What makes work meaningful?

No matter what job you have, you’ve probably felt at various points in your career that you don’t make enough. And because money can be a taboo topic, we rarely reveal what our salaries are—even with the people we’re closest to. In a recent survey, only about half the participants said they share their salary with family members, while just 32% said they share how much they make with close friends. This secrecy helps keep gender, racial, and executive-to-worker pay gaps thriving. Fortunately, the tide has been slowly turning in the past few years. More companies have adopted at least partial-salary-transparency policies, and even some states and cities have introduced laws supporting salary transparency or salary ranges. Hannah Williams, a content creator and host of the TikTok channel, Salary Transparent Street, has a knack for talking to people about salaries. She believes that it’s a conversation we need to have in order to make work a better deal for everyone.

One of the secret problems with work is that hard work alone isn’t enough to get ahead. It’s a tough wake-up call for those of us who spent our school years working to get all As and doing all the things we were told were the key to a successful life. The truth is, work—and the rest of the “real world”—isn’t a meritocracy. The most hard-working, and even the smartest or most-talented, people aren’t always the ones who end up in power. So if hard work alone isn’t what matters, what does? And is there a way to shift what we value to make things more fair? Jill Katz, founder of Assemble HR Consulting, focuses on answering these questions of culture and change in the workplace.

Fifty percent of people say they’ve quit a job because of a bad boss. Why are so many managers unable to effectively manage? And is there a way to learn how to be a better manager? Leadership coach Lia Bosch joins host Kathleen Davis to talk about what companies get wrong about management and how bosses can be better at their jobs.

Welcome back to Season 12 of ‘The New Way We Work’!Even in the best of times, there’s always been an undercurrent of conflict between the priorities of corporate leadership and the needs of employees. But in the last several years, that tension has increased noticeably. Whether it’s the ongoing battles over employees returning to the office (or not), the renewed uproar over executive pay, or missteps in handling layoffs, the conflicts between employees and management only seem to grow. This season on ‘The New Way We Work,’ we’re looking at the problems with work, how we got here, and how to solve them. For this first episode, Work-Life editors Julia Herbst and AJ Hess discuss the most fundamental problem with work: that employees and management don’t see eye to eye.

The New Way We Work is back for a new season next week and we are unpacking the biggest problems with work! Problems like lack of pay transparency, how hard work too often goes unrewarded, how the wrong people end up as managers, and so much more.

The impact of AI on finance departments will be huge.

How artificial intelligence is shaping the product journeys from procurement to end customers.

In this podcast, leaders in HR and AI reveal what it will take for businesses to get their staff on board.

According to surveys, the average employee spends more than 4 hours a week in meetings, but around 90% of people consider their meetings to be unproductive. While it’s tempting to eliminate meetings altogether, they are often a necessary part of getting work done. In this recent LinkedIn Audio conversation with ‘Fast Company’ senior editor Julia Herbst, we talked about how to drastically cut down on the number of meetings and make the ones that remain more productive and inclusive.

Work has changed a lot in the last few years: from the shift to remote work to the struggle over returning to the office, from the great resignation to mass layoffs at tech and media companies, from the rise in union organizing to the rise in AI in workplaces. So what does 2024 hold for companies, leaders, and employees?  Today’s episode is a recording of a recent LinkedIn Audio conversation with Fast Company Staff Editor AJ Hess breaking down advice and predictions for what to expect next.