As compared to a few decades ago, women being part of the workforce has become the norm. However, while this has been viewed as a positive change, there is a noted lack of women in leadership. According to our DEIB report, ‘Despite women making up 26% of the workforce (a figure unchanged for three years), their representation sharply declines at each managerial level. The “broken rung” phenomenon persists, with only 8% of CEOs being women. Career interruptions post-maternity, lack of flexible work models, and unclear promotion pathways contribute to attrition and stagnation.”

At Great Place to Work®, we help companies evaluate women’s representation in leadership, how existing employees feel about the current situation, and advise them on how to improve the workplace. This article will delve into the challenges, benefits, and strategies to help women in leadership thrive at work.

What Does Women in Leadership Entail?

Women have been part of the workforce since the 1900s and part of the corporate world for over the past five decades. However, the one factor that stands out is that even today, women are not a huge part of leadership. This statistic shows this clearly: ‘In 2025, 21% of women have not had the experience of leadership development opportunities.’

Women in leadership are women holding higher positions on the corporate ladder, with immense decision-making power, influence over the company’s direction, and responsibility for leading significant aspects of the business.

Women in leadership, in most companies, will include:

Being part of the executive leadership team of the company

Having a voice on the board of directors regarding the company’s strategy

Leading teams and managing several aspects of their work and responsibilities

C-suite executives who head a particular aspect of the company’s operations

Heading the company as a managing director or chief executive officer

Women in leadership make it easier for other women to join the ranks of leadership, enabling a diverse workforce to create a force that moves the organization in the right direction.

Why Is It Critical for Women to Become Part of the Leadership?

A study of a well-functioning and highly productive work environment will show that these outcomes result from balance, open communication, and a positive approach. Women and other under-represented groups in the workplace and in leadership are part of ensuring all the above-mentioned factors. Here are the benefits of women in leadership:

Women bring an emotional intelligence angle to decision-making through balance

Organizations gain a different and broader point of view

The culture and outlook of the organization become more diverse

It helps structure the benefits offered by the organization in a better way

Businesses are better able to understand and serve customers

Builds a better image of the business among all stakeholders

Increased productivity and improved customer satisfaction positively impact the bottom line

Challenges Women Face in Leadership Roles and Strategies to Overcome Them

When women take on leadership roles, they face more challenges than their male counterparts. This can be due to societal, familial, and corporate pressures on them. Let’s look at some of the challenges.

Challenge #1: Stereotyping and Gender Bias

Often, women face a lot of gender bias from peers and leadership, which even they may not be aware of. There’s a lot of stereotyping around the kind of roles women can play and the skills they have.

Some examples include:

Assuming that women may not want to work on jobs that require manual skills or site visits where they have to be actively involved in physical tasks.

Building a narrative where women use emotions for decision-making rather than logic and statistics.

Viewing women as the weaker gender, not possessing the ‘killer instinct’ attributed to men who lead teams.

Women lacking mechanical skills like repairing cars or working with software coding, making them incapable of leading in such roles

Women leaders being uncomfortable leading a team of ambitious and aggressive men with a firm hand.

Leadership assuming that women may not be ambitious because of the mother-wife roles they play along with their careers.

Hormonal changes which are part of the woman’s life affecting their ability to work consistently and productively.

Strategy # 1: Train Leadership to Overcome Bias

Any change in the company’s outlook, culture, and overall attitude starts with the leadership team’s visible acceptance of these qualities. For the organization to overcome unconscious bias and the stereotyping of women, leadership teams must be trained. When leadership demonstrates a gender-neutral, merit-centric approach to work, this attitude permeates the rest of the organization.

Here are some steps to make this strategy effective:

Create and implement training programs that help people overcome their biases against women and other under-represented factions.

Make it clear that any biases or gender-offensive attitudes will be dealt with strictly and will not be tolerated at any level.

Provide mechanisms that enable women to record, report, and request support when they face such biases.

Design recruitment processes to eliminate unconscious bias and standardize performance evaluations to avoid personal bias.

