ReportWire

Tag: workplace

  • 3 Cognitive Habits of People Who Get Things Done

    Marcus leads a team of eight direct reports, and Jennifer is his star employee. While the other seven team members struggle to complete tasks on time or in the way Marcus asks for them, Jennifer seems to ace any task she’s given. She asks questions when she’s unclear and owns up to her mistakes. Any time the other employees mess up, Marcus wishes he could clone Jennifer seven times and save himself the hassle.

    Sound familiar?

    You may not be able to clone your star employees, but you can help your team replicate the cognitive habits of people like Jennifer to build the skill of accountability across your team. At the NeuroLeadership Institute, we’ve spent the past year reverse-engineering what accountable people do from a cognitive perspective. Quite literally, we’ve asked, what are the cognitive habits—the habits of mind—of people who do this well? Three have come into focus: syncing expectations, driving with purpose, and owning one’s impact.  

    In short, accountable people get clarity in what they’re supposed to do, execute tasks deliberately and intentionally, and learn from the outcomes they produce, whether good or bad. 

    3 habits of accountability

    When people attend to these habits in the course of their work, we call it proactive accountability. That is, they see accountability as a way to grow, develop, and innovate. They take ownership of their responsibilities and learn from their mistakes. Proactive accountability stands in contrast  to punitive accountability, a practice in which leaders create environments of fear, blame, or punishment that hinder learning and growth, as well as permissive accountability, in which leaders assume performance issues will simply work themselves out. 

    Sync expectations 

    A major factor in cultures with low accountability is a mismatch in expectations. The manager thinks the team member will do one thing, but the team member thinks they’re supposed to do something else. Disappointment and broken trust follow.

    In the brain, unmet expectations are processed as error signals. Levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine drop, sapping motivation and causing us to feel frustrated or angry, which forces us to adjust our expectations. When expectations are met, however, there is no error signal, dopamine levels hold steady, and trust and satisfaction remain strong.

    The first habit of proactive accountability, Sync expectations, involves the employee getting clear about what’s expected of them. This is an important first step because shared understanding is the foundation of being effective. In the brain this is represented by a temporary synchronization of neural activity, known as neural synchrony. 

    During neural synchrony, neurons in both people’s brains are firing in the same patterns because their minds are processing information in nearly identical ways. For this to happen, both people need to discuss and eliminate any potential misunderstandings before moving forward.

    Syncing expectations also has benefits for relationships at the end of the project because fulfilled expectations breed trust, while unmet expectations erode trust. When two teammates sync expectations up front, they make an investment in sustaining the relationship long-term.

    Tactic: Encourage your team to sync expectations by communicating in a way that’s succinct, specific, and generous (SSG). SSG communication uses a narrow focus to support working memory (succinct); it uses visual, explicit language to enhance processing (specific); and it’s tailored to create ease of understanding (generous). It’s not “Get me this report by 5 p.m.”—rather, it’s “Email me this report by 5 p.m. Eastern Time, and please attach the report as a PDF.”

    SSG communication creates clarity, which promotes synchrony and aligns expectations.

    Drive with purpose

    Once the leader and employee have synced expectations, the employee must own the responsibility to execute the task at the highest level. Highly effective people often do this by connecting the goal at hand to a higher purpose, and then working to create the right outcomes with that purpose in mind.

    Purpose ignites motivation. When we know why we’re asked to do something, and we can see how the work creates a meaningful impact, we’re more intrinsically motivated to act. Compared to extrinsic motivators, such as money and status, intrinsic rewards, like a sense of accomplishment or mastery over a task, are much more powerful. Consciously or not, effective people find deeper meaning in their work to summon the energy to keep pushing.

    They also act deliberately, rather than hastily, investigating as many possibilities as they can and assuming almost nothing. In addition, they check their biases to avoid making rash judgments. Since cognitive biases act as mental shortcuts, they pose risks for an employee completing a task effectively. Someone who acts with an expedience bias, for instance, might move too quickly and miss a crucial part of the work.

    Tactic: Help your employees identify the impact this work will have on them. Perhaps the project is an opportunity for them to build a new skill or to contribute to an important organizational goal. Asking questions that elicit a clear “why” will help the employee form a stronger sense of purpose and ownership over their work. 

    Own the impact

    Accountability doesn’t just involve getting things done as expected; it means seeing how those actions play out going forward. Even the best laid plans can produce unexpected results. Accountable leaders own their team’s impact, regardless of people’s positive intentions, and then they devise new plans to keep pushing toward success.

    Proactive accountability requires us to maintain a growth mindset, or the belief that mistakes are chances to improve rather than signs of incompetence. When people always seem to get things done, it’s because they’re not getting mired in failure or basking in success. They may pause to experience their emotions, but ultimately they’re focused on achieving the next set of goals in front of them. 

    Tactic: The most important time for leaders and team members to own their impact is when things don’t go as planned. Help your team apologize well by following (and modeling) a three-step approach: taking responsibility, saying how you’ll fix things, and asking for others’ input. Choosing to learn from our mistakes preserves trust and promotes growth: two outcomes that sit at the heart of proactive accountability.

    With these three habits, Marcus feels more empowered to help his team build the skill of accountability. Jennifer may have a natural talent for getting things done at a high level, but there’s no “secret” to her efficacy. When a new project comes her way, she merely goes through the prescribed steps that neuroscience shows will naturally produce accountability. 

    It will take time to develop the behaviors of proactive accountability and make them habits. But with the right focus, you can help everyone on your team, including yourself, become the kind of person who meets or exceeds expectations in whatever they do. What seems like magic will really just be brain science at work.

    By David Rock and Chris Weller

    This article originally appeared in Inc.’s sister publication, Fast Company.

    Fast Company is the world’s leading business media brand, with an editorial focus on innovation in technology, leadership, world changing ideas, creativity, and design. Written for and about the most progressive business leaders, Fast Company inspires readers to think expansively, lead with purpose, embrace change, and shape the future of business.

    Fast Company

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  • 2025 Graduates Are Facing the Toughest Job Market in Decades

    The entire job market is in turmoil, we know, but a new report highlights that it’s worse for this year’s graduating class than for people starting their working lives. Most job seekers say the entire process of finding and then applying for work took much more effort. If your company is looking for fresh, young talent, this news could inspire you to change your own recruiting efforts.

    The new study, from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) and Texas-based recruitment service Indeed, found that on average Class of 2025 graduates sent out 10 job applications for every six that the Class of 2024 sent, HRDive reports. They were also sending out applications earlier, beginning around 6.5 months before graduating, compared to an average of 6 months in 2024. This might suggest they’re conscious of the worsening state of the employment market, but NACE said it thinks the opposite is true.

    In a press release accompanying the report, the group noted that the mean number of job offers this year’s graduates received after sending out applications was 0.78, a significantly low figure, and lower than last year’s 0.83 and seriously down from the average 1.13 and 1.14 offers the Classes of 2023 and 2022 landed during the same phase of their life. But compared to last year, graduates were keener to accept these offers: 86.7 percent of seniors who received an offer accepted it, compared to 81.2 percent last year and 85.1 percent in 2023. The differences here are more subtle, but still point to a graduating year that’s slightly keener to secure a job sooner rather than later.

    Graduates were, compared to earlier classes, “more likely to say they were unsure about their plans, and more were planning to enter the military, suggesting they were unsure about private-sector employment,” NACE noted. Meanwhile many of this year’s graduating class understand the value of experiential education, and 84 percent of the cohort took part in an “internship, co-op, or other experiential learning program” the report said, also noting that students “overwhelmingly” said internships were the top way to develop their skills. 

    Curiously, despite other reports suggesting that AI use during the job application process is soaring to the point that recruiters are overwhelmed, fewer than one in three students in the NACE survey said they’d used the controversial tech during the application process, and the report says only 22 percent of employers used the tech themselves during recruiting. 

    The big lesson for your company here is that the changes in the job market affecting new graduates may impact the business of finding and recruiting new talent. The pool of available candidates may be bigger than expected, and the number of applications you receive for open posts may be up compared to what your HR team has seen in recent years — affecting the time and effort they need to put in to downselect to the final choice. 

    Meanwhile, a separate report again highlights that the kind of perks you may have to offer to attract Gen-Z workers may be different from those that appealed to older generations of worker. Professional services company KMPG’s new U.S. CEO Timothy Walsh is trying to lure Gen-Z workers to the firm by offering up a new office suite that’s “outfitted with moody lounges and a barista bar,” according to a report at Fortune. Having joined the firm as an intern over 30 years ago, Walsh has seen many aspects of the business change—including the new push for entry-level workers to manage entire teams of AI agents. Refurbished headquarters are an effort to try to attract workers to work in the office more per week, as opposed to strict RTO mandates like those from companies like Amazon and JPMorgan, but they also are designed to facilitate hybrid work setups, since these remain popular. 

    Walsh is clearly aware of this fact, and also that Gen-Z staff are tending to look for more meaningful job perks than appeal to older age cohorts, as well as employers that facilitate their desire for better work-life balance. All of this could feed into the way you try to appeal to the Class of 2025.

    Kit Eaton

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  • How Daily Micro-Recognitions Boost Retention

    When we think about employee recognition, most leaders picture promotions, bonuses, or annual performance reviews. But here’s the truth: retention isn’t built on once-a-year gestures. It’s built in the everyday moments.

    A growing body of research shows just how powerful recognition can be. According to Gallup, employees who feel recognised are five times more likely to be engaged and four times more likely to feel connected to company culture. And yet, many organizations are still overlooking the simple, everyday acknowledgments that truly move the needle.

    That’s where the micro-recognition movement comes in. By celebrating small wins consistently and authentically, leaders can boost engagement, strengthen culture, and keep top talent committed for the long haul.

    Here’s why it works and how to make it part of your culture.

    1. Recognition Builds Retention, Not Just Morale

    People don’t usually leave because of the absence of a promotion. More often, they leave because they don’t feel valued. When recognition is only tied to major milestones, employees can go months or even years without hearing a genuine ‘thank you’.

    Micro-recognition changes that. By acknowledging progress in real time, you reinforce that their work matters now, not just at year-end. This is especially powerful in today’s workplace, where replacing an employee can cost up to twice their salary when you factor in recruitment, onboarding, and lost productivity.

    A simple Slack shoutout, a manager’s acknowledgement in a meeting, or even a quick handwritten note can keep someone engaged enough to think twice before answering a recruiter’s call.

