Your Work Friends | Fresh Insights on the Now and Next of Work
We break down the now and next of work. You stay ahead.
Its not just you - work is bonkers. Burnout is high, trust is low, and everything is changing at breakneck speed.
Friend-to-friend? We get it. We're in it. And we're here to guide you through it.
We’re two leadership insiders—and real-life friends—who’ve led teams, sat in the tough seats, and know first hand how fast, complex, and personal work has become.
Every week, we break down what’s happening at work and to work, taking you behind the scenes of what's happening now, and preparing you for what you'll see in 6 months. We're bringing you breaking news, workplace trends, and interviews with top experts shaping the future of work. We cover what’s changing so you don’t get left behind.
Join us for smart, unfiltered (with the occasional f*bomb or two) conversations about how work is evolving and what you can do about it.
Great for:
• Employees rethinking their careers and trying to navigate what comes next
• People leaders shaping culture and driving change while getting the work done
• Orgs wanting to build smarter, more profitable, more human workplaces
• Anyone craving more honest and practical conversations about the future of work
Topics we cover:
Future of work, leadership, workplace culture, team dynamics, change management, human-centered strategy, layoffs, burnout, performance, career growth, workplace news, workplace humor, and more.
Your Work Friends | Fresh Insights on the Now and Next of Work
New Week, New Headlines: 20+ AI Jobs You Didn’t See Coming & Why Companies Are Ditching HR
This week on Your Work Friends, we’re diving into two hot topics shaking up the future of work.
1️⃣ The surprising new jobs AI is creating and why your taste and creativity might be the most valuable skills you bring to the table.
First, we explore 22 new jobs AI is expected to create — and why your taste (yes, your vibe, your style, your point of view) could become your biggest career asset in an AI-driven world. We’re talking about AI auditors, world designers, and why creativity is about to pay off big.
2️⃣Why some companies are getting rid of HR altogether — and whether that’s a smart move or a big mistake.
Then, should HR go away? We break down why some CEOs are scrapping HR entirely, what that really means, and why splitting HR into two teams (compliance vs. people) might actually save your workplace.
We cover:
✔️ What happens when companies ditch HR
✔️ The growing split between compliance and people strategy
✔️ How AI is transforming job markets
✔️ New roles like AI auditors, world builders, and taste makers
✔️ How to future-proof your career in an AI-driven workplace
If you’re a corporate leader, manager, or just trying to stay ahead in your career, this one’s for you.
Should HR evolve or die? And are you ready for the new AI-powered workplace?
We jammed about:
AI Might Take Your Job. Here are 22 New Ones it Could Give You.
#FutureOfWork #HumanResources #WorkplaceTrends #AIJobs #CareerGrowth #LeadershipDevelopment #PeopleStrategy #CorporateLife #EmployeeExperience #WorkplaceCulture
Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice. We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host or the management.
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And when the tools are democratized, value shits for shits Value. Does shit Value shits.
Speaker 2:Welcome to your work friends. I'm Francesca and I'm Mel and we're breaking down work, so you get ahead back with new week, new headlines. We haven't talked about the news lately, Mel, but we got to talk about the news we do. We got to bring it back.
Speaker 1:There's a lot going on. Yeah, yeah, we went to war this week. Yeah, I'm literally getting ready to send out a newsletter with a guide to help your team through turbulent times. Because what is this? What is happening? What is?
Speaker 2:this Once a week. I ask what the fuck timeline are we living in?
Speaker 1:And it feels odd to talk about work stuff sometimes when you have all these other big things happening. So listen, if you're just looking to listen to us for some shits and gigs, we get it. We're here for the laughs because you got to laugh through it sometimes.
Speaker 2:You got to laugh through it, Mel. I think we've got three topics to talk about. I have two. What are you talking about today?
Speaker 1:I am talking about an article out of the New York Times 22 new jobs that AI could give you.
Speaker 2:That was one of my other ones. Oh, it's so funny. I love this. But this is the spontaneity of this program is we don't know what each other is going to talk about. Okay, so here's what I'm talking about Should HR go away? Last week, the CEO of Bolt, ryan Breslow, talked about scrapping HR, and I want to talk about is this a going trend, and should HR die already?
Speaker 1:I'm happy to jump in with something optimistic, which is job creation with AI Great Jumping in, all right. According to a recent article out of the New York Times called 22 New Jobs AI Could Give you. According to the World Economic Forum and we know this, we've talked about it their future of jobs report, ai is expected to displace 9 million jobs by 2030, but also create 11 million new ones, which many of them don't exist yet. These new roles are centered around where AI still needs us most trust, integration and taste, which was something funny out of this article, so I can't wait to talk about that. The so what? Here we're not just looking at job loss. We're looking at a total job transformation. Right, that's the headlines. We're hearing that everywhere.
