Happy New Year! January is when everyone promises reinvention, and the labour market gets its yearly dose of drama. This year’s soundtrack is “AI transformation,” a phrase that can mean anything from genuine redesign to a polite way of saying “we are cutting costs.”
Meanwhile, the change with the most immediate impact on people is quieter. Work is being renegotiated around time. Not flexibility as a feel-good perk, time as a system: meeting load, response expectations, schedule control, and who pays the “time tax” when collaboration gets messy.
Helping HR, talent acquisition, employer branding, and company culture professionals find careers worth smiling about.
This week’s reading offers useful signals on where AI rhetoric is outrunning labour reality, what schedule autonomy is turning into on the ground, and what narrowing entry routes mean for hiring, development, and employer reputation in 2026.
This Week’s Paper Cut's
