263. The Expert Predictions for 2026 (Part 2): Hybrid work, unionisation and more of the same?

11:20Alanah Mitchell:Let's hear Danny's prediction for 2026.

11:23Ina Purvanova:There was a study by Stanford in 2003 that found a way of predicting the weather with an accuracy of over 90%. And it was simply same as today. The weather tomorrow is most likely to be the same as it was today. So my prediction, my first prediction for 2020, 2020, 2026 is going to be very much more of the same. In 2025, we saw a tightening fiscally, particularly in the UK around wages, attracting talent, succession planning, etc. We saw big investments in technology like AI that weren't always intentional. We've seen people looking for silver bullets for how do I fix all of these challenges. And my first prediction is that I think it's going to be much of a muchness.

12:15Ina Purvanova:It's going to be very similar to going to 2026 because people don't really change hugely. What We found comfort in last year. We will find comfort in next year. Unfortunately, every silver lining does come with a cloud. So I will share a silver lining. But I think there is going to be a marked change in how we approach people. But it's not going to be driven potentially by a desire to improve the people experience, but because of a necessity to improve the people experience. But as a people experience person, I'll take that. Anything that kind of improves and adds a bit of intentionality and purpose around how we approach the soft squishy bits in our organizations has got to be a good thing.

12:59Ina Purvanova:So recently the budget in the UK was announced and it's going to be a bit of a squeeze when it comes to talent attraction. Things like the national minimum wage are going up. There are higher taxes on things like dividends for business owners. so on one side you've got a real squeeze on the on the resources that are available to businesses and people on the other side there are benefits grants and tax breaks for introducing technology so r &d credits and things like this which are going to almost encourage people to start to look at simplifying automating and that dreaded word ai into our organizations and also labor laws are are also being looked at as well.

13:42Ina Purvanova:So they're tightening up. So for me, it creates this kind of pressure cooker of we need to be more clear and purposeful around who and how we attract people into our organizations. For years, people like you and I have been banging on about how do you do that a little more scientifically rather than, oh, he just feels like the right person for the role. So I think that organizations are going to have to become a lot smarter with their talent attraction and their succession planning because they're going to have to look after the people that are in their organization because of these label or changes, but also getting people into the business is going to become more costly as well.

14:22Ina Purvanova:So I hope things like job analysis are going to be done. I hope HR is going to have a little bit of science and leverage the community of occupational and organizational psychologists out there who can help remove bias in your hiring processes who can identify not just what are the competencies that somebody's had in the past but what are their predictable behaviors in the future particularly when they're under stress under change etc and that's the sort of the clarity and intentionality that people like us can bring to organizations so my hope my silver lining is that we start to take the soft squishy bits and the processes around them a little bit more scientifically and a little bit more seriously

15:04Alanah Mitchell:I guess what I'm getting in theme here is that, is it that we're not, next year we're not going to be doing more, but we are going to be doing better?

15:13Ina Purvanova:I mean, I'm not Nostradamus, but I do know that people tend more so to either conform with the comfortable and the familiar of what they have, which is why I think that it will be more of the same. The weather tomorrow is the same as the weather today, 90 % of the time. However, when the pain gets too great, then we do have avoidance behaviours that happen as well, that manifest as well. So the reality of business, particularly in the UK at the moment, is it's getting more and more expensive. If you are profitable, it is then more and more of that is being sliced off for things like taxation. And the regulations around how you operate, particularly with people, are also in flux at the moment as well.

15:57Ina Purvanova:And that kind of pressure cooker is putting an awful lot of stress and risk on organizations and small business owners and kind of forcing their hands to consider how do I do more with less? How do I improve the kind of social capital and the discretionary effort that my people provide? Well, the way to do that is understand more about what the environments that encourage motivation. What are, you know, are you trying to fit, as we said in my podcast, are you trying to fit a Dave-shaped hole just because you've got a Dave-shaped hole rather than what other skills can people bring? And doing things like job analysis and understanding what's actually needed today and tomorrow, you can more cleverly identify where there is competencies within your organization already.

