HBS Managing the Future of Work

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Workforce change, explained at executive altitude.

The gist

Harvard Business School’s workforce podcast tracks the management choices behind AI adoption, skills building, hiring, and organizational change. Its conversations stay close to executives, educators, and labor-market builders facing practical pressure now.

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About HBS Managing the Future of Work

Harvard Business School’s workforce podcast looks at the future of work through the decisions organizations are making right now. It is not a trend show chasing novelty. The center of gravity is management: how leaders define jobs, build talent pipelines, use AI, work with labor systems, and prepare people for shifting demand. Conversations show that AI adoption is uneven but unavoidable. Some companies are using it to grow. Others are hunting for savings, reducing errors, automating routine processes, or trying to improve customer support before attempting broader redesign. The show keeps returning to that gap between tool capability and organizational change. Siemens brings the question into an industrial setting, where reskilling, employability, demographics, and consultative labor practices all matter. Bank of America frames workforce strategy across branches, technology transformation, engagement, mobility, and retention. HubSpot’s episode treats AI as both a customer-benefit tool and an internal adoption challenge, with attention to skeptical employees as well as early enthusiasts. Fiverr widens the lens to the white-collar gig economy, where some services may disappear while new AI-related skills and markets emerge. Education is part of the story too. Riipen’s project-based model appears as one answer to the experience gap facing students who need real work exposure without displacing the rest of their lives. Executive recruiting adds another layer, asking what boards should value when strategy, geopolitics, technology, talent, and social expectations converge on leadership roles. The conversations are polished, academic, and business-facing. They are also specific enough to be useful. The show suits listeners who want careful discussion of AI and workforce change without hype, panic, or vague futurism.

Made for: For executives, HR and talent leaders, educators, policymakers, and business students tracking how AI and labor-market shifts affect real organizations. It also suits listeners who prefer measured analysis over breathless technology commentary.

What sets it apart: The show pairs Harvard Business School framing with executives and workforce builders who are implementing change inside large, complex systems. Its edge is practical specificity: skills, jobs, managers, labor models, customer outcomes, and institutional constraints all stay in view.

In their own words

Artificial intelligence. Robotics. The Gig Economy. Globalization. The world is changing at a dizzying pace in ways that will have a profound effect on the economy, jobs and the flow of talent. How will firms cope with the changes ahead and what steps do they need to take today? Each episode features faculty from the world’s leading business school interviewing CEOs, technologists and experts on the bleeding edge discussing how to survive and thrive by managing the future of work.

As heard by us

Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026

Executive interviews turn AI and workforce disruption into concrete questions about incentives, skills, job design and organizational change.

HBS Managing the Future of Work treats workplace change as a management problem with decisions attached. Bill Kerr and Joe Fuller press senior leaders on how AI adoption, talent practices and public policy alter the way organizations operate.

Read our full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

From Wells Fargo's incentives to HubSpot's faster customer answers, your next management meeting gets sharper questions.

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Bill Kerr asking HubSpot leaders how AI can help staff give customers faster, better answers
the mechanics behind Wells Fargo's shift toward performance pay and more candid conversations

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

AI adoption at workreskilling and employabilitytalent strategy and mobilityexecutive leadership requirementswork-based learninggig economy shiftscustomer support transformationworkforce policy

