World of work trends 2025: The collective workforce

Executive Summary

In the collective workforce of 2025, nuance, not compromise, leads the way. As the world of work continues to evolve, the year ahead will demand a careful integration of individual and collective ambitions. The trends shaping this future – from the ethical dilemmas surrounding AI to the needs of diverse employee groups – reflect a landscape where complexity and interconnectedness are the norm.

Each of the five trends explored in this report offers a clear call to action for HR leaders.

1. Building sustainable workplaces together highlights the need for organisations to integrate social responsibility into their strategies and address global challenges collaboratively.
2. The new belonging calls on organisations to support employees navigating fluid careers, fostering connections both within and beyond organisational boundaries.
3. Transforming employee experience for all focuses on inclusive practices that ensure all employees, regardless of role, feel supported and empowered.
4. Neuroinclusive by design leverages insights from neuroinclusion to improve communication, teamwork, and workflows across the entire workforce.
5. Finally, AI-powered leadership combines human creativity with technological insights, helping leaders guide their organisations through complexity and change.

Organisations that embrace this dynamic reality, fostering environments where diverse perspectives drive meaningful collaboration and innovation, will not only adapt, but thrive. By embedding systems thinking and creating spaces where personal empowerment enhances collective strength, we can build a resilient and inclusive future of work.

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Q&A with Rebecca Jackson from Pfizer

We caught up with Rebecca Jackson, UK lead for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at certified Top Employer Pfizer, who shares the organisation’s innovative HR strategies, inclusive recruitment practices, flexible working policies, and what exactly makes them a Top Employer.

Introduce yourself and tell us about your organisation

I’m Rebecca Jackson, the UK lead for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Pfizer, one of the world’s premier innovative bio-pharmaceutical companies. We have a portfolio of over 150 different medicines and vaccines which are helping to improve the lives of millions of people in the UK and around the world. Pfizer employs approximately 2000 people in the UK, and like most large organisations there is a gender pay gap, reflecting the uneven distribution of men and women through the organisation. My role is to deliver strategies which will eliminate the gender pay gap, and I’m happy to say we are making good progress.

What makes Pfizer a Top Employer?

Equity is one of the company’s core values. At Pfizer, we understand that diverse teams are more collaborative, more accepting of different perspectives and more representative of the world we share. As a business, our aim is to be as diverse as the patients and communities we serve. This supports us to understand the needs and challenges facing different groups and to find better ways to serve them. So, we work hard to create a feeling of belonging. We encourage everyone to bring their whole self to work and strive to create a workplace that attracts and retains the best talent, allowing every colleague to flourish. Our Top Employer accreditation represents our ongoing commitment to making Pfizer a workplace in which all our colleagues can flourish. We’re very proud of the recognition.

What is the biggest people challenge your business currently faces? And what are you doing to meet this challenge?

Like many companies, we are supporting our colleagues through the return to site-based working. We have a suite of policies that support flexible working patterns, but not everyone understands the full range of options available to them. We know people are committed to their work, so we’ve targeted communications directly to colleagues rather than enforcing a ‘top down’ approach. At the same time, resources are being offered to managers so that they can put the colleague back at the centre of a flexible working conversation, rather than the policies.

Tell us about a recent HR initiative you have instigated within your organisation that you are most proud of?

Pfizer is an equal opportunities employer, which means that we appoint the best person for the job. Our Talent Acquisition team works hard to ensure that recruitment efforts reach the widest talent pool, tackling social mobility, enabling equitable career progression & addressing our pay gaps. I’m proud that the ethnic diversity of Pfizer mirrors that of the UK, and that we have a gender-balanced workforce. There is more work to move women and non-white colleagues into more senior roles, but I’m confident that we are building a strong internal pipeline of diverse talent for the future.

Which wellbeing offerings in your business are proving the most popular with employees?

Our Benefits Choice scheme allows colleagues to increase or decrease the amount of holiday they can take each year. Full time colleagues are able to ‘buy’ up to 10 days’ holiday (or the pro-rated equivalent), meaning that a colleague can decide the amount of holiday that’s available to them. Approximately a third of our employees participate in the scheme.  Another popular scheme is the Salary Plan Electric Vehicle lease option, which is making a real impact in making new EVs (which can be expensive) more widely accessible to colleagues. This particular scheme is good for the colleague and has a positive impact on the business carbon footprint, and helping Pfizer achieve its published goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and become carbon neutral by 2030.

What’s next? Tell us about a new initiative/project for 2025 that you’re most excited about?

I’m excited to see how the Labour Government extends the scope of pay gap reporting to mandate disability and ethnicity pay gap reporting by companies with more than 250 employees. I understand that pay gap data can only provide a snapshot of the diversity of our organisation, but it’s a hugely valuable insight and measurement of our progress towards a truly equitable organisation.

Get in touch to discover more about the Top Employers Certification Programme and how it can help your organisation grow as an employer of choice.

Q&A with Michelle Fellows from The Perfume Shop

We caught up with Michelle Fellows, People & Development Director at certified UK Top Employer The Perfume Shop, who shares what makes the organisation a Top Employer, how they retain talent in a competitive industry and the ways AI is being implemented within the HR function.

