Part 1: 6 Squiggly Career Trends in 2026 - AI Agents, Disconnection & Employee Influencers

0:00Hi, I'm Sarah. And I'm Helen. And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, where every week we borrow some brilliance and turn that curiosity into actions that we hope support you with your confidence, clarity to really accelerate your squiggly career. And the next two episodes are going to feel a bit different. So Helen and I have got our predictor futurist hats on. I like it. You might not want to take it too seriously. I think it's probably the caveat at the start. we are going to do two episodes a kind of part one and a part two exploring six squiggly career trends for 2026 so what we have tried to do is pick things that we think are going to be important for all of us in our careers no matter what stage you're at or what industry you're in we're going to talk a bit about what they are but then probably most importantly like what they mean for us so how do you get curious how can you learn more how can you make sure that you are being kind of really creating rather than waiting I always think you don't want to watch trends happen to you you want to take initiative and you want to be really intentional about them and it's not that we are amazing at all or even any of these I think it's fair to say but I suppose they are things that are on both of our minds so maybe that's a better word than trends to be honest trends might feel a bit lofty.

1:22I know I feel like we've both done like roles with trends and they both get a bit unrealistic you know like the hoverboard is coming or something like that but so I think these are actually realistic things that we believe are very likely to be part of people's work in 2026 so maybe trends are I think they're just changes to what you're working on and the way you're working that we want people to be aware of so that they can be ready for them and able to respond I think that's what we're trying to trying to help you with I suppose it's more about anticipating different scenarios rather than going will the AI hype cycle end I don't think we're I don't think we're quite at that level I think we have thought more about what do we expect and anticipate in the short term might influence how you're working today and your career so let's try and get on top of it be realistic I think let's be positive I feel like with all this stuff like I think we've chosen things that we think are likely to happen and we've chosen actions that will give you a bit a bit back a bit more control and I say that in the context of a two-hour podcast I listened to yesterday that I've not told you about yet so yeah it wasn't optimistic or that was well no so um it was my husband's birthday yesterday and we had a day together and what so you listen to a podcast for two hours together so I said to him I was like oh there's a Stephen Bartlett podcast on how well, AI is going to kill humanity.

2:44It's about two hours long. We can listen to an hour there and an hour on the way back. It's a joyful listen for your birthday. Birthday treat, treat time. It was like on the way back. It was about halfway through the second half. So we're 90 minutes in. And he's like, can we just listen to some music, Helen? It was a bit like, basically, it was a bit doom, gloom and disaster. And so this is not doom, gloom and disaster. This is things like to happen and actions you can take to take control of your development. It is a more positive way of approaching 2026, I hope. it is but we haven't avoided some of the tough stuff so actually some of the things that we are going to talk about are hard things um but we're going to try and talk about them hopefully in a helpful way so should we go for the first one i feel like you chose the first one let's get the AI out of the way you can't talk about what's happening at work and careers next year without talking about AI so the trend that we think is going to um affect all of our careers next year is the increased use of AI agents and so you'll hear people talk about like agentic AI you know like all these like terms that I feel like can make people feel less confident yeah intimidating less confident at what it means now this is my very basic very basic way of thinking about this it made sense to me though you described it to me earlier and I was like okay yeah that makes sense I can I can get on board with that agentic AI or these AI agents are basically um little AI activities that we set up on platforms like chat gpt or perplexity or whatever it is you want to do this on and they operate alongside us so you don't need to be there like at the moment for example when i'm using ai most of the time i'm just typing it i'm typing in a prompt i wait for it to respond to my prompt and then i go oh not that a bit more like this and it's very i am very actively engaged engaged in whatever I'm asking the AI thing to do.

4:34Identic AI is you like you set it up and then it works alongside you in parallel. So you can go into a meeting and it will keep doing the thing that you have asked it to do. And I think people are talking about this a lot. And I think it will go from chat that where people are like, I don't really know what that means. I'm too scared to ask to, I think in 12 months time, most people who be listening to this podcast I think will have either experimented with or actively have an AI agent alongside their job and I went and looked at okay well let's make this more real what sort of AI agents could we set up for example so you could have an inbox agent so this would be a little AI agent that sorts prioritizes and drafts replies to messages I think quite a lot of people may already have a bit of that going on but I think you could set it up more specifically like in your tone which emails to prioritize.

5:24So what you've been using when I start getting emails that are from you, but not from you. Well, I would say I'm using superhuman AI, which has been one of my wins of the year for my inbox. But that's, I think an AI agent would be more me saying, these are the emails that I want to prioritize. So always put Sarah Ellis's emails to the top or the bottom, do that. In my inbox. When I'm applying to Sarah, make it sound like this, you know, be less polite, more direct when I'm applying to these people. So it's more. Be nicer. Yeah. And it would, It would like triage and do that based on some specific rules that you set, your little AI agent.

