Chief Change Officer
#380 Josh Drean: Employment Is Dead—Now Let’s Rebuild It — Part One
Thu, 22 May 2025
What if employment as we know it has already died—and we’re just pretending not to notice?In Part One of this three-part series, Josh Drean—Harvard MBA, startup founder, and co-author of Employment is Dead(Harvard Business Review Press)—joins Vince to dissect the slow death of traditional work. From the failure of annual engagement surveys to the false promise of “people-first” slogans, Josh makes it clear: the current system was built for the factory floor, not the future.We trace Josh’s journey from studying psychology to working in corporate consulting during the pandemic, and now building the Work3 Institute to help leaders redesign employment itself. Why is HR still feared? Why are employees called “assets” but treated like expenses? And how can new technologies like Web3 create better human systems?Part Two digs into how a cold outreach led to an HBR publishing deal—and the 10 principles Josh says every modern worker wants now.Key Highlights of Our Interview:Why Engagement Surveys Are a Broken Ritual“Surveys are the dumbest way to build a relationship. They’re not designed for honesty—and most leaders don’t really want the truth.”The False Math of ‘People Are Our Greatest Asset’“If people were really assets, they’d show up on the balance sheet. But they don’t. They’re an expense—and treated like one.”The Pandemic Wake-Up Call“I started consulting right as COVID hit. It forced companies to rethink safety, remote work, and what their employees actually needed.”The HR Dilemma: Protector of People or Risk Manager?“Most employees still associate HR with layoffs. That’s a brand problem—and a system design failure.”From Assembly Lines to AI: Why Taylorism Is Still Haunting Us“Modern work still clings to an industrial-era model—check the box, don’t ask questions. That doesn’t fit the information age.”How Psychology Led Josh Into Web3 and DAO Culture“My reason for doing this never changed—it’s about building better experiences. But tech gave me the tools to scale that.”Meet the Digital Native Workforce (a.k.a. Your Kids)“My 8-year-old builds real friendships through Fortnite. If you think digital community isn’t real—you’re already behind.”The 10 Operating Principles of Work3“From flexibility and autonomy to interoperability and ownership—these are the non-negotiables for the next generation of work.”Why Forcing People Back to the Office Will Backfire“Employees don’t want the typewriter factory version of work. RTO is a backwards step—and they know it.”From Psychology Grad to HBR Author: Josh’s Journey Begins“I didn’t have a tenured chair or a best-selling track record. Just a cold outreach, a clear message—and a broken system to fix.”_________________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Josh Drean --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.18 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1.5% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>170,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: What is the bold claim about employment discussed in this episode?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist humility for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today, we are diving into the future of work with George Dream. George is a Harvard MBA, a startup founder, and the co-author of the book called Employment is Dead.
Yes, you hear it right. That is a very bold statement. But he's got a story to back it up. Across this three-part series, We'll explore why traditional employment models are failing, how emerging technologies like Web3 and AI are reshaping work, and what companies must do to survive.
We'll also go behind the scenes of George's book, how a cold call turned into a major publishing deal, and why the old ways of managing people just don't cut it anymore. Whether you are an employee, an employer, or just curious about where work is headed, this series will challenge the way you think. Good morning, Josh. Welcome to Chief Change Officer. It's very early morning for you there.
Chapter 2: Why are traditional employment models failing?
It is. It's nice and early, but I'm so grateful to be here. Thanks for having me on the show, Vince.
Let's dive right in. First of all, who you really are, what you have done in the past. Then we'll deep dive into different elements of your journey.
Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity and thanks again for having me. My passion is rooted in employee engagement and employee experience, making sure that we are helping employees have the best experience possible so that they can do their best work possible. It's a very simple solution. And when I was a student, we were building a startup out of the Harvard Innovation Labs.
We were very interested in this concept of employee engagement. And when we started to look at the landscape, we recognized that there wasn't a lot being done there. A company would unilaterally make decisions about maybe we should bring a ping pong table in. Maybe we should have snacks in the break room.
