The incoming US administration and the expected advancement of AI alone will surely impact workplaces in 2025. We wanted to know what leaders in business, research, and labor expect for the year ahead. Here are 11 predictions, edited for length and clarity:
It will be the Year of the Duck’ for RTO debates.
Nicholas Bloom
William Eberle professor of Economics at Stanford University
2025 will be the battle of working from home. On one side will be the forces pushing for the five-day return to the office (RTO). Partly this is a backdoor layoff, and partly some CEOs see this as best for productivity. Amazon called for a five-day RTO in September 2024, and the suspicion is this was driven by a need to shrink headcount. [Elon] Musk and [Vivek] Ramaswamy have similar plans for the federal government. On the other side, employees have a hardening resolve to remain hybrid or remote. Expect to see a heavy exodus of top talent and folks in hot-areas like AI in five-day-RTO firms.
My prediction is overall levels of working from home will remain flat at a macro level in 2025. But, below the stable aggregate figures, local battles will rage over hybrid policies, employees will quit, and CEOs will continue to debate this policy. In a sense, it’s going to be the Year of the Duck—stable on the surface but frantically paddling below.
Agentic AI will be adopted faster than genAI and have a greater impact on businesses.
Chris Bedi
Chief customer officer, ServiceNow
I see some parallels [between genAI and agentic AI] in that both have garnered a lot of attention. The key difference will be a faster pace of adoption and much bigger business impact. While early genAI pilots focused on case summarization, marketing copy generation, and email generation, agentic AI will deliver an exponential improvement to business operations including customer service, order management, and supply chain. Agentic AI won’t just assist—it will transform how work gets done by securely integrating with data, systems, and workflows across the enterprise. Specialized agents will handle end-to-end processes like onboarding and order management, automating routine tasks to enhance efficiency. With adoption set to outpace early genAI, businesses will need a ‘control tower”’ view to effectively manage and coordinate these agents. The technology is ready, and the shift is happening now.
Human leadership skills will come to the fore.
Edith Cooper
Co-founder of Medley and board director of PepsiCo and Amazon
I believe we’ll see a growing emphasis on human-centric leadership skills: communication, empathy, relationship-building, self-awareness, and inclusivity. In a world that’s becoming increasingly automated, with fewer moments of human interaction, organizations will need to be intentional about fostering connection. Prioritizing human connection won’t just support stronger teams—it will be critical for business growth and the kind of innovation required to thrive in this new era.
A deepening child-care crisis will force employers and policymakers to respond.
Brigid Schulte
Director of the Better Life Lab, New America and author of Over Work
The child-care crisis and how it impacts the workforce, particularly when it comes to women, will become even more urgent in 2025. The already untenable situation will likely get worse as states run out of pandemic-era funds that were meant to shore up the patchwork child-care system. And with possible cuts to federal anti-poverty programs coming in the Trump administration, the lack of child care is likely to have dire consequences for low-wage workers.
The child-care crisis—and the need for workplace flexibility to combine work and care responsibilities—will become political issues because parents are no longer the only ones feeling the pain. I predict that organizations, increasingly, will see how child care and flexible work are critical business imperatives for functioning, productive, and profitable workplaces, not as ‘nice to have’ accommodations or perks. And because no one business can solve a problem so large, policymakers will be forced to respond.
AI will allow entry workers to have more impact and managers to become more like coaches.
Aneesh Raman
Chief economic opportunity officer of LinkedIn
All jobs are eventually going to experience changes from AI, but some roles will feel the first waves of big change as early as 2025. Entry-level work and people managers are two categories set to feel early shifts. For entry-level work, most of these roles today are built around these manual and time-consuming tasks like data entry, note-taking, and meeting scheduling. This current model won’t be sustainable in the age of AI, but that doesn’t mean we’ll simply do away with entry-level work. MIT has found that workers with the least experience gain the most form AI tools on the job, so there’s a huge upside for companies to quickly get these junior employees working on high-impact projects in a way that wasn’t possible before.
