Top Trends Shaping Your Talent Strategy in 2025 with Jennifer McClure

Discover the future of talent strategy with the trailblazing Jennifer McClure, co-founder of DisruptHR, as she takes us on her journey from corporate HR executive to dynamic global speaker and innovator in the HR community.

Listen as Jennifer and Bill Banham discuss the worldwide impact of DisruptHR, now flourishing in 30+ countries, including fresh chapters in Nairobi and Tanzania. Jennifer shares insights on launching your own chapter, emphasizing inclusivity and diversity. We dive into the transformative trends predicted for 2025, offering a roadmap for those aiming to revolutionize their HR practices.

The conversation also ventures into the evolving landscape of the workforce, highlighting the need for skills development, mental health support, and fostering DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging). Jennifer stresses the importance of continuous learning and empathetic leadership amidst rapid technological advances, urging organizations to nurture existing talent and prepare for future demands.

Explore strategic workforce planning as a tool for enhancing employee engagement and retention while navigating demographic shifts. Don't miss this enlightening discussion packed with actionable strategies to maintain competitiveness and foster a thriving, inclusive work environment.

We do our best to ensure editorial objectivity. The views and ideas shared by our guests and sponsors are entirely independent of The HR Gazette, HRchat Podcast and Iceni Media Inc.

Chapters

• 0:03 Top Trends in Talent Strategy
• 10:21 Future Focus
• 16:51 Employee Engagement and Workforce Planning

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom and visit hrgazettecom.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show listeners, hello, this is your host today, bill Bannam, and in this episode we're going to consider some top trends shaping your talent strategy in 2025. And my amazing, awesome, wonderful returning guest is none other than Jennifer McCl mcclure, co-founder over at disrupt hr. Jennifer, as always when you come on this show, I am honored and blessed for you to join me today. Thank you so much well.

Speaker 3: 0:56

Thank you.

Speaker 2: 0:56

It's always great to chat with you and I know you have a large community, so I love the opportunity to interact with you and your community so, for those in the community who perhaps haven't listened to one of our previous chit chats, why don't you take a minute or two and introduce yourself?

Speaker 3: 1:14

Sure, jennifer McClure, I have now the new phrase is decades of experience in HR, recruiting the people sides of the business. Spent about 20 years in the corporate world as an HR leader and executive, then a little stint in executive search, so I got the other side of the coin with helping companies find leaders for their organizations. And then, since 2010, I have had my own business called Unbridled Talent, where I am a professional speaker out talking at conferences and events around the world about leadership and high impact talent strategies and personal branding all those things and in 2013, started a little thing called Disrupt HR. So that's kind of a labor of love where my title is Chief Excitement Officer by Design, because my role with Disrupt HR is really to support our local license holders and organizers and to cheerlead for people around the world who are sharing their ideas on Disrupt HR stages.

Speaker 2: 2:14

Wonderful, very good. Thank you very much. So regular listeners of this show will know that I am a big supporter of Disrupt HR and I'm involved with a bunch of the chapters, and I'm delighted to say that Disrupt HR and I'm involved with a bunch of the chapters and I'm delighted to say that Disrupt HR is going from strength to strength. What are some of the latest chapters, jen, and are there any chapters out there which are doing excellent things to support the community?

Speaker 3: 2:37

You always ask me these questions to ask me to pick my favorite children. I can't do that. I am excited. This year 2024, we have expanded in Africa, which was, you know, for all the countries around the world that we've held events or have held events in Disrupt HR over the years. South Africa right now doesn't have any cities licensed, but was early on. But this year we've added Nairobi, kenya and this last week, tanzania to the mix of Disrupt HR cities, so 34 countries currently that have licenses to hold Disrupt HR events. So that always excites me.

