What 2025 Taught Us About Building Workplaces That Actually Work

Reflections on a year of profound conversations, honest reckonings, and renewed clarity about what truly matters in building workplaces where people can thrive….

Through our LinkedIn Lives and articles this year, we’ve tackled some of the most pressing challenges facing organisations today. We’ve talked about DEI fatigue, the evolving role of managers, empowering women, reimagining how we support the whole human at work, and more. 

But these themes we explored weren’t chosen arbitrarily. 

They emerged from the real conversations we’re having with clients, the shifts we’re witnessing across industries, and the questions we know keep HR and business leaders up at night. 

In this article, we’ll share with you what shaped our thinking in 2025 and what we believe will define the path forward for all of us as we move into 2026.

From DEI Fatigue to Employee Experience: A Necessary Reset

We can’t ignore the elephant in the room. In 2025, DEI faced its reckoning. The Trump administration’s rollback of DEI commitments made headlines, but the reality is that scepticism had already been brewing. 

Many organisations began censoring the very words “diversity” and “inclusion” from their communications, rebranding initiatives to avoid backlash. Employee Resource Groups, once celebrated as spaces for connection, were criticised for creating silos. The landscape shifted, and it forced us all to pause and ask: What are we really trying to achieve here?

At Thriving Talent, this reset pushed us to return to our core intention: creating workplaces where everyone has what they need to succeed, especially as they navigate the meaningful moments in their lives. Moments that matter.

It’s a mission that’s not about labels or performative initiatives, but rather designing systems that acknowledge the reality of people’s lives. Today’s workforce includes up to five generations, all juggling caregiving, personal challenges, and professional ambitions.

The conversation is shifting from DEI to Employee Experience Management (EXM) and Global Wellbeing (GWB). The outcomes remain the same, but the framing has changed. And importantly, it’s no longer optional - regulatory frameworks like the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) now require workforce disclosures on wellbeing, diversity, and employee voice.

Personal Matters, Boundaries & Belonging: Where Do We Draw the Line?

This question became increasingly urgent throughout the year. 47% of HR leaders now report “blurred personal-professional boundaries” as a new HR risk (CIPD Health and Well-being at Work 2025). Leaders often say, “I’m not a therapist,” feeling ill-equipped to navigate conversations about mental health, caregiving, or personal struggles - especially in multicultural settings.

But people don’t exist in a vacuum. Between 50-70% of workers are in dual-income households (OECD). Approximately 36% of people aged 18-64 have unpaid care responsibilities. Global mobility means many employees are caring for ageing parents across borders. The juggling act is real, and it’s costing organisations over €100 billion annually in lost productivity, sick leave, and stress-related absences (ETUI).

We’re not suggesting organisations need to be actively involved in every aspect of employees’ lives. But they do need to create an ecosystem that acknowledges these realities. That means flexible policies, accessible resources, manager training, and leadership behaviours that genuinely understand the human experience of work.

The ROI is clear. Companies with strong wellbeing cultures see 11% higher retention and 23% higher engagement (McKinsey Health Institute 2024, PWC). When employees feel empowered to make the right choice at meaningful moments in their lives, they’re more loyal, focused, and committed.

The bridge between ‘people sustainability’ and ‘business sustainability’ isn’t built by policies alone. It requires both personal responsibility (individuals asking themselves “who or what can help me?”) and corporate responsibility (leaders creating the conditions for people to thrive). When these work together, everyone wins.

The Missing Middle: Why Managers Are the Linchpin

If there’s one group carrying the weight of these shifts, it’s middle managers. They’re being squeezed from all sides! They’re expected to deliver business results whilst championing wellbeing, navigating five generations in the workplace, and implementing an ever-growing list of initiatives.

Middle managers play the most critical role in both visible attrition (retention and development) and invisible attrition (when employees are present but not engaged or thriving). They’re expected to spot what’s getting in the way, have sensitive conversations, and create the conditions for people to succeed, all while managing their own workload and wellbeing.

The risks are very real. If managers are struggling themselves, how can they be expected to successfully support their teams through the full employee lifecycle? The opportunities are equally significant. Middle managers have the power to nurture their own microculture - building trust, encouraging people to ask for what they need, and co-creating ways of working that meet business objectives whilst supporting wellbeing.

So how do we support them? Five key strategies emerged from our work:

1.     Go back to basics with team charters and create agreements as a team about how to work together
2.     Make managers aware of policies and benefits and ensure they know what’s available and how to signpost team members
3.     Champion the policies yourself! Leaders must model using flexible working and other benefits
4.     Invest in inclusive leadership training and don’t assume everyone knows how to be empathetic or emotionally intelligent
5.     Build cultural awareness and equip managers to navigate diverse communication styles and expectations

Middle managers are the linchpin that holds inclusion and wellbeing together. Cutting their support is one of the biggest risks an organisation can take. As you plan for 2026, pay attention to leadership development at this level. It’s where strategy meets lived experience.

