My takeaways from Gartner's "The Top Priorities for HR Leaders in 2025" Webinar
On October 10th Gartner hosted a webinar about the top priorities of HR during the upcoming year. It was a very informative hour, funny and yet down-to-earth and focused.
Continue reading to get an overview (click here for Gartner's slides) or click here to watch the recording by entering your e-mail in the box on the right side.
Let's start with some questions:
- What are your 5 top priorities for 2025?
- What priorities from 2024 are now less relevant and why?
- What emerging topics can you observe and why do you think makes them important to focus on?
Gartner's research shows that the main concern (nearly) across the board is 'Leader & Manager Development'. Only in the LATAM region is it the runner-up. 'Organisational Culture', which is second place with all the other regions, is here even more important.
So, we can note that the focus is on the softest of softskills. Both Leadership and Culture are very intangible (in comparison to HR technology, which ranks top 5 overall). Just yesterday, I read in a text from Tietgens (Tietgens, H. (1992). Reflexionen zur Erwachsenendidaktik (S. 32). Bad Heilbrunn.) that until now, we often do not know exactly why one method of teaching for example works really well with one group/ individual and not so well with another group/ individual. I am wondering if this "je ne sais quoi" is to be found out in 2025 - or if we manage to get closer to the core of why things (do not) work out.
Especially excited makes me the new people strategy of Bayer (read here about what is going on). Instead of developing leaders and managers they reduced the number of leaders and managers in order to develop their employees to leaders and managers.
This way the organisational culture is going to drastically change. Whereas Bayer was hung up on strict hierarchy and impressive approval chains, it is now set out to become a self-managed, dare I say it, maybe even "hip" company?
An agile way of working and smart technology make this chance possible.
Obviously, all topics link to each other. However, I want to point out another attention-worthy detail: Performance Management is "only" on place 10 overall. Whittle pointed out that Recruiting might not be a priority in 2025 because it has been the focus for quite a while now, and maybe there has been done enough for now. Long story short - there are a LOT of reasons, why performance management did not rank super high.
Yet, I am asking myself, if this and the focus on leadership and culture are connected. Maybe companies realise that in order to build sustainable success, employee performance is less of a sprint and more of an endurance run.
What are your thought! Let me know by reaching out!
Until then,
Saskia
