Dr. Gleb Tsipursky – The Office Whisperer
Nirit Cohen – WorkFutures
Angela Howard – Culture Expert
Drew Jones – Design & Innovation
Jonathan Price – CRE & Flex Expert
We’re kicking off the year with the wrong focus.
Every January, organizations rally around similar themes: boosting productivity, launching AI strategies, and pursuing efficiency goals. Transformation agendas arrive with polished strategy decks and confident forecasts about what’s next.
Meanwhile, employees return from the holiday with an emotional mismatch. Something seems to be shifting beneath the surface of their daily routines and so the words used to start the year at work don’t seem to capture what work feels like.
Why Last Year’s Vocabulary No Longer Fits
For years, the future-of-work conversation has revolved around technology. We anticipated that new tools would change how we work, spark the need for new skills, and enhance productivity. Adaptability was the name of the game.
This year, it’s not just about who has adopted AI and who hasn’t. Some professionals are already deeply integrated with AI tools. Others are dabbling or only hearing about them in passing.
Yet across the board, there’s a shared understanding: work is being redesigned, but it’s unclear what the final picture looks like, or what it means for those inside the system.
We are reengineering the structure of work, but we haven’t reconsidered the emotional and psychological reality of doing that work.
We speak of efficiency while people seek a sense of purpose. We optimize tasks without addressing the human experience. We discuss productivity while employees quietly question their sense of identity, their contributions, and their autonomy.
This growing disconnect has already become the defining challenge of work in 2026.
AI’s Patchy Rollout and the Strain of Anticipation
What’s so destabilizing right now isn’t just the change itself: it’s the waiting.
When transformation is tangible, we adjust. When it’s distant, it can be ignored. But when it’s uncertain and inevitable, it creates anxiety.
People don’t know when the transformation will hit their job. They’re unsure which parts of their role will become more valuable or obsolete. They don’t know whether they’re ahead of the curve, already behind, or stuck in limbo.
They’re comparing their progress with coworkers, headlines, and people who seem more plugged into the AI shift.
Even if day-to-day work looks stable, confidence erodes. There’s a growing sense that something has shifted and no one handed out a new rulebook. Seasoned employees feel unsteady. Even accomplished leaders question whether they still measure up.
This is a collective signal.
2026: The Year the Disconnect Becomes Clear
We’re in a transitional phase without shared language or norms.
This isn’t just about learning new tools or brushing up on skills — but also the slow breakdown of long-standing assumptions about what makes someone valuable at work. For decades, careers were built through accumulated experience. Skills deepened. Seniority brought confidence.
AI unravels this logic. It accelerates competence in certain tasks. It makes other responsibilities obsolete. It shifts value toward judgment and accountability, but in unpredictable ways. It creates a fog of ambiguity.
People are trying to mentally prepare for a future of work they can’t yet fully visualize. While organizations speak with clarity about their trajectory, individuals exist in a present that seems normal but increasingly feels unstable.
That friction is draining.
In previous years, the ambiguity was tolerable. Employees pressed on. Companies kept experimenting. Discomfort stayed private.
But in 2026, it’s no longer under the surface.
Not because AI has taken over every corner of work, but because we can no longer treat the emotional experience of work as an afterthought. When enough people feel caught between the past and a hazy future, the disconnect becomes obvious.
That’s the price we pay for evolving systems without evolving the human side of the equation. And it cannot be solved by telling people to learn faster, stay agile, and remain competitive. This isn’t a challenge for individuals, but a system lagging behind its own impact. The unease people feel is information…not a weakness.
This moment demands something different.
It calls on leaders to understand that transformation begins with how people interpret what’s on the horizon way before new tools arrive. It asks organizations to prioritize the human experience alongside operational efficiency, and it encourages individuals to challenge outdated definitions of value without assuming they’re the problem.
The future of work is a human story, and the careers and companies that thrive will be those that redesign work with that truth at the center.
