Culture Shock

Half of employees don’t feel their companies meet their expectations around positive cultures and trust. This is just one of the findings from follow-up research to our FGS Global Radar, focusing on workplace culture and growing divisions between companies and their employees. 

They also found:

• Cultures that aren’t inclusive are leaving some women and ethnic minority groups behind, wasting untapped potential.

• Hybrid working is here to stay (32% of people believe an option to work from home should be available where possible), but it remains a challenge in practice.

Workplace culture has become a critical issue for employees in 2024. With increasing demands for a meaningful company purpose and for employee wellbeing needs to be taken seriously, here’s how our experts advise employers to respond:

• In an age of hyper-tailored employee engagement, there is no one-size-fits-all approach.

• Empathy is a key leadership skill when managing people with different motivations and pressures.

• Hybrid working is the critical business challenge of our time. Employers must balance the development and the personal needs of individuals without detriment to teams or businesses.

This month has seen a flurry of activity from the federal government around AI regulation and legislation. Here’s what you need to know:

• Concerns over the dangers of deepfakes were the subject of a recent hearing before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law. During the hearing, the Senate Rules and Administration Committee announced they will soon mark up two bills related to AI-generated content and political ads, and requiring disclaimers on ads that are not deepfakes. 

• Later this week, the Senate Commerce Committee is slated to consider two pieces of bipartisan legislation concerning AI innovation. On the markup agenda is the Future of AI Innovation Act which aims to boost public and private sector AI investment and research – and support ongoing work at the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI Safety Institute on voluntary standards for AI. Also on the agenda is the Create AI Act which would establish the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) as a shared national research infrastructure, facilitating broader access to tools for AI development.

• On April 26, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the establishment of the Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board to advise the federal government on how to protect the nation’s critical services – such as pipelines, power grids and transportation services – from “AI-related disruptions.”

If you want to learn more about the latest in AI policy, check out FGS Global’s latest AI Policy Newsletter.

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Google has recently agreed to a significant settlement that involves deleting "billions of data records" collected from users while browsing the web under Incognito Mode in Chrome. This follows a class action lawsuit filed in 2020 that challenged the company's data collection practices. The agreement also includes Google’s commitment to blocking third-party cookies in Incognito mode for three years and making explicit that Incognito isn’t truly incognito after all. 

The unraveling myth of Incognito Mode's privacy protections signals a pivotal moment for digital privacy and the responsibilities of tech giants. While Google has agreed to a number of commitments, some of its activities will remain unknown. 

As the narrative around data privacy shifts, there is an increasing demand for transparency and education to prevent users from being lulled into a false sense of security. Google will want to remain ahead of user concerns as much as possible while protecting a business model highly reliant on connecting advertisers with audiences. 

FGS’s Digital Insights previously covered Google's announcing a winding down of third-party cookies. To learn more, subscribe to FGS Global’s Digital Insights newsletter to stay ahead in the ever-evolving digital world.