00:00
Jane Goodland: Hello and welcome to the LSEG Sustainable Growth podcast where we talk to leading experts about sustainability and finance and everything in between. I'm Jane Goodland, and this week I had the opportunity to spend time with Janine Chamberlin from LinkedIn, where she is the country manager for the UK. And also vice president of global clients. Now, I was really pleased when she agreed to come on the show, not only because she's fabulous, but because we wanted to talk about the future of work and the human capital component of sustainability And who better to do it than LinkedIn? They are the world's largest professional network platform with more than a billion members and 69 million companies globally. They operate in 200 countries in 36 languages, and every minute 138 hours of learning content is consumed, and 7 people are hired from the platform, that's staggering given that LinkedIn was only launched in 2003 But before we hear from Janine a very quick reminder to follow us and rate us on Spotify, apple, podcasts, or any other platform, you use to enjoy the show.
Hi, Janine, thank you so much for coming onto the show. I've been really looking forward to our conversation today. We are going to be talking about something a little bit different. And that is really the human capital element of sustainability. And in particular, we're going to be talking about the future of work as well, and where we see the future of work. And so I think you are uniquely placed to talk about this because of your job. Now I'm pretty sure that everyone listening will be familiar with LinkedIn. I'm sure most listeners will be on the platform. But can you just give us a quick refresher of the businesses mission and strategy at its core?
01:51
Janine Chamberlin: Yeah, absolutely. And thanks for having me, Jane. So LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network. And so at the moment we have 40 million members in the UK and worldwide we have more than a billion members on our platform. The vision of the company is very clear and very much focused on humans. It's all about creating economic opportunity for every person in the global workforce. And as a result of us having more than a billion members on our platform who share with us their work history, their skills, their experiences. We have a huge amount of data that allows us to kind of glean, these economic trends, things that are happening in the workplace, things that are changing in the workplace. And we use that data essentially to kind of give back to our members and help them navigate the changes that are happening in the world of work.
02:51
Jane Goodland: It's really fascinating, actually, because I'm sure quite often people just think it's a way to keep in touch and see what people are up to. But actually, it's probably more profound than we kind of immediately give credit for. And tell me about your role there, because you've been there for 16 years. What have you been up to.
03:05
Janine Chamberlin: Yes, 16 years. And funny, actually, that you talk about, is it just to stay in touch? I think if I go back 16 years ago. That probably was exactly what LinkedIn did. It was a tool to keep in touch with people that you used to work with and understand what was going on in their kind of careers. But over the last 16 years the platform has really grown and evolved to become more of a knowledge database where people are sharing more of the things that they are working on and sharing that with others to learn from as well. So my role, I'm both UK country manager as well as VP of global clients within our talent, solutions, business. And so the majority of my time really, I spend with customers and helping our customers to both attract as well as develop talent into their organizations, and, of course, kind of share the insights that we get from our platform to give our customers the sort of best possible position to do that.
4:04
Jane Goodland: You talked about kind of attracting talent, but developing talent, because I know LinkedIn's got a lot of learning resources as well, hasn't it? So is does your role cover that as well.
04:15
Janine Chamberlin: Yeah, correct. So both from an initial recruitment perspective. But then actually helping people through their career journey, we have something like 18,000 courses online. And obviously, companies can offer that to their employees to make sure that they stay ahead. And especially in, you know, the world of work is changing so fast right now, and skills are changing very fast, which I'm sure we're going to get into is super helpful for companies to just help their employees stay up to date with the latest skills.