Speaker 3: 3:19

You know, in the beginning I had a conversation with everybody who inquired about obtaining a license. So the next step in the process was for us to schedule a call, and so I had the opportunity to talk to people all around the world who were interested in bringing Disrupt HR to their communities, and it was always exciting for me. I remember talking to somebody in Yellowknife, northern Territories in Canada, which I had been. You know, back then Ice Road Truckers on the History Channel was a thing so, and they were always going to yell at us. So we didn't talk about disrupt HR. I wanted to know about ice road truckers. He didn't move forward. But again, to talk to somebody in Bali once, and you know so I don't have necessarily a personal conversation with everybody who takes a license now, but I do get excited when I see new communities or cities that I have to look up because I've never heard of before, or countries even that I have to you know, maybe my geography could be better, so that's exciting to me.

Speaker 4: 4:19

Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at hrgazettecom. And now back to the show.

Speaker 2: 4:36

For those who are thinking about getting involved with a chapter, maybe getting a chapter going in a new place what do you look for in new organizers?

Speaker 3: 4:50

It's really not. What do I look for? I mean, I look at your LinkedIn profile to make sure that you're real. If you inquire about organizing, do you have to be in HR recruiting, you know, or adjacent spaces? Not necessarily. I mean, I probably I'd say 95% of the people who reach out are in something related to the people side of the business and that's really all that's required. Are you interested? Do you want to hold an event?

Speaker 3: 5:18

We don't have a lot of rules, as I've said before for a lot of reasons, but part of it is we do want it to be. I don't want it to be a certain type of people who hold events because I don't want the events to all be the same. So, or I don't, not that I don't want it's. I think part of the beauty of it is that they're not all the same. So to organize an event, you basically raise your hand, you fill out the simple form on our website.

Speaker 3: 5:45

As I said, I look at your LinkedIn profile and sometimes, even if I can't find you on LinkedIn, I'm like well, let's see what happens if I send you the first step and then I ask you to answer a few questions and then, if you're ready to move forward and pay the annual license fee and sign a short agreement which I just had. Somebody who had a problem with our agreement and I'm like, well, not changing it for you, sorry. It's simple for a reason. So we just try to make it easy for people to bring Disrupt HR events to their community.

Speaker 2: 6:15

Excellent, thank you very much. So, as I mentioned in the intro, today we are focusing on top trends shaping the talent strategy in 2025. So I'd like to get into that with you now. In a recent LinkedIn post, you offer a list of six trends, which are also in your most recent newsletter, that are shaping talent strategy in the future of work. Can you take a few minutes now and run through each of those with me? I'm going to say a trend and then I'll pass it over to you to enlighten our audience. The first one is embracing workplace flexibility.

Speaker 3: 6:54

Sure, and I always like to say, when we see these trends and predictions posts, I mean there are many and sure I left some out and that's why I like to put it out on LinkedIn, because I want people to add to the list. But you know flexibility and again, as a speaker, I've been talking about flexibility since before 2020. You know, back then we called it telework and I was encouraging people to think about, you know, telework and allowing people to work remotely and you was encouraging people to think about telework and allowing people to work remotely and inherently pre-2020, everybody was saying our leadership would never go for that. Well then, of course, we sent a bunch of people home and figured out that it works for a lot more people than we thought. But what we've missed, I think, in post-pandemic kind of debate, is that it's become about remote work versus coming back to the office, when the true learning, I think, from 2020 and beyond, was that workers want flexibility. They want to be able to, you know, not have two-hour commute times. They want to be able to integrate their life more into their work. You know, again, if it's possible, if you assemble cars on an assembly line, we're going to have to figure out how to do that differently. But even those jobs and that's what I encourage leaders to think about there are apps out there now where hourly workers can choose their schedules and choose their hours and, you know, get some impact into their lives, and I think that's the challenge that we need to be looking at. You know, get some impact into their lives and I think that's the challenge that we need to be looking at.

