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With 2025 underway, three key trends stand out as businesses strive to manage talent in an increasingly complex landscape. By understanding how AI elevates the work experience, taking a skills-first approach and focusing on the “pixelation” of work, you’ll benefit from an agile workforce, ready to help the business succeed.
It seems that each year, talent management gets increasingly complicated. Just consider the constant emergence of new tools and technologies, changes in demands and expectations from talent, and the growing need to stay innovative and ahead of the competition. Needless to say, 2025 has started off with a confluence of factors affecting employers and talent like never before.
For example, training employees on AI and how to use it in their everyday work is no longer a question of “if” but “when.” At the same time, as you’re likely putting greater focus on increasing your team’s skills — in AI and beyond — ensuring a skills-first approach in your talent management strategy will be crucial. And in the face of growing skills-shortages, it may be time to completely rethink your approach to talent acquisition, breaking work down into tasks and outcomes rather than jobs, and ensuring the right resources are in place to tackle them.
In light of such trends, how can you address these factors throughout 2025 and beyond? How can you be sure the decisions you make today will ultimately help you succeed in your talent strategy to reach overall business goals? The first step is to understand their real impact on talent, and adopting the best strategies in response.
Overhauling organisational culture with AI
Perhaps no trend has had a more drastic effect on talent management than the ongoing emergence of AI. That’s why companies that aren’t already using it to enhance the work experience for their talent are behind the curve. But no matter where you are on your AI journey, one of the most impactful ways to use AI is to rewrite the script on workplace culture and create a more engaging, personalised experience.
The use cases are almost endless, enabling you to enhance key milestones in the talent life cycle, like candidate experience, onboarding, performance assessment, coaching, internal mobility and more. But that’s just the start — AI can do everything from designing workforce surveys that elicit meaningful responses and supercharge collaboration by distilling ideas from meetings, to streamlining communication and accelerating project delivery. Despite the promise, Randstad Enterprise’s 2025 Talent Trends Report finds that only 41% of companies are using automation tools to personalise the talent experience.
Those who are hesitant to fully embrace AI will be missing out on its truly transformative power. That’s because AI’s potential extends far beyond the tactical, administrative tasks, to positively affect how talent get their work done and how they think about their overall workplace experience. For instance, the Talent Trends research finds that 84% of C-suite and talent leaders believe robots and machines can alleviate mundane tasks, so talent can do more advanced work. This means they have more time to focus on innovation, creation and collaboration and can feel more fulfilled. What’s more, they can also use these tools as a collaborator designed to boost creativity and innovation.
But it’s not just employers who believe this; talent themselves recognise benefits of AI as well. A study by Microsoft and LinkedIn revealed that 84% of respondents say AI allows them to be more creative, while 83% say it enables them to enjoy their work more. Another survey by Inc. shows that 70% of workers are happier when they are allowed to use AI in their work.
Take into account other ways AI can enhance the work experience, like automating rewards and recognition, taking notes during meetings and sending event reminders for birthdays and work anniversaries. Such capabilities not only help to bring more satisfaction and joy to talent, but also lessen the administrative burden on HR teams and managers.
Stepping into the skills-first era
As the world of work changes rapidly, finding talent with the right skills — and increasing the skills of current staff — has become a priority. And it’s also a win-win for employers and employees alike. With a focus on skills-based hiring and development, you can help ensure the business has the right people with the right skills to remain competitive. A focus on skills is also crucial to attracting and retaining talent. Randstad’s 2025 Workmonitor survey of 26,000 workers around the globe finds that 44% of talent wouldn’t accept a job that doesn’t offer skills opportunities.
That’s just one reason why a skills-first approach to workforce management is no longer an option, but a necessity. The Talent Trends Report shows the top perceived benefits of skills-based models to include improved equity (41%), greater organisational preparedness (39%), improved hiring outcomes (39%) and stronger talent development outcomes (37%). Skills-based models also enable employers to leverage each person’s natural strengths and motivations, while providing the learned skills they’ll also need to succeed.
Despite the numerous benefits of the skills-based approach, fully adopting it and putting it into action can be challenging. That’s why it’s important to start small. Focusing on skills-based hiring and development for specific projects and initiatives is a good first step, and then it can be scaled to other areas. But to really jump-start your transition, consider building internal talent marketplaces.
With internal talent marketplaces, it’s easy to not only connect internal talent with new opportunities within the company, but also spur skilling and development. Such platforms allow talent to understand the career paths available to them, as well as the skills and know-how needed to pursue those opportunities. Fortunately, AI can help take the administrative tasks out of this, leveraging talent data to drive internal mobility.
This approach is also crucial for finding and developing the next generation of leaders. With the power of AI, it becomes easier to analyse and recommend high-potential employees for leadership roles, and ensure they receive the individualised coaching, mentorship and skilling to succeed.
Prioritising the pixelation of work
Combined with the growing use of AI and greater focus on skills, another major trend is affecting how work gets done. Known as “the pixelation of work,” this refers to breaking down jobs into flexible “pixels” of tasks and skills. The pixels are then reorganised based on desired outcomes, enabling employers to reconfigure and change their approaches based on needs and priorities. This means the right resource to achieve a particular outcome could be an employee, contractor, contingent talent or machine.
Of course, the idea of reimagining work and how it gets done isn’t new; 40% of talent leaders in the 2016 Talent Trends Report said they were increasing investments in integrated and/or total talent acquisition models, for example. But the movement is growing, with 65% increasing investments in 2025.
The result of shifting from the traditional, role-based strategy to an outcomes-based one can help overcome talent scarcity, skills gaps and turnover. And through this approach, hiring managers don’t have to think in terms of filling headcount, but rather consider any of the number of work arrangements, including automation, to get the tasks done. AI can also assist in resource planning and determining the optimal mix of work arrangements.
Focusing on the pixelation of work will be even more important, as talent scarcity only increases. In fact, the Talent Trends Report shows that 32% of talent leaders say talent scarcity has been their biggest pain point, while nearly one-quarter say the same about talent retiring or voluntarily choosing to leave the workforce. That’s why finding the right person for the right task is only part of the equation. It’s also essential to give all talent the opportunity to upskill and reskill, to ensure they continually add value where it’s needed most.
Creating an agile talent strategy
As the talent landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, talent leaders must play a key role in ensuring their organisations keep up. That means not just recognising these three trends and their impact on talent, but acting on them and making the necessary changes. With a focus on implementing AI for the workforce, offering opportunities for all talent to learn new skills and rethinking how different types of talent can be deployed to achieve the desired outcomes, your talent strategy will have the agility to adapt to whatever the future holds.
Written by David Vincent
David is a seasoned professional with over 20 years of experience in recruitment and outsource recruitment solutions.
As Managing Director of Randstad Sourceright EMEA, David works with clients across various sectors such as banking and Financial Services, IT Services and Life Sciences. He has been deeply involved in designing, implementing, and developing outsourced recruitment solutions for top-tier clients around the world.
David has previously held leadership roles at Resource Solutions, Adecco, and Hays, managing large teams and multi-million pound budgets. He takes pride in his ability to develop and maintain relationships at executive level.
He holds a BA from Sheffield Hallam University.
