Lotus People Event Recap:

Navigating the Future of Work in 2024

We recently hosted our first in-person Brisbane event, ‘Navigating the Future of Work’, at the fabulous eSpaces in Brisbane, alongside our friends at Jobadder.


A huge thank you to our network of People & Culture, HR, Talent Acquisition, and Leadership professionals who joined us! We were completely blown away by the amazing turn out. The feedback we've received from the event has been overwhelmingly positive, and we are so grateful to those who took the time to share their feedback from the day.


Event Feedback:

I really enjoyed hearing about AI in the workplace, it’s something we are leveraging quite a bit here at Salesforce. The insights about working from home and inviting workplaces was great too.

Thank you - Sophie and the team, you were all so lovely and welcoming. Also, thanks to Dan at JobAdder for sponsoring!



Thank you for the invite to this mornings event Sophie Thomas and team Lotus. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Was really insightful. The panelists were really engaging and each brought different and enriching perspectives on each topic area discussed. 

What a great event Sophie, thanks for inviting me along. The speakers were great and shared some great ideas and actionable initiatives - my note taking was struggling to keep up!



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Whilst self-reporting and gathering data from engagement surveys is amazing, and definitely a data point you should have, you need to know what is actually happening with that additional time.




- Kate Drew (Arnold), Chief People Officer at Madison Group Enterprise

We had the privilege of hearing from an impressive panel who shared their insights on the key trends, challenges, and opportunities shaping the recruitment market for 2024. A huge thank you to the panel for generously sharing their time and expertise with our audience.



You have to bring your people on the journey with you, the research has shown that although people are really up for AI, they're also terrified of it; 80% of people are fearful of the impact of AI, you have to really dig deep into what you're going to use it for, how that's going to impact people's roles and what the benefits are going to be to them.



- Nicola Young, Head of People APAC and Japan at Cognizant

Visual odyssey across continents
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We have reformatted our standard backwards looking performance review to be a healthy split between looking backwards and focused on the future – to focus on personal development, growth and career aspirations. We’ve had lots of good feedback on this from our team.




- Graham Moody, Chief People Officer at JobAdder


Thank you also to our wonderful hosts, our very own QLD Director, Sophie Thomas, and Dan Anticich, JobAdder APAC Account Executive.


Missed the Event? We’ve included videos and resources below so you don’t miss out on the invaluable insights and advice shared on the day!


Watch the video below!



Audience Q&A



  • What can businesses do to proactively bring people on the change journey when it comes to AI, system implementation and transformation?

    Nicola, Cognizant:

    Education is the key, I am a big proposer of consultation. Having a group who are there for you to consult with, understand the barriers, the resistance, the way people are feeling, is really fundamental.

  • What are you doing in your organisation to attract, retain and support diverse leaders including culturally and linguistically diverse, neurodivergent and disabled leaders?

    Kate, Madison Group Enterprise:

    We have a number of initiatives including scholarship funds which focus on diverse groups. We realised that diverse groups were not represented in the candidates in the market, so thought why don't we invest in them from the ground up. We’ve got partnerships with RMIT, UTS and are about to sign up with Griffith. We are paying for full degrees for almost 20 candidates, but they're also going to be working with us in paid employment through their studies.


    Nicola, Cognizant:

    We use our Outreach networks including the charities we collaborate with, so we are doing a lot of work with schools, particularly with a focus on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. We're finding that in Tech, if you don't have a laptop then you can't get into the industry and a lot of schools don't have those resources.

  • How do we address the gender gap at a senior leadership level, and what initiatives have you implemented to address it?

    Nicola, Cognizant:

    We have to look at the reasons why senior women are not in the workforce. One example is childcare, and women do drop out of the workforce and are not able to come back to work because it is not affordable, I think that is a very Australia specific problem. The policies we have for male employees will determine if our women can come back to the workforce, The government is trying to do a lot of paid parental leave for men, and I believe that is fundamental.

  • We have an aging population, so what are your initiatives for keeping experienced people in the workforce longer?

    Kate, Madison Group Enterprises: 

    We have a ready for retirement program. We have a lot of employees who have worked for us for 20-25 years, so getting towards the end of their career. We have honest conversations with them about plans for retirement over the next 10-15 years, and we help them with a plan of how to exit the business. We focus on giving them meaningful work or engagement outside the business so for one employee for example, we pay his salary for 5 days a week but he works 4 days on the condition that the other day a week he volunteers so that he has community connection ready for retirement


Portraits of people from around the globe
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Visual odyssey across continents
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