And this concept of an employee engagement survey never really sat well with us because the idea is let's ask employees how they're feeling. It's a great concept, but
the way that we were doing it was just completely flawed in my mind it was a once a year survey long questions there was no real diving into the culture or the issues at hand a lot of it seemed performative and employees weren't very trusting of an organization so they weren't being honest on these surveys growing up in this generation of social media we thought
We are so used to immediate feedback almost daily from our social posts and from the feedback that we receive from putting ourselves out into the world. So we started building this startup where we pioneering sentiment analysis in real time. That's a fancy way of saying
let's ask more often, let's create an environment where employees can trust us, and let's receive feedback in a way that flows with the day-to-day activities of an employee so it doesn't feel like they have to stop what they're doing to take an annoying survey. It was quite an interesting venture and we absolutely learned so much.
And I think the surprising outcome for us is we didn't really, some of the assumptions that we were making didn't actually hold to be true. For example, I'll never forget showing my wife the software for the first time. She's a marriage and family therapist.
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Chapter 3: How has the pandemic changed workplace dynamics?
And as I was so excited to show her the software that we were working on, she just turned to me and said, surveys are the dumbest way to build relationships with people. Why are you focusing on this? It's a very deep thought when you really unpack it.
But the biggest thing that we learned, the biggest assumption that was broken for us is that we didn't understand most companies don't actually want to know how employees are feeling. We had pilot organizations who... either liked the performance or the view that they were interested, even though it just felt like they were giving lip service to it.
Or they were, they really just wanted to know for their own benefit so that they could push the employees harder or know who to fire. All of the fears that employees have turned out to be fairly real. And that just blew our minds. And so I spent a long time trying to understand why are most companies not that interested to know how employees are truly feeling and
What we came up with was that it's not necessarily a people problem. It's not a leadership problem. It's a system problem. The system is designed for short-term shareholder value, which often neglects employees' needs. And it was also established at a time where the industrial age was really catching its strides, right? Taylorism is this concept where We're checking boxes.
We're on the assembly line and we have one task to complete. So management makes sure that we are doing our tasks perfectly. And in the age of information, we just don't need that style of management anymore. So the bold claim employment is dead comes out of that experience where we believe that traditional models of employment are failing to adapt to the needs of the modern workforce.
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Chapter 4: Why are engagement surveys considered ineffective?
Yeah, I couldn't agree more about the short-term mindset. I've studied economics, finance, and accounting. And at the end of the day, even with the best intentions, a competent, capable, and purpose-driven CEO, a chief HR officer, or any senior leader still has to balance doing good with making money. They look at the numbers, the bottom line, and all the financial metrics.
They ask, how was our accounting income this quarter? What's our cash position? And eventually, they make decisions, sometimes tough ones like cutting jobs. To them, it's ultimately just a number. It feels cold, but that's the reality of how these decisions are made. And yet, in financial reports, you always see the same message. People are our greatest asset.
But let's be real, on the financial statements, people are not listed as assets. They are categorized as an expense item on the income statement, not something quantified on the balance sheet that drives revenue and income. So while the message says people first, the decision-making still comes down to numbers. In the end, employees are just HR records sitting in the cloud.
Now, I'm not saying this to discredit well-intentioned HR leaders or CEOs. It's just the reality of how businesses operate. Before we get into Wall Street Institute and the solutions you're building for these big challenges, I want to take a step back and talk about your own career journey. You've observed these issues firsthand, and what about your personal experience?
When you were fresh off college, studying psychology, working under different leaders and managers, what did that look like for you? Then you went to Harvard for your MBA and learned to be more innovative in your approach. Let's start with your early career. How did your experiences shape the way you see these challenges today and influence the solutions you're working on?
Yeah, you highlight a really good point, right? The reason why HR tends to get a bad rap from employees, oh no, I'm getting called into the HR office, which means I'm getting fired, is because there is no positive signal coming from that department outside of I'm getting a paycheck, I'm getting paid.
And most people recognize at this point that HR, their job is to protect the company from getting sued, from any lawsuits that might come out of their employment.
I think you're absolutely right that we need to evolve from what we have been evolving from personnel to human resources and a lot of human centric human resource officers are now looking at it as people operations or how do we step away from terms like oh our people are an asset or human capital where it is just a number on a balance sheet to the actual human we're moving away from
a contractual based employment to a partnership based employment? How do we build that relationship in a way that honors their humanity? And I guess that's where I get started. I am very passionate about, again, that employee experience. How are we designing experiences that
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Chapter 5: What does the term 'employee experience' mean?
let employees bring their full selves to work that are aware of their work-life balance that understand the nuances of the things that they are dealing with and and that became very apparent as i was graduating school um it was right in the middle of the pandemic 2020 is a terrible year to graduate i remember being so excited to walk at graduation april of 2020 and the pandemic hit and we are
And here we are throwing our caps and gowns in our base like on a Zoom call. But I entered the workforce fairly quickly. I started working with a consulting firm that eventually was merged with Mercer. And we were working with HR departments of large organizations who were dealing with next level real world pandemic issues with their employees.
