creative person, so I've always had a restriction on, like, how do I take this to the next creative level? But I opened up a an app and I was like, OK, let's take a photo of their drawing. So Henry, my youngest, took a photo of his fire engine, used that image to then create an actual fire engine based on it and then I got them to talk through their story about the fire engine together just in conversation, and then we turn that into a story book.
Jenelle McMaster
Ohh my gosh.
Tim Allen
And then we use that that same image to then created other images inside of the Storybook. So one picture from our my 5 year old, turned into immersive family experience that we created something at the end and like I've never been prouder as a parent, to be able to like to kids were so into it. They were able to express their story. They were able to use their imagery to tell the story and then we had something at the end of it and it was just this great, like, you know, creative learning experience for them. But more importantly, is a creative learning experience for me.
Jenelle McMaster
Ohh absolutely.
Tim Allen
To be able to go through that process. Which I wouldn't have been able to do before.

Jenelle McMaster:

I have seen one of those, I've seen those stories come to life and I've might have to hit you up on how to do that, but I absolutely love that.

So I'm going to wrap up here, but I would like to finish with a call to action. I know that this has been infused from top to bottom with things that people could do. But there's one thing that you could leave the audience of this podcast with, one call to action. I'd like to ask each of you what would that be?
Tim Allen
To play and to use AI.
Jenelle McMaster
Mm-hmm.
Tim Allen
No action is an issue, some action will. Some action will get us to progression. Utilise the technology, play with the technology and then we'll be able to progress.
Sarah Carney
Mine is going to be, go and educate yourselves, and the one I love is there is an 8 minute video on YouTube done by Minecraft characters. It is my favourite way of learning about AI. I'm hearing gamification as a thing for you. Absolutely. I love Minecraft as well 8 minutes, so it will take for you to get an absolute basic grounding to start your education in AI. 8 minutes.
Jenelle McMaster
So where do you find that?
Sarah Carney
You find that on YouTube. What you gonna do is search for Minecraft AI education. It will come up. There's one minute, 30 ones. If you don't have 8 minutes. But the 8 minute video is gold.
Jenelle McMaster
I absolutely love that. Sarah and Tim, thank you so much for your time. I have really enjoyed sort of moving up and down the levels from a national landscape to an organisational landscape to individual. There's a lot to take away from this, but what I really heard loudly and clearly is that no space for no action here. We can recognise that we can be fearful, we can be excited. Two things can be true, but what we should not let happen is for those shifting sands to cause inertia. We've got to get in there and play the game.

That there are three fundamental behavioural shifts that will allow us to play that game. Fear to FOMO, hype to habit, great to GOAT and that we need to be intentional. We have the opportunity here to unlock even greater humanness from ourselves. We can allow our human skills to be far more finely homed. We can facilitate far more inclusion. I think the possibilities and the potential that you both talked about are extraordinary, but we must be intentional about how we do that. So this does have the ability to unlock a whole lot of time for us. But how we then redeploy that time what we put that towards, that's what's going to matter here.

So much more from there, but I I'm gonna wrap it up here. Thank you so much. For your time. Really appreciate the chat.

Sarah Carney
Thanks having for having us.
Jenelle McMaster
The Change Happens podcast from EY Insights from leaders in a changing world. Discover more where you get your podcasts.

Tracey Spicer
Journalist. Author. AI Ethics Advocate.

Tim Hicks
Executive General Manager of Policy and Advocacy

Bernard Salt AM
Author. Demographer. Futurist.

Looking for more Change Happens Episodes?

Check out season 5 of the podcast below.

Listen to Season 5

Jenelle McMaster, EY Regional Deputy CEO and People and Culture Leader, Oceania, reflects on what she's learned from great leaders through her discussions on the Change Happens podcast.

EY refers to the global organisation, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients.

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