How Cross-Industry Innovation Creates Better Employee Experiences

No single company, sector or trade association holds the patent on a great workplace. Yet for decades, organizations have largely set their standards by looking inward, benchmarking against competitors, replicating familiar practices and measuring “good” against what is typical in their own field. That era is ending. The forces reshaping work today, including AI adoption, skills shortages, flexible work expectations, mental health demands and inclusion imperatives, do not stop at industry lines. The strongest responses are emerging from unexpected cross-sector conversations.

Members of the Senior Executive HR Think Tank, a curated group of human resources leaders, executives and organizational strategists, are closely tracking this shift. Their perspectives reveal a consistent theme: the organizations poised to attract top talent, build durable cultures and lead on the thorniest workforce issues are those that look beyond their own sector for models, benchmarks and partners.

The urgency is real. SHRM’s 2026 Talent Trends Report, based on a survey of more than 2,000 HR professionals, found that organizations across industries are confronting persistent recruitment difficulties, widening skills gaps and shifting workforce expectations driven by technological and strategic change. These challenges are not confined to any one sector and no single industry has solved them on its own. The question is no longer whether cross-industry collaboration matters; it’s whether organizations will move fast enough to benefit from it.

“Cross-industry collaboration will shape workplace standards more than internal HR practices—because it resets what ‘good’ looks like. Employees compare your workplace to the best experience they’ve had anywhere, not just similar companies.”

– Amy Douglas, Chief, Culture and Connection of Levata Human Performance

SHARE IT

The Bar Has Moved—And Employees Knew It First

Ask employees what a great workplace looks like, and they will not describe the best company in your industry. They will describe the best experience they have had anywhere. That is the competitive reality Amy Douglas, Chief, Culture and Connection, and co-founder of Levata Human Performance—an integrated people-and-culture consultancy built on the principle that when people thrive, transformation follows—wants leaders to internalize.

“Cross-industry collaboration will shape workplace standards more than internal HR practices—because it resets what ‘good’ looks like,” Douglas says. “Employees compare your workplace to the best experience they’ve had anywhere, not just similar companies.”

Her observation reflects something most HR leaders already sense but rarely name directly: The reference point has shifted. AI tools, well-being programs, onboarding experiences and remote-work policies pioneered in tech or consumer brands quickly become baseline expectations in healthcare, manufacturing or financial services. Douglas sees this as both a warning and an invitation.

“Innovation spreads fast,” she notes. “Ideas from tech, healthcare and consumer brands quickly become baseline expectations. Standards are shifting from ‘what’s typical in our field’ to ‘what’s possible across systems.'”

Douglas also highlights how cross-sector dynamics are reshaping talent pipelines—changing not just how organizations compete for talent, but what “qualified” means in the first place. Cross-sector partnerships are already redefining career pathways, making skills and careers more fluid across traditional boundaries. And increasingly, she says, the work itself happens across those boundaries: “Collaboration becomes core work. Work increasingly happens across boundaries—teams, companies, sectors—making collaboration a critical capability.”

The Gaming Studio Model: Build Around the Person

Mobile gaming may seem an unlikely source of universal HR wisdom. But Aida Figuerola, a Neuropsychologist and People and Culture leader at Lift, brings a perspective from the gaming industry that illuminates something most organizations get backwards: the relationship between talent and output.

“In mobile gaming, senior talent is genuinely scarce,” Figuerola says. “We call them unicorns: people who combine deep technical skill, creative instinct, soft skills and industry experience. The question was never how to find unicorns. It was how to keep them once you did.”

The gaming industry’s answer was architectural—it built the studio around the people, not the product. Figuerola experienced this firsthand at Bandai Namco Mobile, where she created a role called Happiness Manager, grounded in three operating principles: psychological well-being, engagement and development. Not perks. Not benefits on a slide deck. Principles that governed how the organization functioned.

“Gaming studios understand something most industries don’t,” she explains. “The product doesn’t exist without the people who build it. Talent isn’t a resource inside a gaming studio. It is the business.”

