There’s a temptation, as one year ends and another begins, to tidy things up.
To summarize. To categorize. To smooth over the uncomfortable parts with trend lists and predictions.
But for HR and operations leaders, 2025 didn’t lend itself to neat conclusions. It was a year where decisions rarely came with enough information. Where leaders were asked to support people through uncertainty while still delivering results. Where the emotional and operational load of leadership became impossible to ignore, especially for managers.
So instead of starting 2026 with predictions, we went back through our conversations on HR On The Frontline and asked a harder, more honest question:
What actually held up in 2025 and what didn’t?
What follows isn’t theory. It’s a synthesis of what practitioners told us, what broke down in real organizations, and what quietly worked when pressure was highest.
1. HR Strategy Stopped Being Aspirational and Became About Trade-Offs
For years, HR has been told to “be more strategic.” In 2025, that expectation didn’t go away, but the tolerance for busywork did.
Budgets tightened. Timelines compressed. The cost of misalignment became visible faster.
Andrew Bartlow, longtime HR executive and CEO of People Leader Accelerator, stripped the idea of strategy down to its most uncomfortable truth:
“I’ll start with the most boiled-down version of what being strategic looks like in practice. And it is work on the right things. That’s it. What that means is don’t strand yourself out on HR island, working on HR things that are only important to the HR function. Too many of us fall into that trap.
There’s often this imaginary list of things that all good companies and all good HR functions do. Engagement surveys. Comp leveling. Lunch and learns. Succession planning. And instead of ticking your way down that list, you actually have to step back and ask: what is most important to the organization right now?”
Not more initiatives. Not faster rollouts. Not chasing best practices because other companies are doing them.
Strategy, as Andrew described it, required HR leaders to make choices that were often uncomfortable, especially saying no to work they were capable of doing, but that didn’t align with what the business needed right now.
“If you’re doing all the right HR things but the business doesn’t have product-market fit, none of it really matters.”
What held up:
- HR leaders who aligned their work to the business’s actual priorities, not an abstract list of “best practices.”
- Making deliberate trade-offs and being clear about what HR would not work on.
- Prioritizing impact over activity, even when saying no was unpopular.
What didn’t:
- Confusing being busy with being strategic.
- Defaulting to programs or initiatives simply because they were expected of HR.
- Working on HR-only problems while the business struggled with product, revenue, or execution.
What to actually do with this:
- Before approving any new initiative, force a 10-minute gut check with your leadership team: “If we had to stop one thing to make room for this, what would it be?” If no one can answer, you’re adding work, not strategy.
- At your next roadmap review, label each project with the business condition it depends on (e.g., “requires stable headcount,” “assumes revenue growth,” “requires manager bandwidth”). Projects that no longer match reality should pause.
- When a stakeholder asks for “best practice,” respond with: “What problem are you hoping this solves right now?” If the answer is vague, don’t build yet.
- Watch for this warning sign: HR feels busy, but leaders still say “we don’t know what HR is focused on.” That’s a prioritization failure, not a communication one.
2. Culture Didn’t Break Because Leaders Didn’t Care
Many organizations entered 2025 genuinely committed to building strong cultures. And many were surprised by how fragile it felt under sustained pressure.
That fragility wasn’t about bad intent. It was about what happens when pressure outpaces listening.
Victoria Dew, an HR leader known for her systems-level thinking, described where culture quietly starts to unravel:
“It takes so long to build trust and it can be broken so quickly. Listening is really critical to building trust and maintaining trust, and it’s often the hardest thing to do when pressure is high.
When people closest to the work aren’t part of the conversation, that’s when culture breaks down. And what we see when trust is missing isn’t just attrition; it compromises safety, productivity, and the ability to execute change.”
This wasn’t about values or mission statements. It was about what happened when things got uncomfortable.
When leaders defaulted to speed over inclusion. When communication became one-directional. When frontline teams were treated as recipients of strategy instead of contributors to it.
Culture held up where leaders slowed down enough to ask, “What are we missing?” even when time and capacity felt scarce.
What held up:
- Leaders who slowed down to listen when things got uncomfortable, even when timelines were tight.
- Treating frontline employees as sources of insight, not just recipients of change.
- Consistent behavior under pressure, not aspirational values statements.
What didn’t:
- Assuming good intent would carry culture through sustained stress.
- One-way communication during moments of uncertainty.
- Culture initiatives that weren’t backed by everyday leadership behavior.
What to actually do with this:
- In moments of urgency (layoffs, restructures, policy changes): Add one mandatory step before decisions finalize: input from someone closest to the work. Even one frontline manager changes the outcome.
- If you’re hearing “people don’t get why we’re doing this,” assume the explanation came too late. Culture erodes when communication follows decisions instead of shaping them.
- After a tough decision rolls out, ask one simple question in your next leadership debrief: “Who felt this decision, but wasn’t part of it?”
- Watch for this warning sign: Leaders say “we communicated it,” but teams say “we weren’t asked.” That gap is where trust breaks.