5:58You could have an energy agent. I like this idea. So it would review tasks and your calendar to optimize focus and energy. So you would, you might say my highest energy moments are this, makes, you know, proactively block out time for me to do those things. So you're not having to do it yourself. It sort of takes that instruction and does it for you. You could have a learning agent. So you could say these are the things I want to learn about this year. proactively look for articles and resources that reference this and send me them when they come so you've got this like automatic sort of learning researcher that would mean that you're not having to spend time looking you could actually spend more time learning I wonder if you could put in a learning goal that you've got so you know my learning goal for the first three months of 2026 is to learn more about agentic ai for example um and then I assume it could then say it would then send you well this is a really good and and i suppose what you might say is assume assume no knowledge or i'm starting from scratch so share with me learning which is easy simple and it's going to help me to kind of really understand the basics yeah well you could say i'm going to put a learning hour in every friday morning and i want you to look for learning on this topic automatically create me an agenda in that hour in my diary so every friday you go in and your learning agenda is already set like it's for articles thing it's put a time against each one that you could do um so yeah that would be your learning agent and people might be thinking well how how on earth do i get started with this honestly i think youtube is your friend here there are so many relatively short like create your own ai agent for most people that use copilot as well on copa i'll put a link to this on the um show notes um copilot has got like a a simple like build your own agent within like Microsoft things and there are quite a lot of simple things to get started and I think if you just set maximum an hour aside to watch an experiment just on your own to begin with I think you'd go quite far from I don't even know this authentic AI things sounds quite scary to oh I see a simple way I could use it it's a bit like it reminds me of the learning curve you know just actually even just using GPTs kind of if I think about this conversation this time last year I didn't know how to write a good prompt and I'm I might not be perfect but I'm much better than I was before and I have created a couple of GPTs and realized it's not that scary and it's fine you know like you can everyone can have a go at that and so I wonder if that's this is like the next you need to take that same attitude and mindset and apply that now to to kind of creating your own agent and it's funny when you talked about the first two examples I feel quite uncomfortable and that's because I don't want an AI to run my life for me um so I can imagine you and I having a really different reaction to this because I think you really love the idea of an AI making you more efficient and faster um and even if I look at your response to superhuman you were like this is life-changing whereas I look at those and I think I don't want someone to write try and write like me and I don't want someone to tell me what gives the energy well I think it's like where I want to spend my time like do I want to spend time applying to emails absolutely not do I want to spend time reading books generating ideas like sharing them with people in creative ways absolutely so if I can save the six hours I was spending triaging and applying to emails I spent three hours last night just doing that because but but and I would much rather something save that time so I could spend my brain on things that I think are much more enjoyable to me and useful for people that I work with it's not it's not that I love AI doing it it's that I love AI doing that more than me doing it yeah yeah it's just interesting isn't it when you were like going through as soon as you got to the learning one I was like oh yeah that's fine I've got maybe I have to find a thing just one other thing on it I do think that AI is a democratizer for career development as in the people who have confidence and competence in using AI tools I think will accelerate their career regardless of level tenure and all the traditional things that resulted in people you know progressing and promoting all that kind of stuff I think this this this kind of AI ability helps people leap from some of those things yeah I think it's certainly in the short term I'm sure at some point it will be more universal but if you're thinking like next year what could help me stand out in my squiggly career um what could I do that maybe not other people are doing I still don't know that many people who are building their own agents or creating their own gpts or who are really experimenting and sharing but those people i do know who are doing it i'm always like oh that's really impressive and look at all the initiative they're taking and it's not like what they're building is always amazing it's more just the approach they're taking and so i think that is within all of our gift um and i'm going to do it i'm going to do it for the learning goal one and then I'm going to ask it to tell me what to learn and how to learn and put time aside exactly as you described.

