320: How Disruptive Technologies are Revolutionizing the Way We Work: A Conversation with Josh Drean, Co-Author of Employment is Dead
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Work is not working. It is not working for employers. It is not working for management. And it's definitely not working for frontline employees. These individuals who are the only reason they're pursuing a career when you really think about it is for security. They might be doing something they absolutely hate.

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where you're listening. Welcome to AI and the Future of Work, episode 324, now in our sixth season. Thanks to you, our amazing listeners. We have a community of over a million listeners, and it's all thanks to great guests and, of course, your support. As always, I'm your host, Dan Turchin, CEO of PeopleRain, the AI platform for IT and HR employee service.

We recently, as you might be aware, launched a newsletter. There'll be a link in the show notes. Oftentimes there are clips or insights that don't make it into the final cut. And so we thought we'd start a newsletter, share those with you weekly.

If you like what we do, of course, tell a friend and give us a like and a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. If you leave a comment, I may share it in an upcoming episode like this one from Thomas in Augusta, Maine, the great

capital of the great state of Maine, who works in finance for a logistics company and listens while raking the leaves in the yard. Thomas's favorite episode is that excellent one from season five with Dr. Eric Siegel, author, academic, and entrepreneur about why all AI isn't generative AI and how to measure the business impact of machine learning. Go listen to that one. We'll link to it in the show notes.

We learn from AI thought leaders weekly on the show. Of course, the added bonus, you get one AI fun fact each week. Today's fun fact.

Reid Alberghati writes in Semaphore that a lawsuit filed by current Apple advertising tech employee Amar Bhakta accuses the company of spying on its workers via their personal iCloud accounts and non-work devices. According to the suit, Apple used its privacy policies to harm his employment prospects.

For instance, it forbade Bakht from participating in public speaking about digital advertising his job and forced him to remove information from his LinkedIn page about his job at Apple. For Apple employees, the Apple ecosystem is not a walled garden. It's a prison yard, a panopticon where employees both on and off duty are subject to Apple's all-seeing eye, according to the lawsuit. When

When using their own devices, employees are required to use their personal iCloud accounts and must agree to using software that gives the company the ability to see virtually anything happening on that device, including its real-time location. My commentary, expect more employee angst ahead, not just from Apple employees.

and employers increasingly as they collect vast amounts of data and use it to make automated decisions with AI. In theory, well-behaved employees need not fear employer surveillance. The problem is employers aren't required to disclose when they're spying or what constitutes, quote, bad behavior, including good behavior now that is deemed bad later.

This suit is of course particularly ironic in light of Apple's very public views on privacy as a fundamental human right. Of course, we'll link to the full article in today's show notes and it's actually quite relevant to today's conversation.

Today's guest is one of only five repeat visitors on this podcast and they're all legends. Josh Dreen is one of the most vocal employee advocates in the future of work community. His passion for humanness at work is evident in his social posts, like the recent one celebrating humorously, I might add, the best holiday memes that mock tone deaf managers. Check it out on his LinkedIn feed.

Josh and his co-author, Deborah Perry Pistioni, are also the authors of the forthcoming Employment is Dead, How Disruptive Technologies are Revolutionizing the Way We Work, published by the Harvard Business Review Press. As the co-founder of the Work3 Institute, Josh specializes in the intersection of employment and tech, everything from AI to blockchain and AR, VR.

Josh holds a master's degree from Harvard and also studied IO psychology. His insights have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, and The Economist. And he's appeared on the Today Show, NBC, and Fox Business. Without further ado, Josh, it is really my pleasure to welcome you back to AI and the Future of Work. Let's get started by having you share maybe a bit of an update about what you've been up to since we last talked.

