Change has been the only constant in India’s recent trajectory of economic, technological, and talent ecosystems. Caught between the constant pull and push of forces like growing GDP, geopolitical shifts, inflation, cost pressures, 2025 will be defined by how companies navigate their impact. But these aren’t the only forces shaping business outlook in 2025. The recently launched People Matters SHRPA State of the HR Industry– Executive Summary for India identifies the top three external forces impacting India Inc’s business outlook for 2025. For 650 companies surveyed across the country and 15+ talent and tech leaders interviewed as part of the report, over business relevant tech advancement, growth in consumer spending, and labour market shifts are top on CXOs and HR leaders agenda. While tech advancements in areas like AI and consumer demand are bound to grow in 2025, talent becomes the inflection point that will decide business success, growth in 2025. Are HR leaders ready?
Not a question of readiness. But execution
Looking at the questions of readiness to play a more strategic and embedded role in the business growth story, The SHRPA report highlights that HR leaders in India show exceptionally high levels of change readiness. On average around 80% of HR leaders show high levels of satisfaction across different change readiness parameters. Some parameters like adaptability and alignment of talent and business strategies saw the highest satisfaction levels. The critical gap that HR leaders need to address heading into 2025 is that of executing talent initiatives with success. Many HR leaders today lack in their ability to effectively execute talent initiatives that help companies keep pace with change. The dissatisfaction among HR leaders across different change execution parameters. Parameters like raising productivity through AI and executing digital transformations show the highest dissatisfaction levels.
A case of low tech maturity
Digging further to identify the reason behind the gap in readiness and execution, the report found that 7 in 10 companies in India with low HR tech maturity, are falling behind the change execution journey.
Low tech maturity impacts HR’s ability to execute for change. In Southeast Asia, a major portion of companies remain in what the report categorises as laggards— those with just a basic HR automation suite—at around 43%. This is followed by adopters who use data-driven tools at 22%. Finally, progressive companies (35%) that today have integrated HR systems with advanced AI and analytics capabilities. The gap in impact across areas like talent management and leveraging talent analytics between progressives and companies at low tech maturity level is the widest.
Hence, there’s a need to develop and develop HR tech architecture to keep pace with business and talent shifts and ensure its people-centric implementation leading to productivity gains and improved decision-making.
Overcoming misalignment critical for HR tech
While the SHRPA India Insights paints a clear picture of the gap in readiness and execution within HR leaders, it also assesses how the HR tech journey is unfolding.
An important part of the SHRPA State of the HR Industry– Executive Summary for India was to assess how aligned HR and their tech and services partners are. While investment into HR tech remains positive and shows close alignment between HR priorities and partner offerings, fault lines emerge when we look closer at the evaluation (identification) and implementation phase of HR tech. When evaluating tech solutions, HR teams and their tech partners align on 3 out of 5 key priorities. Areas like data security, measuring business impact, and ease of use are on both sides’ radars. However, two critical priorities are being overlooked, leading to future challenges. HR leaders are focusing on cost optimization and ease of maintenance, but these are often missed by tech and service partners. Meanwhile, HR leaders themselves are not prioritizing analytics and reporting when evaluating solutions.This misalignment persists even during the implementation phase. When examining the challenges HR leaders face with technology, compared to the perceptions of tech partners, two significant gaps become clear: a lack of system compatibility and integration, as well as insufficient configuration and compliance. HR tech leaders on the other hand say that critical change management support from HR’s end that helps overcome internal resistance are not adequate, impacting the implementation of HR tech solutions.
Roadmap for HR success in 2025
The SHRPA report highlights key gaps in the evolving landscape of the HR industry. These gaps include:
Change Management Gap: A disconnect between readiness for change and effective change execution.
Acknowledgement Gap: The failure to recognize that HR tech performance is directly tied to HR’s ability to utilize it effectively.
Value Realisation Gap: A misalignment between how HR leaders evaluate HR tech and what tech partners believe HR leaders actually need.
These gaps, which impact HR’s ability to drive tech-enabled transformation, raise execution capabilities, and drive HR tech usuage will be key to overcome in 2025. To tackle these challenges, the roadmap of HR success needs the following imperatives guiding talent leaders.
Accelerating change execution
Strengthening HR resilience
Building sustainable technology infrastructure
Unlock how HR leaders and CXOs are planning to overcome these gaps and meet the three imperatives by downloading the SHRPA Executive Summary- India Insights Insights by downloading your copy here.