Josh Bersin: ‘2025 is not only the year of the Superworker, it’s also a year of business reinvention’

HR industry analyst Josh Bersin only has one prediction for HR in 2025. He and his colleagues at The Josh Bersin Company believe this year will see the rise of the Superworker.

The concept is that “each of us, in our personal and professional lives, has suddenly been granted superpowers through AI”. “Just as Superman Clark Kent learned to channel his powers, we must learn to harness AI for individual and team performance.”

That’s according to a new report from The Josh Bersin Company.

Superworkers are those who seize this AI moment. They go beyond using AI to automate routine work and make incremental improvements, and instead leverage this technology to “dramatically enhance their productivity, performance, and creativity”.

In turn, “a ‘Superworker company’ is an organization that embraces this transformation, building a culture of adaptability where people reinvent themselves”, added the report.

These companies are constantly reinventing, innovating and experimenting – they also invest in technology, as well as learning, development, upskilling and reskilling as they are aware that tech transformation is a people, rather than a technology, challenge.

The question that remains is how can organizations turn that theory into reality?

AI success requires business reinvention

The first thing to note is that businesses need to shift from thinking about how to implement AI and instead focus on how to use AI to transform their businesses.

As Bersin exclusively tells UNLEASH, “2025 is not only the year of the Superworker, it’s also a year of business reinvention.”

To start with, “we have to think of AI as ‘work enhancing’ not ‘job replacement’ technology, because the improvements in time to market, quality, and productivity are 100X greater than the cost savings of reducing routine work”, adds Bersin.

This is especially the case with the new agentic AI capabilities – in this scenario, the AI “becomes a co-worker itself: listening, learning, reasoning, and acting”.

This AI reality means “HR leaders and CHROs have a new mandate”, according to the report. They are agents of change in this AI-powered world of work.

“Now is the time to tightly integrate the HR team with the business in order to drive the job redesign and new talent architecture for AI transformation.

“Leading organizations like Standard Chartered, Spotify, Telstra, and others have promoted the CHRO to a ‘chief strategy officer. position, enabling the HR team to interlock with job and process redesign throughout the company.”

At the end of the day, Bersin tells UNLEASH: “AI transformation it not a problem of ‘buying a tool’ – rather it’s a process of thoughtfully rethinking how work gets done, and that means training people to understand it so they can really learn how to reinvent.”