Skating to the Future:
A Research Roundup

Skills, AI, and Bold Moves to Stay Ahead in 2025

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What I am reading, listening to, and thinking about in the world of skills, talent, and AI innovations.

By Jeff Schwartz

During the winter holidays (here in the northern hemisphere!) I read this excellent piece by Dimitri Masin, and one question in particular stuck out to me: where do you think the puck will be next December? That might feel like a crazy question given that we’re still in the early days of 2025, but in a world as fast-moving as ours, we need to take some time to keep an eye on the bigger picture and reflect on what we want to accomplish this year.  Are we moving in the right direction and at the right speed?

Speaking of direction and speed, I think we should all view 2025 as a year for action and a time to ask what are the bold steps to take now to move the needle by year-end. So many leaders continue to spend countless hours weighing pros and cons, taking pulse checks, and debating their next steps forward. The challenge is to move beyond deliberation to deliberate action that at least presents the promise of taking on the transformation backlog (skills/future-ready workforce, GenAI, and work redesign) and not just focusing on optimizing what we’re doing today.

While these are all crucial practices, there comes a point when this preparation and consideration phase hinders more than it helps and I think we’ve reached it. The world around us is evolving at a pace we’ve never seen before, with new innovations like agentic AI presenting the ultimate workforce reinvention challenge at a time when many of us are still trying to wrap our heads around ChatGPT. 

Rather than sitting back and spending another twelve months planning and preparing, I encourage leaders to seize the opportunity we’ve all been presented with. We have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to use the newest generation of AI innovations to jump ahead of the curve, and the only way to do that is by taking action today. Since this is unchartered territory for all of us, I’m dedicating my latest research roundup to spotlighting the articles, podcasts, and research reports that will help us navigate today’s work reinvention, skills, and GenAI challenge. Armed with these insights, I hope we’ll all be able to look back at 2025 as a crucial turning point, a year during which we finally stopped talking about change and started enacting it. What do you want to accomplish by December 2025? 

READ

What’s new in thought leadership about AI and the future of work
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This report is a great way to jump-start your thinking about where to begin and what you want to accomplish in 2025. The research introduces Josh and his team’s thinking about how employees and AI will work together in a framework they have developed: “Superworkers.” We’ve been watching the evolution of people and their work being augmented by AI and GenAI (in 2019 I co-authored a Deloitte Human Capital Trend piece on this topic, From Jobs to Superjobs, and 2025 appears to be the year for this to be an active focus for HR and business leaders. The report also lays out five imperatives and predictions for 2025. All five are important, but from my perspective the first two, work redesign and dynamic talent, are the top priorities that are reshaping the transformation agenda.

Redesign Work, Jobs, and Organizational Models:

Focus on the customer, consider how success is measured, then apply AI. This is what we call “productivity-based job design”. Deconstruct work into activities, evaluate AI solutions, and determine the human role alongside AI, using the models above.

Create a Dynamic Talent Model:

The traditional “prehire to retire” model is becoming obsolete. We need a more dynamic approach where people move across roles and projects. Prioritize internal mobility and foster a culture of growth.

Rethink Pay, Rewards, and Performance:

Move from traditional pay models to “systemic rewards,” based on role, skills, and output.

Refine Leadership and Culture:

Focus on human-centered leadership. This is a time of change. Ensure leaders understand AI, foster innovation, and focus on productivity, not headcount. Start co-design projects and get line employees involved in transformation efforts.

HR must operate in a consulting role. Integrate HR silos, develop a change-enablement team, and experiment with AI tools in HR.

PwC

PwC’s annual global CEO survey is released each year in January to coincide with the World Economic Forum in Davos.  In this year’s report, I find the correlation between human resource allocation and enhanced innovation and profitability particularly intriguing. This emphasizes the critical role of dynamic talent mobility, project and skills analytics, and workforce planning in the era of AI.  Key points from this year’s report include:

Business Model Reinvention:

42% of CEOs acknowledge the imperative to revamp their business models to ensure viability beyond the next decade.

AI Integration and Skills:

Only 31% of CEOs are systematically incorporating AI into their workforce and skills strategies.

Profitability and Resource Reallocation:

Companies that engage in significant human resource reallocation tend to experience higher profit margins.