3. Recognition Worked, But Only When It Was Grounded in Reality
Recognition was everywhere in 2025. It showed up in engagement surveys, employee listening tools, end-of-month shoutouts, and well-intended Slack channels. And yet, many employees, especially those closest to the work, still felt unseen.
The gap wasn’t effort. It was relevance.
What became clear over the course of the year is that recognition doesn’t fail because organizations don’t care about it. It fails because it often gets treated as something separate from the work itself, something to be summarized later, instead of reinforced in the moment.
Laura Lillie Goodridge, a manager coach who works closely with frontline leaders, named the core blind spot she sees again and again:
“I don’t think managers truly understand what appreciation is in its basic form. In its basic form, it’s acknowledgment. Acknowledgment that somebody else exists and is spending time doing something for you.
Managers don’t undervalue it on purpose. They just don’t understand the value of it in the first place. There’s so much pressure on outputs that they focus on what gets done, not how it gets done.”
That pressure to deliver, to move fast, to hit numbers, shaped so much of how work functioned in 2025. In that environment, acknowledgment is often the first thing to disappear. Not because it’s seen as unimportant, but because it doesn’t feel immediately measurable or urgent.
The problem is that when recognition gets delayed, saved for quarterly recaps, monthly meetings, or performance reviews, is that its impact fades.
The moment has passed. The effort is no longer fresh. The connection between action and appreciation weakens.
What people needed last year wasn’t a summary of what they did well. They needed confirmation, in real time, that their work mattered while they were doing it.
Tracie Sponenberg, an HR executive with deep experience supporting frontline organizations, connected this directly to morale and retention:
“If you come into work every day and nobody says thank you, there’s no way to know if you’re doing a good job. Why would you want to be there? Most people want more than a paycheck.
They want to know that the work they do matters.”
That insight landed hard in 2025, especially for operational and frontline teams where effort is constant, visible, and physically demanding yet often goes unnamed. What worked last year wasn’t elaborate programs that appealed to execs or perfectly crafted messages. It was consistent, candid human reinforcement embedded into the flow of work.
Sometimes that meant:
- a peer calling out a teammate’s effort mid-shift
- a manager naming how the work was done, not just the result
- a leader noticing the invisible tasks that keep things running
And critically, it meant doing it in the moment when the effort was still alive, when the connection between contribution and acknowledgment was unmistakable.
Those moments didn’t feel flashy. They didn’t require a meeting or a recap. But they stuck.
Because in a year defined by pressure and uncertainty, being seen when it mattered turned out to be one of the most stabilizing forces teams had.
What held up:
- Recognition embedded into existing workflows instead of layered on top.
- Timely acknowledgment of effort, not just outcomes.
- Making invisible work visible, especially for frontline and operational teams.
What didn’t:
- Unsustainable recognition programs that lived in slide decks but not daily work.
- Delayed and/or generic praise that felt disconnected from real effort.
- Treating recognition as a perk instead of a leadership responsibility.
What to actually do with this:
- Move recognition upstream. Instead of end-of-month shoutouts, ask managers to name one effort during weekly check-ins or shift handovers.
- Coach managers to be specific in the moment, e.g.: “The way you handled that customer escalation kept the whole shift on track.” Not: “Great job this month.”
- If recognition lives mostly in decks, reviews, or rewards meetings, assume it’s arriving too late to shape behavior.
- During high-output periods (peak season, launches): Assign one leader to call out invisible work daily - scheduling, coverage, handoffs, clean-up.
- Watch for this warning sign: People are performing, but disengaging quietly. That’s often effort going unacknowledged, not motivation disappearing.
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If you work in HR or people operations long enough, you start to realize some of the hardest parts of the job are rarely talked about. That’s what HR On The Frontline is for.
Our Year in Review episode pulls together expert voices from across the industry to talk plainly about how to tackle your role when the answers aren’t obvious.
No motivation. No frameworks. Just honest conversations about people and about the work.
Listen now to HR On The Frontline: Year in Review!
4. Manager Burnout Was a Design Problem, Not a Personal Failure
By the middle of 2025, one thing became impossible to ignore: managers were exhausted.
But the story that burnout was about resilience or mindset never quite held up. What surfaced instead was role creep. Managers quietly absorbing responsibility without clarity or support.
Stacey Nordwall, VP of People Strategy at PIN, named a boundary that many organizations still struggle to draw:
“Managers have a really big responsibility, and the boundaries of their roles can easily blur because they’re trying to do so much.
Supporting someone doesn’t mean diagnosing them. Managers are not therapists.”
In 2025, managers were often expected to coach performance, support wellbeing, navigate conflict, and carry emotional weight, all while delivering results.
Stacey emphasized that the most responsible leadership move is sometimes knowing when to hand something off:
“Sometimes the kindest thing you can say is, ‘I’m out of my depth but I can help connect you to the right resources.’”
Burnout showed up where expectations expanded without guardrails. What held up were systems that made boundaries explicit, and treated emotional labor as real work that needed structure and support.
