• Despite negative stereotypes, some people are working longer in a hybrid world.
• This "work intensification" has been going on for decades.
• Setting boundaries is crucial to avoid burning out, says organizational psychologist Amanda Jones.

In an era of quiet quitting, the Great Resignation, and lazy girl jobs, the assumption is that workers are slacking.

These trends are actually all symptoms of a workforce that is toiling harder and longer and doing more with less, according to Amanda Jones. The senior lecturer in organizational behaviour and HR management at King's Business School at King's College London specializes in remote working and work-life balance.

Jones told Business Insider that "work intensification has been happening for decades. She remembers hearing about it and becoming interested in the concept while she was at school.

When Jones was doing her doctorate, a professor at Cardiff University called Alan Felsted, agreed to be her examiner. He has studied work intensification extensively.

"One of the things that always fascinates me about this is that it's never gone down," Jones said, pointing to Felsted's research. "We are working harder progressively over time."

The end result isn't increased productivity, it's burnout and detachment.

Jones said that quitting as a concept in response to feeling overwhelmed by one's workload is "quite victim-blaming; it could be just that they can't take it anymore."

'Race to the bottom'

The negative impacts of work intensification include burnout and stress, which can lead to people taking long-term sick leave and putting a strain on the economy.

"You've got people who are economically inactive, so they're not paying taxes, they're possibly receiving benefits instead," Jones said.

"It's going to not only cost more, but if we're doing this to people in the skilled section of the workforce, it's also not going to help us with our skills gaps, so productivity will reduce," she added. "It does feel a bit like a race to the bottom."

Some companies are implementing a four-day workweek, which is a step in the right direction, in Jones' view.

All organizations should be aware that "what's happening isn't going to benefit them in the long run," she said. "I think probably there's a policy intervention that's necessary."

Increasingly intense digital world

Researchers have linked work intensification to the pandemic.

The stereotype is that people who work remotely are less productive, stepping away from their computers to do household chores or run errands.

This has factored into the decisions of several prominent companies requiring their staff to return to the office — sometimes up to five days a week.

This is another misconception, though, Jones said, because people who work from home can actually attend more meetings than before.

"It provides you with more opportunity to participate in work," she said.

"If you can't go to a meeting, in the old days, you couldn't go to a meeting, you couldn't physically get there. Now, we can go to everything."

Setting boundaries

Having work at our fingertips — emails and messaging apps on our phones — has caused our professional lives to bleed into our personal ones more than ever.

"People go on holiday and they do all this extra work," Jones said. "It doesn't feel difficult — you've got your phone in your hand and you're able to let go."

Jones said she's taken note of this and now deletes her email and her LinkedIn apps when she goes on vacation.

"There's this whole requirement to build your brand and to constantly be employable and always be looking for work, which adds to the intensification. It's this 'I must always be marketable' culture, which, for younger people, I worry they're going to be burned out before they're 30 at this rate."

Jones also recommends setting boundaries to avoid getting sucked into the work intensification cycle, even if it's difficult to do so.

"If you are in a context where your organization is not supporting that so much, often people don't feel that they have any choice other than to exit or try to retrain or do something else," she said.

Ultimately, people need to be aware of what is and is not acceptable and healthy for them.

"Some people do just have a propensity toward overwork, and we do have a duty of care to make sure that we are not overburdening those kind of people," Jones said.

"But then again, they're exactly the kind of people who tend to get things done. So I think there's that element of having to have self-awareness and knowing how to look after yourself."

• Rutger Bregman says top graduates going into finance and consulting are wasting their talents.
• He advocates for morally ambitious career paths to inspire meaningful societal change.
• Bregman says people can break out of the fog by starting their own "cult" of like-minded, ambitious idealists.

"It's an extraordinary waste of talent." That's what Rutger Bregman has to say about smart graduates from top universities going into careers in consulting and finance.

"In a rational society, you would expect that if you go to a jobs fair at these elite institutions where the best and brightest go, you would have one stand about preventing the next pandemic, a stand about curing malaria once and for all, and a stand about abolishing extreme poverty," he told Business Insider.

"But instead, what we have is Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and Kirkland & Ellis. What the fuck is going on here?"

Bregman, a historian from the Netherlands, is the author of "Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference." In the new book, he argues that too many people go into "socially useless" professions and thus feel their chosen careers are pointless.

Many even realize this before making their decision, but don't know what else to do, he said.

"Most of them are very well-meaning and deeply care about the state of the world. They want to do better, but then somehow they get sucked into this Bermuda triangle of talent."

Many grads are spiritually lost

Bregman's previous books, "Humankind" in 2020 and "Utopia for Realists" published three years earlier, were both New York Times best-sellers. His works have sold more than 2 million copies.

Throughout Bregman's career, he has spoken and written about how the most damaging jobs to society — big tobacco, for example — tend to be the best paid. Not all consultants and bankers necessarily fall into this category, he said, but having so many of them is a problem.

"It's not all totally destructive or anything like that," he said. "But compared to what these people could do, if they would take on some of the biggest challenges, the opportunity costs are massive."

Some people are "just a little bit shallow and boring" and "care deeply about owning many cars or owning a big house or having the corner office," Bregman said. "You probably can't help those people."

But for many, money isn't the most important goal of choosing the consulting and finance route. A huge motivation is "preserving your optionality," Bregman said, because "many of these people are just terrified of the future."

"Many of these kids are spiritually a little bit lost," Bregman said. "They don't really know what to do with their lives. McKinsey is very good at tapping into that."

He said big companies offer them a continuation of what they were already doing, which is the "logical next step."

"They were going from the best primary school to the best high school, and then always doing the honors classes at university, getting the best grades," Bregman said. "It's a way of postponing the real decisions, postponing actually becoming an adult, and that's very attractive if you are an insecure overachiever who has no idea what the hell to do with your life."

Champions League for do-gooders

Working in finance can also be intellectually challenging, which attracts people who like solving puzzles. Bregman said there needs to be more options in morally ambitious fields.

"Many of these kids, they just want to play in the Champions League," he said, in reference to the European top-flight soccer competition. "What I think we've got to do is to create the Champions League and the Olympics for do-gooders."

Some options for morally ambitious people include entering large-scale research and innovation fields and focusing on solving some of humanity's biggest problems, like hunger and the climate crisis. Bregman said it's not about following your passion, but figuring out "where your impact can be greatest."

"The right path depends on the challenge you're tackling. Some problems need cutting-edge research and innovation, others demand activism, lobbying, or bold entrepreneurship," he said. "Whether you're working to end hunger, fight climate collapse, reduce factory farming, or stop tax avoidance by the superrich — what matters is that you go where you're needed most."

Bregman hopes to inspire people who feel stuck to break out of going through the motions with the School for Moral Ambition, which he cofounded.

"We want to help as many people as possible devote their careers in their lives to some of the most pressing issues that we face as a species," Bregman said.

"When you study these moral pioneers of the past, it's not that they were good people and then started doing good things," he added. "It's the other way around, really. They started doing good things often because they were asked, and then they became good people, which is a very important difference."

Bregman likens it to Gandalf knocking on Frodo's door in "The Lord of the Rings." Frodo wasn't passionate about going on a long journey and risking his life, Bregman said. But Gandalf's perspective changed him as a person.

"Frodo was really passionate about gardening and having a really relaxed life full of second breakfasts," he said. "But when the old wise wizard explained everything, he was like, yeah, that's probably quite important."

Bregman jokingly advises those who feel like they want to do something more to start their own "cult."

"If you want to be a really ambitious idealist, it's quite hard nowadays because you're often swimming in a sea of cynicism," Bregman said. "What you need then is to surround yourself by other ambitious idealists, because then you'll be like, Hey, I'm not alone."