Introduce yourself and tell us about your organisation

I’m Michelle Fellows , People & Development Director at The Perfume Shop. I’ve worked in the business for 24 years and led the team for the last 20 years.

The Perfume Shop was established 32 years ago and our purpose is simple – to be the UK & Ireland’s number destination for perfume. Our brand values are “We’re Expert, We’re Passionate & We Care”, knowing perfume like the backs of our hands, like no one else on the high street.

With 2,000 employees across the UK & Ireland of which more than 1,500 are based in our stores, we have the best-trained people with expert perfume knowledge ready to showcase their passion for perfume by offering the finest advice.  We stock the widest and newest fragrance range with exclusive brands and best offerings for customers.

We are also proud to be an O+O business (offline + online), with around 1 in 4 of our sales made online via our website. Our Store teams are supported by a Distribution team of 70 people based in our Warehouse in Dunstable and a team of 200 in our Head Office, which we call ‘Scentquarters’, in High Wycombe.

We call ourselves The Perfume People and you can see our Talent, Passion and Spark in everything we do.  We care about our customers, we care about each other and we care about being a sustainable business.

What makes The Perfume Shop a Top Employer?

It’s our approach to our people. Our people have always been at the heart of our business strategy because we recognise that happy people mean happy customers, creating long term loyalty and value for the business.

We take great pride in our positive culture, but we don’t take it for granted.  We continually look to improve by benchmarking ourselves externally, listening to our people and taking action on what we learn.

We were very proud to be accredited as a Top Employer for the first time in 2023.  It’s given us confidence to really shout about our people credentials.  We were delighted to understand the areas where we excel and find out where we could be better.

What is the biggest people challenge your business faces? And what are you doing to meet this challenge?

Retaining our people remains our biggest challenge and it’s the KPI that we’re all focused on in our team. We’ll continue to invest in our pay rates for Stores. We’re an accredited Real Living Wage employer and we’ve seen the difference that this makes in attracting and retaining people.

We’ll continue to focus on career development.  Retail is a brilliant place to create a career and we’re proud to ‘grow our own’.  We’ll continue to offer a wide range of apprenticeships across the business.  We also have a wide range of internal learning programmes that support people to progress to their next role, or develop key skills in the role they have.  We also enable a handful of people to attend prestigious leadership development programmes offered by the BRC, which is the gold standard in our sector.

We’ll continue to listen, learn and respond to the feedback and ideas from our teams.  As a smaller organisation we’re able to be agile and respond quickly to our people when they tell us that we’re getting something right, or wrong!

Tell us about a recent HR initiative you have instigated within your organisation that you are most proud of?

Given the cost of living crisis, I’m really proud of the way we’ve invested in our teams and ensured that they can get more pay in their pockets.  There are 3 key ways we’ve responded to the cost of living crisis:

Living Wage – as a real Living Wage employer we can demonstrate our commitment to our employees and that we want to pay our people a wage that enables them to meet their every day needs.

Incentive pay – Across October, November and December we offer everyone the opportunity to earn extra in commission, including our 800 temporary Sales Assistants who join us to support with Christmas Trading.  In 2023 we paid an additional £250 (on average) to every Sales Advisor across the business.  It’s our way of ensuring that we retain our teams at a critical time of year for the business, and enables us to recognise and reward their hard work.  We also have bonus schemes for Store Management, our Head Office teams and Warehouse management.

Financial wellbeing focus – We’ve launched Wagestream across the UK business. Wagestream is a service that allows employees to access a portion of their earned wages (streaming) before payday, helping them manage those unexpected bills.  Wagestream helps employees to manage their finances more effectively, provides financial education and enables them to create saving pots.

How is AI helping you – or challenging you in terms of your people practices?

AI is an area I’m personally hugely excited about. It provides a brilliant opportunity to help us become more efficient in the way we do things and the way in which we support the needs of our people across The Perfume Shop.

We’ve already created bots which automate the administrative parts of our recruitment and onboarding processes.  We’ve recently launched a chat bot to provide policy advice.  Automating the routine tasks makes sense, it enables the team to spend more time doing the things that AI can’t, like partnering, coaching and advising, adding value to the business.

But AI also poses some challenges for us.  We need to ensure that our people are equipped and ready for the changes that AI brings. We need to reskill and upskill our workforce, foster a culture of learning and innovation, and provide support and guidance. We also need to ensure that our people feel valued and engaged, and that they have a sense of purpose and meaning in their work.  We’ll need to ensure that AI develops in a way that is ethical, transparent and fair.

We’ll need to balance the human and the machine aspects of our people practice. We need to leverage the strengths of both AI and human intelligence, and find the optimal combination for each task and situation.  We also need to preserve the human touch and connection that make our brand unique and appealing.

Which wellbeing offerings in your business are proving the most popular with employees? And which are proving the most effective in terms of their impact?

We’re really delighted with the response to Wagestream. To date since launch we have 36% enrolment across the business, with 2563 streams and 162 saving pots created.  We considered carefully whether it was right thing to do as we were concerned that giving people access to a portion of their pay early would create more financial hardship, but the data and insights from Wagestream showed us that the opposite was true and when people can access their pay when they need it, it reduces their use of pay day lenders, credit cards or other forms of high interest debt.

