3 workplace trends that will define 2025 These are some of the biggest topics that will influence the way we all work next year.
These are some of the biggest topics that will influence the way we all work next year.
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This year has seen no shortage of terms to describe the new ways we work.
As 2024 comes to a close, Fast Company’s Work Life team has been thinking about the major trends we’ve seen this year—but also what the new year will bring. Here are some of the biggest stories we’ll be monitoring in 2025.
1. The fight over RTO
Why are we still talking about a return to office? We’ve been chronicling the push to get workers back into physical offices for over three years now, but the rift between what most employees want (flexibility and a hybrid schedule) and what some leaders want (in-office collaboration and a return to pre-pandemic workplace norms) remains. As much as everyone wants to move on from this debate, we’re likely to see more companies adjust their policies in 2025, especially following major employers like Amazon deciding to bring workers back to the office five days a week.
Even with additional in-office pressure, many companies will still commit to some version of hybrid work. “Hybrid work is the new normal,” Sam Naficy, CEO of the employee visibility and productivity intelligence software provider Prodoscore, tells writer Stephanie Vozza. “Despite the push for in-office mandates, hybrid work is here to stay, driven by the need for flexibility. Few companies will fully revert to all-office models without risking talent loss.”
Of course, in some cases, RTO office mandates may actually be designed to get workers to quit. Last month, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are set to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency, wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal expressing the hope that requiring federal workers to come in to an office full-time would lead to resignations. “Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the COVID-era privilege of staying home,” they wrote.
2. AI affecting jobs—and hiring
We’ve spent much of this year chronicling employee concerns about the ways in which AI will affect careers. That impact is already being felt. A November study showed a 21% reduction in job posts “for automation-prone jobs related to writing and coding compared to jobs requiring manual-intensive skills” since ChatGPT was introduced.
Many experts, however, are bullish on the positive impacts of AI to reduce boring tasks—and even to create new jobs altogether. “It is normal to worry about the loss of jobs that comes with a new technology,” writes futurist Frank Diana. “But there has always been fear around new technologies, and almost without fail, the new technology has led to more jobs than the previous technology ever allowed.”
One of the areas where we’re already AI changing things is in hiring. While many companies have long used AI to screen candidates through applicant-tracking systems, more are likely to embrace AI in the process in 2025.
According to one recent study from Resume Builder, nearly 70% plan to use AI for some part of the hiring process by the end of 2025. It’s not just the initial vetting process that is transforming: 23% of companies surveyed already rely on AI to conduct interviews and another 19% said they plan to start using AI for interviews within the next year.
Adam Charlson, managing partner of Focus Search Partners, cautions against allowing AI to take over the process. “AI can quickly sift through a vast pool of résumés and pinpoint those that best match the keywords in a job posting,” writes Charlson. “But can AI alone truly determine the best fit for a position? The short answer is no. While AI can do a lot, it doesn’t replace a human when it comes to hiring.”
3. The backlash to DEI
This year saw many companies—including Walmart, Lowe’s, Ford, John Deere, Harley Davidson, Jack Daniels, and Toyota—scale back DEI programs in response to conservative activism. Anti-DEI sentiment appears to be reaching some employees, too. In a November 2024 Pew study, 23% of workers described focusing on DEI as “a bad thing” compared with 16% in 2023.
But DEI is not over, writes Out & Equal’s Erin Uritus and Witeck Communications, Inc.’s Bob Witeck. “The truth is that we are not witnessing a sea change in the marketplace or an erosion in public attitudes,” write Uritus and Witeck. “Most businesses understand that DEI is good for workers and good for business.”
With the arrival of a new Trump administration, there will likely be additional pressures on DEI programs. We’ll be watching carefully in the new year to explore how businesses committed to greater equity in the workplace rebrand or shift their efforts.
No, not shrimp Jesus—though that’s noteworthy, too. We’re talking about what TikTok could be planning with AI influencers.
[Images: arcady_31/Getty Images; lukedesign/Getty Images; Dan Cristian Pădureț/Unsplash]
BY Michael Grothaus5 minute read
There’s been a popular theory floating around conspiracy circles for about seven or eight years now. It’s called the “Dead Internet” theory, and its main argument is that the organic, human-created content that powered the early web in the 1990s and 2000s has been usurped by artificially created content, which now dominates what people see online. Hence, the internet is “dead” because the content most of us consume is no longer created by living beings (humans).
But there’s another component to the theory—and this is where the conspiracy part comes into play. The Dead Internet theory states that this move from human-created content to artificially generated content was purposeful, spearheaded by governments and corporations in order to exploit control over the public’s perception.
Now, as a novelist, I love this theory. What a great setup for a tense techno-thriller! But as a journalist, I always thought it seemed pretty bonkers. That is, until recently. Lately, the Dead Internet theory is starting to look less conspiracy and more prophetic—well, at least in part.
AI slime
Let me address the conspiracy part of the theory first. While all nation-states and corporations try to control narratives to some degree, it’s unlikely that any one or even group of them got together and said, “Hey, let’s get rid of all the human-generated content online and replace it with artificially created content.” It would be too arduous a task and would require tens of thousands—maybe even hundreds of thousands—of people to keep their mouths shut so the public never finds out.
But the first part of the theory—that the internet’s human-created content is being replaced with artificially generated content—not only seems possible, it’s starting to feel plausible. This idea got its start sometime in the 2010s as bots became more and more prevalent on social media platforms. But an old-school bot never had the technological ability to generate completely fabricated images, videos, websites, and news articles. AI does.
Ever since ChatGPT burst onto the scenes in late 2022, people have been using it to generate content for websites, social media posts, and articles of all kinds. People have also been using AI image-generation tools to create an unending flood of photos, videos, and artwork, which now abound on mainstream social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok.
In recent months, this flood of AI-generated content has gotten especially bad on TikTok. Sometimes every second or third video I see in the app is AI-generated at every level: from the script to the narration to the accompanying images. And man, don’t get me started on Facebook—I mean, can I introduce you to shrimp Jesus?
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