March 2025: Market Insights by Kayla Hoye.

I’ve been back to back over the last few months, meeting with a number of CPOs and their teams to unpack the key themes shaping the HR space right now. There are a number of interesting findings to share; firstly, the trend of Safety roles and business units shifting to report into HR off the back of a significant rise in Psychosocial cases – this will be an area to watch. The most dominant topic though has been growth. Many organisations have ambitious growth strategies but are navigating this without either sophisticated structures or systems in place to enable it. This has put increased pressure on many HR teams to navigate this, while maintaining BAU operations.

Transformation is everywhere—operating model shifts, restructures, C-suite changes, and leadership overhauls. Off the back of this, restructuring has seemingly created natural restlessness among some employees, particularly in a handful of the larger organizations. HR leaders are noticing lower engagement scores as a result and are busy working on tackling this with their leadership teams as part of their 2025 agendas. In amongst this, tech stack reviews, System harmonization and integration is a key focus area with many businesses looking to unify fragmented systems and processes to increase efficiencies and increase productivity.

As I touched on this week, HR talent is more active in the market than we’ve seen in some time, reminiscent of the boom of 2021/2022. While this might sound like an employer’s dream, the reality is that HR professionals are being highly selective. They are only making a move for the right opportunity, meaning businesses need to be mindful of how they position not only their EVP, but too the scope of their HR roles. This is particularly relevant if you’re hiring in the HR Business Partner and Generalist space – it’s the part of the market that is seeing the most movement and the most competition.

With growth and operating model shifts, it’s no surprise that we’re seeing Internal TA teams hitting capacity. With recruitment ramping up across all functions, TA’s are being stretched to cover a large number of business unit vacancies and so processes that aren’t efficient or candidate experience focused are being exposed. It’s the classic cycle that we see for TA and right now they are close to a peak.

My advice? Hiring managers and TA - ensure you’re aligned on the recruitment process and timelines before going to market. If you aren’t moving efficiently and with an engaging process, you’ll quickly lose top HR talent to businesses who are.

With all of the change and movement happening in the HR space – I want to touch on REM expectations, particularly at the mid-level of the market for HR Business Partners and Advisors. If you’re exploring the market, first understand where your salary sits in the external market versus your capability as opposed to basing expectations off a similar job title or a certain percentage uplift. It’s important to approach conversations and the market with informed and realistic expectations so that you’re not pricing yourself out of the market or discounting opportunities that might not give you the significant REM uplift you’re after, but could actually springboard your career trajectory — if you're looking for real time benchmarking, reach out - we can absolutely help you with that.

In terms of motivators, The two biggest drivers for those considering a move are leadership and flexibility - but another increasing factor is the lack of clear career pathways, particularly for Hi-Po HR Business Partners and Advisors. I’m hearing from a large portion in this part of the market that their roles feel stagnant, with limited progression opportunities internally. The obvious risk with that — some businesses are on the cusp of losing some of their best HR talent. My advice to Senior HR leaders—now is the time to sit down with your high-potential HR team members, have a transparent conversation and map out a clear development plan and pathway to keep them engaged.

Finishing on some good news. One notable, albeit slower, trend is the promising rise of female CEOs—some of whom have progressed through the ranks via HR. This to me, signals a shift in how businesses are recognizing the strategic impact of HR leadership at the highest level. Some might also argue that we are seemingly slowly but surely moving the needle in the right direction from a gender balance perspective.

There are some exciting things that we have in the works behind the scenes, and we’ll be reaching out to our HR community to share more on these value-add pieces soon.

As always, if you’d like to chat more about the market, recruit for your People team, or your own career advice, do reach out.