Which HR resolutions do you have in 2025?

Welcome back to Personio Pulse: This Week in HR and welcome to 2025! This edition, we’re doing things a bit differently and diving into a conversation around new year’s resolutions for HR teams. To do that, we spoke to a handful of HR experts to see what their plans are for 2025.?

What happened to resolutions??

When was the last time you really sat down, put pen to paper and wrote down your resolutions for the year ahead? According to data from Statista , the share of adults in the UK who intend on making resolutions for the new year has declined from 27% in 2020 to 16% in 2024.

Why the drop? It could be due to a fear of failure. After all, Columbia University found that less than 10% of people actually see their resolutions through. It’s important to note, though, that a resolution doesn’t have to be a binary — not ‘completing’ something doesn’t make it a failure.?

But we could be in for a bit of a resolution renaissance — Gen Z is leading that charge when it comes to making resolutions, making them at a rate of 52%, compared to only 16% of the over-55 crowd. Maybe what’s missing is a bit of inspiration??

HR experts and their resolutions for 2025?

Luckily, we tapped into a host of HR experts to see what they’ve resolved to do in the year ahead. To help provide you with a bit of inspiration, here’s what’s top of mind for them:

“A resolution that companies should focus on in 2025 is to invest more on leadership and skills — specifically upskilling and reskilling. Many companies are currently cutting jobs even though talent is more important than ever. Against that backdrop, and when resources are limited, HR should think about two things: how to ensure that people continue to develop and adapt faster than ever, and how to get them to have the right mindset to learn new things and stay motivated.”

- Laura Bornmann , New Work & Leadership Expert

“I'd love to see more HR professionals embracing a 'build in public' mindset. HR has historically been secretive, closed, opaque... but it's so encouraging to see the growing number of folks in the People & Culture space share, open-source, and document their work and journey through community, content, and things like open employee handbooks. Anyone in HR will tell you just how much of a lifeline it is to have access to open resources. The more we all share, the more we can progress what is still seen as a very traditional function. Let's take HR from Opaque to Open!”

- Adam Horne , Co-Founder, Open Org

“I'm dedicating this year to deliberate self-development. In small HR teams, we often wear many hats and work reactively. While this provides plenty of experience, it's often unplanned, with growth driven by immediate business needs rather than intentional career development. In such environments, it's easy to lose sight of personal goals and deprioritize self-development. For 2025, I’d encourage everyone to focus intentionally on personal aspirations - allocating more time to activities we enjoy, want to grow, and areas we're passionate about. Let's prioritise ourselves and bring deliberate self-development to the forefront of each day.”

- Nina Johansson , HR Manager, British Rowing

“This year I’ll be investing time researching how I think reward philosophies will need to evolve to meet the shifting demands of both employers, industry norms and employees. I see a real need for HR professionals to explore next evolutions in total reward, especially pay benchmarking, equity offerings and incentive plans to truly underpin business strategy and growth plans, whilst bringing more innovation to this area.”

- Ross Seychell , Founder & Consultant, Seychell Gordon

“My resolution is centered around quality over quantity. For too many years, I've focused on delivery of too many initiatives - through planning efforts, goal-setting and commitments to stakeholders. With so much to prioritize, it's easy to over commit and under-deliver. My focus to start 2025 is to do less, but deliver on all commitments and deliver them with a high quality. Whether it's focusing on high quality reporting and dashboards, quality of hire initiatives or quality in building the right team engagement efforts. I'd urge HR professionals to ensure high quality in everything they do!”

- Fritz Singer , VP Talent Acquisition, Personio

“Keep looking up and out. It can become all too easy to get stuck in the day to day challenges of HR and lose sight of what is happening externally. Keeping a look out for what is going on in our profession, our industries, and the world at large is vital for us to be able to adapt and pivot our focus when needed. In 2025, I will be endeavouring to build my network, with people that help to inform and inspire me as well as look for new ways to gather external insights so I stay not only relevant, but a step ahead of what’s to come.”

- Nebel Crowhurst , Chief People Officer, Reward Gateway

“My focused resolution for 2025 is a new Theory of Change (ToC). For some time, we've been in constant flux, yet most models and theories are all for episodic and programmatic change. A new ToC to create a tempo that oscillates with "business as usual" in a constantly adaptive way to do work. To adapt business and operating models, and adjust and align organisation design, roles, capabilities, learning and performance. A ToC that shapes the epic story of change, the elements and activities involved and the tools and techniques for agile and constant iterations. I call it Organisational Version control.”

- Perry Timms , Founder and Chief Energy Officer, People & Transformational HR Ltd

Where would you like to focus??

To help HR teams prepare for what’s likely to be another big year, we’ve prepared a sterling roster of Personio Masterclasses to take full control and build exciting programs and innovations from the worlds of recruitment to people analytics, DEI, leadership, and more.?

You can check them out, completely for free, by clicking on any of the links below:?

• Perry Timms on data analytics: Learn the importance of having an HR analytics strategy, which KPIs to focus on, and how to align those KPIs with your business.
• Abadesi Osunsade on DEI: Equip yourself with strategies and tips to unlock the potential of a diverse workforce — and foster a culture where everyone feels valued and supported.
• Phil Blaydes on recruitment: Here, a leader in transforming talent acquisition functions shares his expertise, along with real-life examples, to help you become the best TA leader possible.?
• Mira Magecha on leadership development: Learn how to design a high-performing leadership pipeline by focusing on what it truly takes to be a great leader.
• Nebel Crowhurst on total reward: Create a culture of appreciation with a total reward expert and find out how to craft a competitive benefits package to attract, engage and retain your talent.

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