We’re excited about the agenda for the upcoming Charter Workplace Summit, with top executives and researchers speaking on topics including how AI and humans can best work together, how to approach politics and constructive communication in the workplace, and the intersection of sports and women’s leadership.
As we prepare for the day—whose theme is “the new leadership playbook”—Charter’s team has been discussing some theses about the future of work. These “provocations” are grounded in our research and reporting, but are also designed to provoke your thinking. In some cases, they’re more educated forecasts than historical facts.
Here’s a sampling of our provocations—you can reply to this email with any reactions, and join us at the Workplace Summit to continue the conversation.
- Businesses are swinging away from the investments in people-centered leadership that were a hallmark of the pandemic years. Employee-friendly benefits and policies introduced over the past few years are at risk as hiring has become easier and less frequent and human-resources budgets have contracted. Companies aren’t convinced such programs have appreciably improved employee wellness or engagement, and with the talent crisis subsided (only temporarily, experts forecast) are shifting back to traditional practices and compliance-focused HR.
- Hybrid work will maintain its share of workplaces despite new in-office mandates from Amazon and others. A lot of US CEOs want to see workers back in the office full time—a recent KPMG survey found a large majority expected employees to be fully back on-site within three years. But the percentage of knowledge workers in hybrid configurations—going to the office two or three times a week by default—has been stable over the past few years despite CEO efforts, and we don’t see that changing at most organizations because the case for hybrid, backed by increasing research, remains strong.
- In terms of the workplace, genAI is flashy in the short term, boring in the medium term, essential in the long term. Most of us have been wowed by simple applications of genAI tools. (If you haven’t, check out these ‘aha’ use cases.) Few organizations are seeing dramatic productivity gains or changes to how they work, but specific areas such as coding and customer service are starting to be transformed. Over the longer term, AI will enable new workflows and processes that make it essential to business success. Amara’s Law—“We overestimate the impact of technology in the short term and underestimate the effect in the long run”—seems to apply to genAI as well.
- Companies should train workers to use genAI, not just have them figure it out on their own. Research shows that women are using genAI for work less than men and young people aren’t introducing the tools to older colleagues as they usually do with new technology. Universal training on genAI tools and ongoing incentives and exchanges around their application helps address this.
- Wellness should be treated as a business imperative, rather than just a perk. Workplaces should staff psychologists and other health professionals—and support mental and physical performance regimes around nutrition, sleep, etc.—just like pro sports teams do. Sports teams understand there’s a whole person and have eliminated taboos around addressing mental and physical obstacles to performance, while workplaces pretend that’s not the case. Therapists brought in by companies are overbooked—a signal of the demand for and acceptance of such services in a business context.
To continue the discussion on these and other business-critical topics, sign up to join us for the Oct. 8 Workplace Summit in person in NYC or virtually. Virtual attendance is free and open to all.