ReportWire

Tag: workplace

  • How Career ‘Ghost Growth’ Can Hurt Your Business 

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    It’s easy to feel like just a small cog in a very complex machine when you’re a low-level worker. Employers try to counter this feeling of having a limited career horizon by promising raises and promotions — a hint that you won’t remain a small cog for long, and there’s a bigger and brighter future for you if you just stick with it and grow with the company. But a new survey shows that many of these promises ring hollow, and the majority of American workers have experienced what’s called “ghost growth,” where their employer has promised advancement of one type or another, and then simply failed to follow through. There are lessons to be learned from this for your company, primarily how to avoid damaging employee morale.

    The data, from San Francisco-based resume platform MyPerfectResume, found that fully 65 percent of U.S. workers surveyed said they’d suffered ghost growth at one time or another. Essentially this means that two in every three workers have been promised advancement, and may have been handed expanded duties or authority, but without any meaningful changes to their jobs, such as significant pay raises, HRDive reports.

    Digging into the details, the study confirms that 78 percent of the 1,000 workers questioned said they’d been assigned new duties without getting a raise or promotion. Over half said they’d been promised promotions that never materialized, and over a third complained that they’d been given an increased workload as part of this process but had not been given a raise. Only 15 percent of people said they’d received a raise in the past year that matched their ever-growing duty list. And 35 percent — more than one in three people — said they’d never been properly compensated for additional workloads.

    This phenomenon seems incredibly prevalent, which may explain why two in three of the survey respondents blamed their employer for taking part in “growth theater.” You can think of this as being like greenwashing (promising some eco-friendly credentials that are associated with a particular item or business process, in order to boost sales and the company’s image, even though there’s no meaningful benefit), but for career growth. Basically an employer goes through all the big-gesture motions of promising to help their staff’s career paths without actually intending to go through with much of it. This could look like offering training to a staff member who’s been given new, expanded responsibilities ,but then failing to promote them to a new job title or boost their salary.

    The damage this bait-and-switch can cause is significant. Survey respondents noted how emotionally damaging ghost growth can be, with 53 percent saying it “looks like” their career is progressing, even as it actually doesn’t feel like it. And 49 percent of people say they’ve reached a plateau in their career and, as the report notes, “their company is trying to mask it with superficial opportunities.”

    Promising someone recognition of some sort and then not following through can harm trust and, ultimately, even drive staff to look for work elsewhere if they feel they’re being exploited by their employer, or if their extra duties are burning them out. Nearly 7 in 10 people in the survey said they’d considered quitting due to ghost growth issues, and nearly 3 in 10 people had actually done so.

    Losing these frustrated, disaffected employees can hurt a business beyond the departure of trained personnel and their expertise. It has an actual cost, from repeating the recruitment process, which increases the price tag through the extra time and effort required. This might be one reason why ghost growth happens, of course: conscious of their bottom line, and faced with a an important employee’s departure, some managers may be tempted to share out that person’s duties to their remaining colleagues, but not reward them accordingly.

    What can you take from this for your company?

    Simple: if you’ve promised your workers some form of support along their career journey, you should follow through by actually helping them to advance and compensating them accordingly. Tangible benefits like higher pay, or even a clear path to promotion and leadership roles, supported by upskilling and placing your trust in them are good ideas, HRDive notes. This is supported by MyPerfectResume’s data, which found 27 percent of employees saying they’d like higher pay to go with expanded duties, and 18 percent said they’d feel they’d “grown” if they were offered better work-life balance. 

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    Kit Eaton

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  • What Business Leaders Got Wrong About Zoom Fatigue

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    Back in the dark days of Covid lockdowns, millions of people around the globe brought a new app into their homes and lives to adapt to working at home: Zoom. Five years later, after the collective experience of endless video calls and other pandemic-era stressors led to Zoom fatigue or video call burnout, prompting the creation of guidelines about how to minimize those risks, those on-screen meetings are part of many people’s ordinary working lives. The enduring shift to hybrid and remote working conditions has changed how many of us go to the “office.” New research on current attitudes to Zoom today suggests video interactions no longer wear us down. In fact, a recent academic article says that under certain conditions, Zoom meetings may be less stressful than face to face gatherings.

    The scientists’ work, published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, described extensively interviewing over 100 people who take part in different types of work meetings. Researchers asked about their exhaustion levels, if they were able to take a mid-meeting break, and their more general attitudes about the platform’s role in their work lives. One team member, Hadar Nesher Shoshan, a junior professor at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany told news outlet Phys.org that their initial hypothesis was that “zoom fatigue still existed” simply because “all previous studies had come to this conclusion.” 

    But their investigation came to a startling conclusion that told a very different story. “We found no evidence of the phenomenon,” Shoshan said, and in fact, according to their findings, “online meetings are not more fatiguing than in-person meetings.”

    Even more fascinating, from the questions the subjects in the study answered, the researchers concluded that if a Zoom meeting lasts less than 44 minutes, the experience of attending the meeting may even be less exhausting to the attendees than traditional in-person business meetings.

    Intuitively, this makes sense. A shortish Zoom meeting from the comfort of your own home, a cafe or a coworking space may not seem as inconvenient as dressing in office-suitable clothing, suffering your commute, and then having to sit in a drab office environment to have the same discussion with the same people. For Zooms that last less than three-quarters of an hour, you probably wouldn’t even feel the need to get off the sofa or top up your coffee mug. That’s much less tiring than having to listen to Steve from Accounts in person, droning on across a conference table under poor lighting.

    So what’s going on here? Why did this research find such different answers about Zoom fatigue? And what can you learn from it for your own company?

    According to Shoshan, the most likely cause of Zoom fatigue at first was the pandemic itself, versus the complications of switching to mainly online meetings. When you add all the complex social issues lockdowns caused, Zoom meetings — closely linked to lockdowns in user’s minds — were thus subject to many of the same negative feelings. “People were missing their old way of life, their social contacts and were no longer enjoying their work,” Shoshan said. 

    Meanwhile, previous studies that suggested we were still suffering Zoom fatigue years after the lockdown ended mainly included data gathered actually during lockdown, Shoshan contends.

    So what’s the lesson here for your company?

    It might be surprising: hybrid and remote working may actually be better for your workforce, under certain conditions, at least regarding video call meetings.

    This is definitely something to consider if you’re thinking of pivoting back toward a more traditional in-office model (which data show will be deeply unpopular with your staff). As long as you keep your Zooms short, it may actually boost your workers’ efficiency, since they may not be so tired out. And while you’re at it, why not set a firm time limit for in-person meetings too?

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    Kit Eaton

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  • How 1 LinkedIn Post Shows the Ruthless Reach of the Starbucks Layoffs

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    What’s colder than a mocha frappuccino? Losing your job while on maternity leave.

    That’s the reality former Starbucks recruiter Leslee Hemenway faces after being laid off by the coffee chain, according to her LinkedIn post on Monday. Hemenway worked at Starbucks for seven years and was one of their retail management interns during college, her LinkedIn profile reads. She was one of the 900 non-retail employees laid off from Starbucks last week.

    “Being laid off while on maternity leave feels like a sick joke, but it’s the reality I’m presently facing,” Hemenway’s post said.

    Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol said the layoffs were a “difficult decision” to tighten the company’s costs, he announced online. Employees were instructed to work from home on the day laid-off employees were notified. Affected employees will receive “generous severance and support packages including benefits extensions,” according to Niccol. Starbucks did not return a request for comment by the time of publication to offer a more detailed explanation.

    “I know these decisions impact our partners and their families, and we did not make them lightly,” Niccol said in a company announcement. “I believe these steps are necessary to build a better, stronger, and more resilient Starbucks that deepens its impact on the world and creates more opportunities for our partners, suppliers, and the communities we serve.”

    In addition to corporate layoffs, Starbucks is also closing hundreds of its U.S. stores, including its flagship Reserve Roastery near its Seattle headquarters. The company said it was closing locations where they don’t see “a path to financial performance,” and they’re unable “to create the physical environment our customers and partners expect.” Baristas working at the closing stores are being transferred to other locations, when possible, Niccol said. In cases where transfers are not possible, these workers will be given a severance and are encouraged to “come back” when new stores and roles open.

    As for Hemenway, she’s going to use the severance package she received to take time to bond with her newborn.

    “After the birth of my daughter this summer, I’m going to savor the time I have with her and not actively pursue a new role for now,” Hemenway said on LinkedIn. “However, if you know of something that might be a particularly good fit in recruiting or talent management, please feel free to send it my way.”

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    Kayla Webster

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  • I Ask Candidates Their Salary Expectations, and I Don’t Feel Bad About It

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    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.

    A reader asks:

    You’ve talked about how inappropriate it is for employers to ask candidates about their salary expectations without giving out any info on salary themselves.

    I became a small business owner without having received training in that aspect of things, but learned early on when I am hiring to always ask the candidate their salary expectations before giving any information out about the range I am willing to offer. Why? Firstly, the money comes directly from our pockets and frankly if we can get away with paying $20/hour instead of $22/hour, why wouldn’t we? It also gives us room for raises, bonuses, etc. without taking too much of a financial hit. You always advocate that employees look out for their own interests. Why should that be so different for me as an employer? Maybe we tend to think of employers as big corporations but in our case we’re just hard-working individuals hoping to keep expenses in check.

    The second reason I want that information first is that if I were to give my range, a candidate expecting more might well say, “Sure, that’s fine,” while planning to take the job and keep looking for something else. Frankly, I want to know if they’re likely to be unhappy with that salary! Hearing that they expect more is valuable information for us to have and if I can get it, I will.

