When several organisations publish on the same topic, we use AI to compile a briefing with the key points, the figures and the sources. Each topic belongs to a theme within an organisational condition. The list is not complete: a briefing is only added once at least two independent organisations have published on the same topic. To see everything that has appeared, go to all publications.
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Algorithmic management is spreading from platform work to warehouses, transport and shops. A Swedish study of 978 drivers and warehouse workers links heavy algorithmic management to twice the rate of mental health complaints. Brussels and The Hague are drafting rules.
Publications per month for Algorithmic management in warehouses, delivery and retail
The number of AI agents is growing fast, but Gartner expects over four in ten agent projects to be cancelled by the end of 2027 because of rising costs and unclear value. Vendors, meanwhile, are sticking the agent label on existing products. The value goes to companies that manage agents as a single programme.
Publications per month for Agent-washing and the cost and value of agent projects
Employers in shops, hospitality and public transport say aggression towards staff is rising and their own measures are falling short. Dutch Railways (NS) recorded a record 1,132 incidents in 2025. The national working conditions survey finds 11 per cent of employees face unwanted customer behaviour, as often as before.
Publications per month for Customer aggression towards frontline staff and the employer's role
Demand for technicians in manufacturing is growing faster than demand for production staff, and in the Netherlands machine fitters are very scarce. Deloitte sees AI as a way to build knowledge into the work, so that new people can work independently sooner. One in five AI applications has been scaled widely.
Publications per month for The technician shortage in manufacturing and AI in onboarding
Since 2 February 2025, Article 4 of the AI Act has required organisations that use AI to take measures for their people's AI literacy; since 2 August 2026 national supervisors can enforce it. The law prescribes no level or certificate, but it does require demonstrable steps.
Publications per month for AI literacy and the obligation under the AI Act
Whether employees use AI and experience it as an improvement depends mainly on whether their own manager visibly supports it. At the same time, half of HR directors doubt their managers can do this, and training alone does little as long as those managers are overloaded.
Publications per month for The manager's role in how employees use AI
The share of Dutch employees with burnout symptoms rose for the second year running, to 21 per cent in 2025 against 13 per cent in 2015. Women (23.5 per cent) and employees aged 25 to 34 (28 per cent) score highest. Worldwide, Gallup meanwhile measures the lowest engagement since 2020.
Publications per month for Burnout symptoms, sickness absence and employee engagement
Managers use AI almost twice as often as their staff and think the direction is clear. The workforce does not experience it that way. The difference lies in what a manager visibly does: leading by example, setting a quality standard and saying what happens to the time saved.
Publications per month for AI use and AI strategy as seen by leaders and by staff
The European car industry is shedding jobs while shifting towards more highly skilled technical and digital work. CLEPA counts 104,000 announced job losses at suppliers in two years; ACEA and Adecco find that companies approach reskilling reactively and involve HR late.
Publications per month for Job losses and reskilling in the European car industry
Chinese carmakers develop new models 25 to 30 per cent faster than European ones. In 2026, analysts and executives locate the cause mainly in the organisation. At KPMG, slow decisions and governance top the list of internal brakes; at Capgemini, six in ten blame delays on processes.
Publications per month for Decision-making and development speed: European carmakers versus China
CEO turnover hit a record in 2025 for the second year running, average tenure fell to 7.1 years and 84 to 86 per cent of new CEOs are in the role for the first time. Meanwhile only one in five HR professionals say they are confident in their own leadership succession pipeline.
Publications per month for CEO turnover, tenure and the first-time CEO
Closures in European chemicals have risen sixfold since 2022, and the Netherlands accounts for a fifth of the capacity announced, more than twice its share of turnover. On an integrated cluster, one company's exit hits its neighbours directly. The Dutch government and Chemelot are therefore working with a cluster plan.
Publications per month for European chemical closures and cooperation within industrial clusters
Technical managers in the software industry are once again writing and reviewing code themselves. LeadDev sees the share of engineering managers doing more hands-on work rise from 20 to 35 per cent in a year, and engineers spend more time directing AI agents.
Publications per month for Engineering managers writing code and engineers directing AI agents
Individual productivity gains from AI have been widely measured, but the share of organisations that see them in business results has been stuck at just over a third for two years. The pilots that do break through redesign the work itself and measure outcomes rather than usage.
Publications per month for GenAI pilots, productivity gains and the bottom line
The removal of management layers continues, and AI has become the argument: redesign the work around technology and you need less coordination. Korn Ferry finds that 42 per cent of organisations cut management roles last year; 55 per cent of the managers who remain are exhausted.
