Q&A: Jill Stewart Asks, Amanda Schneider Answers
Jill Stewart: If you were sitting in a corporate meeting today, what is the one assumption about the future of work that you believe CEOs are getting completely wrong?
Amanda Schneider: I think we’re all focused on the wrong debate. For years we’ve been arguing about where people should work. But the Future Forum found that employees care more about how they work than where they work. To me, that signals that maybe we’ve been asking the wrong question altogether.
Because you can’t solve a problem with a where solution. If culture is broken, bringing everyone back to the office doesn’t solve it. It just relocates the dysfunction. The future of work isn’t about where work happens. It’s about designing how work happens.
Jill Stewart: AI is changing knowledge to work at an unprecedented pace. Five years from now, what human skills will become exponentially more valuable — not less — how should organizations begin developing them today?
Amanda Schneider: People often tell me that Gen Z lacks soft skills. I think that’s the wrong conversation. The truth is that all of us are learning a new set of soft skills for a digital world. Because the rules have changed.
Building trust today isn’t just about reading body language across a conference table. It’s about communicating clearly across Slack, Zoom, Teams, text, email… and now AI.
As AI accelerates, those human skills don’t become less valuable. They become even more valuable. So, we can’t just invest in AI literacy. We also have to invest in communication, leadership, and trust-building skills that help people thrive in a digital-first world.
Jill Stewart: We’ve spent years debating where people work. What do you believe is the next conversation leaders should be having about… when people work?
Amanda Schneider: For years, we’ve designed to work around what businesses need. Now we’re asking a new question: How do we also design work around what people need? That’s where many leaders get stuck. Not because they don’t care about their people… but because they’re trying to solve something incredibly difficult: How do you customize at scale?
How do you create enough flexibility for individuals to do their best work… while creating enough consistency for teams and businesses to thrive? Because businesses must be sustainable… or people don’t have paychecks. And people must be sustainable… or businesses won’t have the talent they need to succeed. I think that’s one of the defining leadership challenges of the next decade.
Jill Stewart: As someone who studies workplace trends around the world, what is one innovation or workplace practice you’ve seen that you think every company should be paying attention to right now?
Amanda Schneider: One of the biggest shifts I’m seeing isn’t technology. It’s how organizations are building trust.
We’re all living through a time drought. In the past, trust happened by accident: you bumped into people, you grabbed coffee, you built relationships over time. Today, every minute counts.
So, the best organizations use digital for efficiency… and save in-person time for the moments that build trust. Trust can no longer be left to chance. It has to be designed.
Jill Stewart: If you were writing the final chapter of Work for What’s Next today, what would you add that wasn’t obvious when you first started?
Amanda Schneider: If I were writing the final chapter of Work for What’s Next today, I’d add one statistic.
Gallup just reported the first back-to-back decline in employee engagement they’ve ever recorded. The drop is on par with what we experienced during the pandemic. But this time, there wasn’t a global crisis.
The system itself is under strain. What surprised me most was where Gallup saw the biggest decline: managers. They’re the ones translating business priorities down… while carrying individual needs back up. They’re trying to hold two competing realities together every day.
I think the next chapter of the future of work isn’t about where we work. It’s about giving managers better systems to lead in a world where both people and businesses need to thrive.
The Bottom Line
The future of work isn’t a location, a policy, or a piece of technology. It’s a design problem — one that asks leaders to build trust on purpose, invest in human skills as AI takes on more of the work, and give managers the support they need to hold two competing realities together every day.
Businesses that get this right won’t just retain talent. They’ll build the kind of flexibility and consistency that lets people and organizations thrive together, not at each other’s expense.
