By Rohit Talwar, Steve Wells, and Alexandra Whittington

Fast Future’s Life in 2025: “Say Hello Say Goodbye” Scenarios were developed in partnership with Huawei Consumer Business Group. This latest scenario explores how a range of exponentially advancing technologies such as AI and big data could transform the workplace.

Technological innovations will increasingly enable us to be as effective and secure while on the move, at a remote location, or at home as in the office.

The workplace environment could evolve to the point where smart furniture and intelligent personal assistants monitor our productivity, provide instant on the job training and instructional videos when we need them, and manage the physical environment to help enhance our comfort and performance.

Say goodbye to…

• The traditional office environment – “Holoportation” would allow users to teleport their holographic 3D presence into a different physical space. Working remotely adopts a whole new meaning and digital nomads become the norm.

Workplace 2025 will be characterised by constant interaction between our personal AI, located within our interconnected devices, and the AIs of the organisation we work for. Monitoring of our brain waves, physical activity such as keyboard typing patterns, conversations, and movement, will help determine the type of support we require from one moment to the next, to help us concentrate and “produce”, reflect, and be creative, or simply rest.

Say goodbye to…

• Inefficient working and wasted physical and mental energy – technology will help us ensure that we are working on the right tasks in the right way.

Remote workers and the self-employed may welcome a personalised mix of smart technology tools for tech support, accounting, and customer contact – keeping us productive and connected. The technology could also remind us to slow down and take breaks at appropriate spots in the day.

Employers will start to place increasing reliance on AI at every stage of the recruitment process – from framing the job advertisement to convey the right information, through to evaluating CVs, candidate selection, interviewing, and even making automated job offers.

For the individual employee, regular personality type assessments will be used to determine whether we are in the right role and what we need to work on to take up new tasks and opportunities within a thriving internal gig economy, where potential, aptitude, and capability are key determinants of each placement.

By 2025, AI could be proactively scanning the market for new opportunities that might be of interest to us and automatically constructing our CV or job application to best convey our suitability for a role.

Say goodbye to…

• Bad work / job placements – allowing people the opportunity to work in the right project given the balance of their current abilities, interests, and development goals – in turn leading to better job performance and productivity.

For those seeking advancement and salary increases, AI technology could help us assemble our case, rehearse how to present it, and advise on different types of negotiating strategy – driving towards a positive outcome for all. Training in self-management skills such as communication, conflict resolution, negotiation, and collaboration could be delivered in daily bite sized chunks to ensure we are constantly curious, always learning, and extending our capability and impact.

Within organisations, we can expect the continual automation of HR tasks and processes such as workforce planning, procedural advice to line managers, skills matching, recruitment, selection and onboarding, performance monitoring, and rewards management.

Say goodbye to…

• Resourcing gaps in terms of both capacity and skills – With AI providing the input to drive early issue identification, thus enabling rapid resolution and increasing productivity over time as the right resources are put in place more rapidly.
• Unequal pay – fair pay regardless of gender, age, or race could be guaranteed.

Alongside the advent and use of new forms of automation, robots, and intelligent avatars, employees may also choose to upgrade their performance through the use of implantables to provide constant monitoring, exoskeletons to enhance strength and speed, and nootropics to improve cognitive capabilities. As a result, our workplaces could encompass different types of basic and enhanced human alongside digital actors, requiring us to adopt new models of, and approaches to, leadership for the hybrid organisation.

The authors are futurists with Fast Future – a professional foresight firm specializing in delivering keynote speeches, executive education, research, and consulting for global clients on the emerging future and the impacts of change. To arrange a presentation on the Life in 2025 scenarios please contact

To access more of our articles and learn more about our work please visit www.fastfuture.com

You can find summaries of the ten scenarios here https://consumer.huawei.com/uk/campaign/truestories/tech/

How can I bring the future in my organization?

To find out more about key developments, ideas, tools, and approaches to help you and your organization navigate a fast changing future, why not attend one of the 20 leadership focused events taking place over seven days during Fast Future’s London Futures Week 2020.

Image: https://pixabay.com/images/id-2682712/ by geralt