HBS Managing the Future of Work

The start-stop nature of business during the coronavirus pandemic demands flexibility and innovation. This is especially true for physical places of work. CIC maintains offices, shared workspace, and labs. It specializes in building hives of creative and productive activity and fostering entrepreneurial communities. Founder and CEO, Tim Rowe, explains how Covid-19 has spurred CIC to find inventive solutions to the challenge of working safely amid a viral outbreak and to extend its networking events online.

The Covid-19 pandemic is triggering widespread anxiety, depression, and addiction—deepening what many have identified as a mental health crisis. A recent study suggests that at least a quarter of American adults are experiencing pandemic-attributed, high emotional distress. Louis Gagnon, CEO of the Total Brain online mental health platform, discusses the benefits of preventative care delivered through self-monitoring apps and how analytics based on the resulting data can help companies improve wellbeing and productivity in the workplace.

Covid-19 has made robots a welcome sight for many by hastening the adoption of autonomous cleaner-bots, greeters, personal assistants, burger-flippers, classroom aids, and more. SoftBank Robotics' Kass Dawson talks about the role of robotics in combatting Covid-19 and in changing the world of work. Rather than a wholesale replacement of human workers, he says, we can expect more cobotics—human-robot collaboration—and new robotics jobs.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Sheryl WuDunn (HBS ‘86) and Nicholas Kristof are widely recognized for their coverage of international humanitarian crises. In their recent book, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, they turn their attention to the struggles of the US working class. Regular encounters with the devastation wracking blue-collar families in Kristof’s hometown of Yamhill, Ore., prompted the couple to examine the effects (and causes) of joblessness, homelessness, substance abuse, incarceration, and chronic ill-health. WuDunn discusses the hard-to-break intergenerational cycles of poverty and despair, the impact of Covid-19, and some glimmers of hope.

How can businesses move from awareness to action on systemic racial discrimination?  In a wide-ranging discussion, Laura Morgan Roberts, an organizational psychology expert and professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, says it begins with frankly acknowledging the extent of the problem, fostering open discussion, and committing to meaningful change, both internally and in the wider community. As she notes, business schools have a long way to go as well.

Is the triple bottom line a liability in a crisis? The question is anything but theoretical for John Pepper, who co-founded restaurant chain Boloco in 1997 while still in business school. The pandemic has brought many restaurants to the brink, but Boloco continues to work to establish a profitable model that includes paying a living wage and providing workers with opportunities for more gainful employment. CEO Pepper reflects on running an enterprise whose business plan includes social and environmental goals; navigating the public health and economic crisis; and engaging with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Merck Chairman and CEO, Ken Frazier—one of only four Black CEOs in the Fortune 500—joins HBS Professor Tsedal Neeley. Topics include the necessity of putting science ahead of politics in the search for a cure for Covid-19 and steps corporate leaders need to take if they are to counter structural racism. He advises Black professionals on the importance of mentors and acquiring the “psychological armor to defend ourselves against the racism that’s all around us.” He also shares his personal story, including “hav[ing] only one generation between me and slavery.”

The pandemic underscores US workers’ need for help with caregiving obligations. HBS graduate Lindsay Jurist-Rosner founded B2B benefits company Wellthy in 2014 after realizing that her experience juggling work and the complex care needs of her mother was shared in one form or another by a large segment of the US workforce. She talks about the scope of the challenge, how employers are starting to address it, and what the payback looks like.

The wholesale shift to remote work in response to Covid-19 is a radical change and most organizations are scrambling to adapt to the complex realities. Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley has spent decades studying distributed organizations. Author of the forthcoming book Remote Work Revolution, she explains that getting it right depends on clear communication, routine, work-life boundaries, common purpose, and inclusion. She also discusses the pandemic’s disproportionate toll on African Americans and other minorities, and the systemic change needed to bring more diversity to businesses, particularly the upper echelons of professional organizations.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith candidly discusses how Covid-19 has exposed many of America’s systemic weaknesses, including the underfunding of social programs and infrastructure due to racism, bailouts for “zombie” companies, generational inequality, and the challenge of distributing wealth.