Your Employee Experience Roundup: The AI Efficiency Pushback, Forrester’s Sobering EX Data, and 61% Cover Their Backs At Work

This week in employee experience, the rush to make short-term AI efficiency gains saw pushback at the Festival of Work 2026, where speakers urged organisations to adopt a more people-centric approach to AI. Meanwhile, fresh Forrester data shed light on how...

The Guide to Exit Interview Questions: How to Listen Well, Spot Patterns, and Fix Turnover

People don’t just leave for “more money” any more. They go for momentum, work that fits their life, managers who coach rather than micromanage, and tools that don’t fight them back. The trouble is, you don’t know what’s causing the...

Festival of Work 2026: AI Can Strengthen the CX–EX Link – or Sever It

We’ve known for a long time now that ‘happy employees equals happy customers’. But what is changing is how quickly that CX–EX link can be strengthened or broken as AI becomes increasingly embedded into work. At Festival of Work 2026, the...

Festival of Work 2026 Takeaways: The Efficiency Obsession With AI Is Backfiring

Peter Cheese opened the Festival of Work 2026 with a memorable comment that set the tone for the rest of the event. The pace of change has never been faster, he told the audience in his final address as Chief...

The NEET Crisis: Five Experts on Preventing a ‘Lost Generation’

The UK is “at risk of a lost generation”. That was the stark warning from a recent independent review led by former minister Alan Milburn, which found that within five years, one in six young people could be not in education, employment,...

AI Fatigue Is the New Workplace Burnout – and It’s Far More Expensive Than You Think

We probably don’t need to convince you that the level of AI in the workplace today is suffocating. It really does feel like you can’t spend five minutes at work without interacting with some form of artificial intelligence – whether...

Forrester’s Total Experience Score Now Grades Employee Experience – and the Early Data Is Sobering

Employee experience has, for years now, been the overlooked cousin of customer experience, searching for a way to prove its value to the business. Forrester is now giving it the attention it deserves, but with this comes a hard reality...

Employee Retention Strategies That Work: Reduce Turnover Risk and Grow Profit

Hiring these days feels like wading through mud. It’s tougher and more expensive than ever to to find the right talent. When a great person leaves, they take their know-how, their connections, and half your team’s momentum with them. The...

UK Permanent Hiring Falls at Fastest Rate in 10 Months as Uncertainty Drives Shift to Temporary Work

The UK jobs market took another knock in May, amid rising business uncertainty linked to the war in Iran and UK political turmoil. The latest Report on Jobs, from KPMG and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), showed UK permanent hiring...

The Employee Satisfaction Survey: Questions and Tips to Drive Action

There are moments business leaders should notice well before people start to leave. The signs that satisfaction is slipping are clear: staff stop speaking up, stop suggesting ideas, and start passing the time at work. Most teams aren’t as happy as they could...

Your Employee Experience Roundup: World Cup Flexibility, Microsoft’s Slipping Manager Support, and a Frontline Rethink

What employee experience news caught our attention this week? An internal Microsoft employee survey finds manager support on a downward slope, and CEO confidence in the economy has tumbled in Q2. Also, in an effort to stop organisations lumping billions...

The Josh Bersin Company Launches Frontline Workforce Taxonomy to Replace HR Guesswork with Precision

Frontline workers make up 70–80% of the global workforce, and 60% of these roles require highly skilled people who are not easily replaced or automated. Despite representing the lion’s share of employment, frontline workers receive far less organisational attention than their...