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Pay transparency laws were supposed to address the pay disparities that tend to impact women and people of color in the workplace. Over the last decade, 15 states have introduced laws that require varying degrees of disclosure from employers—from including explicit salary ranges in job postings to verbally sharing those details with prospective employees during the interview process. But new research out of Cornell University indicates that those laws have not been as effective as intended—in part because many employers fail to truly comply with them. These laws often do not clearly articulate how broad a salary range should be, and simply instruct companies to …

This year, the number of mothers with young children exiting the U.S. labor market saw the sharpest January-to-June decline in more than four decades. That isn’t a coincidence—and it isn’t a lack of ambition. Across industries, women are reassessing how—and whether—work fits into their lives. Not because they want to step back, but because too many workplaces are still designed around outdated assumptions about who provides care and how work gets done. As leaders debate return-to-office mandates, women are quietly doing the math—and deciding whether staying is worth the cost. This isn’t a women’s issue. It’s a design failure. And it’s one leaders can choose to fix…

Despite decades of scientific research, incredible advances in deep analytics and AI, and no shortage of good intentions, many organizations still struggle to select and develop the leaders they need to navigate increasingly complex and unpredictable business challenges. Markets are volatile, uncertainty is constant, and leadership quality matters more than ever. Yet many firms still fail to identify and elevate the best (or at least right) leadership talent available. Contrary to what many people think, more often than not, the problem is not a shortage of capable leaders. Rather, it is a failure of the systems designed to identify, develop, and advance them, which s…

Companies often assume that when mid-career women step back from leadership tracks, their ambition has faded. Our research suggests something else is happening. The real pressure point is caregiving strain. Caregiver strain is the cognitive, emotional, and logistical burden of coordinating care for children, parents, or other dependents—and our research found it was the most powerful predictor of workforce exit. Unlike other pressures, caregiving strain does not shut off when the workday begins: kids get sick, elderly relatives have bad falls around the clock. Yet most workplaces continue to treat it as a private matter that “doesn’t clock in” alongside paid work …

Influencing has a major pay gap, and it’s not what you might expect. A new report from Collabstr, based on over 15,000 influencer collaborations using first-party data, reveals a surprising disparity: male creators earn 40% more per collaboration than female creators—$291 compared to $208 on average. This gap persists despite women making up the majority of the content creator space. In 2024, 72% of influencers are women, up from 70% in 2023. These two facts are connected. The report, which focused predominantly on nano and micro-influencers, suggests that female creators are paid less largely due to the sheer number of women in the industry. Oversaturation d…

When Meryl Rosenthal and her cofounder started a human capital and workplace transformation consultancy in 2005, she was 41 years old. Nine years later, her cofounder left for personal reasons, rendering Rosenthal—by then age 50—a so-called solopreneur. Being a woman of that age and running a business on her own certainly came with challenges. One, she says, was that younger HR and business leaders tended to assume she didn’t have the necessary expertise because her background had not squarely been in HR. Another was a preconception that she—as an older woman—didn’t understand technology as well as her younger peers. None of these things daunted Rosenthal, though…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. In today’s shifting political and economic climate, companies are reassessing their commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Many are pulling back, and in the process, investments in women’s sports—often lumped into DEI initiatives—are being questioned. But treating women’s sports as merely a diversity play misses the mark. This isn’t just about fairness; it’s about smart business …

The future may be female, but in economic terms, the present is as well. The gender gap—which references how much more the average man in the United States earns compared to the average woman—has eroded in recent years, largely because women are earning more money, according to new data from the Bank of America Institute. In a report published this month, the data shows that women’s median discretionary spending increased 0.9% year-over-year during November, and that it’s been growing faster than men’s spending over the previous two-year period. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, female workers’ median annual income growth is growing faster than male workers,…

Over the years, I have conditioned myself to only be able to focus in 25-minute increments, a timer counting down in my peripheral. The five-minute break following? It’s like a reward. It is now accepted wisdom that taking regular breaks during the workday makes one more productive. How long those breaks should be, however, depends on which productivity method you are subscribed to. Recently, a University of Cambridge mental health researcher has suggested that longer breaks could, in fact, be more effective at tackling those afternoon slumps. “The most productive people work for about 52 minutes at a time and then take 17-minute breaks,” Olivia Remes shared on …

America is at a generational tipping point. The next five years will usher in a whole new class of leaders as powerful positions shift from one generation to the next. Leadership roles are transitioning away from baby boomers, whether they like it or not. Millennials and Gen Z are poised to rise in the ranks, however much of the business canon and available literature offers advice from an irrelevant world—a world before hybrid offices, social media, and kiss cams at Coldplay concerts. Leaders are navigating digital and IRL (in real life) challenges where the older generations’ leadership styles are incongruous with the current moment’s needs. So how does one navi…

The wellness market is the biggest it has ever been, with a valuation of nearly $2 trillion, according to a McKinsey report. But somehow today’s workforce is more burnt-out than ever before. Research by the Boston Consulting Group shows that 48% of workers are exhausted from stress. The reason? Wellness works, but the way we are working doesn’t. After spending a decade on Wall Street, I can attest that high stress periods at work are inevitable. Unfortunately, anyone advocating for better “stress management” often receives an eye roll due to the misconception that it means avoiding stress altogether. When I learned that “stress management” is not about removing stress…