    So there you have it from a brazenly unapologetic employer who plans to continue asking the question. (For what it’s worth, we are excellent employers whose staff have been with us for years and seem very happy).

    Green responds:

    Well, I’ll happily tell you why you should stop.

    First, your current practice is likely to lead you to break the law. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 makes it illegal for you to pay a man and woman differently for doing the same work. So if you have a man who negotiated a higher salary than a woman did, and they’re doing substantially equal work, you are violating federal law. The law is clear that it doesn’t matter whether or not they negotiated differently and it doesn’t matter whether or not you intended to engage in wage discrimination; the fact that you’re paying them differently is itself illegal. (There’s an exception if you can prove the difference in pay is due to a seniority system or a merit system.) This is true if the genders are reversed, too — you can’t pay men and women differently, period.

    So if you want to look out for your own interests, ensuring you don’t break the law — with the significant fines and penalties that go with that — is a pretty good baseline to start with.

    Second, there’s tons of data showing that setting pay the way you’re doing disproportionately harms women and people of color, who are less likely to negotiate. I’m sure you don’t want to be perpetuating a system that keeps women and people of color’s wages depressed.

    Third, if you’re worried about losing candidates once they hear your range, then either your range is too low for the market and the candidates you want to attract or those candidates aren’t well matched for the role you’re filling. As the employer, you need to figure out the value of the work to you and to the market, come up with a range that reflects that, and be able to explain to people where they fit into it and why.

    Fourth, you’re far better equipped than your candidates are to know what the job should pay. You’re intimately familiar with the role’s responsibilities, pressures, and challenges in a way an outside candidate never can be. You’re asking candidates to name a number first when they’re not the one with the deep understanding of those factors — which can result in new hires who discover the salary doesn’t match up with the job after they start, which can mean they don’t stick around or don’t go above and beyond in the way they might if they felt fairly compensated.

    And last, the world is increasingly scoffing at employers that operate the way you do, and more and more employers are jettisoning the practice. When you refuse to disclose your budgeted salary range and insist on the candidate naming theirs, you’re sending a signal about your culture that will increasingly turn off your best candidates.

    I think the reason you’re “brazenly unapologetic” about a practice that hurts people is because it’s what you’ve done in the past and you don’t want to change something that you’ve grown comfortable with. But it’s a poor way to operate and at some point will have you violating the law if you haven’t already.

    The times are changing. Change with them — and don’t gloat about doing something that hurts people.

    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.

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    Alison Green

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  • Why Tech Workers Don’t Trust AI

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    It’s expected that tech companies are going to wind up spending a whopping $1.5 trillion on AI in 2025.

    That’s a lot of chatbots.

    Amazon is allegedly leading the way at $100 billion and major players Oracle, Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet round out a group of megacaps that will plunk down $320 billion, more than a fifth of the overall spend.

    It makes that $20 for Claude Pro seem like a bargain, right?

    Let me get serious for a moment, because this trillion-dollar AI money train might be speeding towards a wall of employee mistrust. And the resulting trainwreck might make the cash-fueled NFT bonfire look conservative.

    Let’s talk about the tech employee AI trust gap.

    Why Tech Workers Don’t Trust Workplace AI

    I’ve been a builder of AI tools since 2010, and I’ve been sounding the alarm on how we’ve been selling AI to both business and consumers since ChatGPT debuted in 2022. 

    There’s a massive disconnect brewing between sellers of AI and buyers of AI, because while executives continued to rubber-stamp high-dollar AI investments, more than half of all workers didn’t trust their workplace AI to benefit them. Thus, a strong-but-hidden employee AI resistance was established.

    Over the last six months or so, an interesting phenomenon is happening across what we’re now calling the AI sector. As more regular people like you and me have had more time to react to the integration of these AI tools into our lives, we’re finally able to figure out its limitations, where it should be used, and more importantly, where it shouldn’t.

    As this was happening, more and more AI experts have been speaking out on everything from the true definition of artificial intelligence to the corners being cut in the name of grabbing early AI market share, to the underwhelming return on corporate investment in AI – if you want to call 95 percent of companies seeing no return whatsoever as “underwhelming.”

    That NFT metaphor doesn’t seem so stupid now, does it. 

    And of course, AI platform developers see mistrust as a huge threat. They know that no matter how groundbreaking their technology might be – and make no mistake, this is groundbreaking technology – if the market doesn’t trust it, they’ll reject it. 

    So I’m speculating here, but suddenly, maybe six months or so ago, your AI chatbot started agreeing with you when you tell it you think it’s hallucinating, or performing bad math, or just making shit up. It will agree with you, apologize, and then take another crack at your request. 

    This worked, but it didn’t. Just because someone tells you when they’re working against you doesn’t mean you’ll trust them when they tell you they’re working for you.

    “Performative Acceptance” is the New Normal

    So now we’re in the middle of a whirlpool-style cycle.

    Companies are promoting, even forcing AI adoption in an effort to justify those massive investments. Employees, working in the shadow of maybe the worst tech job market in history, are performing implementation theater – using the AI, giving the boss a smile and a thumbs up, and putting “machine learning expert” on their resume, while quietly waiting for a frozen job market to thaw.

    This performative acceptance is playing out in two primary ways, acted out by two completely different types of tech employees. First, you’ve got the quiet corner developer:

    “Every week one of my friends announces on LinkedIn that they got laid off,” says “Tammy,” a senior software developer at a mid-sized tech company in the middle of the country. “I will just do whatever they tell me to. If they want me to use AI when I code, I’ll do it. It’s helpful in some ways, but it really isn’t making me more productive. If my productivity drops, I could lose my job. So I have to play a game of showing how AI is making me more productive.”

    Tammy is sugar-coating it. “Bobby,” a sales engineer for a Fortune 500 tech giant, does not:

    “If I wasn’t so angry it would be funny.” he chuckled. “You want me to waste time training AI to do my job, watch it do a shitty job, but then tell you how amazing it is, so you can replace me with it? This is my life now, Joe. I’m living the dream.”

    These are just two cases. They’re anecdotal. They prove nothing. But they highlight a bevy of AI implementation mistakes that need to be undone.

    Filling The AI Trust Gap

    Every new technological advancement comes with its own share of overselling in the beginning. The problem is that for this new AI cycle, the overselling was more like a manic threat:

    “INJECT AI DIRECTLY INTO YOUR VEINS OR YOU WILL DIE PENNILESS AND FULL OF SHAME!”

    In that FOMO-fueled race to AI adoption, leadership bought into AI promises without involving the employees who would actually use it. Then companies spent billions on AI tools but skipped the part where they engaged with their workforce to best adopt those new tools. Now many of those same companies are wasting billions justifying those decisions at the expense of a friction-filled workplace.

    There’s a lot of resentment here, and the job market won’t stay frozen forever. When it thaws, resentment always turns into resignations.

    As the fascination with generative AI dies down, and the limitations of “vibe coding” are becoming understood, more tangible concepts like AI Automation tools, agentic AI, and even neural-network-driven decision making are starting to drive the AI hype talk from “AI can run your entire company” to “AI can do cool things in the hands of the right people.”

    This is a second chance. To sell AI as less about “machines that think” and more about “really fast computing.” The latter, I can assure you, is the best definition of artificial intelligence you’re gonna get.

    Tech employees aren’t children. They’ve already figured this out. If we want to fill the AI trust gap, it’s time to start being reasonable about what the AI endgame should really be. Otherwise, untrusting employees who see AI as a liability and not a benefit will end up going somewhere that will invest in them, not chatbots. And those AI-first companies will discover their billion-dollar AI investments created resentment instead of productivity.

    If you found yourself agreeing with this, or not, please join my email list and get a quick heads up when I write something.

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

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    Joe Procopio

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  • Why Major Workplace Disruptions Aren’t Always a Bad Thing

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    The road to business success rarely stays smooth, and while you may aim for your enterprise to tick along like a well-oiled German luxury sedan, bumps and dings and accidents and upsets along the way are all but inevitable. Some common examples include an executive falling ill, the loss of a major client, or a top-to-bottom restructuring to pivot the business to new markets. Take heart, though. A new report says that if your company suffers a serious disruption of some kind, it may actually boost your employees’ trust levels and tempt them to stay with you in the long term, but only if you manage the crisis well.

    The data, from SparkEffect, a small Seattle-based organizational development firm, found that 71 percent of the companies surveyed had experienced some form of disruption in the last two years. Unsurprisingly, the most common disruptions were AI-driven changes forced on business operations, with 37 percent of companies going through this disruptive process. Leadership team turnover was a close second, with 36 percent of companies affected, and further down the list were disruptions like layoffs or company restructurings, personal crises, cultural overhauls and job redesigns, Human Resources Director noted. 

    The investigation showed that if companies deal with these disruptions well, it can boost employees’ trust levels by 12 percent over the baseline. Meanwhile, if the company’s leadership fumbles the play, it can actually crash employee trust levels 28 percent under the baseline — a pretty dramatic shift. 

    The focus on trust is important, because the research showed the biggest impact a business-disrupting event can have is on manager trust — even more than workers’ trust in the overall organization. Data show that staff trust their direct managers more than company leadership, which might explain why a badly bungled reaction to a dramatic business disruption can have a significant impact. The report highlights this and notes that while “trust in local leaders often starts higher than trust in the organization as a whole,” it is actually “more fragile.” 

    Organization-level leaders do well with retaining employee trust if they exercise good communication throughout a disruptive event. The report also says that if leaders are fair and clearly empathetic to their workers that can boost trust, also if they offer staff the chance to explain their concerns.

    But if managers exhibit poor transparency, and there’s a misalignment between the decisions the leadership makes and what employees feel they need, including bad handling of tech rollouts (critical in the “all in on AI” business shifts that are trendy right now) then that can harm workers’ trust.

