If the current work challenges are unaddressed, the life and work experience of the future will create even worse circumstances for workers, organizations, and society. Why not imagine a much better future and then take steps toward ensuring it becomes reality?
The primary reason for this project is to explore how we can address our challenges understanding that they are interconnected. If true, then we must embrace our interconnectedness in order to change the future for the better.
The pandemic exposed many unresolved challenges and revealed new ones facing evolving life and work. The challenges were experienced by workers in different ways. Those who had the choice to work at home gained greater control but experienced new challenges of public and private space. Those without the option experienced less control and safety and job insecurity issues. Emerging work arrangements offered more work options for many, but also created unanticipated consequences: Workers’ personal and work lives are now intertwined more than ever. We need to enhance productivity through workers' health and well-being.
Our country needs a new vision for modern work to make room for this new reality that includes new forms of work arrangements, changed expectations of work and personal life and the balance between the two. Workers require greater autonomy in how and where work is performed, and deserve a much better work experience that provides all workers a healthier, safer, and productive work life that builds and sustains well-being. This new vision must benefit everyone: employers, workers, families, and communities.
We believe a new approach to work, worker experience, and workplaces must be sought to enable both business and workers to thrive.
We want to do more than anticipate the change. We want to reimagine it. Broadening our lens allows us to identify the forces that create good and the counterforces that undermine it. Understanding the “whole picture” enables us to articulate a Problem Statement.
Our sincere hope is that you will read the collection of unfiltered voices to learn about and appreciate their experience. By doing so, you might see that all voices contribute to our collective experience of work life, directly or indirectly.
We heard from over 150 professionals:
Corporate Real Estate Workplace Strategists
Occupational Health Psychologists
Occupational & Environmental Health Professionals, Occupational Medicine Professionals, Ergonomists
Senior Human Resource Managers
Chief Human Resource Officers
Work Psychologists
Building Owners, Developers, Urban Planners
Public Policy Professionals
Government Officials
Technology Experts: Artificial Intelligence, Software
Technology Experts: Sensors, Medical Devices, Robotics
Artists, Writers, Musicians
College Student Leaders
Union Leaders
Chief Executive Officers
Business Executives, Investors
University of California, Berkeley
University of California, San Francisco
Cushman & Wakefield
ISS Facilities Services
Lamorinda Consulting LLC
Dr Cristina Banks, University of California, Berkeley
Bryan Berthold, Cushman & Wakefield
Jeremy Macdonald, ISS Facilities Services
Keith Perske, Workplace Advisory
Jan Johnson, Workplace Collective
Melissa Jancourt, WorkSIGHT LLC
Tracy Wymer, New Boat LLC
Jeff Loi, University of California, San Francisco
Cosette Gagnon, University of California, Berkeley
Sixteen two-hour virtual discussion sessions with minimal facilitation were conducted by the Leadership Team to collect unfiltered voices from a wide array of occupation and stakeholder groups. These sessions, lightly facilitated by a Leadership Team member, consisted of peer-to-peer discussions among members of the same group, ranging from 6 to 16 participants. Nine Sandboxes were held in 2024 and seven in 2025. Their voices were captured in quotes and presented in a two-volume set, Unfiltered Voices: A Reveal of Our Current and Future Work Life. These books will be available for distribution in early 2026.
Our next step is to integrate this collection of voices into a cohesive and multidimensional picture of the current and anticipated future state to reveal potential avenues of improvement and paths forward. The “Knitters,” a group of experts who are comfortable thinking at a systems-level and can recognize patterns and intersections across a field of information, will work collaboratively to extract common themes, synergies, opposing forces, and opportunities for mutual gain. They will knit together a new vision and formulate a framework for the future of work, work experience, and workplaces.
The final step is to execute this new vision and framework in multiple forms in order to jump start the change envisioned by the Knitters. The “Producers,” who are experts skilled in translating a vision into tools for change, will create an integrated suite of change management resources such as toolkits, educational curricula, publications, presentations, training materials, and podcasts available for public distribution. Once completed, others will be recruited to further develop resources and facilitate the change.
Unfiltered Voices: A Reveal of our Current and Future Work Life will be released in Q1 2026.
Cristina Banks cbanks@berkeley.edu
Cosette Gagnon cosettegagnon@berkeley.edu
Jeff Loi jeff.loi@ucsf.edu
Website link coming soon.