Speaker 1:New roles like AI auditor, consistency coordinator, escalation officer, an AI personality director which is interesting and world designers highlight what makes us most human, which is around our accountability, our storytelling and surprise your style. For those of us who have some style I'm not claiming I do that might be one of your strengths and your X factor. Going forward, those things are going to get more valuable. One of the stats out of the article noted that 70% of the skills in the average job will have changed by 2030. That was by Anish Rahman, linkedin's chief economic opportunity officer, and one of my favorite quotes from the article was you aren't just being paid for the words that you submit to AI, you're being paid to be responsible for them, so I think that's a good distinction to make. Something interesting that came out of this was the AI taste differentiator. How do you feel about that? What does that make you think of?
Speaker 2:I get it. I get it. One of the books I loved was Rick Rubin's a couple years ago on talking about the idea of creativity and taste. That's one of the places where that idea of discernment, of editing, of creation is really be valuable. Go on LinkedIn and see how everybody is basically writing with AI. I'm not knocking that by any means. I leverage AI as well. Okay, but like you can tell people that are just copying and pasting the AI verbatim and the people that actually have a very deep point of view and a very crisp voice. That is the difference between taste and just leveraging AI for what it is and the people that can really pull out the voice and pull out taste or make trends happen, make voice happen. They get paid now. They're going to get paid even bigger money in the future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, look at Zuckerberg and his $100 million AI salary jobs. Yeah, so the taste role that we're talking about here refers to a person whose main value is their ability to make judgment-based, creative or aesthetic decisions. Right, so it's not just based on your technical skills everything you just said intuition, insight, cultural awareness. These people aren't necessarily doing the work, however, they're directing the output, they're shaping the vision, they know what good looks like. We talk about this all the time, like you could be somebody who does strategy in an organization, but if you don't, if you can't get to the heart of it, you can't speak the voice of your customer or your client. You're not really using the taste as an X factor.
Speaker 1:So some of the roles that they talked about were creative director, without needing to actually touch the camera or necessarily review things. Brand strategists, without having to make the decks. Story designers. World builders which is interesting for your topic, because they talked about world builders as people in marketing, gaming, even HR, who are world builders for organizations. And differentiator designer, who craft the feel of the financial firm versus its competitors. Right, why does this matter? Because in a world where anyone can prompt on chat, gpt, taste becomes your differentiator and when the tools are democratized.
Speaker 1:Value shifts from execution to discernment, as you said, and the challenge here, though, is taste is hard to measure but really easy to fake. There is a little bit of that, so you need your portfolio to include your good decisions, not just your good work. So that's going to be a difference in how you even write your resume or you think about those stories that you tell in interviews. You need to start thinking about those things like how you took something and made it as a differentiator. Organizations are going to probably struggle for assessing for taste, because that is different. It varies by person to person, but I could argue it all comes down to the value that you brought.
Speaker 2:You can demonstrate taste when you look at anybody that's been in any kind of visual identity career. Any of the arts have been in this for a long time For a long time, a long time. So there are ways of evaluating it.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent. One of the unifying factors, though, around this taste role is that they're all creative steering roles. So, listen, if you're a creative person who's been slowly dying in corporate, now's your time to shine, so tap into that. A couple other things that stood out to me here was some of the things that they called out for folks to focus on, and we've been talking about this for a long time. Number one, front to front. Here are the things you need to start thinking about. If you're a creative, or if you feel like you don't have a creative bone in your body, you need to start like tapping into what does creative mean for you? Audit your human skills, like judgment, ethics, storytelling, cross-functional translations of those things. That's going to be your edge.
Speaker 1:Getting familiar with AI tools we say this every day. You don't have to build them, but you need to direct them, and that's the other differentiator. So we're not talking about stale prompts. You need to make it your style, because something that others don't have is your style when it comes to prompting. Rethink your entry points. If AI is handling all the grunt work, maybe your job starts at the strategy table. So start working on how to be a strategist and define your taste. So start working on how to be a strategist and define your taste. What is your taste? What is your style? To your good point. This could be visual, this could be verbal, this could be written. But what is a point of view that AI can't fake?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm excited. I like the shift. I think it's a good one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think this is where liberal arts majors are really going to shine. So the CEO of Bolt just announced that he's getting rid of HR Not downsizing, not rebranding, but flat out, no more HR. Instead, they are going into people operations. Why? Because, in his words, hr never worked. It's a little triggering, it's very bold and it's part of a growing movement around this kind of I would say, a little bit of a backlash around HR. Are you seeing this, mel?
Speaker 1:Yes, I think my whole entire career I've heard this message. Having worked in the HR space for 20 plus years across different areas of HR, I just think a lot of people like to blame HR when shit goes wrong. I'm curious what he sees as people ops. You and I talk about this often, how there's a compliance side and there's people side, and the people side has gotten lighter versus the compliance side, but it should be the other way around. This is the thing.
