The Future of Work Conference 2026
The Future of Work Conference 2026 was a great success! The venue was packed to the rafters and our speakers debunked many myths. Below is a summary of them all once again.
“Women didn’t work in the past, did they?”
That is the myth that PhD candidate Claudia Hacke discussed at the conference. In her presentation, she nuanced and refuted the notion that women were not active in the labour market in the past. She demonstrated how a combination of incomplete and inaccurate data, definitions of work and institutional constraints led to this misconception.
“You’re either for or against D&I policy”
This is the myth that Prof. Dr Jojanneke van der Toorn debunked during the Future of Work conference. The Dutch Inclusion Monitor shows that employees are rarely unequivocally for or against D&I; far more often, they have an ambivalent or mixed attitude. Inclusion therefore requires more than just general policy.
“Generation Z is entering the labour market, and there has never been such a difference compared to previous generations!”
Not so… the truth is that generations often differ little, if at all, from those that came before them. Yet we all too often believe that this difference does exist and that a younger generation really is unique. Dr Wouter Vandenabeele, senior lecturer in Human Resource Management, explained to us at the conference why this is the case and how we should deal with it. One practical conclusion is a life-stage-aware HR policy: responding to employees’ specific needs, without labelling them or making certain characteristics permanent.
“Working conditions in the Western world are so good that people here no longer fall ill because of their work”
Dr Susan Peters has debunked this: even in the Netherlands, people still fall ill because of their work. Unfortunately, this often goes unrecognised, and we ourselves may be too entrenched in a bubble of office work, meaning that many of these unhealthy working situations are not sufficiently recognised.
“If managers provide more support for their staff’s wellbeing and development, this increases staff job satisfaction and performance.”
Sounds plausible, doesn’t it? Yet research by PhD candidate Roos Mulder and Dr Julia Penning de Vries shows that this is a myth. More well-intentioned support from managers does not necessarily lead to better results. The speakers explored in more detail why this is the case and how it can be prevented.
“Is designing workplaces and tasks for the average person efficient?”
Standardising work environments to organise work more efficiently is a commonly used method. However, there is a problem with this approach. The ‘average person’ on whom the norm or standard is based does not exist, and this means that people have to adapt to a system rather than the other way round. With all the consequences that entails. Dr Stella Donker told us more about this myth.
An artist also dropped by the conference: Philip Vermeulen. He explores the fundamentals of human perception. He experiments with various elements, including movement, light, sound compositions, physics, nature and digital technology. He creates ‘hypersculptures’ that stimulate and deceive the viewer’s senses. His work, too, centres on the perception of reality.