Ambition, he said, is energy, and what really matters is "how it's used, and how it's channeled."

"Find yourself some wise old wizard, a Gandalf who has a really good idea about what you should do with your life," Bregman said. "Then listen and do it."

• AI interviews can streamline the job-seeking process, but they also raise ethical concerns.
• There's also a lot of experimentation, meaning AI interviews can glitch, as one TikToker found.
• An AI communication and etiquette expert shares advice on how to prepare for a meeting with an AI.

There's a chance your next interview could be conducted by an AI bot.

That's what happened to a woman named Ken, whose AI assistant started glitching and repeating the words "vertical bar pilates" over and over.

In a recent TikTok, Ken shared a recording of this part of her interview. In comments, she explained she was interviewing for a job at a studio called StretchLab in Columbus, Ohio.

In the 25-second video, Ken recorded the AI assistant, named "Alex," malfunctioning.

"It was genuinely so creepy and weird," Ken wrote in the caption. "Please stop trying to be lazy and have AI try to do YOUR JOB!!! It gave me the creeps so bad."

StretchLab did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

AI hiring is inevitable

Emily DeJeu, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business and an expert in AI communication and etiquette, said AI-powered video interviews are likely to become more common as companies seek to streamline and automate early hiring stages.

"In terms of whether or not this will become the norm, I think the jury's out," DeJeu told BI.

Any time technology promises to save time and money and make everything faster, "we by default pursue it — there's a kind of inevitability to it," she said.

AI is being increasingly used in the job-seeking and hiring process. Candidates are using it to help tailor their résumés, while employers use it to sift through the thousands of applications they receive.

Wider use of AI for interviews is potentially the next step, a natural response to a heated and competitive job market.

DeJeu told BI that AI systems can process information much more quickly and thoroughly. However, there are concerns about their impersonal and potentially unethical nature, especially for young job seekers who may not realize they are not talking to a person.

The human element has to remain in the process somewhere along the line, in DeJeu's view.

"The idea that I am going to make lots of positive facial expressions to convince this AI tool that I'm a nice person, that's just so weird," she said. "I'm trying to convince a non-human entity that I'm a smart, capable, warm human. There's a weirdness to it that makes me uncomfortable."

Disclosure is key, DeJeu said — otherwise people are likely to feel insulted when they expect to be interviewed by a human and are instead met with a bot.

How to prepare for meeting an AI

DeJeu's advice for anyone who knows they are going into an interview with an AI is to focus on the "three V's":

1. Visuals

The visuals are what you look like, so make sure your background is professional and you're dressed as you would be in any other interview situation.

"Wear your suit. Think about your background," DeJeu said. "You really want to think about how you use engaging expressions with your face and how you bring your hands into it. It's the same kind of prep that I would give if you were going to give a presentation."

2. Vocals

An AI is also taking note of your vocals — how fast you're talking, your vocal variety, how often you pause, and if you use a lot of filler words.

"Can you practice your response enough that you feel really fluent in answering and you're able to reduce your filler words?" DeJeu said.

"You don't have a lot of these backtrack, sidetrack, tangential statements built into your answer. You can speak directionally, answer the question in full, put a period at the end when you're done, and stop talking."

3. Verbals

Finally, you should notice the words you're using and the sentence structures you're building.

DeJeu said it's a good idea to mine job ads for keywords and make sure they say them repeatedly through the interview.

"I don't know that a human recruiter would be kind of tallying in their minds, 'they said collaborative leadership six times,' but an AI tool absolutely would be able to do that," she said.

"Your prep needs to account for the fact that AI is capturing and remembering so much more than your human interviewer."

AI interviews seem to be cropping up more often for entry-level and part-time jobs, meaning they'll likely affect young job seekers — Gen Zers — before anyone else.

"They really have to absorb a lot of the challenges of this disruptive moment in our history," DeJeu said. "They are being disrupted in a way that in my lifetime, certainly, it's never been disrupted."

• Elliot Grainge advised Northeastern University grads to embrace rejection in his commencement speech.
• The CEO of Atlantic Records said he set up his company, 10K Projects, after repeatedly hearing "no."
• Grainge was appointed to run the Warner Music division in 2024.

The CEO of Atlantic Music Group had some advice for new graduates of Boston's Northeastern University: don't give up when you're told "no."

Elliot Grainge, the son of Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge, gave a commencement speech at the university on Sunday.

He told the graduates he'd learned the power of resilience when he faced rejection.

"I'm here to tell you the two greatest things people have said to me: 'That's impossible' and 'no,'" Grainge said.

He graduated from Northeastern in 2016. During his time at the university, he started two businesses he was "certain would be massive successes." One was a promotion company, the other was a live music series.

"These companies made me a total of negative $3,500," Grainge said.

He didn't that the failures to heart and remained determined to make it in the music industry after graduation.

After leaving Northeastern Grainge said he tried to convince music execs that the artists he was listening to on SoundCloud were going to be big.

After "hearing 'no' — again and again" he said he started his own company called 10K Projects.

"I heard these things so many times, eventually I thought: screw it. I'll try and raise some money, and try to sign one or two of these artists, and launch my own label," Grainge said.

"That company, 10K Projects, was born from hearing 'no' — again and again. I bet on myself. I bet on the artists I believed in. And I was right, not always, but I was right more often than I was wrong."

10K Projects has since signed artists including Trippie Redd, 6ix9ine, Aitch, and Ice Spice.

"Looking back, if just one of those individuals had said yes, or even offered me a job, I probably wouldn't be standing here today in front of you guys," Grainge said. "It was hearing 'no' that drove me to follow my gut and build something of my own."

Grainge encouraged the graduates to embrace their failures because each of his own had taught him a valuable lesson.

"Success isn't one massive leap," he said. "It's little wins, a thousand setbacks, some detours, and eventually, a door opens."

Grainge was appointed CEO of Atlantic Music Group at Warner Music in 2024, overseeing Atlantic Records and 300 Elektra Entertainment.

Warner is one of the world's largest music groups, along with Universal and Sony.

Commenters on a Northeastern subreddit noted that Grainge's father is a member of the university's board of trustees. Elliot Grainge married Sofia Richie, the daughter of singer Lionel Richie, in 2023.

• Frich CEO Katrin Kaurov highlights the common financial pitfalls many Gen Zers face.
• Her experience as a young model taught her financial independence early.
• Kaurov says common errors include relying on buy-now-pay-later apps, and waiting too long to start investing.

Money mistakes can start early, and Gen Zers are at risk of making some big errors, according to Katrin Kaurov, the CEO and cofounder of social financial platform Frich.

She says modeling between the ages of 14 and 24 taught her to manage her money in a way many that age do not have to.

"I would spend three months in Milan, three months in London, and three months in Hong Kong," Kaurov told Business Insider. "So I basically had to become financially independent and be an adult at the age of 14, 15, 16 when everyone else was going to parties."

When she moved to New York in her 20s, Kaurov realized this wasn't the norm. She saw her friends flounder when it came to their finances. They had no clue how to manage their money, yet seemed to be living lavish lives on social media.

Kaurov and her friend Aleksandra Medina founded Frich in response to what they saw, aiming to help young people learn "radical transparency and honesty" around money.

"Money shouldn't be lonely and sad and anxiety-inducing," Kaurov said. "We know that money is behind every decision that you make in life, and it doesn't have to be scary."

Here are some of the biggest mistakes Kaurov thinks Gen Zers are making, and what they can do to fix them.

1. Believing everything on social media

Social media, especially TikTok, is full of financial advice. Not all of it is good.

Kaurov said that while TikToks and Instagram Reels are great for opening up the conversation about money, much is "not really verified."

