Stephen Roberts recently attended the CIPD Festival of Work which brought together nearly 13,000 professionals across HR, L&D, and leadership to explore the future of work. Stephen shares his key insights on how leaders in the HR sector are adapting to a rapidly changing landscape.
1. Engagement: your people are your customers
According to ADP’s 2024 global study, only 21% of employees are fully engaged at work. That means nearly 80% are not. Yet engagement is the single biggest driver of productivity and loyalty.
As Annabel Jones of ADP put it, HR teams need to think like account managers. Every employee is subscribing to your workplace – and they can churn if the experience doesn’t deliver. That means understanding what matters to each individual, in the context of their team and the wider organisation.
Quarterly pulse surveys are replacing outdated annual engagement reports, and HR software like Ciphr can help HR teams monitor engagement in real time and identify where to improve.
But surveys help you assess engagement, not deliver it. That comes down fundamentally to pay, progression, and purpose. If people can’t see a future in your organisation, they’ll find one elsewhere.
2. Investment skills: build a workforce that stays
According to ADP, only 17% of UK employees believe their employer invests in the skills they need to advance. That figure drops to 12% across Europe. Yet when employers do invest in training, workers are six times more likely to recommend them.
The most in-demand areas? Communication, leadership, and soft skills. These aren’t just “nice to have”- they’re essential for navigating change, managing teams, and driving performance.
There has been a growth in companies that are helping businesses build scalable training pipelines. But the real shift is cultural: from seeing training as a cost, to recognising it as a strategic investment in retention and growth.
3. AI adoption is a people challenge as well as a technical one
“AI won’t take your job – but people who use AI will.”
AI is a source of worry for many employees, while younger employees are more optimistic, many see it as a threat. The solution? Involve your people in how AI is introduced and used. Done right, AI should reduce stress, not to add to it, but people need to have clarity on why it isn’t a threat but a facilitator.
As Neil Pickering of UKG noted, AI adoption starts with understanding your own data and processes. Then it’s about removing friction – making AI easy to use, secure, and clearly beneficial.
At ECI, this is an area we actively support management teams with, identifying and facilitating the most valuable use cases for AI, in a way that can make their teams more productive, and engaged through spending their time on higher value tasks.
4. Trust and transparency over surveillance
Speakers noted that monitoring tools are on the rise, but they’re not always delivering the results leaders hope for. In fact, employees who feel watched are four times more likely to report low productivity.
The answer isn’t more surveillance – it’s clarity in communications. When people understand what’s expected of them, they perform better and feel less stressed.
OKRs or V2MOM are frameworks used throughout our portfolio to align teams around shared goals. But the real shift is mindset: trust your people to deliver, and they usually will.
As one speaker put it: “Are we using productivity tools to build a better business – or because we don’t trust our people?”
5. Boost the wellbeing of your team
In 2023/24, the UK lost an estimated 16.4 million working days to stress, depression, or anxiety. Burnout is a productivity killer and it’s often preventable.
Creating a culture where people feel safe, supported, and included isn’t just good ethics – it’s good business. That means normalising mental health conversations, training managers to spot the signs, and designing work in a way that supports balance.
Flexible working helps but only if it’s backed by trust and fairness. Nearly 30% of employees say they feel judged for using flexible policies. That needs to change.
If you’d like to chat to anyone about how we are working with HR Tech companies, and supporting companies to enhance their people and culture strategies, please get in touch.