    Much of this thinking resonates with an interesting report that recently underlined how important middle managers can be in an organization, despite the current trend for ditching midlevel managers in favor of a flatter org chart. The survey from San Francisco-based workplace communications outfit Firstup showed that more than half of the 1,000 U.S. non-management workers surveyed said their direct manager was their “most trusted source” for up to date workplace news. Just 10 percent said they think senior leadership is their best source for this info.

    There are some very clear lessons for running your own operation here.

    Rolling out AI systems is a surging workplace trend at the moment, as companies seek to boost worker efficiency and glean higher profits from their revenues. But AI rollouts can be dramatic and disruptive, as this new research points out, unsettling employees who may have to deal with unfamiliar, radically new technology, possibly requiring upskilling, even as they worry about the long term implications AI has on their employability. If you’re pivoting to include AI in your business, handling it carefully, with clear communication and an openness to hear employees’ concerns is a must. Otherwise worker trust may fall, and the secondary impact on their engagement and your profits may be marked.

    Similar thinking should be included in your management decisions should your company encounter other disruptive events. Fairness and empathy are your friends here.

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    Kit Eaton

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  • 2 Studies Say Gen Z’s Values Are Hurting Their Job Prospects

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    Many business owners and managers continue reporting on difficulties they’ve had integrating Gen Z employees into their companies, describing them variously as entitled, aloof, loath to take directions, and insufficiently skilled for their jobs. Now a New York University’s Stern School of Business professor goes even farther with that critique in a white paper published this month, claiming just 2 percent of the cohort born between 1995 and 2009 share the values employers seek from workers they hire.

    The “Hiring Managers vs. Gen Z Priorities” paper, co-authored by journalist and MBA program professor Suzy Welch, examines a study that used the Values Bridge personality assessment tool Welch helped to develop. It started by analyzing data from the over 7,500 Gen Zers among the 45,000 people who have used the platform to date. Welch then compared the values that those younger people cited with the most frequently mentioned priorities of 2,100 knowledge industry hiring managers, who were surveyed separately but as part of same study. That revealed a near total mismatch in what Gen Zers and participating HR professionals considered important in the workplace.

    “Only 2 (percent) of Gen Z rank all three hiring-preferred values (of managers) in their top five,” the paper said, warning of looming real-world business consequences. “For leading firms, this gap translates into an arms race to identify and secure the few candidates who align. For others, it requires more strategic adaptation, designing teams and roles that maximize partial fits while minimizing mismatch risk.”

    The survey of hiring managers determined that their top three priorities were Achievement, or professional success; Scope, or learning and action; and Workcentrism, denoting comfort with hard work. The leading values of Gen Zers, by contrast, were described as Eudemonia, or well-being and self-care; Non-sibi, or helping others; and Voice, which represents authenticity and expression.

    Many previous polls have found Gen Zers to be far more concerned with learning, mentoring, work-life balance, and mental health priorities than traditional career goals like ascending executive ranks and earning more money. But the new study’s results not only indicate that values gap is far wider than previously believed, but is often on shaky ground even when sharing did occur.

    “Even where overlap exists, Gen Z often tries to dial these values down: 61 (percent) report Achievement is higher in their real life than they want in their ideal life,” it said. “The values gap between Gen Z and hiring managers creates two starkly different realities for employers.”

    ‘The attitudes are not.’

    Given the rather dire implications of those findings for for Gen Z — especially in a virtually flat labor market that continues to tighten as businesses automate many jobs with artificial intelligence — it isn’t surprising Welch’s results have generated strong reactions that reveal stark contrasts. She said as much in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, where she quoted a human resources executive reacting to the results with the lament, “The bodies are out there. The attitudes are not.”

    It’s for that reason that Welch foresees larger companies with big budgets competing with each other for the rare Gen Zers whose values entirely match their own. The rest, she predicts, will sift through the remainder for candidates with as many shared priorities as possible, then make their adherence to those through a virtual “values contract” a condition of their employment.

    Unsurprisingly, many of Welch’s own MBA students were as dismayed by the findings as hiring managers, but for different reasons. Some of those younger people, she wrote, wondered how they’d ever land jobs in the current labor market if their age cohort has been labeled unemployable to boot.

    Others, by contrast, argued that with Gen Z already representing a large percentage of the workforce — which will only grow larger with time — businesses also need to adapt to the values of younger workers to keep pace with the times.

    “Maybe they’re right,” Welch said in her op-ed while explaining why she continues sharing the data with disconcerted Gen Zers. “And maybe business will change someday — when Generation Z is in charge. But right now, the marketplace faces a values disconnect between generations that could reshape the future of work… Values, after all, are choices. Like all choices, they have consequences.”

    In the wake of Welch’s op-ed, critics have stepped up to take issue with the study’s findings. Most, it appears, aren’t even Gen Zers.

    Some detractors have clearly viewed her tough love promotion of the study’s conclusion through the historical lens of her marriage to the late General Electric CEO Jack Welch. His relentless cost-cutting, and ruthless selloff of virtually any less than maximally profitable business units won him cheers from investors at the time. But they’ve more recently provoked jeers after companies that adopted the same strategy, notably Boeing, flirted with financial and industrial ruin from their embrace of his focus on immediate profits above everything else.

    Moreover, Welch co-authored the 2005 best-seller Winning with her husband about his successful, no-holds-barred management style, an association some of those critics alleged colored her unflattering findings on Gen Z.

    ‘Because a boomer said so’

    Other observers doubt the credibility of the findings themselves, and question both the study’s objectives and methodology. Some of those commentators have dismissed the results as another gratuitous hit on Gen Z’s beleaguered workplace reputation by older generations with more established positions in business.

    Yet another group, meanwhile, flatly challenged the assumption that Gen Z’s values aren’t as legitimate as those of hiring managers or their companies.

    “Is this woman really dragging a generation for valuing things like self-expression and altruism?” asked caprazzi in a thread on social media platform Reddit responding to Welch’s op-ed. “Our society and culture [are] diseased, we need a doctor over here.”

    “Gen X leader here,” responded Austin1975. “These generation hit pieces don’t deserve anyone’s time. ‘Young people don’t wanna work’ gibberish has been around since the 90s. Today’s articles are purely for money now and full of rage bait and links to propaganda.”

    “These same articles were written for Millennials as we were entering into the workforce, too, and during the Great Recession,” agreed Affectionate_Ratio79.

    Other redditors also pointed out Welch’s own Baby Boomer cohort doesn’t exactly command the love and respect of younger generations is it sets to retire — often with envious fortunes. That’s particularly true of people still decades away from retirement, and currently facing the high prices, tight labor markets, and rising national debt levels that have spiked under Boomer control of business and government.

    “Corporations exist to serve people not the other way around no?” asked the floridly named fartdonkey420, casting doubt about Boomers’ credibility to negatively judge Gen Z priorities. “Why should an entire generation modify their value systems in servitude to corporations?”

    “Because a boomer said so,” replied Redd11r.

    Those diverging reactions suggest Welch’s findings, much like Gen Z’s work ethic, are both open to debate, and likely to draw contrasting conclusions. But the study also demonstrates that while business leaders continue questioning the cohort’s personal and professional values, countless other observers are ready to defend them against what at times may seem like relentless scorn.

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    Bruce Crumley

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  • Why Scandals Hurt CEO Reputations More Than Fraud

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    The infamous viral video that featured Andy Byron, the then-CEO of the small New York-based data platform Astronomer, on the kiss cam at a Coldplay concert in a seemingly intimate embrace with his chief people officer, Kristin Cabot, went global earlier this year. Both parties were married to other people, so Byron quickly took the fall and resigned, with Cabot following shortly after.

    Given the worldwide attention the clip gained, their resignations were all but inevitable. But new research suggests that a scandal of a personal nature like this is much more harmful to CEOs than you might think — no rock band kiss cam necessary. In fact, if a CEO is caught committing fraud, it’s far less harmful to their future than becoming embroiled in a more personal scandal.

    The actual figure is surprising: CEOs are five times more likely to survive fraud-related scandals than they are if they get caught in inappropriate relationships, issues like drug or alcohol abuse, violence or inappropriate speech, Phys.org reports. The study leader, Aaron Hill, an associate professor from the University of Florida Warrington College of Business, told the news outlet that in an instance of financial fraud, a CEO “can easily say, ‘Hey, it wasn’t me,’” but for the other sorts of scandal, like “personal misconduct, there’s no excuse,” because it’s harder to evade accusations of direct involvement in the problem.

    The researchers also found company boards act decisively when a leader’s personal scandals become known, but recent company performance has more of an impact on how they react to a leader’s involvement in a financial scandal. If the company is doing well, the CEO is more likely to be allowed to remain at their post, possibly because company directors may have “plausible deniability” about absolute blame, and little incentive to disrupt the company’s success.  

    And when a leader does get fired when their personal misbehavior goes public, the researchers found boards are more likely to promote an insider into the role. it’s a “signalling move,” according to Hill, implying the company is fine, and the behavior of one bad apple has been addressed. “Stick with an insider after a personal scandal, and it says the organization itself is sound,” Hill said. He added that if it’s fraud, it’s better to reassure markets and clients by hiring an outsider. This is exactly what Astronomer did, in the wake of the Coldplay video scandal, by promoting Pete DeJoy, a co-founder, into an interim CEO position while looking for a replacement.

    CEOs, of course, hold massive authority over their companies, and their public image may be tightly bound up with that of the firm itself. Recent data show exactly how influential CEOs have become, with the average leaders’ pay rising nearly 6 percent in 2024, so they now make 281 times the salary of the average worker, the Economic Policy Institute showed.