"You see a 17-year-old TikTok who is like, this is how I built a seven-figure business overnight, I'm 17 and I'm already retired. I think it creates very unrealistic portrayals of how people are managing money," she said. "It creates an idea that Gen Z has it together with money, when in reality, most people don't."

Young people shouldn't compare themselves to these posts, Kaurov said, and instead think about their own goals and aspirations.

2. Not getting real about credit card debt

Gen Zers are racking up a lot of credit card debt. They need to get real about this if they're going to face all of their challenges, Kaurov said, such as saving enough for a down payment on a house.

Social media, again, plays a part here. "Especially in cities like New York or London, it just seems like everyone is having dinners out every night and they go on these amazing trips," she said. "It just makes you wonder, wait, why am I always broke? Am I doing something wrong?"

You never see whether your peers are in debt, "which most of them are," Kaurov said.

"You never really see the truth. Maybe their card is getting declined at the restaurant."

3. Making budgets too restrictive

Kaurov said people can create budgets with too much enthusiasm and optimism for how little money they will spend from month to month.

She said a budget should be about creating a realistic guideline for spending and saving — and if it's too restrictive, then rethink it. "Trial and error is crucial and will allow people to find what kind of budget works best for them."

4. Not setting aside enough time

Kaurov recommends young people set aside about 30 minutes a week for a "money date."

"The same way we review our fitness goals and our career goals," she said. "Review what you're doing with money, what are your goals, where are you going?

"Having a money date when you actually review what you're spending on, and go step by step."

5. Reliance on BNPL apps

Buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) services such as Klarna and Affirm have made it easier than ever to spend.

Kaurov warned that relying on them can be catastrophic. "Recently, I went to a bar and I saw that you could pay for your drink with Afterpay," she said. "I was essentially taking a micro loan to have a drink."

It's a sign that things have gone too far, Kaurov said. "That is one thing that I would really highlight for people to be careful."

6. Waiting too long to start investing

When it comes to investing, "You just need to get started," Kaurov advised.

She waited years to start investing, but said it doesn't have to be daunting.

Kaurov said she started micro-investing — setting up automatic investments every week — and it only took about five minutes.

"Things are not as hard and scary as they look," she said.

Kaurov added that being in your 20s really works in your favor because even small contributions, like $50 a month, add up over time.

"I always like to compare that to running a marathon. You're never going to do it on day one."

• Panasonic said on Friday it planned to cut 10,000 jobs this financial year.
• The Japanese company said in a statement that the measures were aimed at boosting its efficiency.
• The reductions will amount to about 4% of Panasonic's global workforce.

Panasonic will slash its workforce by 10,000 roles in an effort to boost efficiency.

The Japanese electronics manufacturer, which supplies batteries to Tesla through its subsidiary Panasonic Energy, plans to cut 5,000 roles in Japan and 5,000 overseas. That amounts to about 4% of its nearly 230,000-strong workforce.

In a statement on Friday, Panasonic said it planned to "thoroughly review operational efficiency … mainly in sales and indirect departments, and reevaluate the numbers of organisations and personnel actually needed."

"Through these measures, the company will optimize our personnel on a global scale," the statement added.

The cuts will take place this financial year, which ends in March 2026, "in accordance with the labor laws, rules, and regulations of each country and region."

The cuts are expected to incur costs of almost $900 million.

Panasonic shares closed 2% higher in Tokyo.

President Donald Trump's tariffs and trade war with China have made the global economic outlook more uncertain this year.

In January, Panasonic Energy said it wanted to curb its reliance on China for EV batteries.

"We do have some Chinese supply but we don't have a lot," Allan Swan, the president of Panasonic Energy of North America, said at the time. "And we have plans not to have some, as we go forward, and that has accelerated."

In 2022, Panasonic opted into the government-recommended four-day workweek in Japan, which aimed to reduce the number of employees country falling ill or even dying from overwork.

CEO Yuki Kusumi told investors at the time that the company "must support the well-being of our employees."

• Young professionals lose money by keeping savings in low-interest accounts, says Yuval Shuminer.
• Shuminer, CEO of Piere, says daily purchases, like coffees, aren't the problem.
• Piere aims to automate financial optimization by finding the best deals.

Young professionals are leaving thousands of dollars of their hard-earned money on the table, a personal finance expert says.

But, she said, their money mistakes have nothing to do with their daily purchases.

As a New Yorker, Yuval Shuminer, the founder and CEO of the fintech app Piere, was used to expensive coffees and brunches.

"It is an absurdly expensive city," Shuminer told Business Insider. "As you go about day-to-day life, you start to rack up a lot of these expenses across coffee that costs $7, an avocado toast that costs $12."

But in 2022, when the economy started to turn, Shuminer saw some of her friends get laid off and look at their finances more critically.

"The conclusion that we came to is that we're taking so much brainpower to think about the $5 that we spend on coffee every day," Shuminer said. "It is so constricting to our lives."

Young professionals do make a lot of financial missteps. But the biggest one is holding their savings — sometimes tens of thousands of dollars — in accounts with 0.02% interest when market rates for high-yield savings accounts were more like 4.5%, said Shuminer.

"That alone is $10,000 they're leaving on the table," Shuminer said.

Shuminer, who studied behavioral economics, launched Piere in December 2023 in response to what she saw. She thought traditional budgeting apps focused too much on constraining spending rather than automating financial optimization. She realized that so many people weren't aware of how much money they could easily put in their pockets while instead focusing on these $5 purchases that shape their lifestyle.

"Instead of working with all these tools that focus on constraining people's budgets and limiting the amount that you're spending on these fun things, the way that we built Pierre is to say, those things are fine," Shuminer said. "But if you're leaving your money in savings without earning yield on it, or you're paying fees that you shouldn't be paying, those are the things that aren't OK."

Piere's ethos is to make your money work for you in the background, Shuminer said.

Most of Piere's users are lower or middle class, Shuminer said, who didn't necessarily learn early on how to manage money.

"Consumers are just so overwhelmed with the financial choices that they have to make that oftentimes they just don't do them," Shuminer said. "Because of inertia, because of anxiety, because of the frictions that they need to overcome in order to make some of these decisions."

She said Piere does the hard work for them, keeping track of the financial marketplace, which changes daily.

"Every single day, something is changing," Shuminer said, such as a new savings account with a better rate.

"Money is a tool — you're not collecting money just to collect money," she added. "You're collecting money for it to create more value in your life so that you can allocate it to the things that are going to make you happier or better off."

Shuminer said the biggest financial oversight she sees people in their 20s making is not realizing the impact that even small investments can make.

"$10 a month, $100 a month, has a lot of compounding effect," she said, which can turn into a healthy savings pot by age 40, and certainly by 70.

"It's like it's some hidden secret that I think a lot of people realize when it's a little bit too late," Shuminer said. "Our goal is to help people."

• Career coach Em Rezkalla advises being "professionally mean" to advance at work.
• Her TikTok on the subject has been viewed 2.8 million times.
• She gave BI advice on putting it into practice.

When career coach Em Rezkalla made a TikTok suggesting people be "professionally mean" at work, it was viewed 2.8 million times.

"I'm going to say this once, and I'm going to say this with love: You need to be meaner at work this year because you, my friend, were way too nice and people pleasing in 2024," Rezkalla said in the video, which she put out in January. "Don't get me wrong, when I say mean, I mean assertive, direct, opinionated."

She gave examples such as, if you want a colleague to change their behavior to improve their work or use their time more efficiently, tell them. Or if they're doing something that is slowing you down or making your working life difficult, you ask them to stop.

"The definition that people use for mean at work, especially women, is not actually mean," Rezkalla told Business Insider.

She told BI she learned what she calls "professional meanness" after being a "pushover" and learning "the hard way that that doesn't make you successful."

Rezkalla recommended practicing what you say when you want to set a clear boundary at work. She also suggested trying it first with a trusted coworker rather than a manager, "and then work your way up."

