It’s the season of the internet running amok with predictions for 2025, be it astrology, finance, markets or HR. While I haven’t been consistently publishing my list of trends as I do my word of the year, here are two reasons why this is one set of predictions you shouldn’t miss:
- I’m not trying to sell you anything. Thus, anything I write on this blog is not influenced by any ulterior motive. I can be unabashedly genuine with my opinions. [though if you do enjoy the blog, I would not stop you from buying me a coffee (or two)].
- No other article out there publishes an assessment on how they did on their predictions the year before, thereby breaking one of the only two cardinal rules when it comes to predictions.
Thus, without ado, let’s begin with a quick assessment on how I did with my 2024 predictions.
I started by predicting that ‘uncertainty’ would continue to be the theme of the year and it sure was. With escalations in global unrest, climate change continuing to cause havoc, multiple elections, the fight over in office vs hybrid vs virtual; certainty ensured it stayed out of the picture. As for the five trends,
✔GenAI: It was hard to escape the word and, while each organization may still be somewhere on the learning curve, it definitely sucked the air out of every room. 2025 started with Microsoft and Google adding its AI assistant to email clients as a mandatory add-on, and it doesn’t look like the GenAI craze is fading into the background anytime soon.
✔Return to Office: With a few big announcements of organizations either demanding employees return to an office full-time or a certain number of days, return to office definitely dominated conversations. It will continue to stay top of mind in 2025, but we’ll try not make our 2025 predictions a repeat of 2024.
✘Fixing the trust deficit: Some predictions are more wishes, less reality. While there was definitely a trust deficit, I didn’t spot instances of organizations sweeping in to fix it. In fact, we may have swung a little to the opposite end, widening the chasm. Trust is hard won and easily lost. Sure, we didn’t fix the trust deficit in 2024 but 2025 is a brand-new page, but let’s be honest, this isn’t going to be a year of trust. So, I’ll let this one lie.
✔Anxiety will continue to be high: And how! While we didn’t see the same slew of layoffs, we did see newsworthy levels of anxiety and accidents caused thereof. From employees committing suicides (over four cases in the news in four months), to wondering if every call for efficiency was yet another layoff, not knowing when the company will flip it’s decision on working from the office, geopolitical unrest, the US elections – it all let to a high-anxiety year. Here’s hoping 2025 will be different.
✔Moving in increments vs giant leaps: Not a lot of earth-shattering innovation made its way into the world of work (with the exception of GenAI for organizations that embraced it). Most moves were incremental but I have a feeling 2025 will see a few giant leaps even if it is a giant flip backwards.
As for the not-a trends, I scored a perfect 3/3. The four-day workweek, pay transparency and the word ‘great’ all found themselves kicked out of the mainstream conversation, and especially implementation. We may have talked about the first two but we didn’t do much with it. As for the word ‘great’ – I think after hearing it being used incessantly in the US elections, everyone else decided to drop it.
There you go! An almost perfect score except one slight blip. It almost makes me want to call it a day and never make a prediction again.
But – fear isn’t the name of the game and the show must go on. Let’s get to our 2025 predictions.
The big trends of the year
Butchering diversity: Donald Trump’s quote on there being only two genders in the world and consequent steps to back up this statement is a moment that will forever stay etched in 2025’s memory. IDE, EDI, DEI – call it what you want, is taking a leap backwards. In 2024, Mali passed its first law criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual acts. Georgia passed a new law banning any legal recognition to same-sex couples, legal gender recognition, and information about LGBTI people in public spheres. In the United States, 574 bills have been directly targeting the LGBTQ+ community. With the increase in anti-gender movements, organizations have made multiple decisions impacting the field of IDE either by optimizing the size of their diversity initiatives or the people driving them. It is unfair to say that there haven’t been bright spots. Namibia and Dominica decriminalized consensual same-sex sexual acts, while legal gender recognition based on self-determination became a reality in Ecuador and Germany. The list of countries where same-sex marriage is legal now includes Thailand, Estonia, and Greece, while Latvia introduced civil unions and the right to marry for same-sex couples was affirmed in Aruba and Curaçao.
However, 2025 will be the year where initiatives in this space will feel like a tougher uphill climb. With the latest on Meta killing its IDE initiatives, this space is definitely one to watch.
