foHRsight: HR, Leadership & the Future of Work
You’re leading people through constant change. Evolving expectations, AI disruption, and rising pressure to get culture and performance right.
If you’re an HR leader, People and Culture executive, or senior business leader shaping the future of work, foHRsight is for you.
foHRsight: HR, Leadership & the Future of Work is a weekly podcast from future foHRward, hosted by Mark Edgar and Naomi Titleman Colla. Each episode explores the most pressing issues facing HR and leadership today, including employee engagement, retention, flexible work, leadership effectiveness, and the real impact of AI on organizations.
Through candid conversations with CHROs, senior leaders, and forward-thinking experts, foHRsight delivers practical insight and strategic perspective you can apply immediately. The goal is simple: help you make better people decisions, build stronger organizations, and lead with confidence in an increasingly complex world of work.
Follow foHRsight on your favourite podcast platform and join the future foHRward community, a growing network of HR and People leaders connecting through conversation, events, and shared insight on what’s next for work.
foHRsight: HR, Leadership & the Future of Work
The Disconnection Crisis with Dr. Tracy Brower
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Most HR leaders are chasing engagement scores.
Very few are diagnosing loneliness.
If performance feels flatter… if initiative is fading… if teams feel more transactional than connected, this episode explains why.
In this conversation, Dr. Tracy Brower joins Naomi Titleman to unpack a truth many leaders feel but struggle to articulate: connection is not a “nice-to-have.” It is a structural driver of performance, initiative, retention, and fulfillment.
They explore:
- The early warning signs of workplace disconnection
- Why proximity still matters in a hybrid world
- How AI may unintentionally weaken team reliance
- Social contagion and why energy spreads faster than strategy
- The difference between dirt roads and superhighways inside your culture
- What a real “connection infrastructure” looks like
This isn’t about forcing friendships or dragging people back to the office.
It’s about being deliberate about the human system inside your organization.
Because when people don’t feel seen or needed, they disengage.
And disengagement is expensive.
About our guest
Dr. Tracy Brower is a PhD sociologist and VP of Workplace Insights at Steelcase. She studies connection, community, fulfillment, and the future of work, and is the author of Critical Connections. Her work bridges research and real-world application, helping organizations understand how human dynamics directly influence performance.
Stay connected with foHRsight
To sign up for our monthly newsletter, foHRsight, visit http://www.futurefohrward.com/subscribe
Follow us on LinkedIn:
Mark Edgar – www.linkedin.com/in/markedgarhr/
Naomi Titleman Colla – www.linkedin.com/in/naomititlemancolla/
future foHRward – www.linkedin.com/company/future-fohrward/
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If you are looking for more foHRsight, sign up for our monthly foHRsight newsletter. It’s free and includes access to our quarterly white paper. This quarter’s white paper is about Rethinking Entry-Level work in the Age of AI, produced with Dr. Miranda Rodak from Indiana University’s Kelley school of business - an important topic for HR, Leadership and parents, students and society as a whole! https://www.futurefohrward.com/subscribe