Dynamic Resource Reallocation:

 Swift reallocation of resources is vital for innovation. However, many companies struggle with agility in reallocating financial investments and personnel across projects. A significant portion of CEOs indicate limited resource reallocation annually, hindering rapid business expansion.

Profitability and Reallocation:

PwC’s analysis reveals that active people reallocation is linked to increased profitability. Moreover, a direct correlation exists between extensive resource reallocation and revenue generation from new business ventures, underscoring the inseparable connection between reinvention and dynamic resource management.

AI agents will be a theme throughout 2025. The trend seems clear: as individual workers, we’ll be working with AI as work partners and as project team leaders we’ll be designing work and projects with people and AI on the team. NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang has shared his perspectives on this topic recently, saying that IT will “become the HR of AI agents.” But there are some larger questions here, starting with: how do we think about AI (and robots) relative to talent and the workforce? In February 2015, as the editor of Deloitte Consulting’s Human Capital Trends Report, I co-authored a trend Machines as talent, and as the co-author of Workforce Ecosystems, in 2023 we discussed the role of technology as a participant in the workforce. AI as co-workers? How do we want this to play out? I think it’s something to focus on and dive deeper into this year.

This article by Ethan Bernstein, Michael B. Horn, and Bob Moesta is easily one of my favorite pieces written in late 2024. In my role as the Vice President of Insights and Impact at Gloat, I’ve seen firsthand that employees are looking for movement and growth opportunities. It’s incredibly powerful for companies and leaders to create compelling, actionable internal markets to explore and navigate new experiences, roles, gigs, learning, networks, and mentors. I love how this is described as “Four Quests for Progress.” People who change jobs do so because they want to get out of their current situation, regain control of their work or lives, regain alignment between their work and their knowledge and capabilities, or take the next step in their careers. 

What impact will AI agents have on the workforce?  Interesting insights in this article about Marc Benioff in late December who commented that while he thinks the workforce at Salesforce will “probably be larger” in five years, in 2025, he is freezing the hiring of software engineers and hiring more salespeople. 

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“We’re not adding any more software engineers next year because we have increased the productivity this year with Agentforce and with other AI technology that we’re using for engineering teams by more than 30%—to the point where our engineering velocity is incredible. I can’t believe what we’re achieving in engineering.”

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“And then, we will have fewer support engineers next year because we have an agentic layer. We will have more salespeople next year because we really need to explain to people exactly the value that we can achieve with AI. So, we will probably add another 1,000 to 2,000 salespeople in the short term.”

Ready or not, AI agents are quickly becoming our new co-workers. In the book I co-authored in 2023, Workforce Ecosystems, we explored what a comprehensive view of the workforce will look like and its various essential players, including employees, external workers, and technology as part of the workforce. The challenge that leaders face today is how to incorporate all of them into their workforce and work planning and design.

At a time when many companies are still experimenting with AI usage, visionary organizations like Standard Chartered are reaping impressive results from AI-powered systems they have implemented in recent years, as this article explores. I couldn’t agree more with Tanuj Kapilashrami, Chief Strategy and Talent Officer, that the war for talent is now becoming the war for future skills. The ROI— which is top of mind for finance leaders—for talent marketplaces is clear and well demonstrated in this story: $8.5 million in productivity through 2,700 projects while empowering employee growth and experience. 

As leaders look to take action this year and turn their change visions into tangible realities, many executives are also deciding that it’s time to call people back to the office. Ultimately, the hybrid and remote work debate that has been stretching on for years seems to be a question of “executive judgment” rather than data. The quote at the end of this article is amusing: do leaders know what their workforces value? Maybe it’s not becoming a CEO. “You’re a young person coming out of college, and you want to be CEO someday—you will not get there via remote work,” warns Ron Kruszewski, the CEO of the investment bank Stifel, says of his company. “It just won’t happen.”

