Overheard at WorkLife’s HR Leaders Dinner: Tackling RTO, AI and the generational divide post-pandemic
The pandemic may be a distant memory to many — but not to HR leaders, who continue to navigate the many challenges it left in its wake, including those concerning RTO, the rise of AI and the generational divide of the workplace.
HR leaders gathered in New York recently for a WorkLife-sponsored dinner, and the conversation spanned those and many other issues. The participants, including CHROs from a diverse array of companies and industries, were able to swap stories and share their thoughts with us under an agreement that their identities would remain confidential.
What follows is an edited version of excerpts of that conversation.
RTO complexities
It’s the topic there seems to be no end to: RTO.
As one HR leader summed up: “We’re trying to put the genie back in the bottle — and it doesn’t feel so good.”
Said another: “I’m very concerned that we’re going to get to go back to five days a week, and that is not the future of work.”
Noting their employer’s strict RTO policy, another admitted: “People are very unhappy — me included.”
That’s because the return to the physical workspace is a much more complex and multilayered challenge than many organizations could have anticipated. For every company like Amazon that demands the return of their once-displaced workers, there’s a small startup that went fully remote and could never bear the expense of establishing an HQ. As one HR leader noted: “We can’t afford it. Just can’t afford it.”
The discussion pointed to the many nuances of RTO, with employers grappling to balance employee preferences for flexibility with the need for in-person collaboration. Said one: “Having the pendulum swing now to an employer’s market, I think that there’s a greater appetite for bringing people back —because we are now less beholden to the employee.”
The talk also ventured into the complicated RTO policies of companies with a global footprint, with another participant observing, “We’ve got a team in Ireland, a team in the U.K., a team in India — but what it looks like in Ireland is not what it looks like in the U.K. or India.” Another chimed in: “I have employees in 10 time zones.” It’s a reality that points to the need to tailor RTO strategies to accommodate regional and cultural differences for a growing number of organizations.
The impact of RTO on employee engagement and productivity also remains top of mind for HR departments, as many employees resist a return to the old ways of working. As one person noted: “Somewhere along the way, individual identity became conflated with where you work, so working from home went from being an opportunity to an entitlement. It’s commoditized in a way it wasn’t before.”
The rise of generative AI
A sharp picture emerged of how AI is reshaping workplace communications and management practices.
One particularly compelling use case discussed, centered on helping technical teams overcome communication barriers. As one HR leader shared, their organization has used ChatGPT to assist managers who struggle to deliver feedback effectively. “We have a pretty large-scale tech team who may not necessarily be very great at giving feedback,” they said. The tool lets them tailor messages through different frameworks, from “radical candor” to what they termed the “Taylor Swift filter,” demonstrating how AI can help bridge the gap between technical expertise and personal connection.
The discussion then evolved to explore more sophisticated applications of AI in performance management. Participants described advanced public speaking applications that provide real-time feedback on filler word usage, eye contact, and speaking pace. These tools are increasingly being integrated into management training programs, and one participant noted how they’re using AI to analyze implementation surveys and track employee commitment metrics.
The adoption of generative AI tech has its challenges. One participant revealed the tensions between institutional restrictions and practical reality, explaining: “We’re not allowed to use it at work … it’s banned at our company. But you can’t tell people not to use it. It helps with productivity.”
The consensus was that AI in HR isn’t just about automation or efficiency — it’s about augmenting human capabilities in ways that make communication more effective and management more insightful.
Navigating the generational divide
The generational differences within the workforce emerged as another theme. One participant observed: “The folks who make decisions [largely Xers and boomers] are from a completely different world than the workforce,” made up mostly of millennials and Gen Z.
The divide has big implications for employee engagement, communication and leadership development, the HR leaders concurred. The discussion touched on the challenges of managing the expectations and preferences of younger generations, with one noting, regarding RTO policies, “They’re not going to be told that they’ve got to come in four days a week.”
The need for adaptive leadership styles and bridging the gap between decision makers and the workforce is clear. One guest related that when recently asked if they had seen an increase in imposter syndrome, seeing as employees are not getting proper feedback working from home: “I said we haven’t seen an increase — because everybody has imposter syndrome. We are seeing this increase of people who have this idea of fantasized talent, that they’re doing an amazing job, that they’re doing all this incredible work, and that they’re doing it for hours.”
Another HR exec characterized Gen Z this way: “They’re kids. They’re right out of school. They really do have their own idea of what work is. They want work-life balance. Mental health is incredibly important to them. I’ve never seen so many young people with problems. I tell my assistant, ‘This is like a halfway house we’re running.’”