Simon Kuestenmacher

COVID-19 Specific Webinar Based Keynotes

• Rebuilding Australia
  New businesses, work practices and consumer behaviours will emerge, and local manufacturing will be prioritised. The experience of working from home delivers a new productivity, lessens commuting, upskills the workforce in self-sufficiency and creates new businesses in technology. This changes the urban landscape. Post-corona we will see a large nation-building infrastructure program strengthening the suffering middleclass. Businesses and workers must prepare for the post-corona world right now. This is a unique chance to build a fairer and better Australia.
• Global trends shaping Australia
  Will China come out of the crisis strengthened? Is the US losing ground? How is the world changing and how is Australia positioned to succeed in such a world? Global demographics favour Australia as a destination for migration and international investment during the 2020s, our economic profile will serve us well in the short term but must be overhauled in the aftermath of corona. Demographics are stronger than the virus and Australia will prosper.
• Consumer values in post-corona Australia
  Relationships with our loved ones strengthened during corona. We rediscovered local products and our neighbourhoods. The early selfishness of hoarding and non-observance of lockdown shifted as the death toll rose and we focussed on acts of kindness and love. Households will be more caring, more prudent, more cautious and perhaps also less narcissistic following this experience. The new businesses will have a stronger balance sheet. Relationships tested by adversity will be stronger. The home becomes a more important space and people demand larger dwellings. Australians will be kinder and stronger on the other side of adversity.
• Creating opportunities for regional Australia
  We will experience years of lower migration. The largest demographic driver in the 2020s are Millennials reaching the family formation stage, working from home and demanding larger houses. Four-bedroom houses are unaffordable in the inner city and Millennials can be coerced to move to the regions if the case is made in the right way. This is an extremely rare opportunity to strengthen our regions! We must get the planning and storytelling right though.
• Reset your career
  Use the corona crisis to reassess, rethink and reinvigorate your career. Acquire the skills needed to succeed in the post-pandemic world. We need entrepreneurial, adaptable, technologically adept allrounders. We can’t all become tech-workers of course. Australia discovered a new appreciation of lower paid essential workers. Big public spending projects and the establishment of local manufacturing of essential goods is likely to lead to a reinvigorated middleclass. Don’t let a crisis go to waste and realign your career and business now.
  
  
• The future of work: How new technologies, new generations and new skills are changing the workplace
  Simon shows in this presentation how Australia is transforming into a knowledge economy and how you can get yourself, your business and your industry ready for that change. We are creating more highly skilled jobs and more unskilled jobs, while middle-skilled jobs, the backbone of the Australian middle-class, are stagnating. There are specific skills that you (and your children) need to succeed in this new world of work. As a society we will need to ensure that not too many people are being left behind in this transformation. Simon explores how we can ensure social cohesion in Australia considering an increasingly polarized workforce. By 2029 all Baby Boomers will be officially of retirement age. This means our largest companies and top government positions will be almost exclusively in the hand of Gen X and Gen Y. Let’s explore together what these generations value and how they will shape the near future (5-10 years) of Australia. This is a very visual presentation with several more light-hearted slides entered to break the tension on this admittedly difficult (but crucial) topic.
  
  
• Degrees of success: How education the skill shift are reshaping the Australian workforce
  This is another exciting twist on the transformation of Australia. Simon targets educators and educational institutions (schools, higher ed, continued learning, professional development). Simon explains how the Australian population, workforce and lifestyle will change due to demographic megatrends during the 2020s. Education will be key to personal and organisational success in the 2020s. We will explore what skills and training will help you to navigate the next decade. Speak to educators and they will say it’s all about STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) but is this the case? Longitudinal census data suggests that there’s a range of skills that can deliver career success. Let Simon take you through the numbers to his compelling conclusion.
  
  
• Navigating the gender factor: Using data Simon shows that the workplace of the future will be more gender-balanced
  Simon delivers a fact and data-driven presentation on the hot topic of gender in the workforce. Women are leaving the worst paid jobs in Australia and are entering the highest paid professions. Across all industries the gender income gap has been narrowing in recent years. The good news has unintended side effects though. The most successful and most educated women struggle to find a partner. The phenomenon is linked to the “upwards social mobility of women”. Back in the day when women were excluded from the workforce the only way to improve one’s lot in life was to marry a man of higher social standing. Today women outperform men in primary, secondary and tertiary education. Ever more women will enter top leadership positions. The higher a woman climbs the career ladder the smaller the pool of eligible bachelors get. We end up with two groups of people that struggle to find a partner: highly educated women and uneducated men – two highly incompatible groups. This and much more will be explored in this very timely presentation.
  
  
• The future of Australian cities: as the nature of work changes so will our cities and our day to day lives
  This presentation is particularly designed for property, government and retail audiences. Australia transitions towards a knowledge economy. These jobs tend to cluster in the central business districts of our capital cities. The composition of our workforce changes. We are creating many highly skilled jobs and many unskilled jobs in the gig-economy servicing the highly skilled workers. Let’s explore together how this impacts the Australian middle class and how our cities are reshaped around these changes. This presentation will feature maps of the city the presentation is at to immerse the audience deeper in the material.
  
  
• Introduction to Australia: Is this a place worth investing in?
  This presentation is targeted at international clients and conferences that are keen to learn about Australia. Simon takes the big picture demographic view to introduce international audiences to the forces shaping Australia in the 2020s. Learn why Australia’s demographics are favourable and explore why the country is not only a safe place in which to do business but it is also an easy-to-navigate market for international investors. Simon also showcases risks that successful investors will have to navigate. Big picture data and detailed information about the industries relevant to the audience are intermingled with personable and entertaining slides to ensure the audience gets a good laugh as well. This presentation is an ideal opening to large international conferences in or about Australia.