2026 has somehow shown up at the doorstep, uninvited and suspiciously early. I am still nowhere close to halfway through my 2025 goals, yet the avalanche of “wrapped” messages and year-end posts has made it abundantly clear that the year is officially done and dusted, and that it is, apparently, time to put my feet up, review the year gone by, and start plotting the one ahead.
After all, ’tis the season. The whole world is busy wrapping something or the other, so it feels only fair that we put a giant, shiny bow on the world of work in 2025 too; take a quick look at the biggest work moments from 2025 and access how I fared on my predictions.
So, in the spirit of Spotify, YouTube, and every other platform that has turned reflection into a year-end ritual, here is the 2025 World of Work: Wrapped.
Track 1: “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits
“That ain’t workin’ / That’s the way you do it / Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free”
OpenAI committed to buying Nvidia chips for 10 gigawatts of new data center capacity. Nvidia committed to investing up to $100 billion dollars in OpenAI so OpenAI could buy those chips (and then started doubting its commitment a month later). Microsoft gave OpenAI office space and a lot of investment money, its stock surging on every OpenAI drop. Cloud giants Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, not to be outdone, funneled cash into AI startups, who promptly spent it right back on their compute power. Meta did its part in guzzling cloud computing too. This returning investment not only inflating financials and valuations is fueling even bigger data centers.
It’s a hypnotic ring dance of imaginary cash and I’ve started losing track of who is giving money to who. As long as no one let’s go, the borrowing party rolls on. But if someone doesn’t start making real money soon, the entire kumbaya bubble may just burst.
In the meantime, the common employee continues to worry about how to use this AI thing to improve efficiency and not lose their job. At the start of 2025, I predicted that GenAI is very much here; like it or not. And though we may debate the existence of the AI bubble; I think we can agree that we all nailed that prediction.
Track 2: “They Took Our Jobs” by Offbeat
“First they came for the fast-food workers/the guys you would pay when you ordered your burgers”
While big tech was busy lending money to one another, the number of jobs quietly vanishing kept climbing. I say ‘quietly’ because it failed to raise eyebrows the same way it did in 2023 and 2024. Per layoffs.fyi, 122,549 tech employees across 257 companies were laid off in 2025, only marginally lower than the 152,922 in 2024. DOJE followed the script too, trimming 71,981 US government roles. The term job security may soon be erased from our vocabulary and as an expectation.
AI reliably took center stage as the villain. True to my prediction, the era of “efficiency” did not drift away; it doubled down. Workforce planning (read: firings) moved to the front row, and while clear evidence of a deliberate “kill middle management” strategy is patchy outside of Microsoft’s news, there was plenty of talk about “fixing culture” and “removing blockers.” Ultimately, almost everyone in tech, except the ML and AI engineers, spent the year wondering when their login would suddenly stop working.
Track 3: “9 to 5” by Dolly Parton
“Workin’ 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin’ / Barely gettin’ by, it’s all takin’ and no givin”
Who can forget Jamie Dimon’s viral audio? Not me. While there were a series of memorable quotes, this one takes the cake – I call a lot of people on Fridays, and there’s not a goddamn person you can get a hold of?
Then Warren Buffett chimes in to say in his final Thanksgiving letter as CEO that he still goes to the office 5 days a week. Organizations continued to push employees back in-office with renewed vigor. Microsoft rolled out a mandatory 3-day policy starting late February 2026, Google tightened hybrid rules and curbed “work from anywhere” perks, while Panasonic scrapped its 4-day week trial mid-year.
Alas, 2025 did not resolve the flexibility debate; but it also didn’t stop making news. As much as I hoped that the conversation had run stale and would cease to be newsworthy, I was wrong. Not only did the 4-day week make zero mention except when thoroughly rejected, six days a week started feeling like a possibility. So, let’s just say I make mistakes too and my prediction that the topic will no longer dominate the news feed was wrong.
Track 4: “Respect” by Aretha Franklin
“R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me”
So many Dicks, so few of everyone else. That’s my pick for “campaign of the year.” e.l.f. Beauty’s board diversity stunt laid it out brutally: there are more men named Dick (Richard, Rich, Rick) on U.S. public company boards than entire groups of underrepresented people, with Dicks outnumbering Hispanic women 2:1, barely edged out by Black and Asian women, and outnumbering women of Middle Eastern descent 19:1—plus just three Native American women on those boards. In a year when many companies quietly scrubbed “DEI” from their websites and rebranded chiefs of diversity into “culture” or “people strategy” roles, e.l.f. dropping this campaign and keeping the website live nine months later feels almost subversive.
2025, though, was mostly a year of gloom for anyone who still gets excited about diversity and inclusion. Several U.S. states advanced or implemented anti-DEI legislation, large employers scaled back public DEI pledges, and global DEI job postings fell markedly from their 2020–2022 peaks. The words themselves—diversity, equity, inclusion, even “employee engagement” were steadily erased from corporate vocabulary, replaced by phrases like “efficiency” and “performance,” and much to my chagrin, my prediction that initiatives in this space would feel like an even steeper uphill climb held painfully true.
Track 5: “Pressure” by Billy Joel
“Don’t ask for help/ You’re all alone/ Pressure/ You’ll have to answer/ To your own”
The only people who maintained their work-life balance were probably the ones carrying out the Louvre heist. No wonder social media went crazy! Despite mental health days, manager toolkits, fewer meetings, and other fake wellness initiatives, balance stayed a pipe dream, with organizations giving zero hoots if employees were fried from job security jitters or endless grind. No amount of mindfulness can fix toxic workloads. “Quiet vacationing” trended as folks logged fake hours to fake rest. I’m waiting for Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 report to show us just how burnout we were this year.
To wrap up, let’s just say, both my predictions of sky-high fatigue and non-existent work-life balance held true. Score.
There’s of course a lot more that happened.To say 2025 has been an eventful year is an understatement. It definitely ensured it was just as, if not more happening than the years gone by. I am acutely aware that any attempt to summarize the last 12 months would be incomplete at best, yet that doesn’t mean we don’t try.
A complete list of events that deserve mention would take a year to compile but of all the things I missed mentioning above, the Coldplay Kiss Cam, rise of the term 6 7 (I am yet to figure what it means), aura farming, the push to rename Gulf of Mexico, the ongoing wars, and many elections kept the world spinning.
Personally, I took a few certifications, began hosting via AirBnB, joined the board of an NGO, went to a few concerts, spent more time with friends and let go of a few things that needed to be let go of. All said and done, it has been a bitter-sweet year.
So, as 2026 loiters impatiently at the door, this is a gentle nudge to pause. In the rush to enter 2026 strong, don’t forget to celebrate the experiments that worked, learn from the ones that didn’t, and give yourself credit for all the wins you clocked.
I hope wherever in the world you are; you are safe, happy and have a great start to 2026. Happy Holidays and I’ll see you soon!
The HR Business Partner Story 