10:58And I will let listeners know how I get on. I'm going to commit to doing that early, Jan. What's next on our trends for 2026? Trends. I do think we probably need to stop using that word. So the next one is, I think, a mixture maybe of optimism and pessimism, but we're calling this connection and disconnection. and there continues to be quite a lot of evidence that people are feeling more lonely at work so there's some good research on that you can read that we'll put a link to and people just don't feel as connected to like each other or to the work that they're doing. Now a really important point here is I think then everybody leaps to oh that's because we're not in the office and actually when you read the research there is no relationship between where you spend your time and how lonely you feel so the answer isn't get everybody back in the office to this the answer is actually being more thoughtful about how you connect together as a team like really and also probably like taking that seriously and I wonder or my hypothesis is that when everyone did work in the office that you you could almost be quite lazy about connection so if I think about my time working in offices every single day at the same desk where everybody was present this wasn't on the agenda because you just thought well I don't I don't need to connect with my team or because they're all right there and we're in meetings all day and I can see everybody and you're making a cup of tea and everyone is there all of the time whereas I don't think we've almost adapted to reflect the fact that now pretty much everybody works at least in some sort of hybrid way whether that's a bit hybrid or a lot hybrid and so you know where you're using old models to kind of and I think people default back to things that they've done before which is why often you go well you just need to get everybody back face to face um and it reminds me of that um difference that we actually talk about this in learn like a lobster we talk about the difference between flexibility and adaptability and I think what happens here is flexibility is you just sort of go oh we need to do something a bit different and so the way that they describe this a lady called Heather McGowan she says it's like going I don't need a hammer from the toolbox anymore I need a screwdriver and so you're like you're still working within the same toolbox but adaptability is recognizing or actually we need a new way so I feel like we need new ways to connect together new ways to spend time as a team um and also to be quite playful in in what that looks like and to figure out how you're going to prioritize it because everybody's challenge to this would be I've got too much to do you know like it feels like a nice to do not a must do probably quite hard to write the business case for connection and so what everybody ends up doing is being more head down work my way through my tasks and my to-dos but then you probably miss out on you know the whole being bigger than some of the parts that we've talked about this year like how do you make your team more than just sort of individual superstars yeah many thoughts many thoughts i was just thinking practically when have i when have i felt connected disconnected what's helped me there's some of the things that were going through my head when you're when you were talking i think sometimes you and i have a when are we better together thing so it's a very practical you know you talk about what's the business case for connection yeah i we definitely have when are we better together and we're clear about those moments and i think there are it's less of an emotional thing it's more about a business value thing there are moments when we're just better together so it could be a useful conversation I also think that one of the times I felt most connected actually it was with people outside of amazing it but it really helped me was last year I didn't do it this year but last year I had that little accountability partner whatsapp and it really helped me feel connected and it started with a vision board so everybody it was only three of us in that group but we all shared our vision board and then every week we just kind of shared what we'd what progress we've made on the things that were on our vision board and sometimes you just go oh that's brilliant like so proud of you I know that was really important and sometimes you've got oh that's the third time you've mentioned you've not moved that thing forward like what's what's getting in your way and I just felt very connected and you could do that with work people or you know that was with two friends actually yeah they were friends but do you know when we started it we weren't super close friends um but we became really close by the end of the year and actually only did it for that year because I didn't I didn't feel right to just do it forever but that really helped me feel connected what helps you I'm just thinking giving people some practical things um I'm what helps me is being connected with people connected to work but not in my day job so you know the making time and space for curious conversations and actually whether they are online or in person I don't mind I do prefer them in person but I have probably just as many online as well and I actually had one yesterday because I was thinking the moment I felt most connected yesterday was when I had a conversation with a lady called Lindsay who had just got in touch with us on LinkedIn and said she really liked our work and you know she she definitely like used a bit of our work for the work that she does she's based over in the US and she was also volunteering to help with Learn Like a Lobster out in the US and it was just a curious conversation so it was agenderless it wasn't like we must get through all these things in this order it wasn't like a decision discussion agenda yeah um which definitely have their purpose and their place and she just like told me a bit about her and her work and like what was happening and sort of I did the same and it felt quite meandering and then at certain points we got to practically she was like would you like an introduction to this person I was like oh yeah that would be great but it just felt like a moment of two people just sort of sharing connecting you know you're finding points of commonality and getting to know somebody for the first time and so I think sometimes you connect with people in a different way when it's less task focused I suppose is my observation and actually I see the same with our team so when I spend time with our team and it's very task focused you're not connecting with that person I'm just like let's get stuff done and that's that's okay um and also sometimes I find it can feel a bit disingenuous to try and connect with someone for like one minute where then yeah 29 minutes you've got to spend a lot of time being very kind of transactional or a bit more transactional um and so again sometimes having conversations with the team where you have got a bit more space to explore or to like just hear a bit you know like window into their world yeah how they're feeling what they're working on what they find frustrating it's those kind of moments I think that are more free form where I feel more connected with people yeah I think that's probably you know when do you feel most and least connected are probably useful reflections of people so how because again what we need is different I think um but then you can maybe dial up some of more of those like you could dial up curious conversations I could maybe you know bring back my accountability whatsapp for 2026 that kind of a thing so our final idea for this episode and don't forget this is a part one and part two so the final one for part one is um I'm going to say theme because i feel like i'm triggering you with the word trend so the final theme for 2026 i think it's more i'm starting to really question my own credibility of using the word trend theme yeah um is the employee influencer um we've not had a really good chat about this so it'll be interesting to get your perspective but the idea that we have seen emerging is the fact that employers are recognizing the value of employees posting about where they work what they're working on and becoming a very visible advocate for the organization and I think employee advocacy isn't a new thing however what is new is people are now being remunerated for it so there are some people that actually have it as a specific job um and also I was chatting to someone recently is this your dream job I was thinking about this and I was like is this Helen's dream job in a big company if I was like if I was in Microsoft and I was in Microsoft's like I mean I would have quite liked it yeah imagine going around microsoft and being like let me tell you about the amazing things that we do in microsoft and why like everyone should care about this i mean i definitely don't want to do this job but i could really imagine you doing it i mean i would quite like to do that job yeah what happened with this job but like if i was still in microsoft last week we went to see our book be printed and you turned up with like a vlogging camera thing and literally didn't let it go for two hours i was like you are basically already this but just for us which is alongside about 25 other things but I was like oh I bet you Helen would have quite you know in a different world in a different life I could imagine this being you.