If a colleague takes issue, you should ask them questions about what they don't like.

Rezkalla said that asking questions invites more engagement than statements. Asking the person to explain why it bothers them can help you understand whether their frustrations reflect their own personal preferences for how people should act, she added.

Rezkalla said women in particular can question themselves when they become more assertive, which is why getting to the root of any problems is key.

She suggested questions like "Is this something you notice particularly with me as a pattern you don't like?" and "Or do you feel like I'm taking over the meeting? "

"Try to take it as a conversation with a human and not necessarily as something affecting your ego," Rezkalla said.

Some viewers agreed with Rezkalla's advice, saying that the moment they started being "meaner," they were promoted more frequently.

In her video, she said that when you start laying out your boundaries and standing up for yourself more, some people will think you're being difficult.

Others, however, thought it could damage your career.

Rezkalla told BI her advice is subjective and won't work for everyone.

She said people should still be "emotionally aware."

"I try not to make people something that they're not," Rezkalla said. "You have to just take it and mold it in a way where you're not changing who you are, but you're elevating yourself to be more open to new opportunities through new methods."

Rezkalla originally wanted to be a lawyer, so she studied political science and completed the LSAT. Then, she decided against the legal route and did a master's degree in public and international affairs instead.

After that, she went into consulting and also worked in accounting, marketing, and policy writing for the Canadian government before becoming a career coach around four years ago.

• Chanel CEO Leena Nair attributes her success to taking on tough assignments.
• Her top career advice is always to raise your hand for the difficult tasks that others might avoid.
• Nair's ambition was evident early, aspiring to be India's Prime Minister as a child.

Chanel's CEO continually raised her hand for the toughest assignments throughout her career, and she sees this as the driver behind much of her success.

In an interview with LinkedIn's CEO Ryan Roslansky for his video series The Path, Leena Nair said she was always pushing boundaries, which was her main piece of career advice.

"Always put your hand up for the difficult job," Nair said. "If you're staying in the comfort zone, it means you're comfortable. That's why we call it the comfort zone. You need to put your hand up for the difficult things that others may not volunteer for and give it everything you've got."

During her three decades at Unilever, Nair led HR across South Asia, became the company's first female chief of HR, and launched initiatives to aid the company in reaching gender parity, such as "Career by Choice," which helps women re-enter the workforce after a career break.

Nair was one of three people in line for the CEO role at Unilever when she received the offer of the top job at Chanel. She started at the luxury fashion brand in January 2022.

Nair told Roslansky she didn't have many female role models while growing up in the city of Kolhapur in India. But she always aimed high and remembers having "big dreams."

She recalled one event at the girls' school she attended when she was eight or nine years old, where the students were all asked to stand up and say what they wanted to be when they grew up.

"People were saying all sorts of things — teacher, homemaker," Nair said. "And then I stood up and I said, 'I would like to be the Prime Minister of India' to lots of nervous laughter in the room, some sniggering, because I was determined, I was ambitious. I knew I wanted to have a voice in the world, I didn't know how."

Nair looked at what her male cousins were doing and decided to try engineering. However, after receiving her degree, she quickly realized this wasn't for her and decided to attend business school.

She landed a Unilever internship in Hindustan and stayed at the company for 30 years.

In her early roles there, she realized the "privilege and responsibility" of being the first woman in the Indian bureau to do many things, such as going into a factory or completing a night shift.

"It meant I had to make it easier for those who came after me," she said.

• Office romances still happen despite a shift toward hybrid and remote work.
• They now rely on digital communication, with less time to work out in-person chemistry.
• This means people have to be more bold and deliberate about pursuing a colleague they like.

Falling in love at work has changed.

Those who study relationships have long been confident about the factors that cause people to fall in love with colleagues. It's largely because of proximity, but also because working toward a common goal is a bonding experience.

Now, at companies where hybrid work is commonplace, teammates meet more sporadically. They certainly don't rack up almost 1,700 hours a year or more in the office together like they used to.

Channa Bromley, a relationship coach who specializes in helping high-achieving men and women, told BI the shift to remote and hybrid work "has completely changed" the way office romances unfold.

"The pandemic didn't kill workplace romance — it just changed the battlefield," Bromley told BI. If anything, the disruption with remote and hybrid work has only "made workplace relationships more intentional," she said.

Proximity bred familiarity in a traditional office setting, but now, without the casual watercooler chats or the slow burn of in-person camaraderie, connections at work require deliberate effort, Bromley said: "People aren't just falling into relationships because they spend eight hours a day together."

Manufactured serendipity

Bromley said the biggest shift is that office relationships no longer happen by accident. Now, they require strategy, with people having to "manufacture serendipity."

Before the pandemic, a marketing executive who was one of Bromley's clients fell for a coworker "over months of casual interactions."

"There was no single moment where it clicked," she said. "It was the accumulation of small, familiar ones. By the time they got together, there was already an unshakable foundation."

In 2025, the dynamic of finding love is different. Another of Bromley's clients, an engineer, barely knew a woman on his team beyond Slack messages and the occasional Zoom call, but he knew he was attracted to her.

Bromley said the relationship was then "built with intention," with her client finding ways to see the woman beyond work tasks, such as flirty Slack messages, virtual coworking sessions, and "lingering on video calls."

"When they finally met in person, it wasn't about discovering attraction," Bromley said. "It was about testing whether the connection they built in controlled, digital spaces could survive in the real world."

A double-edged sword

Jenn Gunsaullus, a sociologist, relationship expert, and corporate speaker, told BI that remote work is a double-edged sword when it comes to office relationships. On the one hand, there are fewer risks once a relationship develops, with less opportunity for scrutiny, less office gossip, and "no awkward run-ins if things don't work out."

"But on the other hand, it also makes it harder to read chemistry in real time," which can prevent relationships from forming in the first place, Gunsaullus said.

"You don't get to pick up on body language, shared eye contact, or that natural energy that can build when two people are around each other every day."

Stealth mode

The fundamental rules of attraction haven't changed. Shared goals, high-pressure environments, and the psychology of teamwork still create bonds.

Angelika Koch, a relationship and breakup expert at the dating app Taimi, told BI that during the pandemic, people became accustomed to communicating more through their phones and less in person.

"This distance allows more flexibility when it comes to conversations," she said. "And subtle flirtations through texts are more likely to begin with those who feel that spark."

Lucy Finter, an account and social media manager at Press Box PR, met her boyfriend at work 18 months ago, while they were both in the office part of the time.

At the beginning of their relationship, Finter said she was excited about the three days they would be in the office together, getting to go on "mini dates" in the day between their official ones.

Bromley said people have to be bolder now to pursue an office relationship. They must pick up on signals when they meet in person and rely on messages and emails in the interim.

"The intensity hasn't disappeared," she added. "It's just gone underground, where it simmers in private messages and well-timed emojis."

Workplace romance isn't dead, Bromley added: "It's just operating in stealth mode."

• Kirsty Hulse burned out as the head of a marketing company.
• She now coaches people on how to find joy in their work.
• Hulse advises integrating play and finding the places where you do your best thinking.

Staring out the window might not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about boosting productivity.

Kirsty Hulse, a motivational speaker and workplace coach, thinks it can actually help us find joy and creativity in our work.

The author of "Don't Swear at Work: The Rule Breakers' Guide to Workplace Brilliance" said she often tells people that gazing into space is a valuable use of their time.

"People always laugh," she told Business Insider. "Isn't it radical that that's funny? We're so conditioned to think that thinking isn't valuable, that it's funny even as a concept."

There's a limit, of course, but if your brain is encouraging you to look out the window for a while, it's wise to take heed, Hulse said.

