How to make partnerships and careers work in face of (subtle) social norms

Subconscious gender norms surrounding families and partnerships are still prevalent even in the most egalitarian societies, and they influence how couples make career choices — even couples who are committed to gender equality. Cecily Josten discusses the literature on couples with dual careers and the choices they face

What makes an individual inclusive of others? Development and validation of the Individual Inclusiveness Inventory

This study develops and validates the ‘Individual Inclusiveness Inventory’. Collaboration and inclusion are key contributors to successful work outcomes in an increasingly diverse workforce. We capture what makes an individual inclusive of others at work. We define an inclusive individual as someone who actively includes individuals in a group and encourages diversity of thought and background but still encourages the group in a way as to maximise performance and productivity. To develop the ‘Individual Inclusiveness Inventory’ we combine a deductive and inductive approach: we generate scale items based on the existing literature on inclusion and interviews with 14 experts in diversity and inclusion. The items are then reduced using exploratory factor analysis and confirmed using confirmatory factor analysis in two samples of working professionals in the UK. This results in a two-factor solution where factor 1 ‘Belonging and Uniqueness’ captures the importance of fostering belonging and uniqueness at work and factor 2 ‘Challenge and Openness’ captures being open to challenge and being challenged. We test the predictive validity of the two-factor solution with respect to work outcomes. We find that ‘Challenge and Openness’ is positively related to all work outcomes studied including income. This link to productivity is intuitive for individuals who are open to challenge are also likely competitive and innovative. ‘Belonging and Uniqueness’ is positively related to the number of people managed and perceived comparative seniority and happiness. This factor is less predictive of productivity as fostering belonging and uniqueness is likely more about group outcomes or happiness

How the most recent AI wave affects jobs

With rapid progress in natural language processing and image generation, AI now affects creative occupations, which were previously considered safe from automation. Cecily Josten and Grace Lordan write that job displacement concerns are legitimate and new approaches to education and workforce development are needed. They say that addressing biases in AI and fostering reskilling are also necessary for inclusive adaptation to AI advancements

People vs machines: automation, the fourth industrial revolution and the labour force

Automation and technical innovation are currently shaping global labour markets. Research on the future of work has brought contributions that seek to determine the exact jobs that have been lost in the past, and those that may be lost in the future. Overall, this research indicates that the winners and losers of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are determined by skills. While low-skilled individuals performing routine tasks remain at high risk of being replaced by automation, individuals with abstract thinking and people skills will continue to be in high demand. Understanding the differential impact automation has on people with different skills helps organisations prepare for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It also helps policy makers determine what should be invested in when considering the stock and flow of skills, so that all citizens have some opportunity to be included in the gains from technological change

Disentangling privilege from merit: a crucial step for true inclusion at work

At some point during the popular podcast series “How I Built This”, the host Guy Raz asks his guests who are all successful entrepreneurs: “Was your success down to luck or your skills?” Most entrepreneurs attribute their success to a bit of both, luck and skill. We usually think of luck as coming to us arbitrarily and being evenly distributed across individuals. In reality, however, what makes us lucky very often depends on where we grew up, which school we went to, or which skin colour we have etc.. In short, luck is not pure chance but depends on our privilege. Creating an awareness of individuals’ privilege — and factoring in privilege or a lack thereof — in the recruiting and retaining of talent in the workplace is hence imperative for achieving true diversity and inclusion at work

Who makes it to the top? Differential rewards to personality across gender and occupation in the UK

This study tests whether personality traits are legitimately rewarded in the labour market or whether there are differing rewards across gender that cannot be explained with productivity. We investigate if personality traits affect the likelihood of making it to the top income quintile within an occupation differently by gender using UK Household Longitudinal data. We find that being agreeable hurts men more than women across a majority of occupations, which points at the role of gender norms for wages. Further, female legislators and senior officials who are conscientious, extraverted, neurotic and open are more likely to be among the top earners than men. Other than that, we find small gender differences in personality rewards

Not a joke: leveraging humour at work increases performance, individual happiness, and psychological safety

Why are workplaces often devoid of humour, if having a good laugh brings many benefits to people and organisations? Teresa Almeida and Cecily Josten look at the research on workplace humour and write that having, and showing, a sense of humour is a way to demonstrate authenticity and come across as more human. They argue that more experimental research is needed to test the benefits and downsides of humour interventions and how to best leverage humour to achieve positive work outcomes

Automation and the changing nature of work

This study identifies the job attributes, and in particular skills and abilities, which predict the likelihood a job is recently automatable drawing on the Josten and Lordan (2020) classification of automatability, EU labour force survey data and a machine learning regression approach. We find that skills and abilities which relate to non-linear abstract thinking are those that are the safest from automation. We also find that jobs that require 'people' engagement interacted with 'brains' are also less likely to be automated. The skills that are required for these jobs include soft skills. Finally, we find that jobs that require physically making objects or physicality more generally are most likely to be automated unless they involve interaction with 'brains' and/or 'people'

Non-cognitive skills and the labour market: the past, the present and the future

The aim of this PhD thesis is to shed light on the role of non-cognitive skills in the labour market in the past, the present and the future. Increasingly, research considers how non-cognitive skills determine important work outcomes, such as wages. Knowing which non-cognitive skills have an impact on such outcomes is hence helpful for individuals wanting to upskill themselves or others. In this thesis I start by highlighting the importance of non-cognitive skills in rapidly changing labour markets in paper 1 and 2, which motivate the analyses in paper 3, 4 and 5. In paper 1, I synthesise the academic evidence on the role of non-cognitive skills. In paper 2, I analyse the impact of skills and abilities on the automatability of occupations. In paper 3, I focus on how a traditional measure of non-cognitive skills, the Big Five personality inventory, determines wage outcomes for men and women differently. I find that agreeableness is punished more for men than it is for women pointing at differential rewards to personality by gender. I extend paper 3 by looking at how the demand and reward for specific non-cognitive skills changes over time in paper 4. Increasing technological innovation and disruptions to modern labour markets are changing the way we work, and the skills required at work. I study a large data set of job advertisements to analyse which non-cognitive skills are rewarded over time and find that collaborative leadership skills are increasing in importance. Also, I find that data science skills are evolving rapidly with the need to upskill on them frequently. The importance of collaborative leadership raises the question what makes collaboration successful and how to measure it. Inclusion has been shown to be a determinant of successful group outcomes. In paper 5 of this thesis, I hence develop an ‘Individual Inclusiveness Inventory’ that focuses on measuring what makes an individual inclusive. It does so in the vein of developing a personality trait scale like the Big Five that fits current labour market needs. The scale is developed through interviews with experts in inclusion and based on literature. It is then validated using a sample of working individuals in the UK and linked to work outcomes. The resulting ‘Individual Inclusiveness Inventory’ consists of two factors where one factor captures an individual’s skill to foster belonging and uniqueness of co-workers and the other factor captures an individual’s openness to challenge others and to be challenged. I also find that it predicts labour market outcomes. Overall, my thesis contributes to past literature on non-cognitive skills and the labour market by offering new perspectives on non-cognitive skills in rapidly changing labour markets

The City Quantum Summit: a briefing on Diversity and Inclusion in the quantum sector

Workplaces are changing rapidly, with an increasingly diverse workforce and a lack of talent to fill all the roles, which is why companies across all industries are tackling Diversity & Inclusion within their organisations