What’s Next at Work? Much Change, and Likely Some Pain for Employees

Workers, brace yourselves.

The rise of artificial intelligence and other new technology may mean plenty of roles and professions shift in the coming years, displacing some employees and requiring far different skills and training, according to executives in a range of industries.

In sessions at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Festival this week, some leaders gave blunt assessments of the coming transition and said current employees may not be able to adapt.

“This is the hard part: I’m not sure we can upskill everyone. I don’t think they’re going to make it. It’ll take too long,” said Jim Farley, CEO of Ford Motor, in an onstage interview on Wednesday. “There’s going to be a big shift in know-how in the company.”

At Ford, the automaker will still need traditional roles such as powertrain engineers and supply-chain specialists to help it manufacture vehicles, but it will also require employees with more digital expertise, Mr. Farley said. The company has been recruiting more technical employees, and its office in Silicon Valley is now full of such workers, he said.

“There’s a new skill set we’re going to need, and I don’t think I can teach everyone,” he said. “It’ll take too much time. So there’s going to be disruption.”

For years, workplace specialists predicted that technology would upend work, often warning that blue-collar jobs could be most affected by automation. More recently, though, many leaders see AI as having a far greater potential impact on corporate employees than hourly workers.

At the hotel giant Hilton, CEO Chris Nassetta said he could see AI being used in marketing, revenue management, customer insights and finance functions in the company.

Many executives said they were still unclear about AI’s role inside companies, and some expressed optimism about how the technology could free workers from drudgery.

Slack CEO Lidiane Jones. PHOTO: JUSTIN J WEE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

“AI is going to take away a lot of mundane tasks from people and hopefully free people up to spend more time creatively, spend more time with the people they want to spend time with,” said Marissa Mayer, the former Yahoo CEO. She is now the CEO and co-founder of the startup Sunshine, whose product helps people to better manage their digital contacts.

Others said AI potentially could help with tasks such as summarising messages from colleagues, freeing employees from reading hundreds of emails and other communication.

“When there is so much happening in organisations, AI can also help you focus,” said Lidiane Jones, CEO of the messaging platform Slack. “So out of my 5,000 pings, what are the things that I should really prioritise?”

Labor leaders said they, too, were eyeing AI’s influence on the workplace. Sara Nelson, the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO, said she hopes any sort of efficiency benefits achieved through AI would be shared with workers.

“Workers really need to be at the table to make sure that these are going to be technologies that are going to work for us, and give us more tools to do our job,” she said. “So we do want to implement these things in a way where, No. 1, we are sharing the benefits of that productivity, and that’s going into everyone’s pockets who’s a part of that company.”

Beyond technology, executives said they were seeing other changes in the job market. It is now easier to hire cooks, housekeepers and other hotel employees than it was earlier in the pandemic, Hilton’s Mr. Nassetta said, though he added that the hospitality industry is still dealing with some labor shortages. He also called for changes to immigration policies to enable more workers to come to the U.S.

“There just aren’t enough people in our country in terms of service-level jobs to do the things that we need to do,” he said. “If we don’t think about immigration really sensibly, we’re eventually going to stunt the growth of our economy.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said his administration was considering flexible hours and other benefits to get more people to take jobs with the city. Mayor Adams also said he was concerned by layoffs among financial companies in New York.

“It’s crucial that we stabilise Wall Street,” he said. “Wall Street is so important to the economic stability of the city.”

Throughout the event, a number of speakers also sprinkled their remarks with guidance for professionals looking to navigate the challenges of careers. Fashion designer Michael Kors said he made the biggest mistakes in his career when he became too focused on others.

“You cannot constantly be looking at everyone else. You can’t look over your shoulder. You have to do what’s right for you,” Mr. Kors said. “Listen to your gut. Move slowly. Stay focused.”

Colin Saint-Vil got his money education at the dim sum cart, over a steamy plate of pork buns and turnip cake.

A friend offered to pick up the whole tab on her credit card, “for the points.” At the time, six years ago, “for the points” meant nothing to Saint-Vil, now a 30-year-old planning manager in Brooklyn, so he pressed for more details. They lingered over the dim sum meal as a larger conversation unfolded about annual percentage rates, credit-card debt, payment schedules and more.

Millennials and members of Gen Z prefer to seek financial advice from each other than from parents or from financial professionals. They don’t like overwhelming spreadsheets and marketing material written in seemingly foreign languages. They don’t trust big banks and institutions trying to sell them on investment strategies—as many were raised around the late 2000s financial-crisis. And, they are not wrong: There is a lot to be learned from comparing numbers with peers—from sharing salaries to talking out big decisions like home or car purchases.

Saint-Vil said when his father was his age, he had already begun investing in real estate, but with property prices now so high and mortgage rates only just beginning to fall, he said he couldn’t imagine being able to follow in his father’s footsteps. He, like many millennials and Gen Z-ers, describe their finances as “fairly good” these days, though they hold a negative picture of the greater economy, according to a new poll of 18 to 29-year-olds from the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School.

Millennials are still reeling from the impact of back-to-back recessions, all while large bank closures and investing scams dominate the headlines. Younger people report a feeling of “financial avoidance” exacerbated by high inflation and the pandemic-era budgeting.