Challenge # 2: Restricted Access to Leadership Roles

Today, most companies welcome women into their ranks with open arms; however, not into leadership teams. It is often assumed that women will take career breaks to fulfill their personal commitments, which, in turn, makes them unsuitable for leadership roles. Another assumption is that women may not want to step into roles that require more responsibility.

Some examples include:

When companies consider potential leadership candidates, they focus mainly on service length, and women could show some gaps due to personal commitments

Judging women by their leadership styles, as they may not always be the same as those of their male counterparts.

Restricting women in leadership due to paucity of time they have for social and networking activities.

Strategy# 2: Create Women-Specific Tracks and Leadership Programs

It is a given that men and women think and act differently, which will also affect their leadership styles. However, to ensure that the company does not restrict women based on their working style, it is crucial to create women-specific tracks and programs.

Here are some steps to make this strategy effective:

Help women candidates identify their strengths and train them to improve in areas where they lack, ensuring they have a well-rounded skill set and can take on leadership roles.

Aggressively promote mentorship programs to prepare women for their leadership roles by providing overall support on technical and emotional skills.

Encourage existing women leaders within and outside the company to address women employees.

Offer support in the form of training programs, certifications, courses, and sponsored workshops to prepare women for leadership roles.

Challenge # 3: Interrupted Career Path Due to Personal Reasons

Biology and nature have assigned women to caregiving and reproductive roles, which results in career gaps. Many women have successfully managed both these responsibilities, but this has also hindered their growth in the company.

Some examples include:

Women feel disoriented when they return from maternity leave due to changes in their roles and within the company.

Some women have found themselves moved off the promotion track once they get married, on the assumption that their priorities have changed.

Enable online meetings for important events, key client account handling, and crucial team events to keep the woman on leave updated on all changes and developments.

Women with family responsibilities, such as caring for elderly parents or raising children, are often viewed as not suitable for leadership programs.

Strategy #3: Enable Mentorship and Input During Such Situations

Today, companies have become more understanding about supporting people, especially women as a whole, rather than only at a professional level. This strategy focuses on creating support systems and mentorship programs, and providing the right input to ensure that women on the leadership track move forward, no matter what.

Here are some steps to make this strategy effective:

Talk to women leaders to understand how they overcame these challenges to stay on track for leadership roles.

Create programs that support women when their personal responsibilities create gaps in their schedules. For example, create a one-on-one support person for women who are on maternity leave. This person can keep the woman updated on developments in their work, clients, and any company changes. Furthermore, this person can also act as a liaison between the woman and the team to keep the link going.

Partner with childcare services to ensure the woman leader can focus on work without worrying about missing any child-related issues.

The Human Resources department can provide a forum for women with varied family commitments to seek guidance and support in difficult situations.

Challenge # 4: Women Needing to Balance Work and Personal Life

The world is evolving at a faster pace, and society’s outlook toward what women are responsible for has also changed. However, despite these changes, women still need to balance their personal and professional responsibilities. This could be due to societal pressures, specific skills that only women possess, and biological differences that confer traits men do not have.

Some examples include:

Women have more child-centric responsibilities, especially in their early years, due to the need to nourish their children during the first two years.

Since women are often considered skilled at multitasking, they are expected to take on more household responsibilities than their male counterparts.

Even when roles are divided equally, women often take on more of the personal load due to their nature.

Strategy #4: Build a Flexible and Sustainable Hybrid Work Situation

Companies seeking to encourage more women to take on leadership roles can adopt a strategy of offering flexible hybrid work arrangements that also measure productivity objectively. With hybrid working models, women can continue to perform at their best without sacrificing any aspect of their professional or personal responsibilities.

Here are some steps to make this strategy effective:

Identify all roles that can be performed without requiring employees to commute to the office and that support a viable hybrid work model.

Empower these women with the right apps and tools to make communication with internal teams and external stakeholders easy and seamless.

Enable them to create a professional, comfortable work setup at home to maintain a seamless experience when they interact with external parties.

Set up mechanisms and establish metrics to measure performance without any bias and with complete transparency.

Challenge # 5: Self-Doubts and Imposter Syndrome

Historically, women have been placed in more subservient roles, and this has resulted in many women becoming victims of the ‘imposter syndrome’. When women doubt themselves, they often shy away from taking up leadership roles.

