So, what are your priorities and strategy for 2025 and beyond?
The Talent Labs
The Talent Labs equips and empowers talent professionals to excel in recruiting, managing and retaining talent.
This is a question we have been talking a lot about with members, partners, and clients recently. We have also been doing our own strategic planning for the coming few years. It is hard using that crystal ball, especially when the UK/worldwide economy, politics and general business environment feel a bit all over the place!
But it is much better doing it with such a wide network to draw feedback and insight from.
Thank you to everyone who has helped us shape a view on what is going on for organisations in general when it comes to their people priorities and how their strategies are shaping up. It has enabled us to update our approach to make sure we are meeting the needs of all our important stakeholders.
Earlier in the year we did some research into those priorities. This cross-sector insight showed the top 5 people strategy priorities currently to be:
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When people looked forward over the next 5 years and considered which would have the biggest impact these priorities shifted subtly, with data, technology and AI replacing culture, employee experience and engagement in the top 5. Interestingly that revised list very closely matches the report Gartner have just released on ‘Top priorities for HR leaders in 2025’. Our collective crystal ball gazing was seemingly pretty accurate!
We already knew our research was on the money as we have been working with members and clients over the last 6 months on all these areas. We have done some great work with organisations on helping them develop their strategic approaches, improve their core people processes, develop their leaders and managers to deliver on their strategy, diagnose where their capability gaps are and improve their measurements of success.
Every new member has a complimentary consultancy hour with us too and I have enjoyed some great conversation with people on culture, employee experience, learning and development strategy, leadership development, transformation, HR metrics… The list goes on and on, but certainly all align around those core priorities.
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I think what is key and makes each conversation different is the context of those priorities aligned to the organisation’s strategy and current position or maturity. This is the stuff that I really enjoy getting into and makes every challenge unique. Understanding why these things are important to support the organisation deliver as a whole. Then working out how you are going to achieve this from the current business position is key to a good people strategy. Defining and agreeing it all with your stakeholders is a real skill and takes some serious partnering and consulting skills.
In our research earlier in the year we also asked about the key HR skills that organisations were focussed on developing to help them execute their strategies. The top three were talent management and succession planning, learning and skills development and strategic people planning. I was surprised to see business partnering and consulting skills down at seventh on the list as I think it is core to achieving all of HR’s strategic priorities for a business. I also often see it as a skillset that needs improving in HR teams. Reflecting on it and talking to people about this I think it was interpreted in the survey as being about the HR Business Partner role rather than a skillset. I definitely see it is a skillset for the whole of HR, from the CPO or HRD to every expert function (resourcing, talent, L&D etc) and shared services dealing with their daily customers.
We have a fantastic virtual workshop session next week on this core skillset that is free to attend. 90 minutes of development time on building stakeholder relationships and contracting effectively with them. Join us on Weds 30th, 2:30-4pm, with expert facilitator and consultant John Allen and give your and your team's core skillset a boost as you work through updating your strategic plans for 2025. Sign up now.
A couple of other virtual events coming up in November that link to these strategic priorities are:
Our members have access to lots of relevant and practical tools and guidance on our platform, and we offer wide ranging learning and development solutions and consultancy to support members and non-members alike. For more information on these, speak to one of our lovely talent solutions team (Jemma Wilkinson, Sarah Lane or Sukhy Carey MCIPD) or email [email protected], or visit our website.
I hope this gives some food for thought and would love to hear what you think on it. We are researching another hot topic and strategic priority currently, Skills-Based Hiring and Development. Please give us your input on that here and we will send you the report when released in early January. Where has this year gone?!
Have a great weekend when you get there!