Have you any new DEI initiatives you can tell us about that help you tap into fresh sources of talent?

In the last 12 months we’ve done a lot to ensure we support women across their working lives.  86% of our employees at The Perfume Shop are women so it was important that we responded to their feedback.

This year we’ve reviewed our maternity pay offering and implemented enhanced pay for Store Managers, Deputy Managers and Head Office employees.  Eligible employees will now receive full pay for the first 13 weeks, followed by 50% pay for a further 13 weeks.  This is a significant investment, but protects people from worrying about their finances at an important time for them and their family.  It’s early days in terms of understanding the impact, but it’s proved popular with people who are already on leave, or about to go on leave and will help us attract and retain people who are thinking about starting a family.

Every year we appoint a number of Sustainability Champions from across the business.  They help us drive our Sustainability agenda across the People, Product and Planet pillars with fresh eyes and fresh ideas.  They developed a Period Positivity policy which sets out our approach to periods.  We want to provide an open and supportive environment where people who have periods feel comfortable, they can discuss periods if needed, and have access to period products in an emergency.

We have also developed a Menopause policy which was formed by holding a series of listening groups with women in Perimenopause or Menopause, so we could understand what they needed, because fostering a culture of openness surrounding menopause is important here.  We want all employees to feel able to talk about menopause and be aware of the symptoms. For those experiencing menopause we want to provide information and support to be their best selves during this stage of life.

Around International Women’s Day in January we took the opportunity to really celebrate women here at The Perfume Shop, featuring women across the business across a wide range of career stages and seniority.  We’re very proud to have a female Managing Director and a Leadership team which is 78% female.

Inspiring women to understand that we care about them, that we want to support them and offer brilliant careers is a key part of our retention strategy.

What’s next? Tell us about a new project that you’re most excited about?

2024 will be the year where we begin to harness AI, so working across the business and getting everyone thinking about the opportunities for them personally will be my mission!

Get in touch to discover more about the Top Employers Certification Programme and how it can help your organisation grow as an employer of choice.

Q&A with Garry McCabe from Mater Private Network

Ireland’s leading private hospital brand Mater Private Network was certified as a Top Employer 2024 in Ireland earlier this year. We were delighted to catch up with Chief People Officer Garry McCabe to discover what makes the organisation a Top Employer.

In this Q&A Garry reveals all about their great success in reducing attrition rates, the implementation of unique flexible working initiatives, and their new bespoke tailored leadership programmes.

Introduce yourself and tell us about your organisation

I am Garry McCabe, Chief People Officer at the Mater Private Network. I’m a strategically focused Human Resource Professional with over twenty years’ experience. I’m a known high-achiever, adept at driving company growth and productivity. I have established “world class” innovative HR initiatives that have been widely adapted. In recent years I have spent time out of the Human Resource world to work in the Commercial arena, to round out my business nous. This gives me a relatively rare blend of Human Resources and Commercial aligned to multi-industry experience, allowing me to focus on delivering real return on investment and driving continuous improvement in organisations. My passion as a HR professional is impacting the bottom line using a range of Leadership skills, thus continually proving the outstanding value that Human Resources can deliver for the organisations.

The Mater Private Network is Ireland’s leading Private Hospital Brand with over 2,400 staff and has grown exponentially in the past 20 years form an initial flagship hospital in Dublin to now comprise of two acute hospitals (Dublin and Cork), two Day Hospitals in North and South Dublin, two advanced specialist Radiotherapy Centres in Limerick and Liverpool (UK), and a number of out-patient clinics in various regional locations. Mater Private Network has built a strong reputation for medical innovation and the provision of high acuity care, and is a national leader for heart and cancer specialties in particular. Both Mater Private Dublin and Cork hospitals have consistently been awarded JCI Gold status since they joined this world-recognised accreditation system.

Congratulations on your first year certifying as a Top Employer in Ireland. What is the main value you receive from the Top Employers Programme?

There are two main value propositions derived from the Top Employers Programme for Mater Private Network being 1) its ability to provide a comprehensive framework for evaluating and enhancing our HR practices and 2) the opportunity for Mater Private Network to differentiate our Employer Brand to a global community of healthcare talent.

Through the rigorous assessment process, we gain invaluable insights into areas of strength and areas for development across various aspects of our employee experience and the Employer Brand is bolstered which impacts our attractiveness in what must be one of the most, if not the most, competitive employee talent market in any industry across the world.

What will be the biggest people challenge you expect your business to be facing in 2024? And what will you do to meet this challenge?

There are 2 intrinsically linked people challenges for all of the healthcare systems globally and Mater Private Network are no different. The twin topics of Attraction and Attrition or as we like to refer to them as Recruitment and Retention.

Recruitment:

With the worlds healthcare professionals expected to be in a 30 million headcount deficit by 2030 the acquisition of talent is not easy, in fact it is unbelievably difficult with many critical healthcare skills already at extreme levels of scarcity. We in Mater Private Network are competing with all the 1st world countries and all the 1st world healthcare providers and all of the Irish Healthcare providers for the exact same small group of international transient healthcare talent, mainly coming from Philippines and India. To be attractive, you must have a compelling reason for this talent to a) consider your country / city as a place to live and b) consider your hospital as a great workplace and develop, while considering all of the cost factors that exist in these considerations.

