Coffee badging. The Great Stay. Revenge quitting.
This yr has seen no scarcity of phrases to explain the brand new methods we work.
As 2024 involves a detailed, Quick Firm’s Work Life crew has been fascinated with the foremost traits we’ve seen this yr—but additionally what the brand new yr will carry. Listed below are a number of the largest tales we’ll be monitoring in 2025.
1. The struggle over RTO
Why are we still talking about a return to office? We’ve been chronicling the push to get staff again into bodily places of work for over three years now, however the rift between what most workers need (flexibility and a hybrid schedule) and what some leaders need (in-office collaboration and a return to pre-pandemic office norms) stays. As a lot as everybody desires to maneuver on from this debate, we’re more likely to see extra firms alter their insurance policies in 2025, particularly following main employers like Amazon deciding to carry staff again to the workplace 5 days every week.
Even with further in-office stress, many firms will nonetheless decide to some model of hybrid work. “Hybrid work is the new normal,” Sam Naficy, CEO of the worker visibility and productiveness intelligence software program supplier Prodoscore, tells author Stephanie Vozza. “Regardless of the push for in-office mandates, hybrid work is right here to remain, pushed by the necessity for flexibility. Few firms will absolutely revert to all-office fashions with out risking talent loss.”
In fact, in some instances, RTO workplace mandates may very well be designed to get workers to quit. Final month, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who’re set to steer the brand new Division of Authorities Effectivity, wrote an op-ed in The Wall Avenue Journal expressing the hope that requiring federal staff to return in to an workplace full-time would result in resignations. “Requiring federal workers to return to the workplace 5 days every week would end in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal workers don’t need to present up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the COVID-era privilege of staying dwelling,” they wrote.
2. AI affecting jobs—and hiring
We’ve spent a lot of this yr chronicling worker considerations concerning the methods through which AI will affect careers. That influence is already being felt. A November examine confirmed a 21% reduction in job posts “for automation-prone jobs associated to writing and coding in comparison with jobs requiring manual-intensive expertise” since ChatGPT was launched.
Many specialists, nonetheless, are bullish on the constructive impacts of AI to scale back boring duties—and even to create new jobs altogether. “It’s regular to fret concerning the lack of jobs that comes with a brand new expertise,” writes futurist Frank Diana. “However there has at all times been concern round new applied sciences, and nearly with out fail, the brand new expertise has led to extra jobs than the earlier expertise ever allowed.”
One of many areas the place we’re already AI altering issues is in hiring. Whereas many firms have lengthy used AI to display screen candidates by way of applicant-tracking programs, extra are more likely to embrace AI within the course of in 2025.
In line with one current examine from Resume Builder, nearly 70% plan to use AI for some a part of the hiring course of by the tip of 2025. It’s not simply the preliminary vetting course of that’s remodeling: 23% of firms surveyed already depend on AI to conduct interviews and one other 19% mentioned they plan to begin utilizing AI for interviews inside the subsequent yr.
Adam Charlson, managing companion of Focus Search Companions, cautions against permitting AI to take over the method. “AI can rapidly sift by way of an unlimited pool of résumés and pinpoint people who finest match the key phrases in a job posting,” writes Charlson. “However can AI alone actually decide the most effective match for a place? The brief reply isn’t any. Whereas AI can do loads, it doesn’t replace a human when it comes to hiring.”
3. The backlash to DEI
This yr noticed many firms—together with Walmart, Lowe’s, Ford, John Deere, Harley Davidson, Jack Daniels, and Toyota—reduce DEI applications in response to conservative activism. Anti-DEI sentiment seems to be reaching some workers, too. In a November 2024 Pew examine, 23% of staff described focusing on DEI as “a bad thing” in contrast with 16% in 2023.
However DEI is not over, writes Out & Equal’s Erin Uritus and Witeck Communications, Inc.’s Bob Witeck. “The reality is that we’re not witnessing a sea change within the market or an erosion in public attitudes,” write Uritus and Witeck. “Most companies perceive that DEI is sweet for staff and good for enterprise.”
With the arrival of a brand new Trump administration, there’ll probably be further pressures on DEI programs. We’ll be watching fastidiously within the new yr to discover how companies dedicated to better fairness within the office rebrand or shift their efforts.
