This article is part of “Workforce innovation“, a series that explores the forces shaping enterprise transformation.
2024 was a year of major transformations in the workforce: increased adoption of AI, shifts in the makeup of the C-suite, and new approaches to worker wellness and DEI initiatives.
For the latest roundtable in Business Insider’s Workforce Innovation series, Rebecca Knight, a contributing reporter for BI, asked board members to predict the most important changes to the workforce in 2025.
In their predictions, participants highlighted the advancement of AI agents and research results, as well as the importance of learning opportunities to help employees keep up with new technology.
They also discussed the trend toward skills-focused hiring and talent management—but they also highlighted the challenges of executing it.
“I think there might be a difference between larger organizations that have been focused on this for a while versus mid-sized and smaller companies that are maybe just starting that journey,” said Purvi Tailor, vice president of human resources at Ferring Pharmaceuticals USA.
Jack Azagury, chief executive of Accenture’s consulting group, shared his company’s experience implementing skills-based HR during the pandemic, when it had to retrain more than 100,000 employees on cloud technology.
“We’ve been on the journey for about 10 years in skill-based HR,” he said. “It took a while to get that right.”
Participants at the table were:
- Anant Adya, executive vice president, head of service delivery and head of Americas delivery, Infosys
- Jack Azagury, chief executive of the consulting group, Accenture
- Lucrecia Borgonovo, head of talent and organizational effectiveness, Mastercard
- Kenon Chen, executive vice president of strategy and growth, Clear Capital
- Maggie Hulce, Chief Revenue Officer, indeed
- Shane Koller, senior vice president and chief people officer, Ancestry
- Justina Nixon-Saintil, vice president and chief impact officer, IBM
- Marjorie Powell, Chief Human Resources Officer and Senior Vice President, AARP
- Purvi Tailor, vice president of human resources, Ferring Pharmaceuticals USA
- Sharawn Tipton, Chief People and Culture Officer, LiveRamp
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Rebecca Knight: What do you predict will be the single most important change in the workforce in 2025? And what advice do you have for business leaders to prepare for that change?
AI research, workflows and ethics
Ken Chen: I’ve thought about it a lot and I think it’s going to have a really big impact, which is the idea of AI-first research. Here the search funnel provides direct answers as opposed to just a sorted set of results. I think of it as summary results before the source.
There are a number of companies looking at adopting this technology in-house as a way to modernize their knowledge base and provide employees with live, searchable information to do their jobs.
It really changes the historical barriers to access to subject matter expertise within a company. To access someone who once owned that data or who knew more about that topic, you had to commit their time. In this new world, you can bypass all that and get an answer. But it may not be the most accurate answer.
If used well, I think companies can have a really strong competitive advantage because making data more readily available to employees can help people have shared goals and derive value from achieving that goal. shared together compared to simple data currency management.
Pure capital
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IBM
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Indeed
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Justina Nixon-Saintil: Much has been said about AI agents. I think there are two areas that companies really need to focus on for 2025. One is how do you balance innovation versus running some of these AI systems in the most responsible way? And I think both are related to ethical artificial intelligence and skill building. Focusing on upskilling your employees and ensuring you have a pipeline of AI-capable talent will be critical for employers this year.
The second thing is the ethical responsibilities that companies have. When you give a request to a system to run something, you really have to consider the implications of that. What types of guardrails do you need to put in place to be able to use AI agents effectively and also protect your company?
Maggie Hulce: There are growing projects in specific functions that use AI to improve workflow. Then there are the projects of reimagining how this customer journey should be radically different if AI can drive all these steps? And it crosses ownership lines and teams of many people.
Organizationally, how do you make sure there’s a group of people up and empowered to say, “I can think of problems that would shake up a lot of things on a blank sheet of paper”? I think if we leave it to every function to be solved when it is so loaded in all the functions, it is very challenging.