16:43Ina Purvanova:We tend to be more comfort and familiarity, but I think there's that much stress in the marketplace at the moment that people are, they may be looking for a silver bullet that's not there, but there is some silver buckshot. There's lots of little things we can do. Job analysis, using the science, using psychologists and understanding your business a little more intentionally are never bad things, particularly when we're in a stuff.

17:04Alanah Mitchell:If you want to learn more about Danny's approach to leadership, and of course you do, check out his book, Constellation Leadership. We've put the link in the show notes.

17:11Ina Purvanova:Right, let's keep going, Lee.

17:13Alanah Mitchell:Our next prediction comes from one of our most favourite people, the winner of Hot Take of 2025, Rebecca Taylor. She's a content creator, host of the HR Confessions podcast and co-founder of Skill Cycle.

17:26Ina Purvanova:And if you know Rebecca, you'll know she doesn't mince her words. Her opening line for this prediction is pretty much people are getting sick of the bullshit, which gives you a flavour of where this is going.

17:34Alanah Mitchell:Rebecca's prediction is about power dynamics in the workplace and what happens when employees decide they've had enough of being commoditized. This one is bold. I think that people are coming to a point where we're just getting sick of the bullshit and we're just getting sick of seeing ourselves as being commoditized. We're just sort of expected to spend all this money and yet we're all losing all of our jobs and everything is more and more expensive. So what I think we're going to see is a rise of unions. I think we're going to see more people try to unionize, maybe in industries and in fields that typically aren't usually unionized or people actually join unions who maybe those unions already do exist, but they're just not, you know, they're just not in them now for whatever reason.

18:19Alanah Mitchell:And, you know, through a union, I think they're going to be looking for more collective bargaining power, more job protection, more insurance protection, more, you know, more compensation protection, all of the things, because those are the things that people are lacking the most right now. So that's my take. But let's be honest, in the UK, and I can't speak to the US, in the UK, unions do come with a bit of a stigma. Yeah, here too. How can we engage people in this idea that unionizing could actually be a way forward and a way of improving working lives for the majority? Well, they come with a stigma because they're kind of not anti-capitalist, but they cause friction in capitalism.

19:03Alanah Mitchell:And we're a capitalist society. So it makes sense that there's propaganda that says things that benefit employees are bad because that's a narrative that supports the people who have most of the wealth and most of the control in this country. Yeah, you always think about sort of, you know, the union workers who aren't working and are getting paid or the people who are on furlough and all that other stuff. And so there is there is a lot of propaganda about it. I think that there have been really interesting measures in organizations like Starbucks where they did unionize and they've seen benefits and you see people making good wages.

19:38Alanah Mitchell:You see people getting health care coverage and parental care and in parental leave. And those are things that they're only going to benefit other people in other organizations, too. And I mean, I'm not going to lie, it is going to be an uphill battle. There is going to have to be sort of some leaders, some people who are unafraid of remessaging unions and really driving, almost like campaigning for them, the same way you'll campaign for an election. And it is going to be it is going to take a bit. But I think that once you start to realize the benefit that that has and you start to unwind your narrative and realize that there's more there could be more benefit to you as an individual, even if it hinders the company that you work for.

20:20Alanah Mitchell:I think people are going to start to be okay with that narrative because people are also realizing that companies will replace you in a second. And it's something I see all over social media. I see, you know, we talk to a lot of people who are in coaching, a lot of people who work in HR, like our customers are HR customers. And, you know, there's this talk about companies will replace you in a second. So there's no such thing as loyalty anymore. So I think that that narrative that is usually the one that starts to support that anti-union narrative is kind of like making people realize like, oh, because it's bad for them, it's good for us.

20:56Alanah Mitchell:We want it to be bad for them because we want it to be good for us. But it is going to take almost like a like a rebranding, a rebranding of unions in order for it to work. Where could we be at this time next year if people actually took this agency and did something about it? It'll probably be sort of like important steps towards massive change, but I wouldn't expect the whole thing to be blown up, right? Unless everyone just strikes everywhere and stops working. And that would be a really, really bold move, which I'm also here for. You know, but I think if we're looking at it sort of within the next year, if people are sort of taking the steps of what that is, we could start to see more laws being formed around worker protections.

