Don’t believe the hype on these three workplace trends

From a quick glance at 2024’s business headlines, you’d think all companies were pushing return-to-office policies, embracing artificial intelligence and banishing diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

But as we head back to work this year, let’s remember that headlines don’t always reflect reality.

Everyone back to the office and forget about diversity policies? Not so fast.Credit: iStock

Return-to-the-office mandates

The media loves a scary back-to-the-office headline. From the point of view of clicks, a strict five-day-a-week policy is gold. Even better? If that policy applies to liberal tech dweebs. Full points if it’s a company that once promised to work remotely forever, like X when it was still Twitter.

These headlines gain attention because they play to some readers’ anxieties — and others’ schadenfreude. But the reality is that most companies have accepted hybrid work.

Even Elon Musk had to back off his declarations of full RTO at X; shortly after his initial, well-publicised demands, he conceded there’d be exceptions. He also shuttered some of the company’s offices, meaning that all staff in those locations had to go fully remote.

I expect this duality to ramp up in 2025, with more companies loudly announcing returns to the office even as the majority quietly shrink their office footprints or continue to embrace hybrid arrangements. The bottom line: Badge-in data has been close to flat for the past two years. Among workers whose jobs can be done remotely, hybrid arrangements remain the most common.

Generative AI

Since ChatGPT burst onto the scene two years ago, we’ve seen endless speculation about what such technology could do and how workers might use it. (Or how general artificial intelligence might take over the world and destroy us all.) In 2024, 75 per cent of employees used generative AI at work, according to a survey by EY; that’s much higher than the 49 per cent who said, in 2023, that they anticipated using it in the months to come.

But if the last two years have been a bullet train for AI, we may be heading for a slowdown at the station.

That slowdown could presage the next, more realistic phase in the “hype cycle,” a phrase coined by Gartner to describe technological change.

First, a new technology triggers a surge in “inflated expectations,” which is followed by a “trough of disillusionment” as the tech’s limitations become apparent.

Gradually, people figure out how the thing can actually be used, and people’s expectations settle somewhere in between. We may be heading there with text-based generative AI in 2025.

Diversity programs

In the last couple of years, right-wing activists have made a punching bag of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. And I don’t think President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House is going to convince them to hold their fire.

But the reality is messier than the DEI-doomer headlines suggest. Yes, some very large companies, intimidated by activist shareholders and legal threats, have announced changes to diversity programs.

But despite the backlash, many companies remain convinced that it is still important to do the core work associated with DEI programs: recruit from the largest possible talent pool; assess workers accurately and fairly, without implicit bias; and foster an environment free of overt racial prejudice, gender hostility or sexual harassment. (Not least because such discrimination remains illegal and generates a far larger number of lawsuits than any “reverse discrimination” claims.)

But given the vibes, look for companies to approach this work differently. Some will simply call it something else — Walmart had already hired a “Chief Belonging Officer” rather than a Chief Diversity Officer long before the company was targeted by anti-diversity activist Robby Starbuck.

We might be done with DEI as an acronym. But the practice, whatever we call it, will evolve to fit a new era.Credit: Simon Bosch

Others will integrate data-driven DEI practices into core managerial functions — an approach that could actually yield better results for women and minorities.

For example, rather than demanding every finalist pool contain at least one “diverse” candidate (a backlash-sparking practice that has not resulted in more diverse hiring), HR could insist that managers hire according to clear, objective, consistent criteria — including a concrete definition of “culture fit.”

An insurance company that followed this more rigorous approach ended up hiring 46 per cent more minority applicants, according to scholarship by Joan C. Williams.

We might be done with DEI as an acronym. But the practice, whatever we call it, will evolve to fit a new era.

Evolving is something that we all have to do — but we can’t do it skilfully unless we can cut through the hype.

Sarah Green Carmichael is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and editor. Previously, she was an executive editor at Harvard Business Review.

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