So good to be back, Dan. And thank you for that intro. Congrats on 300 plus episodes. You know, that is quite the accomplishment and a labor of love, as you mentioned. Great conversations. I've loved tuning into the podcast, loved watching the rebrand. And, you know, a lot of the focus on AI is...

relevant as ever, right? There's a lot happening in that space. And I guess that would be the pivot that we're making as well, is understanding how AI is impacting the future of work. And I just want to clarify that this book that we have written, Debra and I, is entitled Employment is Dead. That is not to say that AI is coming for your jobs. That is not the context at all. So let's put that to bed up front. But yeah, I mean, I'm truly passionate about

the future of work, not just what is it going to look like to have people work for me? It's how can we kind of reclaim some of the elements that have been so long lost of experiencing not just productivity, but fulfillment at work and working on projects that make sense to an individual because it fuels their passions. We have a lot of work to get back to that place, but I have a feeling that it's closer than most of us realize.

Talk to us about what inspired you and Debra. Maybe introduce Debra as well, but what inspired you to write the book? And why is there kind of this gap in the large volumes of content produced on the subject that you and Debra needed to fill in? Yeah, that's a great question. So I've always been an employee experience person.

lover, right? I am fascinated by how we can design better experiences for employees because the age-old adage is true. A happy employee is a productive employee. And I was just, as a student at the Harvard Innovation Labs, we were part of their incubation program for startups. We were building an HR platform that pioneered sentiment analysis in real time, which is a

collect sentiment analysis from our employees that is actually honest? What kind of culture do we need to build in order to provide for that honesty? And how can we do it in a way where it's not one survey a year that's 70 questions, it's long, and the insights never get back to the employees themselves. So we were solving that. And through this journey of building that startup and spinning it off, joining an HR agency,

consulting agency where we were working during the pandemic with large corporations like McDonald's or Cargill who have frontline workers who needed to be safe, needed to be taken care of. It was just fascinating to see something so obvious as employee experience and how important it is to the productivity and health of the organization just to watch employers shrug at it and not care about it. And there was a moment where I just realized, okay,

I don't think the majority of companies actually care about this. And that's going to be a huge problem down the road. So I started doing some thought leadership around it. I was submitting applications to conferences to speak. And I actually submitted an application to Debra's conference. She was at the time doing a Web3 conference in Silicon Valley. And...

I was leaving my co-working space one day. I got a phone call from her and she said, hey, this sounds like a book. Do you want to write it together? And I was obviously like, how serendipitous? How interesting? Let's walk down this path and see where it leads. We quickly found how passionate we are about the same subject. We pitched the idea to several publishers and Harvard Business Review Press picked it up.

We didn't think they would keep our title, Employment is Dead, because it is quite controversial, but it stuck throughout the entire process and is now published January 28th. We're really excited about it. And Debra is incredible, right? This is her fifth book. She's written quite a bit, quite extensively. So the insights that we can tease at in the podcast today are so exciting, and we're excited to share that. Yeah, you two are a dynamic duo.

I think of you as kind of a Cesar Chavez for the white-collar worker, which begs the question, you know, why does the white-collar worker who most would say, you know, is privileged, you know, generally speaking, well-paid, why do they need a voice representing their interests, you know, particularly at this time when we're confused about how AI might conflict with what we do at work?

Yeah, let's definitely dig into the AI component as we go along. But I think the foundation is work. Can we just call it out for what it is? Like work is not working. It is not working for employers. It is not working for management. And it's definitely not working for frontline employees. These individuals...

who are the only reason they're pursuing a career when you really think about it is for security. They might be doing something they absolutely hate, but the reason they continue to do it day in and day out is because it does offer a nice paycheck and nice benefits. And they have all their needs met enough to be able to spend their time doing things that they like to do outside of work on the weekends, etc. And we're starting to see that model slip away, especially for the younger generation.

