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Throughout 2025, weve watched companies treat employees with a stunning disregard: rolling layoffs (with thousands let go at a time), unchecked workloads, turning a blind eye to burnoutwith 76% of U.S. workers reporting at least one health condition todayand a near-gleeful rush to replace people with AI. Over 200,000 American women quit their jobs this year, many citing inflexible policies and lack of support for balancing work and life. Relentless rounds of cuts have destabilized employee trust and left employees uncertain and questioning leadership at every level. Across industries, leaders have routinely prioritized short-term efficiency over human impacts, sending a clear signal that employee well-being is treated as irrelevant to how most CEOs define organizational success. Despite a year in which many companies acted as if they were actively anti employee well-being, theres clear evidence that 2026 will be the year everything changes. This isnt wishful thinking or naivete. Its grounded in hard business realities that CEOs can no longer afford to ignore. First, investorsthe same ones who have historically applauded employee layoffsare beginning to reward companies that prioritize employee flourishing because multiple years of research show that firms with high well-being scores consistently outperform peers in stock performance, profitability, and innovation. Second, the talent market is unforgivingtop performers now demand workplaces that offer trust, growth, and the conditions to thrive; ignoring this risks losing the very people who drive competitive advantage. Additionally, weve reached a point of destabilizationa crisiswhere people are hitting a no more moment and simply wont continue in the old way any longer. This will be a major catalyst for change. Third, the AI-driven transformation of work depends on human adaptability; organizations that fail to foster well-being, learning, and resilience will sabotage their own investments in technology. Finally, the reputational and financial costs of ignoring well-being are increasingly visible, from mass departures of key employees to heightened public scrutiny. Taken together, these forces create a perfect storm: 2026 is the year CEOs will have both the incentive and the imperative to finally make employee well-being a central strategic priority. The Reckoning Arrives If 2025 will be remembered for the callousness and disregard organizations showed their people, 2026 will be remembered as the year CEOs felt the consequences of those decisions and were forced to pivot. And this shift wont happen because leaders suddenly became more empathetic. It will happen because the data is now unequivocal: employee well-being isnt a soft ideaits a hard, proven driver of performance, retention, customer experience, innovation, and long-term value creation. When people feel genuinely valued, respected, supported, treated humanely, and that they truly belong, they dont just perform more optimallythey think more clearly, solve problems more creatively, and bring far greater energy and commitment to their work. Research from leading business schools and global workplace studies demonstrates this; 2026 is simply the year the evidence becomes impossible for CEOs to dismiss. The Well-BeingPerformance Link Is No Longer Debatable For years, employee well-being was treated as a feel-good afterthoughtsomething leaders knew mattered but never put on the same level as profits and shareholder returns. That era is over. Rigorous, multiyear research from investment firm Irrational Capitalanalyzing thousands of public companies, including the entire S&P 500 and Russell 1000shows that organizations in the top 20% for employee well-being have outperformed the market by hundreds of basis points. Oxford research finds that a single-point increase in employee happiness correlates with billions in additional annual profit for large enterprises. McKinsey on burnout, Deloitte on retention, Gallups global workplace dataall of it points to the same conclusion: when people feel genuinely supported, productivity, profitability, innovation, and customer loyalty surge. Harvard leadership professor Arthur C. Brooks puts it bluntly: Happier employees are more profitable, more productive employees. Thats just the way it is. Investors are now baking these realities into their models. The gap between human flourishing and financial flourishing isnt philosophical anymoreits mathematical. Where Companies Have Gone Wrong Most organizations spent the past decade conflating well-being with wellness programs. They handed out meditation apps, gym stipends, and yoga classes while ignoring the root causes of poor well-being: uncaring and untrustworthy managers, a lack of connection and belonging, expectations of always being onand feeling unappreciated for ones hard work. The result was predictableburnout soared, engagement flat-lined, and the best people walked away. The damage is undeniable in 2025s data. Trust in senior leadership has fallen to its lowest point in years. Employees are using words like disconnect, misalignment, distrust, and hypocrisy in record numbers. The power shift back to employers has been used to push return-to-office mandates, endless restructurings, and the forever layoffsmall, rolling terminations that keep everyone fearing theyll be next, exhausted, and diminished in what they can contribute. Why 2026 Changes Everything 2025 exposed the cost of treating people as expendble. 