Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Hello and welcome to Working It.I’ve been feeling rubbish and had to pull out of a couple of big events I’d been looking forward to. Once, I would have croaked through a panel or keynote, underprepared and hampered by fever and brain fog 😶🌫️, then collapse in a heap. Not any more. Perhaps I’m just getting old, but I do think we are all more likely to be kind to ourselves than in previous decades. Did Covid cause this shift? I’m keen to hear your thoughts. Read on for how to become a “superworker”, while Jonathan Black counsels a former dentist seeking a new career. And as US president-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, I asked Kevin Delaney, editor in chief of Charter, to tell us what’s preoccupying workforce leaders in America. As we enter an unpredictable era, Kevin’s insights will be a regular Working It feature. Email me about sickness, health and any topics you want to read about in this newsletter: isabel.berwick@ft.comHow to be a superworker. (Without a cape 🦸🏽♂️)I love the idea of being a “superworker”. This catchy title comes from the latest research from the always-interesting Josh Bersin Company, a US human capital consultancy. What is a superworker, exactly? Josh himself defines it like this: “An employee empowered and supported by AI. In a world where AI agents support every employee, a superworker can step up their value, productivity, and output by learning to optimise their use of AI systems.”Just when you’ve learned to drop the latest workplace buzzword — that would be “agentic AI” 👀 — into your conversations to look good, along comes the next stage of AI deployment at work. Agents are, as the definition suggests, still important, but the superworker concept is far more ambitious, as Josh told me: “Right now, the state of maturity of all this AI is that every single person in every role has the opportunity to double or triple the amount of work they do and change the nature of where they spend their time. It’s really a giant re-engineering expedition we are going into.”To be clear, Josh isn’t suggesting we all work 80-hour weeks. He’s talking about the amount of work we get through — and, crucially, some of it will be different work. As a benchmarking process, Josh and his team have identified four levels of workplace AI expertise as we move towards becoming superworkers — and most of us are still on level one, playing around with ChatGPT and other generative AI systems 👩🏼🎓. Essentially, we are using AI to help us do our existing jobs. The big leap — and one that Josh says will be happening this year in some companies — is to reimagine jobs, and recruit different staff accordingly. It’s an intellectual leap, rather than just a technical one. In customer service roles, for example, the AI will do the basic interactions, so recruiters may be looking for people who have a better understanding of data and a higher education level than was previously the case. Josh continues with the superhero analogy: “When Superman landed on Earth, he didn’t know how powerful he was, he made all sorts of mistakes, he broke things. The same idea here is that we have to learn how to use this AI superpower we now have for our own personal careers and for the company — as opposed to being intimidated by it and frightened by it — or pushing back on it and saying ‘it will never be as good as the way I do it’ — because it will be.”Josh believes the reckoning over job losses is coming soon — a lot of routine jobs will go away — but the challenge for a company is, as he puts it, “to say to itself — ‘do we really want to lay these people off or do we want to give them better jobs?’ I think in many of the companies that are going through this — now, particularly in call centres — they are saying ‘we may not need the number of people . . . but many people should be involved in training the AI, and doing higher level work, and helping customers with other things because they have institutional expertise.’“You don’t have to be an AI engineer to work out how these things work — I see these seeds of innovating all over the place.” US workplace sentiment as Trump returns If you like Working It, you need to know about our friends at Charter, the US-based media and research organisation focused on the future of work. (Full disclosure: the FT owns a stake in Charter). I asked editor in chief Kevin Delaney to share his observations after convening a group of chief human resources officers from big US corporations. What’s on their collective minds as president-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office on Monday? Kevin told me: “A top concern was the deportation of unauthorised immigrants and reduction in legal immigration that Trump has promised. They’re worried that their staff will be impacted directly or indirectly — with, for example, employees’ immigrant child-care-providers being deported — and that it will become even harder to recruit workers for fast-growing roles such as health professionals. “The HR executives predict that some employees will relocate away from states such as Texas, Florida and Alabama, where access to reproductive care is increasingly limited and some worry that they could eventually face legal jeopardy