04:44
Jane Goodland: So let's talk about that a bit more. Actually, because you said, the world of work is changing and absolutely couldn't agree with you more there. And it seems that adaptation and the ability to just constantly learn and adapt and evolve your skill set is arguably amongst kind of the greatest skill. And to make you kind of marketable as an individual. And I know that you guys explore this and produce research reports about this topic and I think that the one that's obviously top of mind at the moment is, of course, AI, which seems to be all over the place everywhere you read, and there's probably quite a sort of a healthy dose of nervousness around that I think in people thinking about? Well, what does this mean for me? And what does it mean for my job and the organization I work in? And particularly, I think perhaps people coming into the workforce now, thinking about well, actually, you know, what career should I be? Should be I aligning with? And what does that mean from an AI perspective also all the way through to people who are kind of, I guess, further on in their careers and thinking, gosh, you know, really like, what does AI mean for me? And actually do I have a role in kind of organizations, even a more mature end of the spectrum, which is where I occupy, by the way, and I need to brush up on my AI skills. But tell us about kind of the work that you've done more recently in terms of thinking about the AI and the impact on new jobs and skills. So what was the research? What were you looking to understand? And critically, what did you find.
06:16
Janine Chamberlin: Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, I feel in a very similar position. I talked about AI, and I really try very hard to build habits for myself where I really use AI to make my work better, essentially, to augment what I'm doing. But it's a bit of a minefield, and it's changing incredibly fast and so that's some of the things that we were looking for in our research right? As you said, AI is transforming the world of work really fast. It's reshaping our career paths. And it's really changing how companies are operating and what we can see as well is that new roles are getting created off the back of this kind of rapid advancement in generative AI. And so what we really wanted to understand is, what's the impact of AI on jobs? What's the impact on skills? And what's the impact on our career paths? How quickly are the skills changing? And how can we have a read of like, what are the skills that are going to be in demand going forward? And then, lastly, being a little bit more pragmatic about it. What can companies do? What can businesses do to essentially help their employees, but also really kind of focus on closing that skills gap that exists as we transition so quickly through it. Some of the things that we found for me. One of the most interesting stats is that you know, Jane, for you and I to do the job that we are doing today. So we're not going to change into another job. We're still in this job by 2030. The skills that we need to do our jobs that we have now is going to change by 70%. And that's in the next 5 years.
07:55
Jane Goodland: That’s so Incredible. and is that just in relation to AI or is that kind of across the board in terms of just recognition that actually skill sets required are changing.
08:04
Janine Chamberlin: I think it's a really great question. It's a sort of a change that was already happening, because we've already seen of course, technologies come into our day to day lives. But I think generative AI is just accelerating that pace of change. So where, maybe, you know, otherwise we would have been looking at 40 or 50% of our skills changing. Now, it's 70%, which is a huge amount of change to absorb for anyone.
That's where the learning comes in. Right. I think we're probably going to continuously have to reinvent ourselves over the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years of our careers. And we have to keep learning those new skills just to kind of keep up with change that we're seeing right now.
08:45
Jane Goodland: When I hear you talking like this, one thing, really jumps out at me about organizations approach to training and development. It feels that maybe that needs a bit of a refresh, because for those of us that work in large organizations will be very familiar with the mandatory training delight that we all have, which has a role. Right? It has a role to make sure that you know, we're equipped with the baseline level of competence and understanding to make sure that we're doing things safely for our companies. The whole kind of skills, adaptation and development is sort of a whole different world, isn't it? And that's not anything that we can put into a mandatory training program. Right?
09:25
Janine Chamberlin: No. And I think so. We talk a lot with companies about essentially democratizing the access to skills and to learning. And then allowing for a little bit of freedom and creating that culture where you know your employees are actually excited to develop themselves and do more learning, but of course, giving some guidance around. Well, here's where the direction of travel is. So these are the types of skills that are useful for you to learn. And so when we look at some of our data, we can see very clearly what the skills are that are in high demand right now. And so typically a skill in high demand means that there's a shortage of supply. And with that information we can then kind of point at. Here's a number of courses that would really help to close that particular skills gap. And some of those courses we also make available for free by the way, for our members, so that our members can also keep up to date with those new skills that are in high demand right now.
10:23
Jane Goodland: I suppose, these skills. It's not really just about kind of development within a role within a company, this is about recognising that through a career. Typically now, people will have multiple different employers, right? So it's more normal to have more employers than in the past. Right? So and I suppose maybe this is about embracing the fact that change can be a really positive thing for people, even if that means moving company and moving jobs. And so that link between your total career journey throughout your entire life and adapting and evolving and kind of equipping yourself with skills is really important. I think one of the elements that kind of springs to mind, though, I suppose, is, people often say that there's no time to do this learning right? So maybe organizations, I guess. Do you have conversations with some of your clients about kind of creating the space and kind of the culture to enable people to.
