The Evolving Role of HR in the 2020s: Challenges and Responsibilities

 

Photo by Mimi Thian, Unsplash, 2025.

What are the requirements for HR today?

If the 2010s were about building HR capability, the 2020s are about demonstrating that HR does work. If you walk into any management meeting today, you will hear the same tensions: flexibility versus fairness; global standards versus local nuance; productivity targets versus human energy. The Deloit report on next HR trends say leaders don't have to choose because great organisations design for both business and human outcomes at once.

What is genuinely hard right now in HR?

• Engagement and trust of employees are fragile. Global engagement fell through 2024, with managers in particular feeling this. In the USA, Gallup data shows the slip is real and costly making manager enablement and meaningful conversations non-negotiable.
• Employee relations have grown up. The latest HR Acuity report benchmarking across 8m+ employees flags rising misconduct claims and data gaps in how cases are tracked and resolved. This means HR investigations, returns from leave, tough performance calls are now brand moments too.
• Evidence beats opinion. People analytics has matured from dashboards to decision science. Many organisations still struggle to turn insights into action that leaders use. Research by Rasmussen, Marr, & Boudreau (2024) lays out how to take the last step from insight to business impact.

What does HR do in this decade?

In high-performing organisations, HR behaves like a value architect. HR plans the workforce and skills that are tightly attached to strategy, scenario modelling, capacity planning, and clear reskilling pathways. That is culture work, the quiet power of HR is aligning "how we work here" with "how we win here". The truth is, the 2020s will test HR's ability to hold contradictions between productivity and well-being, fairness and flexibility, data and judgement. The organisations that thrive will be those where HR leads from the centre, architecting value for people and performance. I'd love to hear your perspective. What's the hardest tension your HR team is facing right now?

References:

Deloitte. (2025, March 24). 2025 Global Human Capital Trends. https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/talent/human-capital-trends.html
Gallup. (2025, January 13). U.S. employee engagement sinks to a 10-year low. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/654911/employee-engagement-sinks-year-low.aspx%20Gallup.com
HR Acuity. (2025, June 12). Ninth Annual Employee Relations Benchmark uncovers critical data gaps, increasing organisational risk as misconduct claims surge [Press release]. https://www.hracuity.com/press-releases/hr-acuitys-ninth-annual-employee-relations-benchmark-uncovers-critical-data-gaps-increasing-organizational-risk-as-misconduct-claims-surge/

Rasmussen, T. H., Marr, B., & Boudreau, J. (2024). Moving people analytics from insight to impact. Human Resource Development Review. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15344843231207220?utm_source=chatgpt.com