    2. Small Wins Spark Big Motivation

    It’s human nature: recognition fuels motivation. When someone feels seen, they are far more likely to bring that same energy to their next project.

    Micro-recognition is not just about making people feel good. It reinforces the behaviours that drive your business forward. Did a team member handle a client issue with empathy and speed? Call it out. Did someone create a new process that saves the team hours each week? Recognise it publicly.

    By being specific, you not only validate the effort, but you also send a clear signal to the rest of the team: “This is what good looks like here.” Over time, that shapes culture more effectively than any handbook or mission statement.

    3. Recognition Strengthens Culture, Even Remotely

    Culture doesn’t only live in the office anymore. Hybrid and remote work have made recognition even more critical because employees can easily feel invisible when working from home.

    Micro-recognition bridges that gap. Leaders who intentionally build in rituals, like ‘Win Wednesdays’ where everyone shares one success, create a rhythm of appreciation that connects people across screens and time zones.

    Peer-to-peer recognition is just as important. When recognition only comes top-down, it can feel performative or inconsistent. But when you empower employees to uplift one another, recognition becomes embedded into the culture, not just a management exercise.

    4. It’s Cost-Effective and More Impactful Than You Think

    Budgets are tight. Many leaders assume that improving retention requires expensive raises, lavish perks, or costly benefits. Micro-recognition proves otherwise.

    The cost of a handwritten note? Pennies. A team-wide Slack shout-out? Free. The impact? Significant. Employees who feel consistently appreciated are less likely to burn out, less likely to disengage, and less likely to leave.

    Compared to the cost of turnover, which can drain budgets and morale, the ROI on recognition is undeniable. Recognition is one of the most cost-effective strategies available to leaders who want to protect their talent.

    5. How to Embed Micro-Recognition Into Your Culture

    The most effective recognition isn’t complicated, but it does require consistency. Here are a few ways to make it part of your leadership toolkit:

    • Train managers on the art of recognition. Teach them to be timely, authentic, and specific.
    • Create rituals. Whether it’s weekly team wins or monthly peer shoutouts, build recognition into the routine.
    • Encourage peer-to-peer. Recognition should not just flow downward. Empower your team to celebrate each other’s successes.
    • Tie recognition to values. Highlight not just what was achieved, but how it was achieved in line with company culture.

    The Retention Strategy You Can’t Ignore

    At the end of the day, micro-recognition is more than a feel-good practice. It is a strategic retention tool. In a labour market where top talent has options, the leaders who win won’t necessarily be the ones offering the biggest salaries or flashiest perks. They will be the ones who create cultures where employees feel consistently valued and seen.

    The small, daily acknowledgments are what add up to long-term loyalty. If you want to stop chasing new talent and start protecting the talent you already have, start small. Celebrate the daily wins. Recognise the effort, not just the outcome.

    Because in today’s workplace, retention is built in the little moments.

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    Mandy Gilbert

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  • These CEOs Scaled Up While Strengthening Company Culture During Big Pivots

    Leaders who have scaled up their businesses know that protecting company culture is a key to successful change. At the Inc. 5000 conference, held last month in Phoenix, three leaders who have recently gone through big growth spurts shared their tips. Shuman Ghosemajumder, co-founder and CEO of the AI-powered cybersecurity firm Reken joined Kelly Johnson, founder of the advertising agency ANOVA Digital, and Ian Yang, the founder and CEO of the custom lighting design firm Gantri spoke about how they anchored their companies’ core values amid big shifts and rapid growth.

    Take Stock of Your Company Culture

    For Yang, the growth of his company Gantri was a long time coming, but it has made great leaps in a relatively short span since the pandemic. The Bay Area business, which clocks about $14.1 million in annual revenue, started out as a sustainable lighting and design firm in 2016, and this year launched a platform for designers to use Gantri’s manufacturing capabilities — including 3D printing — to bring their own products to market.

    “The process of mass-producing designs is very costly and very time-consuming, and so a lot of great designs don’t get to be brought to market and a lot of really creative, really amazing designers don’t get a chance to share their own ideas and build businesses,” Yang explained.

    As the company was growing, he consulted talent coaches, who asked the founder, “‘What do you want? What company culture do you want the company to exhibit?’ And I described all these things, and they’re like, ‘Those things are not present in your current company.’ And that realization I think was huge.”

    But with the company’s growth and diversification, “there was a difference between what the company culture was and what I wanted to be,” Yang said. “What I wanted was to empower my team was the idea of ownership, accountability, but most importantly the safety to take risks. I think with any startup, if you’re not taking risks, if you are not feeling a bit stressed about the decision you’re making, then you are not going to succeed because you’re status quo.”

    Make Hiring Decisions That Support the Culture You Want

    When Ghosemajumder, a veteran of Google’s trust and safety group, founded Reken in 2024, his aim was “building a platform to protect against scams and fraud that are enabled by AI that allows cyber criminals to be far more sophisticated than they’ve ever been before,” he said.

    Ghosemajumder said he took lessons from his long career and kept them in mind when building out Reken. “You’ve probably heard the quote from management theorist Peter Drucker, that ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast,’ so whoever you hire in your organization, they’re going to dictate what your culture actually is regardless of what you tell them to do,“ he said. “You can’t hire a group of people who operate a certain way and then tell them, ‘We want you to operate in a completely different way, our culture.’ And so from the very beginning, one of the things that we did was we wrote down what we believe in as a company.”

    You want demonstrate that you’re an organization that wants to learn as much as possible, he said, because that is a conscious break from some of the know-it-all aspects of tech culture. “It actually takes a higher level of both competence and humility to say, ‘I’m open to new ideas and open to being challenged, and I want to be able to learn what’s required in this particular role,’ because that’s actually the thing that is most important in a startup.”

    Look for Employees With Entrepreneurial Spirit

    As ANOVA, an agency that specializes in lead generation for professional services clients such as law firms and financial advisers, hit an inflection point, Kelly Johnson suffered severe health problems in 2022. She realized that the company needed a full-time team, and also that it had to shed some smaller clients that took a disproportionate amount of time and effort, because they were holding back growth. Her days as a one-woman powerhouse were over, and that realization made all the difference as the agency took off.

    “It was at that moment that I realized I can’t do this anymore. I need to hire, I need to grow this. I’ve got a great opportunity,” that required focusing on growth clients, she said. “We just basically pivoted and focus on where we had the most experience and making the most income.”

    But building a high-growth oriented team required a certain amount of balance in the workplace and outside it, she said. “I want people to feel authentic at work,” she said. “We brought on an HR consultant that does all the pre-screening, she makes sure everyone fits together. We wanted people that have an entrepreneurial spirit and they feel like they can really own what they’re doing. [Now,] we have a great team.”

    Set the Right Tone for Your Business

    While each CEO’s path to scaling progressed differently, a common thread emerged in the discussion. When it’s time to pursue scale and growth, leaders need to take a thoughtful, hands-on approach to hiring people who can produce in a hands-off environment.

    “Organizations that are highly decentralized that are able to make decisions at the lowest possible level that are able to then reorganize themselves in order to be able to constantly shift their strategy as opposed to having to make every decision in a top down monolithic fashion,” Ghosemajumder said.

    The mix of control and autonomy creates the ideal blend for growth culture, which the Google vet pointed out is never a one-size-fits all template.

    “We have an infinite amount of LinkedIn, fortune cookie wisdom that we get on how to create culture and how to manage effectively,” he said. “And when you look at the most successful companies ever, the one thing that they have in common is that they weren’t blindly applying somebody else’s methodology to their organization.”

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Will Swarts

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  • Why Adam Grant Recommends Giving Bad Interview Candidates Another Shot

    Business owners, hiring managers, and applicants have all experienced job interviews that started going south at some point, and kept grinding downward from there. But organizational psychologist Adam Grant says even recruiting exchanges that seem to offer neither side much reason to continue may hold opportunities to uncover the hidden capabilities of flub-prone candidates — if they’re handled correctly.

    The best-selling author and professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of business underlined the hiring potentials in what otherwise appear to be no-hope job interview scenarios. Speaking at the WOBI World Business Forum in New York last week, Grant urged company owners and HR executives yearning to pull the plug on unimpressive exchanges with sputtering candidates to instead give them a second chance to demonstrate hidden capabilities. Ideally, that would involve a follow-up encounter with the struggling applicant, conducted from a different angle that they may respond better to.

    The point,t, Grant said, is for interviewing executives to identify and repurpose the very areas job candidates had been stumbling on to see if they can overcome those during a second chance. The reason that’s worthwhile, Grant said, is that research has shown “how well somebody does a job is not indicated by how the first interview goes, it’s how much growth they show from the first interview to the second,” according to CNBC’s coverage of his presentation.

    Aware that many business owners and human resources managers won’t have the scheduling flexibility to call a hapless applicant in for a second interview, Grant offered a workaround requiring far less time and organization.

    “Even if you could pause an interview halfway and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a couple of notes for you,’ and then watch the motivation and ability to grow from the first attempt to the second, that is a great window into ‘is somebody excited to get better,’ and also ‘do they have the capability to learn the skills that you’re trying to get them to excel at?’” Grant told the audience, CNBC reported.

    The key to offering that second chance, Grant explained, is giving flailing candidates a task directly related to the job they’re vying for. That will not only require both the applicant and interviewer to focus on skills the position involves. But it also creates the opportunity for potential recruits to demonstrate their capacity for bouncing back while proving abilities performing the work.

    The extra effort, Grant said, will spare employers from “missing diamonds in the rough.”

    The strategy springs from Grant’s own pre-Wharton near-miss experience, while working in advertising and hiring people for sales positions. He recounted one applicant he described as “the worst fit for sales imaginable,” particularly in refusing to make eye contact. “I didn’t know a thing about neurodivergence then,” Grant noted.

    But his reaction also overlooked a key employment detail that Grant’s boss soon reminded him about.

    “You realize this is a phone sales job, right?” the company president asked him, presumably from beneath sharply arched eyebrows. “There is no eye contact in this job.”

    As a result, Grant called the all the applicants back in and gave them a task related to the sales jobs being filled, and using a reference they’d all be familiar with: a rotten apple. The challenge was for candidates to convincingly sell Grant on the idea of buying the withering fruit.

    The person he’d scratched off his list for not making eye contact never hesitated, and promptly demonstrated his abilities for the sales job being filled.

    “This may look like a rotten apple; it’s actually an aged, antique apple,” Grant recalled of the nearly axed candidate’s second-chance presentation. “You know the saying ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away?’ Well, because of the nutrients in the aging process, you only need to eat one of these a week. And then afterwards you can plant the seeds in your backyard.”