Speaker 3: 8:21

How do we ensure that all of our employees have the opportunity for more flexibility, to be able to live their lives, to have their well-being taken into account, to be able to take care of increasing needs, with, you know, being in those sandwich generations of having to care for older family members, maybe as well as younger family members, or even the health challenges that some of us face, and how we have to attend doctor's appointments, et cetera. In my days back when I was working as a practitioner in HR, if you were an hourly worker, you had to take vacation to do all those things, if you needed to take your kid to a doctor's appointment. I don't think that's the case anymore.

Speaker 3: 9:00

If we're willing to invest the time and effort as leaders in again, there's a lot of technology that can enable flexibility for workers of all types and organizations and the workforce. Their expectations have changed. It's not just the younger generations coming in, the older generations expected to. So I want us to talk about embracing flexibility versus getting bogged in the oh. We're requiring people to come back to the office a certain number of days a week, or this job you can't work from home, or you can work from home. It's much more about flexibility, I think.

Speaker 5: 9:34

This episode of the HR Chat Podcast is supported by Nebula Academy, a technology industry-focused workforce accelerator that offers learning programs to prepare individuals for successful careers. Our approach is centered around cognitive neuroscience research, combining the latest research and modern learning methods to create informative and psychologically safe learning experiences. Our programs enable individuals to achieve career readiness and immediate impact in their chosen field. Moreover, we help businesses create positive learning experiences, increase productivity, enhance team performance and build upskilling resources to meet the needs of today's modern workplace. Learn more at nebulaacademycom. Thanks, and now back to the HR chat show.

Speaker 2: 10:20

Okay, thank you very much. The second is prioritizing skills development.

Speaker 3: 10:35

Yeah, I think skills is the way of the future in terms of focus Again, all these things we have to focus on, but the reality is the half-life of skills today is less than two years. That's for you, for me, for new people coming into the workforce. Things are changing at such a rapid pace technology implications on all of our jobs, ai, et cetera. We're all going to have to grow and develop and learn new skills. So, having a culture that's focused on continuous learning and development and the first step, which many people are missing they're not interested in skills at all. They're still posting job descriptions and expecting people to apply who've had the same job title or worked in the same industry. What skills are required for those jobs? And maybe we hire someone who has 60% of the skills needed, but we have the opportunity for them to learn and develop the other 40% of the skills and continue to learn and develop as those skills change in the future. It will allow us to be able to focus more on our existing employees and making sure that we're upskilling and reskilling them, rather than either getting rid of them when their skills become obsolete or the job changes.

Speaker 3: 11:42

As we all know, talent is more scarce than ever. It's not going to get better. Birth rates are going down, the demographics are, the older, workforces are retiring. There are less younger generations coming in. So the reality is we're going to have to focus on the people that we already have and help to keep them relevant and skilled to do the jobs we need now in the future, and we're also going to have to invest a lot more in upskilling and reskilling new hires into the organization who are not going to come into the jobs fully baked. They're just not. We're not teaching people the skills in universities and education systems that they need for the jobs of today and again, those jobs are going to be changing and the skills needed for them are going to be changing so rapidly that we're all going to have to be learning and growing and developing to keep up. So focus on skills, identify the skills needed for the jobs, what skills you need to have programs or methods to train and upskill people on, and constantly be looking at that as an ever evolving landscape.

Speaker 2: 12:39

Okay, very good, thank you very much. Number three, jen, moving straight on, is championing mental health and well-being.

Speaker 3: 12:46

Yeah, again, I think we've learned a lot in the last five years about how people are whole human beings, as decades of experience here coming in. When I started in the workforce, you were a cog in the wheel, no matter who you were. It's like you know, work is work and your life outside of work we don't want to hear about it. That's not the case anymore. Again, changing expectations of the workforce are that people expect to have a whole life. You know some organizations, some jobs, some people do that better than others, but we really have to focus on that because the stress out there in the workplace and in the world today is probably higher than it's ever been. I haven't, you know, I don't have any studies I can quote on that there, but certainly I think, anecdotally, we know that we're all more stressed. So how can we help our employees be the best they can be? As I said earlier, they're more valuable than ever. We can't just replace them, so making sure that we're a caring and kind culture and company or organization or leader is really important. I found it interesting.