11:20
Janine Chamberlin: I think that's a really interesting, especially when you're talking about AI skills. And so let's sort of set apart what I'm talking about when I say AI skills, because there's the technical AI skills. So those who are really building the AI, and that's quite a technical skill set like that skill set is in very high demand. It's growing very fast. But there's also kind of this AI literacy. So making sure that everybody learns how to work with AI and how to use AI to augment the jobs that we are already doing. And I think what's interesting there is that many of us, including many organizations, are looking at AI in the first instance, maybe as a productivity gain. And so how do we deploy AI? And then, all of a sudden we have more productivity. But. as you well know, when you go through a massive change, you're not immediately finding that productivity, because you all have to learn and adapt, and that takes time. And I think the best way to do that is given access to people to kind of play around and actually just make it fun, right? Really stimulate curiosity within your organization and get people to kind of use different tools and see what works for the different roles to then become really familiar with it, and then that productivity gain will kind of follow. After that. Something that is also interesting. Maybe to note. I think a lot of companies do look beyond just the productivity and are really thinking about AI as a sort of innovation boost for their organizations. And that's, I think, where it becomes really exciting when you can bring in AI and find ways to innovate, whether it's your processes, your products, etc. I think that's an exciting part of this. But you know, really encouraging that curiosity amongst your employees, I think, is the way to inspire a culture of learning.
13:09
Jane Goodland: Yeah, I mean, I think with respect to AI, I'm still. I'm still on the nursery slopes. If it was an if it was a ski mountain. I think I've managed to grapple with kind of meeting transcripts and summaries and things like that, and it still it still gives me a bit of a laugh when the AI interprets things just slightly differently. But anyway, I'll commit to more learning.
Now, you talked about kind of jobs in demand. And I think this is a really fascinating part of your research as well, because you produce reports about effectively the what jobs are, in short, supply but high demand. And this is, I think, really fascinating, because you also break down these jobs by country. So you look at country levels seeing what jobs are in demand. And then also by gender as well. So like, who typically is taking these roles and I think this is fascinating. So tell me a bit more about that. If we look at the UK, for example. So if I'm reading your research reports correctly, the highest job in demand is an AI engineer. So staying on this AI theme, and we see over 80% of those roles going to men but then, second, we've got home health and then third an aircraft mechanic. So this is intriguing. And it's. I'm actually also pleased to say that in the top 5 is an environmental officer so very close to my heart. Tell us a bit more about these kind of jobs in demand. And what should we be concluding from these.
14:37
Janine Chamberlin: So first and foremost, like the jobs that you're talking about they are the fastest growing. And I think, just on average, when you look at the top ten, and this is like globally, but also applies to the UK
AI as well as sustainability roles. They have a really significant place in the top 10 of fastest growing jobs. So AI researcher, AI engineer, environmental officer, energy manager, those are the types of jobs that are growing incredibly fast. What I find interesting as well, talking about the skills changing more than half of these fastest growing roles didn't even exist 25 years ago, just to give an indication of just how quickly things are moving along. And our report the full report. If you know anybody is interested, it's not just about showing kind of you know, what are those jobs, what skills are in demand. But it really does highlight which industries are hiring right now, what are the top locations. If you're looking for any of these jobs and kind of to supplement our report, we really look at closing that skills gap by opening up our LinkedIn courses with a specific focus on the skills that are in high demand right now. So for anybody looking to get into any of these industries there is. There is essentially a path there to do it with the understanding of. Oh, here's an industry that's hiring. Here's a company that's looking for this skill. And here's a good location that I would be able to find those jobs in.
16:06
Jane Goodland: How much do those kind of fastest growing jobs change by region out of interest?
16:10
Janine Chamberlin: You mean how different is it from one country to the next?
16:13
Jane Goodland: Yeah.
