Who Is the Future of Work Actually Being Designed For?

Who Is the Future of Work Actually Being Designed For?

We talk constantly about the future of work.

AI.

Automation.

Hybrid work.

Return-to-office mandates.

Skills.

Productivity.

Reskilling.

Workforce reductions.

Everywhere you look, organizations are trying to figure out what work will look like next.

But in our rush to redesign work, there's a question we aren't asking nearly enough:

Who are we actually designing it for?

The organization?

The customer?

The shareholder?

The employee?

Or can we create something that works better for all of them?

That's the question at the center of my conversation with Stacey Lewis, Founder and CEO of HR Interrupted, on Episode 84 of the Her Resources Podcast.

And the answer isn't simply about AI.

It's about what kind of workplace we want to create as AI gives us the opportunity to rethink almost everything.

AI Is a Tool. The Bigger Question Is What We Do With It.

There's no question AI is going to change work.

It already is.

Tasks will disappear.

Jobs will evolve.

New roles will emerge.

Organizations will become more efficient.

But Stacey makes an important distinction during our conversation:

AI is a tool.

And tools don't determine the future.

People do.

Technology can help us automate transactional work, analyze enormous amounts of information, make faster decisions, and dramatically increase productivity.

But efficiency alone isn't a vision for the future of work.

If the only question leaders ask is:

"How much work can we eliminate?"

we're missing the bigger opportunity.

What if we also asked:

"What kind of work could we create?"

Are We Losing the Spirit of Work?

This was one of the questions from our conversation that stayed with me.

Work is obviously economic.

People work because they need income.

Organizations employ people because they need work performed.

But work has always been more than a transaction.

Work can provide purpose.

Community.

Identity.

Relationships.

Learning.

Opportunity.

Contribution.

Belonging.

As organizations become increasingly focused on efficiency, there's a danger that we optimize the humanity right out of work.

That doesn't mean preserving every job exactly as it exists today.

It means recognizing that when we redesign work, we're redesigning something that occupies an enormous part of people's lives.

That deserves more thought than a productivity calculation.

Work Is a Relationship

For years, we've talked about the employer-employee relationship as if the responsibility flowed primarily in one direction.

Employees should be loyal.

Productive.

Engaged.

Flexible.

Accountable.

But relationships require something from both sides.

Organizations need people to contribute.

People need organizations to provide opportunity, clarity, honesty, and a reasonable degree of trust.

That relationship has become strained.

Employees have watched layoffs happen over Zoom.

Organizations have struggled with disengagement.

Leaders have issued return-to-office mandates.

Employees have pushed for flexibility.

Companies want commitment.

Workers increasingly question whether that commitment will ever be reciprocated.

Perhaps the future of work requires us to stop asking:

"What do employees owe employers?"

or

"What do employers owe employees?"

and start asking:

"What does a healthy employment relationship require from both?"

Layoffs Are Business Decisions. How We Handle Them Is a Leadership Decision.

One of the most direct parts of my conversation with Stacey centers on layoffs.

Sometimes organizations have to make difficult workforce decisions.

Businesses change.

Markets change.

Technology changes.

Strategies change.

Jobs sometimes disappear.

But there's a difference between making a difficult decision and delivering that decision without humanity.

We've seen employees terminated through mass emails.

Access shut off without warning.

People discovering their job disappeared because their badge stopped working.

Employees with years of service treated like an entry in a spreadsheet.

The argument is often that layoffs are simply business.

But how leaders handle those moments is also business.

Employees who remain are watching.

Candidates are watching.

Customers are watching.

And people remember how organizations behave when things get difficult.

Trust Doesn't Disappear With the Employees Who Leave

Organizations sometimes underestimate what happens after a poorly handled layoff.

The people who remain ask:

Could that happen to me?

Does loyalty matter here?

Can I trust what leadership tells me?

Should I start looking somewhere else?

You may eliminate positions in a day.

But rebuilding trust can take years.

That's why humanity shouldn't be treated as something separate from business strategy.

Trust is business strategy.

Reskilling Can't Just Be Something We Say

If AI is going to significantly change jobs, organizations frequently point toward the same solution:

Reskilling.

It sounds reassuring.

But Stacey and I challenge what that actually means.

It's easy to tell workers:

"You need to learn new skills."

It's much harder to create the infrastructure that allows them to do it.

Are employees given time to learn?

Do they know which skills will actually matter?

Does training connect to real opportunities?

Are managers supporting development?

Is the organization investing in workers whose current jobs may eventually disappear?

Or are we telling people to reskill while expecting them to figure everything out themselves?

Real reskilling requires investment, opportunity, and time.

Otherwise, it's just another corporate talking point.

What If We Reskilled People for Their Careers, Not Just Their Current Jobs?

Stacey raises another idea that I think organizations need to consider.

What if reskilling wasn't only about preparing someone for another role inside one company?

What if we helped people build skills that made them more employable across an entire industry?

At first, that can sound counterintuitive.

Why invest in someone who might eventually leave?

But perhaps that's an outdated way of thinking about the employment relationship.

Very few employees will spend their entire career with one organization.

If companies genuinely want people to embrace continuous learning, perhaps they need to recognize that development isn't simply about retention.

It's about employability.

Imagine the trust created by an organization willing to say:

"We can't guarantee that your current job will exist forever. But while you're here, we're going to help you prepare for whatever comes next."

That's a very different employment proposition.

The Future of Work Isn't Just About Knowledge Workers

Another mistake we make in future-of-work conversations is focusing almost exclusively on corporate office jobs.