    Acting swiftly to remove a scandal-tangled CEO thus makes economic sense as well as protecting the company from reputational harm. This is something Hill also highlighted, noting that firing a CEO after a scandal is nearly always motivated by finances. Meanwhile if a company leaves a CEO in post, it can simply send “the wrong message — to employees, to investors and to the public,” Hill noted.

    What can you take away from this for your own company? 

    You might think that in your smaller, more family-like atmosphere none of these issues are likely to raise their ugly heads. And hopefully you’re right. But remember that recent data show one in three U.S. workers has had a relationship with their manager, and 91 percent of the people surveyed said they’d used flirting or charm to boost their position with leadership.

    The one lesson you can learn from this is that a scandal really can impact your company unless it’s handled right, and one of a personal nature (instead of, say, fraud) can be even more damaging for the executives involved. 

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    Kit Eaton

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  • 4 Leadership Lessons From Faith Leader Russell M. Nelson for Any Business

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    I woke up Sunday morning to the news that Russell M. Nelson, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had died at the age of 101, and shortly after publishing an op-ed in Time Magazine: “We All Deserve Dignity and Respect.”

    As a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I always listen to the words of church leadership when it comes to my spiritual life, but I’ve also learned that applying these principles to my work life has worked as well. 

    Here’s what I’ve learned about business from President Nelson. Whether or not you share my faith, President Nelson’s leadership lessons in respect, managing anger, and lifelong learning, apply in the workplace as much as other areas of life.

    Remember, everyone has inherent worth

    Society is divided. Your employees are divided. There is hate and violence around the world, including a horrific attack Sunday on a congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ in Michigan.

    Nelson wrote in Time: 

    First:  Each of us has inherent worth and dignity. I believe we are all children of a loving Heavenly Father. But no matter your religion or spirituality, recognizing the underlying truth beneath this belief that we all deserve dignity is liberating — it brings emotional, mental, and spiritual equilibrium — and the more you embrace it, the more your anxiety and fear about the future will decrease. 

    When I’m dealing with a problematic client, vendor, or business partner, I’ve found that taking a moment to remind myself that this person deserves respect helps me make better, calmer decisions. By stepping back and recognizing that their lives are probably just as difficult as mine, and that they deserve grace, I can make better choices.

    Twice in recent times, I’ve had people unknown to me attack me. However, without escalating the situation, I’ve managed to resolve these conflict and make friends with the people. We still have different opinions, but by recognizing the inherent worth of each other, we were able to solve our concerns. 

    Anger doesn’t lead to solutions

    Nelson said, in April 2023, 

    “Anger never persuades. Hostility builds no one. Contention never leads to inspired solutions.”

    Business is competitive for sure. But we don’t have to approach it antagonistically. While I’m certainly not a perfect peacemaker, and I do take strong positions that may upset some people, I actively seek solutions.

    I also do get angry from time to time. When that happens, I try to step back. I’ll take time to think before responding and run my response by trusted friends, and when necessary, legal counsel. I’ve found that being careful in what I say and dealing with my anger on the jogging trail or by getting out my nervous energy in an improv comedy practice.

    Could I make more money if I used my anger to engage in cutthroat tactics? Maybe. But would I be happier? Of course not. Frankly, using this method has resulted in some amazing solutions.

    Take care of your physical health

    President Nelson was a cardiac surgeon who was respected worldwide and “served as president of the Society for Vascular Surgery, a director of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery, chairman of the Council on Cardiovascular Surgery for the American Heart Association and president of the Utah State Medical Association.”

    I’m an overweight HR professional who eats her feelings. But I’ve also seen the research on how taking care of ourselves benefits all aspects of our lives so what President Nelson said, in a speech in 2019, hit me:

    There are specific ways in which we can likely improve. One is in the way we treat our bodies. I stand in awe of the miracle of the human body. It is a magnificent creation, essential to our gradual ascent toward our ultimate divine potential.

    Viewing our bodies as a miracle rather than a burden is an interesting shift. I’ve tried to take better care of my body through exercise, diet, and medical support. 

    When we consider that our bodies need rest and nourishment and our employees need the same, it switches how we think of things. Instead of pushing myself to the breaking point to make a sale or close a deal, I make sure to get adequate rest and try to eat a bit better. (I still struggle with eating my feelings, but I’m a work in progress.)

    You’re never too old to learn

    President Nelson was conversant in 11 languages. I’m fluent in English and conversant in German, and I’ve complained about every German word I’ve had to learn. When President Nelson was 55 in 1979, President Spencer W. Kimball, then President of the Church of Jesus Christ, advised leaders to learn Chinese.

    Nelson took that to heart and learned Chinese. It opened doors for him, and later for the Church, as he developed relationships with Chinese leaders. Nelson was able to introduce open-heart surgery to China in 1980.

    I haven’t learned Chinese, and I haven’t taught anyone open-heart surgery, but when ChatGPT came out in 2022, rather than saying, “Oh, I’m 49. That’s too old to learn new software,” I jumped right in. I’ve since then taught thousands of HR professionals how to use AI to make their lives easier.

    Through this, I’ve been able to give speeches and training on AI on three continents, and I continue to be a thought leader in AI for HR. 

    I think of President Nelson’s example often when I am faced with new tasks. I’m not too old to learn anything.

    I, personally, will miss President Russell M. Nelson, as will the 17 million members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His leadership reminds us that respect, health, and curiosity aren’t just personal virtues — they’re business strategies. Every leader, regardless of their faith, can carry those lessons forward.

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

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    Suzanne Lucas

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  • Does Owning a Business Push People to the Political Right? A Stanford Study Says Yes

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    Picture a hard-working small business owner, maybe someone who operates a car dealership, a consulting business, or a fast-food franchise. If I tell you nothing else about this person, would you guess they’re more likely to vote for Republican or Democratic? 

    I am willing to go out on a limb and guess most of us would say Republican.

    The image of small business owners as steady, practical, hard-working and interested in pro-growth, pro-business policies aligns with the traditional Republican brand, after all. The extremely high-profile recent shift of Silicon Valley founders towards the right only underlines the link between entrepreneurs and Republicans. Add to this everyday interactions with entrepreneurs and the scales tip decisively towards the right in many people’s minds. 

    But does data back up this intuition? And perhaps more interestingly, if gut feel proves correct, why is it exactly that most small business owners tend to lean right in their politics? A large new Stanford study dug into these questions with interesting results. 

    Data shows small business owners do lean right

    For the study, published in the British Journal of Political Science, a team of researchers out of Stanford and University College London used a few clever methods to get a handle on small business owners’ political loyalties and motivations. 

    The first was the most straightforward: just ask them. The team looked at two historical polls that included questions on self employment and political affiliation and found, “both surveys showed that self-employed Americans were more likely to lean Republican,” according to Insights by Stanford Business 

    That even held true after controlling for demographic characteristics like race, gender, education, and income that tend to influence voting patterns. The researchers then broadened their lens, looking at similar data internationally. In Japan, Germany, and Australia small business owners tend to lean right politically as well. 

    Finally, they compared doctors who own their own practices to those employed by others. Would self-employed physicians have different politics from the otherwise demographically similar doctors who work for someone else? The answer was yes again. 

    Self-employed doctors were up to 5 percentage points more likely to register as Republicans and up to 6 percentage points more likely to donate to Republican candidates. 

    Why do small business owners tend to be Republican? 

    This last finding is particularly interesting as it suggests that it’s not just that those who lean Republican tend to become small business owners. Rather it looks like owning your own business tends to nudge people to the right. 

    The researchers came up with another crafty way to test if this hypothesis was correct. And if it was correct, why entrepreneurs generally move rightwards. They used data from the Covid-era Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to identify small business owners. Then they surveyed them about their personalities, as well as their political and social views. 

    Confirming what the previous evidence suggested, the small business owners again leaned right. As a group they were 18 percent more likely to vote Republican. This wasn’t because of their more generally conservative temperament, the data revealed. Instead, the primary reason for their preference for Republicans was dislike of government regulation.  

    “The experience of running a small business — especially when other employees are involved — increases the likelihood of having to deal with onerous government regulations, which in turn influences one’s political views rightward,” the co-authors concluded.

    Everyday intuition confirmed 

    This is hardly the most shocking research finding ever published. As Gene Marks, founder of small business consulting firm The Marks Group, explained on The Hill, these findings align with his impressions of entrepreneurs after working closely with them for 20 years.  

    “Business owners, though optimistic and opportunistic, are also generally wary and untrusting,” he writes. “Like the rest of us, they know that politicians lie for a living. Tax cuts, economic growth, grants and investments are promised and then never materialize. All things being equal, they would rather hear less from their government leaders than believe in promises that are often broken.”

    Republicans, traditionally, have promised to meddle less. They’ve been rewarded with the votes of more small business owners. Politicians interested in reversing this trend will need to flip the expectations of entrepreneurs. 

    The way to earn an entrepreneur’s political support, this research confirms, is to convince them you’ll stay out of their way. The way to lose it is to give them even more things to worry about. 

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

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    Jessica Stillman

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  • Tech Hiring Is Still Frozen. Here’s the Real Reason Why.

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    A quick glance at the TechCrunch 2025 tech company layoff tracker shows that massive firings across the tech sector have not come close to letting up.

    To date, just in 2025, nearly 90,000 layoffs have made the list, and these are coming from just the major tech companies we’ve all heard of. For example, xAI, Rivian, and Oracle are September’s most current “winners.” 

