For the fourth consecutive year, The Omnia Group has released our report on the latest trends impacting the Human Resources industry. Talent Trends Report 2025: Beyond Comfort Zones: Inspiring Meaningful Connections and Growth outlines what matters most to people in the talent sphere: what has stayed the same, what has changed, and what is foremost in the minds of industry professionals.
With insights drawn from 413 companies within 21 industries, 2025’s Talent Trends report reveals the state of the current job market and the factors that impact hiring, turnover, employee engagement, and retention. It captures the most pressing developments in the talent acquisition and management arena for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
Survey responses led us to five key points surrounding talent management: engagement challenges, career development, evolving uses for workforce assessments, proactive leadership, and AI integration.
Here’s a glimpse at what we found.
1. Stability in Turnover Masks Engagement Challenges
Heading into 2025, turnover was relatively low, with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting an average 3.3% turnover rate in the last quarter. Our survey responses echoed this finding, with only 19.7% of respondents reporting an increase in turnover.
It’s a good sign that people are staying in their positions longer. However, staying is not the same as thriving. While low turnover is excellent, U.S. employee engagement has reached an 11-year low, according to a report by Gallup.
Being hailed as “The Great Detachment,” this reduction in engagement suggests people are mentally distancing themselves from their work, resulting in lower productivity, reduced trust among team members, and overall impacts on the organization’s performance and growth.
Reconnection is the theme of our report this year, and in it, we offer a plan including four actionable approaches to increasing employee engagement. By targeting the factors impacting your individual employees, aligning people with their natural strengths, responding to their communication preferences, and keeping an eye out for signs of problems, you can prevent The Great Detachment from taking root in your organization.
2. An Urgent Need for Structured Career Development Processes and Programs
Our survey data highlighted a need and opportunity for organizations to take a more structured and systematic approach to career development. Only 24.8% of organizations surveyed have implemented a formal career development process, while 56.4% rely on informal or casual approaches.
Here’s why it matters: According to Korn Ferry’s Workforce Survey, 67% of employees would stay with their company if offered opportunities for advancement and upskilling—even if they’re dissatisfied with their jobs.
Being proactive and formal about developing employees makes sense. But with all the other concerns of managing a business, leadership may readily set aside this strategy-setting for a later or quieter time, especially if they don’t know where to start. Unfortunately, that quieter time may never come.
This year’s Talent Trends report demystifies the process and provides simple steps (from establishing incremental plans and reviewing skills to connecting talent for coaching) to help leaders implement structured career development processes.
3. The Shift in the Purpose of Workforce Assessments
In the past, skill, cognitive, and behavioral assessments have been used primarily for talent-selection purposes. While this remains a popular and critical application, this year’s data showed a shift in top usage from selection to personal awareness and growth. It also highlighted an increase in the employment of emotional intelligence assessments. This is an exciting change, as it shines a light on a growing understanding of the need for self-awareness, particularly in organizational leaders.
As noted in the report, “This broader application of assessments gives them the tools, data sets, and insights they need to create an organization driven by self-aware leaders who have the emotional competence to guide teams through dynamic environments and uncertainties while maintaining steady performance levels.”
The report goes on to outline a path for leveraging workforce assessments in hiring, development, engagement, and communication.
4. The Need for Proactive Leadership and Consistent Talent Initiatives
With nearly 60% of respondents coming from companies with less than 500 employees and 28.8% from companies with less than 20 employees, we captured a clear image of the different ways SMBs tackle human resources, compared to larger companies. With smaller companies comes fewer, or even no, dedicated HR professionals, leaving the leadership team to manage many or all aspects of talent management. It’s necessary to spread the work out this way while a company is growing, and doing so can make individuals more well-rounded in their knowledge and skillsets. However, it could lead to inconsistencies or other challenges that larger companies with more dedicated HR professionals may avoid.
On the plus side, respondents report that more than 70% of leaders are committed to having regular one-on-one meetings with their teams. This is a step in the right direction, but these meetings haven’t always translated into comprehensive talent management practices. Less than half of organizations represented in the survey take advantage of three essential talent-management opportunities:
- Conducting employee satisfaction surveys
- Collecting data on why employees leave the organization
- Training staff to conduct effective interviews
The 2025 Talent Trends report offers four strategies SMBs can employ to leverage the resources they have for talent initiatives. By dividing the labor around creating and implementing well-researched processes, businesses without a dedicated HR team can foster consistency and maximize the effectiveness of their talent management approach.
5. Strategic AI Integration in HR
Despite the labor-saving promise of using AI in talent management, survey responses indicate a lower-than-expected adoption rate of this new technology. According to a Gartner study, 76% of HR professionals worry that their companies could lag behind if they don’t ramp up AI adoption. The results of Omnia’s survey show that 64.7% of organizations represented by respondents don’t use AI at all, and those that do use it primarily for selection and hiring.
This year’s Talent Trends report provides solutions for moving forward to adopt AI not only for hiring but also to enhance efficiency; offer added support; and boost learning, development, and onboarding.
Talent Trends 2025 offers practical and actionable steps to address challenges in the talent sphere. During times of uncertainty, it’s tempting to take a wait-and-see approach, but by being proactive, organizations can build resilient, engaged, and high-performing teams ready for whatever challenges 2025 and beyond may bring.
Download your complimentary copy of the 2025 Talent Trends Report to gain expert insights and data-driven strategies for hiring, retaining, and developing top talent in 2025.