In response we have developed a very robust Talent Acquisition Strategy with International Recruitment at its heart. Our express intention is to express our “Differentiation” to the talent we are seeking to attract. We do that in numerous ways including, Podcasting, Educational Seminars (on-line), Pre-Decision Orientation, Videography, Employee Advocacy and of course Financially.  Aftercare support for new International colleagues is critical to ensure that they feel comfortable and connected at the earliest point, enriching their initial decision to come and join our company.

Retention:

In an industry with Attrition Statistics typically running in the +20% range, retention is vital. The cost of attrition for critical skill roles for example is circa 70% of basic salary, due to time to hire, adaptation, relocation and temporary replacement costs etc, which is substantial when you have such high levels of attrition. So, retention initiatives that make positive improvement on the attrition statistics can be highly valuable.

In response to extremely high levels of Attrition we in MPN have developed a strategic approach to Critical Skill roles through our 36 month Retention Program which in essence is an innovative differentiation, to ensure a) we are attractive to new talent, b) we remain attractive and different than our competitors for our current colleagues and c) we have created a “stickiness” for current colleague to consider, if there are tempted to leave. Our initial pilot schemes have been highly successful and for each critical skill department that meets the attrition criteria we consider the implementation of the 36-month Retention Program.

Tell us about a recent HR initiative you have instigated within your organisation that you are most proud of?

The aforementioned 36-month Retention Program has been hugely successful in creating stability in departments that were in crisis, in terms of attrition and attraction. The implementation of the program has completely changed the dynamic from 24% ongoing open roles (unable to fill) and 25% attrition. We were recruiting to stand still, barely filling the attrition with a continuing 24% vacancy rate. We have now completely stabilised these departments with no open roles and <10% attrition. While the cost savings involved are considerable, the biggest impact is in patient care, where we are seeing our NPS scores breach 70 as our patients are getting exceptional experiences due to the higher levels of continuity of care.

At MPN we have developed with an external provider called EQuita, 3 bespoke tailored leadership programmes called Fit4Future (Strategic Leadership), ASPIRE (Situational Leadership) and PACE (Fundamentals of Leadership), all of which we are in the process of delivering to every Line Manager in our business. To date we have had over 120 management and executive colleagues through the programmes with a further 80 to attend over the next 18 months.  The beauty of these tailored programmes, delivered by one external provider, is the absolute consistency in delivery and messaging, the providers understanding of our context and the wider healthcare landscape and importantly the consistent messaging that distils through an organisation which is willing to grow and change.  We are already seeing significant positive behavioural change from our Line Management as a direct impact of the learnings.

Within the Nursing cohort we have a unique type of flexible working arrangement when it comes to allocating working time. Because we measure time annually which is inclusive of annual leave and bank holidays, nurses are paid a standard fixed monthly salary and premium pay / overtime is paid fortnightly, a fortnight in arrears. The beauty of this arrangement is that the Nurses have huge levels of flexibility and can identify when they will work, when they may be available for work and equally when they will not work. They are building time when they choose or taking significant breaks in working time at certain parts of the year while not impacting their basic salary. This allows colleagues extensive travel or family time or both depending on their respective needs.

We have recently implemented WorkVivo, a world class engagement tool, best described as an internal hybrid of LinkedIn and Facebook, allowing a central repository for all communications collateral, business data, colleague recognition, live podcasting, live video feed and community spaces where colleagues can have their own engagement without company interference. We cant forget that face to face communications is the lifeblood of an organisation and this is a core area for development for MPN, however WorkVivo is a platform to record and share information which enable our 2,400 colleagues to interact seamlessly, which until now was impossible. We have great plans for expanding the reach and content of WorkVivo in 2024 to enable even greater engagement within our business.

Can you tell us how AI is affecting your business? How is it helping you – or challenging you in terms of your people practices?

Human resources have benefited from AI in various ways, such as streamlining recruitment processes through automated resume screening and optimizing workforce management through predictive analytics for better decision-making. We are about to bring improvements to employee engagement through WorkVivo with AI-driven feedback systems, which will allow us to react to prevailing circumstances across the business in different sites and different departments in a much more fluid manner. While i’d like to think that AI will give me more time to spend on strategic HR projects, the reality is we have a huge amount of transactional work and service to get right, it is only freeing time up to get more tactical work done.

What’s next? Tell us about any new initiatives/projects that you’re excited about?

I’m really looking forward to the following projects and adding bottom line value

1.Further development in HR’s ability to utilise predictive analysis for better decisions on people and cost related topics.

2.Further reduction in Attrition statistics which adds considerable value to both patient experience and bottom line.

3.Improving engagement factors across all sites which will stimulate connectivity and discretionary effort.

4.Improving data integrity and its integration with payroll which will address costs factors and improve bottom line

5.Introduction of a world class formal Employee Recognition Programme to recognise and celebrate the amazing work our colleagues do every day.

