Workwire

Like you, I’ve always assumed dangerous workplaces had to do with construction or factory jobs, fighting fires or rescuing trapped mountain climbers. But a new analysis proves that risk doesn’t always wear a hard hat. Conboy Law Injury & Medical Malpractice Lawyers examined five years of fatal-injury data covering 32 office-based, professional and indoor occupations. Among those jobs, it was actually CEOs who had the highest annual fatality rate—5.7 deaths per 100,000 workers.

The workplace may be the last place in America where teenagers are expected to go six consecutive minutes without checking their phones. As CNBC reports, 17-year-old lifeguard Ronin Segrest finds six- or seven-hour phoneless shifts “an adjustment,” always left to wonder “who was texting me or what I was missing out on.” I wonder if the swimmers were wondering whether he was missing them. More employers are banning phones during teen work shifts.

If employers thought benefits costs might finally settle down, the latest numbers offer a blunt reality check: They haven’t. Gallagher’s 2026 Benefits Benchmarks Report, based on responses from 3,717 U.S. organizations, shows employers squeezed between rising costs, growing complexity and employees who expect their benefits to deliver real value. The statistic that jumped out at me: 36% of employers reported health plan premium increases of 10% or more at their most recent renewal.

Employers spent years telling workers to take care of their mental health. Employees listened and requests for mental health leave are on the rise. So, now what? Clinical psychologist Dr. Jennifer Prohaska believes employers left their benefits strategy half-finished. Companies invested in EAPs, accommodations and leave—resources that respond after employees begin struggling. Far less attention went toward helping people develop the psychological skills needed before stress becomes a crisis.

The workplace debate over AI has focused largely on a familiar question: Will AI replace people? But a new study suggests many workers are wrestling with a different and more personal concern: they’re worried about losing confidence in the abilities that make them valuable at work.

Companies may be investing heavily in AI to make employees more productive, but a study suggests that technology can sometimes create as much friction as it removes. According to Ace Workflow’s State of Work report, companies lose an estimated 26% of their working time to recoverable waste. The analysis covered 680 processes at 128 companies across 10 industry groups. At six companies, researchers examined 187 processes accounting for 2,546 hours of work each week.

If you’re like me (a person of, as they so quaintly put it, “a certain age”), just read through some current financial data about Gen X and it’s enough to make you want to put on a B-52s or Go-Gos record and mentally transport yourself back to the 80s, before life got quite so sucky. Zety’s Gen X Financial Outlook Report paints a particularly bleak picture for my generation’s retirement plans.

Like you most likely, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be “AI-ready.” A new PwC study just gave us some hard numbers to chew on. PwC surveyed more than 1,000 financial services executives, and the findings confirm something many of us have suspected: AI fluency isn’t a nice-to-have anymore but is quickly becoming the currency of career advancement.

I keep coming back to a big contrast in two new Glassdoor reports. Employee confidence in the future of their companies has fallen to a record low. At the same time, Glassdoor has identified 50 CEOs who continue to earn exceptional trust from the people they lead. At first glance, the findings seem to point in opposite directions. But I think they tell the same story: In an uncertain workplace, leadership is becoming more consequential, not less.