    Though Grant said he had certain reservations about the ethics of making that exact product pitch, he wound up hiring the candidate — who became the best performer on the sales team. The experience made Grant change his thinking about recruitment beyond the valuable recruit he’d nearly written off.

    “What I learned from that story was not just that I needed to see him in action to gauge his potential… (b)ut also, I needed to give him a do-over,” Grant said before broadening that lesson further, according to CNBC. “I realized I had to reboot our hiring process. If you want to gauge somebody’s potential, the best thing you can do is actually give them a challenge that’s really part of the job and watch how they handle it.”

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Bruce Crumley

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  • How Tariffs Are Making Workplaces More Dangerous

    Recent data on consumer spending ahead of the holiday season suggests that price increases from import tariffs may already be reducing shoppers’ purchases. But another, less obvious effect of duties may also make it less safe to go to work. According to a new report from a trade association representing construction, manufacturing, energy agriculture, medical, and other companies, many member businesses are delaying procurement of workplace safety materials made abroad. That adjustment to higher costs risks creating a downstream effect of potentially rising accidents on the job.

    The International Safety Equipment Association (ISEA) says many businesses that rely on personal protective equipment (PPE) as a workplace safeguards are buying less of it. Imported first-aid kits, respiratory protectors, high-visibility clothing, and even steel-toed work boots are among the many items that now cost more, according to ISEA. A survey of association members blamed the purchasing cuts on those higher outlays since import tariffs were imposed. The move not only increases the risk of injury for the 125 million employees who use those materials to ensure their protection on the job. It also exposes their employers to greater threats of accidents that already cost U.S. businesses $176.5 billion each year.

    According to “The Hidden Costs of PPE Tariffs “report, the ISEA says import levies are forcing many businesses whose employees face higher risk of workplace mishaps to make a very hard choice. Either they pay the increased costs of protective equipment that duties have created immediately, or scale purchasing plans back in the hopes customs taxes will be lowered over time — or perhaps be overturned by a looming Supreme Court ruling.

    In most cases, business owners have decided to bide their time.

    Nearly 60 percent of companies surveyed said they’d delayed planned purchases of safety materials, “in many cases using PPE far beyond its useful lifespan.” Another 41 percent of participating businesses said they’d sought to offset the higher costs tariffs have generated by switching to cheaper made, often less effective protection equipment.

    The reason? Fully 93 percent of respondents reported their costs for safety materials have risen since import duties were announced in April. By contrast, the study didn’t establish a figure for the average increase of PPE prices under tariffs, or even offer an ballpark percentage of those hikes.

    However, it did find 90 percent respondents believe that companies cutting procurement of costlier PPE materials “will have a negative impact on the safety” of workers. But faced with choice of paying more now or waiting to see if tariffs decrease, many employers have decided to take a calculated risk.

    “Workplaces will cut corners to accommodate the extra costs,” said one unidentified ISEA member cited in the report. “They’ll use PPE too long, buy inferior and less protective PPE, and not use PPE when they should. We haven’t yet seen the full consequences.”

    The report projected how the resulting increase in workplace risks might play out.

    It warned that if “worker injuries increase by just a single percentage point, over 40,000 workers will be injured on the job, costing the American economy $1.8 billion.” That’s on top of the $176.5 billion accidents already cost companies each year. ISEA CEO Cam Mackey called that a tragic waste in more ways than one.

    “When tariffs make it harder to afford quality protective gear that keeps workers safe, everyone pays the price,” Mackey said in comments about the report’s release this week. “This isn’t about politics. It’s about protecting the people who make America run — the workers building the infrastructure that keeps our cities moving, manufacturing the machinery that defends our nation, powering the energy systems that drive our economy, and caring for our families. Ensuring their safety should be a national priority.”

    Injuries aren’t the only way higher PPE costs are affecting business owners and employees. The survey found 44 percent of participating companies — which collectively contribute $15 trillion in annual GDP growth — have already delayed hiring plans in reaction to rising costs, including those of safety materials. Another 33 percent of respondents said they’re considering doing likewise.

    Release of the report is part of the ISEA’s continued drive to convince the Trump administration and members of Congress to exempt PPE and other safety materials from import tariffs. Doing that, it argues, would prioritize the protections of U.S. workers exposed to workplace risk by sparing their employers the cost of trade war duties.

    “Businesses don’t want to cut corners on safety,” said Mackey. “But when costs rise and budgets tighten, difficult choices follow. We’re asking policymakers to help prevent that situation before it starts.”

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Bruce Crumley

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  • Mark Cuban Shares the Smartest Places for AI-Skilled Workers to Find Jobs

    Serial entrepreneur, business visionary, and — not coincidentally — billionaire Mark Cuban has repeatedly urged both young and older people to develop artificial intelligence (AI) skills, and use those to tap into the enormous career-building potential these tools offer. More recently, Cuban expanded on his advice by counseling job seekers to market their AI experience to small businesses, not the big corporations now spending billions adopting the tech.

    Cuban is clearly convinced AI is set to transform business in ever bigger ways than his Cost Plus Drug company revolutionized pharmaceutical markets. To get in on that change, Cuban has been encouraging people — including his own children — to spend all their free time to “learn all you can about AI,” and exploit the “unique opportunity” it offers employees and companies. Of late, the 67-year-old entrepreneur has honed that message even more by telling current and future job seekers to forget trying to use those AI skills to secure work with leading corporations, and instead focus on the far more numerous opportunities at small businesses.

    “They have to compete differently, and they don’t have the resources to just, you know, have a huge IT department,” Cuban told CivicScience CEO John Dick on his “Dumbest Guy in the Room” podcast recently. “So, they’re going to go to kids just like we saw with the early days of the internet. You hired young kids who were more comfortable with it, who learned it already and could come in and implement new things.”

    In making that point, Cuban didn’t ignore the fact that big companies are spending billions of dollars both developing and adopting AI tools to automate countless workplace tasks previously performed by humans. But as part of that, he said those corporations are also investing considerable amounts of money to hire top tech workers, not recruiting at lower levels that would be open to most job seekers.

    “The large companies are trying to use AI to cut back and they have the resources to understand how to implement it, apply it to processes,” Cuban said. “They have great AI people.”

    He further detailed that thought recently in comments to CNBC.

    “Small- to medium-size companies don’t have that depth,” Cuban told the business channel. “They are typically entrepreneurially driven and don’t have the flexibility to have people research things. Bringing a new graduate on to work on agentic AI projects is inexpensive for them and can get them immediate results.”

    Moreover, small businesses are not only more numerous than corporations, but will use AI — and the new recruits helping them adopt it — differently. He cited his own Cost Plus Drugs company as an example of how that works.

    “Small- to medium-size businesses like our size companies, we need people that understand AI and agentics, (and) can go and look at our processes and automate them using AI,” Cuban told the podcast. “And as we grow it, you know, (recruits) help us become more productive, competitive, and profitable using AI. And so I think redirecting kids as they graduate from college in particular to small -to medium-sized businesses as opposed to trying to work for a big company (is wise).”

    Cuban admitted not all his three college-age children are fans of AI, with one daughter particularly soured on it due to its enormous energy consumption.

    But he said he continues urging all his kids — and other future and current employees — to embrace the tech, and use it to take their careers to new, higher places over time. The alternative, he warns them, is that people and businesses who snub the quickly developing and spreading AI tools risk finding themselves on the outside looking in.

    “I tell them, like I tell every young kid, there’s going to be two types of companies in this in this country,” Cuban said. “There’s going to be those who are great at AI and those who used to be in business. There’s no in between.”

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Bruce Crumley

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  • Giving Feedback Is Hard. Here’s How Top CEOs Get Better At It

    A company is nothing without the people who keep it running—but how can you, as a business leader, ensure those people are bringing their best selves to work?

    That knotty question was the subject of the latest installment of Your Next Move, Inc.’s ongoing series of interviews with top business leaders.

    “Without good performance management, your best people might leave and your worst habits stick around,” Inc. editor-in-chief Mike Hofman explained at the top of Thursday’s episode, which was produced in collaboration with Capital One Business. “We’re going to talk about how founders can build a sustainable and effective approach to managing performance as their companies scale.”

    Joining Hofman in conversation were two CEOs from the wider Inc. community: Daniel Chait, co-founder of repeat Inc. 5000 honoree Greenhouse, which offers hiring software; and Christie Horvath, founder of the pet insurance company Wagmo, which entered the Inc. 5000 pantheon this year at No. 1,082.

    Performance management can be uncomfortable, Horvath said, since it often involves telling an employee that they’re not doing their job perfectly. That means having hard conversations—something that Chait emphasized is a skill you can hone through practice.

    “Defining what good is—even knowing, ‘What are you trying to manage that person to do?’—isn’t always so obvious,” he said. “What good versus great actually means requires a lot of thought. It’s not always easy to get right.”

    At one point, faced with an executive team that was struggling to give and receive feedback, the Greenhouse chief executive even brought in an outside expert who shared a feedback framework with the team: “Get a micro-yes, and then talk about the behavior and how it made you feel. … You have this little checklist in your head.”

    Horvath also recommended role-playing the feedback process ahead of time so that leaders can get comfortable approaching those conversations with staff.

    Of course, sometimes feedback isn’t enough and you have to let someone go. When that’s the case, Horvath said, it’s always best to get it over with.

    “Every time I’ve ever had to exit somebody, I’ve always wished we’d done it sooner,” she explained. “It’s never worth waiting. Your company is so much more resilient than you think; your team is so much more resilient than you think. It really detracts from your top performers. So it is your job to make the unpopular decision [and] make sure that your top performers are surrounded by other top performers.”

    The moment you start thinking about letting someone go, Chait added, is probably the right time to do it. That’s likely what’s best for both the organization and the individual, who would probably be a better fit elsewhere, he explained.

    But you can make those decisions less painful.

    “Be great at hiring,” Chait advised. “If I knew that I could hire an amazing ‘A’ player the minute this person’s out of that seat, I feel much more comfortable about making that change, whereas part of the fear that people always have is, ‘Gosh, if I get rid of this person, I don’t know if … the next person will be as good.’”

    Another key consideration when it comes to managing your team is burnout. Sometimes there will be stretches of high-intensity crunch, Chait acknowledged, but it’s generally important to create a sustainable work culture so that when those periods do come up, everyone’s ready to handle them.

