First-year Bachelor students in Organizational Behaviour at ISM University of Management and Economics, taught by Assoc. Prof. Tobias Grünfelder, became field reporters for a semester. Their task: go out and ask people what the futures of work might look like.
They interviewed former Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė, CEOs, kids, the artists Jessica Shy and Martynas Kavaliauskas, rally team managers, dentists, freelancers, coaches and restaurant staff and even stopped taxi drivers and baristas on the streets of Vilnius. They surveyed hundreds of peers on burnout, mobbing and work-life balance, then turned it all into blog articles and short videos.
The topics they chose were as diverse as the people they spoke to: the lasting impact of the pandemic, hybrid work, artificial intelligence, gender equality, leadership, motivation, personality at work and much more. Across more than twenty projects, one conclusion recurred: work is not one reality, but many realities at the same time. Organisations that take human and ecological needs seriously will be the ones that last.
The course also invited students to question old and outdated assumptions about work: that work and life must be strictly separated, that people are motivated mainly by money, that control produces performance, that burnout is an individual weakness, that leadership means having answers. Students are not here to reproduce the organisations that already exist. They are here to shape them. That is the spirit of being one step ahead at ISM.
Thank you to all the students for their contributions and for their willingness to engage with the world beyond the classroom.
