Getting Ready for 2025
As 2024 winds down, you’re probably thinking more about family, friends, holidays, parties, and just being. But don’t tuck this post too far back in your mind. If you’re giving yourself some time for planning for 2025 in the coming weeks, you may want to consider these workplace forecasts—some of which you may already be experiencing.
1. Growth in the use of AI. We heard a statement recently that AI is like discovering fire. You can use it to cook or burn the house down. These generative AI tools hold tremendous promise around efficiency and cost reductions, but leaders must evaluate where and how they can meaningfully create value.
2. Attacks on DEI. Unfortunately, this has turned into a political firestorm when it should be a positive approach to people management—making everyone feel included and safe in their workplaces. DEI goes far beyond training, and diversity exists in every organization and every employee. For some additional insights, read what we wrote during Global Diversity Awareness Month.
3. Skills First Approach. The debate is on whether or not college degrees are necessary in today’s workplace which has rapidly changed over time. This creates a big shift for not only talent acquisition teams, but for learning and development and workforce planning. Skills First is another topic we’ve tackled recently.
4. Work-Life Boundaries. It’s no longer just finding that balance. Technology has brought more challenges about when and where work can and should be performed, often leading to employee burnout and stress. This is creating discussions around 4-Day Workweeks and giving rise to “right to disconnect” laws. Underlying all these discussions is: what can you do to support your employees’ mental health and prevent burnout?
5. Creating Collaborative Workspaces. Getting employees to return to the office to enhance collaboration requires having physical workspaces that are flexible and allow for collaboration and a sense of belonging. For many organizations, this is going to require redesigns of existing space with the goal of creating environments where people want to spend time, and workspaces that prioritize not just work, but employee well-being. People need to feel connected at work.
Additional trends, as researched by Workplace Intelligence, their Forecast for 2025 also includes:
6. Unretirement keeping more Baby Boomers in the workforce. This is going to have an impact on younger generations of workers. The challenge for leaders is the continued need to manage multiple generations in the workplace—a diversity issue.
7. Embracing neurodiverse hiring practices. Organizations are increasingly embracing support of individuals with neurological and developmental differences. This requires offering resources to support neurodiverse employees and training managers and employers to understand the different cognitive styles of neurodiverse teammates—yet another diversity issue for the workplace.
8. Pressure from stakeholders to be more transparent. From external sources, these include a range of hot-button issues—climate policy, pay equity, reasons behind restructuring. Beyond external pressures, the need for trust and transparency is a leadership imperative—one which we write about frequently.
As you prepare to welcome 2025, take some time to celebrate the accomplishments you’ve achieved for your organizations in the past, and toast the opportunities ahead to make a difference for your teams and their work.