HR Realities 2025

Fosway Group, Europe’s #1 HR industry analyst, is excited to announce this latest cycle of research into the lived experience of EMEA’s enterprise HR leaders: HR Realities 2025. Now in its 11th year, the research continues its study of how HR teams are responding to the challenges and opportunities of a changing HR landscape, as well as looking at the HR tech ecosystem, the employee experience, and of course AI’s impact on HR. This year’s research is made up of six infographics – you can explore them all beneath.

HR Challenges and Priorities

In a dramatic turn from the previous five years of our HR Realities survey results, we have seen performance and profitability become the most significant organisational challenge in 2025.

HR Budgets and Investment

The pendulum continues to swing against HR teams,  and the post-COVID headcount bounce has come crashing down. Longer term, HR headcount reduction seems set, and the push for greater AI automation is only likely to further embed this trend for the remainder of the decade.

AI in HR – Today

Just over half of HR professionals believe the claims for AI in HR are NOT OVER-HYPED. That’s a dramatic shift over the past three years, and the nay-sayers for AI’s potential has fallen from one in three in 2023 to one in five in 2025.

AI in HR – Tomorrow

As we look at the impact of AI on HR, keeping the ‘human in the loop’ is the dominant HR position. What is less clear is whether that’s an ‘HR’ human or a delegated role for managers. The full implications of AI accelerating processes isn’t just the impact on HR roles.

THE HR Technology Ecosystem

Cloud HR platforms continue to face disruption from specialists that focus on enabling a differentiated people experience. This is especially true in talent acquisition, learning, performance management, skills, internal mobility and employee listening.

HR and the Employee Experience

Despite the perceived importance of the quality of the employee experience, delivering it with HR’s existing solutions is challenging. HR systems need to be transformational systems of engagement and outcomes, not just systems of record. But there has been only marginal improvement on EX over the past four years.

A new set of priorities is clear – organisational performance is now the focus for competitive edge, but we would urge HR leaders to consider how they can achieve this goal through a people-centred workforce strategy. For example, we hear the term ‘human in the loop’ more and more often now – in the context of AI – but that should be the mantra for all HR priorities in 2025 and beyond. HR Realities remains a study in enabling your people through technology, and the continued prioritising of talent, in particular the internal talent pipeline in 2025’s data, is evidence of this. As AI moves beyond its nice-to-have era and into an all-encompassing strategic must-have technology for businesses in every industry vertical the question needs to be asked of HR leaders – what radical decisions are you making today that will secure HR’s relevance tomorrow?

David Wilson, CEO, Fosway Group

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I don’t think we’ve seen results like it in the 11 years we’ve been running our HR Realities Research. There is a real shift happening in HR and the long-term and even short-term trends make it clear just how significant these are. HR is under pressure, businesses are under pressure and that is rippling through HR’s sense of priority, how the employee value proposition is evolving and where HR is looking to invest in its future. The impact of really keying into and emphasising these on the employee experience, HR operations, HR tech and the focus for HR innovation is profound. It marks an evolutionary step change for HR that we haven’t seen before. It’s a leap which many HR teams are ill-equipped to make. But thankfully our research is showing exactly where the real leaders in HR are heading and how they are planning to get there. It is the most fascinating report yet.

David Perring, Chief Insights Officer, Fosway Group

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Fosway AI Insights 2025

The Fosway AI Insights Strategic Research Programme aims to get beyond the hype and noise, exploring these questions and more, and taking a detailed look at the reality of AI on a segment by segment basis including Cloud HR, talent management, talent acquisition, digital learning and learning systems.