Publications per month for Management layers, AI and the strain on the managers who remain
Worldwide, manager engagement is falling faster than that of their employees, while organisations cut management layers and hand more to the managers who remain. Gallup identifies this fall as the main cause of the global dip in engagement.
Publications per month for Engagement and workload of managers and their teams
Middle managers feel less free to voice mistakes and doubts than their own bosses and their own teams, and newly promoted managers least of all. Yet they are the layer expected to model psychological safety in teams. Culture work that skips this layer does not land.
Publications per month for Psychological safety of middle managers and their role in teams
Dutch subdistrict courts treat working-from-home arrangements as working conditions, which gives the works council a right of consent (Article 27 of the Works Councils Act, WOR). A head-office instruction applies only after that conversation, while 45 per cent of employees have worked from home steadily for three years.
Publications per month for Working from home, office days and the works council's right of consent
The planned cut to the civil service rises to €3.4bn in 2035 and also affects implementing agencies. The Netherlands Court of Audit finds no choices in the budgets about which tasks will go, while implementation assessments show that new laws almost never save staff.
Publications per month for Cuts to the Dutch civil service and the choice of which tasks to drop
Half of Dutch school leaders experience a lot of work stress, and in secondary education almost twice as often as in 2018. One in three has too little time for instructional leadership, while the Inspectorate singles out the school leader as the lever for better education quality.
Publications per month for Work stress, time use and turnover among school leaders
Executives think employees trust them and understand the culture. Recent measurements show a widening gap: fewer than half of employees trust their leadership, and only one in five feels strongly connected to their own organisation's culture. Leadership is the last to notice.
Publications per month for Trust and culture as seen by executives and by employees
At large law and accounting firms the bottom layer is shrinking: US firms with more than 500 lawyers hired 540 fewer graduates, and the Big Four are recruiting more AI specialists than auditors. 71 per cent of professionals say new starters need extra guidance.
Publications per month for Graduate hiring and how juniors learn the trade in law and accounting
One in five new homes comes from a factory, yet the factories use less than half their capacity. Roland Berger therefore does not see capacity as a bottleneck. TNO points to the planning phase, in which municipality, client and builder work one after another and clients keep asking for bespoke designs.
Publications per month for Factory-built housing: spare capacity and a slow planning phase
More than half of nurses, carers and support workers use AI, mostly on their own initiative and without training. Hospitals are adopting AI policies at speed, but half of healthcare professionals see no clear policy and two thirds feel insufficiently prepared.
Publications per month for AI use, training and AI policy among healthcare professionals
US pressure on diversity policy arrives in Europe as silence: companies drop the terms or pause programmes, and their own staff are the first to notice. In interviews, NEOMA finds five responses, from retreat to swimming against the tide, occurring about equally often.
Publications per month for European companies' diversity policies under US pressure
The AZWA obliges municipalities and health insurers in 38 regions to agree a joint work agenda. The governance of these networks is not yet in place: RIVM finds no central governance in over 60 per cent of IZA regions, and Groningen found no structure able to grow with them in any of 142 initiatives.
Publications per month for Governing regional care networks and the AZWA work agenda
Seven in ten US executives plan at shorter intervals and almost half of companies worldwide have shortened their planning cycle, because geopolitical events move faster than their view of the risks. Among non-executive directors, geopolitical risk rose from 15th to 7th place in a year.
Publications per month for Executive planning cycles and geopolitical risk
Grid operators are building more than ever, but the work is growing faster than the workforce. By 2030 grid operators and contractors need some 30,000 extra technicians, and the sector names the capacity to train and supervise new people as the biggest bottleneck. The IEA sees the same worldwide.
Publications per month for Grid technicians and the capacity to train and supervise them
In the US, employment of 22 to 25-year-olds in AI-exposed occupations is 19 per cent lower than if it had kept pace with peers in other occupations, mainly because employers hire fewer new starters. The entry-level jobs that remain call for skills that used to belong to senior staff.
Publications per month for Entry-level jobs for young workers in AI-exposed occupations
Organisations collect ever more data and make no faster decisions with it. KPMG finds 63 per cent of executives leaning more heavily on data, while 43 per cent say decisions come faster; BCG hears from 41 per cent of employees that AI actually increases the time a decision takes.
Publications per month for Data, decision speed and mandate in organisations
Support among Americans for CEOs who speak out on social or political issues fell from 65 per cent in 2018 to 55 per cent in 2026, and the share who shun a product over such a stance doubled. Support holds only for issues that affect the company itself.