    “I’ve had conversations with people in my teams,” he said, “where I’ve told them, ‘You’re creating a risk for the business in the way you’re working. You haven’t taken a Saturday or a Sunday off in three months. One day you’re going to come to me when I don’t know it’s gonna happen, and you’re going to catastrophically explode and quit—and that creates a big problem for me.’”

    When it comes to making performance management a day-to-day task, both executives have developed their own distinct processes and philosophies. Horvath, for instance, asks her direct reports to check in with her about their strategic performance—on an “out of the weeds” level of abstraction–every month.

    “’Let’s take a step back,’” she’ll say. “’How are you feeling about how you’re doing this month? Are you feeling supported?’ That way, when you get to that semiannual or whatever performance review, where it’s all documented and it’s a whole process, there’s no surprises.”

    A poll of the audience watching this episode reinforces this notion:

    Chait, meanwhile, said he’s sought to implement an ethos of “good is good” at his company.

    “If everybody at the company did their job to a good level, we’d be in a really good spot—but it’s not great,” he explained. “What does it really mean to be transformational? What does it really mean to be great? … That’s a better place for us to find ourselves in.”

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Brian Contreras

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  • Amid Government Shutdown ‘Fog’, Employers Are Scrutinizing Private Data for Economic Clues

    One of several effects of the longest government shutdown in history that’s clouding our economic outlook is the shuttering of the agencies that provide economic and employment data. With that flow of information closed since September, private sector observers have stepped up with their own statistics to offer business leaders a better idea of where things are headed. But no end in sight for the federal work stoppage, the job figures released this week by a variety of companies may actually create more confusion than clarity.

    This week the government shutdown entered its second month, leaving legions of federal workers unpaid, disrupting services from air traffic control to food stamp distribution. It also continued preventing the Bureau of Labor Statistics from producing its regular monthly jobs reports. The agency’s last official data in September showed companies had pinched off recruitment to almost nothing beyond replacing departing workers. That cautious staffing strategy by businesses that have hesitated to hire since spring amid economic uncertainty meant a monthly average of only 26,750 positions were created between May through August, when just 22,000 openings were filled.

    Since that time, companies have had to rely on statistics and analyses from private sector actors as they try to figure out how the labor market and broader economy are performing. A new wave of data released this week may leave some business leaders more cross-eyed than clearsighted.

    On the positive side, payroll services company ADP said that its customers’ data indicated U.S. businesses increased headcounts by 42,000 in October. That number was a decided improvement over the 34,000 net job losses ADP reported in September, after a decrease of 3,000 in August.

    But it’s still a fraction of the average 180,000 hires per month in 2024, and even less than the 64,500 monthly average between January and May. Moreover, relatively robust hiring in the healthcare, transport, and utility sectors compensated for anemic recruitment otherwise.

    “Private employers added jobs in October for the first time since July, but hiring was modest relative to what we reported earlier this year,” said ADP chief economist Nela Richardson, announcing the latest monthly estimate.

    And that was the good news.

    Rival payroll services and staff management company Gusto released its October employment data for small businesses, when 5,900 jobs were lost. Worse still, that extended the decline in recruitment since a recent peak of 57,400 new hires in July, which decreased to around 19,000 in September before dipping into the red last month.

    “This marks a continuation of the broader hiring slowdown we’ve observed since the post-pandemic hiring surge of 2021, when small businesses were adding an average of 170,000 net new jobs each month,” the October 2025 Gusto Small Business Jobs Report said. “Notably, the overall pace of both hiring and terminations has slowed dramatically over the past two years — the so-called ‘Great Freeze’. Hiring for small businesses peaked at nearly 3.4 million per month in January 2022, and have since fallen by 37 percent since then.”

    Homebase, another competitor in payroll and workforce management services, used different statistics to paint the same picture of a weakening labor market.

    Its recently released “Main Street Health Report” found that what it terms “workforce participation” at the over 100,000 small businesses it studied had decreased by 2.9 percent in October — a slight improvement over the 3.5 percent headcount decline in September. That came as hiring slipped 5 percent compared to October 2024, with business activity sluggish or dropping in all sectors apart from hospitality.

    So, what should business leaders make from those different, yet largely overlapping views of company headcounts remaining flat or shrinking slightly in October?

    According to Appcast chief economist Andrew Flowers, amid the “fog” created by the absence of reliable government data during the shutdown, the best thing businesses owners can do is use the available “headlights” of private sector statistics to carefully steer themselves down the road. That may be unnerving, he said, but less dangerous than pessimists might think.

    “What data we do have in hand suggests a continual labor market slowdown, but not the bottom falling out,” Flowers said in emailed comments to Inc.

    But he also pointed to recent mass layoffs announced by Amazon, Target, UPS, IBM, and other corporations. Following those big cuts, there may be a risk that business leaders deprived of official economic and employment data could defensively replicate the headcount cutting example of bigger companies.

    “This happened in early 2023, mind you — when bad vibes about jobs were disproportionate to the underlying data,” Flowers said. “This time around we don’t have the data to guide us. (But) underlying consumer spending and business investment has been surprisingly resilient. Real-time GDP tracking estimates show Q3 to be quite strong.”

    Meaning employers, staff, and job seekers alike would be wise to buckle up and hope for the best as they make their way through the fog.

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Bruce Crumley

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  • Gen-Z Talks About Their Salaries Openly. Should Your Company Embrace Pay Transparency?

    Few workplace issues get as much attention as the question of salary transparency, which has been a hot-button topic for years. While there’s an ongoing push toward completely public salary disclosures in the European Union, the U.S. has mostly lagged behind, with compensation historically deemed to be a private, personal matter. A new report says Gen-Z is challenging these norms, as it is with many old-fashioned workplace traditions. Could this prompt your company to be open about your workers’ pay, and even to encourage your staff to chat about the topic? And what benefits can you expect if you make the change?

    New global data from Kickresume, the Slovakia-based AI résumé building service, found that only 31 percent of people say salaries are openly discussed at their job, and 37 percent say their employers actually ban talking about salaries, Newsweek reports. But nearly 40 percent of Gen-Z respondents to the survey said that they openly discuss salaries at their workplace—far above the average across all age cohorts since just 30 percent of Millennials and 22 percent of Gen-X respondents felt the same way, and one in three Gen-X workers say they actually prefer not to discuss the matter at all. In fact, 18 percent of Gen-Z respondents said they are so open about pay transparency that they talk about it even if their employer bans the topic.

    Digging into what’s going on here, the survey also found that an average of 32 percent of respondents remain curious about what their colleagues earn and are interested when someone discusses the topic. Gen-Z is more curious, with 38 percent feeling this way.

    As to cultural differences about the matter, while 34 percent of European respondents say salary is openly discussed, just 27 percent of Americans say the same, and only 24 percent of respondents from Asia. Kickresume’s report says the U.S. is actually leading the movement to “[keep] pay talk off the table, with one in three workers saying they simply don’t want to discuss salary at all.”

    What’s your takeaway from this data?

    Experts have long argued that pay transparency is a good thing for the workforce, often citing a noted study in which some people were kept in the dark about bonuses and pay and others were informed of their colleagues’ details. Workers who weren’t told about pay levels actually performed worse in the experiment.  

    Other research suggests that the trend for secrecy around compensation is slowly changing, with more and more job postings explicitly listing salary levels, even as an increasing number of states are legislating to make all companies post salary levels publicly. 

    Interestingly, in 2022, a LinkedIn survey on workforce confidence found that workers at smaller businesses were less likely than workers in larger enterprises to feel that salary discussions are discouraged by their employer. It’s easy to imagine that in a smaller, more family-like company the sense of camaraderie and familiarity with colleagues encourages this idea of openness. In larger enterprises, management may be uncomfortable with workers at similar levels and with similar skills discovering that, for whatever reasons, their pay levels are different—even though the National Labor Relations Act says workers have the right to talk to each other about pay.

    Meanwhile, Newsweek pointed to a February survey from Delaware-based essay writing service EduBirdie that found 58 percent of Gen-Z people surveyed said they would explicitly avoid applying for jobs at employers where salaries aren’t disclosed ahead of time. 

    Essentially, there’s a large body of evidence that being open about salaries promotes employee well-being and boosts the sense of equality and fairness—assuming that you are a fair employer, and, for example, pay female workers the same rates as male ones. The EU is so set on the idea that member states have to implement the Pay Transparency Directive by next June as part of an effort to make such transparency commonplace across the continent. 

    Savvy business owners may see this new research as a prompt to promote pay and compensation openness among their employees, since the change may boost your productivity. You may have to put up with some difficult discussions about disparities in the short term, however. 

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Kit Eaton

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  • Employees Can Tell When You’re Using AI to Deliver Bad News. Here’s How

    The spreading use of artificial intelligence (AI) is not only a potentially game-changing workplace development, but one driven by employers urging staff to increase their productivity by adopting the tech to automate repetitive tasks. New data indicates just how often workers are using apps to compose email and other business communications — including managers’ employee reviews and layoff notices that usually require high doses of human consideration and empathy that bots can’t replicate.

    Those insights come from email strategy and service provider ZeroBounce, which surveyed 1,000 U.S. employees and managers about their AI habits in composing texts for work. It found 56 percent of respondents reporting they use bots anywhere from a few times per week to “always,” with just 20 saying they never do. Not only did 52 percent of participants say using apps leaves them feeling more confident in their workplace writing, but 10 percent said they had delayed, or entirely dropped plans to send business email during the most recent AI outage their company suffered.

    What ZeroBounce looked at from there was how discerning respondents were in turning to AI when writing sensitive messages or reports in addition to run of the mill email.

    Over a third, or 35 percent of participants said they’d used bots to compose those more delicate texts, with 14 percent saying they’ve cut and pasted confidential content directly into bots without editing the results. Just under 10 percent of respondents admitted they no longer felt capable of writing those sensitive reports or notes — or even regular email — after having become over-reliant on apps for that.

    The potential problems with that increasing use of bots in writing became clearer when respondents spoke of their experiences of being on the receiving end of those exchanges.

    Over a fifth of respondents said they’d “caught a coworker using the exact same Al email I have seen before,” which could shape how recipients viewed the importance of the message, and industriousness of the colleague sending it. Even more significantly, however, more than a quarter of participants said they believed performance reviews they’d received had been written by bots, with 16 percent saying they’d gotten layoff notices they suspected were AI-generated.