Some examples include:

Women in leadership roles often feel they have the skills but lack the confidence to lead a team with the necessary authority.

Women are often unable to express their opinions or offer input in a male-dominated setting due to a lack of authority.

Colleagues often put down women for being emotional, leading them to doubt the logic and merit of their input.

Strategy #5: Offer Career Counseling and Support Services

For women on the leadership track, it is often not a lack of skills or aptitude but doubt and a lack of confidence that lead them to shy away from such opportunities. Companies seeking to encourage more women to take on leadership roles must adopt a strategy that helps them discover their potential.

Here are some steps to make this strategy effective:

Build programs and support workshops to help women build their confidence and realize their complete potential.

Highlight and share the achievements of women employees consistently, both within and outside the company.

Offer courses on public speaking, mentoring, and discovering the power within to all those employees who show leadership potential.

Identify leaders to mentor potential candidates in mentorship programs, helping them build confidence and learn new leadership skills.

Challenge #6: Limited Networking Opportunities

Traditionally, networking opportunities are restricted to clubs and night events where men meet and interact, resulting in an old-boys-club, which is a tight clique. Often, women either feel uncomfortable at such events or are unable to attend due to other commitments. In such cases, women miss out on crucial networking opportunities.

Some examples include:

Night events in clubs and places where entry is traditionally men-only in certain areas, restricting women from entering.

Hunting, shooting, golfing, or other such events where men discuss business while participating, where many women may feel out of place or even unwelcome.

Networking events that require investing time beyond work hours, which may not work for many women due to their personal responsibilities.

Strategy #6: Build Professional Networking Events That Are Women-Friendly and Accessible

While it is true that many business deals occur in social settings, it is important to have a strategy to ensure women do not miss out on opportunities to network, increase visibility, and close deals. The strategy is simple: schedule business events around times that work for the entire leadership team, including women.

Here are some steps to make this strategy effective:

Schedule events and meetings at times and places where women can also participate. For example, move the meeting to a hotel luncheon rather than a game night at a club.

Form specific groups and forums where women can represent their skills. This can be at a board meeting or a client-based event where the celebrations occur only when business negotiations are concluded.

Enable women to attend evening or night events by offering them the required support in terms of transportation, childcare, and accommodation as required.

How to Ensure the Growth of Women in Leadership Roles Going Forward?

The world is recognizing the need to recruit women actively, encourage their growth, and support their advancement into leadership roles. Having a well-balanced team with representation from all segments creates a positive and productive work environment. The starting point is to check the organization’s pulse through employee surveys.

Another great way to kickstart this is to talk to an expert about DEIB to assess the current position and move forward. Change must start at the leadership level and permeate to lower levels to ensure the proper implementation of any women-in-leadership initiatives. At Great Place To Work, our team of experts can guide the process and ensure tangible results. Click here to connect with us.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it crucial to develop women in leadership roles?

Women bring a different perspective and skills to any role they take on. With women in leadership roles, the company will benefit from increased productivity and creative solutions. Having women in leadership also builds a better image of the company internally and externally.

What are the steps to take to encourage women to take leadership roles?

Companies can start by identifying women leaders among existing employees and offer them training and support to encourage them to take on leadership roles. Moreover, women-specific initiatives can support women across various phases of their personal and professional lives, helping them continue their career trajectories.

What programs can support women in leadership?

Programs such as young executive boards, mentorship, networking events, and targeted soft-skills training can help women discover and develop their innate leadership skills. Support facilities such as hybrid working, maternity leave support, and opportunities to interact with other women leaders can also help.

What issues do women in leadership face?

Women in leadership can face issues at both personal and professional levels. At the personal level, a need to focus on their family, having babies, travel limitations, etc., can be some of the issues. At the professional level, challenges can include male colleagues not accepting them, a lack of confidence and networking opportunities, and a poor understanding of their specific needs.

Companies today are including employee wellness as part of their growth strategy, since it is directly tied to improved productivity, business continuity, customer lifetime value (CLV), and brand reputation. Leaders today acknowledge that employee wellness is a set of carefully thought-out strategies that help future-proof the business.

