The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Future of Jobs Report, 2025 was published in January and contains 300 pages of predictions about macro-level changes in the work landscape. The insights are based on data collected from more than 1,000 employers, representing 14 million workers in 22 industry clusters across 55 economies.
We present eight principles that will help leaders to navigate the future challenges.
The WEF Future of Jobs 2025 Report highlights challenges facing the labour market and workplace.
Technology is always a factor. This includes artificial intelligence (AI), robots, and automation. workers can expect to lose two-fifths their skill sets.
The economic slowdown will continue to affect organisations and individuals. The lower growth will lead to the loss of 1.6 million jobs, while creative thinking and resilience are in demand.
Climate change is a major issue in the workplace. Employers expect to continue investing in green solutions over the next few years. The responsibility of environmental stewardship will only increase.
In higher-income countries, the population of working age is aging. Meanwhile, in lower-income countries it’s growing. These demographic changes require new employment practices and skills development.
Companies continue to re-shoring or offshoring operations due to geopolitical tensions and fragmentation of the economy. Demand for network skills, as well as leadership and other skills that are human-centred, is increasing.
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Responsiveness, flexibility, and agility will characterize roles that are growing versus declining as these macro-shifts occur. Resource management, quality control, and operations will be of paramount importance, as well as programming and technological literacy.
A Perfect Storm
The WEF report contains predictions that are an invitation to change the world. The WEF report also warns us about our responsibility to the society outside the walls of the organization.
The future of work is a perfect storm. Managers and their organizations are facing a multitude of shifts at once. We have been saying, sometimes glibly and often for years, that change is the one constant. Yet our ability to implement new practices remains limited.
The WEF Future of Jobs Report for 2025 is a sobering read, revealing how complex the transformations required are to manage technological, societal, and economic disruption.
Leadership will be tested at all levels in all of our organizations over the next few years. These eight principles will help us navigate and make sense of this challenge.
1. Embrace responsibility
Work culture and practices are often centered on internal performance and results. The management thinking is also geared towards the bottom line, clients and (sometimes) even employees. Since decades, commerce has operated largely in isolation from the rest of society. It is a law all its own.
The WEF report explains how managers’ decisions and actions affect the fortunes and experiences of people in society. Our various work roles give us immense power. We should use this power responsibly.
2. Accept Limitations
Many of us have the ability to influence the world we live in through our work. We must also remember that society is an organism in which the results of every action are determined by the actions of others.
We can be influenced by our overpowering self-confidence to pursue bad ideas, which often cause devastation for others. We need to be realistic and not get seduced by our visions.
3. Think well
When we think of business as a way to make money through selling products and service to customers, without considering wider implications, we can get away with a fairly simple approach.
In a world in which we are unable to change our society due to the fact that we only have a limited amount of power, we need imagination, we need a way to see relationships and we must explore causes and effects. Managers must be intelligent and thoughtful.
4. Question Values
Profit and efficiency are the primary drivers of decision-making, despite all the bluster about corporate social responsibility. When it comes down to it, managers are often unable to break away from these traditional motives.
Maximising profit and efficiency is not a good guide as AI and related technologies will shape the future economy. Our thinking must be based on values that are oriented towards society.
5. Investing for the long-term
While managers must keep pace with WEF predictions, long-term investments in climate change, new technologies, skills development and geoeconomic fragmentation, as well as investments in new technology, will pay off.
We must also take seriously long-term planning, which challenges the quarterly financial returns of corporations and other norms. While short-term results are important, they cannot be achieved at the expense of our future social systems.
6. Champion purpose
Managers often roll their eyes when they hear the word purpose. Please, can’t we just get on with the business at hand? The idea of purpose is appealing to team members, but they remain cynical and see it as just another leadership trick.
When firms find themselves in a perfect storm, they can’t control, focusing on a single, worthwhile goal eases the day-to-day decisions and work. The purpose of an organisation or manager shields them from the constant chaos that surrounds them.
7. Change of course
It also provides a sense of stability in the workplace. It also allows everyone to ask questions, take new directions, and explore novel paths.
While the WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025 is meant to bring coherence into the future, there are no guarantees. Actions that are impulsive and adrift have no purpose. Neither do actions that remain steadfastly tied to goals that for reasons outside our control are now irrelevant.
8. Harness relationships
The future of work demands a transformation that cannot be achieved in a boardroom or corner office. Only by involving those affected by change can the organisation, a human system complex within a human society complex, be shifted.
Strong relationships at work can help managers to secure commitment and take action. Relationships can be a valuable asset for leaders, allowing them to encourage dialogue, new ideas, and most importantly, calm the workforce when change is occurring.
The WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025 reveals the challenges that organisations and their members face. The insights of the Forum reveal an opportunity as well as a responsibility to create a more equitable world.
These eight principles will help us, as team members and managers, make sense of the complexity. They will also guide us to confidently and effectively take action.