"Your brain is like a snow globe. If you shake up a snow globe, it's so noisy, and then it will start to slowly settle — and we need a settled snow globe in order to be able to solve problems."

Burned-out girlboss

Hulse's first business was a large marketing agency, which she started aged 26.

From the outside, she was immensely successful, landing huge clients such as Virgin Atlantic and IBM, opening offices in London and San Francisco, and expanding her team.

However, in her late 20s she started experiencing severe chest pains. After some tests, doctors concluded her heart was fine, but she was having panic attacks.

Hulse, a millennial, grew up in the "girlboss" era, when hard work and success were prioritized over everything else.

"I thought I was handling it," she said. "I was strong in resilience and all those things that women are conditioned to be, but my body was giving me all of these subtle cues."

Hulse realized she needed a change, so she pivoted to learning everything she could about the neuroscience of success and work and what makes us productive beings.

Now, she's a confidence coach who trains people at top companies, including LinkedIn, Amazon, and Spotify, to be more confident and how workplaces should be structured to bring out the best in people.

Here's her top advice:

1. Don't ignore your emotions

Hulse said many workplaces are still operating like they did in the 1950s, when emotions weren't as welcome.

She said that prioritizing intellectual rigour over our own personalities is not how humans naturally operate, leaving many people feeling like they're not themselves at work, or developing impostor syndrome.

"If we feel as though we have to have some kind of personality transplant and suddenly be this serious, robust professional, it gets in our head," Hulse said. "We're emotional beings. We make emotional decisions, emotional choices."

In the era of AI, Hulse thinks soft skills will help workers stand out.

2. Find out what play looks like for you

Hulse said the opposite of play isn't work; it's depression. Play is a need "as much as food and water."

She often asks what people liked doing for fun when they were little, like running in the forest or playing board games. "Then I ask them the question 'how can you connect that more to your work?' There's nearly always actually a clear path," Hulse said.

It could be an hour a week spent taking a pottery class, painting, playing the guitar, taking a yoga class, or going for a run. "Something that you love that truly fuels your creativity and fulfillment."

3. Work out where you do your best thinking

Instead of worrying about the perception of working hard or being performatively busy, Hulse recommends working out where you do your best thinking: "We're paid for our thoughts, we're paid for our thinking."

Hulse said people often tell her the best place is in the shower, which may be because "innovation is neurologically quiet." Staring out the window has a similar effect.

"We are coming up with cool stuff all the time, but when your brain is going fast and you're doing tasks and you're ticking things off your to-do list, you will never be able to hear your innovative ideas," she said.

"It's not that we have our best ideas in the shower, it's that that's the only time you can hear them."

• Digital communication is handy, but can lead to problems with tone and misinterpretation.
• Feeling unheard can lead to team members disengaging and quiet quitting, says Skillsoft's VP.
• Managers need to figure out how their employees like to communicate — and how they do it best.

Digital communication has become the norm at work, especially in workplaces where staff are hybrid or completely remote.

That doesn't mean it works for everyone all the time. Those who find in-person meetings can provoke anxiety favor DMs on Slack or Teams. The problem with this approach is that text can make it far harder to decipher tone and meaning.

Leena Rinne, the vice president of Skillsoft Coaching, told Business Insider that managers should make it a priority to work out the best way for their team to communicate.

Otherwise, frustrations and feedback fall by the wayside, leading team members to feel overlooked. This only leads to disengagement and a lack of purpose, Rinne said, which don't help productivity.

"How important it is depends on how happy and engaged you want your people to be," Rinne said. "If you don't care, maybe it doesn't matter. But if you care about them being engaged, delivering good work, feeling loyal to your organization, and if you care about those outcomes, it has to be a priority."

Slack is quick, but not always helpful

Communicating through text, email, DM, and even voice notes has sped everything up. Rinne said it also gives people a chance to think before responding.

"You can be thoughtful about what you say back," she said. "If you have a big feeling, you're not on the spot to come up with an answer right then."

But for Gen Zers, the world's digital natives, this can lead to a "communication gap," Rinne said, because "they almost feel awkward talking to people" face to face. "This digital generation has never known life without devices, never known life without digital engagement."

Many Gen Zers also got their first full-time jobs during the pandemic and missed out on the early years of workplace socializing.

Anxious generation

"They went through some of their most formative years in their houses in the pandemic, when we may have developed social skills," Rinne said. "They had a different experience from me and many other generations."

As such, Zoomers are a particularly anxious generation and can develop conflict aversion if they only communicate digitally, Rinne said. They can't adapt to be agile in "these moments of rumble that happen all the time in a conversation," in her view.

Rinne thinks people shouldn't solely use more disconnected forms of communication in general. Younger generations are not the only ones using voice notes and texts now.

"We're all evolving our communication styles. There might be benefits for this new way of communicating, but there are some big gaps if we rely too heavily on it."

Communication via these means can be stunted and even misinterpreted. "The connectivity, that human moment, it's not the same," Rinne said.

She recalled a recent interaction with a colleague in which she was busy answering their DM in a very straightforward manner. The colleague assumed Rinne was being short-tempered or was annoyed with their question, which wasn't her intention at all.

At the same time, it's important to balance these needs and meet team members "where they're at," Rinne added, and not force communication styles that simply don't work for them.

"If you don't do that, you risk all those things that every organization is complaining about right now, which are the turnover, the disengagement, the quiet quitting — all of those things."

Middle managers are vital

The antidote to this is working to maintain a high-trust relationship — one where small lapses in concentration don't erode it.

"Building teams that are psychologically safe gives us a lot more latitude to stumble, either in our digital communication or even in our face-to-face communication where we are awkward and say the wrong thing," Rinne said. "If it's safe, that's fine."

Middle managers play a critical role in facilitating communication and understanding the needs of their teams. This "messy middle" can receive less investment in leadership development compared to frontline managers and executives, she said.

Companies that are "unbossing" the workplace and aiming to flatten organizations, such as Amazon, may find this strategy risky, Rinne said.

"The whole thing starts to unravel if you cut too far into that level. You better have something that fills in not just the functional skill gap, but the leadership gap of a middle level.

"Everyone left now has how many direct reports that you're supposed to be engaged with, know about, adapt to be agile in their styles? It's hard to do that with 10 people — try it with 30."

• Build-A-Bear shares are up by a third over the past 12 months, valuing the company at almost $500 million.
• CEO Sharon Price John credits nostalgia and targeted marketing for its sales growth.
• Gen Z and millennials are big drivers of plushie sales, embracing toys for joy and self-expression.

Build-A-Bear's CEO was always drawn to the toy industry, something she credits to her "inner child."

After getting her MBA from Columbia University, Sharon Price John took a job at Mattel in 1994. Then, she moved to Hasbro. Now, she's the boss of one of the biggest plushie sellers, Build-A-Bear Workshop, which is worth almost $500 million after its stock soared by 35% over the past 12 months.

"Barbie was one of my favorite toys when I was a kid," Price John told Business Insider. "Barbie and plush. Those were the things that I played with a lot. And so my journey, it's almost poetic. When people look at it, they think I planned it — but I didn't."

In her three decades in the toy world, Price John has witnessed many trends such as the rise of the "kidult" market.

Plushies are hot right now, particularly among Gen Zers and millennials.

Mintel's Traditional Toys and Games report, published in October, found that stuffed toy sales have been growing among young adults. Brian Benway, the author of the report, previously told BI this is in part because social media communities are more open about sharing their interests.

"A lot of people are taking the approach that, well, I don't care if other people think this is dumb, this brings me a little bit of happiness, a little bit of joy, so I'm going to keep doing it," he said.

Build-A-Bear has capitalized on this by collaborating with some millennial favorites, including Harry Potter, Pokémon, and Hello Kitty. They also license "with everything from "Deadpool" to "The Matrix" to "Ted Lasso,"" Price John said.