How do we keep our employees safe who still have to work? How do we bring a remote policy to the workplace that allows people to continue to work from home? They were forced to work from home, if you will. How do we design for a work life balance? And that's where I really started to cut my teeth in this industry of understanding Here's what people are experiencing at work.
Here's why leadership is failing to meet those needs. And the book really serves as a red flag to organizations who aren't focused on designing an experience for employees. If you still feel like they are just an asset and that you can Tell them exactly what to do and they should be grateful to have a job because most don't.
And you promote them without pay or you fire them and lay them off in droves as we're seeing right now, or you force them back to the office against what their preferences are. We're seeing so many practices on display that are just going to destroy the cultures of organizations that are going to destroy the trust that employees have.
And it's going to lead to a great resignation 2.0 that is going to be so much worse than we've ever seen.
You started with psychology, then went to business school, and now you are in Web3. That's quite the journey. I'm curious about that transition, not just in the sense of switching jobs, but more about what shifted in your mindset. A lot of people see psychology as a soft skill field and tech as a hard skill domain. So what was it for you? Was there something about Web3 that really fascinated you?
Something that made you think, this is the technology that can truly change the world for good? What was the trigger that pushed you into this uncharted territory coming from a psychology background?
That transition from soft skill to hard skill, from working with people to working on a very deep technological advance. So I can definitely see the interest there. And I don't think my raison d'etre ever changed. It is, again, that employee experience. And when you really unpack what do employees want and need out of work? It is evolving in a way that we sometimes are blind to.
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Chapter 6: How does financial thinking impact HR decisions?
We were just on Zoom calls. We couldn't be together. That's the reason why we're pushing for this RTO mandate right now. Return to the office because it's better in person. There are a lot of companies who are like, we can have the best of both worlds where we don't have to commute. We don't have to, we can save on gas. We can save on money. We can save time. We can work more.
and also be together because my digital avatar is sitting right next to your digital avatar in the coworking space. It feels like we've largely set that aside for now. That's not going to serve us that much. Let's all just return to the office.
And I would say that if you feel like the metaverse is dead, you are greatly mistaken and you should continue to pay attention because of the expectations of employees.
So, would it be fair to say that the metaverse, Web3, and all these emerging technologies are essentially bridges, tools that help us redefine the employee experience? Not just in one way, but in ways that actually make sense for our lives, our productivity, our outcome, and our well-being? Would you put it that way?
Yeah, so we actually write in the book, we call it the 10 operating principles of work three. These are the non-negotiables of the modern day workforce. I work with people leaders all over the world and I show them these principles. I say, can you offer any of your employees any of these today? And if the answer is no, why should they work for you? And they're really on a spectrum.
There are some that are deeply technical, like interoperability. They want to jump from job to job. They want to... Mix and match several streams of income. They don't want to be a full-time employee at your organization. They want to work on several different projects across several different DAOs or decentralized autonomous organizations.
And then there are stuff that is readily apparent today, like flexibility. There's flexibility, autonomy, ownership. How do we allow employees to work flexibly so that they can work on their circadian rhythm, right? A lot of them are logging on at 9 p.m.
at night so that they can get some deep work done, or they work really well in the morning before the kids are awake, or they like being able to run out and pick up their kids from school at 3 p.m. without skipping a beat.
So it just is tragic to me to see that we are returning to the office so forcefully in this nine to five structure, instead of moving forward in a way that makes sense for the employee and their work-life balance.
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Chapter 7: What is the future of HR in the evolving workplace?
That's the web for today. We've broken down why traditional employment is crumbling and why companies need to wake up before they lose their best talent. But how do we actually rebuild work for the future? In the next episode, George takes us behind the scenes of his book, Employment Is Dead. from a cold call to a major publishing deal. Don't miss it. Thank you so much for joining us today.
If you like what you heard, don't forget, subscribe to our show, leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.