In 2025, Charter convened thousands of leaders, experts, and practitioners for our three hybrid summits—Leading with AI, the New Employer Brand Summit, and the Charter Workplace Summit. To close out the year, we looked back at the insights that have stuck with us most:
Amid uncertainty, organizations should focus on training “great sailors.” “We can’t promise calm seas, but we’ll make you a great sailor,” said Katie Burke, chief people officer of Harvey, at the New Employer Brand Summit. At LinkedIn, that means emphasizing a “next play” culture through coaching and learning benefits. “We want people to grow and to learn,” Linkedin chief people officer Teuila Hanson explained. “Both from the perspective of, ‘how do I make sure I’m successful in my current role, [and] what is my next play?’”
Be wary of under-hiring young workers as AI adoption grows. At the Charter Workplace Summit, Indeed chief economist Svenja Gudell and Harvard Business School professor Joseph Fuller both shared data showing that job prospects for early-career workers have weakened amid AI adoption. At Microsoft, AI adoption is making the organization flatter as teams scale with AI rather than hiring as many new workers, chief marketing officer Jared Spataro told us at Leading with AI. Fuller urged caution on not hiring and promoting enough young workers, saying “you can’t have a five-year-old if you didn’t have a one-year-old.” Guild CEO Bijal Shah noted that if roles do have to evolve, organizations should communicate proactively with employees. “A lot of people are super scared and we’re not giving them something back, and people need hope,” Shah said.
“The resort should match the brochure,” said Burke at the Charter Workplace Summit, borrowing a colleague’s saying to point out that culture crises happen not because of specific practices, but when employees’ expectations don’t align with organizational realities. “The best question to ask for your organization: Is what we’re selling matching up with what people are buying?” Burke said. That means applying consistent policies across the organization, or overcommunicating when you can’t, advised Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures.
Even layoffs can help build culture, if you do them right. “One of the things that…sends a clear message around your values and your culture is how you exit people, whether it’s involuntary or voluntary,” said Sam Simmons, chief people and internal operations officer of the Ladies Professional Golf Association, at the Charter Workplace Summit. When the pandemic shuttered hotels and forced Hilton to furlough and lay off workers, it built preferential pathways to external jobs and listed over a million opportunities on job boards for laid-off employees, CHRO Laura Fuentes shared. That not only signaled to workers that the company was there for them and created work for an otherwise inactive recruiting team, but incentivized boomerang employees to return to Hilton after the company started hiring workers back, Fuentes said.
Make a promise—or a ‘sizzle reel’—to workers from day one. From the first interview, share with potential employees “what you will get, what you will not get,” said Anna Lundström, CHRO of Spotify, at the New Employer Brand Summit. Milk Bar founder Christina Tosi said when she first started the bakery, bringing new bakers into the organization’s culture was as easy as working side-by-side with her in the kitchen. “That’s what training was and that’s how we became one [united team],” said Tosi at the Charter Workplace Summit. As the company grew, she started focusing on the training materials Milk Bar used to welcome employees. “How do we bring someone in? And how do we make sure they understand where they are and what it means and that the promise they’re making to us is the same we’re making to them?” she said. At Milk Bar, that includes playing a short “sizzle reel,” or introductory video, for all new hires that starts with the song “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House.”
Workplace AI use needs to move from individual productivity to team-based collaboration, said Microsoft chief scientist Jaime Teevan at the Charter Workplace Summit. Because most knowledge work is collaborative, using AI for individual productivity without considering its impact on the team has contributed to the proliferation of low-quality “workslop,” she said. To change that, teams must refocus on creating knowledge, rather than outputs. “Right now, we’re very artifact-focused,” said Teevan. “How many beautiful documents and presentations do I create to share?” At Leading with AI, Manuela Veloso also urged workers to redefine their value by focusing on creativity and innovation.
Organize AI training around the “five Cs,” or comprehension, concerns, collaboration, context, and calibration, recommended Rebecca Hinds, the former head of Asana’s Work Innovation Lab and current head of the Work AI Institute at Glean. Speaking at Leading With AI, she explained that comprehension refers to whether a worker knows how to use AI. AI training should address workers’ concerns about the technology, which will vary based on the group. Collaboration is about whether workers view AI as something they can work closely with, like a teammate, rather than just a tool. (Workers who view it as a teammate report greater productivity improvements, according to Asana’s research.) Finally, context involves understanding the organization’s policies and principles around AI use, and calibration means measuring the results of AI investments and training effectiveness.
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