The lesson she presses other industries to absorb is structural, not cosmetic. “If you build around the person, performance follows,” Figuerola says. “If you build around the output, the unicorn eventually leaves—and you spend the next year trying to replace someone irreplaceable by design.” She is clear that this logic is not a gaming-industry quirk: “Every business is a people business. Putting talent at the core of how you operate isn’t a gaming concept. It’s just good business.”

Convergence Pressure: How Industries Pull Each Other Forward

There is a force in the labor market that operates faster than regulation and more efficiently than any single company’s strategic planning: convergence pressure. Dr. Curtis Odom, Managing Partner of Prescient Strategists—a consultancy that helps organizations build the human capabilities required for AI investments to generate lasting value, with frameworks in active use across healthcare, financial services, manufacturing and professional services—and Executive Professor of Management and Organizational Development at Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business, has studied this phenomenon across industries and time horizons.

“Cross-industry collaboration reshapes talent standards through convergence pressure,” Dr. Odom says. “When organizations benchmark against peers, best practices accelerate faster than regulation.” Industry consortia drive the shift: Technology’s remote-work flexibility forced traditional sectors to rethink their location requirements, and healthcare’s emphasis on psychological safety has influenced every sector’s approach to culture.

Talent mobility is both a mechanism and an accelerant. When compensation transparency takes hold in tech, other sectors follow within two years to remain competitive. Engineers moving between industries carry new methodologies with them—and the expectations they pick up along the way do not disappear when they cross sector lines.

“Employees who’ve experienced flexible arrangements elsewhere expect them everywhere,” Dr. Odom explains. “Retention suffers without alignment,” and the convergence pressure ahead is only intensifying. “Cross-industry collaboration will shape skills certification standards, mental health benchmarks, climate governance and AI ethics protocols,” he adds. “Organizations that move ahead gain a temporary advantage; those that lag face permanent talent loss.”

“Cross-industry collaboration will play a critical role in shaping future workplace standards because many of the challenges organizations face—such as AI adoption, skills development, flexible work and employee well-being—are not unique to any one industry.”

– Tyler Crebar, Founder and CEO of Crebar Career Consulting

SHARE IT

Shared Challenges Demand Shared Solutions

The workforce challenges occupying executive attention today—AI adoption, skills development, flexible work, employee well-being—share a common characteristic: No single industry has solved them. Tyler Crebar, Founder and CEO of Crebar Career Consulting, a career strategy and recruiting firm founded on the principle that people get hired, promoted and paid more through honest, recruiter-backed advice, draws on experience spanning JPMorgan Chase, LinkedIn and the NCAA to articulate why that universality matters.

“Cross-industry collaboration will play a critical role in shaping future workplace standards because many of the challenges organizations face—such as AI adoption, skills development, flexible work and employee well-being—are not unique to any one industry,” Crebar says. “As companies share best practices and lessons learned, they can accelerate innovation while avoiding common pitfalls.”

The practical benefits, in his view, extend beyond avoiding mistakes. Cross-industry dialogue can help establish more consistent expectations around ethical AI use, workforce development and talent mobility—creating a more level, more predictable playing field for both employers and employees navigating career transitions across sectors.

“Organizations that learn from other industries often gain fresh perspectives that lead to better solutions than those developed in isolation,” Crebar adds. “The companies that actively participate in these conversations will be better positioned to attract talent, drive performance and remain competitive.” In a rapidly changing world of work, he contends, cross-industry collaboration will become not a nice-to-have, but a strategic necessity.

Compete in the Market, Collaborate for People

Some workforce challenges are too large for any single organization to solve. Britton Bloch, VP of Global Talent Acquisition Strategy and Head of Recruiting at Navy Federal Credit Union, sees cross-industry collaboration not as a strategic luxury but as a structural necessity—particularly for challenges that cut across all sectors.

“No single employer has a monopoly on effective practice, and many workforce challenges—mental health, safety, caregiving, inclusion, skills development, crisis response—are larger than any one company,” Bloch says. “Company-agnostic collaboration allows organizations to pay knowledge forward through shared playbooks, peer forums, mentoring, community partnerships and open standards that help others improve regardless of affiliation.”

Her framing introduces an important concept: the distinction between competitive and collaborative terrain. She is emphatic that the two are not in conflict. What organizations share across industry lines—frameworks, measurement approaches, accountability structures—makes the competitive market they return to much stronger.

