It’s no secret that the future of work is evolving faster than ever before, but HR experts at UNLEASH America 2025 told an audience of their peers that it’s happening right now in front of them and they need to be ready to evolve at the same time.
In a keynote panel, HR leaders joined host David Green, Managing Partner at Insight222, HR leaders from SAP, Microsoft and New York University (NYU) explored how this is impacting on skills, workforce planning and leadership.
When considering how tech giant Microsoft is identifying and transitioning to future roles, skills and operations, Global General Manager, Future of Work, Workforce of the Future and Employee Experiences, Karen Kocher highlighted three key elements.
“One is the work itself. We at Microsoft, and all of us in the audience, need to focus on foresight. What is foresight is anticipating? Where is it all going?” She explained.
Secondly, there is a focus on “work to skill” rather than “learning to skill” – for AI skills, this means using AI tools for 11 minutes in day-to-day activities every day, which Kocher stated is “a bit of disruption of the way we typically tend to provide learning skill, but it works.”
Kocher’s third factor is a mixed team of humans and AI agents, working in an agile, dynamic way, referencing findings in Microsoft’s Work Trend Index 2025 which found “team members really want to work with agents”.
HR needs to rethink learning to prepare for the future
Looking at the future of work through the lens of learning, Anna Tavis, Clinical Professor, Human Capital Management at NYU, said that in the current, fast-moving environment what is required is “empathy for the human way of learning”.
“I think we need to rethink, fundamentally, how people learn and this is a big, big agenda,” Tavis told delegates.
She added that there were three key considerations to this: The democratization of data, the personalization of learning, and scalability of tools that support learning.
Picking up on what HR in organizations of the future must look like to support these transitions, SAP SVP and Global Head of People & Culture Services, Dr Christian Schmeichel, says “the very nature of work, as we speak, is changing right before our eyes”.
“Look five or ten years down the road – what does your future workforce look like? How many kinds of skills, how many workers are really needed? How much AI do you have, with how many robots?” He explained.
Data is the ‘difference maker’ for the future of work and skills
One of the key themes of the discussion across the panelists was the critical role of data in preparing for and succeeding in the future of work.
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HR leaders from SAP, Microsoft and New York University explored how organizations are preparing for the future of work.