    There are several reasons for those suspicions. Those included sensitive texts composed respondents had gotten containing excessive, even robotic formality and unnatural word choice that bots are infamous for. Overly polished, ornate, or repetitive phrasing were other notorious causes for doubt.

    Then there were the survey answers from managers themselves about their use of apps in writing sensitive messages that further fanned those misgivings.

    For example, 41 of participating executives said they’d indeed relied on AI “to draft or revise a performance review.” Another 24 percent of respondents said they’d used apps to compose a performance warning, and 17 percent had done so to inform an employee they were being terminated.

    The problem with that, ZeroBounce said of its findings, is if the positive use of AI in automating all kinds of repetitive, boring, or less critical workplace tasks becomes too reflexive. When it happens, it said some users immediately turn to the tech to compose critical communications requiring maximum human input, analysis, and even compassion that bots can’t produce.

    “The (survey) results are part cautionary tale, part Black Mirror episode,” the introduction to the survey’s results said. “AI has crept into our inboxes, sometimes invisibly, and many of us aren’t sure who’s writing or feeling on the other end.”

    Recognizing that, 40 percent of participating employees said they thought sensitive emails, evaluations, or notices about promotions and terminations should never be Al-assisted. Another 56 percent of respondents said those texts may be crafted with some support from apps to increase clarity, but that should never come at the expense of full human input and personalization.

    A separate survey offered some possible reasons for why managers would rely on AI as much as the ZeroBounce study revealed. Language learning platform Preply questioned an unspecified number of U.S. employees and managers about termination messaging they’d been involved with, and found delivery and phrasing of that bad news often sorely lacking.

    For starters, it found an average of 55 percent of participating managers “who have fired someone (had) not received training on how to navigate the process.” Perhaps not surprisingly, 65 percent of respondents who’d been laid off said “the manager handled the situation poorly.” While the survey didn’t ask how often AI was used to formulate those termination announcements, there’s some reason to think bots may have at times been involved.

    With word and term repetition a frequent AI vice in these early days of the tech’s development and output, use of the phrase “letting you go” appearing in 45.6 percent of all layoff announcements examined may indicate bot involvement. Meanwhile, “effective immediately” and “terminating your employment” were also mentioned in over 28 percent of all dismissals, with “no longer require services” and “parting ways” used in over 20 percent of cases.

    All of which indicates that at this point in its evolution, AI’s automating abilities are impressive, but not always adapted to workplace scenarios requiring human discretion and empathy.

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Bruce Crumley

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  • How These Employer-Backed Health Clinics Are Saving Companies Money

    As many workers note while checking changes in their company-provided health care plans during the open enrollment period that began November 1, U.S. employers have worked to provide their staffs with the most affordable medical insurance coverage possible. But a growing number of businesses are going even further by establishing on-site clinics, or partnering with nearby care providers. That has allowed them to slash the time and money employees must invest in seeking professional care, and considerably reduced their overall costs of keeping their workforces healthy.

    The moves by many businesses to provide health care services within the workplace, or by partnering with neighboring clinics, was the focus of a Washington Post report this week. That effort goes beyond offering typical medical insurance coverage — whose costs to employers rose 6 percent this year, and are expected increase by double digits in 2026. Instead, companies took the considerable extra step of bringing health care providers into direct proximity to their employees. That nearness and convenience allows workers who may otherwise avoid doctor visits because they take too much time, are difficult to set up, or are prohibitively expensive to quickly schedule consultations when they need one.

    That usually involves third-party companies setting up clinics within customers’ workplaces, or establishing facilities nearby that cater primarily to their employees. The effort permits employers to provide care to workers at lower costs, and without the habitually long appointment waits and travel times of seeing outside physicians. Meanwhile, clinicians primarily dedicated to employees can give them more time and attention than most doctors can spare.

    “They offer a combination of low- or no-cost in-person and virtual care… (with) the convenience of same-day appointments, on-site labs, and consistent relationships with their providers,” the Post said of workplace clinics. “It’s a benefit strategy that is gaining traction across all industries, to attract and keep talent, and to address common U.S. health care woes — long wait times, short appointments, unnecessary and expensive ER visits — that can lead to less healthy employees and weigh on the bottom line.”

    Why would an employer assume the heavy lifting of establishing a workplace health care center for employees? Because most that have done so report big dividends in the form of lower overall costs and healthier workers.

    According to a study by the Business Group on Health professional association, 48 percent of its member companies said they offered on-site health care. About half of those respondents estimated the rate of return on their clinic investments at 200 percent, with a quarter of participants putting that payoff at 300 percent. Frequently, improved health and cost benefits of those newly established medical facilities offset the finances used to launch them within a year.

    “Employers are facing double-digit medical cost trend increases and looking for solutions,” said David Keyt, national director of employer health centers at insurance company Alliant in comments about a study it carried out with the National Association for Workplace Health Care.

    Its survey found 28 percent of business with their own health centers said they planned to establish new clinics in new locations in 2026. Nearly 55 percent of respondents also said they intended to increase services or staffing at existing clinics.

    “Directly contracted worksite and near-site care models have been a proven strategy that delivers significant value on investment,” Keyt said. “Employer health centers are a strong foundation for an employer total worker health strategy.”

    It’s also a win-win initiative, with companies cutting costs and productivity lost to staff illnesses through improved worker health and well-being. Just ask the 26,000 employees at Oakwood, Georgia-based poultry company Wayne-Sanderson Farms, which hired clinic operator and medical service provider Marathon Health to set up an on-site healthcare facility nearly a decade ago.

    “Making things easy, making things affordable, putting that care right there at their fingertips … is what we want to do,” Wayne-Sanderson Farms’ director of benefits, Christy Freeman, told the Post.

    While some companies like Wayne-Sanderson establish clinics to provide close and accessible health care options to their largely rural staffs, businesses in urban centers have done likewise to make visiting doctors and getting treatment easier for swamped employees.

    For example, in 2022 Washington, D.C., law firm Sterne Kessler asked CloseKnit Health to set up and staff an in-house clinic to serve its attorneys and support workers. Many of those employees don’t have time to set up outside doctor visits, or commute to them when they roll around.

    “Working at a law firm isn’t easy,” Sterne Kessler chief operating officer Rob Burger told the Post. “You have a lot of stress and a lot of hours. I saw people neglecting themselves.”

    Similarly, telecom and media group Charter Communications partnered with Marathon Health in recent years to open three on-site health centers on its corporate campuses. Those have already handled over 10,000 appointments, and helped cut the company’s overall healthcare costs.

    “People get what they need,” Paul Marchand, Charter’s executive vice president and chief human resources officer told the paper. “They get it on time. They get it in a convenient manner, and they walk out saying, ‘Wow, that was easy.’”

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Bruce Crumley

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  • How Wearable Tech Could Become ‘Big Brother’ in the Workplace

    Wearable tech continues to be one of the Next Big Things in technology innovation, thanks to what many experts expect to be the replacement for the humble smartphone—AR and VR headsets, as well as other AI-powered devices. But wearables like fitness monitors and smartwatches are already part of some workplaces as a useful tool for monitoring employees — providing data on everything from performance to employee well-being. But this sometimes controversial data collection carries some risks, as a new report highlights.

    A team of management researchers from the U.K.’s University of Surrey recently did a meta-analysis of previous studies on the benefits and risks of using wearable worker monitoring tech. They found that most workplaces that have deployed wearable tech are using them to track employees’ well-being and health data. The devices were helpful for accurately tracking “sleep quality, stress markers, physical activity, and even team dynamics,” science news site Phys.org reported. That, which aligns with some of the ways devices like FitBits and Apple Watches are promoted. 

    But the way some businesses roll out these devices is problematic the researchers said, since many of these efforts aren’t fully transparent and leave employees guessing about what personal data is being collected by their companies and why it’s being gathered. Meanwhile, many businesses have inconsistent policies for analyzing collected employee data, and they may even store it insecurely. This behavior risks making workers feel insecure and suffering the effects of “invasive surveillance,” Phys.org says. That level of explicit oversight can harm workplace culture. 

    When used properly, these wearables, many of which are commercial off-the-shelf products, can warn HR departments in real time about potential problems. One good example is their potential to spot “rising stress before burnout or to safety hazards before accidents,” wrote Dr. Sebastiano Massaro, a neuroscience lecturer and co-author of the study.

    But unless companies have “robust methodological and ethical guardrails,” there’s a risk of blurring the lines between “science and pseudoscience, between real support and dangerous surveillance,” Massaro worries. In their best uses, wearables can “help create safer, healthier, and more responsive and productive workplaces” he thinks. Done badly, they could “normalize unnecessary monitoring and paradoxically increase workplace stress rather than reduce it.”

    Recently, Amazon revealed it was developing smart glasses (a little like Meta’s recently unveiled AR glasses) the company said will help its delivery drivers “identify hazards, seamlessly navigate to customers’ doorsteps, and improve customer deliveries.” The goggles sound like powerful tech, melding “AI-powered sensing capabilities and computer vision” with cameras and a display so a driver can see “everything from navigation details to hazards to delivery tasks,” as well as spotting the right packages in their truck at a delivery address. It’s plausible that these devices could speed up deliveries—a form of 21st century optimization that’s akin to a business efficiency decision that means UPS delivery trucks almost never turn left.

    But Amazon’s product announcement immediately triggered ethical and privacy worries, both about the drivers’ well-being and about data collected outside the trucks, when drivers are at a delivery location, for example. Amazon, after all, has repeatedly been in the news over the way it surveils its workforce, including landing a 32-million euro fine ($36 million) in France in 2024 for doing so excessively. 

    How can you best apply this research for your own company?

    Offering your workers wearable tech can be presented positively — the devices have a certain social cachet, and if they help workers monitor their health and fitness for their own purposes (as well as for more workplace-directed reasons, like monitoring stress levels) then they can be seen as an attractive workplace perk. The data they collect can, if used responsibly, also help you avoid complex health issues like burnout.

    But if you do deploy tech like this, it’s important to be open and transparent about what data is being collected, and what for, and also to be rigorous in protecting sensitive employee medical data. Otherwise you risk harming employee well-being and your company’s reputation. 

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Kit Eaton

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  • How AI Training Can Lead to Productivity Gains

    While most U.S. businesses are already using artificial intelligence tools in their workplaces, their adoption rates and productivity increases vary greatly. New research shows how valuable those efficiency increases can be when employers give their full support to staff, including properly focused training on new AI tools. It also shows how the ineffective or disorganized introduction of these apps often undermines their potential gains.

