The future of work: brace yourselves for a bumpy ride!
“The future cannot be predicted, it must be prepared for.”
— Maurice Blondel
Dear all,
For several months now, I’ve been regularly speaking in companies about the future of work, often to managers who are anxious or even visibly nervous. It’s a crucial topic—not because we can predict the future like fortune tellers or through grand statistical projections—but because adopting a forward-looking perspective helps us anticipate, innovate, and better navigate uncertainty.
Because yes, the world of work is undergoing a massive transformation—it’s even, pardon my French, a real mess! And this is only the beginning…
If we don’t want to be left behind, we need to take a step back and observe the major shifts over the next 5, 10, 15, even 20 years. That means looking not only at technological, economic, and societal changes but also at the values and choices that will shape our organizations and professions.
Why adopt a foresight-based approach?
Looking down at our feet or keeping our heads buried in the day-to-day hustle can give the illusion of rapid progress. But if we don’t look up, we might crash into a wall. We need a broad and long-term perspective to anticipate change. As Gaston Berger, founder of French-style foresight, once said:
“We must look far, look wide, and look deep.”
That means:
Looking far to anticipate rather than react;
Looking wide to understand the interdependencies between the economy, environment, society, and new technologies;
Looking deep to grasp the complexity of the system we operate in.
We are living through the end of a paradigm—everything is being questioned. We’re not just witnessing a transformation of work, but of the very way we live together as a society: economy, ecology, politics, governance…
So no, we cannot predict the future.
But we can prepare for it.
Welcome to the age of chaos!
Our leaders and managers know it: the world of work has become chaotic.
Yes, dear friends, we’ve moved beyond the VUCA era (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity)—a term we’ve been hearing for over 30 years (time to update those PowerPoint slides!)—and entered the BANI era.
The BANI world, conceptualized by American futurist Jamais Cascio in 2018, is:
Brittle
Anxious
Nonlinear
Incomprehensible
A world where old certainties collapse, everything changes rapidly, and unless we learn to navigate uncertainty, we risk breaking down. Because more than just volatile, our world—driven by relentless pursuit of profit and efficiency—is hyper-fragile, just like us, and prone to snapping at any moment.
And in this massive mess, work is no exception. It’s being radically transformed by artificial intelligence, the expectations of new generations, environmental emergencies, and the search for meaning.
So how do we find our way through it all?
This world forces us to rethink our bearings. We need to learn to navigate uncertainty with new compasses.
Here are 5 major challenges that, in my view, companies will need to address in order to survive:
1. How can CSR become a true strategic lever (and not just a nice word in the company brochure)?
We’re no longer talking about “small gestures”—it’s now imperative. Companies that genuinely integrate social and environmental responsibility into their strategy attract top talent, boost employee motivation, and are more resilient in crises. CSR is no longer just a department—it’s a strategic issue. It’s not enough to minimize negative impact; we need to regenerate our ecosystems—both environmental and human. Organizations that fail to meet this challenge will lose both competitiveness and relevance.
2. How do we protect employees’ mental health and motivation in an increasingly stressful world?
Exhaustion, burnout, loss of meaning… Today, 1 in 2 employees reports experiencing psychological distress. We can’t afford to ignore these issues if we want engaged, high-performing teams. Never before has workplace well-being been under such threat. According to John Clifton, CEO of Gallup, this is the great paradox of our time: despite all our technological progress, we’ve never recorded so much stress, anxiety, suffering, and disengagement at work.
We need to fundamentally rethink our relationship to work. CARE is no longer optional—it’s a necessity. Sustainable work can’t exist without serious attention to employee well-being.
This is at the heart of my talks and of this newsletter. If we don’t take care of our people, the entire company will eventually collapse.
3. How do we manage and value younger generations (without losing our minds)?
We often hear that Gen Z is “difficult.” My HR clients and directors frequently confide that they just don’t get them. I’ve been designing more and more workshops and training programs on generational topics lately.
“Alice, I can’t recruit them!”
“Gen Z doesn’t want to work!”
“They don’t care about anything, it’s impossible to motivate them.”
“They don’t respect hierarchy and leave at 4PM!” etc.But what if we moved beyond clichés and really tried to understand their needs and motivations?
