What Should Employers Leave in 2025?

Each year, we like to ask the OrgShakers team what practices and mindsets they believe employers should be leaving behind in the year that has passed to help them begin fresh in the new year to come.

As 2025 has now come to a close, we wanted to see what they believed should be left behind in order for employers to continue to grow in the year to come and beyond:

David Fairhurst – 2025 should mark the end of rigid, one-size-fits-all leadership and tokenistic wellbeing initiatives. Generic programmes and surface-level gestures no longer meet the needs of a diverse, fast-changing workforce.

The employers who will succeed are those who build trust-based cultures, focus on genuinely meaningful employee experience, and adopt AI responsibly rather than fearfully. Used well, technology can enhance work, but only when grounded in human values.

These are the organisations that will continue to win the war for talent.

Ken Merritt – employers should leave behind engagement survey scores; at least for the next few years. Annual or biannual surveys take too long, tell us what we already know, and often arrive long after the moment to act has passed.

The focus now needs to be on engagement processes, not scores: real-time listening, ongoing dialogue, and genuine partnership with employees to improve day-to-day workplace dynamics. Engagement isn’t a metric, it’s a relationship.

Natasha Santos – one of the most damaging habits employers must leave behind in 2025 is reactive HR, also known as the ‘wait until it breaks’ approach.

Reactive HR shows up when organizations wait for complaints before updating policies, wait for performance issues to escalate before introducing review processes, wait for turnover spikes before addressing culture, and wait for regulatory pressure before focusing on compliance. It’s costly, risky, and unsustainable.

Modern HR must be structured, preventative, compliance-aligned and people-first, not driven by crisis management.

Beth Molinaro – for HR business partners, 2025 should be the end of gut-feel decision-making and disengagement tolerance. Intuition alone is no longer enough. Data-driven insights, predictive analytics and AI-powered tools are now essential for effective workforce planning.

Ignoring disengagement weakens organisational agility. HRBPs must actively push for career mobility, re-engagement and long-term capability building.

For employees, this also means leaving behind the acceptance of toxic cultures and the habit of neglecting upskilling. Poor leadership and stagnant skills undermine both wellbeing and career resilience in a rapidly changing market.

Patsy Doerr – put simply, employers need to let go of fear: fear of change, fear of AI, and fear driven by the current geopolitical climate.

Operating from fear leads to hesitation, stagnation and short-term thinking. Progress requires confidence, adaptability and a willingness to move forward…even when the future feels uncertain.

Amanda Holland – the normalization of constant availability – emails at midnight, “urgent” weekend messages – has fuelled burnout across labor markets. Employers must leave behind unbounded workdays, ambiguous expectations and the rewarding of overwork.

In their place, organizations should move toward clear communication norms, protected rest time, and leadership that actively models healthy boundaries, aiming for work-life harmony rather than an unrealistic idea of balance.

The same shift is needed in wellbeing. Annual challenges and EAP posters aren’t meeting real needs. Employers must move beyond check-the-box mental health initiatives and crisis-only responses, and instead build psychologically safe cultures with proactive workload management and integrated people-risk approaches.

Karen Cerrato – AI isn’t here to replace people, but rather to reshape how we work by removing inefficiencies and amplifying human skills.

Organizations that thrive will be those that lean in, experiment responsibly, and help their people build confidence rather than fear. Used well, AI can automate low-value tasks, improve decision-making, enhance employee experience, and support upskilling, all while still preserving human judgement.

The future belongs to companies that prepare their people for change, not those that avoid it. When HR leaders model clarity and confidence around AI, the rest of the organisation follows.

Therese Procter – 2025 should be the year employers leave behind the idea that financial stress is a private issue. The link between employees’ financial lives and their performance, health and engagement is now undeniable.

Financial stress affects focus, decision-making, attendance and safety. Ignoring it is no longer compatible with responsible leadership.

As we move into 2026, financial wellbeing must take its place as a strategic pillar of good work (alongside mental and physical health) delivered through human-centred leadership, thoughtful work design, and data-led decisions paired with empathy.

If you would like to get in touch with us about any of the points raised by our team, or if you have a different concerns that you were hoping to leave in 2025 and need assistance in shedding it, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today!

From all of us at OrgShakers, we wish you a happy and prosperous New Year!