Talent 2025: Key Takeaways on the Future of Hiring, Retention, and the Employee Experience

With the job market and the workplace evolving rapidly, HR leaders are rethinking how they attract and retain top talent in today's shifting landscape. The SHRM Talent 2025 conference welcomed more than 3,000 HR leaderes to Nashville's Music City Center to discover and discuss forward-thinking recruiting and retention strategies in this era of change. Here are some key takeaways ...

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Favor Disruptive Voices When Hiring to Drive Innovation

The role of the human at work will become more critical, not less, during the era of artificial intelligence.

“Talent becomes more important in a world where you can automate tasks,” said Mike Walsh, founder and CEO of Tomorrow, a global consultancy. “The question is: How does this new age change the value of what we do and what it is to be good at your job?”

When scaling your company, focus on hiring employees who will come along with you on the journey to the future. The “reward hackers” are the employees who focus on maximizing their workload most efficiently. In the vein of working smarter, not harder, these employees may challenge you or your organization’s norms. But their ability to increase efficiency will be worth the acclimation period.

“Hire the person who thinks they can do your job in half the time with new technology,” Walsh said. “They know the job of the future is the job they destroy by finding a smarter way of doing the work.”

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Earn Buy-In for Reskilling Initiatives by Pointing to Real ROI Metrics

With work in the midst of dramatic change, so are the skills needed to perform it. When advocating for the budget and initiatives to upskill and reskill your existing workforce, it’s critical to identify bottom-line metrics so that your CFO and CEO can relate. These real metrics are what will help you protect your workforce.

“Most often, programs on reskilling or upskilling have been looking at satisfaction with content or course completion rates,” said Tan Moorthy, CEO of Revature, a technology talent development company. “It’s important to move away from that and say: What does this mean for business? How do you make an impact on the total human capital costs for the organization?”

When adopting reskilling or other learning and development (L&D) programs for your employees, it’s important that CHROs work together with their L&D teams. It’s common
for chief learning officers to be tasked with closing the skills gap. But to be most effective, they need to have an active partnership across the executive team. This connection will help L&D challenge their assumptions and better understand organizational needs.

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Lean into KPIs to Improve Your Talent Acquisition Strategy

By choosing the right KPIs to focus on and creating a dashboard to highlight their current workforce challenges, HR leaders can improve their quality of hires and internal mobility rate.

“Think about the ecosystem you’ve built and whether or not it’s providing you the insight that you need to take back to the business and say: Here’s an opportunity cost,” advised John Dawson, division vice president of Dayforce Talent.

Here are four tips that Dawson shared for increasing your return on talent systems:

1. Take a macrolens on what’s really going to move the needle. When setting your KPIs, think big picture about the potential you have to make an impact on the longevity of your employees.
2. Recognize your power to impact the employee experience. It’s up to HR leaders to be the gatekeepers on what’s going to work and what’s not.
3. Implement AI with data. If an HR process would work better if it could be done 24/7, then that is likely a task that should be completed using AI.
4. Set KPIs that match your organization’s needs. Take your time to set KPIs that benefit your specific companywide goals.

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Do Your Motivations Address the Human, or Just the Employee?

Motivation plays a big role in the staying power of employees. To increase retention, first take the time to understand your workforce’s “total motivation.” Ask yourself: How can I address the human, and not just the employee?

“That’s big, because if you’re trying to get the most productivity out of that employee, if you keep calling them ‘employee’ and you don’t think of them as a human being, you’ve missed the mark,” said Noble Potts, talent transformation expert at Checkr. “That’s important as it relates to figuring out how to better engage and get that best employee experience out of that individual.”

An employee’s total motivation is comprised of:

• Indirect motivators, which are short-term factors that aren’t related to an employee’s identity. Examples include economic pressure and emotional pressure.
• Direct motivators, which tie an employee’s work to their identity. Examples include an employee’s sense of play (their curiosity and innovation at work), purpose (their alignment with the business objectives), and potential (their willingness to pursue development opportunities). 

