20+ Employee Experience Trends 2025 and Beyond

Note: This article was last updated Oct 2025. 

Key Takeaways: 

• Employee success remains critical to organizational success, so leaders must consider how they can continue to deliver positive employee experiences that will help improve employee engagement, employee retention, job satisfaction, and business performance.

• Digital tools, like AI, employee onboarding, and digital workplaces will continue to play a key role in improving employee experiences. However, leaders must be mindful of employee wellbeing and mental health.

The last several years have brought about fundamental and lasting changes to the workplace. As the Employee expectations at work have shifted as the last several years have brought about fundamental and lasting changes to the workplace. Employees want better personal wellbeing, more development, better management, and opportunities to do what they do best every day. When these expectations are met and employees are highly engaged, Gallup reports that organizations see:

Employee engagement is directly tied to employee experiences in the workplace. Look to these trends to see how you can deliver experiences to match what employees are looking for, while improving company culture and organizational performance.

Employee Experience Trends in 2025 

AI and Human Productivity 

AI will play a key role in employee productivity in 2025. 

• 49% of workers are optimistic about AI at work, and 45% use AI daily or weekly. Employees see the potential of AI to improve the quality of work (47%), to enable them to do work in less time (42%), to engage in new tasks (38%), and to increase the amount of work produced (27%).

• The majority of AI users say that it saves them 30 minutes or more a day. 

• 80% of workers who use GenAI daily expect it to make their time at work more efficient in the next year. 

However, businesses are still resistant to adopting AI—especially HR teams.

• Only a third of HR leaders are exploring or implementing potential AI solutions, although 76% view AI as important for success. 

If your business wants to improve efficiency, you—and your HR teams—will need to create a plan for adopting AI strategically to leverage its benefits. 

A Return to the Office and Hybrid Work 

After Amazon announced they would be requiring employees to come back to the office five days a week, many organizations are also mandating more in-person days, resulting in many remote employees either quitting or forced to commute again. These companies cite better workplace culture and productivity as the main reasons for going back into the office.

• In a survey of 1000 corporate decision-makers, 90% said their workforce would return to the office by the end of 2024 to help improve organizational culture and team engagement.

• Nearly half of workers in a Pew Research Center survey stated that they'd look for new work if their employer no longer supported remote work.

• Around 83% of workers claim they prefer a hybrid work model, indicating strong demand for flexible working arrangements for better work life balance and making some form of hybrid a probable choice for many teams worldwide. Flexibility for remote workers has become more than just a perk, it's a core competitive strategy for retaining a committed workforce and increasing employee satisfaction.

• But according to Gallup, there's a remote work paradox, where the absence of daily social connection and navigating everything online can take a tool, especially over time. To obtain successful business outcomes from remote work, employers will need to consider how to give employees the right balance of flexibility, while still allowing them to feel connected at home or wherever they choose to work.

Turbulence in the Workplace 

• Two-thirds of employees say that they've experienced more significant change at work in the last year compared to the year prior, including changes to their team structures and daily job responsibilities. 

• One in three employees feel under pressure to be more productive, and 38% say this is because of the pace of change at work. 

• Employers believe 44% of workers' skills will be disrupted by 2030 and that 6 in 10 workers will require additional training before 2027. 

• 56% of new employees plan to leave in the next three years, versus 34% of tenured workers. According to Gallagher's Workforce Trends Report, 66% of HR executives still say employee turnover is still their biggest workforce challenge.

The Importance of Employee Well-Being 

• According to the American Psychological Association, 81% of employees say that an employer's support for mental health is an important factor when searching for a job.

•  Mental health issues affect about 15% of working-age people worldwide. Gen Z and millennial workers are particularly vulnerable, with 40% and 35% respectively reporting frequent or constant stress and anxiety and nearly half experiencing burnout at work. This has resulted in $1 trillion in losses annually due to depression and anxiety. 

• The best way to tackle employee burnout is actually to reduce the number of inefficient processes. According to Qualtrics' Chief Workplace Psychologist, Dr. Benjamin Granger, he says that, "the biggest predictor of burnout as reported by employees was inefficient processes; processes that they go through regularly in their work, that are supposed to work, and don't. We need to start thinking about what we can take off peoples' plates."

The Continued Need for a Digital Workplace 

• 72% of employees still consider the digital workplace to be extremely important.

• According to a Gartner survey, 74% of organizations plan on putting an Employee Experience Platform in place by 2025 to encourage employee involvement and improve productivity. 

The Future of Work in the Modern Workplace

To combat the challenges and disruptions employees will face in the coming years, your business needs to evaluate how you can deliver better employee experiences, including focusing on the well-being of your employees. This includes starting employees on the right foot with proper onboarding, equipping employees with the resources they need both professionally and personally, and engaging employees in meaningful ways.

Do all of this with a modern intranet. Learn how to get started building an effective intranet that brings out the best in your employees here.