In hindsight, 2025 may be remembered as the year talent strategy stopped being theoretical.
Artificial intelligence moved from experimentation to expectation. Employee confidence wavered, but didn’t collapse. Managers were asked to lead through ambiguity with little precedent. And HR teams were pushed to connect the dots between technology, culture, and performance faster than ever before.
At The Predictive Index (PI), we had a unique vantage point into how organizations navigated that complexity. In 2025, we surveyed hundreds of HR and business leaders, listened to employees grappling with AI’s impact on their roles, and observed how thousands of organizations used PI to define jobs, develop managers, and make talent decisions in real time.
What emerged weren’t just trends, they were signals.
Signals that reveal how talent strategy is evolving beneath the surface, and what organizations will need to prioritize in 2026 to turn workforce complexity into a competitive advantage.
Signal #1: Capability is replacing reassurance as the currency of trust
For much of the past few years, employee conversations around technology have centered on fear, fear of displacement, fear of obsolescence, fear of being left behind. But in 2025, the data revealed a meaningful shift.
Across our HR Playbook for the
