Coloradan Conversations: The Future of Work

About the speakers

Liza Barnes

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is a PhD candidate in organizational behavior at the Leeds School of Business. Her research focuses on understanding the complexities and challenges of interpersonal relationships at work, such as navigating unique relational dynamics, advocating for oneself during difficult times and building more compassionate workplaces. Her work has appeared in outlets such as PLOS One, Organizational Psychology Review and Harvard Business Review. In addition to her academic work, Liza has worked in healthcare consulting and client operations and is currently a research advisor at Prime Chief of Staff.

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Sidney D鈥橫ello

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is a professor in the and the at CU Boulder. He is interested in the dynamic interplay between cognition and emotion while people engage in complex, real-world activities. He applies insights gleaned from this basic research to develop intelligent technologies that help people achieve their fullest potential 鈥� by coordinating what they think and feel with what they know and do. D鈥橫ello has co-edited seven books and published more than 300 journal papers, book chapters and conference proceedings. His research has received 16 awards at international conferences and has been funded by numerous grants. D鈥橫ello directs the NSF National Institute for Student-Agent Teaming (2020鈥�25), which aims to develop AI technologies to facilitate rich socio-collaborative learning experiences for all students.

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Timothy Kuhn

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is a professor in the CMCI Department of Communication and currently serves as its chair. He has been on CU鈥檚 faculty since 2000, and his research and teaching address how communication constitutes organizations and thus doesn鈥檛 merely occur within them. He鈥檚 also interested in explaining how identities and knowledge emerge in power-laden organizing practices. He has held visiting appointments at Lund University in Sweden and Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. He is also a fellow of the and presently chair of its Organizational Communication Division.听

Learn More

Published by the World Economic Forum, maps the jobs and skills of the future while shedding light on the pandemic-related disruptions of 2020. The report鈥檚 section highlights the drivers of change that impacted businesses models and transformed industries.

American workers across various ages, industries and income brackets have experienced heightened levels of fatigue, burnout and general dissatisfaction toward their jobs since the pandemic鈥檚 start. But today more young people are airing these indignations and jaded attitudes on the internet, often to viral acclaim.

In this panel, Scott Carlson, a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education, joins education experts to discuss trends in academic areas of study, new areas of the economy that impact higher education and how college graduates can prepare for a world where automation is increasingly prevalent.听

From changing a major to joining a community, associate professor of physics at Southeastern Louisiana University Rhett Allain provides advice to college students.听听

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work is an exploration of the joys and perils of the modern workplace, beautifully exploring what other people wake up to do each day 鈥� and night 鈥� to make our frenzied world function.听

A deeply-reported examination of why 鈥渄oing what you love鈥� is a recipe for exploitation, creating a new tyranny of work in which we cheerily acquiesce to doing jobs that take over our lives.听

A generations expert and author of When Generations Collide and The M-Factor teams up with his 17-year-old son to introduce the next influential demographic group to join the workforce 鈥� Gen Z.听

To attract and retain talent, businesses need to understand the top priorities of the future workforce. This means they must embrace new, flexible work models and cultivate a workforce that can design their own careers.听

What does true flexibility look like? Most organizations approach it in one of two ways: as an ad hoc work-life accommodation available upon request, or as giving people permission to get their work done on their own schedule 鈥� as long as they鈥檙e available to answer emails and put out fires 24/7. Neither approach is sustainable over the long term.听

A dual need for increased compassion and higher performance is hitting while Covid fatigue has employees, leaders and customers running on fumes. This problem of extreme demands isn鈥檛 going away. To deliver both compassion and performance in a sustainable way, leaders need data, prioritization, setup and collaboration.听

When it comes to psychological safety, managers have traditionally focused on enabling candor and dissent with respect to work content. As the boundary between work and life becomes increasingly blurry, managers must make staffing, scheduling and coordination decisions that take into account employees鈥� personal circumstances 鈥� a categorically different domain.听

In times like these, leaders need to make hard decisions, deliver negative feedback and, in some cases, lay people off. How do you do the hard things that come with the responsibility of leadership while remaining a good human being and bringing out the best in others?听

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