This year, the World Employment Confederation Conference was held in Dublin, Ireland, from June 6^th to 8^th, under the theme “Managing an Extended Workforce”.

On June 6th, only WEC Members gathered to discuss topics of importance on a regional and global level.

On June 7^th, Geraldine King and Frank Farrely, CEO and President respectively of the National Recruiting Federation, welcomed attendants to the WEC Conference 2018. Right after that, Ms Regina Doherty, Minister for Employment and Social Protection of Ireland, gave an opening speech, in which she analyzed facts and figures on the Irish labour market.

Annemarie Muntz, president of WEC Global, and Hans Leentjes, Vice-president of WEC Global, also welcomed attendants, and debated on the challenges that the employment industry faces in terms of social innovation. The key ideas are that the industry is right in the center of the perfect storm, as it has already become a decent alternative, but must aim at becoming a key element. In addition, Hans Leentjes stated that social innovation is not moving fast enough, and it is necessary for workers to have a voice, but unions must change. Annemarie also encouraged attendants to start working on fostering social innovation.

A number of keynote speakers shared their insight during the conference. The economist David McWilliams delved on unconventional thinking, group thinking and confirmation biases. His message was that, if you intend to work in the gig economy, the last thing you can be is a member of a group. In addition, individual responsibility in terms of professional development, lifelong learning and markets risks shall be key elements in the 21^st century.

Fons Trompenaars, expert in cross-cultural leadership, delved on how to deal with diversity, considering that our models are biased and bipolar. He said that innovation is about connecting the opposites: it can only be achieved by combining things that are difficult to combine. Innovation is about diversity, inclusion, and proper leadership.

Peter Cosgrove, Future of Work Expert, also addressed diversity, but from the gender perspective. He claimed that those who are in a privileged position (basically white, middle age, heterosexual men, from middle to upper socioeconomic status), fail to notice unfair situations. But such situations exist, and it is necessary to work on them. Helen Thynan, Head of People Operations at Google, explained Google’s policy to foster diversity within the company.

Another keynote speaker, David Collings, Professor of HRM at Dublin City University Business School, talked about how the boundaries of talent management are shifting. Freelancers are a growing reality in the labour market, and a large share of them work under this mode because they want. As a matter of fact, there are 57 million freelance workers in the United States, and 1.9 million in the UK, and their numbers are growing faster than regular employees. The key individual drivers for freelancing include interest in doing meaningful and autonomous work, work-life balance.  Also, companies are starting to re-hire employees that used to work for them, which would have been a completely unusual situation years ago.

The conference also included a number of breakout sessions and panel discussions, where experts, debate on topics such as leadership, talent management, the future gig economy, extended workforce, diverse employment models, skills and education, among others.

Denis Pennel, Managing Director at WEC, closed the World Employment Conference and summarized what social innovation is all about: reconciling the opposites to achieve flexicurity, simplexity, and agibility. Three key elements for better functioning labour markets in a future of work that is already among us, and that we will continue to address next year in Australia, for the World Employment Conference 2019.