IFOW Partners with the CogX Festival | "Building a Better Working Future"

The CogX Festival: Building a better working future

Join the Economy and Future of Work stage curated by the Institute for the Future of Work in partnership with CogX.

This year, CogX, Europe’s largest festival of technology, has moved online for a virtual experience.

The Institute for the Future of Work is partnering with CogX to fuel the festival’s usual convening power: to connect people to inspire creativity, drive innovations that improve our quality of life and work, and to help fully realise human potential.

This year, the festival will be trying to grapple with one big, thorny question:

How do we get the next 10 years right?

We explore how the revolution in technology has accelerated upheaval in our working lives, how the pandemic has overturned how we value the work people do, and how we can build a better, more resilient future – with people at its heart. The choices we make now will shape the future of work for decades to come.

Join us online: 8-10 June 2020.
We have 1,000 Festival Passes available for free (usually £295). Simply use code: TPIFOWSFP1000 when you register here.

We are delighted to curate the Economy and Future of Work stage with CogX, where you can hear from the world’s leading voices in the future of work and the economy. We’ll discuss how Covid-19 and other recent economic shocks have changed the way we live and work.
With dozens of thought-leaders from policy, academia and industry, we will seek to tackle the knotty, real-life trade-offs of benefits and harms we face that will disrupt our working lives and overhaul the economy in the decades to come.

Building a new partnership model: A commission for the future (8 June, 10am)

In our response to Covid-19, we face a once-in-a-century opportunity to change work and the lives of working people for good. Decisions we make now on priorities, staging and goals will affect work for people, and their lives, for generations to come. This session will share and discuss insights from the newly re-established Future of Work Commission, which has been looking beyond the crisis management we see every day.

Speakers:
Naomi Climer CBE, Co-Chair, Institute for the Future of Work
Darren Jones MP, Chair, House of Commons Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee
Helen Mountfield QC, Principal of Mansfield College, University of Oxford
Peter Cheese, CEO, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development

Building Resilience post Covid-19 (8 June, 2pm)
An ability to adapt to disaster, uncertainty, and upheaval is a key measure of a healthy economy. This session will hear international perspectives on tackling structural problems that weaken economies. It will hear about efforts to iron out regional variations in resilience, and discuss ways to create policies that nurture positive and robust environments for businesses, their workers, and society.

Speakers:

Anthony O’Sullivan, Director, Whiteshield Partners
Kay Firth-Butterfield, Head of AI and Machine Learning, World Economic Forum
Jason Stockwood, Founder of 53 Degrees Capital, Vice Chairman of Simply Business
James Hayton, Professor, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Warwick Business School

Promoting Equality through the Age of Automation (8 June, 5pm)

Data-driven technology has helped us map and track spread of Covid-19, support the transformation of businesses across the country, and recruit thousands of people into new roles at record speed. But research by the Institute for the Future of Work has warned we must consider the wider effects and unintended consequences on workers before introducing AI and automated systems to the work space. This session explores new uses, risks and ways to actively promote equality through tools such as Equality Impact Assessments.

Speakers:
Ivana Bartoletti, Technical Director, Deloitte
Andrew Pakes, Director of Communications and Research, Prospect Union
Professor Lilian Edwards, Deputy Director of CREATe and Professor of Law, Innovation and Society at Newcastle University
Helen Mountfield QC, Principal of Mansfield College, University of Oxford

The Big Acceleration: Technology through Covid-19 (9 June, 10am)
Companies are seeking to harness the power of technology to renew their businesses and remain competitive. New technology can drive growth and offers huge potential to improve standards of work and living across the country. But these changes also fuel uncertainty, and adverse impacts are not evenly spread.

This session will consider structural upheavals in the economy and the acceleration of automation. It will explore how the pandemic is accelerating disruption, how CEOs are transforming their business models and how society should respond.

Speakers:
Sir Christopher Pissarides, Co-Chair, Institute for the Future of Work and Nobel Laureate in Economics
Professor Jacqueline O’Reilly, Director of the Digit Centre, University of Sussex Business School
Anna Thomas, Co-Founder & Director, Institute for the Future of Work
Dr Daniel Susskind, Economist Fellow, University of Oxford

Generation Covid: It’s our future (9 June, 12pm)
Young people have taken the biggest hit from the Covid-19 pandemic. ONS statistics already suggest one in ten has lost their job. So what of the future? Covid-19 has revealed for good and ill the many ways the digital technological revolution is transforming our working lives. Use of new technologies across sectors and jobs will speed up because of the pandemic.  But what will it mean for the prospects of young people at the beginning of their working lives? And what can the rest of us do to understand their challenges and support their successful entrance into the world of work?

Speakers:
Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon MBE, Founder, Stemettes, and IFOW Trustee
Zahra Davidson, Director, Enrol Yourself
David Hughes, CEO, Association of Colleges
Lord Jim Knight, Chief Education & External Officer, TES

Future of Work and Wellbeing (10 June, 2pm)
The pandemic is exposing widening health inequalities and demonstrating the importance to society of frontline workers. This session will explore the links between work and wellbeing, where work is an important social and economic determinant of health. It will consider how the nature and quality of work bears on people’s wellbeing. What barriers and opportunities do we face to create a better future for work and health together?

Speakers:
Tom Watson, Chair, UK Music
Dr Jennifer Dixon, Chief Executive, The Health Foundation
Professor Sir Michael Marmot, Director, UCL Institute of Health Equity
Anna Thomas, Co-Founder & Director, Institute for the Future of Work

Please join us on Monday 8 June - Wednesday 10 June from 10am to 6.45pm BST.

You can sign up for a free festival pass (usually £295). Just use the code: TPIFOWSFP1000 when you register here.

For more in-depth discussion about the huge changes we face in our working lives, and for regular updates from the Institute for the Future of Work, please sign up to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter.
We look forward to seeing you at CogX, and beyond.

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