Harvard Business Review

The gender wage gap has barely budged over the past 20 years. Women still only earn 83 cents for every dollar that men make, and men make more money when they have the same educational degrees, at every educational level, and at all parts of the wage distribution. For years, it has been argued that simply increasing the representation of women in the workforce would be enough to eliminate the wage gap, but it isn’t enough. New research shows that adding women to a group does help—but only to a certain point. The gender wage gap closed more quickly when there were fewer than 14% women in the category. But once women hit this tipping point, progress slowed. Organizations must stay committed, push beyond early progress, and avoid complacency to achieve the sustained goal of pay equity.

Many high-performing professional services firms—from big law to accounting to consultancies—are characterized by the extreme hours logged by their employees. Yet, organizational attempts to curb these hours (and the stress associated with overwork) have often failed. A study of 150 global firms explains one reason for this failure: a misunderstanding of overwork’s root cause. Rather than a personal problem faced by workaholics, the study found that overwork is caused by a synchronization between employees and a relentless organizational tempo characterized by formal timekeeping, professional advancement systems, and cultural expectations of 24/7 availability. These factors work together to create a pace that feels impossible to clock out of, even after hours. In order to free employees from this punishing cycle, organizations must make strategic, company-wide shifts to help protect workers’ personal time and help them truly disconnect.

Like any living systems, teams need regular care, attention, and intentional renewal to thrive. Whether driven by restructuring, relationship tensions, demotivation, or strategic pivots, there comes a moment when a team needs more than a tweak. It needs a relaunch. By pausing to reassess, reset, and realign, leaders can reenergize their teams, strengthen trust, and build the clarity and momentum needed for sustained performance in an ever-changing environment. Relaunching a team isn’t a sign of failure—it’s a sign of leadership.

Profits are lagging, and your team is looking to you for answers. What can—and should—you tell your employees about the true state of the business? How can you highlight the good stuff without creating a false sense of security? And when do you risk glossing over the real issues that need everyone’s attention? Here’s how to strike the right balance.

While connecting with colleagues outside of work can produce numerous benefits—from career advancement to emotional support—many leaders are rightfully squeamish: Crossing work and non-work boundaries can create reputation risks if interactions are uncomfortable. Yet new research finds that the setting of these non-work interactions can make a big difference. Using the virtual fitness platform Peloton as a case study, the research finds that settings with four key characteristics (flexibility, social acceptability, virtuousness, and playfulness) can help leaders meaningfully connect with peers, employees, and other industry professionals while mitigating reputational risks.

In a recent experiment, nearly 300 executives and managers were shown recent stock prices for the chip-maker Nvidia and then asked to predict the stock’s price in a month’s time. Then, half the group was given the opportunity to ask questions of ChatGPT while the other half were allowed to consult with their peers about Nvidia’s stock. The executives who used ChatGPT became significantly more optimistic, confident, and produced worse forecasts than the group who discussed with their peers. This is likely because the authoritative voice of the AI—and the level of detail of it gave in it’s answer—produced a strong sense of assurance, unchecked by the social regulation, emotional responsiveness, and useful skepticism that caused the peer-discussion group to become more conservative in their predictions. In order to harness the benefits of AI, executives need to understand the ways it can bias their own critical thinking.

To remain competitive in the internet-of-things era, should the CEO of SolidTech Innovations, a fictional elevator company, invest a lot of money in reskilling its entire staff? The industry is moving from hardware to software in the form of smart, connected elevators. But instead of laying off legacy hardware staff and hiring new talent, the CEO wants to offer the employees a “Grand Bargain”: The company will pay for voluntary reskilling and retraining, but the workers will need to take responsibility for their own futures. Those who opt in will gain valuable skills and have a future with the company; those who don’t may face demotions and pay cuts. However, there is pushback from the company’s shareholders and leaders. Some want to use the program as a fig leaf for laying off staff; others think it costs too much and might put the company at a competitive disadvantage relative to companies that are hiring technologically skilled people right away. Leaders are worried that longtime workers will balk at learning these new skills and end up quitting, causing the company to lose hundreds of years of cumulative experience. The CEO is now unsure of how to proceed.

From career sabotage to team dysfunction, the Amys weigh in.

As organizations navigate an increasingly unpredictable global environment, experts recommend building a checklist that covers both technical and people-related business travel policies. Here’s how to get started: 1) Clarify which employees are working under temporary authorization. 2) Establish a framework for weighing the necessity of each trip. 3) Brief employees on entry requirements and provide guidance on potential challenges. 4) Devise contingency plans for policy shifts affecting travel. 5) Balance cautious awareness with practical decision-making.

A conversation with HR experts Peter Cappelli and Ranya Nehmeh on making the most of compromise.

Food has historically played a critical role in bringing people together or welcoming strangers into a community. This practice of eating together (or commensality) is also a part of some work cultures around the world. However, it is also an alien concept for many. Modern workplace cultures can make shared eating somewhat difficult. Whether or not people eat with others at work can vary based on many factors such as company and industry norms, workplace-timing arrangements, or even job status. So, what would happen if people who don’t normally share a meal at the office did so more regularly? We invited HBR readers to volunteer to collaborate with us on a 4-week experiment. The ask was simple: If they usually ate alone at work, we wanted them to reach out to a few colleagues to have lunch (nothing fancy; just their regular home-cooked meal) together at least once a week over a period of one month and send us their responses to three questions. We found some interesting patterns.

Flex time is an appealing benefit for most, offering the ability to take time during work hours to handle commitments at home. But sometimes the blessing of a flexible schedule can turn into what feels like a curse when you don’t have enough time during normal work hours to get your job done. There are ways to be more strategic with your time. First, set realistic standards for what is “enough” at work and at home. Next, clarify where you add most value in both realms. Third, set boundaries, even if it makes others unhappy. Finally, define times where you’ll be really “on”—and really “off.”

Workplace stress, on the rise for decades, has been treated by many organizations as a personal issue instead of a business-critical risk that merits executive oversight. This is likely due in part to the fact that companies have not effectively quantified and tracked the cost stress poses to integral business outcomes. Companies can take charge of the avoidable costs of stress by surveying their workforce and mapping the stress they report onto quantifiable outcomes like revenue, customer satisfaction, and performance evaluations. Understanding how fluctuations in stress impact these outcomes can help businesses come up with and initiate targeted solutions to reduce the likelihood of disruption, protect workforce health, and unlock long-term competitive advantage.

New research, including a nationally representative study of U.S. workers, suggests that presenteeism isn’t simply a matter of personal choice or lack of sick leave—it’s a structural problem rooted in how jobs are designed and workplace expectations are managed. Gender norms, occupational sorting, and industry-specific job demands create invisible pressures that push employees to work through illness, leading to major consequences for organizational health. Using the Job Demands-Resources framework, leaders can redesign job structures, empower managers to intervene early, and build rapid feedback loops to balance demands and supports. Forward-thinking organizations that integrate sick leave into their structural and strategic planning can build healthier, more resilient, and more productive workforces.

In recent years, many organizations have reevaluated and attempted to improve their processes for reporting and investigating workplace abuse. But new research, which analyzed thousands of workplace reports, found that reports made by women are less likely to be taken seriously than identical reports made by men. This gap is widest when reports lack supporting evidence—which is especially common in workplace abuse cases. The authors argue that in order for leaders to address the gendered biases that impact how misconduct is handled, they need to understand why they occur. They analyze their data to offer insights and recommendations to help companies build the kind of equitable systems that their employees can trust.