    As noted in recent Inc. reports, studies show a majority of global employees aren’t wasting time worrying about AI taking over their jobs, and have instead actively learned to use the tech to enhance the value of their work. A new global survey of nearly 3,250 workers and executives by the London School of Economics’ Inclusion Initiative along with business consultancy Protiviti, quantifies the efficiency gains AI offers. It found that on average, employees save 7.5 hours per week — nearly a full workday — by using apps to automate tasks. The report calculated that by redeploying that extra time for other work, each respondent generated about $18,000 in additional annual productivity for their companies.

    Alas, wasn’t the only lesson for business owners. The study also warned that a large gap exists between the AI-powered productivity increases and the level of support they’re offering staff to use most effectively.

    For starters, 68 percent of employees who answered the survey said they’d received no AI training in the previous 12 months. That was determined to have influenced both adoption rates, and efficiency gains made using the tech. Indeed, fully 93 percent of respondents who’d gotten that instruction reported regularly turning to apps for their work, versus only 57 percent who hadn’t been given that support.

    Meanwhile, the time saved by participants who said they’d received instruction on AI was double that of people who hadn’t. Concretely, 11 extra hours freed up each week to redirect to more productive tasks, versus five hours for people who used the tech without training. According to Grace Lordan, founding director of The Inclusion Initiative and the study’s research lead, those differences offer an obvious message to employers seeking efficiency gains through AI.

    “For business leaders, the priority is clear: Closing the AI training gap is one of the fastest ways to unlock measurable return,” Lordan said in comments accompanying the findings. “Equipping employees with the right skills doesn’t just improve individual productivity — it drives sharper decision-making, accelerates innovation and creates stronger overall performance. In an environment where every efficiency counts, organizations that act now will set themselves apart from those still waiting on the sidelines.”

    Getting all generational workplace members into that game on a more level field is also essential.

    While the survey found 82 percent of Gen Z respondents said they used AI for work, the rate dropped to 52 percent of Baby Boomers. Similarly, about half of Gen Z participants said they were involved in developing AI and its use across the workplace, compared to about 30 percent of Gen Z and Boomers combined.

    In line with those findings, the survey also showed nearly twice as many younger employers received AI training during the previous 12 months than older colleagues. That discrepancy was also reflected in the performance of workplace teams that were made up of people of different age cohorts. About 77 percent of working groups with higher degrees of generational diversity reported regular productivity gains, compared to 66 percent with lower age diversity.

    In other words, survey authors said, companies that both encourage AI use and train all workplace members to use those tools are likely to see higher increases in overall productivity — as well as better adoption rates and efficiency gains by employees of all generations.

    “AI isn’t just another tool for the workplace — it’s a catalyst for rethinking how they organize, lead and empower their people,” said Protiviti global leader of people and change Fran Maxwell. “The organizations that will benefit the most are those that embed AI into everyday workflows, redesign roles to focus on higher-value work, and give employees the confidence to experiment. This research shows that inclusive adoption across all generations doesn’t just improve productivity — it prepares companies for the next wave of change.”

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Bruce Crumley

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  • Why Some People Have Better Jobs Than Others

    Why are some jobs better than others?

    Well, it largely depends on people’s preferences. In other words, one person’s dream job may be another person’s nightmare.

    And yet, there are also clearly some universal or at least generalizable parameters that make most people accept the idea that some jobs are objectively better than others—or at least seen by most as generally preferable.

    Pay and purpose

    For example, jobs that pay well, offer stability, and provide opportunities for growth are almost universally considered better. A tenured professorship, a senior engineering role at a reputable company, or a stable medical position all combine financial security with long-term prospects and prestige. In contrast, poorly paid, insecure, or dead-end roles (like gig work with no benefits or exploitative manual labor with long brutal shifts and an alienating experience) are widely viewed as worse, even if a few individuals might value their flexibility or simplicity.

    Then there’s autonomy. Jobs that grant people a degree of control over how and when they work (e.g., creative professionals, entrepreneurs, and researchers) tend to score higher on satisfaction than those defined by micromanagement or rigid supervision. Autonomy is a proxy for trust and respect, and it correlates strongly with both engagement and mental health. Few people dream of jobs where every move is monitored, and most aspire to roles where they can think, decide, and act freely.

    Unsurprisingly, purpose matters, too. Occupations that contribute to something meaningful (whether saving lives, advancing knowledge, or building something lasting) are viewed as more fulfilling than those that feel transactional or pointless.

    A teacher inspiring students, a scientist developing a vaccine, or an architect designing a community space are all examples of work that confers a sense of legacy. By contrast, even lucrative jobs can feel hollow when they lack purpose or moral value. This may explain the low correlation between pay and job satisfaction, which highlights the fact that we tend to overestimate the importance of compensation when making career choices. In that sense, the “best” jobs aren’t just about rewards, but about how they make people feel about themselves and their place in the world.

    What the science says

    A good way to acknowledge these nuances, and yet still predict whether a person is likely to access better jobs, is to examine why some individuals have more choices than others. That is, in any job or labor market, available job or career opportunities may have different degrees of appeal or attractiveness; but from a job seekers perspective, the more employable you are, the more likely to are to find and maintain a desirable job—whether we look at subjective or objective dimensions of desirability. With this in mind, here are some critical learnings about the science of employability that explain why certain people are better able to access in-demand jobs:

    (1) Their personality
    Research has consistently shown that employability is largely a function of personality. Traits such as conscientiousness, emotional stability, curiosity, and sociability predict not only who gets hired, but also who thrives once employed.

    Personality shapes reputation (the way others see us) and reputation determines whether we are trusted, promoted, and retained. For instance, people who are reliable, calm under pressure, and open to learning tend to be more employable than those who are erratic, avoid feedback, or difficult to work with. Moreover, personality also predicts job satisfaction: even in objectively good jobs, neurotic or disagreeable people are less likely to feel content, whereas optimistic and adaptable individuals find meaning in a wider range of roles, and are resilient if not satisfied even with jobs that make most people miserable. In short, who you are determines both the jobs you can get and how you feel about them once you do.

    (2) Their social class
    While most advanced economies like to think of themselves as meritocracies, the data on social mobility suggest otherwise. In the United States, only about half of children born to parents in the bottom income quintile will ever move up the ladder, and just 7% will reach the top quintile. In the U.K., the “class pay gap” between working-class and professional backgrounds persists even among graduates.

    Privilege still buys access to education, networks, internships, and employers willing to take a chance. Sociologists call this social capital; in plain terms, it means your parents’ contacts and credentials still matter more than your own potential. The world may be trending toward meritocracy, but it hasn’t quite arrived there yet.

    (3) Where you are born
    Location remains one of the most powerful predictors of career outcomes. The “Where-to-Be-Born Index” ranks countries by the opportunities they afford their citizens, and being born in Switzerland, Denmark, or Singapore gives you exponentially better odds of landing a good job than being born in Haiti, South Sudan, or Bhutan. Access to education, infrastructure, technology, and basic security all shape employability. The same talent, if born in a country with weak institutions or unstable governance, is far less likely to achieve its potential. In that sense, geography is more likely than talent to mean destiny, at least until global mobility or remote work meaningfully narrow the gap.

    (4) Their values, interests, and preferences
    Even within similar contexts, people differ in what they want from work. Psychologists like Shalom Schwartz and Robert Hogan have shown that our motivational values (e.g., achievement, power, altruism, security, stimulation, and so forth) determine what “fit” looks like for us. Someone who values adventure and creativity will flourish in startups or design roles, while a person who craves structure and predictability may prefer government or finance. Misalignment between values and job environment (say, a highly independent person in a bureaucratic culture) leads to burnout or disengagement. The better your job matches your values, the more likely you are to perceive it as a good one.

    Adapt, evolve, and improve

    In the end, “better jobs” are not just better paid or better designed; they’re better matched to the people who hold them. Some of this is luck: being born in the right family, in the right country, with the right temperament, will simply afford you a higher range and choice of matches, so you are bound to find more options. But much of it also depends on deliberate self-awareness, namely understanding what kind of environments bring out the best in you, and aligning your career moves accordingly.

    From a societal perspective, the goal should be to expand access to good jobs by improving education, reducing inequality, and helping people develop the skills and traits that make them employable. That means focusing less on pedigree and more on potential, less on connections and more on competence.

    Ultimately, the world of work will never be perfectly fair, but it can be fairer. And while none of us can control where we start, we can control how we grow. The most employable people are not just those who fit the system, but those who learn to adapt, evolve, and turn whatever job they have into something better.

    BY Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

    This article originally appeared in Inc.’s sister publication, Fast Company.

    Fast Company is the world’s leading business media brand, with an editorial focus on innovation in technology, leadership, world changing ideas, creativity, and design. Written for and about the most progressive business leaders, Fast Company inspires readers to think expansively, lead with purpose, embrace change, and shape the future of business.

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Fast Company

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  • How New-Collar Jobs Are Shrinking the Value of Degrees in Hiring

    Among the many workplace evolutions now in full swing is the trend among employers to place as much emphasis on the skills and experience of candidates without college degrees as they do the diplomas of university graduates. As that shift in recruitment criteria has continued, it has created new career pathways—many involving over $100,000 salaries—in so-called new-collar jobs that are enjoying increasing demand.

    The growing range of new-collar jobs is filling the gap between two traditional work categories: office workers, who were initially hired on the strength of their college degrees, and manual laborers without those diplomas. People now flourishing in ‘tweener positions, by contrast, use skills and experience they earned in technical training, certification programs, or simply by working to strengthen the knowledge and abilities that many companies are now clamoring for. That also permits new-collar hires to hit the ground running and immediately produce results for employers, who often previously needed to onboard and train recruits fresh out of universities.

    As with so many developments today, tech is driving the growth of many new-collar jobs, but it isn’t the only sector generating them. Manufacturing, engineering, and, especially, health care companies are also increasingly hiring people who may not have college degrees but do have the skills and experience to begin performing from day one.

    “These roles focus on bridging the skills gap in industries that rely on advanced technologies and specialized training,” said a recent post by Martina Mascali on job posting platform Monster. “For example, a software developer is considered a new-collar job and might acquire skills through coding bootcamps rather than a computer science degree. The key distinction is that new-collar jobs prioritize competence and capabilities over credentials.”

    Monster compiled a list of some of the booming new-collar positions, providing an idea of the varied sectors, specialties, and salaries increasingly open to people without degrees. While many of those positions sound highly technical, they are all open to self-taught candidates or people who attained required skills on the go and are ready to put them to use.

