332. Things We Got Wrong: 4 Years of Terrible Workplace Predictions, Summer Sessions #6

Welcome back to Truth, Lies & Work, the award-winning workplace podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Every New Year's Eve, hosts Al and Leanne make bold, confident predictions about what the next year of work will look like. Some are rooted in occupational psychology, some in business experience, and some... are just Al getting carried away. In this special Summer Sessions episode, we dig through four years of predictions from 2023 through 2026 for a brutally honest, self-deprecating review of our past calls. From the rapid rise of AI agents and skills-based hiring to the over-hyped promises of AI burnout prediction and corporate transparency, find out who actually holds the ultimate workplace crystal ball. 🔥 What We Covered 2023 Predictions: Skills-based hiring vs. degree requirements, ChatGPT as a personal workplace coach, and the permanent shift to hybrid working. 2024 Predictions: Employee retention strategies, corporate transparency fails, and why AI missed the mark on predicting workplace burnout. 2025 Predictions: Why empathy became the defining AI-era leadership skill, the explosion of autonomous AI agents, and personalized financial wellbeing. 2026 Halfway Progress Report: Are human-centric skills becoming more valuable? Is AI fading into invisible infrastructure? And how are we measuring outcome-based productivity? 💡 Key Takeaways Skills Over Degrees: Leanne accurately called the shift to competency-based, skills-first hiring as employers moved away from rigid qualification requirements. AI as a Thinking Partner: Employees routinely use generative AI as a personal sounding board for difficult workplace conversations and leadership prep. The Burnout Miss: AI was heavily leveraged for workplace productivity, meeting summaries, and administrative tasks—not for predicting employee burnout or monitoring mental health. Agentic AI Arrives: Workflows shifted rapidly from basic AI prompt-writing to autonomous AI agents acting as digital colleagues. Human Skills Matter Most: As routine tasks automate, empathy, judgment, ethics, and emotional intelligence have become the ultimate leadership differentiators. 📬 Connect with Al & Leanne – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/truthlieswork – Al Elliott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thisisalelliott – Leanne Elliott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meetleanne – Email: hello@truthliesandwork.com – Book a call: https://savvycal.com/meetleanne/chat Mental health support UK & ROI — Samaritans Call 116 123 or visit https://www.samaritans.org UK — Mind Call 0300 123 3393 or visit https://www.mind.org.uk US — Suicide & Crisis Lifeline Call or text 988 or visit https://988lifeline.org Australia — Lifeline Call 13 11 14 or visit https://www.lifeline.org.au Global helplines https://findahelpline.com