Managing an employee who was once a high performer but now seems disengaged can be challenging. It’s important to determine why they’ve checked out before taking action. Sometimes, the issue isn’t work-related at all — personal struggles like family illness or financial stress may be affecting their focus. Approach your employee with empathy, offer support, and explore if adjustments can help during tough times.
Disengagement can also stem from a values or goals mismatch. If an employee feels their personal beliefs or career aspirations don’t align with the company’s direction, their motivation may falter. Encourage open dialogue to understand their concerns and see if responsibilities or goals can be realigned. In some cases, the best outcome might be for the employee to find a workplace that better fits their values.
Anger or frustration caused by obstacles at work, whether from coworkers, management, or processes, can also lead to disengagement. Identifying and addressing these barriers is crucial. This might involve mediation, restructuring workflows, or bringing in neutral third parties to resolve conflicts. Fixing the root causes can help restore the employee’s enthusiasm and productivity, though recovery might take some time.
Ultimately, reengaging a checked-out high performer requires attentive listening, empathy, and practical problem-solving to support them through whatever challenges they’re facing — personal or professional.
AI-powered roleplay offers customer-facing teams unprecedented opportunities to practice and refine their skills in realistic, dynamic simulations. Instead of relying solely on scheduled sessions or live coaching, frontline employees—from call center agents to retail staff—can engage in anytime training that evaluates their questioning, empathy, product knowledge, objection handling, and overall customer interaction quality. These roleplays feature scenarios such as handling frustrated customers, cross-selling in banking, managing refund requests, and de-escalating billing disputes, all with instant, personalized AI feedback to help improve tone, listening skills, compliance, and efficiency. By simulating unpredictable customer behaviors and providing consistent coaching, AI roleplay helps frontline teams build the confidence and instincts needed to excel in real customer interactions. This approach scales across onboarding, continuous learning, and performance management, transforming training into an ongoing, adaptive practice rather than a one-time event.
Gap Inc. is introducing a creator program available to its corporate, distribution, and store employees. This initiative offers opportunities to contribute across newsletters, social media, branded content, product storytelling, and other platforms, empowering staff to share their unique perspectives and enhance the brand's communication.
Facing a 98 percent decline in profits, Porsche has announced a significant restructuring initiative to ensure the company's sustainable growth and future stability.
An analysis of 1 billion job postings by PwC reveals an unexpected insight: while AI advances rapidly, the most valued skills are not technical but human-centric. This shift highlights a growing demand for abilities like communication, empathy, and adaptability in the workforce, which many companies are overlooking in their investment strategies.
A detailed retrospective of prominent technology companies that have publicly attributed significant layoffs this year to the impact of AI, presented in reverse chronological order.
Artificial intelligence might not fulfill its promise of creating immense economic growth without significant social costs. In March, Anthropic, the AI company behind the chatbot Claude, released a study examining AI's effect on jobs, questioning fears that robots will soon eliminate the need for human workers. Last May, Anthropic's co-founder Dario Amodei warned AI could displace half of all entry-level jobs within a few years. However, recent discussions suggest that while AI will reshape labor markets, a complete job apocalypse is unlikely in the near term. The challenge remains balancing rapid AI-driven growth against increasing inequality and societal trade-offs.
Economists have long predicted AI would reshape the labor market, automating many white-collar tasks while leaving human-centered roles like caregiving, teaching, and mentoring intact. Since women dominate these relational professions, there’s hope they might finally receive greater recognition and value. However, historical trends reveal a troubling pattern: as women enter fields in large numbers, wages and prestige often drop. Conversely, when men join, compensation and status tend to rise. This pattern, seen in programming and other sectors, raises concerns about AI’s impact on female-dominated work. As AI drives up the value of relational skills like empathy and trust, sectors like healthcare and social assistance are growing—sectors traditionally undervalued and female-led. Yet, if men move into these fields when they gain prestige and pay, women who built these professions might not share equally in the benefits. The challenge lies in ensuring that rising wages and status lift the women already in these roles, not just the new entrants redefining the work’s identity.
Two companies may report the same financial results yet receive vastly different market reactions. The key difference lies not in their performance but in whether investors trust the leadership and grant them the benefit of the doubt.
Murugan Anandarajan and Cuneyt Gozu from Drexel University examine which qualities make job candidates stand out more in the hiring process of 2026.