    These include cybersecurity analysts, now in high demand to protect companies from online criminals, who are fetching salaries of $85,000 to $141,000 as they do. Data analyst roles are also multiplying for people with experience with “Excel, SQL, and Tableau, as well as programming languages like Python or R… [and have] strong problem-solving abilities and an eye for spotting trends and anomalies in data,” Mascali writes, adding that those employees tend to make $64,000 to $114,000 in annual pay.

    Similarly, candidates with cloud computing experience are finding a rising number of work opportunities, most fetching between $95,000 and $160,000 annually. Even people who earned their HTML, CSS, and JavaScript chops developing websites for friends, family members, and neighbors can now export those skills to companies wanting to create state-of-the-art web platforms—and which are willing to pay $56,000 to $109,000 annually for help with that.

    But not all jobs Monster listed are based only on computing skills. Mascali notes that businesses needing in-house electricians now pay between $47,000 and $78,000 in annual salaries to those employees. People who both broaden and adapt that electrical know-how into other areas find ample work as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning technicians (whose pay ranges from $36,000 to $61,000 per year), and wind turbine specialists (who earn from $49,000 to $61,000 in salary).

    And how many people currently slaving away over college textbooks and cramming for exams wouldn’t be at least a bit tempted by working as a video game tester instead? The growing number of those jobs becomes especially alluring, with Mascali noting they only require “attention to detail, patience, and a passion for gaming… [to] identify bugs and usability issues.” The pay for putting those skills to use in vetting games many college students spend hours playing for free? Between $72,000 and $124,000 annually.

    That sociology degree may start losing its luster compared to a career playing Minecraft or Pokémon Go for a living.

    Still, employers can face some challenges in hiring new-collar workers. For starters, many of those job seekers still assume companies continue favoring degree holders and therefore don’t bother applying to those roles open to them. Others may assume those positions are effectively blue-collar grunt jobs set within professional environments and look elsewhere for more promising prospects.

    To prevent this, Monster and other job posting platforms advise companies to stress the importance of skills and experience over degrees in their recruitment announcements. Businesses should also underline the critical contributions to the business those hires will provide and opportunities for advancement the positions offer.

    Another suggestion for human resource managers with new-collar jobs to fill is to visit the online networking and social-media platforms favored by people pursuing activities that hone the skills being sought—and use those platforms to initiate contact. Many hiring officials may be surprised at the receptiveness and enthusiasm they find there.

    “I love it. Modern education needs a serious overhaul,” said one contributor in response to a thread about the new-collar trend on social-media platform Reddit. “No reason for kids to go into a lifetime of debt for their sociology degree. A portfolio is way more valuable than a resume for a lot of tech jobs. Show me you can do it versus telling me where you learned how to do it.”

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Bruce Crumley

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  • How Much Do I Need to Accommodate an Employee’s Religion?

    Inc.com columnist Alison Green answers questions about workplace and management issues—everything from how to deal with a micromanaging boss to how to talk to someone on your team about body odor.

    Here’s a roundup of answers to three questions from readers.

    1. How much do I need to accommodate employees’ religion?

    I was curious about where the line is on religious accommodation, and at what point it’s OK to say an accommodation cannot be made.

    I had an employee who needed an accommodation that allowed them to take lunch at a different time from the rest of the company once a week. This was somewhat inconvenient but I was able to accommodate them. Later, they let me know that they were going to need additional accommodations, which again were doable but inconvenient. I also noticed that their work performance suffered during certain times when they told me they needed to fast for their religion. They didn’t make me aware of any of these needed accommodations until they’d been hired and working for a couple of weeks. At one point, someone suggested that in order for me to accommodate this employee, I should to work additional hours myself.

    Ultimately, I was able to accommodate this employee with minimal frustration, but what if it hadn’t been as easy? What if there’d been a standing meeting that they were needed for during the time they needed to take their lunch that couldn’t be easily moved? I want to be as supportive and flexible as possible but at what point am I able to say “this goes past reasonable”?

    Green responds:

    The law says employers must accommodate employees’ religious needs unless it would cause “undue hardship.” The bar for undue hardship is high—generally something that’s costly, compromises people’s safety, requires others to do more than their share of difficult or undesirable work, or infringes on other employees’ rights. Moving a meeting is unlikely to meet that bar, although you having to work more hours probably would.

    If the person’s performance suffered when they were fasting, I’d look at how you handle it when someone else’s performance suffers because they’re sick, tired, hungry, etc. Presumably you figure that everyone has ups and downs, and unless it becomes a pattern, it’s generally just part of working with humans. (I’m assuming the fasting periods were relatively rare. If they weren’t, then you’d address the performance issues just like you would any other—no need to bring the fasting into it.)

    But it’s absolutely fine that the employee didn’t address the accommodations they needed until a few weeks on the job. There’s no requirement, ethical or legal, that they address it earlier than that. (Keep in mind that you can’t legally rescind a job offer over it, so there’s no real reason you needed to hear it earlier; it’s fine for them to raise it when they’re comfortable raising it.)

    2. Is it reasonable to expect a multiyear commitment for an entry-level job?

    I am hiring someone whose work will be split 50-50 between the department I manage and another department. Both of us really need a full-time person, but the budget won’t stretch that far this year, so this is meant to be a stopgap until we stabilize a bit more. The other manager has decided she wants someone to commit for a minimum of two years, ideally three. The problem is that the job we’re hiring for is very entry-level. It’s half clerical data-entry work and half work that is more skilled/creative—but (in my opinion) anyone with the skills to do the more creative side of the job isn’t going to want to stick around in the data-entry side long-term.

    I think that’s normal and I’ve designed my half of the position to be easily replaceable, with the expectation that we’ll have to hire someone new at some point. But the other manager claims that it will take a full year (!) just for the new hire to learn the job, especially the new database system, so there’s no point hiring someone who will leave after a year.

    I have a candidate who I think would be phenomenal. Right now she works for me part-time as an intern, but she has an incredible skill set that would allow her to do both jobs (which are quite different). But, since she’s graduating this year, she doesn’t know how long she wants to stay. I think it would be better to hire her in the short term because she could do a lot of good while she’s here. The other manager would rather have someone less skilled but competent who sticks around longer. Which option is more reasonable?

    Green responds:

    Normally I’d agree with you for all the reasons you laid out, but if this particular candidate is graduating this year, does that mean she might leave you in May or June? If so, I can’t blame your colleague for not wanting to hire someone who might leave that quickly; she’d be starting the hiring and training process all over again after just a few months.

    But beyond this one candidate, point out to the other manager asking someone to commit to three years for an entry-level job is out of step with what most employers ask and will lose you good candidates. Maybe there’s a compromise—18 months wouldn’t be unreasonable. (That said, keep in mind that you can’t lock people in. You can tell them what you’re hoping for and decline to hire anyone who makes it clear they’re likely to leave before that, but unless you’re signing a contract with them—which would be unusual in the U.S.—they’re going to leave when they want to leave.)

    3. CC-ing a manager to compliment their employee

    A colleague asked me to help make his work with me more visible to his manager. We talked about me sending him an email thanking him for some recent work he did and cc-ing his manager, but it feels really awkward. I rarely talk to his manager, so there’s no natural opportunity for me to mention how he’s doing a good job. Any suggestions on writing an appreciative email, or other ways I could help show his manager that his work for my department is valued?

    Green responds:

    If you think he genuinely does good work, it’s a great idea to let his manager know! It doesn’t matter that you rarely talk to her; managers generally are thrilled to get this kind of feedback about their teams, and it won’t seem odd. You could do it as a cc, where you email the co-worker an appreciative note and cc his boss, or you could just directly email her to say something like, “I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate Leo’s work on the X project.” Then give specifics about what he did that was so great—found solutions to tricky problems, persevered around obstacles, produced a better X than you’ve seen before, wowed clients, made a difficult project easy, whatever it was. The more specific you can be, the better.

    But you want this to be genuine. If you aren’t that impressed with the colleague’s work, it’s not something you should do as a favor (since if, for example, his work is consistently subpar, it will reflect oddly on you to rave about it—unless you can find something that you can truly speak well of).

    Want to submit a question of your own? Send it to alison@askamanager.org.

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Alison Green

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  • The Economy Seems Uncertain. Here’s Why Entrepreneurs Remain Optimistic

    Although small company workplaces likely face margin pressures from higher costs generated by import tariffs, they’re still largely upbeat, characterized by owner optimism about their business outlook. Nevertheless, recent data shows that many entrepreneurs are using the same cautious hiring strategies as bigger firms, slowing recruiting to a crawl nationwide.

    That mix of entrepreneur confidence despite lingering concerns over the broader outlook for economic growth was captured by payroll and staff management service provider Gusto. Its recent “State of Small Business 2025” report surveyed 1,148 owners of midsized and smaller companies, most of whom remained upbeat despite the impact of import tariffs, rising costs, and higher interest rates that have made borrowing prohibitively expensive. Indeed, an impressive 87 percent of respondents said their businesses met or exceeded performance expectations this year, including 51 percent of participant who said they’d fared better than anticipated.

    Still, entrepreneurs were divided in their views of the wider economy, with exactly half of respondents describing themselves as either somewhat or very pessimistic about its direction. By contrast, only 28 percent of participants said they were somewhat or very optimistic about the economy, while 21 percent were undecided.

    Small business owners were even more tightly split about the effects of tariffs. Half described import duties imposed this year as having had more negative consequences than previously existing duties did. Surprisingly, the other 50 percent of participants said the recent levies had generated no additional impacts beyond those of previous customs levies, or had even produced positive changes.

    But there was another way the tariffs colored entrepreneurs’ perceptions. Eighty-five percent of small company owners who voiced negative views of the economy said tariffs had influenced that view, while 65 percent of respondents who said their businesses had underperformed their expectations blamed import duties at least partially for that.

    “(T)he costs of tariffs are felt by many small business owners, who told us that tariffs are creating a clear drag on margins and forcing them to rethink supply chains and possibly scale back expansion plans,” the Gusto report said. “What began in 2025 as uncertainty is now manifesting at the end of the year as real economic costs.”

    In addition to tariff costs prompting some entrepreneurs to rethink growth plans, wider doubts about the economy have also led many small business owners to embrace the minimalist hiring patterns adopted by bigger companies since the first quarter of the year.