    The 2025 layoffs sit on top of 2024’s 150,000 cuts, according to the same list, and that’s after “significant cuts” in 2023 and 2022. Let’s use a nice, round, conservative number, and say there’s been about 300,000 tech jobs cut. 

    So quick question: Was there over 300,000 workers worth of fat to be trimmed in the tech industry?

    OK, kind of a trick question. I know for a fact that exactly 300,000 of you will likely say “Hell, no!”

    But even the most cynical among us have to raise an eyebrow at that large a number. I suspect that even if all these tech companies got profitable – and many of them say they did – they’d have a really hard time growing again without hiring up, at least a little.

    That’s a problem that’s only going to snowball. So after four years of massive resource cuts, why is tech hiring still frozen? 

    I have a one-word answer. At the end.

    Truth: You Can’t Cut Your Way To Growth

    Speaking of cynicism, any time you give a short-sighted company a choice: Either cut a less-experienced, not as good, cheaper resource or a more experienced, very good, expensive resource, that company will choose to cut the latter, especially in tech. 

    This is for a couple reasons.

    1. It’s the unfortunate nature of the tech worker beast. Despite conventional wisdom, becoming a tech worker has a very low barrier to entry. In fact, as time goes on and tech evolves, that barrier drops even lower. Remember the “Learn to Code” movement?
    2. For reasons I’ve never understood in 30-plus years of doing tech, the tech company SOP has always been to put as much of the tech department in a black box that gets fed instructions and returns apps. And for reasons I do indeed understand but don’t condone, most every tech worker is fine with this. Which leads to a hard ceiling of value as their salaries continue to increase.

    What does this have to do with growth?

    About 10 years ago, one of my mentors hit me with this quote:

    “You can either grow, or you can make money. One or the other. Not both.”

    As the unstoppable force of AI labor replacement met the immovable object of mandated board calls to make more money, cutting experienced tech workers and replacing them with chatbot-armed junior counterparts became a “two-fer.” The company was able to slash the holy hell out of their tech labor costs while also leaning into AI to boost productivity by a seemingly exponential factor.

    Oh-ho-ho no. That did not work.

    The Shine is Off Of AI-Enhanced Productivity Estimates

    Now, the math isn’t adding up. My favorite CTO once told me:

    “One great developer = 2.5 average developers. And one average developer = 2.5 junior developers.”

    Look, I’m not going to ask you to commit to anecdotal math that one great developer is equal to 6.25 junior developers. But if you’re in tech, in your heart of hearts, you know he’s right. And I’ve found this to be true across the tech spectrum, from QA engineers to database administrators to project managers. 

    But even if you don’t subscribe to the ratio, you have to admit that no one is fooling anyone anymore with ChatGPT as a productive 1:1 replacement for tech labor. The reason last month’s MIT study stating that 95 percent of AI projects haven’t produced any ROI shook every tech company leader to their core is because it was a big statement from a credible source that simply shouted something everyone already knew.

    Prompting Skills Aren’t Skills

    Let’s do a little more math. 

    One junior developer plus AI equals… one junior developer.

    Crap. Might as well fire her too.

    And here we are.

    But why?

    I’ve had my hands in the guts of AI, including some of the first generative AI, for over 15 years. I was the source of what we were building on the data side, what today you could call “small language models,” but we were even too early to call them that.

    So when I first heard about “prompting skills,” I immediately started calling them bullshit. 

    To put it as simply as possible, the person with the best “prompting skills” is going to be the person with the most intimate knowledge of the data, the context of the prompt, and the desired accuracy of the result. It’s about knowing what to ask for, what to negatively prompt against, and what guardrails need to be in place. Not to be “the most convincing” or whatever “prompting skills” were being sold as.

    In other words, if you put a software developer in front of an AI code assistant, the more experienced that developer, the more productivity they are going to get using the assistant. If you give a junior developer that same tool, they will struggle. If you tell a newbie to “vibe code,” they will take down your system.

    And this effect isn’t just in software development or even tech, it’s inherent in every generative AI use case. Everyone who was developing or selling or promoting AI knew this. But the lure of selling 10x or 20x productivity gains, with “no skills necessary”, was too strong to ignore. 

    Thus, one junior tech worker plus ChatGPT equals one junior tech worker. Or even 0.8 junior tech workers because they’re also dealing with hallucinations and not experienced enough to catch them.

    Tech Hiring Is Frozen Because It’s Paralyzed

    Paralysis. That’s the one-word reason why those 300,000 tech jobs, fat or not, aren’t being rehired. 

    “It’s frustrating as hell,” said another friend who is a VP of Product and, not uncoincidentally, is leading a team in a black box of junior product managers and junior engineers. “Everyone is overworked. We need help, but the ELT hasn’t figured out what kind of help. So we’re screwed until they figure that out.”

    And so if I may speculate, the delay is because it’s really, really hard for an executive leadership team to admit they were wrong. Especially when they’re wrong about promises they were sold, not facts they independently verified. I can’t blame them, because what got sold as “AI” is a new science, it would take months before any sort of verification could be done, but to justify the spend, they had to cut expenses somewhere else.

    Like I said, when faced with that decision, they will almost always cut the more experienced, very good, expensive resource. Some tech companies are realizing that now, and tech hiring might be ticking up, almost imperceptibly, but with 300,000 jobs to go, it’ll take a lot more companies to admit their mistakes before we get those lean, experienced, very good tech resources back in place to start fueling growth and unfreezing the hiring cycle.

    If you like a little reckless speculation with your tech, please join my email list and get a heads up whenever I stick my neck out. 

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

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    Joe Procopio

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  • No Joke: Experts Say You Shouldn’t Be Funny at Work

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    There’s always one office joker, isn’t there? The person who can reliably stump up a pun like “I got a career through learning lock picking. It’s opened up so many doors…” when you need a pick-me-up on a humdrum work day. But according to a new report from marketing and management academics — experts who study humor in the workplace — you need to be careful if you’re in the habit of being funny at the office. Because it might backfire, and much of the time the effort isn’t worth the payoff.

    The researchers, from the Universities of Colorado, Arizona, and Melbourne, Australia, write in Phys.org advising that their research, as well as a “growing body of work by other scholars,” shows that it’s actually much harder to be genuinely funny than people think. And in a workplace setting, the downside of a joke landing badly may be larger than the upside you’d get from telling a real corker. 

    One big issue, the researchers point out, is that for a joke to be funny, it has to break certain social rules while simultaneously seeming harmless: jokes that are too lame “get yawns,” but jokes that violate too many rules may end up “triggering outrage.” Landing a joke is hard enough in a comedy club, they note, but in an office environment, the “razor-thin line” between hilarity and upset “becomes even harder to walk,” and what makes one colleague laugh may cross a line for someone else.

    All of this makes great common sense, of course. We all know that shifting social norms mean that some jokes thought funny and clean enough for the TV shows of yesteryear can make us cringe today. Meanwhile, the currents of today’s social norms are blowing in some challenging directions at the moment, meaning edgy jokes may be even more out of place. And while dirty jokes can work well among friends in a bar at night, they really don’t belong in the office because they dance right on that “razor-thin line” of distastefulness. 

    So what’s the problem with telling jokes at work? 

    The report highlights one issue, for example: the difference between women telling jokes and men — simply because women face “harsher backlash than men for behavior seen as offensive or norm-violating,” meaning the impact of trying but failing to be funny may be bigger for women. 

    And while some evidence shows funny managers were seen as having more confidence and being more competent, if their jokes flop, then their their status and credibility can take a hit. Worse, bad jokes can make staff lose trust and respect for a manager, harming their ability to give out advice. This may have bigger business impacts than you realize, as a recent report showing how much staff rely on middle-level managers proves. Plus bosses who are known to be jokers can risk pushing their staff into a position where they feel they have to act amused, even if the jokes are reliably bad. This can sap workers’ energy, sour the working atmosphere and even increase burnout.

    If this sounds like so much gone-off wine (sour grapes….get it?!) to you, and you feel humor really does have a place in your office, then read on. 

    The unfunny team does think humor has an important role to play in business. But it’s more of a backstage part, versus cracking “knock knock” jokes in the spotlight. Comedians often flip the script, the report says, with the audience thinking a shaggy dog story is going to have a certain ending, but then the punchline is a dramatic and funny pivot. Thus while telling jokes may not be worth it in the office, thinking like a comedian may be a valid business habit, the report suggests, because you may end up “reversing assumptions, cooperating to innovate, and creating chasms” which may lead to fresh perspectives, or innovative solutions.

    Of course, like many efforts to change company culture, that’s easier said than done. (And what’s easier done than said? Nothing!)

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    Kit Eaton

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  • Why New Startup Founders Are More Optimistic Than Established Entrepreneurs

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    Despite continued uncertainties about the bottom-line impact of tariffs, and lingering doubts about the economy’s health, polls have shown small business owners’ optimism has risen since the the beginning of the year. Now, new data indicates the confidence of more recent founders is even higher than the generally improving outlook of more established entrepreneurs.

    The upbeat expectations of relatively newer small business owners were captured in a recent survey by email, social media, and digital marketing platform Constant Contact. Its polling of nearly 1,600 entrepreneurs showed founders who launched their companies within the last two years expressed higher levels of optimism about growing their businesses over the next three months than the average of all survey respondents. Leaders of those younger firms were also markedly more confident about the near-term future than respondents whose businesses have operated for a decade or more.

    For example, while 29 percent of all participating founders said they expected to increase headcount in the next quarter, 41 percent of those who launched their companies less than 24 months ago said they planned on hiring within that period. By contrast, just 21 percent of business owners with 10 years’ experience or more thought they’d be able to hire new employees over the next three months.