As of June 2023, Gallup polling revealed a historically low faith in U.S. institutions, with younger generations voicing high skepticism. According to Gallup, only 9% of respondents aged 18 to 34 expressed “a great deal” of confidence in banks; meanwhile, 47% and 28% said they have “some” or “very little,” respectively.

But when it comes to winning back young consumers, these same financial institutions haven’t quite given up, and are rolling out new outreach programs and robo advisors, some of which have helped bridge a connection with Gen Z and millennials, said Keith Niedermeier, clinical professor of marketing at Indiana University. But many young people still say they prefer do-it-yourself investing platforms like Robinhood and Acorns over traditional advisers at more established wealth-management firms.

Andrew Ragusa, a real-estate broker based on Long Island, blamed the twin problems of low housing inventory and high home prices for postponing younger buyers’ ownership. The median age of a first-time home buyer in the U.S. is 35-years old as of 2023, according to data from the National Association of Realtors. That is slightly down from an record high of 36 in 2022, but still two years older than the median age in 2021, which is representative of an ageing first-time buyer trend.

When he talks with younger clients now, he detects a gloomy sentiment. “They try to be optimistic, but the overall sentiment is ‘This is supposed to be the American dream: we get a house and we get some financial security and I just have to have faith it will all work out in the end.’ But they don’t have faith it will.”

Fear and shame around being able to buy or accomplish as much as one’s parents might have financially can crop up when millennials talk to elders about their financial frustrations, said Jodi Kaus, director of Kansas State University’s student financial planning centre, Powercat Financial. She’s found that lessons and advice from friends are often more constructive.

Kaus leads a peer-to-peer financial planning centre that pairs up students to work through financial issues. She works to pair people with similar backgrounds: graduate students with graduate students or international students with international students. Talking with someone only a few years removed from your current situation means you’re better able to internalize the messages and execute on their advice, Kaus said.

“Early on, parents even say ‘Are you sure students can help my child?’” she said. “And I say ‘I am more than confident that they can help each other.’

Sharing money tips and financial know-how with your friends doesn’t only benefit the asker, Kaus said. In the Kansas State University peer-to-peer group, the advice giver also learns a lot from their own position, because sharing their story and bonding with a peer helps them to build their own confidence and belief in their financial acumen.

Lindsay Clark, a 34-year-old director of external affairs in Washington, D.C., recalls one lesson she shared with a friend carrying student loans from pharmacy school. Clark works at Savi, a student loan platform, and she offered to cook her friend dinner while they sorted through his loan repayment options. Long after they’d cleaned their dinner plates, they sat together at Clark’s kitchen island, lingering over a plate of homemade hummus and chatting about everything from financial goals to Costco card benefits.

“Those conversations blossom from the transparency, and the visibility makes both people feel really good,” she said. “That creates better relationships overall.”

When you’re talking about money issues with friends, Clark said, you’re not artificially inflating your salary or pretending to know more than you do. And most important, you’re not worried about their ulterior motives.

“You feel safe in that conversation, knowing their intentions are good and they’re not trying to make money off of you,” she said. “And that’s going to lead to better results, because we’re working with the reality here.”

Skepticism of pronounced experts and criticism of established financial institutions is especially common among millennials and Gen Z, Neidermeier said. Studies show people across generations are much likelier to take a friend or colleague’s recommendation to heart over that of a faceless institution, he said; people who spend time on social media just have a greater opportunity to source those answers and field questions.

“What people say to each other over the picket fence is what is the most influential,” he said.

At a certain point, however, talking solely to friends and peers for your financial lessons can be very limiting, said Sarah Behr, founder of Simplify Financial Planning in San Francisco. Relying on your social circle can also put a strain on those relationships; no one wants to be responsible for your disappointment when a financial decision that worked out well for them doesn’t fit as well in your own life.

Behr recommends tuning into your own emotional reactions when assessing peer advice: does the road map they followed align with your own financial values? Does it put pressure on you to live outside your means or challenge your personal risk tolerance? If the answer doesn’t feel clear, that could be a time to outsource to a financial professional who has no emotional connection to you or your financial status.

“‘People have been telling me do this, but I just don’t know if it’s the right thing for me’—I get a lot of calls like that,” said Behr.

Saint-Vil said he and his friends share tips on what high-yield savings accounts offer the best rates, and when he did his credit card research, he chose a card recommended by a friend. When it comes time to work with a financial adviser or even one day a wealth manager, he’ll likely work with someone recommended through a peer. Behr said close to 90% of her business comes by way of client referrals.

Since that first conversation over dim sum, Saint-Vil has thrown his own card onto the table at meals and shared his knowledge with other pals who look confused.

“I have a real wide range of friends who are in many different financial places, but I would say a rising tide lifts all ships,” he said.

Julia Carpenter is the co-author, with Bourree Lam, of The Wall Street Journal’s “The New Rules of Money: A Playbook for Planning Your Financial Future,” a personal-finance workbook published this week by Clarkson Potter, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group.

What’s Next at Work? Much Change, and Likely Some Pain for Employees

At the Journal’s Future of Everything Festival, many predicted work could shift, jobs will vanish and some employees might be displaced; ‘there’s going to be disruption’

Millennials and Gen Z are turning to peers instead of professionals for financial advice. They don’t trust banks, and they are tired of information overload.