Speaker 3: 13:46

Ddi does an annual leadership challenge survey and in 2023, I haven't seen the results for 2024. They asked global leaders, thousands of global leaders what the number one competency was for leaders, and the answer was empathy, and that would not have probably even shown up on the scale pre-2020, I'm sure. But the truth is, and I talk to leaders every day who come to me with their challenges, with their workforce, and they're like my employee is asking me about this in their personal life, and should I even talk to them about that? Yes, we have to. Now, are you the answer?

Speaker 3: 14:21

Do you have to be? Well, here's exactly what you should do the fact that you're being abused at home? No, you, as a leader, need to be able to listen, to understand, to care, and then you also need to know where you can direct people to get the best help that they need, and that is a muscle. A lot of leaders will tell you that they don't have empathy or they don't know how, and when you say you don't know how, that means you can be taught. So, learning and growing and understanding that our people are whole human beings and caring for them as whole human beings and having benefits and policies and procedures and flexibility that allows us to think about all that is going to be more important than ever, I think, in 2025 and beyond.

Speaker 2: 15:04

Okay, the next one is also kind of a no-brainer.

Speaker 3: 15:08

That's fostering DEIB, diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging you know, really lead the challenge and it's not going to be easy.

Speaker 3: 15:30

It's never been perfect, I think, anywhere around the world in terms of DEI and B and what companies or leaders do in regards to that.

Speaker 3: 15:37

But the fact that now it's becoming again at least in the US and maybe other places in the world kind of a political lightning rod and a lot of companies are doing away with their programs, they're reducing the size of their diversity and inclusion teams all very unfortunate, but again, the humans in your workplace expect it. They expect to be treated equitably, they want to be included. They need to feel like they belong in order to be able to contribute at their best. So I think the challenge for 2025, especially for those leaders or in companies where it is under attack is how do we continue to do the work and champion the work and truly believe that it matters, when outside forces are telling us not to even talk about it or think about it? So I think it's a focus in 2025 to foster it, especially in the organizations where some leaders or maybe outside forces are telling us that we shouldn't, but in organizations that are still truly championing it and leading it, to do that in a way that other people can learn from and follow their examples.

Speaker 2: 16:48

We are flying through these two more to go. Number five driving employee engagement and retention.

Speaker 3: 16:55

Again, some of these overlap, I guess, a little. If you're not driving employee engagement and retention to focus on your existing workforce, you're in trouble, because you're probably already having trouble hiring people that have the skills that are needed for the jobs that you have. Again around the world. I know unemployment rates are different. In the US it's been fairly stable and if you wanted a job, in theory you could get a job. But there are a lot of people I just saw a post on LinkedIn last week, very well written. I mean, obviously I don't know the human, but a person who was a recruiter who said he'd been out of work for 19 months and during those 19 months he'd applied to over 400 jobs and so he was working at Target to pay the bills. And he wrote a really good post about you know what he was doing in his job at Target to stay engaged in the world.

Speaker 3: 17:45

And my mind immediately goes to how can a person be out of work 14 months in today's economy, or you know, I don't know the dynamics of that, but the truth is we need to. We need to understand again that the people that we have in our workplaces are valuable. We need to keep them, we need to upscale them, we need to make sure they're engaged, to feel that they belong, etc. So focusing on retention and engagement, engagement versus well, if they don't like it here, they can just go somewhere else. It's going to be really important because we can't just post jobs today and have someone again who has the skills, even if they're a sure that our existing workforce really wants to stay as long as they can probably not 25, 30 years in the same job or the same company but we want them to want to contribute at their best while they're there and also to stay as long as it's valuable to both of us.

