The Hidden Cost of Global Talent: When Your Workday Never Ends

Everyone talks about the expanding scope of Talent.

Nobody talks about the expanding reach.

In this episode, Edan explores the reality of running global Talent portfolios from Australia. The early starts. The late-night calls. The 14-hour workday. The pressure to always be available across APAC, Europe and North America.

As Talent evolves into Total Talent, are we creating sustainable careers or designing jobs that quietly lead to burnout?

And could agentic AI finally be the answer?

Join the Edan Haddock - Total Talent community (formerly Rubberband)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey everyone. Welcome back to Eden Haddock Total Talent. I am your host, Eden Haddock, Head of Talent and People Experience at Movember. This week isn't about skills. It's not about AI. It's not about workforce planning. Well, actually, it is about workforce planning, but not in the way most people think. This week I want to talk about something I've been feeling. And judging by the discussion that exploded in our Facebook community last night, something a lot of you are feeling too. Exhaustion. Not because the work is bad. Not because we don't love what we do. Not because we aren't engaged. Actually, quite the opposite. The problem is we care. The problem is we're ambitious. The problem is we've built careers that span the globe. And somewhere along the way, nobody stopped and asked a really important question. Just because technology allows us to work across six countries, should we? For years, the talent profession has been obsessed with scope. Talent acquisition wasn't enough. We added employer branding, then workforce planning, then succession, then engagement, then talent intelligence, then mobility, then employee experience, then organizational design, then culture, then skills, then AI, then everything else. The profession became bigger, broader, more strategic, more influential, more valuable, and rightly so. But while everyone was staring at the width of the role, nobody noticed the length of it. Because something else happened. The geography exploded. Suddenly we weren't supporting Melbourne, we were supporting APAC. Then North America. Then Europe, then the United Kingdom, then APAC, whatever it looks like for your organization, and then global. And every time another country got added to the portfolio, we celebrated. Nobody asked what happened to the human behind the portfolio. I think Australians have a unique challenge here. If you're sitting in London managing a global remit, you can generally catch Europe. You can generally catch North America. It's manageable. If you're sitting in New York, you can generally catch Europe. And again, it's not easy, but manageable. Australia, well, it's a different story. Australia is the awkward middle child of global business. To speak to Europe, you start early. To speak to North America, you finish late. To speak to both, you do both. And this changes depending on season, depending on time of year. And suddenly your day starts before sunrise and ends well after dinner. Not occasionally, repeatedly. Week after week, month after month, year after year. Last night I posted a simple question in our community. The response was immediate. And what stuck what stuck with me, it wasn't the advice necessarily, it was the consistency. People talked about years of this lifestyle, not months, years. People talked about twelve hour days, fourteen hour days. Some actually talked about much longer. People described burnout, physical symptoms, exhaustion, the inability to switch off, the constant feeling that someone somewhere in the world needed something. And the comments all shared something interesting. Nobody was complaining about the work. Nobody hated their company. Nobody regretted building these global careers. I certainly don't. They simply acknowledge the reality. This is hard. Really hard. And yet we rarely talk about it. I've started to wonder whether global remits have become a status symbol. We proudly announce I look after APAC. I look after EMEA. I look after global. I support six countries. I support twenty countries. And everyone nods impressed. Because bigger must be better, right? But imagine if somebody said I work 14 hours a day. Nobody would clap. Imagine if somebody said, I haven't had dinner with my family three nights this week. Nobody would celebrate. Imagine if somebody said I start at 5 30 AM and finish at 10 30 p.m. People would be concerned. Yet often that's exactly what sits underneath this shiny title. We designed the role, and now the role is designing us. This is where it gets really interesting. As talent professionals, we spend our lives designing jobs. But how often do we redesign our own? Many global talent roles were designed for a different era, a pre-AI era, a pre-agent era, a pre-automation era, a pre-intelligence layer era. We are still operating as if every meeting requires every person. Every update requires attendance. Every discussion requires participation. Every decision requires synchronous calibration. And that's just madness. Let's talk about meetings. Because meetings are often the real villain. A lot of global meetings aren't actually decision-making forums. They're information sharing forums, status updates, project updates, steering committees, governance meetings, working groups, alignment sessions, the same ten people listening to the same information across three continents at ridiculous hours. And we've normalized this. I think future generations will look back and think we were insane. So enter a gentic AI. This is where I think the talent profession is about to change dramatically. And as I always say, not because AI will replace us. I've said it a thousand times that I don't buy the AI replaces talent narrative. What I do believe is that AI will replace enormous amounts of coordination. And that's different. Imagine an agent attending a meeting for you, listening, taking notes, capturing actions, highlighting decisions, flagging risks, producing a summary, recommending follow-up actions, and doing it better than a human note taker. Now imagine that across fifty meetings, one hundred meetings, five hundred meetings. Suddenly attendance becomes optional. Information becomes asynchronous. The work continues. But the human doesn't need to be present. That's a very different future. I think one of the biggest shifts we'll see over the next five years is the move from synchronous talent to asynchronous talent. Today the expectation is attend the meeting, join the call, be available, respond immediately. Tomorrow, the expectation may be review the output, validate the recommendation, approve the decision. A completely different model. And one that could dramatically improve quality of life, particularly for global professionals sitting in Australia. Now boundaries are not a weakness. The other lesson from the community's discussion was boundaries. The professionals who seemed to survive the longest had something in common. They became ruthless. Not rude, not difficult, just deliberate. They blocked recovery time, skipped unnecessary meetings, shared coverage responsibilities, created regional ownership, rotated meeting times, protected sleep, protected family, protected themselves. And I think that's important. Because burnout doesn't usually arrive dramatically, it arrives quietly. One late meeting becomes two, two becomes five, five becomes normal. Then one day you realize you haven't switched off properly in months. So the future of global talent. Here's my prediction. The future isn't fewer global roles, it's more, much more. I think this is a great thing. I love my global role. The centralization trend, it truly isn't slowing down. And technology will accelerate it. Companies will continue consolidating functions. Talent teams will continue supporting multiple regions. Global operating models will continue expanding. That's happening. The question isn't whether global roles disappear. The question is whether we redesign them before they break people. And that's where Workforce 5.0 comes in. Because Workforce 5.0 isn't just about AI. It isn't just about technology. It isn't just about productivity. It's about designing work that humans can actually sustain. So this week I leave you with a question. We've spent years talking about expanding the scope of talent. But if the bigger challenge isn't scope at all, what if it's reach? What if the biggest workforce design problem sitting in front of us isn't skills or succession or engagement or AI? What if it's time? What if the most finite resource in the entire workforce is the one thing we're quietly asking global professionals to sacrifice every day? Sleep, presence, recovery, life. Because the irony is this the talent profession exists to help people thrive. Maybe it's time we made sure we're thriving too. I think we need to rethink the design of our roles. I don't think we should be resisting global. Global is the future, and it's wonderful. But we need to rethink. Thanks so much for listening. If this episode resonates with you, jump into the Eden Haddock Total Talent Facebook community and continue the conversation. I'd love to know how many time zones do you support? And what boundaries have you put in place to make it sustainable? And until next time, keep challenging the way work works. It's important. Keep designing the future. And please, keep looking after yourselves along the way. Thank you.