Putting purpose first
We will continue to link our company purpose to our people strategy in 2025. Mony Group’s purpose is to help households save money, which fits in the context of our wellbeing and people strategy. We’ve been reflecting that purpose back to our employees through our Big Money Workshop, where we hold seminars and focus groups on personal financial wellbeing.
People want to see that the company purpose is congruent with the employee experience. The cost-of-living crisis hasn’t completely gone away, so supporting employees with financial wellbeing will be important to us.
This will also play a central part in our talent-attraction strategy. I think we will see more movement in the job market in 2025 than we saw in 2024. A lot of people sat tight in their roles last year but the job market tends to be cyclical. We must continue to invest in retention and engagement to hold on to our talent.
While some companies are going back to five days a week in the office, we feel very comfortable and confident with our two days in the office and flexible work-from-anywhere programme. We’ve recently invested in our offices in London to improve our hybrid-working spaces and really maximise their effectiveness. I don’t think our approach is going to change here.
AI is obviously also going to play a big role too, but I will be moving from using AI bots to AI agents and reviewing how we train our staff to work harmoniously with the technology. We’ve moved beyond the initial fear that AI could take away jobs. People are now understanding that this technology can help them in their day-to-day work.
I think the productivity benefits offered by AI will feel less conceptual and more tangible this year and getting our employees ready for that will be important.
Identifying future skills
We’re hearing more and more about advancements in AI and automation, so it will be interesting to see what happens over the next 12 months. Some AI tools have become much more accessible than they once were and organisations are starting to get to grips with them now that some of the security and data questions have been answered.
We’re at a really interesting point when it comes to the adoption of AI by the masses. There has been a good level of adoption so far but I think we will start to see a greater adoption in very defined pockets of businesses. Used correctly, AI can augment roles, rather than automate or replace them, so I’m keen to see what happens there.
The other priority is understanding our future skills needs. We did some of that work at Zurich five or six years ago. Now, it’s time for us to review this and get clarity about the skills we need to recruit for in the future.
We will always need core insurance, underwriting, claims and risk-management skills, but I see a significant increase in demand for data-analytics skills. People must have the ability to analyse and use data effectively in almost every role moving forward.
Lastly, many organisations are doing much better when it comes to diversity, inclusivity and belonging. Our gender pay gap has almost halved since 2017 [the median gap shrank from 27.4% in 2017 to 15.5% in 2024]. From my perspective, our company has done a good job on gender diversity but there is a lot of work for all of us to do when it comes to improving representation of ethnic minorities and better reflecting the communities we operate in.
Getting people back together
The use of AI will continue to pick up in 2025 for a couple of reasons. Every business is being asked to do more with less and really look at free cash flow to demonstrate the health of the business.
As an HR leader, this has made me look at what can be automated and how we can get work done more effectively and efficiently with AI. This doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to lay off employees who are currently doing those jobs, but it may enable them to do higher-order work or be retrained in other areas. These workers have institutional knowledge and we want to keep that in the company.
Employee engagement will also be a priority. Hybrid working has made this harder as people are scattered across the country and don’t all live close to a central office.
It’s both a big challenge and an opportunity for HR. We’re going to have to personalise the way we communicate with our employees and manage their performance, as well as the way they provide feedback.
We’re going to continue to be remote-first, as that has opened up the talent pool for us. But we are going to invest in some employee travel and drop-in offices for team-building, problem-solving sessions and socialising.
I hope these will encourage more of the unstructured conversations that used to happen in the office, when people chatted while making a cup of coffee. I think that can make the difference.