2026 will reveal the cost of continuing to do so. The forces now converging leave CEOs no room to hide: Investors have begun rewarding cultures of genuine care. The same financial logic that once justified layoffs now proves that sustained well-being creates superior performance. Boards are asking hard questions about turnover, culture risk, and the long-term sustainability of workforce models built on burnout. The cost of neglect is now impossible to hide. The U.S. Surgeon General has warned that workplaces are a major driver of the nations mental health crisis. The result is spiking turnover, steep drops in productivity, skyrocketing medical claims, and a workforce whose resilience has been systematically erodedlosses that dwarf the cost of actually supporting people. Young talent is reshaping the expectations of work. Gen Z and millennials, who will soon be the majority of the workforce, refuse to accept fear, overwork, or indifference as normal. They demand growth, stability, and humane leadershipand they walk quickly when they dont get it. The mistake leaders continue to make is by framing this attitude as entitlement. Its not. Its clarity. Younger generations simply refuse to tolerate what older generations accepted as normal. The battle for talent has become a battle for well-being. AI is acceleratingnot reducingthe need for well-being. The belief that technology could replace people and eliminate the need for authentically supportive leadership has been proven wrong. AI demands adaptability, creativity, emotional intelligence, and resiliencecapacities that collapse under chronic stress. Organizations that want their people to master the tools of the future must first keep them energized and trusted today. A new leadership mandate is forming. This is the shift Deloitte calls human sustainability: the deliberate choice to build organizations where people can thrive for the long haul, not just survive to the next quarter. It means embedding respect, growth, and genuine care into every systemhiring, development, compensation, communication, and even the way difficult decisions are handled. Most importantly, well-being must become a leadership competency. Leaders must learn the importance of trust, how team cohesion gets built, how psychological safety is created, how meaningful work is designed, and how human energy is sustained. Leaders must embrace new practices known to support human thriving. The companies that make this pivot in 2026 wont just repair the damage of 2025. Theyll dominate the decade. Theyll keep their best people and attract everyone elses. Theyll turn AI from a source of fear into the greatest amplifier of human potential weve ever seen. Theyll build resilience that no disruption can break. In my new book, The Power of Employee Well-Being, I lay out exactly how this transformation happens and why its the single greatest untapped performance lever left in most organizations. The evidence is settled. The investors are watching. The talent is voting with their feet. And 2026 is the year the old excuses finally die. Leaders who still treat people as costs to be managed will be left behind. The rest of us will be building the futureand its one where people are flourishing, trusted, and bringing everything they have to work every single day. Happy New Year!
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E-Commerce
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Last December, Modern CEO named the inaugural Modern CEO of the Year. The goal was to recognize a business leader who embodied the traits frequently covered in this newsletter: inclusion, accessibility, humility, and innovation amid unprecedented uncertainty. We looked for a person with vision and grit, someone who is growing a company sustainably. The methodology isnt scientific, but this year, one name stood out: Flexs Revathi Advaithi. Meet the Modern CEO of the Year Advaithi didnt set out to ride the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. After becoming CEO of Flex (formerly known as Flextronics) in 2019, she zeroed in on the contract manufacturing companys power-focused business, which makes components that manage, regulate, and distribute power for advanced semiconductors and systems. Advaithi understood that business segment well from her years working at Eaton, the power management company. She bet that technology companies would continue to need more power and computethe processing power and other resources needed to run applicationsplus systems to cool equipment to keep it from overheating. She quietly began to build a portfolio of products and services to design, manage, and deploy power, compute, and cooling infrastructure. Today, that business is growing 35% year-over-year, and Advaithi expects it to generate about $6.5 billion of Flexs fiscal 2026 annual revenue, projected to reach $26.7 billion to $27.3 billion. As Modern CEO went to press, Flex stock was up 65%, outperforming the broader market and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index. Either we were very smart, or we got lucky, Advaithi says. But when [generative] AI emerges and people start talking about power-hungry compute, the strategy we put together looks like its a winning strategy. Strategic leadership, personal adversity Advaithi is quick to point out that her remaking of the power portfolio was part of a strategic approach she applied to all parts of Flexs business, which includes supply-chain management and manufacturing of components for electronics and automobile makers and the healthcare industry. Indeed, Flex did more than simply capitalize on AI in 2025. This year, the company also helped its clients figure out strategies for dealing with new tariffs. And Advaithi led the company while undergoing treatment for breast cancer for part of the year. Shes currently in remission. Advaithi says her board of directors supported her decision to keep working after she was diagnosed with cancer in August 2024 even though intense chemotherapy would mean missing travel and interactions with employees and customers. But Advaithi says shes never been a 24/7 CEO and has always made time for family, friends, and activities, so she felt confident that the company could thrive without her being constantly on call. For Advaithi, the decision was affirming. Having that purpose, keeping myself grounded, having something to push myself out of bed, kept me going in a pretty significant way, she says. She also says she wanted to show the business world and other patients that those undergoing treatment, especially women, were capable of reliance and strength. I felt like I had a duty and obligation to show that it could be done, she says, acknowledging the support of her family and the ability to access high-quality care. A guide for uncertain times With manufacturing facilities in 30 countries, Flex this year found itself consulting with