In 2026, the onus for ensuring employee wellness is no longer restricted to the HR department, and this is due to many factors. The way employees approach work has taken a new direction with the advent of technology, options like hybrid workplaces, and changing lifestyles. Adding to this is a mix of various generations and a diverse workforce with different outlooks.

All these factors can lead to employee burnout, financial pressures, physical fatigue, and performance pressure, unless employee wellness takes center stage. As per a recent study. ‘Nearly two-thirds of Gen Z employees (65%) are at low wellness, higher than other generations.’ Another study reveals, ‘Best Workplaces maintain a consistent 2 – 4 % advantage across all core wellness drivers, with the largest gap in motivation for work (4%).’

This article will focus on defining employee wellness, the factors to consider, and strategies for getting it right.

What are Employee Wellness Strategies?

Employee wellness strategies are structured, well-planned, long-term plans designed to improve the overall employee experience that leads to greater well-being. Along with engagement activities, wellness strategies consider deep-rooted changes in the leadership approach and organizational culture to align with the business purpose and goals.

Wellness strategies will focus on supporting employees at various levels, including:

Physical well-being, focusing on safety, health, fitness, sporting events, etc.

Mental health support like counseling, wellness workshops, support groups, etc.

Financial well-being to encourage better personal fund management, dealing with taxation, etc.

Social engagement through group activities and outings to foster team spirit.

Emotional help when employees face difficulties in their work or home environment.

Career counseling and advisory services to help plan career paths and identify training requirements.

The goal of wellness strategies is to provide employees with an atmosphere where they feel supported and encouraged to perform to their fullest potential. At Great Place to Work®, we help companies assess current wellness levels to better strategize for wellness.

Why Do Companies Need Robust Employee Wellness Strategies in Today’s Environment?

Workplaces today are at a unique juncture, where you have generations working together, hybrid models becoming the norm, digital technologies evolving, and Artificial Intelligence driving many work processes. The erstwhile employee wellness strategies must be tweaked, updated, and changed to serve the needs of today’s workforce.

Also Read: 25 Best Health and Wellness Activities for Employees

According to a report, ‘Employees who experience wellness are 2 times more likely to stay longer, put in extra effort, adapt quickly, and innovate compared to those who don’t.’ Here are some of the main reasons that employee wellness strategies are critical for business growth and success:

#1 Changing workforce:

The workforce today is a mix of genders, ages, orientations, and backgrounds, which means that what worked a few years back will not work today. One of the biggest evolutions we have seen in the past two decades is immense. Technology has made communication easier and more convenient, enabling people to work from home. While this is convenient for people with home-related responsibilities, it also isolates them from the camaraderie and interactions at work. All these changes require companies to formulate wellness strategies to suit the evolving needs.

#2 Evolving awareness:

Unlike in the past, employees today are more aware of their needs and expectations regarding support from the company. Women employees want to work for organizations that support them through various stages of life, such as marriage and motherhood, without limiting their growth. The younger generation expects support for their emotional and social well-being from their workplace. At the same time, people of different orientations are more open about their choices and want support from the workplace.

#3 Retention and motivation:

Companies have started to realize that while there are many skilled and qualified candidates out there, recruitment is a long-drawn process; one that they need to help by increasing retention and motivation. Having the right mix of employee wellness strategies will help motivate and retain the existing workforce. This, in turn, means a marked uptick in productivity and savings for recruitment costs. People look for factors like Employee Resource Groups that help them stay motivated.

#4: Employer branding

In today’s competitive world, where information is available at the tap of a button, potential candidates are more likely to research the company before joining. Moreover, the competition for the right talent is also intense out there. Keeping these factors in mind, it becomes critical for companies to build a genuine brand. Employer branding has become more than sharing a few press releases or posting on social media. It is about being authentic and showcasing how the company cares for its employees; having an employee wellness strategy is the way to go.