6.Commencement of a meaningful and consistent Wellbeing Agenda that address each of the 4 wellbeing pillars for all of our colleagues, as such enabling greater sense of connection in our business

7.Reduce HR response times and improve HR service to the organisation, which will build further levels of credibility with our colleagues, improving connectivity in our business.

Get in touch to discover more about the Top Employers Certification Programme and how it can help your organisation grow as an employer of choice in Ireland.

Best practice ethical AI: Our Top Employers in action

Our new whitepaper Ethical AI in the world of work: A framework for success explores the key role of ethical AI in the workplace. It emphasises HR’s vital role in its implementation and includes our ethical AI framework, which must always rest on three pillars:

• AI decisions should be human-centric.
• Considerations must be evidence-backed.
• A long-term lens should be applied to its use, benefits and costs.

The whitepaper shows how Top Employer organisations from around the world are already harnessing AI’s potential effectively with impressive results.

To download the whitepaper, click here.

Human-centric

Accenture Poland, for example, has used AI to help promote employee connection and engagement. Through their initiative ‘Change @ Work,’ they developed an AI tool called ‘Remesh,’ which allows for real-time input from their 250 employees. Its human-centric approach demonstrates how AI can increase a sense of community and improve employee satisfaction.

The South African Breweries demonstrates ethical AI through a collaborative approach between a diverse team of stakeholders and different perspectives when assessing, implementing and managing AI tools.

Evidence-backed

Airbus has embraced AI as a key strategic partner in their organisation. Since 2023, new AI tools suggested by employees are carefully assessed by a Trustworthy AI Steering Committee to ensure they are implemented responsibly. This shows why it’s essential to have transparent AI and for key stakeholders and HR professionals to be involved from the beginning.

JTI Switzerland introduced an AI-powered HR assistant called ‘Ayumi’ in early 2024. Before launching it across the organisation, though, their HR team piloted the tool and used it in their daily tasks. This early testing meant they could collect feedback and develop relevant training materials for colleagues.

Virtusa Corporation committed to an 18-month long HR digital transformation by integrating all their HR processes into one platform to drive the improve employee experience. It has shown how AI can successfully create a smoother and more supportive environment for employees by making sure technology suits both theirs and the organisation’s needs.

Long Term Lens

The impact of AI on Verisure’s UK people practices and DEI efforts has been extremely positive. The business noticed the pitfalls of using gendered language in job adverts that could stop women from applying. To address this bias, it began using AI to improve the hiring process and promote equal opportunities for all candidates.

Our view

Our Top Employers report ‘Ethical AI in the world of work: A framework for success,’ demonstrates how AI can drive business success while respecting employees and contributing to the wider society. The practical examples explored show that with thoughtful and careful implementation, all businesses are capable of harnessing AI’s potential to create more collaborative, inclusive and transparent workplaces.

To download the whitepaper, click here.

Driving Transformation to Elevate People Experience

Introduction to UST

Founded in 1999 and headquartered in California, UST has grown to over 32 000 associates across 35+ countries, serving 160+ Global 1000 clients. The organisation’score values of humility, humanity, and integrity drive its mission of transforming lives through digital solutions, platforms, and product engineering. UST’s market approach focuses on select clients, providing them with undivided attention and tailored solutions.

Transformation Overview: From Project-Based to Practice-Based Management

In 2023, UST embarked on a significant transformation, shifting its focus from a project-based approach to a practice-based management strategy. This model ensures that employees remain assigned to their primary manager while contributing to projects led by different project managers. Practices are primarily organised around specific skill sets, allowing employees to leverage their expertise across various initiatives while maintaining strong connections within their core teams. This approach enhances collaboration, fosters skill development, and aligns talent more effectively with project needs.

This shift is more than just a structural change. It represents a fundamental mindset shift within the organisation. Moving from project-based to practice-based management means UST now assigns them based on practices that rather than assigning managers to oversee specific projects. This approach fosters long-term employee development by ensuring managers are invested in their teams’ continuous growth and success rather than just completing individual projects.

People Experience Transformation

At the heart of this transformation is UST’s commitment to recognising employees as valuable assets rather than just resources. Key aspects included:

• Practice-based management: UST transitioned to a practice-based model, where employees remain with their primary manager while working on projects led by different managers. This approach, supported by the integrated Workday system, ensures continuity in reporting lines and focuses on long-term employee development, with practices organised around specific skill sets.
• Increased investment in development: Emphasising development through new channels and integrated learning within the Workday system, fostering continuous growth and improvement.
• Enhanced engagement and loyalty: Utilising engagement tools, including Workday’s feedback features, to continuously measure and act on employee insights, thereby enhancing engagement and loyalty.
• A holistic view of employees: The integrated Workday system consolidates all employee-related data, providing a comprehensive view of each individual across their lifecycle, from learning and feedback to overall development.

Mindset Shift: From Project Managers to People Managers

The transformation required a significant shift in mindset—from managing projects to managing people. This shift involved embracing servant leadership and focusing on long-term employee success and well-being. Key initiatives included:

• Data-driven decision making: UST has implemented mechanisms to capture and utilise data for real-time insights and actions. With all hire-to-retire lifecycle data integrated in Workday, managers, HR, and employees can access comprehensive information to make informed workforce decisions.
• Rotation and succession planning: Rotating employees across assignments for long-term development and succession planning.
• Integrated team view: Providing an integrated view of teams with data on talent, learning, performance, and other metrics.