"When you put Build-A-Bear together with a Harry Potter, which came out the same year Build-A-Bear did in 1997, that's explosive," she said. "You get to pick which house you're in by which scarf he wears."

Revenues rose 2.1% to $496.4 million for the year to February 1, while pre-tax income increased 1.2% to $67.1 million. Build-A-Bear has almost 600 locations globally.

For its 25th anniversary in 2022, the campaign leaned into nostalgia and reminded older consumers why they loved their plushies in the first place.

"The entire campaign was focused on what was special about Build-A-Bear and to come back to Build-A-Bear and celebrate those memories," Price John said. "At the time, less than 20% of our total sales were teens and adults. Now it's 40% of our sales."

Targeted marketing helped too, because it's much easier to find micro-communities now through social media.

"That's where all of that sort of these subsets have emerged, and it makes it much much more efficient to communicate with like-minded groups," Price John said. "That would have been really difficult for toy companies a long time ago had, who would have had to waste much waste trying to find the Harry Potter Build-A-Bear overlap."

Price John has never thrown away any of her own stuffed animals or Barbies. She said we release endorphins when we relive those fond memories of childhood.

"We place extraordinary meaning in them," she said. "There are things that you look at, and the feeling that that evokes is really good."

It's particularly strong for people who rediscover their old toys in adulthood. Children love their plushies, and then they become tweens and forget about them for a while. Maybe they are a little embarrassed and think of them as childish, and don't want to play with them in front of their peers.

Childhood development

Once that awkward phase is over, Price John said, people realize how much the toys they played with helped form their identity.

"Nurture toys teach you how to be a caring, giving person. There are role-play toys that teach you that you're practicing being an adult. There are building toys that teach you how things work together," she said. "All of that is an important part of childhood development."

Price John always saw the value of toys. When her business school counterparts were getting signing-on bonuses to join top management and consulting firms equal to her annual Mattel salary, they couldn't understand her thinking. "They made fun of me. They don't anymore."

• A new papal election — known as the conclave — is set to begin following Pope Francis' death.
• The method the Catholic Church uses to elect its leader has stayed almost the same for 800 years.
• Cardinals from around the world will descend on the Vatican City to decide on the next pope.

The Vatican announced that Pope Francis died Monday at 88 at his papal residence.

The pope's last public appearance was at St. Peter's Square on Easter Sunday, less than 24 hours before his death.

Now, the secretive election process to appoint the next pontiff of the Catholic Church will soon be underway. In keeping with a centuries-old tradition, popes are chosen by the College of Cardinals, a group of ordained bishops who make up the church's most senior officials. They will now be summoned to a meeting at the Vatican where the papal election — also known as the conclave — will take place.

There are currently 252 cardinals. Of those, 138 are eligible to vote in a conclave to elect a new pope (rules introduced in 1975 exclude cardinals over the age of 80 from voting).

The conclave process explained

To begin with, a special morning Mass will be held, after which 120 of the cardinals — the maximum number of cardinal electors — will gather inside the Sistine Chapel, which has overseen all papal conclaves since 1858.

The conclave will officially begin when the words "extra omnes" (Latin for "everybody out") are said by the master of the papal liturgical celebrations.

This expels everyone but voting cardinals from the Sistine Chapel. Those remaining are then essentially sequestered until they have chosen a successor.

After the first day, four ballots will be held each day, with the cardinals casting their vote on a piece of paper headed "Eligo in summen pontificem," or "I elect as supreme pontiff." Ballots are then stuffed into an urn and counted.

Three cardinals delegated as scrutineers count the ballots, ensure everyone has voted, each make a count, and then burn the ballots. A two-thirds majority is required for a cardinal to be named the new pope.

Security measures are in place to keep the conclave sequestered

From the start of the conclave, the cardinals are cut off from the outside world — phones, TV, radio, and newspapers are all banned. They will hole up inside the Domus Sanctae Marthae, a hotel-like residence in the Vatican, until the conclave has concluded.

As with previous years, it's expected that security around the Sistine Chapel will be tight.

During the most recent conclave, following the resignation of Pope Benedict in 2013, sweeps were made for microphones and communication devices, and electronic jamming devices were installed to prevent any transmission from escaping.

There is no definite answer on how long the papal election will take

In the past, some papal conclaves have gone on for weeks, months, even years. Notably, the conclave of 1268 lasted over two years, and the cardinals were eventually given only water and bread to try to force them into a decision.

Conclaves in recent years, however, have been relatively short. The one in 2013 took just two days. The longest papal conclave in the 20th century was in 1922, when the cardinals voted 14 times over five days.

If a conclave lasts more than 12 or 13 days, the cardinals can swap over to majority voting to expedite the process.

The new pope will be named after white smoke is seen from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel

Once a candidate has been selected, it is up to them to accept.

With the word "Accepto" — "I accept," the papal conclave is over, and the Catholic Church has found its new pope.

The outside world will know that a new pope has been elected once white smoke is seen coming from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel.

Smoke will be visible to onlookers twice a day throughout the conclave process, but, crucially, it will appear white only if the next pontiff has been selected.

That's because the scrutineers douse the discarded ballots with mystery chemicals (or something else, it isn't entirely clear) to make the smoke black if there isn't a pope, and make the smoke white in the event that "Habemus papam" — which translates as "We have a pope" — is announced.

As is customary, the identity of the new pope will not be immediately made known.

Instead, the crowds who gather in St. Peter's Square will be among the first to see who has been chosen.

• We all know burnout, but you may have "boreout" — being uninspired and detached from work.
• A Wharton psychologist has said it was on the rise as hybrid work reduced in-person interaction.
• This is what managers and employees can do about it.

Every employee knows what it is to be burned out. But do you know if you have "boreout"?

The term describes feeling purposeless and disengaged because of a lack of meaning at work. It was coined by two Swiss business consultants in a book in the late 2000s, but it may be having its moment.

The Wharton psychologist Adam Grant told CNBC last month that "boreout" was on the rise thanks to remote work. That comes after Gallup warned in January that a combination of a bad job market and rising cost of living meant American workers were "sticking with their current employer while feeling more disconnected than ever."

Kelli Thompson, an executive coach and the author of "Closing the Confidence Gap," didn't know the term boreout when she was feeling "itchy" after 11 years in her banking job.

"I love this company. This is great. All my coworkers are great, but I just feel like I'm going through the motions," Thompson recalled thinking in an interview with Business Insider. "Ultimately, you just start to feel disengaged."

Boreout isn't necessarily anything to do with the company or the people you work with, Thompson added. You may just be "bored because you've mastered whatever it is you're doing," she said.

After her own bout of boreout, Thompson started running her own business and coaches people who are experiencing it.

Boreout can arise when people fear leaving a job in an employers' market.

But Thompson said she encouraged people not to think that quitting a job they were disconnected from was the only solution.

"Actually, it's like 'no, I can be grateful that I have a job and also advocate to my employer that we should be making sure that we are aligned in our work,'" she said.

Kacy Fleming is an organizational psychologist and founder of The Fuchsia Tent, a private membership group for professional midlife women. She told BI that while boreout isn't discussed as much as burnout, she believed it was more common.

Fleming said boreout can happen for various reasons. Sometimes, people tire of their days being the same when they have tasks that impose a rigid routine. Other times, people become more senior and are given responsibilities that don't interest them, she added.

Office v home

Fleming said burnout and boredom can occur when someone's work life is suddenly taken over by tasks that overshadow the reasons they got into a profession in the first place, such as spreadsheets over creative pursuits.

Whether you're working in the office or at home is also a factor.

Fleming said flexibility and autonomy in working arrangements were important for productivity, and removing them could be detrimental, especially if leaders don't clearly explain the reasoning.