“If you’re able to focus more on [direct motivators], you’ll get that higher employee performance and that longer-lasting person without reliance on just the compensation,” said Jared Snyder, director of talent management at The Shield Companies.

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Build Trust by Design: 5 Key Workforce Behaviors

Trust is the foundation of high-performing teams, but it doesn’t happen by chance.

“Strong workplace cultures are built on a foundation of three things: trust, communication, and alignment,” said Steph Llano, a consultant at The Perk, a leadership development firm. “Building trust is teachable, and trust issues at work can be fixed.”

Llano outlines five key behaviors that create a culture of trust in the workplace:

1. Connect. People trust those they feel connected to. Foster genuine relationships by having meaningful one-on-one conversations, eliminating distractions, and listening with curiosity.
2. Create safety. Psychological safety encourages open communication and innovation. Leaders should model vulnerability, assume positive intent, and create an environment where employees feel safe to speak up.
3. Commit. Do what you say you will do. Follow through on promises, communicate when challenges arise, and set realistic expectations for yourself and your team.
4. Be clear. Ambiguity erodes trust. Clearly define expectations, priorities, and responsibilities to ensure alignment. Establish behavioral norms and a shared vision.
5. Celebrate. Recognize and appreciate contributions regularly, not just at major milestones. Ask employees how they prefer to be recognized and make appreciation a habit.

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Know the Important Difference Between Engagement and Culture

When assessing your workforce, be mindful of how you think about culture and engagement. They’re distinct things. Employees can be engaged in their work while also experiencing a toxic workplace culture brought about by peers or leaders.

“Engaged employees aren’t a predictor of a healthy work culture,” advised Catherine Mattice, founder and CEO of Civility Partners Inc. “You wouldn’t believe the amount of times I’ve seen an executive keep an employee who acts like a bully because they are achieving business results. We think they’re doing this to cause harm, but they’ve actually lost their way because they intend to get results.”

When thinking about your organization’s culture, take the time to consider what your employee surveys really measure. You want to establish accountability for the right behaviors and be prepared to coach employees to achieve the individual behavior you’re looking for.

“Everyone needs training for them to reach accountability in terms of metrics, rewards, compensation, promotions, and more learning opportunities,” said Mattice. “Your culture has to focus on managers and using them to help craft your culture.”

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Understand Generational Dynamics to Unlock Employees’ Full Potential

HR leaders face a growing challenge in retaining younger workers, who often lack employer loyalty and are strongly impacted by their first manager. Giving these workers extra support is crucial for their development.

“A young person’s decision to leave an organization is directly tied to their first performance review,” said Kim Lear, founder of Inlay Insights. “The best thing leaders can do is help them move from ideation to execution.”

HR leaders are also focused on supporting “sandwich generation” workers, those raising children while also dealing with aging parents. Given these employees’ growing responsibilities, Lear advised that the best thing you can give employees in this life stage is time. Be mindful of the number of meetings on their calendars and consider replacing meetings with an email when possible.

To get the most out of your collective workforce, consider the leadership concepts of “whole self” and “best self.”  Ask yourself as a leader: What energy am I bringing into the room? Which version of me will help my team right now?

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The Right Technology Can Extend the Longevity of Your HR Team

Especially in the past five years, HR leaders have been asked to play increasingly prominent roles in the organization — and HR is feeling the stress.

In the 2025 SHRM State of the Workplace report, nearly two-thirds of HR leaders (62%) said their HR department has been working beyond its typical capacity, an increase from 57% in 2023. Outsourcing or using AI to handle the repetitive work of HR can give leaders more time to focus on the human elements of the profession they were originally drawn toward.

“If we’re not implementing technology to make things easier, to get rid of the manual activities, we have to blame ourselves for part of that,” said Tony Buffum, head of enterprise strategy at Human Cloud, a global advisory firm. “When you can build a story around ROI, this is going to pay for itself because you can pull out some of that deadening work and spend more time on what really adds value and what really uses your capabilities and skills. Then you can jump forward in terms of an advanced HR function that’s personally satisfying that you don’t want to leave.”