Hello, please let it work.
For years, my Gen-Z son had told his skeptical mother that the second Trump terminology would lead to the technology and political control of the anti-awakening young man who grew up online. He was right and I was wrong.
This change is closely linked to the diversity, equity and dismantling of our company’s comprehensive programmes and the banned and sometimes banned.
Can you refocus and rebuild the company’s dei? Many experts believe that the answers to nonpartisan, long-term progress are already available. There is a good shorthand for Bloomberg’s incredible work by two law professors. The author cites two types of Dei. The first is “lifting.” This provides preference or exclusive access to a particular group and uses quotas and targets. These practices are now illegal to some US organizations and are being removed by many more.
In contrast, “leveling days” can be in the workplace for a long time and may remain. It focuses on things like “opening gender and race-based affinity groups in every corner” such as removing the by-acing of the recruitment and promotion process to make it fair to everyone.
Thank you to David Glasgow, co-author of the article, and Sarah Minor Massey at PWC for sharing her lifting/leveling ideas on LinkedIn. Both of these experts are great followers for Dei’s wisdom, not Njak or panic. Want to hear your opinions on the future of diversity in the workplace, on record or off: isabel.berwick@ft.com
Sorry, it was a long time, but a lot has happened. Check out the latest FT DEI reports here.
Read amazing insights into agent AI in the workplace – present and future.
Agents that enhance your workflow (not so secret)
I first talked to Iliana Oris Valiente about the Working IT podcast last summer. She has AI-driven digital twins called laila, who look and hear like her human companions. And she (Irl iliana) is the managing director and is trained in Iliana’s work at Accenture, a leading North American innovation hub. Lila can go to meetings, answer Iliana’s questions and free humans for more complicated tasks.
This week, as Iliana was passing through London, I caught up with her and asked her what was new and coming to AI. Not everyone can have a sophisticated digital twin, but what has changed since we last spoke eight months ago is that everyone who uses digital agents at work (I I want to call them “helpers”) which means they are no longer “frontier” topics.
The pioneer of this huge shift, part of what Accenture calls “The Binary Big Bang,” is when Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announces “Hard Pivot” on the AgentForce platform It’s here. laborer. (AgentForce ads are displayed on the London Underground, so it’s really mainstream right now.)
Iliana and her team and clients asked how they used Agent AI. When I say the answer is complicated and that my key point from the conversation was that I can’t “paste” into an existing workflow and get things better, I’ve got to do it. I hope that. We all need to think about our work differently. It’s probably a company blueprint for a leader in large legacy companies that has multiple internal divisions and features (“silo”🫣) or not to mention agile startups or organizational charts. It’s a more recent scale-up. (Related: My colleague Andrew Hill wrote a must-read analysis of the problems facing industrial Titans in the United States of the 20th century.)
Here is Iliana: “If you’re building a process, you need to rethink the entire process from scratch and embed the agent. You just need to take a clunky process and have the agent do exactly what a human was doing in the past. Not that.”
So the future is likely to be agents, and many technologies are intuitive – new skills are needed to implement the rollout, thanks to generative AI that can process and speak our language It will become. As Iliana emphasizes, “There is a skill set in less attractive business process mapping, but the design of AI systems requires that processes be mapped, which means that Vogue is very large and very large, You’ll need it. It’ll be over.”
Hop on that mapping to keep your career in the future. Or just sit back and enjoy the possibility that efficient agents will give us more free time. Wearing an Iliana Futurist hat, she suggests that in the long run, AI might save 10 hours a week on our work. “I’m ready for the world of AI as I begin to develop my hobby.”
i love this. Other times, 🏃🏻♂ssssss, and my favorite, 🏊♀️.
In a nutshell, Agent AI remakes our work, but it’s not bolt-on. You need to use integration agents to map everything we do, break it down and rebuild it better.
