There is no shortage of issues for HR leaders to address in 2025.

From managing RTO mandates to the incoming EU AI Act, from prioritizing DEI initiatives to advancements in AI, there’s plenty to keep CHROs occupied over the next 12 months.

Gartner has published its own collection of predictions for CHROs in 2025, driven by new demands for a future-ready workforce, the evolving role of leaders and managers, and emerging talent risks to organizational strategy.

UNLEASH spoke exclusively to Emily Rose McRae, Senior Director Analyst in the Gartner HR practice, about a few of these predictions that touch on expertise and skills, AI for performance management, and loneliness among workers.

McRae explains that the coming year is an interesting one, as it’s “very, very clear the momentum around HR as strategy leaders which came out of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic has modulated”. 

These changes include the advancements of generative AI, towards which McRae says there is a “preference for value based investments” compared to previous years, and “forces that were macroeconomic in play that have serious implications for HR.”

One such force is the impending wave of workers due to retire from the workforce in the next two years, both in the US and globally.

A lot of companies have been aware of this but haven’t really taken a lot of action, because they’re kind of hoping maybe the talent pool would sort itself out or maybe they won’t need that kind of skills anymore. Now the pressure is on to deal with this”, shares McRae. 

Skills and role-based mindset shifts can combat the expertise gap

This departure of experience from the workforce, combined with an influx of new entrants and increased disruption caused by new technology, is resulting in a widening expertise gap.

This is coupled with a lack of hands-on training for employees – a Gartner survey of 3,375 employees in May last year found that more than half (60%) weren’t receiving on-the-job coaching they required to support core job skills.

McRae believes that skills-based strategies will be part of the solution for HR leaders, but it will also require a rethink of roles and how the two factors are utilized.

“In some cases, the issue is that the operating models have depended on that level of expertise, but when we’re talking about the skills just not existing in the workforce it doesn’t matter if you do it role-based or skill-based, you’re still missing those skills,” she says.

As a result, HR leaders may look to redesign roles and workflows to reduce reliance on the skills they are missing. 

Or they could embrace non-traditional employment models or new employment models, like gig and contingent, to continue access to some expertise after older workers retire.

Intensive upskilling programs could also play a part, McRae explains.

However, these would require a dedicated hands-on management approach from HR leaders, because “you can’t just put a couple things on the learning management system and hope people take the courses“. 

AI preferable to managers when it comes to rating performance

The increasing use of AI in HR processes will be a specific challenge for HR leaders over the next 12 months.

Performance management is one area where AI poses risks and challenges for HR, but research from Gartner has found that employees are largely in favor of having an algorithm judge their performance.

Of 3,500 employees surveyed, nearly nine in ten (87%) said they believe AI could provide farrier feedback on their performance than their manager; a result that McRae says is “super fascinating.”

While there has historically been an “understandable” resistance to being managed by machines among employees, McRae highlights that such a high proportion of workers in favor of AI in this area is “a pretty brutal indictment of how people feel about their managers, skill and performance management“. 

She adds that one in four (23%) employees are more comfortable owning up to a mistake to a machine than a human, as its de-personalizes the experience. 

Let’s be real, managers are not good at this and it’s not their fault. Most managers have been thrown into positions of management based on individual contributor success, and then we expect them to be good at management, which is a totally different skill and performance,” McRae states.

For HR leaders, the appeal of being able to use AI in performance management will no doubt be alluring, but many may not have the budget to go out and buy new systems, McRae details.

Instead, she advocates examining what functionality is already embedded within existing platforms and assessing comfort levels, as well as how it fits into the organization’s strategy and values.

However, this does not mean that performance management, or other matters such as compensation, should be left entirely to machines.

“There’s still a future for humans in this and there has to be. There needs to be people involved, because human logic needs to be involved, and empathy as well.

“But it’s actually potentially a really nice opportunity for managers to get more information and also better guidance on what all the information they’re receiving, and to take something off their plate,” McRae explains.

Employee loneliness is more than just a wellbeing challenge, it’s a business risk

Employee wellbeing is often a staple of yearly predictions, but Gartner has gone a step further and identified loneliness as an acute business risk in 2025.

Loneliness is not just limited to a singular group of employees either –  it could be among older or mid-career employees, new entrants to the workplace that have missed out on social experiences during the pandemic, or those working from home or in other locations.

“Loneliness is painful, but it’s not just about wellbeing,” McRae details, highlighting that when employees are lonely they are less engaged and suffer a drop in productivity, and the answer isn’t as simple as bringing them back to the office full-time.

“Our data shows very clearly that not only does that not work, but that employees who have been pulled back into the office are actually lonelier than everybody else, because they are being asked to do things that are just not necessarily leading to actual connection,” McRae says.

She says HR leaders can work on improving opportunities for their employees to combat loneliness by collecting free resources that are available in the different locations where they operate.

These could be sports clubs that promote teamwork or social groups that bond over shared interests, but McRae also advocates that HR leaders can push to set up similar groups within their own organizations.

If companies want their employees to be building strong connections, that’s about incentivizing that behavior and that activity, not about magically hoping that you can somehow fix loneliness just by putting people together,” she concludes.