19:50I've done a bit of job crafting I've taken this theme and I've already I've already adopted it but yeah so some people are being paid now for posting which I'm not it was interesting isn't it but I think it is a new whether you're paid directly for it or just valued indirectly for it I think it is a new source of influence you can have in an organization if you build your external profile on a platform like LinkedIn or maybe if you're speaking at events and you use that profile to shine a spotlight on the products services culture the company you work for interesting I have a few worries about it share your worries inevitably um well I wonder whether it's sort of places of value on extroverts behaviors um because as somebody who is more introverted I would never do this but I I struggle it's sort of part of our job to spend time on LinkedIn and I and I I don't think I'm as introverted as some people and I even find that hard as in I find it hard to like post things um I overthink it like this would be this is not a job I ever want to do um and so if you are someone who just doesn't you know like it's a very externalize you're like I'm going to share everything um and but it's quite like out there isn't it and you have to be a certain sort of person to be able to do this and to do this well and I was like the one watch out I think just in my head was if companies are going to start doing this you know making sure that you don't go for everyone who's the same so for example if everyone is a Helen in every company obviously obviously Helen is incredible but there are lots of ways to lead and there are lots of ways to be successful and so I think if if I was setting this up in a company now so if I was back in Sainsbury's and thinking about this I would really want to make sure whether you're paying people or not but that there was a range of voices that people could also do this in different ways so you know some people are better at writing than they are at speaking like you're actually very good at both some people are so good at if I think about like some of the teams I've worked in they're so good at snappy short funny content you like puns like I remember working for one boss she was like incredible at that um and so I suppose you just want to find ways so it feels inclusive because I think there is a danger that it could feel exclusive like you have to be a certain kind of person for this to be a thing so I feel like this could actually be a really helpful thing for organizations and actually for individuals you know when you're thinking about different ways to progress um practicing new skills like learning from lots of different people um so I can see lots of good things and lots of upsides I think as long as it is done thoughtfully you know and actually really making sure that it is for everyone you know we talk about we want to make squiggly careers better for everyone i always think there's just this just look out for anything you might do that makes you know the people could feel a bit alienated or or kind of opt out of doesn't mean everyone has to be an influencer but i just feel like you don't want all of the voices to be like an echo chamber and to look and sound the same also i think there's someone i follow who is um has a brilliant role at marks and spencers who uh i often see will post about products like on instagram oh i follow her too sherry yeah sherry's amazing yeah sherry's amazing yeah i love her she won an award recently at an event i was at i thought it was brilliant she's a good example yeah she's a great example this is what so i was thinking oh if you were at sainsbury's you'd have done a sherry which is what sherry will spotlight amazing products so she'll do that is what i do like like mark spencer's advent calendar of like amazing products that you need to get and it's so authentic and you would have done that at sainsbury's you're doing like this mince pie is are the best mince pie you're ever going to have or this crisp needs to be on your Christmas table like if this is the Christmas crisp you would have done that whereas I would probably do more like I don't know events or people or so I so I think finding if you if this is something you want to do and obviously this is all a choice like creating AI agents and having curious conversations all a choice it's just if it's something that you choose to do um in this kind of employee influence theme that is emerging I think finding a way to do it that you actually enjoy like you love to put I remember when you were at Sainsbury's and you would always like tell me about the products and the taste testing and you were you just loved loved that part of the job well one of the reasons I went to work there is I love food and that's true now and it was it was true then um if anything I would have had more food in those jobs but I yeah I loved I loved that so let us know we hope these feel these trends slash themes feel useful um and as a little teaser for what we've got coming to get part two we're going to be talking about this is more cheery than it sounds uh restructures and redundancy um because we think it's happens to all of us and maybe that's helpful to just think a bit about that autonomy times accountability so two words that we we are hearing a lot so like what does that mean for us and then we're basically making one up that we want to happen which is forcing this one yeah um we have written this so we're going to make it a trend we want learning that gets recognized and rewarded and we're going to talk about what that might look like so that's what's coming up next but that's everything for this episode thank you so much for listening and i hope you come back for part two bye for now bye everyone