The uptick in Intergenerational Mentoring Circles is one of my favorite emerging workplace trends for 2025. Several companies are revolutionizing mentoring by creating structured programs where Gen Z employees teach digital skills to senior colleagues, while simultaneously learning institutional knowledge and strategic thinking from those same professionals. It's an important trend because it addresses two critical workplace challenges simultaneously: the digital skills gap among senior leaders and the institutional knowledge gap among younger employees. Intergenerational mentoring fosters more cohesive and adaptable teams, while enhancing retention across all age groups. Major corporations like P&G, Citibank, General Electric, Fidelity, Cisco, and Target have all found success running reverse mentoring programs across different business areas as a competitive advantage tool and to solve business challenges. To bring this trend effectively to your organization, design programs that emphasize mutual benefit rather than one-way knowledge transfer. Focus on creating psychological safety so senior employees feel comfortable being "students", and set clear learning objectives for both parties to ensure measurable outcomes. Establish success metrics, including skill assessments, engagement surveys, and project collaboration outcomes.
The Silent Skills Revolution: Why "Soft Skills" Are Dead (And What's Replacing Them) The most surprising workplace trend hitting us in 2025? Companies are finally ditching the term "soft skills" and recognizing what I call "Power Skills" - the strategic capabilities that actually drive business results. I'm seeing job descriptions that list "conflict resolution" and "emotional regulation" right alongside technical requirements. Not as nice-to-haves, but as core competencies with measurable KPIs attached. Here's why this matters: We've spent decades treating communication, empathy, and strategic thinking like personality traits instead of learnable, scalable business skills. Meanwhile, companies hemorrhaged talent and missed revenue targets because their "high performers" couldn't collaborate, give feedback, or adapt under pressure. The shift happened when organizations started connecting the dots between people skills and profit margins. Turns out, that manager who creates psychological safety isn't just "nice" - their team delivers 67% more breakthrough innovations. The leader who can navigate difficult conversations doesn't just keep peace - they prevent the costly dysfunction that kills productivity. My advice for leaders jumping on this trend: Stop outsourcing people development to HR. If you're a director expecting someone else to teach your team how to give difficult feedback or manage up effectively, you're missing the strategic advantage. These skills directly impact your bottom line. Get specific about measurement. "Better communication" isn't a goal - "reduced project revision cycles by 30% through clearer stakeholder alignment" is. Track the business impact, not just the feel-good metrics. Invest like you mean it. Companies dropping $50K on new software but balking at $5K for conflict resolution training are making backwards investments. Your people problems are costing you more than your tech problems. The organizations winning this transition are treating power skills like any other competitive advantage - something you develop systematically, measure relentlessly, and leverage strategically. Because here's the truth: in a world where AI can handle the technical work, your humans' ability to think, connect, and adapt isn't just important - it's your only sustainable differentiator.
So far this year, as we've seen divestment in diversity, equity, and inclusion programs driven by shifts in federal expectations, another trend has emerged in the workplace: a renewed focus on meritocracy. This has been especially visible at companies like Amazon and Google, who both recently adjusted their compensation and performance strategies to provide outsized rewards to top performers. Generally, I'm aligned with this trend when it's implemented carefully. High performers often do drive significant value for the business, and their contributions should be reflected meaningfully in their rewards. However, our more average performers still support in many valuable and exceptional ways. As we think through similar changes we need to be mindful about how they impact this group, ensuring that they feel motivated and inspired to do better, and not disregarded or under-appreciated. With respect to paying high performers, I often advocate for creating additional budgets rather than reallocating funds which can feel penalizing to average performers. Both groups are necessary for business success and should be recognized accordingly. I also advise revisiting the use of restrictive performance distributions. When too few people can be rated highly, it creates environments where peers may feel forced to compete rather than collaborate. Instead, expanding room for more high ratings, while still maintaining guardrails and very clear definitions, enables leaders to recognize talent more equitably without fostering scarcity or resentment. Finally, as we evolve our approach to rewarding top performers, we need to consider how these changes impact our broader pay policies across base salary, bonus, and equity. We may need to rethink and adjust our programs and frameworks to ensure they are equitable, sustainable, and aligned with our long-term business goals and overall strategy. Overall, I support the shift toward rewarding impact. However, I also believe we must balance that with care for our steady, solid performers. My advice is to make expectations clear and attainable, offering support and growth opportunities, and ensure people feel valued even if they're not always at the top.