Overall Change Management and Success: The REST Approach

One of the critical success factors in UST’s transformation was its robust approach to change management. The company established the REST guiding principles (reduce Risk, enhance Experience, improve Speed, promote Transparency) and a structured governance framework. This ensured that UST’s transformation was managed efficiently and effectively.

Key change management strategies included:

• Strong programme management: Effective management of all programmeaspects was crucial. This included setting clear goals, defining roles, and establishing a roadmap for implementation.
• Active leadership commitment: Weekly engagement with HR, technology, and partner leaders ensured alignment and support from top management.
• Regular cadence: Frequent communication and coordination through daily standups, bi-weekly status check-ins, and weekly PMO reporting kept the project on track.
• Early team involvement: Involving many  team leads from the planning stages ensured buy-in and readiness for change.
• Build in public: Leveraging a culture where mistakes were seen as learning opportunities fostered transparency and continuous improvement.

Communication and Workforce Engagement

Communicating change and creating excitement within the workforce was pivotal. UST implemented several strategies to ensure effective communication and engagement:

• Leadership messages: The company’s leadership team actively communicated messages throughout the rollout.
• Communication hub: To support the transition internal hub was created with messages, job aids, and contact details.
• Engaged volunteer network: UST extensively utilised its COLORS volunteer network for organisational initiatives.
• Change champions: Identifying and engaging change champions across geographies and business units facilitated smoother transitions and early adoption.

Technology Enablers

Technology played a critical role in enabling UST’s transformation. UST balanced standardisation with the best platforms, ensuring seamless integration into the broader environment. Extensive testing was enhanced through automation, and Microsoft Fabric was used to prepare data for analytics and AI, providing a scalable data strategy. 

Impact and Future Outlook

The transformation led to significant qualitative and quantitative impacts:

• Employee engagement: High adoption rates and positive feedback on performance management and learning.
• HR operations: Reduction in requests to the HR operations team.
• People management: Shift in managers’ perception of employees as valuable assets.
• Candidate engagement: Increased candidate engagement scores post-RippleHire rollout.

UST anticipates continued improvements in employee engagement with additional AI use cases, integrated employee engagement tools, and improved talent planning.

Key Takeaways

UST’s successful transformation was driven by several key factors:

• Leadership commitment: Ensuring top management support and active involvement.
• Talent strategy and people experience vision: Aligning transformation goals with a clear vision for talent strategy.
• Platform and partner selection: Choosing the right technology and partners to support the transformation.
• Future-ready technology approach: Leveraging advanced technologies to enhance people processes.
• Active team engagement and change management: Engaging teams early, maintaining regular communication, and fostering a culture of transparency and continuous improvement.
• Strong programme management and governance: Establishing robust programme management and governance structures to guide the transformation.

Guidance for successful transformation 

For organisations aiming to drive similar changes, it is essential to start by defining a clear vision aligned with strategic goals. This vision should be compelling and realistic, providing a sense of purpose and direction.

Active support and involvement from top management are crucial. Leaders need to be visible champions, making strategic decisions, providing necessary resources, and communicating the importance of the transformation to foster a sense of urgency and dedication.  

Engaging employees early in the process builds buy-in and readiness for change. Involving employees in planning, soliciting their input, and addressing their concerns helps mitigate resistance. Regular, transparent communication keeps everyone informed and maintains momentum.

Choosing scalable and integrable technology solutions that align with business needs is another key factor. The technology should support immediate needs and future growth, ensuring a seamless user experience. Fostering a culture of continuous improvement is also important. Encourage a mindset where mistakes are viewed as opportunities for learning. Provide ongoing training, recognise innovative ideas, and create feedback mechanisms to support continuous improvement.

Ethical AI in the world of work: A framework for success

The use of AI in the world of work is full of both opportunities and challenges.

It has been one of the critical drivers of change in 2024 – and its impact will be just as substantial in 2025. Organisations that harness the benefits of AI will enjoy faster product innovation, agile business models, increased profitability and improved customer experience. However, its introduction is also bringing many challenges, the most obvious of which is the impact on the workforce, with some jobs becoming obsolete and fears on an adverse impact on career paths.

The question that many business leaders are asking themselves is: How can AI be leveraged to drive business success in a way that is respectful to employees and responsible to society overall? And how can it help the future workforce realise its career potential?

This whitepaper therefore looks how to adopt an ethical approach to AI to drive business success, considers HR’s role in bringing this alive and introduces our Top Employers Institute Framework for its successful implementation.

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Our Ethical AI Framework is built on three pillars.

• AI decisions should be human-centric. This means that the needs of individual employees are considered alongside the business opportunities that new technologies provide.
• AI must be evidence-backed. There needs to be a clear visibility on the way AI tools function, given the rapid evolution of technology.
• Use a long-term lens. The use, benefits, and costs of AI should be evaluated with a long-term perspective, acknowledging that their full impact, including unforeseen consequences, may only become apparent over time.

