Today's Digest is a 4 minute-read

Welcome back. This week’s Digest looks a little different.

I’ve tightened the structure to make the main evidence, interpretation and practical questions easier to find, while keeping the depth and nuance that regular readers expect. I’m keen to know whether you prefer this approach, so please do reply and tell me what works – or what doesn’t.

This week’s three stories move from the working day to the boardroom. We look at why faster tools are not necessarily creating more productive organisations, what The Age of HR says about the profession’s next contribution and whether boards have the capability to govern the businesses they are becoming.

Whether you work in HR or lead people elsewhere in the organisation, the common challenge is clear: better performance depends on better decisions about work, capability and leadership.

1. Faster work. Slower organisations.
2. The next test for HR: better decisions.
3. Who is testing the board?

1. We keep asking people to be more productive. What if the work is the problem?

By 6pm the workday has technically ended. In practice it is often when the real work begins.

The meetings are over, messages have slowed and urgent requests have been acknowledged. Having spent the day responding, updating, reviewing and switching between platforms, you finally open the document, analysis or decision that needed your full attention hours earlier.

The signal: People can draft, search and summarise faster with AI, yet many feel busier, more interrupted and less able to do the work that creates value.

The UK’s long-running productivity problem continues. Office for National Statistics estimates show output per hour worked in the first quarter of 2026 was only 0.4% higher than a year earlier, while output per worker fell by 0.1%.

The productivity debate usually moves between the economy and the individual: investment, technology and skills on one side, then performance, engagement and effort on the other. The organisation itself receives less attention, even though this is where productivity either happens or leaks away.

Why it matters: Task-level speed can disappear inside organisational friction.

Microsoft’s 2026 Work Trend Index found that organisational factors such as culture, manager support and talent practices accounted for more than twice the reported AI impact of individual mindset and behaviour. People may be ready to work differently. The systems around them often lag.

The Chartered Management Institute reports a similar pattern. Some 70% of UK managers have seen productivity improvements from AI, yet only 5% describe the gains as transformational. More than a quarter have seen no gains at all and only 12% feel very confident managing AI-enabled teams.

What’s really going on: Productivity is being lost in the work around the work.

This is the coordination, waiting, translating, checking and reworking that fills the day. It is the message asking whether an email has been seen, the presentation reviewed by three people because no one has agreed what good looks like and the manager juggling performance, wellbeing, transformation, recruitment and cost control without any reduction in their own workload.

Low trust adds further drag. Investors in People finds that 61% of employees regularly “cover themselves” at work by keeping emails, screenshots or other evidence. Some 65% have avoided raising or speaking openly about something at work during the past six months.

The leadership question: Are we designing work people can actually do well?

Our People Space Doable Work Test starts with eight practical questions:

• Is the valuable output clear?
• Are priorities explicit enough for people to make trade-offs?
• Do people have uninterrupted time for high-value work?
• Are meetings, messages and approvals proportionate?
• Are decision rights clear and close enough to the work?
• Does technology remove work, move it elsewhere or create more?
• Is trust high enough for problems and mistakes to surface early?
• Can the workload be sustained without routinely spilling into evenings and weekends?

So before auditing individual performance make sure you audit the work.

👉 Read the full story: Workers are moving faster. So why doesn’t work feel more productive. 7-minute read

2. HR’s next job is improving decisions

The productivity question leads directly to a bigger one. If work design, management, trust and capability determine whether effort becomes value, then how well is HR helping the organisation make decisions about them?

Last month I mentioned The Age of HR, the new anthology from Dave Ulrich, Anthony Nyberg, Rebecca Kehoe and Patrick Wright. I have now read it and, while its 61 essays cover a wide range of territory, several common threads come through clearly.

The strongest is that HR’s future influence will be shaped by how well it improves organisational decisions.

The signal: Execution excellence is becoming the baseline.

HR still needs to recruit well, support managers and run reliable people processes. The bigger question is what changed as a result.

Anita Graham, EVP and CHRO at Labcorp, and Utah State University management scholar Mike Ulrich make the distinction clearly. Reporting that 90% of managers completed training describes activity. Showing that the training was associated with a 12% increase in team productivity says something about impact.