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Find your next episode

About HBS Managing the Future of Work

In their own words

As heard by us

Why you'd press play

Talks about

Podcasts like HBS Managing the Future of Work

Episodes

Cal Newport on slow productivity and next-wave AI

Jacob Morgan on managing the new normal

Workforce Competitiveness: Business Roundtable's Kristen Silverberg

Ed Glaeser on Cities, Work, and Why America Struggles to Build

IBM CHRO Nickle LaMoreaux on AI and the culture of skills building

Morningstar CEO Kunal Kapoor: How AI can raise the investment IQ

Cleveland Clinic’s formula for a robust healthcare workforce

Microsoft’s AI perspective: From chatbots to reengineering the organization

ServiceNow’s Amy Regan Morehouse on workforce transformation

Shopify’s Tia Silas on rewiring HR for a remote-first e-commerce company

Resilient Coders' formula for a diverse tech workforce

How SkillUp signposts pathways to good jobs

Siemens' Judith Wiese on engineering a global workforce transformation

Units of work: Riipen's Dana Stephenson on experiential learning

Executive recruiting: Tom Monahan on algorithmic power brokers and adaptability

Bank of America's Josh Bronstein on hiring for the long-term

HBS Project on Managing the Future of Work 2025 Year in Review, 2026 Preview

HBS Skydeck: Can tech solve health care’s workforce crisis?

How HubSpot sells and supports its own AI transformation

Fiverr's Micha Kaufman on the post-AI gig economy

Wells Fargo's Bei Ling on culture change and learning agility

Guest Episode: Joseph Fuller on the TechWolf podcast

Reading and riding the AI wave: John Winsor on the value of flexibility

How web data is fueling the robot revolution

EY's Dan Diasio on consulting's AI challenge

JFF's Maria Flynn on getting to good jobs

Redefining success: Harrison Keller on the Texas higher-ed model

BuildOps' Alok Chanani on rewiring commercial contracting

Cisco's alignment strategy: Coordinating workforce and operations

Designing Equitable Workplaces

Vanguard's skills strategy for tech transformation

Shake Shack’s test kitchen: Developing a good jobs and automation combo

Upwork’s Hayden Brown on bridging volatility with contingency

ManpowerGroup’s Jonas Prising on the new global talent equation

Redrawing the map to tech careers: Per Scholas CEO Plinio Ayala on skills, mobility, and AI

Erik Brynjolfsson on how AI is rewriting the rules of the economy

David Deming on workforce shifts and the future of college

Positive prompts: Sal Khan on AI in the classroom and beyond

OneTen CEO Debbie Dyson: Why "skills-first" builds a better workforce

Nicholas Bloom on the unbundled workplace

Hospitality at work: Bridging opportunity and innovation

Beyond exit interviews: Knowing why workers quit makes for better job matches

Guest Episode: Joseph Fuller on The Gartner Talent Angle

The business logic of supporting carers in the workforce

Worker welfare: From theory to tangible good

Collective counsel: Corporate law's changing workforce and culture

Help Wanted: Workforce boards face greater demands and more strings

Marshall Goldsmith outlines the humble path to better leadership

Bonus episode: Introducing HBS's latest podcast, Think Big, Buy Small

EY’s Trent Henry on how AI can extend white-collar careers

Adaptable and inclusive: Kraft Heinz’s brand of workforce

Cengage Group’s Michael Hansen on the employment-ready syllabus

Strada’s Stephen Moret on democratizing access to education and opportunity

Can work-based learning revive college-for-all?

Wharton’s Peter Cappelli on changing the talent equation

Western Governors University: Pursuing the network effects of competency based education

Guest Appearance: Joe Fuller on CSU's Spur of the Moment

Volvo Cars retools its talent strategy for an EV future

Harvard’s Project on Workforce: Charting college’s employment pathways

Cal Newport on knowledge work, Part 2: “Slow productivity”

Transplanting college to the corporate campus to develop talent for good jobs

Revisiting Upward Mobility: The 2023 American Opportunity Index

Revelio Labs’ Ben Zweig on creating a universal HR database

Why employers need to tune in to worker preferences

Euan Blair on workforce development: College is broken. Apprenticeships deliver.

Deloitte's Dan Helfrich on consulting in the post-Covid, AI-inflected new normal

Defining experience: How micro internships build skills and boost productivity

Workplace transformation: Gallup plumbs the new normal

The EEOC’s Keith Sonderling on job fairness in the age of AI

Chike Aguh on government innovation in workforce development

The case for investing in the apprenticeship model

Complex systems: From supply chains to artificial intelligence