first and foremost, they're looking at the careers that their parents ran after. And they're like, wait, you did what? Four, nine to five every day for 40 years just so that you could retire comfortably at a time where you probably can't enjoy it anymore? The concept itself doesn't

resonate with the younger generation, especially when that security element is falling through the cracks for them as well. They're not seeing them retire very comfortably like what was promised. And that is truly not an option for them as they can't afford a house. They can't afford to even put money towards a 401k. Half of the American population is living paycheck to paycheck. And a majority of them can't even provide a

for a medical emergency of $1,000 or more. And so we're seeing this kind of like, well, if I'm doing this drudgery now and I'm not getting that security, that safety net that was promised to me, then I'm going to

do something else. I'm not quite sure what it looks like and what it feels like, but either that's exiting corporate America altogether or mixing and matching streams of income through some sort of hybrid consulting, freelancing, entrepreneurial venture, which is, again, how the younger generation was raised. They were raised watching TikToks, watching Instagram, watching...

an influencer set up a shop and make money by doing something that they love. And that seems way better to them than going to four years of college, taking on massive amounts of debt, and then not even guaranteed a job, right? That was the promise. And so we're seeing the promises that have been given to us are not working anymore. And that's why we boldly declare that employment is dead. It's because it's the traditional models of work that

put into place during the industrial age that aren't working anymore. And understandably so. It's not the age of the industrial age anymore. It's the age of information, the age of AI. Information moves so much more quickly. Decisions need to be made much more

broadly than the normal hierarchy of I'm a couple CEOs, a C-suite at the top of the organization who makes the decision and it trickles all the way down. We need speed and agility. And so we need to know how to empower frontline workers to make decisions

to give them that freedom and that flexibility that they're asking for. And then to bring some of that ownership to the table as well. Like if you create X amount of value for the company, you should get a piece of that at least. So we're moving away from traditional models of employment, which is contractually based to a partnership based employment where we value the relationship. We value the two way communication. And those are just some of the insights from the book.

Yeah, so building on that, so work is a four-letter word, and it's associated with toil. And kind of to your point, you know, it's the stuff that I do to fund, the stuff that I do that I don't want to do to fund the stuff that I do want to do. And I think what you're suggesting is that, you know, it may be a choice, and it may not have to be, have these kind of negative connotations. If you're talking to your kids or my kids or, you know, that next generation, you're

What would you tell them they should expect from work if it's different from the employment that is about to be dead? Yeah, and let's make that clear distinction between the word work and the word employment, right? We actually first chapter say they're not the same. Employment, right, we know is you sign a contract that says you will give X amount of labor to a company in exchange for X amount of dollars. Work, however...

can be, I like to think of bees, right? They're busy working, they're doing things, they're collaborating together. And we've lost that completely, whether it's the drudgery of 1,000 meetings a day on a Zoom, whether it's I'm just not passionate about the work that I'm doing, or the company budget is getting so tight that we can't provide for the needs of employees like we used to, or we just don't prioritize it. And we're seeing that very clearly right now. And so there's a difference. I firmly believe that

Humans naturally want to be industrious. They want to work. They want to add value, but they have no outlet to do it. And we're watching an entire generation find a model that doesn't even exist in the corporate world, right? Corporation is very centralized. Again, that means one decision maker, a group of decision makers, and you have to fall in line. A decentralized model for work is something that we're seeing emerge on apps like Discord.

Discord is kind of like a Gen Z Slack. It's a Zoom and a Slack combined. It's not quite a metaverse-like platform, but it's getting there. It is a way for you to get on there and just start chatting and finding problems and solving them together. You could be a drone enthusiast that doesn't know why drone batteries don't last long enough when the technology exists.

So you get together with your team, you build out a smart contract, and you decide who's going to do what, how long is it going to take, and let's just have fun with it. And they go out and now they're competing for government contracts because they are running at what they're passionate about. So we believe that this kind of decentralized version of work is going to give more flexibility and autonomy and ownership back to the frontline workers, back to the individuals who are the ones doing the work.

So, what I would say to my younger children, I have an eight-year-old son, a five-year-old son, and a three-year-old son. They currently are actually in the other room playing Roblox together. And I think Roblox is a perfect example of what it looks like to not just work, but interact and be friends together.

