This webinar will consider what it means to put the human at the heart of Industry 5.0 and why it has been so hard to move innovation beyond the 19th century paradigm of techno-centrism. Realising the strategic advantages of Industry 5.0 requires organizations to understand what makes work human, and what is distinctively human about work: skill and skilful practice. As well as making work meaningful, skilful practice can be a powerful source of innovation but too often managers misrecognise skill, undervaluing employees. Realising the benefits of Industry 5.0 will require an ‘upskilling’ of management to move beyond an efficiency paradigm to recognise, reward and develop the skills that matter strategically today.

Chris Land is a Professor of Work and Organization at Anglia Ruskin University and director of the Centre for Research into the Organization of Work and Consumption. His research is concerned primarily with work, how work is changing, and how it intersects with technology, consumption and culture. His current focus is on ‘the future of work’ as imagined in science-fiction, high-tech engineering and ‘Industry 5.0’ in practice and in academic and policy discourses. Other projects include: the quality of work in neo-craft industries like craft brewing; wellbeing and its intersection with work; the position of coffee growers in global commodity chains.