Speaker 2:Don't know what people operations means at Bolt, but what we do know, to very good point, is HR is typically in two tracks. Just to make this very overly simple To Mel's very good point, there's the legal and compliance side. So think of your anti-sexual harassment training, your I-9 forms or whatever, and your benefits and your pay. That's the legal compliance side, making sure everybody's getting paid, no one's sexually harassing each other we're all legal beagle right. Then there's this people side of it, like your culture, your learning and development, your talent management, your coaching right Things that really develop people and enable them to thrive.
Speaker 2:You're starting to see this kind of interesting schism between the two and my gut is that with Bolt they're basically saying we don't need the people side anymore. We're just going to do the legal and compliance side and let the business figure out the people side, and I would argue that's a pretty interesting take. One of the things that I get really nervous about when people do that is basically coaching, management, development, leadership development, development in general, onboarding all this stuff that we know makes people really thrive at work doesn't happen and it sure as hell doesn't happen through the legal department.
Speaker 1:No, and what we do know is that most people leave within the first 90 days if they don't even get a comprehensive onboarding plan. So if you're not offering, at a minimum, something like that, you're going to lose people in the first 90 days and it is expensive to hire and it's expensive to lose.
Speaker 2:At minimum. When you lose someone, it's about two times the cost of someone's salary to replace them at minimum. So, yes, that turnover gets very expensive. The reality of the situation is the legal side of HR and the people side of HR actually have completely different reasons for being. Legal and risk is protective protective of the organization, protective of the employee. The people side is an enabler, it's an enablement organization and, I would argue, sometimes it even turns into a rev gen side of the organization as well. Absolutely, you have two very different reasons for being, and because of that I know I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I'm actually a massive fan and have been a massive fan of looking at splitting these two organizations. Because, in order to have a more clear reason for being right, because right now what's happening is they're mushed together, it gets very murky. They have a ton of remits under this umbrella, from onboarding all the way up through making sure that you filled out your FAFSA, the correct way.
Speaker 1:If organizations want HR to work for them, they should do the split 100% in agreement on that. That comes down to also having a seat at the table. You're not reporting into the CFO or the CO. You're reporting to the CEO, chros, cpos they should all report into the CEO and have a seat at the table, and they should have different budgets. You and I know, because we worked in L&D. You don't see shit because instead the budget, to your good point, is going to a workday implementation versus actually a learning budget. That is what helps people to develop and support your business goals and your strategies.
Speaker 2:The other thing in favor, in my mind, of splitting these two organizations is these are two very different domain expertise. When you have a legal and compliance side of HR, these are people that are incredibly skilled at compensation on benefits. We have attorneys that are looking at employment law right. That's an incredibly different domain expertise than someone that is architecting a skills-based organization right. This is totally different domains.
Speaker 2:I have never been an HRBP in my life period Like an HR business partner, never dealt with it. In fact, I'd get fired because I'd be like you did what. I would absolutely not be able to do it. But people comment that I'm HR and I'm like I am an HR but I'm not HRHR. The way HR is Because we're totally different domain expertise.
Speaker 2:Listen, best practice says split these two up and let these two be their own domains, and especially for a people strategy side, when I'm talking about really great people development organizations, they're looking at people strategy much like they're looking at product strategy and they're building systems around like onboarding, coaching, manager development, leadership development, feedback loops.
Speaker 2:They're not expecting one team to be a therapist, an enforcer, a coach, a strategist they're not and so being able to really let that engine flywheel happen for what it is again totally different skill, needs a totally different budget and will be a totally different enabler of the org rather than a protector of the org. The other thing that just kills me on this, quite honestly, is that AI is going to make this conversation completely moot anyway, given what you just talked about with the New York Times article too. Right, yeah, we're going to see these people sides of the organization being world developers. They're looking at what does the world of work look like for employees working with AI agents. That's going to be its own ecosystem. No matter what, ai is already augmenting and sometimes completely replacing more of the compliance angles of HR. I would argue you will still need people and strategists and that compliance side of the HR because that is again a very different domain expertise that is absolutely fucking needed.
Speaker 1:It is, and I think, regardless if you're a CHRO or a CPO, you're going to always straddle between these two areas, because you need to understand the full life cycle of an employee experience, from pre-hire during post-hire. What's that experience? Look like You're touching all elements, but those teams can operate separately while supporting each other, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's much like how product, product marketing and sales work together too right, we're taking different elements of the life cycle, but they all have to be the same consumer journey, the same employer journey. This drives a really interesting conversation around what could the future of HR look like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and employee experience teams can start to get better budgets to make better workplaces.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and maybe the legal and compliance side too, because they need some help as well. They need some help too. Yeah, show them some love.
Speaker 1:This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriendscom, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams. So please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye friends, thank you.