    Around 40 percent of owner-respondents who employ one person or more said they had hired no additional new staff this year. That was often described as a check on rising costs, a precaution that many entrepreneurs attributed to tariffs and inflation. Nearly 60 percent of 2025 Gusto survey participants said higher prices had had a negative effect on their businesses — compared to 49 percent last year — leading many to become wary of adding more staff and salary expenses.

    “The smallest businesses tend to keep their headcount steady over time and hire only when an employee leaves,” the Gusto report said, noting that aligned with other aspects of national employment strategies. “The low rate of hiring among those firms suggests more workers are staying put, which is consistent with broader trends in the labor market.”

    Small business owners who have been hiring said they often filled customer-facing jobs, or other work requiring human skills that artificial intelligence applications can’t replace.

    “(A)s price increases have stressed the budgets of both businesses and consumers, small businesses who can’t easily raise prices may be investing in exceptional customer service to retain and attract customers,” the Gusto report said. “Finally, customer- and client-facing roles may be more resilient to replacement by today’s AI tools, as most of their value comes from a ‘human touch’ AI can’t replicate.”

    Another concern a majority of entrepreneurs voiced are the still relatively high interest rates that make borrowing money through bank loans too expensive. As a result, nearly 60 percent of survey respondents said they turned to alternative forms of external financing this year, with owners’ drawing from personal savings or using business credit cards cited as the most frequent forms.

    Contrary to popular belief, however, those funds were often used just to keep existing business running, and not to finance expansion plans.

    “It’s a popular assumption that small businesses primarily seek financing to grow their business,” the Gusto analysis said. “However, our survey shows financing is more often used to cover everyday expenses. This year, entrepreneurs have been most likely to use external financing to cover short-term costs or buy equipment and tools. Just 16 percent of small businesses that have received external financing this year have used it to invest in long-term growth.”

    Bruce Crumley

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  • The Modern Day Tech Worker Is Obsolete. Amazon’s CEO Just Told Us Why

    In over 25 years working in tech—from my first days as an entrepreneur developer, through co-inventing some of the first generative AI, to my current stint helping all kinds of companies figure out the AI evolution—I’ve never seen the employer-employee relationship this toxic.

    It’s more than the effects of an employer-friendly labor market. That shift happens every five years.

    It’s more than a technical evolution being sold as magic fairy dust that can increase productivity a jillion percent. That happens every 10 years.

    It’s more than the definition of work changing from accomplishing great and unexpected things to pushing buttons until the investors are happy with the quarterly numbers. That’s a constant battle.

    After Amazon announced another massive round of job cuts last week—anywhere from 14K to 30K corporate employees on the block—CEO Andy Jassy got on their quarterly earnings call—where the company announced $21 billion in profits—to give us the real reason behind all those layoffs.

    And it might be the tipping point that finally destroys the notion of a tech job as anything but a short-term contract to be filled by whoever is available and cheap.

    Here’s why.

    Layoff Reasons Roulette

    Yeah, this one is gonna be a little dark. I just wrote one on AI porn. It’s funnier. Go read that. 

    Anyway, I also wrote a column a couple days ago, right after the layoffs were announced, listing the reasons I keep hearing from tech companies about why these layoffs are necessary.

    I’ll try to make the layoff reasons funny:

    1. AI is better than humans at most jobs, and Claude makes us feel validated.  
    2. No one wants to return to the office, so those losers are 86’d. 
    3. Oops. We overhired and we’re “fixing the glitch.”
    4. Hey investors, we heard you like EPS so we got you a bunch of EPS.

    Ugh. Humor is gonna be harder than I thought. 

    But like a drunk football fan making bolder and bolder braggadocious statements as his team keeps winning, it’s only a matter of time before big tech jumps off a porta-potty through a flaming, flimsy plastic table. 

    Funnier? What if I made that table the leadership table?

    “Culture.” You Keep Using That Word…

    From the Amazon CEO’s comments during the earnings conference call:

    “The announcement that we made a few days ago was not really financially driven, and it’s not even really AI-driven—not right now, at least,” he said. “Really, it’s culture.”

    First of all, love the “not right now.” Total gangster.

    Second. How? How is this a cultural move?

    I mean, I’m not saying it’s not. Culture is a corporate term that has been redefined, reshaped, and smothered to death over the last two decades. It used to mean actively cultivating an environment where all the pieces—from leadership to employees to customers to partners—felt good about their relationship with the company. 

    And not even in a squishy way, like it is today. The goal of culture was literally to get everyone to believe, “I like doing business with this company.” 

    To call axing up to 30K of the workforce a cultural move is a little like saying, “We’re all one big happy family… so I’m gonna borrow $1,500 from you and show up drunk to your niece’s wedding.”

    “It’s Not AI”

    I don’t want to “yes it is” this. I really don’t.

    I get it. It’s not an AI move… yet. But the “productivity gains” that are coming with AI automation are real, and they’re going to make the generative AI “chatbot” productivity gains look as silly as they turned out to be.

    What the scrappy entrepreneurial class is doing with AI will make your head spin. And, once you get past the nominal chicanery, it’s not just dorm-room and garage startup stuff. These are companies getting to $1M ARR in days and $10M ARR in a couple months. Or so they say, but there are a lot of these stories around, enough to keep a megacap CEO up at night.

    So if it is indeed an agility move, let’s talk about what Amazon’s CEO means when he says he wants to run Amazon like… 

    The World’s Largest Startup

    Amazon is not a startup. 

    I got into a fight with a former big oil executive about this.

    Not really. We exchanged a couple of pleasant emails, but he initially reached out because he misunderstood something I said in the layoffs reasons column, where I also referenced Amazon’s goal of “running the company like it’s the ‘world’s largest startup.’”

    Big oil guy said I shouldn’t expect Amazon to run like a startup.

    I didn’t say Amazon was a startup. I didn’t say Amazon should run like a startup. Them are quotes. Their CEO says this, and in fact repeated it on the earnings call. 

    And when we get past the misunderstanding, I think we can all agree. Amazon is not a startup, and no amount of workforce optimization is going to make Amazon run like a startup, even the World’s Largest Startup. This includes cutting 30K on top of the 27K since 2022 out of the roughly 350K corporate employees at the heart of their 1.2M total employees.

    Hell, startups have a hard time running like startups once they reach 50 employees. 

    Ultimately, I have no qualm with big corporations trying to recapture the flexibility and fleetness of their startup days. In fact, I also get paid good money to help companies do just that. And while removing bloat is always a necessary evil, the 1.2M denominator here is just too high.

    Damn man, even big oil agrees with me on that. 

    I’m Not Judging You, I’m Begging You

    I believe every time I talk about this in public, I add to the list of CEOs and leaders who get mad at me. Fine. I’ll take that. I’m a big boy and I know the kind of value that comes with doing these things the right way.

    But please understand, I’m not calling anybody out here, not even Amazon. I’m not judging these moves or this messaging. I’m trying to make all of us – including them, you, and me – more successful. This isn’t about anyone’s political or business beliefs, or their methods, or ignoring what kind of pressure they’re under. 

    When I coached my kid at baseball, and he kept swinging under the ball and popping up, eventually I just had to start telling him, “You’re doing it wrong.”

    That’s not judgment. He’s doing it because he wants to hit the ball out of the park. I want him to hit the ball out of the park.

    I’m begging these leaders to change their tone. That’s it. You run the company however you see fit. But if you don’t change the way you value and respect your workforce in public, you’re going to force more and more of that workforce to come up with a backup plan. 

    We need to fix the relationship before it gets damaged beyond repair.
    Please join the rebel alliance of over 10K professionals on my email list. My goal is to run my email list like it’s the “World’s Largest Email List.”

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    Joe Procopio

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  • Small Businesses, Big Ouches. These 7 Weird Workplace Injuries Stand Out

    The frequency and costs of workplace accidents leave entrepreneurs particularly vulnerable, because they have a much bigger impact on smaller companies. The latest annual study by Denver-based Pie Insurance detailed the rate and financial impact of those mishaps to small-business owners, and listed some of the weirdest incidents in the past year.

    The main finding of the recently released Pie Insurance 2025 State of Workplace Safety Report was the high percentage of small businesses involved in workplace accidents. Its survey of 1,018 company owners found 75 percent saying they’d had to manage worker injuries over the past year, and that 50 percent of those were preventable. Nearly a third of those entrepreneurs said on-the-job incidents had cost them an average of $20,000 per employee involved, as well four workdays typically lost while an employee recovered.

    That’s all part of the $176.5 billion toll workplace accidents cost employers annually in recent years. Most larger companies suffer even higher losses from accidents than small-business owners, with their average per-injury cost rising to $43,000.

    But if expenditures for accidents in founder-owned workplaces were less than half of those suffered by larger companies, smaller businesses outdid themselves in the category of strangest mishaps reported over the last year.

    Among what Pie Insurance charitably referred to as the “most unique and unusual” of those included truly strange accidents involving employees who:

    • Refused to stop hitting golf balls in the workplace, causing another worker to be knocked out after being hit in the head by one
    • Suffered third-degree burns after sitting on “a freshly cleaned hot office chair”
    • Were knocked unconscious by a frozen fish propelled by a malfunctioning conveyor belt
    • Slipped on a pickle in the lunchroom and cracked their spine
    • Forgot to turn off the lights, leading to a blown fuse that caused burns to another employee the following day
    • Choked on a bone at a Christmas party, resulting in a trip to the emergency room
    • Stapled their hand instead of the document they were working on

    Authors of the Pie Insurance report further demonstrated their gift of comic understatement by citing incidents worthy of a workplace sitcom with the reminder that, “despite our best efforts, workplace safety can sometimes be affected by the most unexpected circumstances.”

    Nevertheless, some small-business owners who participated in the survey were apparently determined to improve their workplace safety records—even if that meant anticipating improbable, and in some cases seemingly impossible, accidents. As a result, new measures they introduced over the past year included:

    • Requiring employees to have their pupils checked before using ladders to ensure they’re not under the influence of prohibited substances
    • Instituting a “no high-heels” rule to reduce foot and ankle injuries from long hours of walking on hard floors
    • Prohibiting employees from making their own coffee to prevent burns, with only managers being allowed to operate brewing machines
    • Establishing a “no drone zone” policy after an employee’s aerial hobby became a workplace safety hazard
    • Banning chewing gum after an improperly disposed wad resulted in a worker’s injury

    And last but not least, there was the small-business owner who formally prohibited employees from swatting golf balls in the workplace, after learning the painful and costly lesson of that activity one too many times already.

    Bruce Crumley

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