    Moreover, 76 percent of business owners who launched less than two years ago and now have 100 employees or more said they plan to make new hires in the next three months. According to Constant Contact CEO Frank Vella, more recent entrepreneurs’ higher confidence partly reflects the vigor and positivity of leaders whose companies are still benefitting from early-stage growth.

    “For many this optimism isn’t just a feeling; it’s a reflection of their current growth trajectory,” Vella told Inc. in emailed comments. “Younger businesses are more likely to be hiring, and this rapid scaling imbues a greater confidence in their current position and trajectory. Many of these business owners are highly ambitious as well. They are actively scaling and investing in their future, which naturally fuels a more positive outlook.”

    Those upbeat views were also evident in respondents’ optimism about how they think their companies will perform over the next three months.

    While an average of 31 percent of all participants said they were “extremely confident” about how their business will fare over the next quarter, that figure rose to 41 percent among owners who’ve been in operation less than two years. It was even higher — 60 percent — for members of that more recent cohort with 100 employees or more. It then dropped to less than a quarter of entrepreneurs who launched more than a decade ago.

    Those differences in outlook, Vella says, may come down more recent founders still having the greater flexibility of younger companies to react the various business and economic challenges all small companies are confronting.

    “They were likely founded in the midst of the current economic landscape, which is defined by supply chain issues, rising prices, and general uncertainty,” Vella explained. “Because of this, their business models, supply chains, and marketing strategies were built from the ground up to withstand this volatility…They are accustomed to doing more with less and can adapt their plans without the inertia that can slow down a more established company. In this way they aren’t reacting to a ‘new normal’; this environment is their normal. That makes them structurally better positioned to navigate it.”

    That pliability of smaller businesses may also explain why their owners’ optimism of starkly contrasts the more somber views of corporate leaders. For example, the reading of the most recent Conference Board’s Measure of CEO Confidence survey came in at just 49 points — still in negative territory, despite a 15-point boost over the previous poll.

    By contrast, the National Federation of Independent Business’s recent monthly surveys have shown the confidence of member entrepreneurs steadily rising this summer. Constant Contact’s survey confirms that optimism among entrepreneurs, even as tariff and economic uncertainties weigh more heavily on corporate CEOs.

    Indeed, it found nearly a third of respondents saying now is “an extremely good time” to launch a new product. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter said they considered current market conditions beneficial for growing their companies by opening new physical locations.

    Asked if the higher optimism of more recently launched business founders might reflect an insouciance or naivete that more established business owners may have lost through the experience of tough times, Vella said he instead views their confidence rooted in their success in meeting today’s challenges.

    “These business owners haven’t experienced a more stable economic climate to compare today against, so they are less focused on what’s been lost and more focused on the opportunity directly in front of them,” Vella said. “So, rather than being naive, I’d say they are inherently adapted. They’ve built their businesses for the world as it is today, and that’s a powerful advantage that fuels their confidence and their capacity to grow.”

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    Bruce Crumley

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  • Why You Should Let Financially Savvy Female Employees Guide Your Company’s Benefits

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    Perks on the job are usually a nice bonus to have, and can actually help boost performance, as a recent report on offering frontline workers food and work-sponsored outings shows. Other perks hit the headlines for different, sometimes quirky reasons, like the current trend for of Silicon Valley startups letting people go shoeless in the office. Now a new report focuses on how some benefits have a more direct appeal to working women. Its findings could make a difference at your company.

    The most significant finding in the new data shows that women with a high degree of financial literacy are the least satisfied with their company’s benefits programs.

    The data, from Oregon-based insurance and investments provider The Standard, show that three-quarters of women who identify themselves as highly financially aware said employers really need to consider benefits more carefully, including offering caregiving benefits, according to HRDive. More than half of the survey respondents said they should also have different benefits from other members of their household so that their overall needs are met. We can interpret this as meaning that one partner’s job has benefits like flexible hours that line up with the school run, while the other partner’s work offers perks that, for example, offers an end-of-year bonus that will help during the holiday season.

    The report also notes that as women’s wages rise, their confidence in their own financial acumen rises, and this confidence leads to dissatisfaction with company benefits. Higher wages also correlate with “women feeling more limited in their choices for family and career,” the report says. Data, for example, show that for women earning over $200,000, 35 percent admitted to wanting more children but felt they couldn’t afford to expand their families, compared to just 29 percent of women earning under $50,000. Meanwhile, 42 percent of women in the top pay bracket said they’d like to shift their careers, compared to 35 percent of lower-paid women, suggesting that the top earners definitely feel more stuck. 

    Anecdotally, this makes sense: higher wages can be perceived as “golden handcuffs,” and taking time off to have children may impact working women’s household earnings (especially if an employer doesn’t offer family-centric perks). 

    The data also show that women report less confidence in understanding benefits and matters like insurance. That’s important, because two-thirds of women are the primary providers of household-related benefits, and this figure is 72 percent for women making less than $50,000 — the group that also reports the lowest level of financial confidence.

    The report quotes The Standard’s senior vice president for External Affairs, Marketing and Communications, Justin Delany, who outlined why the data is important for companies considering tweaks to their staff benefits packages. “To be most effective at retaining and engaging employees, workplace benefits need to meet the unique needs of different employee populations,” Delaney said, adding that the data show “employers have a significant gap — and opportunity — in meeting the needs of women employees with tailored employee benefits and financial education.”

    The report also points out that tailoring benefits packages for women, as well as benefits education programs to help them better understand what’s on offer, could help people choose their best options. Offering flexible benefits packages, tailored to women workers’ needs, could be key to recruiting and then retaining female staff.

    In March this year, for example, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser landed her company’s benefits system in the spotlight because, unusually among Wall Street firms, she decided to make a concerted effort to support working mothers. While many other industry giants are pushing for strict return-to-office rules, citing vague team-building notions to explain the mandates, Fraser told her staff they’re sticking to the hybrid working model that evolved during the pandemic, allowing most workers to be remote at least two days a week. As well as being what she thinks is truly a “new way of working,” the policy is also extremely family-friendly, and may specifically appeal to working mothers who (as The Standard’s data underlines) typically have more family duties than male workers. 

    What can you take away from this for your company?

    First, if your company offers flexible benefits packages, then you may want to offer, repeat or maybe even rejig an in-house educationaa program explaining the benefits to your staff, particularly since The Standard’s data show women have less confidence in their understanding of these topics.

    Secondly, you have an opportunity to carefully tailor your benefits packages to appeal to female staff — particularly your higher-paid workers. Offering suitable benefits could act as a competitive advantage in the job market, and you could attract talented workers who’d perhaps balk at rival firms’ less-promising benefits packages. It may even help you retain your most valuable female workers for the long term.

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    Kit Eaton

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  • These 10 Jobs Are the Hardest on Your Feet

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    Working on your feet can be a real pain, but certain jobs put workers at a high risk of developing chronic pain if they don’t wear the right shoes.

    Aching feet might seem like a trivial problem, but left unmanaged, the condition can greatly diminish work performance and overall quality of life by limiting mobility, according to orthopedic shoe brand KURU Footwear. According to the Joint Replacement Institute, a surgical practice in Naples, Fla., foot pain can also be the first sign of more serious health problems, such as type 2 diabetes and peripheral arterial disease — when plaque builds up in the veins of the lower body, potentially causing a heart attack or stroke.

    “When foot pain sets in, it can affect your focus, your mood, and your ability to keep going,” a KURU spokesperson said in a blog post. “For many, that discomfort doesn’t stop at clock-out either. Feet pain after work is a daily reality that makes it harder to enjoy the downtime you’ve earned.”

    More than 44 percent of adults say they experience ongoing foot pain, and a third of them said it’s caused by their job, according to the footwear company’s survey of working U.S. adults. Sixty-two percent said the pain is exacerbated by their jobs, to the point that nearly half (48 percent) have considered changing careers. In their current roles, foot pain has caused disruptions: 20 percent admitted to taking more breaks than usual; 9 percent have left work early and 7 percent called in sick.

    While certain hands-on jobs are expected to be tougher on feet, a few desk jobs were also more sole-crushing than you’d expect. Here are the 10 industries that cause the most foot pain, according to KURU Footwear:

    1. Technology / IT

    That’s right, the top spot goes to a desk job. Long hours of sitting can lead to stiffness, but IT workers also have to trek across campuses or server floors, which can strain their feet.

    2. Healthcare / Medical

    Long hours on hard hospital floors make this one of the toughest industries for foot health — ask any nurses, doctors, and aides.

    3. Retail

    Manning a register and patrolling store aisles can do a number on employees’ arches.

    4. Construction

    Lifting heavy objects over uneven ground in heavy boots is bound to cause foot pain.

    5. Manufacturing

    Spending hours on assembly line concrete floors gets tiresome fast.

    6. Education / Teaching

    Teachers spend most of the day on their feet giving lessons and supervising students, which adds up to a lot of pain.

    7. Warehouse / Logistics

    These workers are constantly lifting heavy objects on concrete floors, making foot pain unavoidable.

    8. Hospitality

    Servers, bartenders, and hotel staff are on their feet for entire shifts.

    9. Finance / Banking

    Working long hours in unsupportive dress shoes can catch up to finance workers, especially if they wear high heels.

    10. Homemaking

    While it doesn’t come with a salary or health plan, the hours stay-at-home parents put into caring for children is far greater than a full-time job. These parents are always on the go and need supportive footwear as much as any other occupation.

