Earlier this week we hosted a number of our Industrial clients at PwC’s London office where we had the privilege of hearing from The Rt. Hon. Alan Milburn, who shared his views on the UK’s political and economic outlook, workforce participation, skills shortages and what needs to change if UK manufacturing is to achieve sustainable growth. There was a particularly interesting discussion around economic inactivity, the growing number of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) and the role both government and business needs to play in creating pathways into work. It was a thought-provoking reminder that the UK’s growth ambitions will only be achieved if we can close the gap between skills, opportunity and employer demand.
A further highlight was a session led by Steve Hill and PwC’s Cyber Security team, who provided fascinating insights into the rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape facing industrial businesses. What really resonated was how cyber risk has shifted from being viewed as an IT issue to becoming a fundamental business and operational risk.
The discussion explored the increasing threat to supply chains, the growing impact of AI on both attackers and defenders, and why organisations need to move beyond simply trying to prevent incidents and instead build true operational resilience. The real world examples shared highlighted how cyber-attacks are increasingly focused on disrupting operations, production and customer delivery, rather than solely targeting data.
For manufacturers and industrial organisations in particular, the message was clear: understanding critical vulnerabilities, planning for disruption and ensuring robust recovery capabilities are now as important as traditional prevention measures.
What struck us across both sessions was how closely the discussion connected with the themes we have been exploring in our recent white paper; The Leadership Evolution.
The rapid rise of AI is reshaping both the workforce and the operational risk landscape, reinforcing our view that successful adoption is fundamentally a leadership and design challenge: redesigning workflows so people and AI work effectively together, while building the resilience, judgement and agility needed to respond to emerging threats.
A huge thank you to PwC, Alan Milburn, Steve Hill and PwC’s Cyber Security team, and everyone who joined us for such an engaging and insightful discussion. It was a great opportunity to bring together leaders from across the sector to explore some of the key issues shaping the future of UK industry.
If you’d like to discuss any of the themes from the event, whether that’s workforce strategy, leadership capability, cyber resilience or growth within the industrial sector, we’d be delighted to continue the conversation.