News and Insights

Buckle up: 4 forces will shake up the world of work in 2025. Here’s how to support employees through the turbulence.

February 12, 2025

Disruptive forces are coming for the workplace yet again in 2025. And those forces will be difficult for employees, whose change fatigue has morphed into change exhaustion.

Now it’s more important than ever for organizational leaders to take an intentional, people-first approach to employee communications. The key? Before acting outward, first look inward and ask how you can bring stability and support to your most valuable asset: your employees.

Here are four disruptors that are already upending work—and how communicators can transform turbulence into strength.

FORCE 1: Dubbed “the biggest disruptor since the internet,” Gen AI will upend work in unpredictable ways.

Engagement risk: Your workforce gets left behind.

Some 64% of global CEOs will keep investing in AI, according to KPMG’s 2024 CEO Outlook—but only 38% say their workforce has the AI skill sets needed to fully leverage the tools’ benefits. That’s a sizable gap. And many employees haven’t joined the AI hype squad. A recent study found that 77% of workers who use AI say it decreased their productivity and added to their workload.

Engagement solution: Bring employees along for the AI ride.

Support AI investments with investments in employee communications and workforce training. Demystify AI for employees by making clear your company’s AI plans and the business benefit. And make AI personally relevant by laying out the opportunity it presents for their career growth, skill building and learning. Informal sessions with leadership on AI topics are easy to implement and give employees exposure, experience and confidence.

FORCE 2: Company leaders will accelerate M&A and deals plans.

Engagement risk: Your employees can’t find their footing.

According to KPMG, 54% of CEOs have a “high M&A appetite.” CEOs responding to a Gartner survey named growth as their top strategic priority for 2024-2025. But the human side of combination events often get a short shrift. Bringing two companies together with different values, histories, and modes of working is a long game.

Engagement solution: Unify employees with a renewed sense of purpose.

While discombobulating, mergers also are rare opportunities to re-energize cultures that may have stagnated. Take advantage. Revisit your employee value proposition, or EVP, and make sure you’ve got a solid foundation for change communications in place. This is a great time to create or refresh reward and recognition programs, which can celebrate successes and positively reinforce new values and behaviors.

FORCE 3: Mental health challenges will continue to strain the workforce and the workplace.

Engagement risk: Chronic strain leads to chronic disengagement.

Worker mental health remains an intractable concern. Indeed’s 2024 Global Work Wellbeing Report found that 59% of all employees “feel stressed at work most of the time.”

Engagement solution: Model a culture of caring, and back it up with clear solutions.

Campaigns that normalize conversations about mental health help, but that’s only part of the equation. Year-round benefits communications remind people that solutions and support are always available. One in four employees say they don’t know if their employer offers mental health care coverage, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

FORCE 4: CEOs will push more stringent return-to-office policies. Those who embrace flexibility will enjoy a talent advantage.

Engagement risk: Top talent will leave you.

Flexibility is the number one reason people accepted a new job in 2024, according to Korn Ferry’s Workforce 2024 report. Forced five-day-a-week RTO policies are still unpopular: Employees at high risk of leaving jobs because of them include executives, highly skilled workers and women.

Engagement solution: Develop policies (and communications) with the needs of your workforce in mind.

Take the time to understand the full risk of RTO policies. Know what your top talent, who are difficult and costly to replace, value and want. If changes are warranted, rather than issuing a top-down mandate, the better communications approach is to create a sense of communal benefit.

Employers can prove on-site work has value by providing team-building experiences and opportunities to work on innovative projects that can be more satisfying in person. A recent RTO article in the Harvard Business Review noted that leaders should focus on “making the office an energizing environment where employees want to be.”

There is a fifth force that should be added to this list—the unknown. Trade wars, wars, the next pandemic: No matter what threat comes calling, leading through disruption means putting employees at the center of communications plans from the outset. After all, your people are the heroes of your story and quite literally the health and lifeblood of your business.