21:33Alanah Mitchell:because it's going to be if a company doesn't want a union because they don't want to have to deal with collective bargaining, they don't want to have to deal with the process that and the I'll say bureaucracy that sometimes comes with working in a union. It might push the government to push to regulate more employee centric laws so that they can get protections from their employees that don't involve being in a union. So there could be sort of a benefit that people can get that could be passed sooner because that pressure is applied. I would still advocate for pressuring for unions because that is, again, a move that will benefit the company more than it'll benefit you as an individual.

22:10Ina Purvanova:If you want more of Rebecca's unfiltered takes on workplace issues, check out HR Confessions podcast. We'll put a link in the show notes and also go and check out her LinkedIn. She is one of the LinkedIn queens.

22:20Alanah Mitchell:She certainly is. On to our next prediction right after the short break. Do we need a break? Should we have a break?

22:25Ina Purvanova:Let's have a break. We all need a break.

22:27Alanah Mitchell:I'm going to put the kettle on.

22:28Ina Purvanova:Billion Dollar Moves, hosted by Sarah Chen Spellings, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination of business professionals.

22:35Alanah Mitchell:Join venture capitalist and strategist Sarah Chen Spellings as she asks the hard questions and learns through the triumphs, failures and hard lessons of the creme de la creme, so you too can make billion dollar moves in venture, in business and in life.

22:48Ina Purvanova:Maybe start with episode 124, where you're going to hear how industry giants from Canva to YouTube define leadership.

22:55Alanah Mitchell:Listen to Billion Dollar Moves wherever you get your podcasts.

23:02Alanah Mitchell:welcome back brewing hand i hope our next prediction comes from the amazing vince sanderson who's a bit of a tiktok legend in the management world yeah he's got uh 260 000

23:14Ina Purvanova:followers and over 1.6 million likes on tiktok where he shares management advice that actually makes sense he's also the ceo of velion consulting group very fancy and he's been on the show before

23:25Alanah Mitchell:so we know he doesn't hold back. His prediction for 2026 is about what happens when AI starts doing the job that managers should be doing and he thinks it's going to be pretty messy.

23:37Ina Purvanova:There has been a massive increase in trying to use AI as a replacement of management and leadership skills as well. Coaching agents, guidance agents, goal setting agents and so So even though I think they're quite distinct skills, so what I think is going to shift this year in 2026 is we're going to see a messy phase where we're trying to combine these two very different skill sets. And I don't know how it's going to turn out. I think in the long run, it'll end up separating again. Probably, hopefully. Maybe that's just my opinion on it. But I think next year, maybe even into 2027, we're going to see this kind of messy, maybe even frustrated phase where you imagine I'm a manager and you're a team member and you're using AI, chat GPT in the background because you're now used to it as we see the general population increase in using it.

24:44Ina Purvanova:and you're summarizing what your thoughts are and then it gets sent to me and then I read a bit of a summary based on what AI thinks you're after and then I go oh well I'll just put it into chat GPT what shall I do about this and then I reply with an AI summary to you and then you go oh I'm not sure and then you reply with and are we actually having a conversation am I doing any leading here? Are your issues or frustrations actually being resolved? Or are we just going around in circles using AI agents or whatever it may be? If you get met with that response, I'll speak for myself, I wouldn't be happy.

25:23Ina Purvanova:Well, I've poured my heart out potentially, or I put myself in a vulnerable position and you didn't know what to do. The thing is, AI is at its worst point today than it will ever be. But that doesn't mean as it gets better, it's the right replacement for human connection and interaction and support. I think a lot of people are just going to get a bit fed up that it's clearly not a person that's providing this support, advice, guidance. Why do I need you then? And that's only going to feed into the resentment that many people have towards management, that classic stat of seven out of 10 people leave jobs because of managers.