clients on how best to navigate the new tariffs announced by the Trump administration at the start of the year. Using sophisticated software that analyzed everything from labor costs to rare-earth mining risks, Flex offered customers different options to make and deliver goods as well as develop longer-term manufacturing and supply chain strategies. That dispassionate, disciplined approach is not unlike the way Advaithi is thinking about the AI growth opportunity, which many now feel is approaching bubble territory. Rather than building her business around speculation about investment needed to support AI hyper-scalers, Advaithi says shes focused on the power needs of data centers that have already been announced for 2026. The constant decision that CEOs have to make today is looking at growth, risk-taking, and discipline, she says. Ive only worked with industrial companies, so I feel like you have to [ask]: Where are you five years from now? Where are you 10 years from now? And have you built a business thats viable and sustainable? More Modern CEOs Who would have been your pick for Modern CEO of the Year, and why? Send your submissions to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com, and well highlight readers choices in an upcoming newsletter. Read more: top CEOs YouTubes Neal Mohan is Times CEO of the Year Barrons 2025 Top CEOs Inc.s 2025 Business Leaders of the Year
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E-Commerce
Every December, millions of people pause to take stock of their lives before the new year. Some gather for vision-board parties, others sketch out New Years resolutions, and many quietly vow to finally get organized before the clock hits midnight. But this year feels different. Were closing out 2025 in an economic climate defined by weekly corporate layoffs, social media posts from people with excel trackers archiving hundreds of job applications, and sidelined workers hopelessly looking for jobs for over a year. Families are being pushed to the brink by rising prices, and a generational affordability crisisfueled by a shortage of three to four million homes nationwide, according to analysts by conservative estimateshas made it harder than ever to build stability. Across platforms, people describe the ground shaking beneath them: seasoned professionals struggling to get callbacks, families displaced by rent increases, and workers in every sector worried that technology is reshaping roles faster than organizations can adapt. Americans are questioning not just their career trajectory, but their worth and stability in an economy where the rules keep shifting. Yet history showsfrom the Industrial-boosted Gilded Age to the social mediadriven reality-show erathat moments when disruption and innovation collide also create unexpected openings. These periods force society, and individuals, to reconsider not just what they want from the world but what tools they already possess, or can rapidly develop, to navigate it with greater agency. Thats where a concept I call the Economy of Self becomes essentialand freeing. The Economy of Self isnt manifestation or hustle culture. Its the intentional practice of viewing yourself as an entity with specific value and designing a personal economic ecosystem that enables you to gain ground at best, or protect the ground beneath you at worst. Its the acknowledgment that while no one can control the macroeconomy, we can engineer our microeconomy in ways that produce clarity, resilience, and optionality. First, establish clarity The foundation of the Economy of Self is clarity. In an unpredictable job market, individuals need an honest inventory of what they know, what they can do, and what they can deliver in an instant, transactional mass environment. Too many people underestimate their expertise because their worth has long been defined by job titles and affiliation instead of outcomes. Thinking like an entity allows you to see your value from an outside perspective and helps you highlight what you individually have to leverage. Clarity is the first act of economic powerbecause you cannot price, position, or promote what you cannot articulate. Clarity creates the conditions for structure. Once you understand your value, you can package it. For some, that means turning expertise into discrete service offeringsproducts instead of retainersthat solve specific pain points for clients or employers. In a landscape where many workers are bridging employment gaps or supplementing income through project work, productization of personal expertise becomes a viable stabilizing tool. When you articulate your work as something a customer can buy, not just something an employer can assign, you reclaim the power to shape your own market. Next, supply chain development Finally, the Economy of Self requires supply-chain developmentintentionally strengthening the channels that connect your skills to real-world opportunities. That means engaging consistently rather than virally: showing up in your professional networks, posting subject matter ideas regularly, participating in events and conferences, and cultivating relationships that keep your name active in the rooms you want to be in. Supply chains arent built on sudden bursts of visibility; they are built through repetition, reliability, and presence. If this sounds like a lot, thats because it is. We are living through an economic and technological convergence that rewards intentional self-design more than ever. But the Economy of Self isnt about perfection or reinvention. Its about adapting strategically when the external environment becomes unpredictable. Its about reclaiming agency when traditional structures feel increasingly fragile. As we enter 2026with all its uncertainty and possibilitymany people wont have the luxury of waiting for stability to return. The future belongs to those willing to treat themselves not just as workers or job candidates, but as dynamic economic actors with assets, supply chains, and value propositions of their own. In a world where the ground keeps shifting, the most powerful thing you can build is an economy that starts with you.
Category:
E-Commerce
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