#5 Empowering from within:

The right employee wellness strategy is the best way to empower employees to be their best selves. Physical wellness ensures that employees are fit and ready to put in their best efforts. Mental, emotional, and social wellness enables individuals to self-motivate, be more productive, and maintain work-life balance. The right financial wellness strategy will encourage employees to plan their finances well and work without financial worries haunting them.

Why Do Companies Need Robust Employee Wellness Strategies in Today’s Environment?

#1 Changing workforce:

#2 Evolving awareness:

#3 Retention and motivation:

#4: Employer branding

#5 Empowering from within:

How to Create the Right Employee Wellness Strategy?

The right employment strategy needs to have a solid foundation built on the organization’s mission, vision, purpose, and values, with a certain flexibility to adapt to changing requirements. The right strategy should involve an analysis of the current situation, leadership involvement, and employees’ requirements.

Step #1: Analyze the current situation

When creating the right employee strategy, it is crucial to understand what the competition is doing. This step offers an insight into what similar companies are doing. The place to start this process is by joining industry-related associations, checking these companies’ on social media, and reviewing ratings and feedback on job sites. Accessing publicly available reports can also be another source.

Step #2: Understanding employees’ needs

This step could involve impromptu discussions, employee surveys conducted through a third party, and events like town halls. Another source could be the employee records on people hired and retained, years of service, and gaps. For instance, if the records show increased attrition among middle management, that could be an area to focus on.

Alternatively, if women employees leave after a certain time, there could be either marital stress or lack of advancement. In physically demanding jobs, the focus could be on injuries or fatigue from repetitive tasks. Examining attrition rates among remote workers could provide insight into mental and social wellness needs. With older workers, it could be about financial wellness. Younger employees may need mental wellness initiatives.

Step #3: Define wellness goals

What the company hopes to achieve through its employee wellness programs may depend on the industry, the organization’s size, and employees’ profiles. Generally speaking, wellness goals include reducing attrition, improving engagement, increasing productivity, supporting work-life balance, and fostering a viable, flourishing environment. It is important to quantify these goals and set KPIs to measure the efficacy of these strategies.

Step #4: Getting leadership buy-in

The next step would be to share the findings with the leadership group and present the way forward. Employee wellness strategies work well when leadership is involved and committed to their implementation. A visible adoption of wellness-related initiatives by leadership encourages employees to believe in and adopt them.

As per a study it has been seen, ‘Among women, Gen Z, and early-tenured employees, the groups with the lowest overall wellness perception, ‘Management’s actions match its words’ is the lowest-scoring wellness driver across all three segments. This pattern is consistent across segments, making leadership follow-through the most commonly lower-rated driver among low-wellness groups.’ This finding highlights the importance of leadership buy-in.

Some examples include the leadership teams:

Maintaining work-life balance

Encouraging use of wellness resources

Committing to physical and mental wellness

Normalizing discussions about mental health

Accepting flexible working hours

Step #5: Build resources, launch, and evaluate

Once the employee wellness strategies are in place, it is crucial to have resources to enable usage. These could include the following:

Creating a space for physical activities and offering company-sponsored gym memberships at a discounted rate.

Setting up a panel of qualified counselors and mentors who can help employees work on their career paths and get the required support.

Some mental health professionals affiliated with the company offer support to employees in times of need.

Qualified finance and taxation experts to guide professionals on the best way to save money and build financial resources.

Means for people from diverse backgrounds and different interests to form employee resource groups.

A committee that will be in charge of organizing social activities for employees to participate in, mingle, and get to know each other.

The launch process can involve internal communications, setting up intranet resources, and sharing at an event. The evaluation process needs to be data-based and supported by surveys, discussions, and wellness checks.

What Are the Pillars That Support a Complete Employee Wellness Strategy?

Employee wellness strategies can be divided into six pillars. It considers all aspects that ensure that employees are happy, healthy, fit, secure, engaged, and motivated.

