Response to 12 Opportunities for HR in 2025.

Thanks for tagging me David Green ???? here are my two opportunities below for points 11 and 12.

Link to David’s original article with his 10 opportunities is here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/davidrgreen_humanresources-peopleanalytics-workforceplanning-activity-7274500343814582273-LNQ1

Point 11: Investing in HR/People Technology to Drive Strategic Value

To thrive in the future, HR/People and Culture functions must secure greater investment in their technology stacks and move beyond traditional HR/People data and transactional in-system reporting. Historically, HR has been underfunded compared to other business areas, resulting in legacy systems and significant technology debt.

This underinvestment has perpetuated fragmented systems, functional silos, and disconnected datasets, with each silo maintaining its own system of record. As a result, organisations often contend with data silos and an over-reliance on transactional reporting, which fails to deliver the full strategic picture and actionable insights.

These challenges create inefficiencies, with people analytics teams frequently spending excessive time manually stitching data together in tools like Excel—an error-prone process that compromises data quality.

Meanwhile, many organisations are advancing digital, data, and analytics transformations, migrating to the cloud, and investing in data lakehouses and strategic data assets. However, these initiatives typically prioritise customer-facing and revenue-generating functions, leaving enabling and support areas like HR underfunded and undervalued.

To fully capitalise on these transformations, HR must think beyond traditional People and Culture data. The future lies in integrating this information in real time and linking HR insights with broader business data—such as KPIs, Customer Net Promoter Scores, and financial metrics—to develop analytics use cases that address high-value business questions.

Achieving this vision will also require a shift in capability within HR, with roles like data engineers, architects, and advanced analytics specialists—skills not traditionally found in HR—becoming increasingly critical.

By leveraging real-time, integrated, cross-functional data and fostering greater agility and speed to insights, HR can position itself as a key contributor to organisational success and make a compelling case for investment in modernised technology stacks.

As we look ahead, we must also consider whether the term “People Analytics” remains fit for purpose. With the growing presence of robots, AI agents, and automation in the workforce, should we instead relabel this discipline as “Workforce Analytics” to reflect the broader scope of work and productivity in modern organisations?

Point 12: Strengthening Data Governance and Driving Human-Centred Adoption

As organisations advance their HR and people analytics capabilities, the importance of robust data governance and a human-centred approach to adoption cannot be overstated. Many organisations are struggling to keep pace with rapid technological and regulatory changes, such as GDPR and other privacy-focused legislation.

While the future of work and technology is exciting, organisations must double down on safeguarding employee information, ensuring they uphold ethical standards and avoid crossing into the realm of the “creepy.” This will require a significant uplift in policies, procedures, and standards to ensure compliance, alongside greater transparency to foster trust. Employees need to feel confident that their data is secure, used responsibly, and handled with their best interests in mind.

Beyond governance, better adoption and engagement will require a human-centred design approach. Since much of HR data is self-service and voluntary in nature, employees must feel comfortable sharing their information and not fearful of the technology or insights that emerge. To succeed, organisations must design solutions that prioritise employee empowerment, clarity, and trust, ensuring that people embrace the changes and leverage the insights to drive transformation and desired action rather than resist it.

By embedding data governance as a foundation and combining it with a human-centred approach, organisations can create a data ecosystem that is not only compliant and secure but also trusted and embraced by employees, enabling greater innovation and adoption in the years ahead.

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