26:07Ina Purvanova:Well, now we're gonna get a little caveat and one out of 10 of those people left because it wasn't even a manager that was helping and it was ChatGPT. I don't think this is a generational thing. Any managers and leaders that lean more heavily towards, I've not got time, let's just come on up with an answer. Oh, I don't know how to do that. What does ChatGPT say? they're only doing themselves in any future general you know people come through a disservice there and are we going to see not just in 2026 but 26 and beyond an influx of managers that haven't actually experienced a difficult conversation they've just gone in and looked for an answer and then sent it off without knowing whether it's actually a helpful answer and having used chat gpt and others um out of interest for some of the challenging conversations i've been privy to and part of and you type it up and see or what would it say i look at the answers and i'm like nope that's not what you should be saying it looks good on paper for example the feedback sandwich it'll recommend doing that but we know that that's not a good model to use and will that change in the future maybe maybe maybe it'll get better and better but certainly for next year you know the next couple of years i think we're in for a bit of a frustrating sticky time because of this i naturally err on the side of optimism and hope just in general but in particular with these things i i wonder whether we'll see a more of a separation like we're doing now with remote first companies compared to companies that are encouraging back in the office we're seeing this divergence of companies that really advertising what they're about and i wonder whether this will be the same whether it's with customers or internally we don't use ai agents you will speak to a person we don't employ ai agents within our management system we actively avoid them and we invest in training our leaders and our managers.

28:15Ina Purvanova:I wonder whether that will be an incentive as part of your job description, this is what we're about. I don't know, but I would expect we'll see a bit of a separation to those that go, our business is about our people compared to our business is purely revenue. And I think there'll be a bit of a separation there. And I will add, there'll be plenty of people as well that, all right, great. I'll take an AI manager over a real person because they've had such bad experiences sadly in the past and they've been burnt by real people so i have no doubt that that will be a benefit to some people but i don't i 100 don't believe that an ai agent can substitute a great manager or leader that is worth its weight in gold if you want more of vince's no nonsense management advice go find him on tiktok we've put his handle in the show notes definitely go worth a follow.

29:09Alanah Mitchell:Look at you put his handle in the show notes.

29:11Ina Purvanova:I know.

29:12Alanah Mitchell:Nice. I'm enjoying 2026, Al. Okay, on to our next prediction.

29:18Ina Purvanova:Yes, so let's hear from Sonia Thompson, who's the host of the Frictionless Marketing Podcast and an inclusive growth and customer experience strategist.

29:24Alanah Mitchell:Sonia spends her time helping brands understand how to be more inclusive. So she's perfectly placed to talk about what's changing in how people show up at work. And her prediction is pretty clear. Something is dead. My prediction is that assimilation is dead. We cannot expect anymore that people will start to assimilate or that people will voluntarily assimilate, whether that's in the workplace, whether that's as consumers, whether that's just walking down the street, right? Like, people are more and more leaning into their identities of who they are, and they are expecting other people to embrace and acknowledge their identities rather than having to tuck their identity in their pocket whenever they show up at work, whenever they're in meetings, whenever they're presenting, whenever they show up for a business.

30:26Alanah Mitchell:And I think that was the standard for many, many, many years. I think back to even my corporate days. There was a lot about me that I felt like needed to be sort of, like I needed to show up as who I thought everybody else needed me to be. I needed to not rock the boat. I needed to not present myself as too differently. I needed to be like them rather than focus on being who I was and seeing that as a strength, seeing that as an asset and seeing that I was great as I was, not as who the polished version or who corporate Sonia was. And I spent some time talking with a woman on my podcast recently, And she validated this trend.

31:23Alanah Mitchell:Specifically, she focuses on the Hispanic community in the U.S. And she had done a lot of research with young Hispanic community. And in particular, she called this out that assimilation is over. In this instance, you were saying how they were 100 % American and 100 % Latino. And it's not like they have to sort of hide aspects of themselves. They don't have to hide their accent. They don't have to hide whatever it is about them that makes them them. People are about like, this is me. Take it or leave it. This is who I am. And brands are having to adjust and adapt accordingly. I remember way back when during my corporate time, I was moving up and I was now like a people leader.

32:17Alanah Mitchell:And so that gave me an opportunity to go through some like professional development training. And as a part of that training, I had to get feedback from like all of my peers, some of the leaders. And one of the pieces of feedback that came back was like, we don't really feel like we know Sonia. Like we need to know Sonia the person, not Sonia the marketer. And I thought about that. And it was interesting that this is one of the things that they felt that was needed for me to be more successful, for me to, I guess, better fit in or build relationships. That mask that I had had for years wasn't working.