Trimming the middle: Efficiency has definitely been the prevalent theme for the past two years and 2025 will be more of the same. I want to draw special attention to the theme of workforce planning. Workforce planning has always been key but as organizations take a closer look at middle and senior management in an attempt to make the organization flatter, the term has taken on a whole new meaning. The number of open job roles with the term workforce planning has seen a marked increase and so has the use of the term in everyday life of an HR professional. While the words may mean different things in different organizations, there is definitely a trend of culling middle management in the name of making organizations leaner and reducing bureaucracy. As organizations get innovative in the space of doing more with less, be assured that you’ll find me looking more closely at how this topic is being tackled at different organizations.
Rise of Incivility: Most HR trend articles have been more of the same; except this one. I genuinely think SHRM is on to something when they listed the rise of incivility as a trend for 2025. For a while I had been struggling to place a term on the behaviour that’s been on the rise and I think they’ve done a better job capturing it than I can. Thus, I am going to drag and drop a quote from the article instead of spinning up my own. If the world seems less courteous or empathetic lately, you’re not imagining it. SHRM launched its civility campaign in 2024 precisely because of “rising concerns about an incivility in society that’s bubbling up and overflowing into the workforce,”. The SHRM Q3 2024 Civility Index survey of more than 1,600 U.S. workers, conducted Aug. 27-Sept. 4, 2024, proved these concerns to be well-founded. Workers said they experience 190 million acts of incivility per day, 58% of which happen in the workplace. The biggest drivers of incivility were: Political viewpoints, Disagreements on social issues, Generational gaps, Racial or ethnic differences and the direction of U.S. society.
GenAI: I have to call this out. While adoption of GenAI may see incremental improvement at the workplace, the fight between compliance, security and efficiency will be heightened with organizations struggling to find the right balance. There is no doubt that some big techs have already zoomed ahead with adoption but for the majority, the power of GenAI and efficient LLMs still feel like the future. Last week I shared with a friend that GenAI is currently aiding with code tests and documentation. When they went back and discussed it with their colleagues, there was a sense of disbelief and denial. 2025 has to be the year where every individual gets savvy with what’s coming vs being taken by surprise. GenAI is very much here, irrespective of whether you like it or not.
Fatigue: Can you venture a guess on what happens when all of the above are a trend? Fatigue. And thus, it should come as no surprise if the workforce is highly exhausted this year. As a consequence, the appetite for change will see a decline, initiatives will meet higher resistance and while compliance to top-down asks may increase, engagement will decline, leading to a rise in soft quitting. After over five years of changing at breakneck speed, maybe 2025 is the year we get intentional about which change we push down the throat of employees’ and which ones we park for later. At some point, we will need to recognize that change fatigue is real and no real gain can be made with a highly fatigued workforce.
Not a trend
Work-life balance: We can want it all we want but the ‘year of efficiency’ is an oxymoron to work-life balance. I can confidently say that this will not be a trend this year. Of course, I will keep my eyes open for the odd policy or initiative that may pop up in this space but as a rule, it’ll be more of a ‘squeeze the orange harder’ year.
Generations as an excuse: 2025 marks the birth of a brand-new generation; the Gen Betas are here. However, say what we might about the entry of Gen Z in office, millennials in middle and senior management; not a lot will change thanks to the change in the generational composition of the workforce. I don’t anticipate seeing much generational discussion pop up and I don’t anticipate being wrong.
Return to office: Let’s face it – after talking about whether we work from the office or home for a few years now, the entire discussion on return to office has run pretty stale. While we may still pretend to be shocked by some organizations demanding their employees return to the office five days a week, the topic will no longer dominate the news feed.
There you go! Those are my predictions for 2025. Per usual, we will return in 12 months to assess which ones I got right but until then, which ones do you agree with? Are there key themes I missed? Let me know in the comments below.
Oh – as for the second rule of predictions – there is no such thing as a wrong prediction. It just hasn’t happened yet 😉
The HR Business Partner Story 
I totally agree that incivility in the workplace will increase in 2025. That SHRM article hit the nail on the heard. The political climate and racial or ethnic differences in the U.S. has society in an anxiety ridden state. I also agree that fatigue will be a trend in 2025.
I really hope both SHRM & I turn out to be wrong at the end 🙂 Thank you so much for continuing to read the blog! It’s good to see you here.