How Body Doubling Became the Most Unexpected Productivity Trend of 2025 In the age of hybrid work and digital overload, a quiet trend is gaining momentum: cowork video companionship. Also known as virtual coworking, this practice pairs individuals via video call to work silently alongside each other, often with a brief check-in and check-out. Platforms like Focusmate have logged over 5 million sessions, with 93% of users reporting improved productivity. As isolation, screen fatigue, and attention fragmentation continue to challenge remote teams, this low-pressure, high-focus format offers a surprisingly effective alternative to traditional collaboration. My take? This trend isn't just a productivity hack—it's a cultural shift. Cowork video companionship taps into something deeply human: the desire to be seen without needing to perform. It's rooted in body doubling, a practice long used by people with ADHD to stay focused by working in the quiet presence of another person. The psychology is sound, and the use cases are expanding—from freelancers to founders, students to solopreneurs. It provides presence without pressure and structure without surveillance, and it's helping remote professionals find rhythm in a world of digital chaos. For those considering this trend, my advice is simple: start small, be consistent, and stay flexible. Try a few sessions on Focusmate or set up weekly cowork blocks with a colleague over Zoom. Observe how it impacts your focus, stress, and output. You don't need to overhaul your workflow—just integrate the companionship where it counts. In a world where "togetherness" is increasingly virtual, body doubling might be the most human productivity tool we didn't know we needed.
The rise in the freelance workforce was already hastening, but the incredible pace of women racing for independent work is a trend we should all pay close attention to. As women leaders continue to lose ground in corporate environments, they are finding agency and economic opportunity as solopreneurs. This trend is an economic and reputation risk for brands who need the empathy and lived experiences of their customers and community represented across the business. For leaders building strong, agile workforces, it's time to get creative to keep these critical voices in the workforce. One strategy to attract and retain these leaders is to think beyond the traditional employment model, instead building flexible, blended teams of employees and independents working in close collaboration. Shifting from a default-FTE model to one where we distribute work to project-based teams, spun up more quickly and without the long-term commitment, allows workers the ability to contribute while maintaining schedule autonomy. My advice for anyone considering building a blended team or entering into the independent workforce is to get very clear about scope. What is the job to be done? And what skills are needed to do it? Remove the old expectations of how to get there, because the innovation coming from AI and the independent workforce means women can meaningfully participate in our economy in new and exciting ways without the burnout of our post-pandemic era.
One of the most surprising workplace trends in 2025 (at least to me) is the emergence of agentic AI, not as a distant concept, but as a real, operational shift in how work gets done. This is not about passive tools or helpful copilots anymore. These AI agents are now handling everything from meeting scheduling and onboarding to expense approvals...document drafting, autonomously. When late last year Salesforce co-founder and CEO, Marc Benioff, said "we are really at the edge of a revolutionary transformation" when it comes to using digital labor, most of us couldn't even tell what digital labor is. And yet, just last month, Salesforce's research on CHRO's views on agentic AI revealed that 80 per cent think that "within five years, most workforces will have humans and AI agents/digital labor working together." Many companies have moved passed the experimenting stage. Leaders at Microsoft, Salesforce, IBM, and others are already reframing roles with this in mind. Even their messaging is clear in that direction, in the near future, every employee will manage a portfolio of AI agents, essentially becoming a team leader of digital collaborators. This is not just a tech upgrade. It's a mindset shift. Managing people and managing agents require very different skills. We're moving fast from delegating tasks to defining logic, setting thresholds for autonomy, and teaching AI when to handle something itself and when to raise its hand and say, 'I think you'd better take this one.' It's both exciting and unsettling, especially for roles built on execution rather than strategy. My advice for individuals and organizations is to adapt. Fast. You'd need to start small and pilot an agent in a real workflow. Learn how to supervise, audit, and co-create with these systems. Focus not only on productivity gains but on the redesign of human roles around this new digital workforce. This also means developing new skills, like prompt strategy, process design, digital judgment, and the ability to set boundaries that tell AI when to act and when to step aside - or critical thinking if you'd like. Everyone is concerned about AI. What most don't realize is that the real differentiator isn't whether you use AI but whether you know how to lead it.
