The traditional idea of going to the office five days a week or working 9 to 5 may be dying. Some companies are making room for more creative and flexible approaches to getting workers to do their jobs.

Researchers in Iceland conducted two trials of a shorter work week that involved about 2,500 workers. They found that the experiment was an "overwhelming success"— workers were able to work less, get paid the same, while maintaining productivity and improving personal well-being: Participants in the study reduced their hours by three to five hours per week without losing pay.

Contract drivers say algorithms terminate them by email -- even when they have done nothing wrong: Stephen Normandin spent almost four years racing around Phoenix delivering packages as a contract driver for Amazon.com. Then one day, he received an automated email. The algorithms tracking him had decided he wasn't doing his job properly.

Nesta’s Mapping Career Causeways project, supported by J.P. Morgan, applies state-of-the-art data science methods to create an algorithm that recommends job transitions and retraining to workers, with a focus on supporting those at high risk of automation.

Helping a product team see a market through a Jobs-to-be-Done lens is often a transformational experience. This training canvas can help.