Hello and welcome to work.
For years, my son of Gen-Z had been telling his skeptical mother that a second term of Trump would mark the technological and political domain of the young anti-dysprices who had grown online. I was right and I was wrong.
This change is closely linked to dismantling, and the prohibition, in some cases, of American corporate diversity programs, equity and inclusion.
Can Corporate Dei be forwarded and rebuild? Many experts think that the response to non -partisan progress is now already available. A great piece in Bloomberg By two law teachers It has a good shorthand: the authors cite two types of dei. The first is the “uprising”, which gives exclusive preference or access to certain groups, and uses quotas and objectives. These practices are now illegal for some US organizations and are be fallen In many more.
On the contrary, “Level Dei” has been in workplaces for a long time, and it is likely to stay. It focuses on things like the recruitment and promotion processes of bias to make them more fair for all, and “open gender and race groups to all companions.”
Thanks to the co -author of the article David Glasgow and Sarah Minor Massy In PWC to share the idea of elevation/leveling in LinkedIn, both experts are excellent followers for the wisdom of that it is not instant and/or panic. Eager to listen to your views on the future of diversity at work, inside or outside the registration: Isabel.berwick@ft.com
Sorry, that was long, but there are many things in 🗒️. Stay up to date with the latest reports from Dei del FT here.
Keep reading to obtain some amazing ideas about the Agent Agent at work, now and in the future.
The agents (not so secret) that will turn on their workflow 🔌
I spoke first with Iliana Oris Valiente Last summer, in the Work podcast that works. She has a digital twin with the so -called Laila, which looks and sounds like her human partner 👯, and is trained in Iliana’s work in Accenture, where (Irl Iliana) is a managing director and leads her innovation centers in America northern. Laila can go to meetings, investigate and answer questions for Iliana, releasing the human for more complex tasks.
When Iliana passed through London this week, I found her to ask what is new and arriving in Aia. Not everyone can have a sophisticated digital twin, but what has changed since the last time we talked eight months ago is that the idea that everyone uses digital agents in their work (I still want to call them “helpers”) is no longer a subject of “border” .
A glass for this great change, part of what Accenture calls “Big bang binary“, It occurred in September 2024, when the executive president of Salesforce, Marc Benioff, announced that the company would” turn “the agentforce platform, which creates and displays agents to help workers (I see ads for agentforce in the subway of London 🚇, so it is now really conventional).
How, I asked, Iliana and their teams and customers use Ai Agent, and what can we learn the rest of us? The answer is complex, and I hope to do justice to Iliana when I say that my key conclusion of our conversation was that we cannot simply “paste” the agents of ia in our existing workflows and make things do better. We must all think of work differently, and that will probably be more difficult for leaders in large companies inherited, with multiple internal departments and functions (I dare to say, “Silos” 🫣) of what could be for a new company agile or scale where the company’s plan, not to mention its organized organization, is more recent. (Related: My colleague Andrew Hill wrote a must -read analysis about the problems faced by industrial titans of the twentieth century in the United States).
Here is Iliana: “When you are building processes, you must reinvent the entire process from scratch to embed the agent. You are not just taking a clumsy process and then making the agent do exactly what humans used to do. ”
Therefore, the future is likely to be agent and, although much of the technology is intuitive, thanks to the generative AI that our languages can process and speak, new skills will be needed to implement the deployment. As Iliana stands out, “there is a set of skills around the mapping of business processes that is not very glamorous, but it is about to become very fashionable and very necessary, because to design for AI systems, it must be able to assign A process, starting to finish. ”
Get on that mapping to boost the future your career. Or simply feel and enjoy the possibility that efficient agents give us much more free time. With Iliana’s futuristic hat, she suggests that in the long term, AI can save us 10 hours a week in our work. “Start developing hobbies, so that it is ready for the world of AI.”
I love this. Time for more ⛳️, 🏃🏻️, and my favorite, 🏊♀️.
In one word: Agentic ai will redo our works, but it is not screwed. We have to map everything we do, disassemble and rebuild better, with integrated agents.
You want more? Accent Tech Vision Report 2025 You have the graphics and trends you need for your next presentation 😉
Office therapy
The problem: I have two years in my career in a financial institution after a title in a business related field. My work is stunned, with excessive bureaucracy and without a place for innovation. How can I pivot towards a field where my interests are more prominent?