One trend I've observed in 2025 is that many organizations appear to be shifting away from being people- and employee-centric to being more leader- and technology-centric. For the better part of the decade, "Employee Experience" was a central idea. Defining your Employee Value Proposition (EVP), and creating a culture where employees truly thrive was top of mind. The "culture wars," which hit a tipping point in 2020 (and again in 2024 with the election), coupled with the dehumanizing rhetoric from the current Administration, created a situation where many companies either shifted or deprioritized certain "People & Culture" Initiatives. Add in the emergence and increased utilization of AI, and many companies are seemingly making AI central to their positioning and overarching value prop. This has led to some uncertainty for employees, as well as some fear-mongering about AI taking jobs, all resulting in the increased deprioritization of the employee experience Advice? While it is necessary to consider how you're leveraging and utilizing emerging technology, simply put, you can't forget about your people. As long as any organization has employees, their experience should remain a priority. People want to work in organizations that align with their values, and feeling like you're a "cog in the technology wheel" will ultimately lead to adverse consequences (e.g. - retention issues, disengagement, etc.) The companies that figure out how to prioritize the human/employee experience at work, while also keeping up with emerging technology, are the ones who will win.
In 2025, the most future-ready companies aren't asking 'Where are you working from?'—they're asking 'What did you move forward today?' We're prioritizing outcomes over outputs, and outdated office culture with systems that reward clarity, creativity, efficiency and speed. We're an asynchronous-first organization. That means fewer meetings and more momentum. We don't gather on Zoom to prove we're working; we create Loom videos, build shared documentation, and give people the time and space to create in a manner that works best for them. The result is sharper thinking and stronger ownership. We're also an AI-native company, so AI is a partner in our work, not a threat. Our teams use it to write, synthesize, research, freeing up time and brainpower for strategy and storytelling. AI takes the repetition, we keep the strategy and relationships. And while some leaders are doubling down on rigid RTO mandates, we've doubled down on trust. We don't monitor keystrokes. We don't care if someone is building a pitch deck in a cafe in London or reviewing press targets from their lake house in Wisconsin. What matters is the work product and how it's diving outcomes for our clients. The companies clinging to control are losing talent and time. If your team still measures productivity by hours online or office attendance, you're not just behind, you're building a business for a workforce that no longer exists.
Companies with a future-forward culture are openly embracing their dynamic team members' "career portfolios" and digital footprint. Businesses that see the proliferation of technology and deployment of AI as the future, view their team talent outside of work as a value-add versus a brand liability. This new wave of companies highlighting and reposting their staff's wins is reframing visibility as a shared asset, where individual thought leadership, podcast features, or side ventures become a signal of trust, not a threat. It is a shift from controlling the narrative to co-authoring it. I see this trend of career portfolio diversification as a necessary response to digital platforms cementing the online presence. This acceptance allows top performers to expand their reach while also remaining in their role, ultimately preventing attrition at their current company. I advise employees to create online executive presence and to build a brand that puts their core values at the center of their messaging.
