Q&A with Celina Caesar-Chavannes

Exclusive Trusted Magazine Q&A with Celina Caesar-Chavannes, Managing Director, ReSolve

 Research Solutions

From your diverse experience in healthcare, politics, and business consulting, how do you see the evolving nature of work impacting employee wellness and mental health?

What strategies should organizations adopt to support their workforce through these changes? 

 Beyond what I have witnessed in my experience in healthcare, politics, and business consulting, research has shown that the evolving nature of work will impact jobs and security in a way that we have never witnessed.

Artificial intelligence, AR, and VR are replacing jobs at a significant rate. The positive side is that they are also forcing leaders to adapt and change the way we work, as those same forces create new types of work opportunities. Done correctly, our upskilling and reskilling can incorporate compassion, humanization, and freedom. This can have beneficial impact not only on employee wellness and mental health, but on absenteeism, quiet quitting, and retention.

The rapid pace of change, coupled with the complexities of modern work environments, can often lead to heightened stress levels and burnout among employees. Organizations must adopt strategies that prioritize employee well-being, such as promoting work-life balance, offering mental health support services, and creating inclusive and supportive work cultures.

Compassionate leadership acknowledges and leverages power and privilege to ensure employees, at all levels, not only have the skills for the future of work, but are also able to thrive in a work environment and culture that allows them to show up as their 100% authentic self, make mistakes, challenge the status quo, and have “off” days. This is part of a strategy to ensure all employees feel whole and complete.

It is intentionally humanizing. The outcome is a space what Laura Morgan Roberts describes as spaces where employees can be, become, fade, and fail. This strategy leaves no one behind, especially the most vulnerable. 

Given your advocacy for equity, diversity, and inclusion, how do you envision these principles being integrated into the future workplace?

What measures can organizations take to ensure that the future of work is inclusive for all? 

The purpose of my work is to give leaders the tools to democratize justice within their workspace and within the communities they serve. The aim of this is to build and ensure our collective humanization. I firmly believe that these principles are integral to creating a future workplace that is inclusive for all. It goes beyond diversity, equity, and inclusion, and removes barriers that prevent individuals from thriving at work, and organization from reaping the inherent benefits of positivity, productivity, and profitability.

Organizations should prioritize diversity in hiring practices, foster a culture of belonging and respect, provide equal opportunities for advancement and development, and actively address systemic barriers that hinder freedom. However, since "culture eats strategy for breakfast", all of this is for not if attention is not paid to the cultural transformation and psychological safety that is required to support a strategy of humanization and freedom. Organizations that do this well will reap the benefits, and the future will be kind to them. 

As a leader who has navigated multiple sectors, what role do you believe leadership plays in shaping the future of work?

How can leaders foster an environment that encourages innovation and adapts to emerging work trends? 

Leadership plays a crucial role in shaping the future of work. Effective leaders inspire and empower their teams through trust, cultivate a culture of innovation and adaptability with authenticity, and embrace change as an opportunity for growth by allowing risks and mistakes. However, if leaders are unclear about the how to cultivate these skills, or more importantly, what the pillars of these competencies include, they will find themselves with more people leaving their organization - quietly or otherwise, than staying.

For example, do leaders appreciate the four (4) different type of creative thinking - integrative, splitting, figure-ground reversal or distal) and tap into employees that possess each one when different tasks emerge? Or do they rely on the usual suspects that think they way they do? How often do their biases impact their ability to truly have innovative products, mitigate risk, or broaden strategy, simply because they do not engage the unusual suspects? 

With your international perspective, how do you see global trends influencing the future of work in Canada and elsewhere?

What can countries learn from each other in preparing for these changes? 

Global trends, such as remote work, digital transformation, and globalization, are significantly influencing the future of work in Canada and around the world. Countries can learn from each other by sharing best practices, collaborating on global initiatives, and adapting policies and strategies to address common challenges. By leveraging our collective experiences and insights, we can build a future of work that leave no one behind.

However this cannot be achieved if massive debt, the impacts of climate change, and growing displacement of people are not interrogated, re-envisioned, and met with resolve. We have the global capacity and capability. Let’s get it done! Let’s save each other and our planet.