In this whitepaper, we will not only outline what it means to leverage AI ethically, but also provide some examples of Top Employer organisations that are already applying these values. These include Accenture Poland, The South African Breweries, Airbus, JTI Switzerland and Virtusa Corporation.

Discover all the insights by downloading the report via our form.

Leveraging AI to Build Cross-Functional Bridges In Your Organisation

by Nima Shams

Learning Designer at Sveriges Radio

Building Bridges: The AI Literacy Opportunity 

Imagine your organisation as my hometown, Stockholm, a city built on islands (an inner city built on roughly a dozen islands, with an archipelago of more than 30 000 islands). Now, picture the bridges, the ferries, and tunnels connecting these islands, turning it into a well-functioning city. That’s the opportunity we have right now. A chance to connect teams together across departments and functions, finding common ground and smarter ways to work. 

I’m talking about Artificial Intelligence (AI). You might be experiencing AI fatigue, but hear me out. If you haven’t offered your employees a chance to learn the basics of AI, you’re in for a treat. Before mandatory regulations force you to provide AI literacy at the workplace (such as the EU AI Act, article 4), consider what you can offer your employees already. 

At Sveriges Radio (the Swedish Public Radio), our Learning & Development department took on this challenge.  

We realised this effort would need input from various areas within the company. And that’s when it hit us—what an opportunity to impact learning culture and cross-functional cooperation! How often do we get to speak to the whole company about something playful, serious, theoretical, practical, and relevant? 

The Power of Cross-Functional Learning 

Here’s the thing about AI: if we don’t speak to each other across functions and departments, we’ll never be able to launch AI on any level other than an individual one (i.e. each person using AI best they see fit, but nothing for the organisation as a whole). Basically, we’d end up with disconnected islands of AI knowledge, or lack thereof, with no means of transportation between them. But in order to build these bridges, we would have to bring everyone’s knowledge to at least the basics. 

We could, of course, try to buy a course from an external source, but we didn’t feel like anyone offered exactly what we needed: something tailored to our organisation. Instead, we saw an opportunity to exemplify some of the values championed in a learning culture, such as: 

1. Collaborative environment: Encouraging teamwork and cross-functional collaboration to share diverse perspectives on AI.
2. Knowledge sharing: Promoting peer learning by allowing colleagues to share real-world examples and engaging in a forum for AI learning.
3. Lifelong learning: Fostering continuous learning as the potential applications of AI are limited only by imagination, and the technology continues to evolve rapidly. 

We created our own course in the Basics of AI from scratch, using the skills and talents within our company. We wanted our colleagues to become aware of risks while daring to try their hands at the technology. 

Behavioural research shows that traditional methods focusing only on theory have an effect size of 0.04, while learning combined with practical applications has an effect size of 3.70. The difference is staggering (Albarracin et al., qtd. in Hardman). We wanted to avoid repeating the mistakes many made with the European GDPR courses: mandatory, boring click-throughs that create a bad rep for learning departments. We wanted our colleagues to not just understand AI, but to actually use it effectively and responsibly so they can become involved in shaping the future of AI within the organisation. 

Our Approach: A Step-by-Step Guide 

Here’s how we tackled this challenge: 

1. Set up a structure for AI with backing from management.
2. Define your ‘why’ and ‘what’ with a cross-functional team. Do not get stuck in the ‘how’ quite yet.
3. Prioritise needs with your AI experts.
4. If one of your priorities proves to be to offer basic AI literacy for all, build a diverse team to create content for your first AI learning initiative.
5. Test your initiative with a focus group and communicate it widely before its launch (to all managers within the organisation and all your other employees. We had the luxury of having our CEO communicate our ‘why’ widely to everyone). At this point, you need to have policies and guidelines in place.
6. Launch with a bang – we did it on a company-wide ‘learning day’ event.
7. Watch as AI begins building bridges across the organisation.

We kept the course short – just four modules totalling 40-90 minutes (i.e., each module would take an estimated 10-15 minutes). This addressed concerns about time management and workload. We focused on practical applications, keeping the language simple and digestible. For the design, we used simple tools (that anyone could use) and visualised concepts early to engage our experts effectively. 

Key Learnings and Insights 

Through this process integrating AI, we gained valuable insights: 

1. Have co-creators/subject matter experts set aside time for content creation in their calendars.
2. Ensure you have digitally competent people on your team.
3. Include IT/developers, —they’re key to connecting with operations, and they also need to find the course interesting (if not in technical ways, then in other ways, such as learning more about operations through scenarios around the use of AI).
4. Use this as an opportunity to launch communities and cross-functional understanding.
5. Consider turning some content into videos for better engagement and support different learning styles.
6. Doing it in-house can save significant costs—it did for us!
7. Gather data—free text answers are gold in the age of AI!

By involving people from different departments, we not only created a more comprehensive course but also started building crucial bridges between our organisational silos. The process itself became a learning experience in cross-functional collaboration. 

Also, do not undervalue the value in free text answers. We live in the age of AI, and those traditional scales 1-5/1-7/1-10-questions were meant for a time when analysing data was difficult. That’s not to suggest you overwhelm your users with free text answers, but just one question can provide immense data for future use. We posed the following question: “What would you like an assistant/researcher/mentor/coach to help you out with at work?” 