Because they're meeting people from all over the world. They're not just going to hang out at the mall like they used to. They are undertaking missions and going through skirmishes and finding new ways to collaborate so that they can reach further goals. And upskilling themselves every single day so that they can get better at the game, so that they can get better rewards. That system already is in place to help them work as best as they possibly can. And I would just say,

Do that. Let's find alternatives to the traditional model, which is maybe university isn't the thing. Maybe there's...

an academy for Roblox, depending on how you want to do it. There's actually a developer program right now where anyone, not just developers that work for Roblox can go in, they can build worlds, they can invite people into that world, and then you can make real time money off of that. There are specific developers like Ann Shoemaker, who was just in Forbes 30 under 30. She made last year $500,000 worth

just in one year developing games in Roblox. And again, she's not a developer. She's just some kid that decided to build some world that became extremely popular and she makes money. And while she is the outlier, there's about 12,000 developers last year who made an average of $68,000 a year. I ask this generation if they would rather work a traditional nine to five where they're told exactly what they need to build or go design their own worlds and make enough to pay for rent or

That is the next iteration of work in my mind. Okay. So Gen Alpha, just you're in their vote. They're all cheering. Josh Dream for president, 2028. But let's take the flip side of that. The reality is going back to Karl Marx, there's capital and there's labor. And the very foundations of capitalism mean that capital is

controls the inputs and dictates what labor does because they own the resources. And so everything that you just said that makes Gen Alpha stand up and cheer is a threat to the traditional system. Just like in the realities or like thinking pragmatically about how your message and the message from the research that you did makes so much sense, but how do you operationalize it?

Just hearing that question definitely puts us in that kind of corporate mindset, right? How do you operationalize this labor? And a lot of times, I think that's the wrong question, to be honest. And that's the one part that I think a lot of corporations struggle with is like, a great example is this, right?

Can you attract Gen Z to your organization? Does Gen Z stay longer than six months? Are they happy in the work that they are doing? I can guarantee most companies,

Are not. They cannot do it. And so what do they say? They end up publishing an article that says Gen Z is lazy. Or you see stats where a majority of employers don't even want to bring on Gen Z because they appear entitled or they push back and they ask questions. And I'm just like, wait, wait, this is a bad thing? Look, millennials, we complied, right? It was like,

go to get a college degree, do your four years, pay the money, you'll get a good job. And that was kind of a shaky promise there. It still worked out for a good chunk of us.

But we got to the corporate world and we're like, this is not what you said it was. And we're like, oh, well, this is just life. This is where it is. Whereas Gen Z, if you ask them to do something and they say why, it's not them being defiant. They really want to know what value are they adding and how can they get better? They're used to immediate feedback. They want to know in an instant how they're doing because they grew up with social media. They post something online and they instantly get feedback.

So when you talk about operationalizing, I think the question needs to be, who are we operationalizing for? That includes our clients. But more importantly, who's going to be the ones doing the work? And are we incentivizing them properly for it to be worth it? And if we can't, then I feel like we need to drop this guise of operationalization and just say, hey, look, this is where we want to go.

Here's a group of people who are going to get us there that are interested. Let's go. And so what we talk about in the book is this kind of web three style for work. I've already mentioned the word decentralization, but when you work in a DAO, a DAO is essentially a decentralized autonomous organization. There is no hierarchy. There's no one individual taking charge.

The way that it works is you take the collective wisdom of the organization, you build it on a smart contract, which is just a self-executing contract that will allow you to be compensated fairly according to the value that you generate. And then we teach organizations at the Work3 Institute this all the time. Here's Snapshot, for example, is a tool where you can help vote, make decisions,

in real time immediately. So if I'm just a participant, I can throw in a snapshot, a quick decision that needs to be made. Then there's token holders. Everyone has a certain amount of tokens depending on how much work they are doing at the organization. And if you have five tokens, you can have more weighted vote. If you only have one, you can still vote, but it's not weighted as much. And then once a consensus is made, and keep in mind, this is in real time. This is happening right now.

Once a consensus is made, the smart contract executes and off we go. So maybe that's just a little bit of an insight on what operationalization looks like within a Web3 model. That is such a satisfying answer. I mean, it's data-driven. You cited the metrics. I love the concept of the DAO and decentralized organization, smart contracts. And yet...