What if, instead of viewing them as a problem, we saw them as an opportunity to evolve our ways of working?Their relationship to management, hierarchy, purpose, and well-being is reshaping the rules of the workplace. We either adapt—or we suffer. I’ll share more about this in a future edition. Spoiler alert: they’re not dreaming of a 30-year career in the same company!
4. How do we make the most of AI and technology (without being overwhelmed)?
Threat or opportunity? Technology inspires both hope and deep fears—about job loss, dehumanization, inequality.
So, are robots going to replace us? The answer is: yes and no.92 million jobs will disappear by 2030… but 170 million new ones will be created (source: World Economic Forum). AI is evolving at lightning speed—faster than the ethical and legal frameworks meant to regulate it. Every day, new developments are reshaping how we work.
The key challenge is not to accept or reject AI—it’s coming whether we like it or not!—but to use it wisely, to focus on what truly differentiates us as humans: creativity, relationships, and emotional intelligence.
It’s a fascinating topic—and I can’t wait to explore it further with you.
5. How do we foster agility in organizations and management practices (because rigid = broken)?
This is the critical point, the ultimate challenge, the key skill we all need to develop if we want to survive in chaos. In a world where everything is constantly changing, rigid companies will fall apart.
That’s the “brittle” in BANI—the fragility of organizations lacking flexibility, doomed to break in the storm.
The solution? Less control, more trust (built on psychological safety), autonomous teams that can adapt quickly.
Agility must be developed on four levels: individual, managerial, operational, and organizational. It requires support, dedicated methods, new organizational models, soft skills training, and, above all, everyone’s involvement.
Agility is first and foremost a mindset and a culture. I’ll come back to this—it’s my favorite topic right now, especially in my workshop keynote: “The Art of Adapting to Change: Agile Like the Bamboo!”
(Yes, I’ll teach you how to be the bamboo.)In a world in constant flux, the most adaptable companies will be the ones that survive.
So… what now?
I know, it’s tough… But we’re going to have to go through a process of letting go.
The world of work is in full mutation, and let’s be honest: it’s going to stay messy for a while. The key isn’t to wait for a mythical “return to normal”—but to learn to navigate the chaos.
As I often tell my yoga students, we need to “find comfort in discomfort”, adjust our posture, and cultivate our flexibility in order to thrive in this ever-changing environment.
Managers especially will need to shift their posture: the era of the “controlling” manager is over. It’s time for facilitators, mentors, unifiers, and well-being champions. The more machines take over complex tasks, the more we’ll need human skills: listening, empathy, leadership, the ability to create connection and give meaning.
Training—especially in soft skills—will be one of the main levers for organizations, and HR will play a strategic role in leading this transformation.
And as with any major crisis or shift, while it’s essential to anticipate risks, it’s even more important to identify the opportunities they bring.
Now more than ever, we need to think, debate, compare possibilities and ideas, talk about values, ethics and desirable scenarios, and explore fertile areas of controversy (ping Institut des Futurs souhaitables). Change is an opportunity to rethink what we want to see happen, for ourselves personally, for our company, but also as a society. And that is exciting. By accepting the chaos of the world, embracing it, we can navigate it (ping Matthieu Dardaillon and his enlightening book Compass Yellow Fluorescent!). Chaos becomes creative (ping the brilliant Nathalie Babouraj), it becomes an opportunity, it invites joy through action and commitment to the world, where the optimism of the will allows us to overcome the pessimism of reality (ping Gregory Pouy and his latest newsletter #hop!).
I will therefore conclude with Gaston Berger’s words on foresight, this ‘philosophy of action’, which proposes to ‘see far, wide and deep’ but above all, he adds:
“To think about people and take risks. “
So, in this chaos, let us think about people, about what makes us human, about the values we want to embody at work, about the world we want to see come into being, and let us take courageous action to defend our desirable vision of work, one that perhaps prioritises human capital, health and care.
While the future is uncertain, it is in our hands. The future of work is not something to be endured, it is something to be built. It is up to us to choose the values we want to defend… and to dare.
These five issues will be the subject of five dedicated Culture Care newsletters, because there is so much to say on each topic! So here is our roadmap for the coming months, to learn together how to navigate this changing world of work.
And you, how are you preparing for the future?
See you soon for a new episode of Culture CARE, and until then, let’s stay clear-headed, committed and agile!
Alice