The workplace development in 2025 brought unexpected changes through the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs at specific U.S. organizations. The recent administration's actions have created damaging consequences for DEI programs throughout the United States. This trend does not make DEI the villain of this story. Far from it. These initiatives were created to protect underrepresented groups, including women, people of color, individuals with disabilities, younger and older workers, LGBTQ+ members, and those from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The DEI programs were established to provide support to these specific groups of people. We are currently facing this challenging situation despite all efforts to address it. The withdrawal of these programs by specific organizations occurred because of external pressures and fear. This situation brings extreme disappointment to everyone involved. Every organization has made different choices about their path forward. Luckily there are several courageous organizations that maintain their commitment to inclusion practices. Organizations strengthen their inclusion efforts because they recognize it serves a moral and ethical purpose. The ethical thing. The organizations understand that developing belonging for employees serves both moral obligations and business needs. Take a moment to think about this. The investment in your employees represents more than satisfying a business requirement. You're building something bigger. A workplace built on inclusion produces a high performance environment for all stakeholders to win. And isn't that what every organization wants? Every organization aims to be a leader in innovation, and inclusion is key to achieving this. Hiring diverse talent is just one part of the strategy. Empowering and inspiring employees requires leadership training to unlock their full potential. Some companies received negative reactions when they implemented DEI initiatives. Target Corporation has received criticism for ending its DEI initiatives. The lesson here shows us to move forward instead of withdrawing. To invest. Organizations must devote resources to their workforce during challenging times. Your organization achieves its strength through the people who maintain its operations. Your organization's strength depends on the people who work there so it remains unclear what you actually build when you fail to invest in them.
Companies are spending serious money on what happens in the fifteen minutes between meetings, and it's working. I keep seeing our clients move their good coffee machines away from kitchens and closer to couches and whiteboards. One law firm asked us to put their premium espresso setup right next to their informal meeting area. Six months later, their office manager told me associates from different practice groups were actually talking to each other while waiting for their drinks. Real conversations about cases, not just small talk. These random encounters are solving problems that formal meetings never touched. Start with your break spaces and ask yourself if they accidentally isolate people or naturally bring them together. Sometimes the best team building happens when nobody's trying to build a team.
Async core hours One of the most surprising trends in 2025 is that teams are no longer working the exact same hours, instead there are two short focus windows per day where employees and team members overlap for any meetings, live discussions or brainstorming sessions. Other than those short, scheduled focus windows, the rest of the hours are async. With the flexibility to work hours that are suitable to each person, having those one or two core overlapping windows allows people to stay aligned, connected and get the work that needs to be done together without risking burnout. The rest of the flexible hours gives employees the chance to really focus and prioritize their workload without constant pings or endless zoom meetings. This is a smart way to stay connected but still flexible and ensure that teams are aligned and team members are on top of their tasks. However, it is necessary for anyone adopting this trend to clearly define the windows that will overlap and stick to them. Make them a routine check-in so that it becomes a necessity and keeps everyone connected. You can also use these windows for decision-making that requires the entire team instead of just useless updates that can be sent via email. Just keep in mind that this strategy requires clear documentation and task ownership with use of productivity tools that keep you connected and informed of what team members are doing or when they've completed a task or need your feedback.
Coffee badging has been growing over the past year, but it’s really taken hold as more and more offices force employees to show face at the office without building a culture that makes them want to show up in person. There’s a new rhythm to office life, but it isn’t always a bad thing if you’re building your team dynamics right. We sometimes see our hybrid team show up for a couple of hours, huddle up to solve a specific problem, and then they’re gone. It might look a bit like the coffee badging trend, but it’s actually helping us see even better, more purposeful engagement. Offices are now a tool for specific, high-value human interactions, not a place for eight hours of typing. I’ll sometimes see a finance person and one of our care coordinators huddled in a meeting room for 90 minutes, thrashing out an NDIS budget for a client. It’s a conversation that needs trust and a rapid back-and-forth that just feels clumsy on a video call. Our data tells the same story. Our desk occupancy is down about 40%, which used to worry me, but our bookings for small meeting rooms are up over 50%. The office has stopped being the primary place for quiet work and has become the dedicated hub for teamwork. Stop looking at empty desks and feeling anxious. Instead, walk around and observe what your meeting rooms are being used for. Ask yourself if your office is designed for 2019-style solitary work, or if people are thriving with more collaborative workflows. If you trust your team and provide a great space for the work that is best done together, they will use it when it matters. Look at the performance data and talk to your people to gauge engagement. When you build the culture around connection rather than obligation, you get better collaboration and a team that feels respected, which is a far better outcome than just seeing warm bodies in chairs.