32:57Alanah Mitchell:And like it limited my ability to just be me. And I think people having this code switching or people putting on this mask or trying to assimilate, which I don't have a formal definition of it, but basically how I interpret assimilation is people who are trying to sort of shed their identity in a way to make them fit in to the people or the group that they're in. So if all the group drinks beer after work and wears a certain type of clothes and they go golfing on the weekends, I don't drink or I prefer to drink margaritas. I prefer to wear sleeveless clothes if I prefer to sit on my couch and scroll TikTok on the weekend.

33:54Alanah Mitchell:Right. Like instead of having to do all those other things to be successful, it's how can you show up and talk about the things that you like and the things that who you are and maybe open that up for other people to sort of be introduced and see your world as what is acceptable. and and really this is what's where it boils down to this is opening up people's view beyond just one way of doing things to where there really is no one right way and all these ways are beautiful and if we embrace people as they are not only do we like eliminate all the stress and the costs associated um of trying to pretend to be someone that you're not um and business ultimately will be better.

34:44Alanah Mitchell:Teams will have more trust. Teams will produce better output because people will be able to bring in their perspectives that they've experienced from all their different walks of life. If you want to find out more about Sonia's work on inclusive marketing and customer experience, head to frictionlessmarketing.io. We've put a link in the show notes.

35:05Ina Purvanova:Okay, on to our penultimate prediction. I like a bit of alliteration, Lee.

35:09Alanah Mitchell:Yes, me too. I also like a bit of Jeanette Rumsden from The Curve Group.

35:13Ina Purvanova:OK, take it out of context, a little bit weird, but let's go with it.

35:16Alanah Mitchell:She is one of the most well-known HR professionals in the UK.

35:20Ina Purvanova:And if you know Jeanette, you'll know she's never one to hold back on what's really on her mind. So let's hear her take on what 2026 holds.

35:27Alanah Mitchell:Well, Al, thanks for inviting me back. I think that AI could ruin the way that recruitment is done in the UK, actually. I feel that we really, really need a human-centric commitment to the recruitment process, quite frankly.

35:44Ina Purvanova:So I've seen on X this app. And what people who are going for jobs can do is have this app open. They glue it to their screen, to their laptop screen on their phone. And then when a recruiter asks a question, it tells them how best to answer it.

36:01Alanah Mitchell:Yes.

36:02Ina Purvanova:Now, is this what we're talking about, that this is just AI? because also the other end we've got other people ai people turning up to interview people so what's

36:09Alanah Mitchell:going on here yeah well you're exactly right that's exactly what's happening i think the trouble is though that takes out a real element of the people element like what makes what makes talent in an organization is having the right skills the right knowledge but actually the right attitude and And screening people out based on just skills alone can be extremely discriminatory. Doesn't actually check the right attitude that the people are right. What it's actually doing is checking that they're technology savvy. And that can mean that you miss out on a huge amount of talent, quite frankly. And who wants that?

36:49Alanah Mitchell:You know, as CEO of a business, you want the very best talent for your organisation, not just the one that managed to answer the avatar questions in the right way. And quite often what I'm also finding now is that certainly graduates are using avatars to answer avatars. So there's absolutely no human intervention in that process. There's one large bank. They've got a six stage process for their recruitment. And the first two stages are just totally enabled by robots. and what they are discovering is that the candidates are just doing the first two stages robot to robot. Now, don't get me wrong.

37:26Alanah Mitchell:It's very, very useful, you know, to screen out totally inappropriate people. The role requires somebody to be in country for, you know, for a real reason. You know, being able to wheedle those out, you know, is a sort of a yes, no answer. but anything more in depth and sort of trying to find the very best talent for your organisation, it's not the way to recruit for me. Don't get me wrong, though, we do use a lot of AI, but it's in the appropriate way.

37:58Ina Purvanova:Jeanette, so you do use AI. So what's the right way to use AI in recruitment?