From Aspiration to Action: Empowering Women in the Workplace

One of our most powerful conversations this year focused on what it really takes to move women into leadership. The answer is it’s not about “fixing” women at all. It’s about designing programmes and systems that acknowledge the full context of women’s lives and remove the barriers holding them back.

The best women's leadership programmes are explicitly designed to get more women into leadership roles. That means building flexibility into timelines and expectations, understanding that participants may be juggling care responsibilities for children, ageing parents, or other life transitions.

We’re strong advocates for offering female-only programmes as a choice and not a mandate. When you remove external judgment and competition, women show up faster, speak up more, and connect deeper. Psychological safety is built in hours, not months, and that accelerates learning and vulnerability.

The top five internal blockers we see women facing:

•    Limiting beliefs shaped by upbringing, culture, or workplace dynamics
•    Imposter experience and the constant fear of being “found out”
•    Fear of visibility and discomfort with self-promotion
•    Not networking strategically and deprioritising relationship-building
•    Waiting to be noticed instead of actively advocating for themselves

Effective programmes help women tackle these blockers head-on. They create space to “dare to dream” and reconnect with ambition that may have been buried under the weight of daily life. And crucially, they don’t exist in a vacuum. Programmes must be complemented by manager briefings, peer mentoring, sponsorship initiatives, and systemic changes that create opportunities for women to rise.

As we look ahead to International Women’s Day 2026, the opportunity is clear. Organisations can move beyond panel talks and one-off events to design flagship inclusion initiatives that create lasting impact. That’s where programmes like Empower Your Future (EYF) come in to turn aspiration into measurable action.

Making Inclusion Stick: The Role of E-Learning

One-off training sessions aren’t enough. DEI fatigue is real, and many employees are attending multiple trainings without a clear sense of how to turn learning into action. That’s a missed opportunity.

Creating lasting culture change requires a learning journey, not a single event. E-learning, when done well, is a powerful tool in that journey. It offers scalability, flexibility, personalisation, and cost-effectiveness. But it must be combined with social learning, coaching, policy change, and leadership buy-in.

The key is to set clear behavioural expectations. Saying you value inclusion isn’t enough. Employees need a shared language and understanding of what inclusion looks like in practice. If people can’t describe the expected behaviours, they won’t be able to do them.

We use a “me-we-us” competency model to help organisations define inclusive behaviours at the individual, team, and organisational levels. This model recognises that DEI competencies aren’t binary. Individuals move through developmental stages from awareness to understanding, applying, performing, coaching, and finally leading and transforming.

Effective e-learning is practical and bite-sized (30-60 minutes), focused on one or two key topics, and includes realistic scenarios. It should be matched to your organisation’s DEI maturity and followed up with nudges, peer learning, simulations, and inclusion experiments.

Inclusion has to be baked into the main course and embedded into your business priorities, systems, and people practices.

Fair & Inclusive Hiring: The Blueprint for Bias-Free Recruitment

Inclusive recruitment is all about breaking stereotypes and making roles attractive to a wider range of candidates. With skills shortages intensifying globally (Switzerland alone could be missing 800,000 employees by 2030), organisations must rethink how they approach recruitment in 2026.

Bias creeps in at every stage of the hiring process:

•    Job descriptions that use exclusionary language
•    Sourcing limited to traditional channels
•    Shortlisting influenced by beauty bias, affinity bias, and performance bias
•    Interviews that rely on subjective impressions rather than skills
•    Hiring decisions made without structured evaluation

We need structured, data-driven processes at every stage. Use tools like Develop Diverse and Witty Works to scan job ads for biased language, implement semi-blind CVs, create objective scoring systems, use structured interviews with clear criteria and focus on culture add, not culture fit.

Fair hiring is essential for attracting the best talent and fostering diverse, innovative teams.

Building Momentum for 2026

DEI fatigue is real, but the need for inclusion has never been greater. 

The organisations that will thrive in 2026 are those that move beyond performative initiatives to embed inclusion into how things get done.

That means:

•    Designing Employee Experience strategies that reflect the realities of people’s lives
•    Supporting middle managers as the linchpin of culture and wellbeing
•    Creating flagship programmes that empower women and underrepresented groups to rise
•    Using e-learning and structured development to make inclusion stick
•    Building fair hiring practices that attract diverse talent

International Women’s Day 2026 is the perfect launchpad. It’s a moment to reignite purpose, progress, and ROI, not with another panel talk, but with meaningful programmes that drive measurable impact.

At Thriving Talent, we’re ready to help you design your 2026 inclusion roadmap. Whether you’re looking to launch an Empower Your Future programme for female leadership, refresh your leadership development, or build a more inclusive culture, we’re here to support you.

Ready to Take Action?

•    Book an Empower Your Future Design Call - co-create your 2026 inclusion flagship aligned with IWD
•     Discover our Caring and Career solutions - gain early insights from our upcoming book on sustaining careers through life transitions
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