Joy? In This Job Market?

Brian Elliott

CEO, Work Forward & Publisher, Flex Index

In a wide-ranging conversation with the Future of Work Coalition, BCG leader Debbie Lovich made a passionate case for "radical employee centricity" as the next frontier for businesses. Lovich has become convinced that organizations must elevate employees to the same level of importance as shareholders and customers, and she’s got deep research and case studies to back it up.

I’d argue in the chaos of 2025 that employee-centric leadership is moving from a “sounds nice” to “must do” strategy: it’s the only way to build teams capable of the resilience and drive needed for long-term success.

Her insights might be the key to long term competitive success and certainly have massive implications for generative AI adoption.

The Employee Evolution

Lovich traces how business priorities have evolved from pure shareholder focus to customer-centricity, but notes that employees remain overlooked: "With all our focus on shareholders and customers, we treat employees as a cost to be managed... a cog in the machine, a means to the end."

This transactional relationship leads to problematic workplace cultures. "Nothing says I trust you less than a five-day return-to-office mandate," she quips, "except one of those with badge swipe monitoring."

Just as companies evolved from being focused entirely on shareholders to becoming equally customer-centric, she holds that future success will depend on adding in the third leg of the stool: radical employee centricity.

The Business Case for Employee Joy

Beyond being the right thing to do, Lovich has compelling data supporting employee-centric approaches: "Employees who enjoy their work are half as likely to quit, half as likely to even take the call if someone reaches out and says, 'Are you interested?'"

However, most organizations focus on efficiency rather than enjoyment. "We also know that employees who feel efficient and effective at their work are no less likely to quit. Yet most organizations and leaders work on efficiency and effectiveness and not enjoyment."

Lovich's research digs deeper than typical survey methods, which often capture only surface-level responses to questions like "what's most important to you?" These surveys consistently put pay and benefits at the top. But when using pairwise tradeoffs and examining what truly correlates with attrition, emotional aspects dominate: Do I feel secure? Am I treated fairly? Do I enjoy my job?

If you want meaningful employee insights, Lovich suggests applying the same analytical rigor that companies use to effectively engage different consumer segments.

Gen AI: The Trojan Horse for Employee-Centricity

Lovich sees generative AI implementation as a perfect opportunity to shift organizational focus: "Generative AI is forcing organizations to reset the table of how work is done."

She advocates using AI to eliminate “drudgery and toilsome” tasks while amplifying work people enjoy. In a slide she showed, office workers reported spending a third of their time on administrative tasks they dislike, while only truly enjoying about 5% of their work – largely focused on individual development.

"If you eliminate the toil and amplify the joy with Gen AI, you would point it at the toil of admin work," Lovich explains. "That is where you get the productivity from."

This approach also makes strategic sense: "Don't come in and say, 'We're going to do Gen AI for productivity.' That's the first thing to get everyone to say, 'Don't come at me with that, because I'm going to lose my job, end up withe more work to do and fewer resources to get it done, or you're going to take away aspects of the job that I love doing.'"

A key finding regarding generative AI adoption: it's a team sport. BCG's research across multiple clients shows that active engagement by managers working with their teams accelerates AI adoption by 4X.

Unfortunately, Lovich notes that organizations typically do the opposite of what works: leaders who don't use the tools themselves, training focused on individuals rather than teams, and use cases centered solely on productivity instead of creativity, quality, or reducing administrative burden.

Three Elements of Radical Employee-Centricity

Lovich outlined three key components for making radical employee centricity a reality:

1. Elevate employees to equal importance: "Every time you start a project and you run the diagnostic about where are our costs and what are our market share, run the diagnostic on what's our employee joy."

2. Treat employees as customers: Apply the same sophisticated analysis you use for customers to better understand your employees needs, and therefore better solve them. "When you go to Starbucks, they have three types of consumers... Starbucks has to create a different experience for each of those three segments."

3. Make day-to-day work enjoyable: "It is a business leader's responsibility to make sure the day-to-day work is enjoyable. And they cannot relegate it over to HR."

The Path Forward

Lovich believes GenAI transformations provide the perfect opportunity to introduce employee-centricity: "Employee centricity needs Gen AI to get in the door. Gen AI needs employee centricity to stick."

She cites a BCG experiment with administrative staff where teams that co-created how they would use AI tools "used the tools twice as often for twice as long" compared to the control group. Even more striking: "Teams where they said their manager cares about them... were four times as likely to use the tools."

Ultimately, Lovich predicts that companies embracing employee-centricity will outperform peers, just as customer-focused tech companies outperformed traditional businesses: "I think those companies that glom onto employee-centricity before the others are going to distance themselves."

Her call to action was simple but powerful: "Please help me elevate radical employee centricity... Use your Gen AI driven transformation as both the Trojan force to bring employee centricity to the table, but also help people understand it's doomed without it."