38:03Alanah Mitchell:It's where there is a real process involved. So using AI to make sure that you respond to all candidates, helping you to write an initial job description using ai to write an advert for you to get the first load of wording down helping you to do a nice approach on email but as long as there's a human-centric element that's where the real winners for me will be where you're using ai ai ai there's my dyslexia kicking in beautifully but you know to sort of cut down a process and make it faster is absolutely brilliant and absolutely genius where you're sort of deciding that somebody is not appropriate for a role based on their age or their their criteria or their lack of skills isn't always the best way and of course I'll probably get low inundated with loads of people making the argument the reality is it's not working wholesale particularly for the SME market which is where we specialize.

39:08Ina Purvanova:Classic Jeanette straight to the point as always.

39:10Alanah Mitchell:Yes and And of course, you'll want to learn more about Jeanette and her work at The Curve Group. Surprise, surprise. We put a link in the show notes.

39:17Ina Purvanova:I know. I know. It's just you didn't expect. Didn't see that coming, did you? Tell you what you did see coming is our final prediction. Yes, our final prediction. It comes from Becky Sims from Human First Collective, also one of the founders of Reflect Digital. Just been voted the Employer of the Year. Very, very, very cool company. We've had her on before. So definitely check the show notes out for the other episode that we had Becky on. Here's Becky Sims.

39:40Alanah Mitchell:So thinking about how AI is becoming part of our day-to-day lives, I can see people coming to a job interview wanting to know what AI tech stack am I going to have to support me in my role? And are you open to using AI? Because we've got these kind of fearful businesses sitting over here that are not embracing AI as much as others. And that's going to become important to the employee. We're not going to want to go and work somewhere that says, no, you can't use it or we don't like it. So they're going to want to know, what does our tech stack look like? How will I be able to work with AI? Because I can be more productive.

40:14Alanah Mitchell:I can bring better ideas to the table. I can get more work done.

40:18Ina Purvanova:What would a tech stack look like? Say you, if you implemented this in Reflect or Human Collective, what would a tech stack actually be described as?

40:25Alanah Mitchell:We actually did a big AI session back in September with our whole team as like an away day. And we started saying, we want you to start thinking about your tech stack, what's important to you. So we use Google as our kind of main platform here. So Gemini is the one that everybody has access to. But then we have different tools for different people that are using them in different ways. Like I'm sure you're probably utilizing some of the different AI tools for subtitling or for helping you edit videos, etc. So in our creative team, they absolutely have part of that as their tech stack. Within our SEO team, for example, there'll be certain tools they want to use, etc.

41:01Alanah Mitchell:So we've got different licenses in place for different things. And we're really open to someone suggesting a new technical tool that they want to use and checking it against our AI policy and making sure it works, etc. Like I, as much as we use Gemini, I actually been using ChatGPT before Gemini got to being good. And I'm so in bed with my ChatGPT, if you can say it that way. Like it knows me so well and I know it well that I'm kind of really tied to that. and it helps me in so many ways that a lot of our team use fixer for our emails where it kind of helps draft replies for you so i can imagine like if one of our team that's used to using fixer where the second you've got an email you've got a draft reply ready to go though it's learning your style it's learning what you want to say it can say i'm free at three o 'clock for a meeting if you suddenly went to a company and they said you can't use fixer like that would turn them off wanting to take that job i imagine because they're like well hold on it's been a long time since i've to go and trawl my own calendar and think about these things.

42:00Alanah Mitchell:I'm expecting that to be available to me.

42:03Ina Purvanova:Would you not be concerned that your customers might discover you're using AI or do they know already?

42:08Alanah Mitchell:We absolutely tell them how we're using AI, where we're using it and how it's helping us. So we've got really clear AI policies in the business and I think every business needs an AI policy now and whether that's a really locked down one or a more kind of open one whereby buy. People can suggest products and tools that they want to use. But our team, our clients know, like they know that it means that it's improving productivity. Some of our clients, we do translation work for them, which we would previously work with the translation agency. This year, we've been trialing and have successfully implemented AI translations where the client's so happy, like the price is better, the turnaround's quicker, the tone of voice is there, the localized bit's there, and we're getting it right.