Meanwhile, enormous workforce gaps exist elsewhere.

Skilled trades.

Healthcare.

Manufacturing.

Infrastructure.

Frontline work.

Technical occupations.

We have young people being told that the path to success requires a four-year degree while industries desperately need workers with entirely different skills.

If AI changes where human labor creates the greatest value, perhaps this is also an opportunity to rethink how we define a "good job."

The future of work won't belong exclusively to people sitting behind laptops.

HR Has to Get Out of the Transaction Business

This moment also creates an enormous challenge—and opportunity—for HR.

If AI can automate administrative work, answer routine questions, analyze data, generate communications, and streamline processes, HR professionals need to ask:

What becomes more valuable when the transactional work disappears?

Business understanding.

Data literacy.

Technology fluency.

Workforce strategy.

Employee engagement.

Change leadership.

Communication.

Judgment.

Human connection.

HR can't simply become faster at doing the work it has always done.

It needs to become better at helping organizations make decisions about people and work.

HR Isn't "Everybody Else"

There's a point in our conversation where Stacey pushes back on an idea that shows up frequently in organizations:

That HR is simply another department executing leadership decisions.

It isn't.

HR occupies a unique position.

It understands—or should understand—the business.

But it also sees how business decisions affect the workforce.

That doesn't mean HR's job is to prevent every difficult decision.

It means HR should bring the human consequences of those decisions into the room before they're made.

That is very different from being invited in afterward to write the communication.

Flexibility Requires Responsibility Too

This isn't a conversation where all responsibility sits with employers.

Employees have responsibilities as well.

Flexibility can't mean a lack of accountability.

Remote work can't mean disappearing.

Autonomy still requires performance.

If employees want organizations to rethink when and where work happens, they also have to demonstrate that outcomes can be delivered differently.

The future of work can't be built around:

Employers versus employees.

It has to be built around shared responsibility.

Organizations create clarity and trust.

Employees deliver accountability and results.

Both sides communicate.

Both sides adapt.

Both sides have something at stake.

Maybe We Should Stop Designing Work Around Where It Happens

Return-to-office debates often begin with location.

Office or home?

Three days or five?

Hybrid or remote?

But what if that's the wrong starting point?

Perhaps we should begin with the work itself.

What requires collaboration?

What requires concentration?

What benefits from being together?

What can happen anywhere?

What outcomes are we trying to create?

Then design the work environment around those answers.

Instead, we sometimes take a work model created decades ago and argue about how many days people should physically participate in it.

This moment gives us the opportunity to ask a much more interesting question:

If we were designing work from scratch today, would we design it this way?

The IKEA Question

Stacey shares an example involving IKEA that captures the opportunity beautifully.

Great design doesn't begin with:

"How do we preserve what we've always done?"

It begins with understanding how people actually interact with a product, environment, or experience.

Work should be no different.

Instead of forcing people into old systems and asking them to adapt, organizations could examine how work actually happens.

Where does friction exist?

Where does technology help?

Where do humans add something technology can't?

Where are processes unnecessary?

Where do people need connection?

Where do they need autonomy?

That's human-centered design applied to work.

AI Will Force Us to Make Choices

AI isn't simply another workplace technology.

It's going to force organizations to make choices about what they value.

If a task can be automated, what happens to the person performing it?

Do we eliminate the position?

Redesign the role?

Develop the employee?

Create something new?

There won't be one answer.

But there should be an intentional one.

Because technology may determine what's possible.

Leadership determines what we choose to do with that possibility.

The Future of Work Is Everyone's Responsibility

There's plenty of responsibility to go around.

Leaders need to communicate honestly.

HR needs to understand the business and advocate for human-centered decisions.

Organizations need to invest meaningfully in workforce development.

Employees need to continuously develop their skills.

Workers need to embrace accountability alongside flexibility.

Educational institutions need to reconsider how they prepare people for changing careers.

And all of us need to become more comfortable with the reality that the jobs of tomorrow may look very different from the jobs of today.

No single group gets to sit this transformation out.

So Who Are We Designing the Future For?

Maybe that's the wrong question.

Maybe the future shouldn't be designed for employees.

Or employers.

Or shareholders.

Maybe it needs to be designed with all of them in mind.

Organizations need to perform.

Employees need meaningful opportunity.

Customers need value.

Businesses need to adapt.

Technology needs to be used responsibly.

Those things don't automatically have to compete.

But finding the balance requires something we've been missing in many future-of-work conversations:

Intention.

Not simply reacting to AI.

Not simply cutting costs.

Not simply demanding people return to old ways of working.

Actually deciding what kind of workplace we're trying to create.

Because the future of work isn't arriving someday.

We're designing it right now.

The decisions leaders make today about AI, layoffs, flexibility, skills, trust, and human connection will determine what work becomes tomorrow.

The question is whether we're designing that future intentionally—or simply allowing it to happen to us.

🎙 Listen to Episode 84 with Stacey Lewis

In Episode 84 of the Her Resources Podcast, I sit down with Stacey Lewis, Founder and CEO of HR Interrupted, for a candid conversation about AI, reskilling, layoffs, flexibility, employee responsibility, HR leadership, and what it will take to create a more human-centered future of work.

Connect with Stacey and HR Interrupted:
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Learn more about Stacey:
About Stacey Lewis

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If this conversation made you think differently about where work is headed, share it with a leader, colleague, or friend who should be part of the conversation.

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Because the future isn't something we inherit. It's something we create.