"It's a symptom of employees being given what they wanted briefly and then having it taken away," she said, adding that the reasons for RTO mandates should be more than "because I said so."

Incentives to come to the office, like free lunches, aren't enough, Fleming said. "If we're not taking care of the needs that really underpin people's feelings of safety and significance, Taco Tuesday is a slap in the face," she said.

But Lisa Walker, a Chicago-based strategic business executive who leads DHR's global industrial practice, told BI that the kind of communication the office facilitates can help identify boreout.

When five days in the office was more common, workers garnered a lot from informal conversations there, but remote work makes it harder to recognize when someone isn't as responsive or detect shifts in their tone, she said.

Walker said that if someone who is usually open about bringing up any issues suddenly becomes silent, that could be a sign they've checked out. The same applies if those who've been eager to be part of new projects become withdrawn, she added.

Walker said managers of remote or hybrid workers should ask themselves, "Have you created that informal social network? And if so, when was the last time you talked to them? Are we creating those social networking bonds through real, face-to-face interactions, not just text?"

'1% closer'

Thompson said that the people she works with who suffer from boreout are often risk-averse, or those who advocate for other people, but not themselves.

She said she encouraged them to think about what they want their work life to look like a year from now, and how they can move "1% closer" to the big change they want in it. "I think sometimes where they get caught up is they think they have to make this big sweeping change overnight."

When Thompson quit her banking job after 11 years, she took a pay cut to become the HR lead for a tech company. She said the move instantly felt right, even on the hard days.

"It just felt so easy," she said. The challenges were "worth it because I'm actually doing work that I think is fun and enjoyable and exciting."

Thompson added that the opposite of boreout isn't never having a bad day: "It just means that the harder days are more tolerable."

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected]. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Ad giant WPP offers free Friday lunches as a perk for staff as some express discontent at its RTO policy.
• The policy requires employees to work in-office four days per week, including two Fridays per month.
• WPP said the free lunches are not connected to an employee petition protesting the RTO policy.

Advertising giant WPP hopes to sweeten the deal on in-office work by promising free lunch on Fridays as it fights employee discontent over its RTO policy.

A WPP spokesperson told Business Insider complimentary lunches on Fridays were introduced at the company's UK-based campuses this month.

On Saturday, The Times reported that the free lunch at WPP's South Bank office in London offered beef ragù, garlic bread, and a spring salad.

The spokesperson told BI it was one of several perks being offered to help foster an appealing work environment for employees coming into the office. They did not confirm whether the free lunches would be permanent.

The initiative comes soon after over 20,000 people signed a petition expressing unhappiness at WPP's recent RTO mandate.

WPP's new rules have been controversial among employees, who were told by chief executive Mark Read that they now have to come into the office four times a week and commit to coming in two Fridays a month.

The memo, obtained by BI in January, was sent to 114,000 employees.

Read said that in-office attendance was associated with "stronger employee engagement, improved client survey scores, and better financial performance."

"I believe that we do our best work when we are together in person," he wrote. "It's easier to learn from each other, it's a better way to mentor colleagues starting out in the industry, and it helps us win pitches as a truly integrated team."

The petition, in contrast, described the policy as a "step backwards in supporting employee wellbeing and work-life balance."

"The mental and social effects on employees due to such rigid work regimes can be extensive," it said.

"Therefore, we call on Mark Read and the decision-making body at WPP to reconsider this mandate and adopt a policy that respects and prioritises the well-being and preferences of its employees."

Some staffers' complaints added in comments include the additional hours of traveling per day and the added expenses of commuting to and from the office.

WPP's spokesperson told BI the free lunch initiative was planned independently of the petition.

Employees have had mixed responses to RTO policies. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently told all corporate employees they had to be in the office five days a week. Goldman Sachs, Salesforce, and JPMorgan have followed suit.

While critics say the strict policies can erode trust and cause friction between management and staff, others have a more positive view. Gen Z, for example, may strongly benefit from being physically in the office, workplace experts previously told BI.

Benefits can include enhanced teamwork and more chances for mentoring and career development, Anita Williams Woolley, a professor of organizational behavior at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business, said.

However, according to one 2024 survey, around three-quarters of Gen Z and about 50% of other generations said that hybrid working is their ideal setup. Experts have previously told BI more autonomy and flexibility can help to abate burnout and foster a better work-life balance.

• AI tools are increasingly used in self-appraisals to aid workers' evaluations of their performance.
• They can help address biases and subjectivity in traditional performance reviews.
• Human oversight is still crucial, especially due to privacy concerns, researchers say.

Performance reviews are not usually something many people look forward to.

Evaluating ourselves is hard, and it can feel like a massive effort to sift through a year's worth of work to find the highlights.

Women can find it particularly difficult to advocate for themselves and emphasize their achievements — and this is where AI might come in handy.

It's already proving popular. According to Microsoft's 2024 Work Trend Index, 75% of global knowledge workers, such as architects, engineers, scientists, and lawyers, are using AI in some form.

When Oracle implemented an AI performance review in 2023 and asked employees if they liked it, 89% said they were willing to be a first adopter.

"That shows how much there is a need and how much people tend to believe in this," Triparna de Vreede, an assistant professor in the school of information systems and management at the University of South Florida's Muma College of Business, whose research focuses on human-AI Interaction and workplace well-being, told BI.

Traditional reviews have downsides

According to de Vreede, performance reviews are "usually a subjective exercise" — one with a lot of "power play" between managers and subordinates.

Employees may think they're doing well, but they're not always aware of how that fits with the company's strategic direction or how their work contributes to the bottom line.

There's also a recency bias, where a lot of the smaller things "sort of get lost in the process," said de Vreede.

"If you have done really great things, and then screwed up once in the past month, that bitterness sort of overlies everything else," she said. "So these are the things that our traditional performance evaluations lack."

AI performance reviews can help with articulation and form statements that align with the company's business strategy and ideology.

They also help managers give better, unbiased feedback, which "creates a more standardized response towards all employees," de Vreede said. "So they don't feel like, 'oh, he likes you, that's why he gave you a raise'."

An objective listener is easier to open up to

De Vreede said that when using an AI performance review, people also tend to speak more. That's because they believe the AI will judge their accomplishments more fairly than their manager.

That's not necessarily because the manager-employee relationship is bad. The best managers cannot analyze their direct reports' emails, documents, and project management tools the way AI can.

People are often unreliable narrators. Dorothy Leidner, a professor of business and AI ethics at the University of Virginia, found this when working on a case study with Johnson & Johnson.

The company wanted to figure out what digital skills the workforce had, but found that challenging.

"It turns out people are not great at estimating their own skills, and some people are overconfident, and then some people are underconfident," Leidner told BI. "So they spent a lot of time working with a vendor and designing an AI to use digital traces and HR data on employees to be able to infer their digital skills."

Women can find reviews challenging

Self-evaluations can be difficult for women, both internally and externally.

"Women are consistently called more emotional and abrasive, whereas men are called more assertive," de Vreede said.

An analysis by the management and HR platform Textio of 23,000 performance reviews across 250 US workplaces last year found that 38% of language used in the performance reviews of high-performing women contained exaggerations, clichés, and fixed-mindset labels. Just over three-quarters of women surveyed said they'd been described as "emotional," compared with just 11% of men.

Women also tend to downplay their achievements.

A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2022 found that women, on average, ranked their performance out of 100 as 46, while men gave themselves an average score of 61.

Meanwhile, women often pick up the slack in the workplace, taking on invisible tasks that pile up and lead to burnout.

"Now imagine if I have an AI that is keeping track of all my achievements," de Vreede said. "It allows us to say, 'oh, this is how we are really making a difference,' without having our imposter syndrome rising up."

