Employee wellbeing is UK HR professionals’ top priority for 2025 says Milton Keynes-based WorkBuzz

These are the findings from WorkBuzz’s latest The State of Employee Engagement Report, which involved research with over 640 HR professionals including 335 from the U.K.

The research highlights that employee wellbeing has been a key HR concern for the past number of years, with it being the second highest priority in WorkBuzz’s previous report. However, organisations are now placing an even greater emphasis on their employees’ mental, emotional and physical health, as they try to effectively balance their workforce’s need for flexible working with wellbeing issues exacerbated by the isolatory nature of home working. The situation with younger workers aged 16-34 is among the most complex as they have a strong preference for remote work, and yet are more prone to depression and loneliness*.

“Employers are trying to solve a challenging paradox - providing their people with the option of remote and flexible working on the one hand, while managing the wellbeing fallout from this on the other”, says Steven Frost, CEO of Milton Keynes-based employee engagement specialist WorkBuzz. “Reconciling flexibility with duty of care to ensure a supportive and thriving workplace culture, is a challenge many HR teams are currently struggling to navigate.”

Employee engagement and more broadly, the employee experience, is HR professionals’ second biggest priority according to WorkBuzz’s recent report, moving up from fifth position in last year’s priority list. The focus for HR appears to be on improving the quality of the more everyday employee experiences, with employee listening playing an important role in this.

Frost says, “HR leaders are placing greater weight on listening to their employees to find out how their daily lived experiences can be improved. They want to make changes that are genuinely reflective of what employees want and need rather than investing in sweeping top-down initiatives.”

Talent attraction - still third on U.K. HR professionals’ priority list when compared with 12 months’ ago - remains an ongoing challenge.

Frost adds, “Securing highly skilled diverse candidates, especially those with transformative digital skills, is a struggle across many U.K. industries. It requires HR professionals to take a holistic approach so that their organisation is viewed as an appealing and inclusive destination for all.”

WorkBuzz’s State of Employee Engagement Report 2024/25 can be downloaded here: https://workbuzz.com/resources/research-ebooks/state-of-employee-engagement-2024/

*State of the Global Workplace Report - Gallup