2025 Talent Planning: Flip the Attract/Advance/Retain Order

I'm just back from i4cp’s latest Talent Acquisition Board meeting, where our members (talent leaders at Fortune 500 companies) shared their objectives and plans for 2025.  

I found it refreshing that despite coming from various industries and organization sizes, these leaders are deeply focused on HR strategy and talent planning for the upcoming year. Here are a few observations—including a recommendation to flip a seemingly tried-and-true formula. 

Align HR strategy to the company/business unit strategy 

As each TA leader shared their priorities and approaches, it was nice to see not only talent strategies aligning to HR strategies, but those HR strategies heavily aligned to the company or business unit strategy.  

I've continued to observe an acceleration in the shift of HR from cost center to strategic function, delivering real business value. CHROs are increasingly seen as essential advisors to the board and executive leadership, not just in HR matters, but in shaping the overall business strategy.  

CHRO involvement in strategy development has grown due to the need for expertise in workforce transformation, culture, and executive leadership development, all of which are critical for navigating today’s complex business environments. These HR leaders are increasingly involved in critical board discussions such as CEO succession planning and talent strategy. 

High-performance organizations, according to i4cp research, are more likely to involve their CHROs in board-level discussions, particularly around talent strategies, culture initiatives, and business growth.  

This alignment ensures that HR leaders play a critical role in influencing business outcomes. Leading with delivery of business value first will enable human capital leaders to create a sound strategy. And a strong HR strategy is made real through solid talent planning to drive growth and performance.  

No doubt, AI will be at the core of many company strategies in 2025; I've seen it on virtually every company deck that has come across my desk. And I continue to hear global leaders share perspectives along the lines of: 

• "Balance people with technology—focusing on the human element while leveraging technology will be key to building successful and resilient organizations of the future," and  

• "People want to be hired by people—leveraging technology for automation of tasks, but saving high-value, high-touch interactions to people." 

Leading with strategy while keeping people in mind 

i4cp research emphasizes that HR leaders who integrate talent management with broader business goals, and those who ensure board alignment, are pivotal to driving top-line growth.  

As leaders increasingly recognize the direct connection between people strategies and financial performance, how should leaders align? Kevin Martin, i4cp Chief Research Officer, recently shared insights on our People-Productivity Chain™, a framework that offers leaders a simple and effective way to connect the dots between the organization's strategy, the market, and the intangible leading indicators of success: culture, leadership, and talent.  

A common misstep among leaders is isolating thinking around market and strategy, especially in their alignment. What is often overlooked is that the critical leading indicators to the ability to strategically and successfully execute on a sustainable basis (i.e., to adapt to sudden market changes and effectively build products) is the culture, leadership, and talent of the firm.  

These five components (market, strategy, culture, leadership, and talent) must be managed together as a system, not individually. There are many examples of i4cp member organizations that have done this exceedingly well—their results are off the charts successful.  

Whether you're planning for automation or AI, adjusting return-to-office policies, or going through an M&A, alignment ensures that your organization can successfully execute strategy. And this alignment will require leaders to ask themselves what needs to happen with culture, leadership, and talent to support it.  

To help, we recently pulled together a series of resources to enable leaders to evaluate and effectively communicate their strategy to their executive teams and HR business partners. 

Having the i4cp Strategy Execution Toolkit can help you manage the five core elements as a system—market, strategy, culture, leadership, and talent—which in turn leads to increased productivity and sustained business performance. 

Flipping the order on attract, advance, retain 

With a solid HR strategy in place, leaders then turn to talent planning. Many organizations bucket talent strategies into three key pillars: attract, advance, retain. It is a model that is often used to bring out the full potential of the entire employee lifecycle.  

From a talent planning perspective, I recommend flipping the order: Retain. Advance. Attract.  

This reversal inherently starts with evaluation of the talent on hand to help determine the skills, capabilities, and experience you already have, and where gaps exist.   

It may sound simple, but I (and probably you) have experienced this multiple times, where organizations have acquired talent without much understanding of the talent under its roof. Without that understanding, these companies end up acquiring more of the same talent. As a result, after much recruiting, these organizations are still deficient in the next-level, skills-of-the-future talent required to help advance the business.  

By flipping the script, you can first figure out who your top employees are and keep them happy. Next, advance your current talent by growing and upskilling them. And finally, find the talent the organization is missing. You won't know the answer to this until you embark on a thoughtful evaluation to help make informed talent decisions.  

I wish you the best with your 2025 strategy and planning adventure. Don't forget to bring everyone along. I call it the four-legged stool: the business, finance, HR, and TA. If you overlook any one of these key stakeholders, your three-legged stool will be quite shaky.  

If you’re interested in speaking with me about HR strategy and talent planning, especially through the lens of AI readiness, I'd be delighted to chat.