People managers are another job category under some serious pressure already, and AI is shaking things up even more. It’s unlikely we’re moving into a ‘boss-less’ future—employees today say they rely on their managers and that a good manager makes the difference between staying at or leaving a company. In the future, the people manager role will be more like a sports coach—managing the energy of the team, regulating the emotions and stresses of the team, and understanding at an individual level what makes each person tick to help them do their best work.
Worker organizing will continue to surge in 2025.
Liz Shuler
President, AFL-CIO
2025 has the potential to be a transformative year for America’s workers and unions. Workers are exercising our power to stand up for our right to dignity and fair treatment in the workplace in ways we haven’t seen in generations. We’re seeing a resurgence in union organizing across industries. We expect more large-scale strikes to hold corporations accountable. As technology like artificial intelligence evolves and transforms work, workers will continue to demand a seat at the table to shape our futures. Labor is built on solidarity—and when seven in 10 Americans and nearly 90% of young people support unions, we know workers will continue to win.
Workplaces that use AI will become more creative, connected, and collaborative.
Annie Dean
Global head of Team Anywhere, Atlassian
In 2025, AI-enabled teams will be more connected and collaborative than ever. AI will erase busywork and give teams the exact support they need to explore and execute big ideas, faster. This means the workplace will no longer be dominated by the loudest voices, but rather, the most creative minds.
With a greater ability to execute creative ideas faster, we’ll also experience a complete evolution of meetings. Meetings will no longer serve as a traditional, 30-minute ‘stand and deliver,’ but a time for collaboration, creativity, and complex problem-solving. This could result in an increase in meetings, but this time will be more focused, efficient, and creative—contributing to the deepened connections within teams as they move forward the most impactful work.
AI will be a critical tool in furthering diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Stephanie Creary
Assistant professor of Management at Wharton
In 2025, organizations will prioritize auditing their AI tools for bias, with a focus on improving algorithmic fairness and transparency. AI will also play a growing role in addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion challenges. Specifically, companies will use AI to identify biases in hiring, employee evaluations, and performance tracking, enabling targeted interventions to foster more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace cultures. Additionally, efforts will address disparities in how generative AI is accessed and used by different populations.
Meetings will transform.
Prithwiraj Choudhury
Lumry Family associate professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School
I expect 2025 to be the year in which team meetings will be reimagined. Distributed teams that work from anywhere (WFA) will continue experiments that maximize the value of company and team retreats. Teams will also initiate experiments with agentic AI solutions participating in team meetings. Agentic AI will help workers take notes, highlight meeting segments and in some cases, will even communicate asynchronously on behalf of individuals. Agentic AI solutions will help workers save time on team meetings and will further accelerate their ability to WFA.
Companies will rethink risk management when it comes to AI.
Sabrina Farmer
Chief technology officer of GitLab
In 2025, lawsuits will mount against LLM providers if they are unable to certify that copyrighted data was not used to train models. Companies who are adopting solutions will need to choose providers based on how transparent they are about data use and their guarantees for data protection. In response, AI solution providers will proactively incorporate data protection principles into models from the outset, ensuring ongoing compliance and mitigating the potential for future legal disputes.
We’ll see the adoption of AI coaches, agents, and assistants.
Anna Tavis
Chair of the Human Capital Management department at NYU’s School of Professional Studies
In 2025, one of the most transformative trends in the workplace will be the increasing adoption of personal AI coaches, agents, and assistants. These AI-driven tools will redefine what it means to have access to personalized support. Imagine 24/7 counsel, coaching, advice, or even just a meaningful conversation—available anytime, tuned to your unique needs.
With such benefits come significant risks. The potential for over-dependence or even addiction to these digital companions is real. If not carefully managed, we risk creating a world where human connection is deprioritized in favor of interactions with machines designed to simulate it.