The headlines are screaming like our leaders, the ones who are supposed to be like the most forward thinking. Tim Cook, Andy Jassy, running some of the most, finger quotes, sophisticated organizations in the world are the ones that are clinging to the past. They're the loudest advocates for RTO, return to office initiatives. What do you say, what are they missing? What do you say to them about, you just don't get the future work.

Yeah. I don't think it's out of ignorance. I think they know exactly what's going on. It's a control. It's a power struggle. It is, you know, I am that one person and I am in control and I'm doing everything I can to hang on to that control by making these decisions. And it's not going to work long term, right? It just, it will not.

And the reason why is because if we ignore that experience that employees need and want to have long enough, they're going to leave.

And yes, you have this large organization like Amazon who's making a strong call to return to the office. And by the way, they're struggling to hit their January deadline because they don't have enough office space. They have to find where they're going to put all of their people at this point. They want everyone back into the office because again, they can see and control everything that's going on there. And when employees are like, I don't want to go back to the office, maybe this mid to large size company is going to say, hey,

We offer some flexibility. This is a free perk that we offer. It costs us nothing. And it's something that employees really, really want. And so I just caution like, yes, we're in an employer market. Yes, people are staying in their jobs. But Gallup just put out a stat that 51% of employees are actively looking for a new job right now. That's the people that wouldn't even... There's many, many more people who would take a job if it were offered to them. But

But what happens when Great Resignation 2.0 comes along? It's going to be so much more dramatic because it's not an employee, a disgruntled employee jumping from job to job. They'll be jumping to more attractive alternatives to work, freelancing,

working for a DAO, mixing and matching several streams of income. And so I would say this, right? I understand the goal is short-term shareholder value. How can we provide the most amount of money right now for our shareholders? And we're seeing mass layoffs happen because of that. We don't really care about how our people are doing. There's

amount of money that we're paying them, and we need that money. So they're letting people go and they're making decisions that do not build trust, that do not build on the relationship. And when they need to withdraw from that bank account, employees will be gone. Culturally, there's this connotation that if you object to the traditional structure, including the return to the office initiatives, you're lazy, you're disobedient,

You're not ready for the grown up world of work. To me, that's one of the biggest impediments to the world of work that you and I know will soon exist, whether or not Andy Jassy wants it to happen. How do we get there faster? How do we change the connotation associated with this expectation that work can be rewarding and fulfilling?

Yeah, it is the problem, right? It's such a great way to say it, Dan. I appreciate you bringing that up because...

I can tell you what executives that we talk to say, and I can tell you what their employees are saying on TikTok. There's a large discrepancy there, right? I think a traditional CEO would say it kind of similar to how you did it. You guys just aren't being grownups. You aren't playing by the rules. You don't understand the system. You have to play the game in order to win. And if you opt out of the game, you can't win.

So I understand that and I feel that deeply. At the same time, the younger generation is taking to TikTok and they're saying, the game doesn't work for me. It is stacked against me. In fact, why am I, the curtain is drawn. I can see you profiting off of my labor and I am not seeing any benefit from that. I might get a paycheck, I get some benefits. But if I am going to work my best and

and do as much as I can to grow the company, I deserve to be compensated for that. I deserve a contribution-based compensation, not a contractual-based arbitrary amount of money. And companies are still trying to like, I'll give you equity in the company. Sure, that's great, but that's just arbitrary and it vests over time to keep me here for three years rather than two.

What about like, hey, the more value you generate, the more money you're going to make. And this isn't just, you know, commission sales. This is bringing back some of that fulfillment to the work that they're doing. And so again, I think if you want to be attractive to the younger generation, you need to drop the game that you've been playing and you need to understand the game that they are playing. Those are the companies that are going to win in the future of work.