42:53Alanah Mitchell:And it's just working better for them. So I think we're just really open about it of how we use AI. Like they know that our fixer turns up to calls and is taking notes. They get the benefit of us sharing those notes with them as well. But we talk about our kind of positioning statement is that we use technology and AI to make space for human brilliance. And we've had some deep, meaningful conversations about what human brilliance is. But it's almost like we likened it the other week to like going to an artisan bakery they still use the they're going to use a mechanical mixer and they're going to use the help that they can get but they're finishing it by hand so we're going to use all the help we can get but we finish it with our our minds and our hands if you like to follow that analogy because that's what's important we need to know that it's very human at the end what you're getting but it's absolutely like it benefits everybody if ai can speed things up and can give us access to assess data in a way that maybe we couldn't as a human or would take too long or cost the client too much money to do.

43:55Alanah Mitchell:So yeah, I think people need to embrace it, be open about it, but need to start thinking what that means for their employees. Because if they're not open to it, it could cause some problems. They might not be able to hire the people they want to hire that want to work in that way.

44:10Ina Purvanova:If you want to know more about Becky, then just go find her on LinkedIn. She's very, very active. You will see her posting every single day. Okay.

44:16Alanah Mitchell:So there we have it. Very different predictions for 2026. Some hopeful, some challenging, all thought-provoking, some terrifying. I don't know. Well, where are we going to end up in 2026? We usually do our predictions.

44:26Ina Purvanova:We do. Well, I think to be fair, a lot of the predictions have been covered. But what's yours, Leigh?

44:31Alanah Mitchell:My prediction, and actually somebody asked me this when we were doing the show. It might have been Rebecca, actually. And I said, I think culture is going to die next year. I think culture is going to be like the ick of the kind of business world. I think Gen Z are going to hate talking about it. They're going to start mocking it on the TikTok even more than they already do. I think anyone who's a culture consultant is going to have to really consider how they're kind of communicating this to business owners because I think the last few years we've had a lot of investment, so-called investment in culture.

45:07Alanah Mitchell:What we've actually had is investment in the things that are shiny and sexy. um like hi bob and other like such things yeah and they're all share prices are diving and all

45:17Ina Purvanova:those i think layoffs are coming it's yeah everyone wanted a dashboard and then when they

45:22Alanah Mitchell:got one they realized it's a load of shite yeah exactly it's not about how pretty it looks or how many dials you've got on your board it's actually about creating an environment where your people are happy safe and productive yeah i think culture is going to get cancelled next year i think we're going to see a hard swing back to science so long as a psychologist can get our shit together and talk about it in a way that isn't boring or too middle groundy.

45:44Ina Purvanova:Yeah, totally agree. Totally agree. And also, I think that that is a bit terrifying for our podcast because it's about workplace, but we have changed it to simplifying the science of work.

45:52Alanah Mitchell:Well, as well, though, haven't we always said that culture isn't what you think it is? We don't talk about like break rooms and stuff.

45:57Ina Purvanova:No, no, no, totally agree. My prediction is kind of, my prediction is very similar to Vince's, is that we are going to go full peak. I don't know what the kids call it, high peak, whatever the word is, on AI responses. And we're going to end up having, like Vince says, people, AIs talking to AIs because everyone's formulating their opinions or their emails through AI. And so those companies, those leaders who actually just go, this is not AI, I never write AI, that's going to win. And also in terms of marketing, I think I can see people putting a branch, putting a thing on, this app does not use AI.

46:31Ina Purvanova:And I think that's going to be a big thing. So I think that's going to come through to the way we communicate.

46:35Alanah Mitchell:I wonder whether those two things are actually from the same place of companies proudly declaring that they are human first. Yes. Both in terms of a technology perspective and in terms of the workplace environment perspective. I think psychosocial risk factors are going to be really hot next year.

46:52Ina Purvanova:Yeah. So hot right now. Spice. Right. We'll see you. What are we on now? We're on a Thursday, so we'll see you next Tuesday. Who knows what day it is, man. we'll see you next Tuesday where we've got what we call a feed drop in the industry in the biz this is Leanne's interview on Josh from Great Mondays podcast Leanne is always effortlessly cool and awesome so you should definitely listen to that unless you listen to it for in which case no listen to it again listen to it again why not why not so we will we will see you very soon happy new year