Finale: How work has changed since we started this show

Working It

In this final episode of 'Working It,' host Isabel Berwick joins FT colleagues Andrew Hill, Emma Jacobs, and Anjali Raval to reflect on the evolution

Key takeaways

• Andrew Hill argues that workplaces are fundamentally defined by people rather than physical locations or specific tasks.
• Anjali Raval notes a shift in power from employees, who held leverage during tight labor markets, back toward managers.
• The group identifies 2025 as the year for AI commercialization following a period of experimentation in 2024.
• Emma Jacobs suggests that while the 'dream' of a four-day week has faded, it represented a vital period of workplace experimentation.
• Intergenerational tension is often overstated, as younger workers frequently seek office presence to build professional networks.

Main topics

• Remote vs. Office work
• AI in the workforce
• Power dynamics in management

Notable quotes

Workplaces are about people. And if there aren't any people, there's really no workplace at all.

Conclusion

The episode concludes that despite technological and structural shifts

Transcript preview

Speaker 6 (0:00) Hello, and welcome to the very last episode of Working It from the Financial Times. I'm Isabel Berwick. After 153 episodes and several million downloads, we've come to the end. Thank you for listening and for telling us how much you like the show. It's meant so much to know that it's helped in some small way to make the world of work better. And that's what we set out to do. I want to thank our hundreds of external guests. and the many FT colleagues who've given up time to come on the show. Special thanks to Manuela Saragossa, the executive producer, and to the brilliant and very patient Misha Frankel-Duval, the show's producer, who does all the work while I sit here and have fun. I'll still be running the Working It brand, and that includes writing a weekly newsletter for FT subscribers. So please sign up if you haven't already, as well as making videos and doing live events. In the meantime, please enjoy this final episode. To wrap up in style, I invited three FT colleagues and working at regulars back for one last show. Andrew Hill, Emma Jacobs and Anjali Raval. We talked over what's changed in the world of work since the podcast started back in October 2021 and what we think is coming next. Here's the show. Speaker 6 (1:22) Andrew Hill. Welcome back, Andrew. Thank Speaker 1 (1:24) you for having me. Speaker 6 (1:26) Emma Jacobs, who I think is our most frequent guest. Oh, an honour. And Anjali Raval. Hello, Anjali. Hello. So I just wanted to start by asking you all, you know, we're all workplace experts or think we are. I've been hosting this for three years. You've all been doing this stuff a lot longer than me. What's the thing you say to people when they ask you what have you learned about workplaces? Andrew, I'm going to ask you first. Speaker 1 (1:52) Well, I guess I feel we've learned that workplaces aren't about work, just, and they aren't about places, because obviously when working gets started, we're coming out of the end of the pandemic and lockdowns and flexible working and remote working and hybrid working have all been topics that have been tackled. And all that has shown us that place is not the only important thing. And we've tackled a lot of topics which show us that work isn't the most important thing necessarily. Workplaces are about people. And if there aren't any people, there's really no workplace at all. Speaker 6 (2:29) Exactly. And Emma, when we started this, we all had to wear masks in the studio and we thought nothing would ever be the same again. How much do you think the pandemic did change work? Did it change it as much as we thought it did? Speaker 5 (2:41) I think it probably hasn't changed as much as we hoped. or thought it might. And I think that, Andrew, you wrote about offices after September the 11th and thinking about all the ways that things would change or life generally would change. And then it Speaker 1 (3:00) pretty Speaker 5 (3:00) much returns to what it was. Yeah, I Speaker 1 (3:03) think I totally agree with you. I think in a way, the surprising thing is how little has changed. We did a lot. I was looking back at something I did in September 2020 about this great opportunity for a better workplace and a changed workplace. And if we didn't progress as far down that road as I hoped and thought we might, and if you didn't progress that far down the road in the most global and most work-affecting crisis of our generation, when will we? Speaker 6 (3:34) Yeah. And Angela, you've started in the management editor role while we've been doing the podcast. What has most struck you so far? Speaker 2 (3:44) I sort of think about it really from sort of a balance of power point of view, really. You know, when I first started, you know, just over two years ago in this role, it very much was employees in control. And they dictated not only the sort of the salary terms and everything, because it was a very tight labor market. They were making huge demands on their employers. bosses were responding. You know, they were talking about all the things their staff wanted them to talk about publicly, privately. And then now you see that balance of power shifted back in favour of the managers and there's less of the cuddly stuff. But I think going back to what Andrew and Emma have both said, that it always does come back around. And some of these things are... You know, you kind of go around in circles, you know, and this week I've just written the piece about the future of the corporate HQ, which probably was the one that Andrew wrote all that time ago. So, you know, it's the same sort of topics, just with a slight twist each time. Speaker 6 (4:49) I think one of the things that has surprised me is how sticky the topic of work from home versus return to office has been. Emma, you wrote about it quite recently and said it's so boring, but in fact... I mean, these stories still get extraordinary readership levels. And whenever we've done it on the podcast, it's done brilliantly. Is it because it's a human story? I Speaker 5 (5:09) think it is because it's a human story. And I think what I wrote about recently was the idea that also that white-collar jobs are so complicated that, you know, even your mum, who might be really interested in your life, can't retain any information about what you do. you know, unless you do a job like ours, which has an obvious product, it's quite easy to say what I've done. And the office is a way for us to kind of connect with other people in different jobs. And it's a good topic to kind of bring us together, really. And, you know, I don't really need to know what you do if you work in AI and you don't need to know what I do, but we can talk about how many days we're doing in the office. People like talking about themselves and that's what the office is. Speaker 6 (5:53) That's it, isn't it? Work is about ourselves. So you brought AI into the conversation there. And I did want to mention it because we didn't get to AI until quite late in the run. But Andrew, do you think that my reluctance to engage with AI is perhaps reflective of all of us? Or were we particularly slow? Am I berating myself unfairly? I Speaker 1 (6:11) think you're berating yourself unfairly. I was just actually on a call preparing for a panel I'm going to chair about AI in the workforce. And I... mentioned, in fact, that there are a lot of colleagues who say, oh, I've already fallen so far behind. I've not got into this. We're so much at the beginning of this that I think there's going to be all manner of opportunities to use AI tools in the coming years in the workforce. And we're going to be deluged with training sessions and ways in which we can improve them. And we're going to do all the things that we do with everything from how to adjust the height of your desk through to how do I write a better intro to an article. We're going to be sharing this information with colleagues. So we're going to be learning from colleagues about