As we enter the 2025-2026 fiscal year, we are noticing shifts towards new management strategies which prioritizes building change-agile organizations, a higher emphasis on sustainability, and integrated working environments. These agile management shifts allow for a quicker pivots as new technology and policies arise, which minimizes time spent on restructuring operation models.
Trend 1: Improving Resistance Management
As most companies begin to normalize and integrate AI into workflows, it’s important to consider how your company can better utilize this new technology. AI has the ability to analyze large data sets, which can be used to predict future obstacles and areas of resistance. Such insights can be used to develop solutions. An example of this is AI’s ability to provide personalized learning paths or present training opportunities for employees, once a skills assessment takes place. This is an example of how AI can enable a change management team to adjust strategies and provide real-time solutions to barriers like skill gaps, for example.
Trend 2: Accommodating Environments
If COVID-19 taught us anything, it’s that most roles can be done remotely or with a hybrid work model. According to Pew Research, 35% of workers in the U.S can do their job from home with increased productivity. As a result, employers who are considering pivoting to a more flexible environments are being urged to rethink their management strategies to maximize output, and to generally make operations more efficient.
Communication in hybrid environments is much more complicated than a fully remote or full in-office workplace. To overcome this, managers are rethinking and updating their use of technology to engage employees, track progress and drive efficient change adoptions. This can look like redesigning workspaces to foster better collaboration, in office.
Trend 3: Human-First Work Models
Take a look at the most successful companies’ low turnover rates, big or small, and notice a shared characteristic between them. There is an emphasis on employee experience. A small (but impactful) change can be approaching management which: priorities understanding and accommodating employees’ emotional and psychological needs. Soft skills are often overlooked, but are in high demand, now more than ever. This includes empathy, high emotional intelligence, and effective communication. Managers, leaders, supervisors, executives who harness these traits are better equipped to manage resistance.
A likeable, approachable, and people-first manager is more likely to cultivate a loyal, productive and happier team — which can reduce turnover rates, ensuring more time is spent on the work itself as opposed to filling lost labor.
A Proactive Outlook for Managing Change in 2025
We open our phones or laptops first thing in the morning, and we bear witness to the ever-evolving, rapidly changing business world — it shouldn’t come as a surprise that resistance-management is becoming a priority. These trends in management should provide a glimpse of how to navigate your organization towards a more communicative, empathetic and tech-driven approach which meets the demands of a modern workforce.