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    Kayla Webster

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  • Women’s Take-Home Pay Often Drops 10 Percent During Menopause, a Study Finds

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    The gender pay gap means women on average earn just 85 cents for every dollar made by men, with many cases made worse by differences in education, job type, and work experience. Now a new Stanford University study highlights another issue decimating women’s paychecks. Released in March 2025, this study found that women who seek medical care for their menopause symptoms see a 10 percent reduction in pay within the following four years. We spoke with experts—physicians specializing in hormonal health whose companies also provide innovative menopause benefits—to explore how to support women’s careers, retain top talent, and address this major pay equity issue.

    Led by Petra Persson, an economist, professor, and faculty fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), the study aimed to quantify the financial toll of entering perimenopause and menopause. The findings confirmed what many women already know: common menopause symptoms like hot flashes, brain fog, and fatigue translate directly into economic loss as women cut back on their work hours or quit altogether. 

    “For decades, social scientists have analyzed the ‘motherhood penalty,’ but until now, we haven’t known what the financial consequences are for women at the other end of the reproductive spectrum, when they enter menopause,” Persson told the Stanford Report. “We have parental leave policies, and we have policies that support workers when their productivity dips for health reasons, so it makes sense to also have policies that help women during the menopause transition,” she added, noting that 20 percent of working women have reached that life stage.

    According to The 2025 Bonafide State of Menopause Survey, menopause benefits — a combination of medical, mental health, and professional support — offset the impact of menopause and enable women to extend their careers. Though 71 percent of all women surveyed reported that they were unprepared for how disruptive menopause symptoms can be — an 8-percentage point rise since 2023 — just 12 percent of employed respondents reported that their employers offer accommodations for their symptoms.

    It’s a costly disconnect. In 2023, a Mayo Clinic study including over 4,400 employed women as subjects identified that menopause symptoms result in $1.8 billion of missed work time annually in the U.S.

    “Menopause support is not a ‘perk’ — it’s a productivity, retention, and equity strategy,” says Dr. Cristina Del Toro Badessa, a physician and hormone health specialist currently working with Artisan Beaute. “Women at midlife often hold senior, high-impact roles. Supporting them through this transition is both the right thing to do and a smart business decision that directly impacts the bottom line,” she said. 

    Because menopause’s effects and symptoms vary widely among individual women, experts recommend offering a menu of benefit options for employees.

    “When I think about what makes menopause and perimenopause benefits effective, the most important aspect is that they are comprehensive,” says Asima Ahmad, obstetrician, reproductive endocrinologist, and obesity medicine specialist. Ahmad also serves as the co-founder and chief medical officer of Carrot Fertility, she says her own company offers telemedicine consultations for hormone replacement therapy, non-hormonal treatment options, mental and emotional support, clinically supervised education, access to nutritionists, expert-led group sessions, office menopause break rooms, and access to other holistic care options. 

    A flexible, hybrid work schedule can also be a “game-changer for managing symptoms,” she says. “In our 2023 Menopause in the Workplace survey, 72 percent of respondents reported having to deal with feeling self-conscious or uncomfortable after experiencing a menopause symptom at work,” says Ahmad. “Many of these women also reported having to use the restroom for privacy during the workday or take time off of work, with the majority of respondents concealing the real reason for their time off. Providing flexible work hours or the ability to work from home means that women don’t have to take time off to manage their symptoms or feel embarrassed.”

    Though many women report “not feeling like themselves” and consider making major life changes during menopause, Ahmad emphasizes that many symptoms, like memory lapses and mood swings, are often temporary and transitional. “While these symptoms may be highly interruptive for a period of time, most women we see eventually recover,” Ahmad says, suggesting that employees shouldn’t necessarily make permanent career changes. 

    According to the Cleveland Clinic, symptoms tend to begin in one’s mid-40s during perimenopause and last for an average of seven years. 

    Ahmad adds that addressing a long-standing stigma around menopause in the workplace could help alleviate feelings of isolation. Menopause benefits send a strong message to women that they are valued in the workplace at all stages of their reproductive cycles, from fertility and pregnancy, to postpartum recovery, through the menopause transition, and beyond. 

    As for the pace of progress, the Bonafide Health survey suggests that the workplace has become more welcoming in “baby steps,” but has a long way to go. 

    “Companies that act now will be ahead of the curve,” Ahmad tells Inc.

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

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    Lauren Gray

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  • UPS worker dies in Richmond workplace accident

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    RICHMOND — A woman died Sunday in an industrial accident while working for UPS in Richmond, her family said.

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    Rick Hurd

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  • Is RTO Hurting Your Employee Morale? Manager Burnout Could Be to Blame

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    Return to office (RTO) mandates aren’t popular, as report after report shows. Whether they are announced in a my way or the highway style, like Amazon’s Andy Jassy or JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, or with less bluster. Some research shows RTOs are not effective tools for boosting productivity, and that plenty of workers are finding ways to skirt the policy.

    Now a new report suggests that the gap between RTO mandates and employee compliance remains because many managers may be so burnt out that they’re completely uninterested in forcing their staff to follow controversial and deeply unpopular company rules. It could be that over-stressed managers are driving this so-called “hushed hybrid” office culture, Fortune suggests.

    Support for this conclusion comes from a survey by Flex Index, which describes itself as a platform for analyzing flexible workplace habits. Among 14,000 companies it looked at, increasing numbers of RTO mandates drove required in-office time up by 12 percent since early 2024, meaning staff have gone from an average expected office attendance rate of 2.57 days a week to 2.87. That may sound modest, but remember this includes companies that remain fully remote. Regardless of what the RTO rules say, actual attendance has not risen at the same rate. Over the same period while in-office time expectations rose 12 percent, actual attendance only rose by 1 percentage point, to 3 percent.

    Brian Elliott, CEO of Work Forward, which publishes the Flex Index, told Fortune that some workers can get away with ignoring leadership demands that they spend more time in the office in person with practical arguments supporting more flexible arrangements. For example, managing online meetings with multiple staff members across multiple time zones remains challenging in any setting — so staying at home on a day like that wouldn’t make a difference to productivity.

    And, given high levels of management burnout and disengagement, employees may be more likely to get away with this sort of trick more often than you may expect. “If I’m the manager and I’ve got a solid performer and they’re coming in two or three days a week, but not five, I’m not going to fire them,” Elliott said. That’s because as long as someone is “delivering the goods and getting their work done,” managers who are under severe pressure themselves may simply decide that compliance with certain policies is lower on the list of priorities.

    Anecdotally, Elliott’s thinking makes sense: reports show that executive burnout remains a serious issue in U.S. workplaces, with a survey in March reporting some 72 percent of workplace leaders report feeling burned out. Given the trend toward flatter business structures with fewer middle managers, led by big tech firms like Meta and Microsoft, it’s entirely plausible that stressed-out middle managers, overburdened with work and worried about the threat technology like AI represents to their own jobs, would simply ignore the exact amount of time that key workers spend in the office, even if it violates RTO rules that have been sent down from upper management.

    Why should you care about this?

    It’s another signal that RTO rules sometimes just don’t make good business sense. If you expect your managers to enforce an unpopular new rule, you might be adding to their already high stress levels while also genereating resentment from the employees that report to them. That’s a recipe for increasing the chance your strict RTO policy might simply be ignored by the people who are supposed to enforce it.

    If your company is requiring people to spend more time in the office, then perhaps the way to make your policy work is with encouragement and perks: Flex Index’s data show that if you try stamping your foot, you might just end up being ignored, and, possibly, hurting your workforce’s perception of your leadership.

    Also, there’s an underlying data point here: managers may be burning out under your leadership, and it’s possible you may not have noticed. It might be time for a pep talk, and honest chats about work burdens and stresses. 

    The final deadline for the 2025 Inc. Best in Business Awards is Friday, September 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Kit Eaton

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  • Top 10 Tools for Improving Workplace Productivity in 2024 – Southwest Journal

    Top 10 Tools for Improving Workplace Productivity in 2024 – Southwest Journal

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    The pace of the modern workplace can really pick up speed these days with all our digital ways of getting things done. Finding ways to work efficiently is more important than ever.

    It’s important we take a look at the tools that can help make our jobs a little less hectic.

    Let’s discuss some options that could help streamline how we work and boost our productivity. 

    Knowing what’s out there can really help us save time and energy for what matters most.

    1. OnPay

    A Woman Using OnPay HR Software on A Laptop

    OnPay helps with handling payroll and all things HR. It looks like it takes the complicated stuff, like payroll, taxes, and benefits, and streamlines it through solid automation.

    Employees probably love the self-service portal too – it gives them easy access to their info and builds more transparency. As a business, it takes compliance worries off your plate since OnPay keeps up with changing tax rules. That’s a big relief!

    I can see why HR loves OnPay. Connecting with other accounting and time-tracking tools lets them spend more time on growth plans versus paperwork. 

    Pretty cool that it pulls everything together in one handy place. If you’re looking for ways to simplify processes and comply with everything, OnPay sounds like it deserves a good look. If you want to learn more about this one, click here.

    2. Respona

    Respona is really helpful for teams doing a lot with link-building and PR campaigns. It automates the whole outreach process from finding new contacts to sending follow-up messages.

    I like that it has a built-in search tool to efficiently uncover people to engage with. And keeping email addresses accurate as you communicate saves a lot of headaches later on.

    The automation is probably a lifesaver for PR teams. Instead of spending hours on routine tasks, they can focus their energy on creative content and strategy. No wonder it boosts productivity and campaign success!

    For agencies with multiple clients, Respona’s tools must be a dream come true. Being able to execute precise campaigns across the board with minimal manual work would save so much stress. Definitely one tool I’d recommend checking out.

    3. ProofHub


    ProofHub looks like it could be great for teams juggling lots of different projects at once. Having all your task and project management in one central place must streamline everything.

    I like that it offers tools for delegating work, setting timelines, and tracking hours. That level of organization probably helps everyone stay accountable and on schedule.

