Deloitte’s annual “Global Human Capital Trends” report has become essential reading for anyone interested in the evolution of organizations and work. The 2025 edition (2025 Global Human Capital Trends) is no exception: rich, dense, and fairly lucid. But on closer inspection, it also reveals the limitations of a vision of HR transformation that is still too “normative.” Here are the key takeaways.
In short:
- Deloitte’s 2025 report identifies structural tensions within organizations (e.g., agility vs. stability) and calls for navigating gray areas, away from simplistic management slogans.
- The concept of “stagility” illustrates the difficulty of reconciling stability and agility, but its practical implementation remains very limited in businesses.
- Integrating AI into work does not create value without organizational alignment; technology does not compensate for existing dysfunctions.
- A significant proportion of work is considered to have no direct value, highlighting the urgent need to free up organizational capacity and rethink performance indicators.
- The role of the manager must be redefined as a facilitator and guarantor of the framework, but this requires time, tools, and a clear vision, which are absent from the report.
Work: a concept under strain
The main interest of the report is that it does not fall into a simplistic interpretation of HR issues. Deloitte identifies and maps the major tensions at work in businesses: agility vs. stability, control vs. empowerment, standardization vs. personalization, automation vs. augmentation, output vs. outcome. These tensions structure businesses’ strategic choices and determine their ability to produce sustainable human performance.
Unlike managerial discourse, which hides behind consensual slogans such as “putting people first” and “promoting engagement”, Deloitte deserves credit for calling a spade a spade and inviting us to navigate the gray areas..
“Stagility” : useful but fragile
The report introduces the concept of “stagility” (stability + agility) to describe the necessary coexistence between the need for benchmarks for employees and the imperative of flexibility for organizations. This is a relevant approach: transformation cannot be achieved against individuals or at the cost of chronic instability.
But in practice, implementation remains largely theoretical. 72% of the businesses surveyed recognize the importance of this dual requirement, but only 6% believe they have made real progress in this area. Why such a gap? Because it is not enough to proclaim concepts; on the contrary, it is a matter of redesigning work, coordination methods, and governance. And, unsurprisingly, this is where the problem lies.
AI and the promise of augmented humans: easier said than done
The report emphasizes the need to revise the Employee Value Proposition (EVP) in the age of AI. It is no longer about promising benefits, but about building a framework where humans and machines cooperate seamlessly and fairly.
But as I showed in my article on recent initiatives at Moderna (HR/IT and the reality of working at Moderna: the unspoken truths of a reorganization), AI will not produce value if it is injected into a dysfunctional organization. Without alignment with workflows, decision-making processes, and operational needs, we only amplify existing problems. It is not technology that fixes work, but work that gives meaning to technology.
I have often written that the techno-centric temptation is to believe that a well-designed tool will be enough to transform practices (The limits of technology-driven transformation), but digital tools only improve what the organization already knows how to do. When injected into a rigid or internally inconsistent structure, they amplify and expose all the dysfunctions.
Freeing up capacity: a misunderstood emergency
One of the most interesting chapters in the report is entitled “When work gets in the way of work“. It highlights a well-known but often overlooked phenomenon that is treated as inevitable: the loss of organizational capacity caused by overload, unnecessary meetings, inadequate processes, and an inability to collaborate (Workplace Collaboration: When Technology Saturates, Productivity Stagnates and Generations Disconnect)..
According to Deloitte, 41% of employees’ time is spent on work with no direct value. That’s huge, and yet few businesses are taking action. Why? Because workload is often perceived as an indicator of engagement, and we continue to confuse activity with impact (Productivity: what if quality was the new quantity?). This brings us back to the tension that exists between outputs and outcomes.
Deloitte proposes to revalue “slack”, that space of mental availability and freedom of action. It is ironic that this term has given its name to a tool that has exactly the opposite effect (Slack Is the Right Tool for the Wrong Way to Work). But slack cannot be decreed: it requires structure, a clear framework, stable priorities over time, mutual trust, and above all, effective work governance.
It is also an opportunity to question the performance indicators themselves. As long as we value productivity as hourly output, we are missing what really matters: impact and value creation. The challenge is not to track free time, but to understand what it is used for: learning, innovation, collective breathing space.
And what about management?
The report also asks the question on everyone’s lips: do we still need managers? And its answer is pretty much the same as the one I gave last fall (Is manager still a profession?).
The report does not envisage elimination, but rather an overhaul. Tomorrow’s manager will be neither a petty boss nor a gatekeeper, but rather a facilitator, an architect of performance conditions, and a guarantor of meaning and framework. This is the opposite of the famous minimalist manager advocated by some, which still sticks in my throat (The minimalist manager: a promising model, but one that needs clarification).
But to achieve this, managers must be given the means to act: time, tools, and training in work design. You can manage without technical expertise, but not without interpersonal skills or a clear collective framework (The fictional interview with Ted Lasso, the manager who manages without expertise).
What the report does not say, or does not say enough
However, the report remains silent on several fundamental points that I would have liked to see addressed.
Firstly, the fact that HR transformation cannot be reduced to employee experience initiatives. It requires a redesign of decision-making mechanisms, the value chain, and performance models.
Second, the political factor is conspicuous by its absence: who decides what? What role does HR play in executive committees?
Finally, the methodology for change is not addressed. How can we move from “saying” to “doing”? With what resources, what timeline, and what governance?
I would add two major blind spots to this list.
The economic model remains the real challenge
At no point does the report address the constraints imposed by the economic model that prevails today. Yet the real tension lies between HR objectives and short-term financial thinking. As long as time-to-market, fixed cost reduction and double-digit returns for shareholders are valued, HR will remain confined to an adaptive role. Human sustainability cannot be built on a value chain based on exhaustion.
Human sustainability was a major topic in the 2024 edition of this Deloitte study (How do you measure employee performance without becoming a Care Bear?).
Failure to consider the time needed for change
The report seems to believe that change can be brought about simply by deciding to do so. But there is no magic button. Transforming managerial culture, roles, and work standards takes time. Time to unlearn, test, and re-establish. By trying to do everything at once, without a clear timeline or appropriate governance, we generate noise rather than movement.
Bottom line
The Deloitte 2025 report is a good awareness-raising tool. It draws attention to tensions, debunks certain illusions, and opens up new runways, but it remains too focused on the theoretical layer of transformations, without delving deeply enough into the real “fabric” of work.
Successful HR transformation requires a systemic vision, dialogue between HR and operations (HR and Operations: the only viable duo for driving employee experience), and dynamic work governance. Only then can tensions become productive.
Image credit: Image generated by artificial intelligence via ChatGPT (OpenAI)
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