The Work That’s Left For People Is All About Heart

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The NewCo Daily: Today’s Top Stories

Jamz196 | Flickr

The term “emotional labor” was invented by sociologist Arlie Hochschild to describe the ways workers, particularly women, are expected to put on a happy face in the workplace and for customers. In the future, though, expect to see the phrase “emotional labor” repurposed to describe all the socially skilled, interpersonally intensive jobs that will thrive in an AI-driven world, where anything that can be automated will be (Livia Gershon in Aeon).

Today’s job market is already seeing “growing real-world demand for workers with empathy and a talent for making other people feel at ease.” Salaries haven’t caught up yet — we still underpay people whose jobs involve caring for others — but they will. Meanwhile, we need to rethink how we measure productivity, because right now it fails to account for any kind of “emotional labor.”

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Chasing Happiness? Find Your Purpose Instead

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NewCo Shift Forum

Jennifer Aaker on why companies must move from profit to purpose

Jennifer Aaker General Atlantic Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business during NewCo Shift Forum.

Jennifer Aaker is an author, behavioral psychologist, and the General Atlantic Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Best known for her research on time, money and happiness, Aaker also focuses on the transmission of ideas through social networks, the power of story in decision making, and how to build global brands across cultures.

Aaker’s the recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award from the Society for Consumer Psychology and the Stanford Distinguished Teaching Award. She teaches Power of Story, Designing for VR/AR: Scaling Empathy in an Immersive World, and Rethinking Purpose at Stanford, and more recently, Humor: Serious Business. She co-authored the award-winning book The Dragonfly Effect with her husband Andy Smith, and serves on the Advisory Board of early stage startups and companies.

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