Nick Bloom is one of the world’s leading researchers on hybrid work and this study, released by the Harvard Business Review in October 2024, is one of the seminal studies on the topic. The article summarizes the journey of Trip.com and their experiment with a randomized sample of 1600 graduate employees in marketing, finance, accounting and engineering into 5 days a week in office, or 3 days a week in office and 2 days a week WFH. The report analyzed 2 years of data with two key results:

Hybrid and fully-in-office showed no differences in productivity, performance review grade, promotion, learning, or innovation

Hybrid had a higher satisfaction rate and 35% lower attrition. Quit-rate reductions were the largest for female employees. The report goes on to outline managerial lessons for successful hybrid strategies.  This is a must-read article and report.

Now that the competition for in-demand skills is intensifying, leaders are setting their sights on internal mobility as a means to develop the expertise their organizations need without engaging in bidding wars for external talent that prove costly and time-consuming. I couldn’t agree more with Fatma Hedeya’s perspective on internal mobility, which she views as key to staying competitive. In many ways, what was once a so-called “war for talent” is now becoming a “war to develop and deploy talent and skills. What happens inside the enterprise is critical: what skills you have, what skills you need, and how employees and business managers can grow, move, and flow to work, new roles, internal gigs, and opportunities.

LISTEN

What I’ve been playing on repeat
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I had the pleasure of sitting down with Jack Kelly of Forbes on his Blind Ambition podcast to discuss how the white-collar job market is evolving and forecast what the future may hold. Throughout our conversation we explore how AI is impacting jobs, careers, and work, the evolution of Gloat and the business problems we’re solving, and a bit of my own personal journey—including my early days in the Peace Corps.

Listening to this timely and terrific conversation may be one of the most rewarding ways to spend ten minutes. Two of my colleagues at Columbia Business School, Todd Jick (a specialist in change management) and Stephan Meier (a strategy professor with whom I co-teach a course on the future of work) discuss what it means to be human-centric in an age of exponential technologies. They share useful perspectives, including the difference between why workers are both often unwilling to change (hint, they need information, incentives, involvement, and inspiration) and unable to change (they need the skills, mechanisms, and instruction to change). They also cover how to redesign work around humans, based on findings from Stephan’s book, The Employee Advantage.  

This thoughtful conversation between Susan Podlogar and Kathi Enderes should be required listening for any leader who’s interested in harnessing AI to usher in profound organizational change. Susan discusses her experience creating and driving a talent marketplace for impact for employees, business leaders, and the board. Two of my favorite insights from this chat are:

The talent marketplace is one of the greatest gifts a CHRO can give their organization 

The value of the talent marketplace for boards, managers, and employees to manage the workforce risks of the future is unmatched. 

Today, we’re presented with an incredible opportunity to reframe how we think about work, workforces, and workplaces which is giving rise to the idea of a “Post Career World.” Al Dea explores this very topic with his guest Bruce Feiler, author of The Search: Finding Meaningful Work in a Post Career World. Bruce explores how work is evolving from jobs and careers focused on means to professions focused on meaning. I particularly love his discussion of linear expectations in a nonlinear world. He also closes with a great summary of what gives work meaning: the ABCs, or agency, belonging, and cause.  

THINK

What research and studies are saying about our path forward
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The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 was just published last week and it’s safe to say it’ll be one of the most useful surveys and summaries of work and job trends that’s published this year. Some of the key headlines that resonated with me include: 

60% of employers expect to transform their business by 2030 due to broadening digital access and technology-related trends. 

63% of employers identify skill gaps as one of their biggest transformation barriers to overcome in the 2025-2030 period.

If the world’s workforce was made up of 100 people, 59 would need training by 2030, 29 would need to be upskilled for their current roles, and 19 could be upskilled for and redeployed within and across their organizations 

Analytical thinking remains one of the most sought-after core skills among employers, with 7 out of 10 employers considering it essential in 2025. 

I’m delighted to have contributed to a new report from CPP Investments, Integrating AI and Human Capital: Guiding Boards and Management through a 21st Century Risk and Opportunity. It offers a roadmap for investors looking to support portfolio companies through the early stages of the AI and talent transition. What are the best ways for investors to engage with boards and management on this issue? Featuring insights from leading experts in workforce transformation and investing governance, the report presents key questions to initiate thoughtful dialogue and foster long-term value. Boards have a critical role to play as companies accelerate their adoption of AI and focus on the work of the future and the skills of the future-ready workforce

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