People still need to be 'in the loop'

Several companies have already created AI tools for performance reviews including Oracle and Textio, whose AI is used by 25% of Fortune 500 companies to analyze conversations and give feedback.

There is still some way to go before AI self-evaluations are a perfect solution, de Vreede said.

Privacy concerns remain, and companies need to have very clear policies about what is acceptable AI assistance, as well as be transparent about what personal information and work the AI tools can access.

De Vreede said humans need to be "in the loop" so that softer skills, such as communication, warmth, and likeability, are still factored in.

"AI can't understand it on its own, but AI can be trained to ask those questions so that the person can reflect and write about it," she said. "Then you are truly capturing the human as a whole instead of just a workplace creature."

A major concern in de Vreede's view is that relying too much on AI can lead to people failing to self-reflect at all — rendering an evaluation useless.

She said AI can do the hard work, but you are responsible for reviewing the results, editing them, and fine-tuning them. "What comes out as your self-reflection is not just the AI's work, but a collaboration between you and the AI."

• Fashion retailer Primark's CEO Paul Marchant resigned after an allegation of inappropriate behavior.
• Marchant said during an investigation that he'd made an "error in judgment."
• The exact nature of the allegation against Marchant is not publicly known.

The CEO of a major budget fashion retailer has stepped down after a woman made an allegation of inappropriate behavior against him, the company says.

According to a press release by Primark's owner, Associated British Foods, Paul Marchant has resigned as its boss, effective immediately.

ABF launched an investigation, which was carried out by an external law firm after a woman made an allegation about Marchant's behavior in a social environment.

No other information about the allegation was given.

Marchant cooperated with the investigation and "acknowledged his error of judgment," the release states.

Per the press release, Marchant accepted that his actions "fell below the standards expected by ABF" and apologized to the woman, his colleagues at Primrk, and the ABF Board.

"As we have committed to publicly, ABF seeks to provide a safe, respectful, and inclusive work environment where all employees and third parties are treated with dignity and respect," the press release says. "Primark is committed to doing business the right way at all levels of the company."

Marchant had been Primark's chief executive since 2009. In the interim, ABF's finance director, Eoin Tonge, will take over Marchant's role.

"I am immensely disappointed," said George Weston, the chief executive of ABF. "At ABF, we believe that high standards of integrity are essential. Acting responsibly is the only way to build and manage a business over the long term. Colleagues and others must be treated with respect and dignity. Our culture has to be, and is, bigger than any one individual."

ABF's shares dropped as much as 5% during morning trading in London after the news of Marchant's departure was shared. By 10:30 a.m. local time (5:30 a.m. ET), it had recovered to a loss of around 3%.

ABF founded Primark in 1969 in Dublin, where it still trades under its original name, Penneys. In 2015, Primark opened its flagship store in the US in Boston. There are now 29 stores across 12 US states, including New York and Orlando, which opened in August last year.

The company also launched its first US campaign that month, entitled "That's So Primark," and aims to have 60 US stores by 2026.

• "Boomerasking" is a conversational trick where questions are used to talk about oneself.
• Behavioral researchers found it's perceived as insincere, regardless of good intentions.
• Boomerasking is one of many annoying habits such as name-dropping, mansplaining, and unsolicited advice.

Asking someone a question just so you can talk about yourself is a conversational trick that's as annoying as it is old.

Now it has a name: boomerasking.

Not boomer as in "OK boomer" — think of it more like a conversational boomerang, where you constantly bring the focus back to yourself.

Behavioral researchers Alison Wood Brooks from Harvard and Michael Yeomans from Imperial College Business School coined the term in their paper published in The Journal of Experimental Psychology: General this year.

It's when someone feigns interest by asking a question but doesn't really pay attention to the answer. Instead, they use it as a way to springboard into their own story or anecdote. It's a ruse to make someone self-serving and egocentric pretend they're really a good listener.

Turns out, though, nobody's really falling for it.

In their research, Wood Brooks and Yeomans studied the responses from more than 3,000 people in surveys about their own boomerasking habits and those of others. Wood Brooks told Business Insider they'd like to see boomerasking become the word of the year.

The study found a stark disparity between what boomeraskers think they're doing, and how they're perceived. While those who do it think they're being engaging and pleasant, they come across instead as rude and insincere.

Yeomans told BI that while on their own, each boomerask is a small annoyance to someone. If these are part of a broader pattern of insincere concern for others, "you will lose their patience."

The problem is people think a chronic boomerasker is only interested in themselves, Yeomans said.

"Questions can be windows into other people's minds," he said. "If you use these opportunities to just talk more about yourself, you are missing out on real chances to learn and connect."

Wood Brooks and Yeomans came up with three ways people boomerask after asking a question:

• ask-bragging, when it's followed up with something positive to boast about;
• ask-complaining, which is usually about something negative;
• ask-sharing, which is more neutral, like describing last night's dream.

While boomeraskers are perceived as insincere, Yeomans thinks they probably don't mean to be.

"I suspect that when we want to disclose something, we can be timid about bringing it up directly," he said. "A question functions to pry the door open. But by trying to be polite, we mislead others into thinking we care about them."

'Hepeating' and 'manterrupting'

Boomerasking is up there with other annoying conversational habits, such as name-dropping and offering advice when it wasn't asked for.

In the workplace, women have coined several terms to describe irritating ways some of the men they encounter communicate, including the widely used "mansplaining."

There's also "hepeating," which describes when a man appropriates a woman's comments or ideas and is then is praised for them being his own, and "manterrupting," which is when he talks over her.

Wood Brooks and Yeomans have also studied all the complicated conversational goals we have to balance, such as understanding each other, making a good impression, having fun, and giving or receiving information.

Yeomans said if a boomersker wants to change their ways, they can practice asking questions they don't know the answer to.

"Ask follow-up questions that build on what the other person just said," he said. "If you pay someone sincere attention, that can buy you the trust and space to do a little disclosing of your own later on — if you must."

• Two United Airlines flights to Shanghai were disrupted this month after pilots forgot their passports.
• The incidents caused delays and diversions to passengers.
• Diverting flights is costly due to fuel, crew members, and compensation.

Not one but two United Airlines pilots have forgotten their passports this month, triggering diversions and lengthy delays for passengers.

Saturday's United flight 198 from Los Angeles to Shanghai was diverted to San Francisco International Airport "as the pilot did not have their passport on board," an airline spokesperson told Business Insider.

"We arranged for a new crew to take our customers to their destination that evening. Customers were provided with meal vouchers and compensation."

The Boeing 787-9 was carrying 257 passengers and 13 crew.

The diversion was a hot topic in the subreddit r/unitedairlines over the weekend. Some shared the message United had sent passengers, apologizing for the disruption, and describing the situation as "an unexpected crew-related issue requiring a new crew."

"Once they arrive, we'll get you back on your way to Shanghai as soon as possible," the message read. "We sincerely apologize for this disruption and appreciate your patience."

Some Redditors noticed another United flight had been delayed on March 14 — also heading to Shanghai from LAX.

"Is this the same guy who forgot his passport on March 14?!" wrote a user named simplegrocery3. Commenters concluded that it was unlikely to be the same pilot.

United said in a statement that flight UA857, a Boeing 777 heading for Shanghai with 348 passengers and 16 crew, was delayed on March 14 "prior to departure due to one of the pilots not having their passport."

"A new pilot was brought in, and the flight subsequently departed for Shanghai," the spokesperson said.

Diverting a plane is costly, due to the expense of replacement crew, compensation for passengers — and possibly dumping fuel as well.

It's far from the first time that pilots have forgotten their passports. In 2019, a T'way Air flight from Vietnam to Seoul was delayed by 11 hours when the pilot lost his passport and couldn't enter the airport, The Korea Times reported.