What Your Employees Won’t Tell You: 10 Solutions to Today’s Messiest Office Dramas

From remote work to AI to the habits of Gen-Z, the workplace is changing fast. To help you navigate it all, Inc.’s Ask a Manager columnist, Alison Green, shares her wisdom on how to be an effective leader in 2026 and beyond.

EXPERT OPINION BY ALISON GREEN, INC.COM COLUMNIST @ASKAMANAGER

As someone who has written an office advice column for nearly two decades, I’m here to say: It’s a weird time to be at work. I can’t think of another period in modern history when workplace trends changed as quickly and as dramatically as they have over the past five years. There’s the explosion in remote work, crushing pressure to hit quarterly goals and appease the Street, managers struggling to retain talent under return-to-work mandates, burned-out employees constantly entreated to “do more with less,” and a biannual cadence of mass layoffs. Add it up and the corporate workplace—a relatively change-resistant environment—feels like the Upside Down.

A huge factor: 52 percent of people work in a hybrid environment and 26 percent are exclusively remote, according to a recent Gallup poll. This carries challenges that organizations are struggling to address. Bonding goes by the wayside. Ditto casual communication—it takes extra energy and coordination when you can’t pop into someone’s cube or catch them in the hallway. Junior employees struggle to form relationships, absorb the rhythms and culture of working life, and learn from experienced colleagues. Remote work also creates an uneasy tension between workers who want to be trusted to be productive when not in their employer’s line of sight, and leaders who believe the magic only happens when everyone’s on the same floor.

Skip to the Office Drama

Is there a humane way to fire someone in an open-plan office?

Should onboarding an entry-level staffer be this much work?

Can I keep employees late during busy times?

Can I hire an employee’s replacement before the employee is out?

Can an employee work too hard?

Should I have told an employee I figured out she was pregnant?

A perfectionist employee is costing the company money. How do I get him to cut it out?

A new hire is trying to “manage up,” but he’s really bad at it.

How do I get my management team to lay off the booze talk?

I made a report cry. Was it........

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