Speaker 2: 18:45

Just finally. Then number six is strategic workforce planning.

Speaker 3: 18:49

Yeah, again the overlapping of all of these, but this is one that really kind of wraps it up in a bow. You need to be looking out into the future and again I would assume it may be an inaccurate assumption but I would hope that most leaders today aren't in what I was in again in the beginning of my career, mostly just filling open positions. You know someone resigns or they get fired or whatever. You have to fill out all the paperwork. It takes two or three weeks. You post the job, you fill the job. You don't do any kind of like forward thinking. Now I think over the years obviously we have shifted to always be recruiting for the leading organizations, but the truth is again always be recruiting what you know. So, strategic workforce planning, in the sense of looking out into the future and saying what are the skills that we need for the jobs we have today, what are the skills that we are going to need in the future, what is our overall plan to get those skills, which again is probably going to involve much more of a mix of not just recruiting but also internals, you know, education, learning and development, maybe even partnering with outside organizations to teach the skills that we need or to create programs to develop the skills that we need. So it's much more of a.

Speaker 3: 19:59

At LinkedIn Talent Connect in 2024, the head of global people for Canva presented their you know kind of overall strategy for talent, and I had always talked about build by borrow for talent. Make sure you have a strategy to build talent, to buy talent, which is, you know the people you're recruiting, and then to borrow would be the freelancers contingents. I didn't make that up, but I've been talking about it for years. Canva has expanded that to where I think we all need to be thinking. It's not just build by borrow, but they have bridge and another B, but it's looking at how can you know the additions to the build by borrow is not just how do we build talent and how do we you know what positions are we going to have to actually go out to the market to buy, which is probably going to be more expensive than it was in the past, because those people are rare. Then what talent can we borrow, either through freelancers or contingent or part-time? And then how do we help people internally?

Speaker 3: 20:56

Internal talent mobility should be a focus of your strategic workforce planning. Who has adjacent skills that you know? Maybe today they are working as a data entry person, you know, in our IT department, but maybe they could become a data analyst because they have some of the skills. Maybe we have someone who's working out on our manufacturing floor who actually in their you know, one of their personal interests is they develop games, you know, on their personal home computer at home. So they have that kind of you know, development, software development mentality.

Speaker 3: 21:30

We need to understand how we can help people move within our organization and that's an important part of strategic workforce planning. So if you're still in that mode of just filling open positions, you need to expand your mindset to looking at the whole ecosystem of talent, so the skills, the talent that is available, the demographics, again, that are affecting both people leaving your workforce and the people coming in the expectations. So strategic workforce planning should be a very big focus for any talent professional out there, so that we are prepared and looking out into the future to think about both what the challenges are but what are the opportunities that we are prepared and looking out into the future to think about both what the challenges are but what are the opportunities that we can take advantage of to make sure that our organizations remain competitive in the future.

Speaker 2: 22:17

Excellent. And just finally, as we do look out into the future, into 2025, jen, where can our listeners expect to see you, what events will you be attending, what events will you be speaking at and, of course, how can they generally connect with you?

Speaker 3: 22:32

I love this time of year because the emails start to come in about 2025 events. So right now I know I will be in Chicago in February at an association conference. I hope to be at SHRM in June. Applications to speak at SHRM are through the end of the year, so we'll see if I get selected for the 15th year. Maybe not. Maybe they'll want new people, who knows but I have a new idea, so we'll see. And then a few HR conferences here in the US in conversation right now with one in Malaysia. Would love to go back to Australia. I always say have passport will travel. You know, some speakers want to stay local and do virtual, and that certainly is great. Jennifer McClure wants to be out meeting and interacting with people all over the world, and so I will look at and love to have any opportunities to do that in 2025 and beyond.

Speaker 2: 23:25

Excellent. Well, that just leads me to say, before I run downstairs and read the letter to Santa Jennifer McClure thank you very much for being my guest today.

Speaker 1: 23:35

Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom.