University of Kwazulu-Natal

2025 The Year Companies Prepare To Disrupt How Work Gets Done

Bonisiwe Shabane
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2025 the year companies prepare to disrupt how work gets done

AI will free up workers to focus on people-centric tasks. Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto The world of work has changed enormously in the last two decades. Mobile devices, e-commerce, and social media have all impacted how and where we work. But what’s new now is how AI is starting to drive the next wave of change. It’s creating demand for new jobs and skills, transforming roles and careers, and spurring productivity and innovation.

With this change, executives know they need to disrupt how their teams get work done. We are entering one of the largest change management exercises in history, and every business leader and professional will need to embrace it in order to unlock the value of AI. This will usher in a level of transformation that organizations and employees have never witnessed before. LinkedIn’s new Work Change Report: AI Is Coming To Work highlights the fact that more than 10% of professionals hired today have job titles that didn’t even exist in 2000 – roles like AI... But AI is accelerating the pace of change, and by 2030 70% of the skills used in most jobs will change. It’s clear that even if you’re not changing jobs, your job is changing on you.

It’s therefore no surprise that the majority (88%) of C-suite executives globally say helping their business speed up adoption of AI will be important over the next year. Businesses have much to gain from leveraging the technology, from financial benefits to workforce productivity. According to our research, 51% of SMBs that have adopted Generative AI reported a revenue increase of 10% or more from their efforts. At LinkedIn, we’ve been putting the technology into the hands of recruiters, marketers, and sellers over the past couple of years, and they are using it to spend less time on tedious administrative tasks... 2025 was the year organisations realised that work only succeeds when AI, skills, and roles are linked, while people are deployed based on their abilities, not just past experience 2025 fundamentally altered how we think about work by showing that AI, skills, and flexible arrangements are inseparable drivers of success.

This integration redefined roles, making skills-first deployment the norm rather than relying on past experience. See how the patterns set in 2025 guide HR from managing programmes to designing systems, balancing continuous output with human wellbeing, and uncovering the connections that strengthen organisations for the future. How 2025 changed the way organisations think about work by connecting AI, skills, and flexible arrangements into a single system How leaders and HR adapted roles, tasks, and talent management to make AI work alongside people effectively How flexible and hybrid work became a deliberate part of organisational design, affecting focus, collaboration, and retention This article is part of the "How AI is Changing Talent" series, which explores how AI is reshaping hiring, development, and retention.

Twelve months ago, Jacqui Canney was ServiceNow's chief people officer, focused on talent strategy. Today, she's also the company's chief AI enablement officer — a title that didn't exist until recently. The two roles aren't separate, Canney told Business Insider. "They're one strategy, and the companies that understand that are going to be the winners." That shift, though, requires letting go of how most organizations have always structured work: by function, head count, and department. "Companies can't treat this as 'We're going to run an AI program over here, and it'll add capacity,'" she says.

Instead, they need to ask: how does AI change the work across departments? "AI doesn't follow the same silos people do. That's why you build the workforce around the new workflow." Artificial intelligence was the biggest story in business this year, and it reverberated throughout the workplace and labor market on several levels. While it hasn’t quite led to the jobs apocalypse people were expecting, it has certainly started to reshape which roles are in-demand, where opportunities are found and how workers collaborate with their new virtual... Related ReadingDo Tech Workers Still Need College Degrees?

AI’s impact on the job market cannot be distilled in one clean trend, but rather in various sharp contrasts. Workers are feeling more uneasy and burned out by AI, but are too afraid to leave their jobs. Entire career paths are being created and destroyed in real time. And while some roles are stagnating or disappearing altogether, others are becoming remarkably lucrative. The result is a labor market in flux, where both anxiety and opportunity exist side by side as AI adoption accelerates. As businesses scramble to adopt AI, they have been reluctant to hire more people until they know how this technology will impact their staffing needs.

This uncertainty, combined with the unknown impact of President Donald Trump’s shifting tariff policies, has led to a stagnant hiring market. Throw in all the mass layoffs and dire job market predictions from the world’s top AI developers, and it’s easy to see why workers are fearful about their professional future. This growing sense of anxiety has led some workers to hang on to their jobs for dear life — a phenomenon some analysts have dubbed “job hugging.” Just because they stay doesn’t mean they’re... Instead, the employees who feel burned out by staffing shortages or overwhelmed by the pressure to find a use case for AI are “quiet cracking,” a term used to describe a “persistent feeling of... Deloitte US. (2025, February 13).

2025 trends in the workplace, AI and HR [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsSU_bo69Sw Lesonsky, R. (2025, January 8). Workplace trends for 2025: Attracting workers, employee well-being, and more.

Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/allbusiness/2025/01/08/workplace-trends-for-2025-attracting-workers-employee-well-being-and-more/ Mayer, H., Yee, L., Chui, M., & Roberts, R. (2025, January 28). Superagency in the workplace: Empowering people to unlock AI’s full potential. McKinsey & Company.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/superagency-in-the-workplace-empowering-people-to-unlock-ais-full-potential-at-work Shapero, D. (2025, January 20). 2025: The year companies prepare to disrupt how work gets done. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/01/ai-2025-workplace/

Dec 11, 2024 | Crisis Management, Economics/Trends, Leadership 2025 is approaching and CEOs are looking ahead to ensure their organization is protected. While an optimistic outlook is essential, change always brings disruption. Organizations that are prepared to weather the storm will recover quickly ensuring ongoing operations. Geopolitical disruptions are always a threat as you never know how interactions between companies will impact trade. These disruptions are even more of an issue in 2025 given the possibility of imposed tariffs.

It is unclear how countries will react to these tariffs and how they will affect company finances. Technological disruptions are another ongoing consideration. Organizations never know when a system will go down, when new technology will phase out older technology, or when a security breach will occur. Disruptions may be a prominent concern in 2025 due to ongoing AI adaption and risk. Here are some ways AI could disrupt business:

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