Culturally, how do we reward innovation and adaptability and how do we allow people to embrace change? How do you reward and reinforce a culture that says, “You figured out how we could do this translation thing completely differently. Don’t worry about us having to retrain the manual translation team; we will retrain them. Guess what can and should be changed with AI.”
Lifelong learning and upskilling
Marjorie Powell: The workforce is constantly being driven by an aging population and the growing importance of older workers.
In 2024, you saw more people over 65 choosing to stay in the workforce than ever before, in part due to the rising cost of living and concerns about retirement security. So employers will have to adapt by creating age-inclusive jobs. They will need to tap into the experience and skills of older workers.
It also means we need to rethink traditional career trajectories and offer flexible working arrangements. We will need to invest in lifelong learning opportunities for older workers, keep them engaged and keep them invested in the workplace.
AARP
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Ancestry
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Shane Koller: This is a key area where the HR function can and should impact companies in the future. What I see in the workforce, even with employees who are relatively tech-savvy, is that it feels like they’re stuck right now on the next step they need to take to be with the journey versus being left behind. This is where we as a function need to really step out of neutrality and help the workforce understand what the next steps are.
Nixon-Saintil: Lifelong learning doesn’t just end with AI. You have to consider the acceleration of technology. How do we make sure people understand that each new wave of technology will require new skills and that lifelong learners will thrive? This should be a complete change of mindset for employees and employers from an investment perspective.
The other thing, just with my social responsibility hat on, is how do we make sure we’re investing in populations and providing them with access to skills, mentors, and real learning experiences so they can prepare? How do we build that talent pipeline?
This is something we are doing through programs like IBM SkillsBuild. But overall it’s something every company should consider — not just investing in your employees, but looking at universities, K-12 systems, and partnerships with nonprofits that focus on marginalized groups and provide free access to these skills and technologies. new ones.
Competency-based talent management
Anant Adya: I’m a big believer that skills are more important than the four-year college degrees everyone is running around with. We recruit heavily from underrepresented communities and communities in general where we don’t require degrees.
In fact, we’re going to announce some kind of target for ourselves where we say X percent of our population will come from skills rather than four-year degrees.
Infosys Cobalt
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LiveRamp
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Sharawn Tipton: I also see skill-based talent management as one of the biggest trends for 2025. We talk a lot about experience and what people have in their toolkit, but it’s really about skills and readiness of learning, because technology is moving so fast that you have to work in a different way.
Jack Azagury: Skill-based HR is a very complex field. The first pointer I would give is to start in one place, not the whole enterprise, and pilot and get the algorithms. It took us years to get the right algorithm to determine what skills someone had.
The second is to be very transparent about how you are measuring skills. For example, our algorithm says that you must have worked in this type of job for this amount of months, and that job cannot be older than six months.
The third thing I would say is don’t use skill-based HR for cost reduction.
The fourth is that employees need to see how you’re going to use skills-based HR—how you’re going to give people new opportunities, training, and development. They need to see the positivity that comes out of their career in your organization.
accentuation
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Mastercard
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Lucrecia Borgonovo: The biggest change will undoubtedly be around skills-powered organizations. We know there isn’t necessarily a playbook, and we need to create this playbook together. I think this requires quite significant change management in addition to technology enablement.
What we tell our leaders at Mastercard is to make sure you take a much broader approach across the enterprise to what you think about talent and skills.
From the employee’s point of view, we were talking about learning agility as a big currency. You want to have employees who are curious, open and adaptable, and who can be much more resourceful in this extremely changing workplace.
Chen: The best way to prepare for change and transformation is to make sure your foundations are in place. There’s a reason why sports teams, musicians, and other people trying to master a new skill often go back to make sure their foundations are really solid so they have a foundation to build something new on.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this for AI and skill-based HR. If the basics — things like transparency, communication, shared mission, purpose, and culture — aren’t in place, it’s really hard to engage in radical transformation. The speed at which this is all moving is so fast that it is impossible to predict exactly how this might play out. But if the basics are in place, you can handle the unknown.