That's going on the campaign poster, right? I'm just saying it. I'm saying it right now. Let's do it. So I'm going to toss you some red meat, right? We haven't yet covered this very important topic. AI is very complicated for this generation that we're talking about. On one hand, it's a tech-first culture. It's a tech-first generation. So they embrace technology in their personal lives and their work lives. And yet,

When we talk about it in the context of work, it can also be a threat. How do you reconcile that complicated relationship at work and in life that this next generation is bringing with them into the workplace? Yeah, AI.

I don't want to downplay the complexity and importance of AI in the transformation of the future of work. But I also just want to simply state where I stand and what I observe is going to happen here, right? Broadly speaking, we have had so many technological disruptions, even in our lifetime, that has changed the game. And every time that happens, you have...

the laggards, those who don't want to learn the technology, and you have the adopters, those who learn the technology, bring it into their daily lives, and they do just fine. That's the simple answer. It's like, AI is here to stay, learn how to use it in your daily life. And when you do that, you'll start to realize its limitations very quickly and be like, oh, this ain't that bad. Or you might start to realize there's a lot more learning that you have to do

But if you're not learning it, someone's going to take your job who knows it. And so I think of the calculator, right? I guarantee there was probably a time where accountants were counting by hand and they had a bunch of people just counting. That's all they did. And that was job security. And that's what they liked to do. And then the calculator came out and one person could do that job. It's like, oh,

And you look at the emerging generation who's like, okay, we really had people who were just counting. I don't understand. Right. That's the technology that evolved. And, and AI is the same way. If you have a job,

that can be done by AI. I spent a lot of time in the marketing world. If you can get really great copy for a website from AI and given you're not, you're never going to get a hundred percent there with AI. You got, there's still that human touch and it's going to be even more important in the future to keep that human element there. But dude, if you, if you had a job where a lot of the copywriting that you were doing can be outsourced to AI and you can do it a lot faster and get closer to it,

Then evolve. What is the skill that you need that is going to be able to 10x your productivity? Or how can you use AI to do even more and do better? Those are the questions that we should be asking. And so for any of you out there who are like, oh gosh, AI is coming to take my job, I'm willing to bet you haven't used it enough or you're in a role that can evolve and should evolve. And let's figure out what that looks like and feels like.

we're all pushed to be our best all the time whether it's by other humans whether it's by technology and we have a vested interest in doing our best work and if that means supplementing what we're naturally great at whether it's through a calculator or through a large language model i just i believe in the you know the resilience of the human spirit and and

we get better by learning from the best. And to me, that's just part of the human journey. And I like the way you said it. Yeah, but tell me, Dan, you obviously spend a lot of time thinking about this. Do you feel like I'm oversimplifying it? Is there an ethos that you have adapted that would enlighten me? I'm curious what your thoughts are. I bristle when I hear us call AI by names like neural networks, or we talk about the quote digital brain.

because it feeds on the, you know, innate fears that we have of the other, the technology, the bot, the bot apocalypse, you know, popularized in science fiction movies and things like that. When in fact, I think that really misses the point. These technologies, which are, you know, developed by well-intentioned, amazing humans, you

to help us be more productive and cure cancer and eradicate famine and really solve global problems. We're in a special place in time that we can do amazing things with these technologies. And so I don't want anyone to feel threatened by them. We are smart enough to develop these technologies. We're also smart enough to know how and when to use them responsibly. Yes, I'm an AI optimist.

but I do want everyone listening to get the message that this is the time to think about a new and nuanced relationship that humans have with machines. And go back all the way to the first industrial revolution,

18th century, you know, in Great Britain, there were Luddites who were, you know, let's just say on the wrong side of technology. Didn't work out so well for them. We're on the cusp of another transformation. Often this is called the fourth industrial revolution. But again, we need to confront, you know, this complicated relationship that we have with machines and not run away from them.

You know, not fear innovation, but embrace it. Throughout history, you know, embracing innovation has always been what, you know, the ones who, you know, end up the most successful, the happiest, the most productive. That's always the decision they consciously make. Yeah, so me and my soapbox, Josh. But yeah, that's the message I want. I want more people to embrace.