for funding the travel of employees to access out-of-state abortions or gender-affirming care. “They say privately that the work of diversity, equity and inclusion is ongoing, but some companies are rebranding with less hot-button labels such as ‘corporate responsibility’.” ➡️ Sign up for Charter’s newsletters here. Do you have thoughts on what the new Trump presidency means for workplaces? You can stay anonymous. Email me: isabel.berwick@ft.comThis week on the Working It podcastWhen I started to read Alison Wood Brooks’ new book, TALK: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves, I knew I had to invite the Harvard Business School professor on to the podcast to give us her tips for better communication and connection at work. Fun fact: Alison told me that the science of conversation is in its infancy. It has been enabled by technology that allows researchers to analyse large volumes of transcripts at speed, to uncover new patterns of human interaction 😎.Alison has developed a “TALK” acronym to guide us towards better conversations. (It stands for “topics, asking, levity and kindness”). Listen to the podcast to find out how you can apply these simple ideas in more of your conversations. Dear Jonathan 📩The question: I recently left my career as a dentist 🦷. I would prefer a job where I don’t have to interact with 25 or 30 people a day, like I did in dentistry. I thought about being a care co-ordinator, but pay is much lower. Is there any area where my skills are transferable and wages are similar to an average UK dentist? Jonathan Black’s advice: As you think about alternative career paths, it can be useful to think about the aspects of dentistry that you didn’t enjoy. It is interesting that you cite interacting with 25-30 people a day as something to avoid: dentists have a particular, usually one-way interaction with their patients which is unlike the two-way interactions in most jobs 🚪, even in other parts of health and social care. It would be useful to separate the quality of the interaction from the volume, to understand which one you are trying to avoid. Something attracted you to dentistry and healthcare, and it’s unlikely that either your values or what gives you purpose will have changed. What can you do to build on that interest and motivation? You link your transferable skills with earning comparable wages: I would focus on the first point and then filter out roles based on minimum requirements including salary, but also location, flexibility of working from home, progression opportunity, and how it fits with family and social life. You have learned valuable skills: the ability to absorb a lot of information, process it, and then communicate it in an understandable way 📣; a good “bedside” manner; fine manual dexterity; the ability to use technology in the workplace; being good under pressure, and so on. Create your list and check it with friends to make sure you haven’t missed anything. Then find roles and industries where you could work. First, build on your healthcare expertise where you are known and trusted, before adding new skills (perhaps business management?) and starting on a different career ladder.Jonathan Black is director of the careers service at Oxford university. Got a career dilemma for him? Email dear.jonathan@ft.com. Five top stories from the world of work What US workers can expect from Trump’s second term: an in-depth explainer from Claire Bushey and Taylor Nicole Rogers on some of the big questions for employers and staff in the US. These include the role of Elon Musk and the future of non-compete clauses. Age is more than a number when it comes to policy: We talk about chronological age but we may need better benchmarks for old age. Research has found the fittest 10 per cent of 90-year-olds are close to the same level of frailty as the median 50-year-old, writes Sarah O’ Connor. Starmer’s attempt to ‘do a Blair’ on the NHS: The UK health service is in crisis, writes Camilla Cavendish, but the Labour government is admitting it, and is actively seeking solutions. Can reforms work on a very tight budget? Thirty years after my first day at the FT, what’s changed? FT Weekend columnist Simon Kuper reflects on his early days on the paper, and finds that some things don’t change (including some of his colleagues). Has corporate purpose lost its purpose? New research suggests that personal career development and empowerment is more effective in retaining and motivating staff than top-down messaging about purpose, writes Stefan Stern.One more thing . . . Is it ever appropriate for a boss to disclose an ex-employee’s pay💰? That question’s been on my mind after Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy took to TikTok last week to tell his 4mn followers how much the former host of one of the podcasts in his network earned last year ($250,000). The host, Grace O’Malley, had publicly fallen out with childhood friend and co-host of Barstool’s Plan Bri Uncut show, Brianna “Chickenfry” LaPaglia. (Keep up at the back, Gen X). Grace then went on someone else’s podcast to say that she’d been paid a “decent” salary — but Brianna got a lot more. Then — twist! — the pair’s former boss went public with Grace’s pay. Want more? The “story so far” is in The Cut.