I think the most surprising workplace trend these days is just how much companies are leaning into AI content creation and they're overlooking AI for auditing and solving problems. AI is definitely great for assisting with creative, if it's in the right hands. But I think the real exponential value is coming from diagnostics. So feed ChatGPT, Claude, whatever, your sales calls, customer complaints, internal processes, and ask questions like "What patterns am I missing?" AI can spot contradictions in your messaging, gaps in your processes, and patterns in customer behaviors that you're likely too close to notice. It's like having a full-time, objective consultant analyzing your business 24/7.
A surprising trend of 2025 is the movement towards four-day workweeks for construction workers. Something previously deemed impossible for hands-on trades is now catching on. Workers are employed for four 10-hour days rather than five 8-hour days. The intention is to maintain skilled employees, minimize fatigue, and promote retention during a tight labor market. We experimented with this schedule on some of the teams. Outcomes were obvious: greater concentration, less absenteeism, and improved morale. The additional day off became a motivator. Productivity remained even as the teams recognized they had less time to squander. Customers didn't notice delays. In most situations, jobs were completed sooner because of improved planning and minimal distractions. But this works only with discipline. Logistics on the job site have to be precise. Deliveries, inspections, and subcontractors must be scheduled with precision. One delay can throw off the entire day. That's why we only instituted this after we made project workflows more efficient and enhanced team accountability. If you are thinking of making this change, begin with your best team. Clarify expectations. Gauge outcomes, completion rates, mistakes, and callbacks. A condensed week will not repair inefficiencies. It reveals them. When the framework is sound, however, the reward is tangible, greater output, improved allegiance, and a work culture that values both time and product.
I wouldn't have believed, or predicted, that I would find my leading performer and best professional 57 years old behind the wheel not only for his experience but for his ability to embrace AI enabled navigation more quickly than I envisioned. One of the most unexpected workplace trends of 2025 is the significantly faster rates of adoption of AI tools by blue-collar services professionals, especially in low-tech roles like private driver. When/where we started Mexico-City-Private-Driver.com, we expected young recruits to lead the way. It was our older, seasoned chauffeurs who quickly recognized that AI was not a threat, but a real chance to keep themselves relevant and they have become our most requested drivers. For example, drivers relying on our AI timed dispatch system reduced average pick-up time by 22% and also made 31% fewer deviations to their originally requested routes just in the first quarter! One driver even learned to prompt our dispatch assistant better than most techies I have met before. It was never age that was the problem. It was mindset. To others who recognize this trend; do not assume that the younger-than-you team members will be the ones to adopt. Offer tools that build trust by being intuitive and reliable. We did not "train" our drivers; we equipped them. We let drivers interrogate the system, apply some stress testing, and make suggestions to improve. That gave us some real buy-in. If you work in logistics, service, or any customer facing role, treat team members like your innovation partners not just users. It may just shift your expectations — and your outcomes!
The most important workplace trend I'm seeing this year is a shift towards AI-driven upskilling of the existing workforce. Trying to hire externally for every new AI skill is a losing game for most SMBs because the talent pool is too small and expensive. We're seeing smart businesses invest more in their current teams, who already know your business and show real curiosity. When we adopted an AI system for predictive maintenance on our CNC machines, for example, we trained one of our most experienced machinists to become our internal expert, and he successfully championed it with the whole team. Within the next three months, we saw unplanned machine downtime drop by 25%. And since investing in more AI training, we've seen employee retention increase by 14%. Look for that curiosity in your own ranks first. According to Deloitte, only 17% of businesses are actively investing in AI training their own people, so there's a lot of ground to make up. Make AI literacy a core part of your business strategy, not just an IT department issue.
