ATD Blog
Organizations are not islands. What happens in society, technology, and politics affects organizations.
Thu Jan 23 2025
Organizations are not islands. What happens in society, technology, and politics affects organizations. The end of 2024 surfaced several issues that will affect L&D and HR organizations, and we need to prepare for those repercussions. The three biggest impacts in our field in 2025 will be the new US presidential administration’s policies and reform efforts, the recent attention on the growing divide between employees and CEOs (brought to the forefront by the tragic death of a CEO in New York), and the advent of artificial intelligence (AI).
With every new presidential administration, there are new rules and regulations to meet the political agenda of the winning party. In 2025, it might even be a bit more pronounced. The new US president, his administration, and outside supporters are coming into office with the promise of eliminating entire departments, initiating sweeping reforms, and making systemic changes to how the US government operates.
This, in turn, means there will be systemic and far-reaching changes for L&D and HR departments across the country. It is fair to assume there will be many federal government rules and regulations that will no longer be in force as there is a big focus on de-regulation. In other areas, new rules or regulations might be enacted, such as in the world of finance. As a result, organizations may have to alter, change, or scrap much of their existing compliance training. New training programs will most likely be needed to reflect the priorities of this administration.
The closer an organization is to working with the federal government, the more changes will be evident and required. In some cases, the loosening of certain federal regulations may actually result in a state adopting or enacting their own rules or regulations to make up for the gap. If this occurs across many states, organizations may need to start creating training that is specific to each state. This might result in more development costs and more time required of employees to learn about the different rules and regulations they may encounter. Staying abreast of the changing rules and regulations and determining the resulting changes in training programs will be a large task in 2025.
One of the reactions to the assassination of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare has been for executives and leaders to delete their social media accounts, remove their biographies from company websites, and reduce public appearances. While this is important for the safety of these individuals, there is a potential that employees may feel more isolated and distant from CEOs and company leadership than at any other time in history, especially if they are seen less frequently within their own organizations.
The timing of this isolationism could not be worse. Simultaneously, companies are asking and, in some cases, demanding that employees return to the office. Some of these employees question why they must come into the office just to attend video meetings. Now, to top it off, employees may not even meet with leaders as the leaders are trying to keep a low profile for their own safety. This has the real potential to lead to a deep isolation of leaders from the day-to-day operation of the organization. It is also unknown how much this isolation will filter down to VPs, managers, directors, or even supervisors. This could cause a huge disconnect between employees and leadership.
While training and HR can’t entirely solve this problem, L&D professionals need to enact programs for leaders to learn how to lead with empathy and compassion while seemingly isolated from the rest of the organization. The CEO safety issue will have an HR/L&D impact, and professionals in the field must be prepared and proactive.
Another issue might be employee fear. Could they also be in danger as collateral damage, or could their office be in danger from a disgruntled customer? For years, organizations have created training for hostile situations coming from a fellow employee or disgruntled worker. Now the threat seems to be from several sources. This means that not only will cognitive training issues be needed to address issues such as “how do I operate this piece of machinery,” but affective issues such as “how can I feel safe at work” must also be addressed through carefully planned programs. A focus in 2025 for L&D and HR will be workforce psychological and physical safety.
A widely circulated statistic following the assassination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO highlighted the company’s alleged use of AI to reject claims. This incident has contributed to negative perceptions of AI among many and has amplified fear, skepticism, and concerns with AI usage.
While artificial intelligence is only a tool, not all employees view AI as a positive. Many forward-thinking organizations are conducting basic training in AI to help de-mystify what it can and cannot accomplish. They are also establishing reasonable AI policies, rules, and regulations to guide employees. Organizations must focus on providing employees with a basic understanding of how AI functions and what it can and cannot accomplish and what it can or cannot be used for within the organization to help with productivity.
This is particularly interesting as some investors in AI are wondering where the ROI is with all the money pouring into these large language models. As L&D and HR professionals, we’ve encountered firsthand how AI has become part of many of the tools we use from content creation and development of media to the assistance with course creation. We must continue to use AI but also must be smart and careful about how we help our organizations navigate its use.
AI is changing how we design, develop, and deliver instruction. AI bots have already provided an opportunity for unlimited answering of questions and in 2025, AI agents, which perform specific tasks like filling out forms or organizing information, will be widespread within our field. If you are not up to speed on AI, you need to make that a goal for 2025.
The year 2025 is going to be a wild year. On top of everything mentioned, the corporate and government austerity measures and AI will bring together the typical pressures on L&D that occur during lean times. As they say, “L&D is typically the first area cut when reducing costs.”
If you want to survive and thrive in the upcoming year, you’ll need to monitor these trends (and potentially others) and be prepared to adapt, pivot, and adjust as needed. To modify an old quote that's often mis-attributed to Charles Darwin, “It's not the strongest or the most intelligent learning and development professionals who survive, but those most adaptive to change."
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