    Customizing workflows and visual task views seem perfect for managers to spot where things are backing up and redistribute work smoothly. Communication and file sharing features also keep important info flowing between team members.

    Keeping all projects coordinated without overwhelm is so important. ProofHub sounds like it could really help project teams stay aligned on objectives without losing sight of the details. Definitely one tool worth checking and demoing if you want all your project management in one helpful hub.

    4. Shift

    The Shift is a real game-changer for the way we navigate the digital world. Instead of hopping between a million different sites and apps, it brings everything together in one slick interface.

    I can see how the search and calendar tools would make tasks way more seamless without constant tab switching. Organizing your tools into focused “workspaces” probably cuts out a ton of clutter and prevents distractions too.

    For folks who rely on various software daily, Shift’s centralization could be a huge timesaver. No more minutes wasted moving between programs – everything’s streamlined in one place.

    It’s like Shift revolutionizes how we manage our online lives. Having all accounts and resources so neatly organized has to seriously boost productivity. For anyone drowning in tabs or apps, this sounds like it’s really worth a look.

    5. Todoist

    Todoist - A To-Do List to Organize Your Work & LifeTodoist - A To-Do List to Organize Your Work & Life

    Todoist is one of the best tools for wrangling all your work into order. With it, you can build custom task lists, adjust priority levels, and categorize projects to stay on top of daily duties and long-term goals.

    I know workflow is key – that’s why Todoist integrates with tons of other apps so well. Bounce between devices and programs without missing a beat. One place to manage everything is clutch.

    Whether you’re working solo or on a massive team, Todoist’s intuitive layout and options make it extremely versatile too. The app speaks your language no matter what kind of tasks you face.

    Complex schedules got you down? Todoist helps you break projects into bite-sized pieces that feel totally manageable. Finally getting organized is such a game-changer for productivity – and Todoist makes it a breeze. 

    6. Trello

    Trello is such a cool way for teams to map out projects visually. With its boards and card setup, you can effortlessly track progress by dragging tasks between columns as milestones are hit.

    I like that setting up boards keeps everything neatly organized by project too. The automation features are clutch – things like automatic reminders and status updates save so much time.

    Can you imagine how much smoother meetings must go when issues are right there on the board? No confusion about where things stand. Collaborating in real-time has to make the process way more engaging.

    If you want a simple, visual tool that streamlines project tracking without all the fuss, Trello is an amazing pick. I can see why it’s beloved by so many teams.

    7. Slack

    A Slack Chat Interface Showing a Countdown for A Launch EventA Slack Chat Interface Showing a Countdown for A Launch Event

    Slack has totally changed the game for how teams connect and share info. Instead of endless email chains and meetings, it pulls all your conversations into one handy place that’s simple to search.

    I love how it lets you split into channels based on topic too. Direct messages are great for private chats. And wow, being able to connect apps must take collaboration to the next level.

    No more digging for that snippet someone said last week. With Slack, important discussions and quick updates live right at your fingertips. That kind of accessibility has to streamline workflows like nothing else.

    It’s easy to see why Slack is such a go-to in today’s workplace. Whether you’re debating details or sharing status checks, it supports natural communication in ways that boost productivity for good. An absolute must-have for modern teams!

    8. Asana

    Asana is a super helpful way for teams to stay synced on all their projects. You can craft detailed to-do lists, set timelines, and delegate work – keeping tabs on tasks is that much smoother.

    I like that you can customize the workflows too. That level of flexibility probably helps projects run extra smoothly. Tracking progress is key for keeping everyone accountable.

    Managers must love how Asana gives clear visibility into where things stand. No more guessing if delays are creeping in. Just make sure everyone’s on the same page.

    Coordinating teams can feel like herding cats some days. Asana’s tools look perfect for maintaining that alignment and driving true collaboration. When you need rock-solid project management, this one is a no-brainer.

    9. Google Workspace

    Google Workspace for Improving Workplace ProductivityGoogle Workspace for Improving Workplace Productivity

    Google Workspace is incredible for taking teamwork to the next level. With apps like Gmail, Drive, Docs, and Calendar all connected, collaborating is seamless.

    Sharing files and scheduling meetings between teams is effortless. And I love that Workspace lets you access everything from anywhere – talk about flexibility!

    The interface is super intuitive too. No learning curves there. And those collaboration perks have to seriously optimize how businesses operate.

    When streamlining is the name of the game, Google Workspace is unbeatable. Foster that cooperative spirit while boosting productivity. Yes, please! If you want powerful yet easy tools for teams, this is the suite for you.

    10. Evernote

    Evernote is hands-down one of the best ways to get your life organized. 

    I love that you can capture any type of info from scribbles to web pages. Talk about an all-in-one brain dump! Having important stuff so easily searchable is such a time-saver too.

    Maybe you’re someone who’s always scrambling to find that one note. Or always starting projects from scratch since your files are buried. Evernote puts an end to that madness for good.

    Productivity and efficiency are within reach when you can rely on Evernote to be your trusted second brain. 

    The Bottom Line

    A Man Using Tools for Improving Workplace ProductivityA Man Using Tools for Improving Workplace Productivity
    This Image Is Generated by Midjourney

    Picking the right work tools is so important these days when everything moves a million miles an hour. 

    The apps mentioned really do make adapting much easier.

    Each one offers unique ways to smooth out processes, foster teamwork, and optimize how you spend your time. 

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    Natasa Pantelic

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  • Senior bank leaders must articulate a clear strategy for adopting AI

    Senior bank leaders must articulate a clear strategy for adopting AI

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    The most effective leaders understand that you don’t lead with technology to drive change. Rather, technology is an enabler to overcome business challenges and realize a future different than today, writes Fiserv’s Dudley White.

    Amgun – stock.adobe.com

    As the myriad of new AI technology applications and their burgeoning potential becomes more and more a part of the conversation in business and banking, there is one common truth: No one will get to sit this one out.

    While it is essential to adopt an “eyes wide open” approach that takes into account the potential pitfalls of AI, and ensures use of these capabilities is ethical and responsible, it will be impossible for financial institutions to avoid AI altogether, and those that try risk losing ground in a competitive market.

    When talking about integrating AI, a great deal of attention is focused on the technology piece, such as evaluating various applications or how to select AI vendors. But there has not been commensurate attention on the critical role of leadership. None of the AI technology matters unless banking executives demonstrate clear leadership around it.

    What does that mean? Broadly, senior executives are charged with shaping organizational culture and encouraging a comprehensive range of business operations in the financial services sector. The most effective leaders understand that you don’t lead with technology to drive change. Rather, technology is an enabler to overcome business challenges and realize a future different than today.

    Before integrating transformative technology like AI and generative AI, a financial institution’s leadership must first be aligned on the business problems they’re attempting to solve. Banking leaders, and their staff, need to have a clear north star.

    Do you want to be known for customer service, being the lowest-cost provider or for being innovative? AI can help across all of these dimensions. It can be leveraged to enhance and personalize customer interactions, to increase back-office efficiency or to position an institution at the forefront of the market with new product offerings. All of this requires leadership direction. Otherwise, a financial institution can end up in a nebulous space, not really having a clear road map for what changes are necessary.

    Continued leadership along the progressive continuum of adoption is critical. Even when an organization is able to define and articulate a north star, leaders may be challenged in convincing employees to embrace AI. And that resistance will slow transformation.

    Consider a bank that is implementing AI to address customer service needs and is transitioning to AI-enabled self-service. The bank’s traditional service staff may be understandably concerned about being replaced by the technology. Account holders, as well, may initially resist using self-service products. From a change perspective, leadership means proactively educating employees on how the new efficiency will allow them to spend time on more high-value account holder needs instead of mundane everyday tasks that can be ably handled by the AI. And, crucially, the initiative must be taken to ensure the added value is articulated to account holders and other key stakeholders. This is a positive evolution that will make their financial lives easier.

    A different type of leadership will be required as financial institutions wade into generative AI, given its ability to create content and predict outcomes. While many banking executives have grown comfortable with conversational AI and are now trying to optimize it, there’s more hesitancy around generative AI. It is a curiosity for many with questions around the art of the possible. How can it help with lead generation or fraud models? How will predictive capabilities create new standards for expectations and experiences? No one wants to be left behind, but there are plenty of inherent regulatory and compliance risks with predictive AI to create leadership paralysis.

    A reasonable way to proceed is to start small and then scale rapidly. Rather than trying to do it all at once, implement one use case and then begin to ramp up — all while keeping the identified business strategy or north star in mind. With AI, the logical path for a financial institution to evolve its technology is to become as much of an expert as possible around conversational AI and implement chat-based support. Other early use cases for financial institutions may be leveraging AI to develop code, to help with lead generation or to create back-office efficiencies.

    As a financial institution works to achieve success with early initiatives, it should continue to build up the AI culture and the AI tool kit before moving to generative AI. Develop strategic partnerships with fintechs well-versed in AI capabilities and potentially academia to strengthen confidence with AI skill sets internally. Create centers of excellence in these skills. Engaging in partnerships with academia can streamline the path to building AI knowledge. Banking staff appreciate the opportunity to learn from trusted sources, especially those that are skilled in breaking down complex technology into progressive levels of learning.

    As the financial services industry continues to navigate the emergence of AI capabilities, banking executives can feel as though they are walking on a frozen lake, not knowing where the thin ice lies. This new technology only holds value when it’s driven by leadership that’s bold and visionary, while still measured. Though there are risks when it comes to AI adoption, the technology is here to stay. There is significant potential for adopters of AI to see success, in an area where no one wants to be left out in the cold.

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    Dudley White

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