Across industries, we're seeing issues arise because good jobs are becoming more scarce. Today's workforce has higher expectations for purpose and growth. When people feel forced into roles they dislike, that sense of being trapped is more intense than ever before. Thanks to the transparency of social media and professional networks, they can see others thriving in better company cultures, which magnifies their own frustrations. People feel forced into roles they dislike, making them actively disengaged. When they feel that there are no other options, an employee's frustrations can actively harm the business through costly mistakes, poor customer service, and a negative attitude that can poison a whole team. A booming job market isn't the magic cure for engagement that many leaders think it is. A strong economy gives the most frustrated employees an exit, but it doesn't automatically inspire the ones who remain to do a good job. It simply shifts the mood from angry to indifferent. And that indifference silently kills work quality. That's partly why we've built our entire business philosophy on actively inspiring our team and refusing to let them feel like they are just clocking in and out. Forward-thinking businesses are doubling down on their investments in L&D so employees feel that they have a path to career growth. An electrician who joins us knows they have a real career path, rather than just a job. In a world with so much anxiety about automation and skills becoming obsolete, providing a clear map for career growth is how you prove you're invested in your people's future rather than their outputs. An electrician who joins us knows they have a real career path because we actively help them get certified in complex commercial systems, become specialists in new technologies like generator installation, or even move into project management. When people know they are growing and their skills are being future-proofed, they don't feel trapped. They feel valued, and that is what turns indifference into true engagement.
VP of Demand Generation & Marketing at Thrive Internet Marketing Agency
Answered 5 months ago
One trend redefining how high-performing teams operate in 2025: AUTOMATION is no longer a side process—it's being built directly into how work gets done. It's cutting unnecessary coordination, reducing overhead, and letting specialists move without constant checkpoints. The outcome isn't just faster delivery—it's a reallocation of time toward strategic work that directly impacts pipeline, revenue, and retention. For companies operating in fast-moving categories, this isn't optional—it's a performance requirement. We've restructured our marketing operations to reflect this shift. Work that used to touch three roles—like SEGMENTATION LOGIC, CONTENT ROUTING, and CHANNEL SETUP—is now handled through automated workflows tied directly to our CRM and engagement stack. That change has reduced campaign lead times and increased throughput without hiring. More importantly, we've been able to shift bandwidth toward testing, optimization, and market feedback loops—work that drives real performance but used to fall through the cracks. If you're considering this shift, don't just buy tools—AUDIT the points in your workflow where too many people are involved without improving the output. MAP execution timelines. Look for repeatable sequences that still rely on manual triggers. Automate those, then recalibrate roles around ownership of outcomes, not task completion. The real upside isn't just speed—it's being able to REDEPLOY your team's attention toward work that actually moves the needle.
One surprising (but inevitable) workplace trend is how deeply ChatGPT has been woven into the workflows of content teams. It is not replacing writers, but accelerating the processes around them. To be honest, it's not a shocker that AI made its way into content. What's surprising is how long content folks resisted it. There's been a lot of noise about how "AI will replace writers." And in my opinion, AI can never replace human creativity. At our agency, we built custom GPTs to automate the most mundane and time-consuming parts of our workflow. What used to take us a whole day now takes just two hours. The tool does the manual work for us. My take? I'm cautiously optimistic. The human touch in content creation is irreplaceable, but the human hours spent on repetitive grunt work can be totally saved by automation. The trick is using AI where it makes you faster, not lazier. My advice to anyone considering this trend: don't just copy what others are doing. Every team has its own bottlenecks. Sit down, map your process, and ask: "Where are we spending time that we don't need to?" If AI can free up that time, you'll deliver faster, stay competitive, and create space for better thinking. And better thinking always translates to more revenue.