The six pillars of employee wellness strategy

Wellness pillars	What it entails
Physical and health	The focus is on the physical and health aspects of the employees’ wellness. Under this aspect, the company offers: Health checkups Wellness programs Nutritional consultations Gym and workout facilities Safety aspects
Mental and emotional	Companies support employees in maintaining their emotional well-being through facilities like: Counseling support as needed Sessions on stress management Prevention of burnout Wellness practices for emotional health
Financial	Managing finances can be difficult, especially for young professionals or people with multiple responsibilities. Companies can help employees by: Running programs on financial management Helping plan for their retirement Managing debt, the right way Educating employees about investment options
Social	As humans, we have an inherent need to connect and interact with others. Companies support this by: Promoting team outings and activities Creating forums for group interactions Encouraging cross-department collaboration Mentorship and ERG programs Peer recognition and rewards programs
Career	Employees are most motivated when they know they have a clear advancement path defined. Organizations offer: Training programs for skill enhancement Coaching and mentorship programs Skill development opportunities Career path planning Company-sponsored education

Common Employee Wellness Strategy Mistakes to Avoid

Here are some common mistakes to avoid while implementing employee wellness strategies.

Assuming that a boilerplate or templated employee wellness strategy will work for all companies.

Putting the complete ownership of wellness initiatives on the human resources department

Having no defined metrics to track the success of the employee wellness programs

Focusing on one easy-to-achieve and more visible aspect like offering gym or workout facilities

Leadership not fully committing to the wellness initiatives invalidating the entire initiative

What Are the Best Employee Wellness Strategies for Remote and Hybrid Teams?

The wellness strategies that a company adopts varies as per the type of organization and its needs, remote and hybrid teams being a case in point due to the way they work.

Often, teams that work from different locations and away from each other may experience some of these:

A feeling of being isolated

Fatigue due to overuse of digital technology

Work and life boundaries becoming unclear

Too many meetings and over-communication

Lack of social interaction with colleagues

Some wellness tips for remote and hybrid teams:

Setting strict work timings and cutting down communication outside of those hours

Encourage the team to cut down on frequent meetings to reduce information overload

Schedule and enforce regular breaks to ensure that employees have chance to relax

Have regular virtual team-building activities to improve teamwork and encourage socializing

Start online wellness challenges like meditation, exercises together to promote camaraderie

Sponsor and provide proper ergonomic workstations for those who work remotely

Offer counseling support and mental wellness talks to keep the morale of the team up

Train team leaders to identify burnout symptoms and empower them with the tools to deal with it

How to Make Employment Wellness Strategies a Part of the Company Vision?

Employee wellness strategies are an essential part of the company’s growth and work towards ensuring that the company stays on course. The starting point for this is to understand where the company stands, what it needs to grow, and crafting strategies to ensure that it happens.

It is time for organizations to acknowledge that what worked earlier may not work now because the entire business landscape has changed and people want to make informed choices. A good salary and benefits are just the starting point; employees want companies to commit to their overall wellness. To do this, companies must evaluate their culture and seek employee feedback to understand what must be included in the employee wellness strategy.

Get started with the Great Place To Work team. Click here to connect with us

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the key factors to consider for employee wellness?

Apart from basics like a competitive remuneration package and safe environment, companies must consider emotional, social, mental, career, and physical well-being of its employees. People need to know that they are supported and valued to perform better.

What metrics should be used to measure the success of a wellness strategy?

Organizations can generally measure the success of their wellness strategy by looking factors like reduced attrition, lower recruitment costs, decreased absenteeism, an uptick in customer satisfaction, improved productivity, and positive feedback in employee surveys.

What differentiates a wellness program from a wellness strategy?

A wellness program is a single activity or a set of activities, such as a meditation session, that falls under the overall wellness strategy. A wellness strategy takes on a broader outlook and considers various factors to ensure that it aligns with the overall company strategy.

What is the cost of an employee wellness strategy?

The cost of planning, creating, and launching an employee wellness strategy will depend on the scope of the strategy, size of the organization, and type of activities and benefits provided under it. Some parts of the employee strategy will cost less like implementing flexible work hours while others like offering a discount on a gym membership may cost more.

Will an employee wellness strategy work for scattered, diverse, and hybrid teams?

Yes, it will work for all kinds of teams. In fact, a well-thought-out employee strategy becomes crucial for remote and hybrid teams. The right initiatives can ensure that the team works well together despite differences in work location, hours, and limited in-person interactions.