Publications per month for Public support for CEOs who speak out on social issues
In May 2026, 56 per cent of US managers were looking for another job, and worldwide 40 per cent of managers under increased stress had considered giving up leadership altogether. The layer that organisations thinned out themselves is now thinning out of its own accord.
Publications per month for Unbossing and why middle managers want to leave
The share of developers willing to leave application logic to AI rose from 18 to 50 per cent in a year. Measuring the return no longer works: METR cannot find enough developers still willing to work without AI, and 66 per cent feel metrics miss their contribution.
Publications per month for AI in software development and the trouble with measuring productivity
Many employees use their own AI tools alongside those provided, often paying for them themselves, because they work better or faster. Managers greatly overestimate how much they can see. Both the risk and the opportunity stay invisible as long as nobody asks.
Publications per month for Shadow AI: employees' own AI tools and the policy lagging behind
Supermarkets are giving shop-floor staff AI help and want to hand store managers' admin to agents. McKinsey and Albert Heijn expect managers to oversee both people and agents. For 70 per cent of executives surveyed, the effect on results is not yet measurable.
Publications per month for AI on the shop floor and the changing role of the supermarket team leader
Over six in ten Dutch teachers want a period of calm before the next round of innovation, more than in most other TALIS countries. ROA and the Inspectorate blame an accumulation of rules and temporary schemes, which leaves schools unable to implement new plans properly.
Publications per month for Change fatigue and policy overload in Dutch education
Supervisors find AI in wide use across the financial sector, at over 90 per cent of ECB-supervised banks and 65 per cent of European insurers. Policies and controls lag behind; the ECB sees responsibility spread across IT, data teams, the business and control functions.
Publications per month for AI use and ownership in the financial sector, as supervisors see it
Organisations have cut management layers on a large scale. The managers who remain now have twelve direct reports on average and still do hands-on work themselves. Gallup found the limit: above forty per cent own work, team engagement falls as the team grows.
Publications per month for Span of control and how much hands-on work managers still do
The AZWA agreement wants healthcare professionals to spend at most 20 per cent of their time on admin by 2030. At the end of 2025 it was 30.1 per cent, barely less than in 2019. Interim targets and a fixed measurement method are missing, and in hospitals one in five intended users reports by voice.
Publications per month for Admin time in Dutch healthcare, the AZWA target and how it is measured
In more and more organisations AI agents carry out real steps in the work and will gain more autonomy in the coming years, while almost nobody has set up the governance: who owns the agent, what it may do without a check, who switches it off. That is a structural question for line management, not an IT question.
Publications per month for Who is the agent's boss? Ownership, mandate and control of AI agents
Organisations are shifting from automating tasks to redesigning the work itself around AI. BCG sees the share redrawing workflows end to end grow from 22 to 42 per cent in a year, and 98 per cent of executives in Mercer's survey plan a different organisation design within two years.
Publications per month for Automating tasks versus redesigning work around AI
Since late 2025 Dutch banks have been cutting thousands of jobs, citing AI as a way to save costs. Anti-money laundering work and customer service shrink first: the UWV has seen the number of CDD analysts on unemployment benefit more than double in a year. Whether AI really takes over that work is not yet clear.
Publications per month for Restructuring at Dutch banks and AI in anti-money laundering and customer service
After a decade of near-annual growth, the number of self-employed workers in construction fell in 2025, while labour shortages persisted. Over 40 per cent of construction and infrastructure firms hired fewer self-employed contractors, and half changed the way they hire them. Most contractors want to stay self-employed.
Publications per month for Self-employed contractors in construction and the crackdown on false self-employment
Edelman finds across 28 countries that people are retreating into their own circles, and that only their own employer still scores above half as a builder of trust (58 per cent). Inside the organisation that trust is thin: in the US, one in five employees trusts their own leadership.
Publications per month for Trust in employers and other institutions
Month
Publications
December 2025
0
January 2026
3
February 2026
0
March 2026
0
April 2026
0
May 2026
2
June 2026
0
July 2026
0
August 2026
0
September 2026
0
October 2026
1
November 2026
0
updated · 6 publications
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The themes Leap Trends follows
This map shows every theme Leap Trends follows, grouped by organisational condition. A filled label already has a briefing, with the number next to it. Click a theme to open its page with the publications on it.
23 of the 56 themes have at least one briefing. Click a theme to open its page.
with a briefingtouched on elsewhereno briefing yet
A label with a number has its own briefing. A lightly filled label comes up in a briefing on another theme. An open label has not come up in any briefing so far.
The latest publications in the briefings
The publications most recently added to a briefing. Click a title to go to the publication at its source, or the briefing it belongs to.
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