If I could have my time at the university again, I would have followed the humanities, ideally when going to the academy. I feel very stuck. Am I condemned to work in a boring company forever? Is returning to school the answer?
The answer: You are experiencing the argument of money against passion (or we could say “head against the heart”, since it is almost Valentine’s Day ❤️).
As someone who has spent his career working in the same postal codes as financial institutions, but without gaining anything like the city’s money 🫤, I know both sides of this equation. I have met many people on the financial side that yearn for a more artistic and purpose career. (But … have you seen Industry?! Finance are great again.)
I asked Jonathan Black, director of the Race Service of the University of Oxford, for your expert advice for you: “An option is to stay, try to improve your current work and divert your creative energies in activities outside work; I could even go part -time to release a day or two per week to do it seriously, maybe studying for a title in humanities.
“Or remain in financial services, but move sideways to an organization with a culture that suits it better, less bureaucratic and more creative. “
I did a mastery at night while working in my first job because at that time I had little enthusiasm for journalism and I liked to return to the academy. If you try a part -time title, you will meet fascinating people and you will get a perspective of how universities are really universities.
It turned out that the world did not need my doctoral thesis proposed on the representation of women in the Spanish literature of the nineteenth century, but sometimes I still think about the way I do not travel. Whatever you decide, it will go well. You may only need to make some stops and deviations along the way.
As Jonathan reminds us: “In this difficult labor market, especially for 20 -year -old people, he is in a relatively luxurious position of having a well -paid and safe role. This is a solid base to build. ”
Have a good vacation, you may get a professional coaching (even better if your employer will pay it) and take your time.
Do you have a dilemma for office therapy? We anonymize everything. Email: Isabel.berwick@ft.com
Five main stories of the world of work
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Office assistance is becoming a performance metric: Emma Jacobs and Anjli Raval examine the emerging trend of the heads of the office of their employees, and then use it in salary and performance reviews. Better data means more monitoring, and it is more difficult to escape the mandates back to the office.
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At work, a quiet revolution is underway: I really enjoyed this column of Sam Joiner on the unexpected ways in which the generative AI is being used in workplaces, often under the nose of employers who do not know.
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The case of late flowers: Tim Harford deepens the phenomenon of creativity and productivity in later life, a time when many people are erroneously, canceled. Time for change (and includes a mention of my book😍).
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Deloitte asks the consultants to the United States government to eliminate the gender pronouns from emails: As the consequences of Donald Trump’s prohibition on Dei’s policies in the Government, they begin to feel more widely, this Deloitte movement contrasts with its United Kingdom arm, which is “doubled” in its diversity policies, write Ellesheva Kissin and Myles McCormick.
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Hongkongers in the United Kingdom struggle to make the skills pay in the job market: More than 150,000 Hongkongers have established themselves in the United Kingdom since 2021, many of them highly qualified and with years of experience. As Delphine Strauss reports, many are struggling to find jobs that are close to matching their skills.
One more thing. . .
A workbook with a difference: A lucky woman By Polly Borland he tells the life and career of a GP of the country without a name, accompanied by a beautiful photograph. The book is set in the same valley as John Berger’s classic book A lucky manWritten in the 1960s, which related the life and work of John Sassall (a pseudonym), then the local doctor. This modern version confirms that the medical practice of the people and the attention it provides remains a pillar of the community. If you are an urban person who thinks that this type of medical care has disappeared: read this and wonder.
Draw this week’s book 📕
I am intrigued by Whistle! (Come on, the title is Genius), a new book on “The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication” by Andrew Brodsky, Professor of Management of the McCombs Business School, University of Texas in Austin. He has tips to increase his game of virtual meetings, effective work messages and build a relationship with his team when he works hybrid and remotely. The book is published in the United Kingdom for Penguin Life, and in the United States by Simon and Schuster (costs £ 16.99/$ 28.99). We have 10 copies to give to work readers: Enter This form Before 5pm on Friday, February 14.
(I managed to spoil the TALK Book draw last week, thanks to all those who persisted with their tickets: the winners will receive their books very soon ❤️🩹.)