16:14
Janine Chamberlin: So I would say, there's some marginal differences, but high level globally. We are seeing kind of similar trends, sustainability as well as AI dominating the lists.
16:25
Jane Goodland: So Janine, this is, of course, a sustainability podcast. So it would be remiss of me not to go down that avenue for a little while now. LinkedIn produced a Green skills report last year, and I thought that was fascinating, because actually, when you delve into the report. What becomes really clear is, there is a big mismatch between the talent required in terms of the Green Talent Pool. If that's what you want to call it versus the amount of people going into that. So there's a real deficit in terms of green skills. And when you project forward to 2050. This gets quite exacerbated and effectively. There seems to be, half as much talent as there is jobs required. Is that the right way to interpret the report.
17:08
Janine Chamberlin: Yeah, I think that's exactly the right way. There's essentially going to be twice as many jobs that require green skills as there will be people qualified to fill those jobs. If the trend of today continues. And so to close that gap we will need to double the size of the green, as you also said the Green Talent Pool by 2050. And I think you know some of the things that are interesting about this. If you look at the hiring rate. So you know how easy is it to find a job. The hiring rate for green talent is 72% greater than the hiring rate for other jobs, if you will.
And we've also identified. There's some really interesting jobs that are in high demand right now in the UK, especially such as sustainability, coordinator, or solar installer sustainability, specialists and analysts and directors of sustainability. Those are all the kind of job titles and roles that have been growing very quickly and essentially. If you have those skills it will be easier to find a job in the UK right now.
18:13
Jane Goodland: There you go. You heard it here first guys, sustainability is the cool ticket in town. If you want to get into that one of the things that was quite interesting to me as well is that when you look at some of the demographics as well, that you call out in the report 2 key groups. So that was 2 critical groups, the Gen. Z and women who are particularly important for this area of employment tell me more about that.
18:39
Janine Chamberlin: Yeah, I think so. So what the report highlights is that if I go to Gen. Z first, Gen. Z Will make up a 3rd of the workforce in 2030. So this is a really important group and they are incredibly motivated. They want to be part of the sort of climate solution, but they are finding it hard to get into those jobs right now. So more than half of the Gen. Z population in the UK. They want to work in a green job in the next 5 years and more than 3 quarters believe that they could definitely pick up those green skills if they were offered the training. And so I think that's one of those, I guess, calls to action for businesses, which is, it's really important to prioritize these upskilling initiatives, making sure that we can give people the skills that are required, and close that gap before we get to 2050. Now, when you look at women. Women are underrepresented across the labour market. But actually, it's exacerbated when you look at the green industry, so women are less likely than men to have the skills. Only one in 10 women have a green skill compared to more than one in six men have green skills, and we kind of gradually see the gender gap widening, and there are some companies who are deliberately focusing on bringing women into these jobs to make sure that they can close that gap. And so I think, you know, it comes back to the same solution if you will, as we are talking about Gen. Z. Is like, make sure that we upskill that we offer skill building to our employees to make sure that we can close that gap sooner rather than later.
20:19
Jane Goodland: It's really interesting, that kind of that gender piece, because I've been working in sustainability for 30 years. And I must say I've never actually noticed that I've never really felt that kind of gender dynamic. And in fact, I mean, my particular area is around sustainable finance. And actually, when you look back at the kind of the early times of sustainable finance, it was a bit of a sort of revolution in a way, because for some reason there was many, many more women occupying those investment roles. But you know, analyst roles in in those kind of investment teams working on sustainable investment than their kind of more traditional counterparts. And so I just find it fascinating, actually, that we're still seeing that kind of dynamic play out at a top line green skills level because my experience has been a teeny bit different. But fascinating stuff. And I think what the other thing that kind of springs to mind there is about the development of sustainability skills doesn't necessarily have to always be in relation to a particular job that someone's going for it could be whilst you're doing another job right? Because what one of the things that comes through in my organization is that people are really keen to learn. And people say, where can I find more information? Where can I kind of get more information or skills or training around sustainability, and it might not be because it's their current role. But, like you say, it's this notion of interest and enthusiasm and lifelong learning that people are saying, Well, actually, I just want to learn more, and if I can, in my current role, then that might set me up, for you know a future career. Should they wish to go down that path.
