The People Management – December 2025
This December 2025 issue focusses on Multigenerational Workforce & Challenges for HR as well as How AI & Agentic AI Will Transform Education in the Next 3 Years.
The main challenges HR faces with a multigenerational workforce include managing different communication styles, technology gaps, and varied work-life balance expectations. Other challenges involve navigating conflicting values, bridging career expectation differences, and avoiding stereotypes. HR professionals must develop strategies for effective communication, technology training, and flexible policies to foster a cohesive and productive environment.
Key HR challenges
• Communication barriers: Different generations have distinct preferred communication methods, such as face-to-face meetings versus instant messaging, which can lead to misunderstandings.
• Technology adoption: There can be a “digital divide,” where older workers may need more training on new technology, while younger workers might lack experience with traditional tools.
• Work-life balance: Expectations for flexibility, hours, and time off can vary significantly between generations, requiring flexible policies and effective expectation management.
• Conflicting values and work styles: Differences in career paths, loyalty, and work ethic can create friction, especially in collaborative projects.
• Stereotypes and biases: Age-based stereotypes can lead to misunderstandings and conflict, with some assuming older workers are resistant to change or younger workers are inexperienced.
• Leadership and feedback: Generations may have different expectations regarding leadership styles and how they receive feedback.
• Knowledge transfer: With older employees nearing retirement, a challenge exists in transferring their knowledge and experience to younger employees.
While higher education continues to come to terms with generative AI, a new buzzword is beginning to capture imaginations: agentic AI. Gartner named agentic AI the top tech trend of 2025 and forecasts that by 2028, 33% of enterprise software applications will include it.
Agentic AI builds on generative AI, often leveraging teams of agents using generative AI to execute more complex tasks across administration and academia. Almost three years since generative AI emerged, most applications are still a far cry from the autonomous coworker or across-the-lifecycle tutor initially touted. Today, higher education is most likely to have deployed AI applications that retrieve information to support small-scale decision-making (e.g., an HR policy chatbot). Agentic AI not only optimizes existing generative AI use cases but also expands the scope of what they can achieve.
In Higher Ed, agentic AI can enable AI tutors that can not only recall course information but also troubleshoot learning challenges more effectively and reach out to advisors on a student’s behalf. Amid all the hype, it can feel overwhelming to try to keep up with AI advancements lately. But agentic AI is worth digging into; its potential to power automations that take over rote work could transform the day-to-day experience of staff across various institutions.
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Stay Safe, Healthy & Ahead of the game – Happy Reading & Learning in 2026!
Aparna Sharm