2025 Workplace Trends:
Stability, Sustainability & AI Insights
Wednesday, December 25, 2024
Dec 25, 2024 – For almost five years, real estate stakeholders have been wondering when the “new normal” would arrive and what it would look like. With inflation cooling, interest rates following a downward trend and capital markets thawing, 2025 may give them their first full year of normalcy this decade. We asked three members of the FM:Systems leadership team to share their predictions of how this period of relative stability will manifest in the way organizations manage and optimize their workplaces over the next year. Here’s what they had to say:
Moving Beyond Reactive Attendance: Tailored Office Policies in 2025
Ever since advances in technology made remote working possible, business leaders have been divided about the merits and drawbacks of allowing employees to work from home. Some argue that having employees in the office full time increases productivity, encourages collaboration and strengthens company culture. Others feel that offering a hybrid work model is important to retaining and attracting talent. The pandemic took this decision out of the hands of business leaders, and its aftereffects forced many of them to continue facilitating remote working even when they wanted employees back in the office. In 2025, the work model dust is expected to finally settle, allowing leaders to set office attendance policies that align with their business goals and culture.
Early results from our upcoming 2025 Inside the Workplace report indicate a split: many organizations plan to opt for a blanket, company-wide attendance policy that applies to all employees and locations, while an equal number of respondents to the survey favor establishing department-specific guidelines based on location, role and responsibilities. The latter, more nuanced approach, may be the way to go.
“For a team of coders who normally interact virtually anyway, there may be no benefit in taking a hard line on return-to-office, and it could do more harm than good,” said Jennifer Heath, Director of Product Marketing at FM:Systems. “On the other hand, you could make the case that being physically collocated is essential for teams focused on building relationships, like sales and marketing.”
Cost and time are the biggest barriers to developing new chemical drug molecules quickly. However, AI innovations like AlphaFold 3, co-developed by Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs, offer new frontiers. The Nobel Prize-winning system can “predict the structure and interactions of all of life’s molecules.”
Cutting Energy Consumption and Emissions: Driving 2025 Sustainability Goals
Decreasing energy consumption has long been a priority for organizations looking to reduce costs and their carbon footprint. For instance, saving money was the driving force behind the widespread adoption of LED lighting, but that change also improved energy efficiency in buildings. Now, the proliferation of environmental reporting and building performance laws – aimed at reducing the built environment’s contribution to climate change – is adding another cost component to energy consumption and compelling organizations to go deeper in their efforts to lower energy usage. In 2025, organizations will continue to make strides to identify, track and control all sources of energy consumption in their facilities.
According to the 2025 FM:Systems Inside the Workplace report, sustainability is a higher priority for organizations than it was a year ago, and more businesses are establishing sustainability goals. But companies that use their electric bill as the sole driver behind these initiatives will miss opportunities to make more substantial gains.
Conclusion
After years of volatility and uncertainty, 2025 is looking like the year organizations will finally be able to take advantage of calmer seas to make repairs and chart a new course dictated by business goals rather than external factors. Integral to those initiatives will be workplace management solutions, helping organizations meet current and future demands for cost savings, increased efficiency, optimized spaces, and progress toward sustainability targets.
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