Adapting to change

For the past five years, Fast Company has published the annual Queer 50, a list of the most influential LGBTQ leaders in business, tech, and beyond. The list is a celebration of queer representation and influence in the highest ranks of business. Honorees include those working on addressing the most relevant topics of our time, including responsible AI, trans rights, healthcare, and the future of work. In this episode, we wanted to hear from some of our Queer 50 honorees about the strengths that enable their best work and what inspires them to work through challenges. To read more detailed profiles of 2024’s Queer 50 honorees, go to fastcompany.com/queer-50.

Our show is based on the premise that work is changing everyday. But there’s a big problem with that: Change is hard, scary . . . and necessary. Now more than ever, as AI is integrated into our jobs, we are asked to adapt to seismic shifts at a much faster rate than in the past. But it’s human nature to resist uncomfortable changes, even if we know it might be for the best. So how can we make these shifts a little easier? Can we train our brains to become more adaptable? Sanam Hafeez is a neuropsychologist who has studied how our brains adapt to change, and she explains how underlying emotions affect our ability to adapt in the workplace.

One in five American workers have signed a noncompete clause in their employment contract, and many likely had no idea what they were agreeing to. Noncompete clauses typically prevent workers from joining competitors for a certain period of time after their employment; and although many people only expect to see those restrictions only in high-level positions, they actually apply to a surprising number of jobs. Low-wage workers in fast-food service, nurses and other healthcare professionals, and even temporary Amazon employees have all found themselves bound by noncompete clauses that make it nearly impossible to find another job. Earlier this spring, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) banned the use of noncompetes for most workers, prompting legal challenges from business organizations that will continue for many months. But if that ban goes into effect, the FTC believes it could raise wages by as much as $300 million. Evan Starr, an economist and professor of management and organization at the University of Maryland, studies noncompetes and believes the ban would also enable greater innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship.

Should you send an email, or is Slack the better way to communicate with your colleagues? Is it ever okay to text a client? Can you use emojis with your boss—and if you can, should you? Communication at work can be really fraught and depends on the subject matter, your industry, your company culture, plus your individual style and preference. And given all that, there’s lots of room for mistakes and misunderstandings.In this LinkedIn Audio conversation with senior editors Lydia Dishman and Julia Herbst, we talked about navigating the world of workplace communication styles, and how to pick the best method for your particular situation.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 61 million adults in the United States have at least one disability, and for nearly half that population, the disability is invisible or at least not apparent. These conditions often don’t manifest in ways that are immediately evident to others—such as chronic pain, diabetes, autism, ADHD, learning disabilities, arthritis, and more. And although the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed in 1990 to protect against discrimination, many employees or job candidates are reluctant or scared to disclose a disability for fear they wouldn’t be treated fairly or even get hired in the first place. And it seems many employers are clueless about what they’re doing wrong. So how can we make advocacy easier, open up opportunities, and build a world of work that works for everyone? Ludmila Praslova, a professor of psychology at Vanguard University, recently wrote about how her autism affected her onboarding experience at a new job. In her new book, ‘The Canary Code: A Guide to Neurodiversity, Dignity, and Intersectional Belonging at Work,’ Praslova delves into the challenges of self-advocacy, disclosing a disability, and what employers need to change to create neuro-inclusive environments.

We take for granted the standard 40-hour, 5-day workweek, but this structured schedule was implemented to suit a very different reality than most of us work and live in today. In recent years, the 4-day workweek has gained attention. But that kind of restructuring seems to leave many with more logistical questions than answers: What about parents trying to match a school schedule, or sleep-deprived medical workers, or service workers who usually don’t know their scheduling needs in advance? Is there a way to redesign the workday and workweek to accommodate the needs of both employees and businesses—in a way that’s humane and can also work across industries? It’s a problem that Mark Takano continues address in Congress, as the representative from California’s 39th district. Takano introduced a 32-hour workweek bill in 2021 and is also pushing to restore the Overtime Act, which would increase the threshold for full-time salaried workers nationally.

Leaders have tried to sell work as ‘one big family’ for years. With the proliferation of terms like ‘office besties’ and ‘work spouses,’ many employees have viewed work as a type of family too. But anyone who has been passed over for a promotion they deserved or laid off after years of hard work knows the hard truth: Work isn’t your family. In fact, work can make people feel lonely by preventing them from connecting with their community, and some mental health experts have called loneliness a health epidemic. So, how can we prioritize our mental health and our ambition at the same time? How can we feel less alone at work and foster meaningful relationships while still protecting our ‘real lives’? To dig into these questions for answers, we talked with Ann Shoket, former editor-in-chief of ‘Seventeen’ magazine; author of ‘The Big Life,’ a guide for career-driven young women; and CEO of TheLi.st, a private community of innovators across media, technology, and business.

Even as the nature of work changes and innovations transform our jobs, the hiring process feels stuck in the same biased, ineffective rut. Too often, when companies finds themselves with an open position, they fall back on the same broken methods: mining leadership’s narrow, professional networks, or posting the same ineffective job ads in the same places. So how can we fix a system that’s so ingrained in the traditional corporate psyche? How can we really reach unexpected and underrepresented candidates? If it were possible to, say, burn the whole thing down and start from scratch, what would a new, more effective hiring process look like? We put that question to Kimberly Brown, founder of Manifest Yourself, a consulting company focused on career development for women and people of color. Brown, who sees both companies and job candidates struggling with poor communication and too few resources, believes that a few key changes could start to improve the experience for everyone.

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.