2025 workplace trends: rebuilding culture and settling the RTO debate

In 2010, London Business School professor and author Lynda Gratton attempted to predict what the world of work would look like in 2025 in her book The Shift: the Future of Work is Already Here. 

Broadly speaking, Gratton foresaw two possible outcomes. In her positive outcome, technology allowed people to work anywhere in the world and promoted co-creation and connectivity. People had the autonomy to work flexibly, became more invested in the local community and turned their creative passions into small businesses, marketing and selling work online.

In the other, more pessimistic scenario, technology brought fragmentation and isolation to our working and personal lives. This increased isolation led to a distrust in institutions and rising levels of inequality.

Now, with 2025 on our doorstep, it’s clear elements of both these outcomes have come true. 

One thing that was missing from Gratton’s predictions, and those of other experts, was the pandemic, which continues to have an impact on our ways of working, nearly five years after the initial outbreak. “The pandemic taught us there were other ways of living, but those experiments are still being played out,” she adds.

It’s for this reason that Gratton believes we’ll see a lot more variety in workplace arrangements and in how companies interact with their employees in the year ahead. This makes it hard to make any broad predictions, as companies pursue different working models and workers seek out organisations that can meet their needs. 

Will the RTO debate finally be settled?

This can perhaps be seen most clearly with the hybrid-working debate. Some companies have started encouraging a full-time return to the office, while others are going completely remote. “Individuals will be able to choose the company that suits them best,” Gratton says.

While Lee Daniels, head of growth and innovation at commercial real estate consultancy JLL, believes hybrid working will continue to be a force for change, it will be less of a focus for organisations moving forward.

“I’ve spoken to multiple clients who no longer want to discuss the return to office or hybrid working because they’re bored of the topic,” he says. Instead, companies will be pushing forward with the working arrangement that best supports innovation, culture and employee wellbeing within their organisation, while still providing a good return on investment. 

Although many companies have settled on requiring employees to come into the office three days per week, Daniels says there will still be a wide variety of working models used by businesses.

Companies will, however, become more strict about their office requirements, according to Bruce Daisley, former vice-president at Twitter and author of the Make Work Better newsletter. “There is going to be a more structured approach to companies’ use of hybrid working. Firms will be more insistent on certain days in the office being fulfilled – whatever the number – and implementing that with a bit more rigidity,” he says.

Despite a number of companies implementing a five-day office return in 2024 – most notably Amazon – he doesn’t expect this to become a “contagious idea”. “We’re not going to see a full return to five days in the office,” Daisley adds. “Even in those organisations that make big statements about a five-day return, we’re going to see a bit of flexibility.”

The end of the ‘enshittification’ of work

There will also be greater variety in the types of work people undertake. The rise of the freelance worker is going to continue, Gratton predicts, while flexible and part-time arrangements will also become more common as those with the most in-demand skills seek greater autonomy. “What we’re going to see is a core of employees who are dedicated to one company and then quite a big circle around them of people who work on a freelance basis,” she says. 

Organisations are also going to be more purposeful about the types of culture they create, according to Daisley. There has been a degradation of the working experience in recent years, he says. “People are finding themselves constantly distracted and overwhelmed at work.” 

This is something Daisley has described as the ‘enshittification of work’ – which refers to a consistent decline in quality in a product or service. Normally used to refer to the decay of online platforms, Daisley believes we have seen the same degradation in our working lives, as employee engagement dwindles and staff report feeling lonelier and less connected.

“The firms that want a competitive advantage are going to push back against that trend,” he says. This is going to result in greater differentiation between organisations on their employee value proposition and culture. “Organisations that want to improve retention and career development are going to recognise that culture plays a big part,” he adds.

Daniels also anticipates a bigger emphasis on social connectivity and culture within organisations in 2025. “This will enable companies to attract better talent and will enhance their brands as employers,” he says.

The impact of AI

AI is also increasingly encroaching on the workplace, but Gratton thinks 2025 will be the year we “begin to understand the edges of it” and discover where the technology is most and least useful. 

Some organisations Daisley speaks to are embarrassed that they don’t yet have an AI strategy in place. While some have been slow on the uptake of the new technology, he expects the majority of companies to make progress in this space over the next 12 months. “There are going to be far more organisations trying to boast about their big breakthroughs in terms of what AI is doing for them,” he says.

While there are many roles that remain vulnerable to automation, human experience also remains important – particularly in creative work. “Humans have a whole life’s experience to bring and that’s what makes creativity,” Gratton says. “So 2025 will also be the year we understand what it is to be human.”