The Results and the Future: Beyond AI Literacy 

The results were impressive. Half of our roughly 2 000 employees completed the course within less than two months of launch. That means we now had—more than a 1 000 employees who have learned the basics of AI. We also have more than 1 000 suggestions on what they would need AI to do for them. This data can easily be analysed in the current age, and one of our AI developers has already begun the work. 

AI is nothing without data. In a future that is fluent in AI, nothing will be possible without employees working together across functions, roles, and departments. They are key in creating and understanding the data that will drive the future, but they will have to work together to make it happen. 

As a bonus, cross-functional teams tend to feel much more motivated. One study found that a significant majority of members in such teams reported feeling motivated (Jansson and Persson 71). This not only impacts employee satisfaction and retention, but also has broader benefits. A company that values collaboration across functions becomes more attractive to potential employees and reveals hidden talents within the organisation. 

So, why not start using AI literacy as that perfect excuse to get started within your organisation? Allow for those islands of knowledge to get connected. Remember, this isn’t a one-time effort—it’s the beginning of a journey. A journey towards a more connected, collaborative, and innovative organisation. Are you ready to start building your bridges? 

How Accenture is Enhancing their Employee Experience Using Flexibility

The importance of an employee’s experience in any organisation cannot be devalued. Certified Top Employer Accenture knows that employee experience is crucial to their success. In response, they have focused their strategy to improve on their approach to employee experience programmes. The world of work is changing. That has caused many companies to search for sustainable ways of working to meet the changing expectations of their workforce. Accenture is not only accepting this challenge but actively meeting it with new and inventive measures.

In the latest of our ‘For a Better World of Work’ series we joined Accenture’s Jacqueline Haver-Droeze (Human Resources Director France, Accenture) and Jonas van Wees (Regional HR Auditor, Top Employers Institute) for Flexibility for a Better Employee Experience at Accenture. Jacqueline and Jonas explored how Accenture France enhances their employee experience through their Flexibility Programme.

Rethinking the Candidate Experience

The global pandemic, for many companies, pushed them to rethink their approach to candidate experience but even before this Accenture had already begun to grapple with how they could improve their employee experience. An essential aspect of their company culture is their desire and interest in reinventing themselves. As Accenture rethought their approach to employee experience, they realised that it was not limited to their current employees.  Instead, they realised that it needs to be considered before an employee even starts at the company.

The process of revisiting and rethinking their employee experience led Accenture to learn from many different groups. They first began internally with the people who know their organisation best, their employees. They set up several diverse focus groups with people from all departments within the business at different career levels and asked them what they expected as they approached the future of work. Their next step was to benchmark what they were doing against other organisations around them. They looked at everyone, from large international companies to new start-ups to help increase their knowledge about other strategies addressing this issue of employee experience.

A Kaleidoscope Approach to the Employee Experience

The increase in their understanding coupled with the tremendous progress in technology guided them as they redefined their approach to the future of work and their employees experience at work. Accenture learnt that what was important to them and the people working for them was to find individual employees best work-life balance. There is not a one size fits all approach to making this work for their employees. Instead, to find the best balance for each individual they would need to create personalised experiences.

To implement this change, they used a kaleidoscope approach to introduce their personalised flexibility measures. The kaleidoscope approach is Accenture giving their employees several choices that they can make to improve their experience within the organisation. The choices start at giving their employees the choice to work from home at their discretion – whether this is one day a week or five. They have full flexibility over their working environment, but they do need to make sure that it is compatible with their other team members and manager.

The second measure that they integrated into their people practices was the introduction of the flexible workweek. Accenture has begun to experiment with allowing their employees the choice between working the traditional five days a week or to work four days a week. The choice allows employees to become in charge of their time and even this choice is flexible to more change. An employee may, for example, choose to work a four-day workweek for several weeks and then as changes happen in their personal life, they may find that a four-day workweek suits them better. Whether these changes are to give them more time to unwind from work or spend with their family the flexibility allows them to be in the driving seat to how they manage their productivity. Accenture relies on the trust that they have built between themselves and their employees to know what needs to be done will be done.

The third measure Accenture has been exploring is reliant on giving people depending on their career stage and length of time at the company the opportunity to take a break from the company. These breaks can be taken without the employee needing to go into detail as to why they need to step away from the company for a while. If an employee who had been at Accenture for five years decided to take a three-month break from the company for any reason, they would still be paid 50% of their salary while they were away. While the restrictions and rules around this measure are not yet set in stone, Accenture knows that they need to take in the personal profile of any employee that believes they need to take advantage of this programme.

All these measures are reliant on the high levels of trust Accenture have built with their employees over time. They also rely on Accenture’s new belief that everyone’s approach to work is personal and as the working world changes they need to embrace and reinvent their approach to their practices. The future of improved employee experience needs organisations to be flexible and agile as they meet the future.

Final Takeaway

Embracing flexibility in several ways and continually monitoring the measures allows them to refine and reconstruct their programmes until they get the best out of their strategy. As Accenture’s flexibility practices change, the focus on their employees does not. Employees are at the heart of the decisions they make. Their happiness is a fundamental consideration for the continued success of their business.