2025 and beyond: strategic opportunities to build organisational resilience
Navigating an increasingly complex landscape of work, characterised by rapid technological advancements, economic uncertainty, and evolving workforce expectations, demands strategic foresight and adaptability from businesses.
Lewis Silkin's Future of Work 2025 report “Strategic workforce priorities – What matters most?”, based on a survey of business and HR leaders, examines the challenges and opportunities presented by large-scale trends and how these are shaping the future of work. The report highlights a range of critical issues facing businesses and surfaces actionable insights to provide a roadmap to support organisational preparedness and success in a constantly evolving environment.
Despite a turbulent 2024, the research highlights the potential for growth and innovation through strategic investment in technology, workforce development and organisational culture.
Spotlight on technology
Respondents to our survey pointed to technological advancements, including AI, as having the second biggest impact on their businesses in 2024, with this trend expected to take centre stage in the year ahead. This shift suggests that, after a period of exploration and experimentation, businesses are preparing to fully embrace AI’s transformative potential in the year ahead.
Ensuring responsible technology implementation featured as the key concern for businesses in 2024. Looking ahead, the need to address skills gaps has emerged as businesses’ top priority for 2025, perhaps reflecting growing concerns about employees’ ability to quickly adapt and upskill to meet evolving business requirements and technological advancements.
Surprisingly, AI-safety risks didn’t appear to feature highly on the agenda for the majority of respondents last year, potentially indicating a lack of awareness, or underestimation, of the risks posed by AI. Prioritising AI’s short-term benefits at the expense of anticipating and mitigating potential longer-term risks may prove costly as AI adoption and its application to decisions impacting the workforce accelerates.
2025: From pressure to opportunity
The report highlights the following five key areas for business leaders and HR professionals to turn the pressures of 2024 into opportunities for growth and resilience in 2025.
1. Leading through uncertainty
In 2024, leaders faced mounting pressures from within their organisations, with growing employee and stakeholder demands for businesses to act responsibly, ethically and transparently, support workforce health and financial wellbeing and provide good work. Effective leaders and managers are crucial to people strategies and organisational success as organisations grow and workforce needs evolve.
Key opportunities:
· Upskill leaders and managers to enable them to deftly navigate uncertainty and conflict.
· Enhance HR capabilities to ensure people professionals can address workforce concerns, implement strategic initiatives and support employee development, contributing to building organisational resilience and adaptability.
· Build up workforce communication mechanisms and transparency in decision-making.
2. Optimising resources
Businesses faced significant challenges in 2024 due to tight labour markets and economic constraints which made it difficult to attract and retain the best people with the right skills.
Despite these pressures, organisations recognise a range of opportunities to enhance productivity and flexibility through AI and technology adoption, innovation and leveraging data.
Key opportunities:
· Leverage AI to provide real-time insights to enhance productivity
· Innovate and leverage data to support workforce planning, drive down costs and boost productivity.
· Build on the benefits of flexibility and adopting innovative modern working practices to stand out from competitors and attract the best people.
3. Workforce empowerment
The workforce faced numerous challenges in 2024, marked by tough economic conditions and cost of living pressures. Many businesses found it difficult to maintain workforce trust and faced resistance to change, as growing uncertainty and societal divisions were felt in the workforce.
Despite these challenges, employers have experienced a range of beneficial outcomes from a greater focus on enhanced workforce communication, contributing to enhanced productivity, improved engagement and workforce trust, teamwork and collaboration.
Key opportunities:
· Promote a values or purpose-led organisational culture to foster a sense of transparency, trust and a shared commitment among employees which is crucial for navigating future challenges.
· Prioritise good work and employee voice to better understand and address workforce concerns.
4. Crafting a roadmap for regulatory compliance
Concerns about businesses’ ability to track and comply with legal changes have risen up the corporate agenda following a year of record-setting global elections and a wave of post-election employment law reforms. Notwithstanding these challenges, employers experienced beneficial outcomes from enhanced risk management strategies which will have bolstered resilience against unforeseen challenges, enabling better organisational decision-making, risk and cost reduction, and which helped to build trust by demonstrating organisational preparedness.
Key opportunities:
· Embed effective horizon scanning capabilities to prepare and adapt to upcoming legal and governance changes and minimise legal and reputational risk.
· Proactively identify and analyse upcoming changes to implement timely adjustments to business models and update contractual and workplace policies, ensuring they remain compliant and competitive in an ever-changing legal landscape.
· Develop robust risk and compliance frameworks, ensuring effective management and mitigation of potential legal risks, and adherence to evolving legal obligations.
5. Empowering and developing skills
As businesses anticipate increasing the use of AI to support organisational strategies, a key focus is on properly introducing and deploying new technologies, while considering the needs and concerns of all stakeholders. Transparent communication, effective training and skill development are seen as crucial to integrating new technologies and enhancing productivity.
Key opportunities:
· Employ data gathering exercises to identify skills gaps to support the development of targeted training programmes that address specific needs.
· Develop tailored training programmes and focus on reskilling and upskilling to address skills gaps and ensure employees are well equipped with the necessary skills to meet evolving business requirements and technological advancements.
· Focus on enhancing the employee experience by automating mundane tasks to allow employees to focus on more significant projects.
As businesses navigate the complexities of the modern work environment, harnessing these opportunities will be crucial to building organisational resilience and maintaining a competitive edge in an ever-evolving landscape.
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Authors
Madeleine Jephcott
Madeleine leads Lewis Silkin’s award-winning and innovative Future of Work Hub. The Future of Work Hub is a resource that supports organisations in their horizon-scanning – enabling them to see ahead, identify and anticipate future opportunities and challenges and evaluate how best to respond. The Hub website brings together leading resources on the drivers shaping the world of work and regularly produces and curates original content from a broad range of stakeholders on how organisations can best respond and adapt. The Hub also acts as a forum to generate and inform debate through conversations with leading experts, innovative thinkers and peer-to-peer insight sharing.