Yeah, it's hard to as well because of how quickly things are moving and adjusting. There's a lot of talk about AI is going to very quickly put us in our silos. They're very quickly going to have us pushing the button and doing the thing that we need to do as humans in the relationship. There's so many things that we could be worried about that worrying for worrying's sake is not going to fix or solve. And so I would just say, you're right. This is an absolute opportunity for those people

entrepreneurs and those free thinking individuals to be a part of it, to help shape it. And yes, there are things out of our control that we need to figure out what we're going to, how we're going to think about it. But at the end of the day, I think it's the age old problem that humans have been facing, which is how can I provide value in a way that makes sense to my community and

And again, the argument that we make in the book is that it's not going to be through these traditional ways of work. It's going to be coming together, whether you're working for a DAO, which is headed by an AI that is helping keep projects on task, or...

You know, there's a myriad of things that we talk about in the book, but I will mention that we have the 10 operating principles of work three. These are the non-negotiables of the modern workforce. If you can't provide these principles for them, which is flexibility, interoperability, ownership, partnerships, community, right? All of these elements will have to come together in order for us to move forward. It's not going to come from one person at the top.

Josh, it feels like we're just getting started, but I got to get you off the hot seat, but not before you answer one last important question for me. So here we're doing episode number two together. Let's say it's a decade from now, and I don't know, maybe we're on, I don't know what episode, 10 or 12 or 14. You're going to be a repeat guest as you are now. But we're having a version of this conversation, and we're reflecting back on episode 2.0, this conversation. What has changed?

Well, I believe we were talking more about metaverse and Web3 at the point, and now we're talking about AI. And the next hype cycle is right around the corner, right? So it will continue to

be the next shiny thing that's going to be the next future of work that we're all going to be talking about. I firmly believe that when you are rooted, I'm going to call it employee experience design because that is the HR term that we use today. But employee experience design, which is

Take care of your people. Make sure they're healthy. Make sure they're happy. Make sure that they are doing work that is fulfilling. Make sure that they have enough money in their pockets to be able to provide for the modest living that they're trying to accomplish and achieve. If we can do these things well,

We will always have people trying to come work for us, people trying to... The brand will grow. We don't have to be so deceptive about the things that we say and do. It's just a better future of work. And when we anchor around those 10 principles...

That's when companies win. And you're seeing that split, right? You see the Amazons of the world who are not people-oriented at all. They are process-oriented and the process comes before people. And trust me, get on TikTok now and take a look at all of the Amazon strikes right now. It's incredible. And then you have the other companies. I would mention maybe Spotify in

in the way that they engage Gen Z and speak their language. Just go look at their employer brand page and see who their audience is and how they're reaching out to them. It's so very different. It's very people-oriented over process. If we can get to that point, we'll be just fine in the future of work, wherever it takes us.

Yeah, we may be calling it work seven, work eight. We're not. We're not. I don't know. But I off we go. I think we can agree that work will change faster than humans change. And there will always be a need to advocate, you know, for for work being a source of joy and, you know, not.

analogous with toil, but a place we go to celebrate the best of what only humans can do. And I'm going to look to you to be the leader, you know, championing, even as some of the definitions, the terms change, you're a great leader for the community. So thanks for doing what you do. I appreciate that, Dan. And thanks again for having me on the show. Yeah, always. Let's see, before I can let you go, where can the audience get your book, learn more about the great work that you and Debra are doing?

Yeah, the book is on all major sites. Amazon, employment is dead. At Josh Dreen is my socials. I'm highly active on all of my platforms. So send me a DM, reach out, follow my content or joshdreen.com. I'd love to see you there. Josh, thanks for hanging out. I really enjoyed this one. Thanks, Dan. Appreciate it. That's all the time we have for this week on AI and the future of work.

I'm your host, Dan Turchin, chair of the Josh Dreen for the President of Work 2028 and also CEO of PeopleRain. And of course, we're back next week with another fascinating guest.