The way we work has changed, and most of us have felt it directly. A few years ago, the concept of choosing the work model felt like a luxury but now it’s becoming the norm

Organizations are no longer asking whether employees should work only from the office or only from home. Instead, they are trying to create work models that balance flexibility, collaboration, productivity, and employee well-being together. That is where the hybrid workplace comes in.

A hybrid workplace allows employees to split their time between working remotely and working from the office. For many organizations, this model has become a practical way to support different work styles while still maintaining team connection and business performance.

But hybrid work is not simply about giving employees the option to work from home. It is about creating a workplace experience where people can do their best work, stay connected to their teams, and feel trusted regardless of location.

At the same time, hybrid work should not be viewed as a replacement for on-site work culture. Many industries and roles still thrive in physical workplace environments where in-person collaboration, operational coordination, and customer interaction are essential.

In fact, Great Place To Work® India Voice of India 2025 study shows that employees across industries continue to value both flexibility and workplace connection. While hybrid work is increasingly preferred in many sectors, a large percentage of employees still work on-site depending on the nature of their roles.

What truly shapes employee experience is not just where people work, but how they experience work.

What Is a Hybrid Workplace?

A hybrid workplace is a work model where employees divide their office time between working remotely and working from a physical office or client location. However, hybrid work is not a single universal structure. Organizations may adopt different hybrid models, including:

Fixed hybrid schedules

Flexible hybrid arrangements

Team-based office schedules

Role-specific hybrid structures

Remote-first with office collaboration days

The key principle remains the same: employees have some degree of flexibility in where work gets done. But successful hybrid workplaces are not built only on flexibility, they are built on trust, clarity, communication, accountability, inclusion and intentional collaboration. Without these foundations, even flexible models can create confusion and disconnection.

Why Hybrid Workplaces Are Becoming More Common?

Hybrid work has gained momentum because organizations are recognizing that flexibility can coexist with performance when managed intentionally. According to the Great Place To Work India Voice of India 2025 study:

39% of employees prefer hybrid work arrangements if given a choice.

Across five major industries, employees either prefer or strongly prefer hybrid setups compared to other work models.

Professional services and technology sectors show particularly high hybrid preference levels.

On the other hand, the research also highlights that on-site work continues to play a major role across niches. For example:

72% of employees in manufacturing and production continue to work primarily on-site.

59% of on-site employees work from employer locations rather than client sites.

This is important because hybrid work should not be positioned as superior to on-site work. Different industries, roles, and operational realities require different work models. The goal is not to force one structure for all organizations but to create work experiences that balance employee needs with business realities.

Benefits of Hybrid Workplace for Employees

Here are a few benefits that employees have if they work in a hybrid workplace:

1. Greater Flexibility and Autonomy

One of the biggest benefits of the hybrid work model is flexibility. Employees value having greater control over:

Where they work

How they structure focused work

Commuting frequency

Work-life integration

Employees are far more likely to favor hybrid work models when they have more control over their work schedules. This emphasizes an essential understanding in the workplace: employee experience is strengthened by autonomy.

Moreover, employees who feel trusted to manage their work often demonstrate stronger ownership and better accountability. Companies may establish flexibility through hybrid work without completely removing workers from in person cooperation.

2. Improved Work-Life Balance

For many employees, hybrid work reduces some of the pressures associated with rigid workplace structures.

Reduced commuting time can create:

More personal time

Lower stress levels

Improved well-being

Greater energy for work

This is especially relevant in urban environments where long commutes impact both productivity and employee experience. However, hybrid work does not automatically guarantee balance. Organizations still need to establish:

Healthy workload expectations

Meeting discipline

Clear communication norms

Boundaries around availability

The organizations succeeding with hybrid work are those that intentionally design healthier work practices, not just flexible schedules.

3. Better Focus for Certain Types of Work

Many employees report higher productivity during focused individual tasks when working remotely. Hybrid environments allow employees to choose the best setting for different types of work:

Focused analytical tasks

Creative thinking

Documentation

Collaboration

Brainstorming

Team alignment

This flexibility can improve both efficiency and work quality when managed effectively. At the same time, physical workplaces continue to play an important role in collaboration, relationship building, learning, mentorship, and culture reinforcement.

