The 2025 CEO Outlook: 7 Predictions for a Year of Change

As 2025 gets underway, CEOs are facing a confluence of pressures—from advancing technologies to new labor market dynamics to an uncertain political climate—that will require strategic foresight and strong collaboration with HR leaders.

Many CEOs, however, do foresee 2025 as a year of growth. EY’s Global CEO Confidence Index finds widespread consensus among CEOs that economic conditions and growth potential will be positive over the next 12 months. CEOs also predict that global GDP growth will run a bit higher, compared with 2024. EY notes that CEO confidence is important for the global economy, as a lack of confidence often causes business leaders to scale back operations, meaning that CEO pessimism can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What are CEOs and other C-suite leaders expecting in 2025? The SHRM Executive Network canvassed a group of senior executives to identify the key trends, topics, and challenges they expect to face in 2025—and the actions they’re taking to prepare. Here’s what they had to say:

1. AI moves from promising to practical. Companies that focus on designing practical, real-life use cases will be the big winners with generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). 

“Breathtaking demos won’t matter as much as the ‘toothbrush test,’ ” said Phil Libin, CEO of mmhmm, a video communications company. “By that, we mean practical AI applications that make us better at what we’re doing and will be used multiple times a day, such as the email summaries made possible with Apple Intelligence.”

You can also expect both the downsides and upsides of AI to continue to be vastly exaggerated. 

“The downside is commonly said as something like, ‘It will destroy humanity,’ ” Libin noted. “The upside is something like, ‘It’ll cure cancer and solve climate change.’ Neither of these things is going to happen on anything like the timelines relevant to investors.” 

The most realistic best-case scenario for GenAI is that genuinely helpful new tools emerge that create value, similar to the web or mobile phones, Libin said.

2. The office makes a comeback, but “smart hybrid” still wins. This year, as in 2024, more companies will be reining in their scheduling flexibility and requiring more in-office work. But CEOs need to be careful to avoid driving away great employees who have learned to love hybrid schedules over the past five years.

“Job seekers will be increasingly skeptical that ‘hybrid’ is just another way of saying, ‘We’ll soon be welcoming you back to the office full-time,’ ” said Eric Laughlin, CEO of Agiloft, a contract life cycle management company. “CEOs need to figure out if they’re committed to remote work schedules, or sliding towards office-based.”

Wise employers will structure their workplace flexibility, hybrid schedules, and office designs to maximize employee collaboration and productivity.  

“One of the best ways to do this is by enabling and empowering employees to have some control and determination over their schedules,” said Traci Chernoff, senior director of employee engagement at Legion Technologies. “Gone are the days when a company says, ‘Jump’ and employees ask, ‘How high?’ We’re in an era of work where employees now say, ‘I’ll jump in a moment, and I need you to jump with me.’ That’s here to stay.”

3. Companies shift from change management to change mastery. To stay competitive and resilient in the face of uncertainty, leaders must shift from simply managing change to proactively preparing their teams for it.

“I see a significant rise in anxiety in 2025 due to the accelerating pace of business transformation,” said Jan Bruce, CEO of meQuilibrium, a business innovation company in Boston. “Without the right support and skills, this anxiety will erode productivity, dampen employee morale, and weaken overall organizational performance.”

For CEOs, the stakes are too high to ignore.

“Look for organizations to prioritize the development of change readiness across their workforce—to help employees become comfortable with new technologies like GenAI, transition into new roles, navigate difficult decisions confidently, rebound from setbacks, and manage the turbulence of rapid change,” Bruce said.

By empowering employees with resilience skills to handle stress and uncertainty, organizations can ensure their teams are better prepared for tomorrow.

“The future of work will belong to those who are not just change-tolerant, but change-ready,” Bruce added.

4. Leaders prioritize their own upskilling. C-suite leaders can no longer afford to rest on their decades of experience. To keep up with the current breakneck pace of change in business and technology, executives will need to look inward in 2025. 

“Leaders must take ownership of their own upskilling,” said Kathy Diaz, chief people officer at Cognizant, a global IT service firm headquartered in Teaneck, N.J. “Professional growth isn’t just for the rank-and-file workforce. Even top executives need new skills to survive in an AI-powered world. This year will be an important inflection point for leaders to prioritize and invest in their own upskilling because their perception as true leaders will depend on it.”

5. Increased attention to and regulation of cybersecurity. Cyberattacks are becoming more sophisticated, and they’re increasingly being directed at an organization’s employee base, rather than at some weakness in its technology stack. As a result, HR’s role in cybersecurity needs to grow more pronounced to fully protect the organization.

In addition, leaders can expect fraud to escalate in 2025 as bad actors increasingly use new technologies, including AI. This kind of fraud is one reason you can expect more regulation of AI this year.  

“You’ll see that kind of regulation, particularly at the state level, alongside a trend toward strengthening consumer privacy laws,” said Ariel Tiger, a former founding executive at WeWork and current CEO of EverC, a cybersecurity services firm. “This could create more complexity for businesses operating across state lines, as the potential for federal deregulation under the incoming administration could conflict with state-level legislation.”

6. Stepping back—but not away—from inclusion and diversity (I&D). “The rapid pivot away from [I&D] in 2024 was striking,” said Larry Hartmann, CEO of ZRG Partners, a talent advisory and executive search firm. “It didn’t just slow down—it fell off the radar for many organizations.”

He continued, “The spotlight on the issue dimmed as political and social debates intensified, creating a more polarized landscape. Companies became cautious, some stepping back to avoid backlash or overreach. This evolution wasn’t just about dollars and cents; it was about navigating a shifting cultural tide that’s reshaping priorities at the corporate level.”

But it’s important to keep I&D as a central part of your culture, including at the top level. A McKinsey & Company study in 2023 found that companies with diverse leadership teams were 39% more likely to financially outperform competitors with little to no diversity in their top ranks.

According to Hartmann, while I&D may be less of a main-stage focus in 2025, it’s still a critical long-term play. “Don’t abandon ship,” he advised. “Integrate it into your broader strategy.”

7. Health coverage increasingly goes a la carte. “Business leaders want to focus on their business, not managing something as complicated as their employees’ health,” said Jack Hooper, CEO of Take Command, a health benefits advisory firm based near Dallas. “More companies will look to give their employees a budget to spend on their own health insurance, rather than being responsible for a group plan.”

As a result, expect more organizations to offer their workers an individual coverage health reimbursement arrangement (ICHRA), in which employers opt to give employees a set amount of money each month that they can use to purchase their own health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace or through an insurance broker.

“That allows employers to step back from an active role in an issue as polarizing as health while still taking care of their people,” Hooper explained.

Brian O’Connell is a freelance writer based in Bucks County, Pa. A former Wall Street trader, he is the author of the books CNBC Creating Wealth (John Wiley & Sons, 2001) and The Career Survival Guide (McGraw Hill, 2004).