21:54
Janine Chamberlin: Yeah, absolutely. I think you know, one of the other things that is interesting is that
going forward? If you look at the workforce, that's coming into the businesses now, this is a workforce that's going to probably have twice as many jobs than you know. You and I will have had, if I may say that, Jane, in our careers. And so it's really important, I think, to I don't know have a sort of fluidity to that skill building like you're doing one thing you're starting to maybe prepare for the next thing, and I think it will become a more natural or more organic way to kind of move from one job into another as opposed to. You know, I'm trained or educated to be this, and that's what I'm going to do for the next 40 or however many years. So it's a really important thing, for I think both individuals as well as companies to think about that learning piece and learning can be done in so many ways. There's obviously courses online or classroom training. And there's also on the job training. And I think some of these skills can be very well done whilst on the job. Sometimes it's just kind of changing, or maybe just up levelling something that you already know how to do. But there's an extra bit of information that you're lacking, and I think that can be very well done on the job. So it becomes this kind of fluid motion through your career.
23:17
Jane Goodland: And also, I suppose there's opportunities like volunteering for kind of I don't know working groups internally, or things which are not, you know. Not necessarily kind of in your job description. They may be tangential to it, but you know, would require you to do something outside of that. But then you can develop skills there. So I think the one thing that really hammers home to me is this the notion of accountability for your own learning and your own career. And that's probably something which is really relevant when we've got. We're going to have more and more jobs for our full careers. It's like there's only one person in charge of your career. And that's you, right? So you know, it's really incumbent on the individual to determine what skills they need for the next move or the new move after that, or just kind of just to fulfil their career long term.
I want to come back full circle, I suppose, to where we started, which was about kind of this is about humans and human capital as part of a sustainable economy. And I think that you know there's much debate around AI, and how it's going to sort of kill the job market, and you know it sort of gets very dramatic. But I'm curious to know about kind of human skills. And I know that this is something that Linkedin's looked at. What do we mean by human skills? And why should we not let go of them? Why should we invest in in actually being human? You know.
24:38
Janine Chamberlin: Yeah, absolutely. So the way I think about human skills. And I really love the word human skills, they're often referred to as soft skills which I think is just not a very great way to discuss or talk about skills that are really hard Are hard sometimes to train for as well. But I'm talking about things like creativity, communication, teamwork collaboration, the things that are really unique to humans that won't be augmented or replaced by artificial intelligence. Those are the kind of skills that we're talking about when we talk about the human skills. And interestingly. So we've been talking about the fastest growing jobs and how there's high demand for all of these kind of new and technical skills. Or to become more AI literate. But actually, for many years the sort of high in demand skills that are consistent are human skills like creativity, like collaboration, like leadership, etc. And so I think it's really important that we may be over invest in what that means for each of us. How do we essentially bring AI into our jobs to augment some of the things that are repetitive time consuming, maybe not as fun to do, and that over time will allow us the kind of flexibility to then invest more in the things that make us so uniquely human, and that we can really add value with to our jobs. That's really what I think about when it comes to human skills and because they are irreplaceable, they're going to continue to be really important and in high demand.
26:19
Jane Goodland: So there you go. The motto is, Be more human. Right? So there you go. Janine it's been lovely talking to you. I think it's a fascinating topic. And we've covered a lot of ground here. And the research reports that we've discussed today are available online on Linkedin. So if you're interested in those things. Please do check it out because there are some fascinating stats there, Janine, thank you once again for your time. It's been a delight.
26:44
Janine Chamberlin: Thank you so much, Jane.
26:45
Jane Goodland: Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode with Janine from Linkedin. It's great to know that sustainability skills are in high demand. And despite AI, it's still very important to be human. If you've got questions, comments, or someone you want us to talk to then do get in touch by email at fmt@lseg.com. And if you want to see some of the reports that we talked about during the show you can find links in the episode information, that's all from me. But watch out for the next episode very soon.
