This article highlights our joint findings with Harvard Business School in Future Positive: How Companies Can Tap Into Employee Optimism to Navigate Tomorrow’s Workplace.

Business leaders may be overlooking a key partner in their efforts to prepare for the future—their workforce. According to our research—a collaboration between Harvard Business School’s Managing the Future of Work project and Boston Consulting Group’s Henderson Institute—workers are happy in their jobs and are prepared to adapt to change. Leadership, however, views the future through a different lens and is struggling to identify and act on the forces shaping the workplace.

Our study of 11,000 middle-skills workers (those without a four-year degree) in 11 countries and 6,500 business leaders in 8 countries provides a global outlook on perceptions of the forces shaping the future of work. Those forces include new technology, remote work, contingent workforces, government protection of workers, and regulatory changes affecting trade.