What held up:
- Clear boundaries around what managers are (and are not) responsible for.
- Training managers to navigate emotional conversations without absorbing them.
- Systems that redistributed load instead of asking managers to “push through.”
What didn’t:
- Framing burnout as a resilience or mindset problem.
- Expanding manager responsibilities without removing anything.
- Expecting managers to act as therapists without support or escalation paths.
What to actually do with this:
- Sit down with managers and list everything they’re being asked to carry. Then explicitly name what isn’t theirs to hold (mental health crises, complex HR investigations, performance therapy).
- Create a simple escalation script managers can use without guilt: “I care about this, and I’m not the right person to support it alone. Let’s loop in HR.”
- If managers are expected to support wellbeing, give them training and backup, not just expectations.
- When burnout shows up, ask: “What responsibility expanded without support?”
before asking about resilience. - Watch for this warning sign: Managers say “I don’t want to drop the ball” but can’t name where to hand things off.
5. Wellbeing Worked When Pressure Was Removed
Like previous years, wellbeing was one of the most talked-about topics of 2025, and one of the most misunderstood.
Madison Bohannon, VP of People at Chatbooks, shared a moment that reshaped how she thinks about what support actually looks like at work:
“Coming back from maternity leave really changed how I think about workplace wellness. It revealed blind spots I thought I had already addressed as an HR leader.
It made me realize how much emotional labor employees carry while still trying to show up as high performers.”
What struck Madison wasn’t the absence of benefits, it was the presence of pressure.
“Wellness isn’t just about what companies offer. It’s about what they actively remove. The guilt. The unnecessary pressure. The ambiguity around time off.”
In 2025, wellbeing held up where leaders stopped asking what else they could add and started asking what they could remove.
Clear expectations. Mandatory time off. Fewer unspoken rules.
Not glamorous, but effective.
What held up:
- Removing pressure, ambiguity, and unspoken expectations.
- Normalizing rest through policy, not permission.
- Designing work that didn’t rely on constant overextension.
What didn’t:
- Adding wellness programs that increased cognitive or emotional load.
- Benefits that people felt unsafe or guilty using.
- Treating wellbeing as an add-on instead of a structural consideration.
What to actually do with this:
- Audit one policy through a pressure lens, not a benefit lens. Ask: “Does this reduce stress, or quietly add decision-making?”
- If people aren’t using time off, don’t remind them. Instead, remove the friction. Examples: mandatory shutdown days, auto-calendar blocks, no-approval PTO.
- Name availability norms out loud. If leaders send messages late, clarify whether response is expected or optional.
- After major pushes, schedule recovery time by default, not as a reward.
- Watch for this warning sign: You keep adding wellbeing resources, but utilization stays flat. Pressure is canceling them out.
6. The Future of Work Is Personal, Whether We’re Ready or Not
As organizations looked toward the future, one assumption became harder to defend: what motivates most, motivates all.
Elles Skony, a fractional Chief People Officer and founder of Organized Chaos Consulting, challenged this thinking directly:
“Motivation isn’t universal. What motivates someone today might not motivate them six months from now.”
Same goes for employee loyalty and commitment.
Elles emphasized that understanding motivation requires curiosity, not assumptions.
“Instead of assuming everyone wants the same thing; more money, a bigger title… We have to understand what drives this person right now. It’s harder to scale, but it’s more honest.”
The future of work, as it showed up in 2025, demanded flexibility not just in schedules but in how organizations define contribution, belonging, and recognition.
What held up:
- Recognizing that motivation is personal and dynamic.
- Flexibility in how contribution and commitment are defined.
- Inclusion that wasn’t tied to employment type or schedule.
What didn’t:
- Assuming one-size-fits-most motivators still work.
- Equating presence with commitment.
- Treating flexibility as a perk instead of a design principle.
What to actually do with this:
- Ask one question in regular check-ins: “What’s motivating you most right now?” Don’t assume the answer stays the same year to year or even month-to-month.
- Redesign performance conversations to focus on contribution, not visibility. Output beats hours.
- If flexibility exists but feels fragile, it’s not truly embedded. Make it policy-backed, not manager-dependent.
- When someone’s engagement shifts, don’t jump to “flight risk.” First ask: “What changed?”
- Watch for this warning sign: High performers disengage quietly because the system only rewards one type of commitment.
Taking This Into The Year Ahead
2025 made something impossible to ignore. HR leadership rarely comes with clarity or certainty.
Decisions happen with partial information. Trade-offs are constant. You are asked to support people through change while still being accountable for outcomes, often at the same time.
If these lessons felt familiar, that is not a reflection of what you missed. It is a reflection of the role itself. Much of what HR carries is invisible, even when it is essential.
As you move into 2026, this is not about fixing everything or doing more. It's about being intentional in what you slow down enough to notice, prioritize, and reinforce. And about what you choose not to carry alone.
Those choices shape how work is experienced every day.
And they matter.
— Skai Dalziel, Co-Founder & CEO @ Guusto
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