Why it matters: HR’s credibility increasingly rests on the link between people decisions and enterprise value.

Four lessons stand out to me:

• First, start with the outcome. Dave Ulrich suggests adding two words to every initiative: “so that”. Implement AI so that what improves? Develop leaders so that what changes? Invest in skills so that what becomes possible?
• Second, work backwards from value creation. Peter Fasolo and Adam Steinbach argue that HR should begin with how the organisation creates value, then identify the capabilities required to deliver it. This brings customers, markets, growth ambitions and strategic risk into the people conversation.
• Third, make boardroom conversations clearer. Several contributors note that boards are spending more time on succession, workforce capability, culture, leadership risk and AI. Laurie Siegel argues that HR often weakens these conversations through language that obscures the business implications. Boards need a clear view of workforce readiness, scarce skills and emerging people risks.
• Fourth, treat AI as a judgement challenge. The anthology’s treatment of AI is measured and practical. The recurring themes are workflow design, capability, trust, governance and accountability. Deploying a tool is relatively straightforward. Deciding which work should change and where responsibility sits demands better organisational judgement.

The leadership question: Are you helping the organisation make better choices?

The strongest HR leaders will show how people, work, leadership and capability create value and where poor decisions put that value at risk.

👉 Read my full analysis: HR’s next job is improving decisions – four lessons from The Age of HR and download ​The Age of HR​ free here. 5-minute read

3. Is your board ready for the organisation you are becoming?

If HR’s next job is improving decisions then the capability of the people making the biggest decisions must be part of that conversation.

Organisations map workforce capability through skills matrices, executive succession plans and detailed workforce models. Board capability often receives a narrower review centred on previous board experience, financial expertise, sector knowledge and availability.

Yet this is the group governing AI adoption, cyber risk, workforce disruption and geopolitical uncertainty.

The signal: Board work has expanded faster than many boards have evolved.

In The Next Board Thomas Keil and Marianna Zangrillo draw on interviews with more than 100 board chairs, directors, CEOs and investors. They describe an agenda spanning digitalisation, cybersecurity, AI, sustainability and ESG alongside traditional responsibilities such as oversight, CEO succession and strategic challenge.

Why it matters: Board composition is a capability issue.

Directors need enough understanding of AI to ask how it affects strategy, accountability, jobs, skills, productivity and trust. Workforce transformation also requires insight into organisational design, culture change and skills strategy alongside traditional financial, legal and commercial expertise.

Five questions HR should help raise:

1. What expertise does the board have in AI and digital transformation?
2. Does it understand workforce transformation and work design?
3. Are future skills discussed before shortages appear?
4. Is there enough diversity of experience, judgement and professional background?
5. Is board succession linked to future strategy?

What’s really going on: The board is part of the organisation’s capability system.

HR leaders already understand succession, capability planning and the relationship between skills and strategy. Applied carefully, that expertise can help boards examine their own readiness with greater rigour.

The leadership question: If this board were being designed today for the organisation you are becoming, would it look the same?

👉 Read the full story: The board skills audit nobody is doing – five questions HR should ask about future readiness. 4-minute read

Find your productive space!

Siân

Editorial director, The People Space​

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PS: This newsletter is just the tip of the iceberg! Looking for thought leadership content or PR magic for your HR business? Beyond The People Space I help HR leaders, suppliers and consultancies amplify their voice through impactful content. ​Explore the possibilities here​.

Why people leaders needs a social voice

My colleague Michael Gegg is hosting a new Social C-Suite webinar with Michelle Clark, executive director of people, culture and transformation at The Children’s Society, on 31 July at 12.30pm.

Michelle is a thoughtful and credible HR leader who has carved out a strong voice on social channels, so this should be a useful conversation about what visible leadership looks like in practice. Together they will explore how people leaders can use their public voice to build trust, support transformation, attract talent and create stronger alignment inside the organisation.

The session will also look at authenticity, employer brand and how communications teams can support leaders without scripting them.

You will leave with loads of great lessons on why and how to craft an authentic social media voice, so I highly recommend ​​​​registering for the webinar here​​​.