LBS professors talk longevity and employee morale

LBS Professor of Economics Andrew Scott was a guest on Dubai Eye radio recently, speaking about longevity and the impact the growing trend for people to live longer is having on the world’s economies. 

Celebrated academic and author Professor Scott's newly published book, The Longevity Imperative: How to Build a Healthier and More Productive Society to Support Our Longer Lives, was the inspiration for a conversation on Dubai Eye about how we all need to adapt to a radical change in the human condition – that the young can now expect to become the very old. 

We need to seize the longevity imperative and become ‘evergreen’, says Andrew. We need to focus on constructing a society that prepares us for longer lives and makes certain that the quality of life matches its new-found quantity. That is what “The Longevity Imperative” charts – outlining what individuals and society need to do to make the most of our longer lives.

A long-serving macroeconomist, Professor Scott thinks his profession can be too gloomy about ageing. What matters, he says, is not how long people live, but how well they age, and that is something which can be changed.

In this interview, he discusses how governments and individuals can best navigate a world in which people are living longer lives, from questions over the state pension age to health policy, falling birth rates, flexible work and a four-day week.

Ben Hardy, Clinical Professor of Organisational Behaviour at LBS spoke on Dubai Eye’s Afternoons with Helen Farmer show about employee morale and how to boost it. Because morale affects the amount of work people do and creativity, organisations suffer from dips in discretionary effort when morale is low.

Professor Hardy outlined three areas that organisations need to think about in order to boost morale: the emotional aspect of work; direction and progress; and relationships.

“The emotional aspect is important as employees who feel that they are valued by, and that they bring value to, an organisation are more engaged. It’s about focussing on the individual strengths that an employee brings that can’t easily be replicated as that helps them to feel valued, as well as being explicit in praising that value. Similarly, morale is boosted by people having a belief that they are making progress on something that matters. If they can visualise the future and understand that the work they are doing is moving their organisation towards that goal, morale is usually higher. Finally, enjoying good relations with colleagues is hugely important as bad working relations drop morale.”

Professor Hardy's interview with Helen Farmer runs from minutes 13:56-37:31.