Dynamic market and operating conditions continue to create complex challenges and opportunities for organisations worldwide. These conditions are shaping the talent requirement, driving demand for critical financial and commercial capability and defining additional skills and experience that leaders need in areas such as:
- Technology and digital transformation
- Organisational risk and compliance
- People and culture
Here we explore these trends and how they shape the talent and leadership landscape in 2025.
Technology and digital transformation – senior talent trends
As technology evolves, it fundamentally changes how businesses operate and deliver value to their clients and customers. This makes the ability to understand the technology requirement and use digital transformation to enhance performance, critical talent factors for all organisations.
Chris Tan, Associate Partner for Gerard Daniels, describes artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics as technologies that are on everyone’s radar right now. “AI and data analytics have seemingly limitless potential to improve workforce productivity; automate labour-intensive tasks; foster collaboration and innovation; and inform training and development,” he says. “Businesses are also empowering leaders with these technologies, allowing data-based insights to augment decision making; inform strategy; and drive efficiency and objectivity in resource allocation.”
While technology has the potential to drive business performance, harnessing its true value requires the right skill, capability and leadership at all levels. “Organisations will always need a workforce with the skill to deliver on the technology requirement. But at senior levels there is more of a requirement for the financial and strategic thinking to invest in technologies that drive sustainable growth,” says Chris. Business leaders must also have the savvy to use technology for commercial gain and know how to manage its wide-ranging impact across the organisation.”
In addition to these skills, there is currently strong demand for leaders with the ability to:
- Identify and prioritise the technologies that create competitive advantage
- Interpret and extract meaningful insights to support decision making in data rich environments
- Integrate technology into workforce planning, development and recruitment strategy
- Manage change and transformation, nurturing a culture of continuous learning and innovation
- Navigate the dynamic risk framework for digital transformation
Leadership in a changing risk landscape
As robust due diligence is the foundation for good decision making, operating in dynamic market conditions requires leaders with a deep understanding of risk and a proactive approach to managing it across key disciplines. “Boards value CEOs with strong market, financial and commercial capability for the assurance that risk will adequately be factored into these areas,” says Chris. “As markets and operating conditions change, leaders must keep their finger on the pulse to ensure an informed understanding of risk is applied.”
Given the impact of technology on people and performance and the rapid speed at which it evolves, there is also a broad and significant leadership requirement for managing technology-related risk.
“In 2025, business leaders must be able to look beyond the more obvious technology risk in areas such as cybersecurity and data protection – although these are critically important considerations whenever data-based technologies are deployed,” says Chris. “To grow, organisations must attract and equip leaders with the skill and experience to adopt the right technologies at the right time; maintain the integrity of data to support good decision making; and manage risk as it relates to people – continually adapting, evolving and upskilling the workforce to align with digital transformation.”
With the responsibility to safeguard the organisational performance, risk oversight is also a key leadership requirement of the Board. “By building the right composition of skills and experience, the Board can apply a risk lens, when necessary, to the many contemporary issues that affect organisational success,” says Chris.
People and culture – maintaining social licence to operate
Meeting the needs of the workforce and maintaining social licence to operate will always be intrinsically linked. Changing market conditions and trends in 2025 continue to shape employee expectation and the leadership requirement to deliver on it.
Navigating change and transformation
While digital transformation and other major change programs are designed to improve efficiency, they require the right leadership to positively impact people, culture and performance.
“Whenever there is digital transformation, there is a leadership requirement to manage the impact that the change and transformation process brings,” says Chris. “While there will always be plenty of leaders with the technical skill to deploy new technologies, those with the greatest impact tend to understand how technology relates to people; and the true value of bringing people along on the change and transformation journey.”
Meeting employee expectations
With employee experience (EX) core to the employee value proposition for most organisations, discussion continues on what people want from their employment and the role of technology in meeting these needs.
“From a workforce perspective, candidates are futureproofing their career, seeking employment where there is a strong learning and development framework,” says Chris. “To grow and retain the future workforce, business leaders must be able to look at technology and innovation from a people perspective and invest in building a culture of continual learning to support it.”
“More broadly, people want to know that their leaders can steer them through current and future challenges, balancing strategies and technologies that enhance business performance and employee experience,” Chris continues. “Achieving this requires leaders to understand and communicate not only how technology supports growth, but how it feeds into productivity, collaboration and flexibility, empowering people and growing the employee value proposition.”
Leaders that build on a strong foundation of business fundamentals to navigate risk and leverage these and other opportunities around people, culture and technology, will thrive in 2025.
To build the capability of your leadership team or find your next opportunity, connect with Chris or reach out to the Gerard Daniels team.
