Each year, the HR research scientists at SAP SuccessFactors conduct a comprehensive analysis of HR trends for the year ahead. Now we reflect on our HR trends for 2024, what we heard from HR leaders throughout the year about their priorities, and what early signals we see for how these trends may develop in 2025.

Organizations double down on their top HR priorities in 2025

HR’s focus on AI shifts to business impact

As predicted in our 2024 trends report, AI was top of mind for organizations as they started (or, in some cases, continued) to invest heavily in AI for HR capabilities. While commentary continues about the expected benefits of AI, including efficiency and productivity gains, there is little quality research to demonstrate AI’s effect in the workplace. We anticipate that such research should improve substantially in 2025 as more businesses continue to implement AI and standardize processes for better AI usage reporting. Linking AI usage to employee productivity and financial outcomes will also require strong policies and procedures to ensure data security and privacy.

Employees increasingly need AI skills

In line with our predictions, organizations invested heavily in skills-based approaches to talent acquisition and development, largely driven by new AI-based capabilities that better support the skills transformations that many organizations sought. As AI continues to transform how people work, job candidates and employees will need to build their AI-related skills through upskilling and reskilling. In AI-augmented workplaces, organizations will need employees who have expertise in their professions and the AI literacy to identify how AI can improve their core work tasks.

The HR transformation continues

Our data shows that the transformation of HR was a more important topic this year than our trends analysis originally suggested. HR professionals also need to develop knowledge and skills in AI because there is an increased need for HR to facilitate the adoption of a company’s AI strategy and to define associated ROI metrics. In 2025, we expect HR’s strategic responsibilities to increase, especially if AI is used to improve HR self-service and reduce HR-related tickets and queries. HR should be directed to lead the change management needed for ongoing business transformations next year and to further develop business acumen and competence for cross-functional collaboration.

Key shifts in HR priorities in 2025

Organizations draw the line on hybrid and remote work

We predicted in 2024 that organizations would continue experimenting with different return-to-office (RTO) approaches, either through incentivizing or penalizing employees. Regardless of which approach organizations have landed on (requiring full-time RTO, staying fully remote, or implementing a hybrid model), our customer data suggests that discussions about work arrangements are decreasing in priority relative to other topics. This could be in part because companies will have communicated their positions and policies on the matter by the end of this year. Now employees must decide to adapt to their organization’s chosen model or change companies to find their preferred work arrangements.

Trust in leadership moves in the wrong direction

In 2024, we predicted that trust in leadership would reach new lows and called for significant investment to stem the decline and repair the rift between leaders and their teams. Our customer data shows that HR may be less invested in tackling this issue in 2025, but this does not suggest that organizations have succeeded over the past year. The story may be just the opposite, with research reports throughout this year calling out leadership trust as a low point and employees continuing to cite a disconnect with and, in some cases, resentment toward executive leadership. HR professionals often mediate between the leaders who decide on strategies and policies and the employees who are expected to follow, placing HR in the difficult situation of rebuilding the workforce’s depleted trust in leadership. The decreasing priority of this topic may suggest that HR leaders—perhaps facing internal resistance, lacking clarity regarding their role compared to executive leaders, or having had limited success in efforts to date—are resigned to the fact that they don’t know how to fix this problem.

Striking a balance: DEI&B becomes increasingly complex

Last year’s report showed that the momentum of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEI&B) was plateauing. This past year, however, brought more significant change in this area than simply the deceleration of established strategies and programming. Likely influenced by political shifts, such as the removal of affirmative action in higher education in the United States, plus economic circumstances impacting companies’ DEI&B budgets, some organizations are choosing to rescale their DEI&B strategies to have less specific and ambitious goals or to remove their investments altogether.

At the same time, other organizations are communicating their intention to not only maintain their focus but also to grow their investments in DEI&B. Our customer data showed much less investment in DEI&B this year than we predicted, but it still showed an increase from the present state for 2025, perhaps as companies decide if and how they’ll invest in this area going forward. The resulting shakeout should create welcome clarity for workers about where companies stand on this topic, helping them determine companies’ beliefs on DEI&B as they consider employment options in 2025.

Taking stock, moving forward

As organizations continue to invest in AI, the skills employees need continue to change, and HR roles continue to transform. Strong stances by organizations on issues such as hybrid work, DEI&B policies, and continuing leadership trust challenges suggest that employee experience may evolve next year, creating a significant leading role for HR to shape it (if they want it!).

How will these trends play out in 2025, and what new trends will emerge? How can organizations best equip themselves to address these pressing issues successfully in the coming year? For answers to these questions and more, look out for our upcoming annual trends report to be published in February 2025. In the report, we’ll analyze global trends data and complement it with our original HR research insights to provide an evidence-based point of view on HR’s priorities for the coming year.