“The result is a healthier ecosystem where organizations compete in the market but collaborate in service of people, communities and the future of work,” Bloch adds. She also notes that cross-industry collaboration activates the full breadth of organizational expertise: “Legal, HR, operations, safety, technology, communications and frontline employees bring different lenses to common problems. When those perspectives are pooled across industries, standards become more practical, equitable and durable.”

“When tech companies swap notes with spatial architects and sensory specialists from education, workplace physical standards change forever.”

– Volen Vulkov, Co-Founder of Enhancv

SHARE IT

Designing for the Margins Optimizes the Whole

One of the most concrete—and underappreciated—sites where cross-industry collaboration will reshape workplace standards is the physical environment itself. Volen Vulkov, Co-Founder of Enhancv—a career platform built to help people tell their professional story with clarity and confidence—and a resume expert whose work has been cited by institutions including the Thunderbird School of Management and the University of Miami, brings a career-development perspective to a fundamentally design question: Who gets to feel comfortable at work?

“When tech companies swap notes with spatial architects and sensory specialists from education, workplace physical standards change forever,” Vulkov says. “We will move past the toxic open-office floor plan.”

His prediction is specific: Cross-industry knowledge sharing will normalize offices that are designed intentionally for neurodivergence, featuring deep-focus pods and low-stimulus zones. The insight from education—that sensory environment profoundly affects cognitive performance—has been slow to migrate into corporate settings. Vulkov sees that transfer accelerating as tech companies increasingly seek design expertise from outside their sector.

“Designing for the margins will optimize the workplace for everyone,” he adds. It is a principle with deep roots in universal design theory—curb cuts built for wheelchairs made sidewalks better for strollers, luggage carts and cyclists—now applied to workplace environments. When offices are designed with the most sensitive users in mind, every worker benefits from reduced sensory fatigue, better focus infrastructure and more humane space.

The Case for Institutional Leadership—and a Lesson From EVs

If cross-industry collaboration is to produce durable, scalable workplace standards, someone has to lead the effort. Steve Degnan—a former Chief Human Resources Officer with 20 years at one of the world’s leading food and pet food companies and current board member, advisor and author—has a clear candidate: traditional industry associations, starting with SHRM.

“I’d love to see traditional industry associations play a lead role in cross-industry efforts on work standards,” Degnan says. “SHRM in the HR space would be well advised to take on this challenge.”

To illustrate what happens in the absence of such leadership, Degnan reaches for an analogy that is entirely outside of the HR world. “Examples of the lack of such standards are all around us, not just in the work standards space,” he notes. “There are still two or three different charge connectors out there for EVs, with GM and Tesla only now reaching an agreement on converters and wider networks.”

The lesson is sharp: when institutions fail to coordinate early, fragmentation compounds. Individual organizations make incompatible choices, adoption slows and the cost of eventual alignment rises. “The explosion of technology demands a better response,” Degnan adds. In the HR context, the parallel risks are real—inconsistent AI governance frameworks, incompatible skills credentialing systems and fragmented well-being benchmarks that make it difficult to compare, improve or scale what works.

Labor Market Fluidity and the Accountability Gap

The mechanics of how cross-industry collaboration actually drives workplace standards are well-documented—and the evidence is everywhere, if you know where to look.

Dr. Jonathan H. Westover, Associate Dean at Western Governors University, Founder and CEO of Human Capital Innovations and Chief Workforce and Learning Officer at Future State University—ranked among the top global voices in HR, innovation and leadership and a member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council—synthesizes two decades of cross-sector consulting into a clear-eyed account of how standards actually propagate.

“Cross-industry collaboration increasingly drives workplace standards as companies compete for talent across sectors,” Dr. Westover says. “Tech firms’ remote work policies pressured traditional industries to adapt. When major employers publicized parental leave benefits, competitors followed.”

Industry consortia have already proven effective at establishing shared standards for sustainability, supply chain ethics and AI governance, creating baseline expectations around DEI and climate commitments. Professional associations accelerate standard-setting by sharing best practices: healthcare’s patient safety protocols, for example, influenced manufacturing’s error-prevention systems in ways that formal regulation never mandated.

