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--talking HR now because Pat Tomlinson is here. He's the global CEO and president of Mercer, by some measures, the world's largest human resources consultancy. Pat, good morning. Thanks for being with us.

Thank you for having me.

Based in the US, but on a world tour and stopping off in Dubai. Lots to get through. Let's start with the skills gap. Mercer says 50% of your client's hair in the region think there is a skills gap. Earlier this week, Sheikh Hamdan, the Dubai Crown Prince, says we need a new education strategy to plug the skills gap. Briefly, what's the problem? And how do we plug it?

So what we see going on right now is a significant transition through major aspects of the world. If we think about some of the major areas going on from an AI enhancement, from a green energy transition, it's creating a major strain on skills and on specific jobs and that's having a ripple effect through organizations.

So if we think about some of the key areas that we're seeing major jobs growth, which is creating this challenge on skills, one of the research reports we do with the World Economic Forum suggests that there's going to be about a million more AI and machine learning jobs created in the next three years.

And when you think about green technology and energy transition, probably about 30 million jobs by 2030. And that ripple effect is having a significant impact on skills as we think about the new jobs and the new skills that we need to go forward in these new areas. And basically, we don't have the core foundational build up of skills of people from past jobs to be able to go ahead and do them.

So briefly, what do I need to brush up on is a 52-year-old? And what do my kids who are still at school need to brush up on?

Yeah, I think as we think about how technology is interwoven in everything we do every day, obviously being able to interact well with technology and learning some basic AI skills will be really important.

People talk about, will AI replace my job? The reality is we're seeing AI or technology being integrated into many, many jobs. So having a good comfort level with technology is going to be critically important for people coming up through the workforce, as well as experienced people trying to think about how to reskill themselves through the workforce.

Organizations think about this from a couple of different ways. One is they look at their existing population and are trying to think about, who are the people that I can go ahead and upskill a little bit? Which means they have almost all the skills that they need to go ahead and do the role that's emerging. But they need to do a few minor tweaks and organizations typically enable that with some training.

Then you have reskilling where you have components of the workforce that really need a foundational rebuilding of skills. And that's going to require much more significant education, probably much more in line with what was talked about earlier in the week where we talk about 50% of the people not having the right skills. And then the things that employers can think about when we think about how to handle something like that is you can think almost about, how do I design jobs?

Because there might be components of jobs in the future that if you can deconstruct them a little bit and redesign them, you can open yourselves up to different people who could be able to do them because you might be able to enable those people to be able to do different jobs with AI, with technology to where there might be a core foundational piece that they weren't able to do, that you might be able to upskill people without having to completely skill them to be able to do the job and AI enable them, for lack of a better word.

Let's talk about the four-day week.

OK.

You're a big fan, which surprises me because you're vice chairman of Marsh McLennan, the parent company, $20 billion company, 100,000 people in various high end consulting jobs. How do you square that with a four-day week.

So I think when you think about four-day week, it really becomes about the organization and the business and, who are the customers you serve? First off, it's not going to be set for all organizations. It's not going to work. But it can work in some businesses. So you have to think about, what's the client base? And what is the objective of the business that you're trying to serve?

And if you think about maybe a type of retail job or something like that where you can clearly define objectives of that role and what they could do, you can have clearly defined metrics if somebody who's going to be able to perform that role. It's an opportunity to think about how to go do that.

When we have gone through pilots and seen what happens in a four-day workweek, employees typically self-report that they feel like they're more productive and that they go ahead and that they feel like they have less stress and they have better work life balance. That's obvious from the fact that they're at the office for or at work four days versus five days. So you can think about it from that perspective. But it is providing that mental well-being.

Employers, on the other hand, as we've run pilots with this, if it's not done in the right-- rolled out in the right way and it's not thought about right for your organization, they have seen actually decreased productivity at points and actually more burnout if you don't do it for the right roles because it is hard to do certain jobs, 10, 11, 12 hours in a day.

If you think about what somebody might have to do if are going to compress the workweek, we're not shortening the workweek. You'd be compressing it. So I think it's about finding the right organization, the right roles. And then the way you implement that and the change management you do when you go ahead and execute is going to be critically important to make sure people, managers are on board, as well as the employees.

Do you do a four-day week?

No, we do not do four-day weeks.

Right, why?

Well, that's because the customers. So how I organized it originally was we talk about, what is your client base? So we are a professional services firm. And if we think about most of our customers are working five, it depends on what industry. Some of our customers are working five, six seven days a week. We do public sector work where there's always work going on.

And so you pretty much have to adapt. I think any organization that's going to evaluate a four-day workweek has to think about how to adapt to what their customer's needs are. And can you clearly define the work that can be done inside of a four-day workweek?

And in most professional services organizations, if you think about having the flexibility of what customers would need and access to their consultant, they need that throughout their throughout their workweek. So we typically try and map to what clients are doing to make sure we're available to them to meet their needs.

Last question, you're ex-military, West Point graduate army officer. I can't imagine a four-day work week working in the military. What did you learn from the military? And how do you apply it in your new job?

So there's definitely things you pick up along the way in all jobs. But in the military, I think one of the big things that I learned was the importance of understanding the mission. And we talk about that from making sure that all members of the team clearly understand what they have to be able to go do because the world is very dynamic.

So people understanding the end objective because they'll have to make individual decisions as you move through the day. So then being able to go ahead and do that, it's important. And then the last big piece is prioritization. There is many, many different things that we have to accomplish overall. And certainly won't be able to do everything, but we can probably do just about anything we set our mind to as long as we prioritized it.

Pat, great talk to you. I appreciate you putting the Dubai Eye Studio on your stop off on your world tour. The thoughts there of Pat Tomlinson. He is the global CEO of Mercer. I appreciate your time.

Thank you.

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