Finding Humanity In The Workplace As AI Takes The Lead

Forbes

17-04-2025

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Worried about border incidents, some employers are considering issuing burner phones to their employees. (Photo by)
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Burner phones are usually seen in spy movies or true crime TV shows. Now, use of these devices is being recommended for some more traditional employees.
The European Commission has issued burner phones and basic laptops to some of its staff flying into the United States for this spring's IMF and World Bank meetings, the Financial Times reported Monday. In the past, the practice had typically been reserved for travel to China.
The move comes after an increase in high-profile instances of U.S. border agents stopping both immigrants and U.S. citizens and searching through their phones. For example: After returning from the Dominican Republic with his family earlier this month, Detroit lawyer Amir Makled was stopped at customs, where border agents asked to search his cellphone.
Makled, who often represents Arab-American clients, has advised his clients on what to do if they're stopped at the border. But his own stop, he says, is the first instance he knows of an attorney being stopped because of a case they're working on. Makled is currently representing a pro-Palestinian student protestor who was arrested at the University of Michigan.
And in March, a French scientist on assignment for the French National Center for Scientific Research was denied entry at the U.S. border after immigration agents searched his phone and found messages critical of the Trump Administration.
While lawyers said there isn't yet data to show that more device searches are happening at the border, a number of high-profile instances have employers picking up their phones and calling their own lawyers.
'It's popping up' among clients, says Leon Rodriguez, partner at Seyfarth's immigration practice and the former director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). 'As a general matter on immigration and travel issues, there is a much greater sense of worry among companies than there was in the first Trump Administration,' he adds.
Using burner phones within the U.S. is not common practice among employers, Rodriguez adds, but it usually pops up in fields that deal with sensitive information––think those solving financial crimes, lawyers whose work information is protected by attorney-client privilege, or even employees in high-tech fields that travel with commercially sensitive data.
There is no legal separation between personal or professional devices when it comes to immigration law, especially at border points where constitutional protections against 'unreasonable search and seizure' are weaker.
It's just the latest issue employers must think about, and plan for, amid a changing immigration landscape in the second Trump Administration.
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Career's Q&A: Where Humanity In The Workplace Comes From With Alexi Robichaux
Better Up's Alexi Robichaux thinks providing AI and human coaching to middle managers could be the way to tackle employee engagement.
BetterUp
You've probably heard by now that as AI becomes a larger part of our work lives, it is our human skills and interactions that will matter the most to employers. But what does that look like in practice? I sat down with Alexi Robichaux, CEO of professional coaching company BetterUp, on the heels of the company's annual summit in New York City to talk about the potential of anthropology studies, the transformation of managers, and leadership in the face of AI. The conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.
What do you think is missing from the 'humanity in the face of AI' conversation right now?
I wish I heard more about anthropology in the workplace and what actually makes humans perform. We have a century of science of human performance that the average manager has no access to. We know, scientifically, that when people perform, they learn all this stuff. But we're too focused on these '50 million skills in the workplace' instead of focusing on the 30 that really drive human excellence in almost any job.
So really the 'soft skills'?
Yeah. Just dropping in these provisional skills is not how people learn. Learning requires agency, and agency requires motivation. Employees have to want to learn. So the question then becomes: How do we spend time as employers getting people in a head space where they want to learn? Because unfortunately learning cannot be forced.
It seems like this really comes into play at the manager level.
Yeah. When you go and ethnographically talk to managers where they're spending most of their time, it's sometimes the home life of their people. It's not the work life, it's helping sort through that in an appropriate way. One of the things we've been tracking in management as a subset of leadership is emotional labor, and it is rising. Especially if a lot of supervisory work can be done by AI, what people are left to do as a manager is gonna be taking care of their people. And so I think we're gonna see management—and leadership as the pinnacle of management—becoming more human-centered and less task-oriented.
So how do you build for that, especially as more and more organizations are cutting management levels?
A lot of it is actually coaching and support for managers themselves. We know managers are the most stressed, and middle managers have it the worst. They're stuck in the middle, right?
They have demands from both sides pulling on them, but they're the most pivotal, and they need the most support. So we built a product just for managers that is a combination of AI coaching that's always available and a human coach. That's on purpose because we realized that it's hard to know how to be a coach to your employees if you've never been coached. Managers are increasingly becoming coaches for their teams, where they're not solving problems, they're framing problems.
News from the world of work.
More small business owners are posting salaries for open roles in hopes of attracting talent, Brandon Kochkodin reports. Even in states where pay transparency is not required, Gen Z and Millennial business owners are leading the charge.
Amgen's newest AI head has an unusual background––he last headed AI and data at sportswear powerhouse Nike. So how did such a transition come about? Amy Feldman reports on where Big Pharma and biotech startups are recruiting data scientists to speed up the process of drug discovery.
Forbes released its annual AI 50 list last week, and one trend was clear: So long chatbots, AI agents are getting more specialized than ever. From legal workflows to autocompleting lines of code and even investment research, companies are targeting enterprise adoptions to start replacing work done by people at scale.
For all the fears that AI may take your job, Writer AI is already saving businesses millions in labor costs. About 300 companies use its customizable AI apps to automate everyday work, including writing makeup product descriptions, answers to Uber's FAQs, and social media marketing campaigns. To rank-and-file knowledge workers, cofounder and CEO May Habib has a blunt message: 'Ten percent of the headcount is going to be enough.'
You've probably come across at least one TikTok influencer claiming a new way to make quick and easy money. But it's more likely that they're instead making the bulk of their income from digital marketing courses on said side hustles, Danielle Chemtob reports.
Could You Be Hired By This AI Recruiter Next?
A recent study found that which employee benefit keeps workers from leaving their current employer, regardless of their job satisfaction?
A. Health insurance
B. PTO
C. Gym discounts
D. None of the above
Check if you got it right here.