“Labor market fluidity means employees carry expectations between industries, pushing sectors to modernize,” Dr. Westover explains. But he is equally direct about what genuine collaboration requires: “Meaningful change requires genuine commitment beyond performative pledges. Effective collaborations involve transparent benchmarking and shared accountability.” The distinction between organizations that sign declarations and those that actually change how they operate is the difference between slow-moving symbolism and lasting standard-setting.

Belonging Is Not a Differentiator. It Is a Birthright.

Every section of a workforce collaboration agenda has some degree of competitive sensitivity. Belonging, contends Christopher Bylone, Principal Strategist and Founder of Innovation Unbiased—a strategic consultancy that transforms workplace culture through data-driven, people-centered strategies and host of the podcast “I Know I Belong When…”—should have none.

“Cross-industry collaboration will matter most in the one area where competition has no place: belonging,” Bylone says. “Too many organizations treat belonging as a differentiator—something to feature on a career site as proof they are better than the company next door. That framing is the problem. Belonging is a birthright. It is table stakes, not a trophy.”

His critique of how organizations currently approach belonging is precise: When companies compete on it, they hoard what works. Frameworks stay proprietary, lessons remain internal and progress stalls. The solution is structural—open exchange of what actually moves outcomes, common measurement approaches and shared behavioral standards.

“When industries collaborate, the floor rises for everyone,” Bylone adds. “The goal is a labor market where every employee knows they belong, regardless of which logo is on their badge. Cross-industry collaboration is how we make that the expectation rather than the exception. No one should have to win the employer lottery to be treated as fully human.”

It is among the most direct challenges in the article: that belonging is not an HR program to compete over, but a standard to establish together, and that the organizations willing to share what works are the ones most likely to deserve the loyalty they receive in return.

Lessons Worth Sharing: What Leaders Can Act on Now

The following insights, drawn from each Think Tank member, offer a practical starting point for organizations ready to look beyond their own industry.

• Stop benchmarking only against your peers. Employees already compare your workplace to the best experience they’ve had anywhere—your standard-setting should too. 
• Build the organization around the person, not the output. Structure, roles and operating principles that center human well-being and development produce sustainable performance—a lesson proven in gaming and applicable everywhere. 
• Track where talent brings its expectations. Cross-industry talent mobility raises expectations. Monitor where employees are coming from and the workplace standards they bring with them.
• Join or convene cross-industry conversations on shared challenges. AI adoption, skills gaps and well-being are universal problems; organizations that participate in cross-sector dialogue solve them faster and avoid costly mistakes others have already made. 
• Distinguish between where you compete and where you collaborate. Open-source your frameworks, playbooks and measurement approaches on the challenges where hoarding knowledge only slows progress for everyone.
• Bring sensory and design expertise across sector lines. Intentional workplace design informed by education and neuroscience benefits all employees—make designing for the margins a standard, not a specialty. 
• Advocate for institutional standard-setting. Push professional associations to lead on shared credentialing, AI governance and well-being benchmarks—fragmentation in the absence of leadership is costly and slow to reverse.
• Demand transparent benchmarking and accountability in collaborative efforts. Signing declarations is not collaboration—effective cross-industry partnerships set shared metrics, track progress openly and hold organizations accountable for what they commit. 
• Remove belonging from the competition. Share what works, adopt common measurement approaches and treat belonging as a floor to raise together rather than a differentiator to hoard.

The Standard-Setters of Tomorrow Are Collaborating Today

The next generation of workplace standards will emerge from organizations willing to look beyond their own sectors, borrowing ideas from gaming studios, healthcare systems, spatial designers and technology firms, then sharing what works to raise expectations for everyone. Companies that approach workforce challenges as shared responsibilities rather than competitive advantages are the ones most likely to establish the benchmarks others will eventually follow.

For HR leaders, the mandate is both strategic and ethical: engage in cross-industry dialogue with accountability, invest in the systems that support talent mobility and skill transfer and stop treating belonging, well-being and inclusion as market differentiators. The standard itself is the opportunity. Organizations that help shape it for the broader labor market, not just their own employees, will be best positioned to attract talent, earn loyalty and build cultures that endure.