It’s been a rough week for the tech industry. First, Salesforce announced it would lay off more than 1,000 employees, and now another enterprise software maker has announced even deeper job cuts. Yesterday, Workday, Inc. (Nasdaq: WDAY), maker of cloud-based human resources software, announced that it would lay off 1,750 employees—or roughly 8.5% of its global workforce. These layoffs add to a rough start for the tech industry in 2025, which has seen major tech giants, including Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon, trim their workforces. Here’s what you need to know about Workday’s layoffs. Roughly 8% of Workday’s employees are impacted Workday yesterday announced …

Even as the right to disconnect movement has picked up steam, true work-life balance is still hard to come by for many employees. Fielding emails and other work-related messages after hours continues to be the norm across workplaces, despite ample evidence that it can contribute to burnout and actually decrease productivity. Part of the issue may be that the average workday is punctuated by a mounting number of drains on productivity. A new report from Microsoft, which compiled input from 31,000 workers across more than 30 countries, sheds light on the scale of interruptions and hurdles workers are currently facing on the job, as well as the degree to which the averag…

Spring break season is in full swing, and summer vacations will be here before you know it. Layoff fears, however, have some Americans forgoing their paid time off (PTO) just when they need it the most—but experts warn pushing themselves won’t help their careers, either. According to a new survey conducted by outplacement services provider Careerminds, 17.5% of American workers worry that using their PTO will make them more vulnerable to layoffs, and an equal proportion believe it will negatively impact performance reviews or promotion opportunities. “It’s not paranoia; it’s being pragmatic,” says Amanda Augustine, a certified professional career coach for Careerm…

Employees are jostling to level up their AI skills, and, according to a new report, also using AI to help them learn more, whether it’s asking for extra help to clarify concepts and solve problems, or picking up new skills. The report uses results from a survey conducted by Fractl on behalf of the The American College of Education (ACE). The survey included more than 1,000 U.S. workers who use AI tools as part of their day to day. Somewhat unsurprisingly, a large percentage of workers are using AI to improve their skills. Sixty-three percent of workers said that they used AI to learn skills they didn’t get formal training on from their employer. However, 65% of wo…

In its latest round of mass layoffs, Amazon is eliminating 16,000 jobs—following a round of 14,000 cuts back in the fall. The tech giant did not cite artificial intelligence in a memo to employees, and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has previously denied that the company is slashing headcount due to AI. But there’s no denying AI plays a role, whether or not these layoffs can actually be attributed to it. Jassy has explicitly said that adopting AI across Amazon “will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains.” Even though there is limited data to suggest AI is directly responsible for the scourge of layoffs across corporate America, plenty of CEOs have ma…

The dreaded performance review draws the ire of employees and managers alike. Workers fret that reviews fail to capture the full scope of their work, or that they are an unfair assessment of their performance. For managers, reviews can be a time-consuming nuisance and involve the challenging task of delivering tough feedback. But a new study from Cornell University finds that the structure of the performance review can have a huge impact on how workers feel about them. Over the last decade, a number of companies have revamped their performance reviews, seemingly to address the long-standing pain points. The likes of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have moved aw…

Sunday has long been regarded as the day of rest: After a week of early wake-ups and diligently checking off to-do lists, there finally comes the one day where doing nothing is not only socially acceptable—but actively encouraged. Or so you thought. More and more Americans are now optimizing their Sunday as a means of self-improvement. This might look like light cleaning and calendar organization. Or meal-prepping while marinating in an avocado face mask. Rather than rest, Sunday is now a day to reset for the week ahead. While hardly groundbreaking, the idea has taken off online with almost a million videos tagged #sundayreset on TikTok. Searches for “Sunda…

Companies want to hire workers with artificial intelligence skills, but don’t want to pay the premium. Those are the findings from a new report from Payscale, a leading online provider of data on salaries and compensation. Payscale’s 2026 Compensation Best Practices Report finds that while 60% of companies mention AI as part of their job descriptions, only 55% are willing to shell out extra money for those skills in the form of higher salaries, bonuses or even equity in the company. Why? Well, according to the report, there are a few reasons for the discrepancy, including the impact of a tight job market on hiring, coming at a time when businesses are also tighten…

Workers without college degrees have, for some time, faced declining opportunities in the workforce. However, new data signals that this may be changing, a sign that hiring managers are less focused on educational attainment and more focused on skills than they were in years past. That’s according to new research from Opportunity@Work, a nonprofit focused on increasing career opportunities for workers who lack college degrees but are “skilled through alternative routes,” aka “STARs.” The research, which analyzed trends in so-called paper ceilings, finds that between the years of 2000 and 2020, 70% of newly created jobs often required a college degree. However…

It’s a tale as old as the modern workplace: In the 1960s, women entered the workforce en masse, ready to compete with their male counterparts for promotions, pay, and opportunity—only to find the system wasn’t built for them. Today, women comprise almost half of the U.S. labor force. The playing field looks different now, but the fight for equal access hasn’t gone away. It just moved into subtler territory. Companies make quiet calculations about who’s worth “investing in,” says Corinne Low, gender economist and associate business professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Women often face career penalties in anticipation of m…

Every office has that coworker that turns up to a meeting coughing and sniffling while proudly proclaiming they have never once taken a sick day in their career. (If there isn’t one, maybe it’s you.) But as one viral TikTok makes clear, those attitudes towards taking sick days may be changing—just as sick days themselves are changing, as some think being sick isn’t a real excuse to not work in the WFH era. The skit—which has more than 2.3 million views—sees popular TikTok creator Delaney Rowe adopting the role of that coworker, turning up to a meeting with a hospital tag still on wrist, oh-so bravely battling through the workday while simultaneously making it eve…

David Ko, CEO of Calm, speaks with Brendan Vaughan about the state of mental health solutions in the workplace. View the full article