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Paper short abstract

Based on author's consultancy practice, the paper examines emerging anthropologists’ roles beyond academia and how their insights help organisations navigate changing workplaces and human‑capital challenges, addressing concerns about belonging, purpose and inclusion while shaping new futures of work

Paper long abstract

Across sectors, organisations are undergoing profound shifts driven by evolving business models, demographic change, new employment forms, digitalisation, sustainability pressures and shifting employee expectations. These transformations reshape workplaces, where staff navigate changing roles, new technologies, AI, hybrid arrangements and more fluid but sometimes fragmented career paths. For many, these changes raise concerns not only about employment stability but also about meaning, recognition and belonging as established narratives of work become less certain.

This paper examines the anthropologist as consultant, focusing on how anthropological practice supports organisational responses to workforce transformation and emerging inclusion challenges. It draws on the author’s corporate anthropology and workforce‑consulting experience, using anonymised insights from DEI assessments, employee workshops and advisory projects in multinational and local companies, with particular attention to the Baltic context.

The paper addresses three core questions. First, how employees and managers articulate meaning, purpose and future careers in environments where roles evolve in response to technological, organisational and demographic pressures. Second, how diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging concerns emerge around these pressures. Third, how anthropologists navigate between academic, ethnographic insights and corporate pragmatism, translating sensitive findings into recommendations organisations can act on in changing employment landscape.

Methodologically, the paper reflects on adapting ethnographic tools to consultancy settings. It argues that anthropologists, positioned as mediators and interpreters, add distinctive value to future‑of‑work debates by documenting lived experiences of change, making inclusion dynamics visible and co‑creating alternative visions of meaningful work with organisational actors.