Do you want more? Accenture’s Tech Vision Report 2025 has the charts and trends you’ll need for your next presentation 😉
Office Therapy
Problem: I am two years after completing my degree in a business-related field and then a career in a financial institution. My work is heart-breaking and there is no room for excessive bureaucracy and innovation. How can I pivot towards a field where my interests are more prominent?
If I could spend time again at university, I would have ideally pursued the humanities that would enter the academia. I feel very stuck. Am I destined to work for a dull company forever? What’s the answer when you return to school?
Answer: You’re going through a discussion of money and passion (or you can say “Head vs Heart” because it’s almost Valentine’s Day ❤️).
As someone who worked in the same postcode as a financial institution, but knew both sides of this equation without making anything like city money. I met a lot of people financially. (But… Have you seen the industry?! Finance is cool again.)
We sought expert advice from Jonathan Black, Oxford University’s Director of Career Services. You could also release it part-time, one or two days a week, perhaps to earn a degree in the humanities.
“Or stay in financial services, but move sideways to an organization with a better bureaucratic and creative culture that suits you.”
I completed my master’s degree in the evening while working at my first job. Because at the time I was in the middle of journalism and returned to academia. Try out part-time degrees and you’ll meet fascinating people and get a perspective on what it really looks like in college.
My proposed doctoral dissertation on the representation of women in 19th century Spanish literature turns out to be unnecessary, but I sometimes think about roads that I am not traveling. Anything you decide, it will work. You may need to make some pit stops and detours along the way.
As Jonathan reminds us, “In this challenging job market, especially for people in their 20s, you are in a relatively luxurious position to play a high-paying, safe role. This is what builds. It’s a powerful foundation for doing so.”
Have a good holiday and get career coaching (even better if your employer pays for it) – take your time.
Are there any dilemmas of office therapy? It anonymizes everything. Email: isabel.berwick@ft.com
Five Top Stories from the World of Work
Office attendance is becoming a performance metric. Emma Jacobs and Anjuli Laval look at the emerging trend of bosses checking employee office attendance data and use it in pay and performance reviews. Better data means more surveillance and it is difficult to escape missions to the office.
A quiet AI revolution is underway in the workplace. I really enjoy this column by Samjoe about the unexpected way that AI is being used in the workplace, often under the nose of an employer who doesn’t know it.
The Slow Bloomer Case: Tim Harford delves into the phenomenon of creativity and productivity in later life. Time of change (and it includes references to my book).
Deloitte asks the US government to remove gender pronouns from emails. This move from Deloitte is in contrast to the UK sector as the outcome of Donald Trump’s ban on DEI’s policies in government began to feel more widespread. Write Elecheva Kissin and Miles McCormick on “Down.” Diversity Policy.
British Hong Kongers have a hard time paying for their skills in the job market. Since 2021, more than 150,000 Hong Kongers have settled in the UK, many of whom are highly qualified and have years of experience. As Delphine Strauss reports, many people struggle to find jobs that will be nearby to suit their skills.
One more thing. . .
A book of different works: The lucky woman at Polly Borland tells the life and career of a GP in an unknown country with beautiful photographs. The book is located in the same valley as John Berger’s classic book, The Lucky Man, written in the 1960s, and recorded the life and work of John Sassar (pseudonym), and was a local doctor at the time. This latest version confirms that the village’s medical practices and the care it provides are still pillars of the community. If you’re a fellow urbanite who thinks this kind of medicine has disappeared, read this and marvel.
giveaway of this week’s book📕
I’m interested in ping! (Come on, the title is Genius) a new book on “The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication” by Andrew Brozky, a professor of management at the University of Texas at Austin. There are advice on increasing virtual meeting games, increasing effective workplace messaging, and building relationships with your team when working remotely in a hybrid. The book was published in the UK by Penguin Life and in the US by Simon & Schuster (which costs £16.99/$28.99). Working IT Leader has 10 copies. You will be in this form by 5pm on Friday, February 14th.
(Last week I managed to ruin my talk book gift. Thank you to everyone who kept up the entry. The winner will get the book right away.
