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As businesses enter a new year marked by economic uncertainty — but with the hope that things are looking up — the tension between ambition and limited resources to put toward growth is palpable. Mercer’s latest pulse survey on where HR leaders’ priorities this year fall shows that human-centric productivity remains key — but are businesses backing that up with investing actual resources into the people and technologies that matter? Mercer’s data show that one in three firms are struggling to fill roles. While the top three reported priorities are improving people manager skills, enhancing the employee value proposition to attract talent, and designing talent processes around skills, the gap between new year business goals and what gets done tells a stronger tale of which priorities are most important.
In this environment, workforce planning isn’t about simply doing more with less—it’s about doing differently with purpose. But is this investment and mindset enough to make a difference? Kate Bravery, Partner and the Global Advisory Solutions & Insights Leader at Mercer thinks so — with smart planning. “Teams are still reporting being burned out and lean, so how do free up capacity?” she asks. Employees report increasing states of burnout as lean teams face relentless demands. Gallup’s 2024 State of The Workplace Report found that 58% of employees are struggling, yet Mercer’s data show that only 40% of employers plan to make addressing burnout a priority for 2025. Again, that mismatch is likely attributed to a lack of resources to invest in technology and people.
Bravery says smart employers are looking at how they can reskill, redeploy, and help their workforce to be more agile. “On one hand, companies want to invest in the people they have,” says Bravery. “But that will also have a bit of a dampening effect if they’re not also hiring from the outside.”
When AI becomes the real human advantage
Many leaders are looking to AI to provide the extra capacity and support for their people via the technology’s promised efficiency gains, but they have general plans — at best — to do so. “Many will walk into 2025 where the budget doesn’t quite marry up to the ambition,” says Bravery. “You’ve still got these huge expectations around the AI business advantages and productivity gains that it’s going to deliver — but maybe not with the full financial backing it needs.”
AI’s promise is undeniable: automation, smarter decision-making, and the potential to unlock capacity. Yet, deploying AI effectively requires strategic foresight and financial backing. “If people have bigger priorities but don’t have the budget and resources to execute, then they’re going to have to reprioritize,” Bravery explains. “This is going to be a year of intentional investment.”
What the top 20% of companies leading with AI are doing differently
Companies are going to have to put a lot more scrutiny and criteria into what gets an AI pilot off the ground because now some of the costs of AI are being passed on to them. To that end, Bravery looked at what the 20% of companies that are leading with AI are doing differently than the rest and identified a key differentiator. “They’re embedding AI into how work gets done. They’re using it across the business, not just in sanctioned projects or teams.”
As always, smart planning is the differentiator. When resources are limited and expectations are high, intentionality and innovation will determine who thrives — and who merely survives. “Companies don’t have deep pockets,” says Bravery. “It’s going to be a tough business climate. The choices we make in the first three months of the year are going to dictate our future.”