4. Increased Job Satisfaction

As per our research, 50% of employees report satisfaction with their current work arrangement. Interestingly, satisfaction levels remain relatively stable across remote, hybrid, and on-site setups.

This reinforces a powerful point that employees do not only evaluate workplace experience based on location but also evaluate it based on culture. Trust, fairness, leadership quality, communication, and flexibility often matter more than the work model itself. Organizations that create strong cultures can drive positive employee experiences across all workplace structures.

5. Greater Inclusion Opportunities

Hybrid work can help organizations expand access to opportunities for working parents, caregivers, employees with disabilities, talent from different geographies, and employees requiring flexible work structures.

When implemented thoughtfully, hybrid work can improve workforce inclusion by reducing barriers that traditionally limit participation. However, inclusion in hybrid workplaces requires intentional leadership.

Organizations must ensure:

Equal visibility

Fair access to opportunities

Inclusive meeting structures

Consistent communication

Equitable recognition

Without intentional inclusion practices, hybrid environments can unintentionally create unequal employee experiences.

Benefits of Hybrid Workplace for Employers

Even employers had a lot of benefits associated with a hybrid workplace culture. Let’s discuss a few of them:

1. Improved Talent Attraction and Retention

Flexibility has become an important factor in employer attractiveness. Companies offering a thoughtful hybrid work model often gain access to:

broader talent pools

geographically diverse candidates

higher employee retention

stronger employer branding

Employees increasingly evaluate organizations based on workplace experience, not compensation alone. Hybrid flexibility can strengthen an organization’s ability to attract talent while supporting long-term retention.

2. Higher Employee Trust and Engagement

One of the most important findings from Great Place To Work India’s research is that trust levels remain significantly higher in Best Workplaces™, regardless of work arrangement.

The study found that typical workplaces report trust levels around 50%. But Certified™ Workplaces report trust levels between 76% and 80% across hybrid, remote, and on-site setups.

This reinforces a major insight that the success of hybrid work depends less on location and more on workplace culture. Organizations that build trust, communication, inclusion, fairness, and psychological safety are far more likely to succeed with a hybrid work structure.

3. Better Productivity Through Outcome-Based Work

Hybrid work is encouraging many organizations to move away from visibility-based management to outcome-based performance. Instead of measuring productivity through physical presence, companies are increasingly focusing on:

Business impact

Deliverables

Collaboration quality

Goal achievement

This shift often creates healthier accountability structures where employees are trusted to manage their work while remaining responsible for outcomes. Organizations adopting outcome-focused cultures often experience stronger ownership, improved accountability, greater employee empowerment, and faster decision-making. However, managers play a critical role in making this transition successful.

4. Increased Organizational Agility

Hybrid work has pushed organizations to modernize how they collaborate, communicate, and operate.

This has accelerated adoption of:

Digital collaboration tools

Asynchronous communication

Agile workflows

Flexible team structures

Companies that adapt effectively often become more resilient and agile in responding to change. Furthermore, this is especially important in fast-moving business environments where adaptability directly impacts competitiveness.

5. Cost Optimization Opportunities

Hybrid work may create opportunities for organizations to optimize:

Office space utilization

Infrastructure costs

Travel expenses

Operational overheads

However, cost reduction should not be the major motivator for hybrid work decisions. Companies still need to make significant investments in workplace technology, collaboration infrastructure, management competency, employee experience, and culture-building initiatives. The most successful hybrid organizations balance efficiency with employee well-being and performance.

How Organizations Can Build Successful Hybrid Workplaces?

Creating an effective hybrid workplace requires thoughtful planning and a people-first approach. Some key strategies include:

1. Focus on Trust First

Successful hybrid workplaces are built on trust, not constant monitoring. Employees tend to perform better when organizations trust their judgment, provide flexibility responsibly, and focus more on outcomes than physical visibility. Transparent communication also plays a critical role in strengthening trust across teams.

2. Strengthen Manager Capability

Managers play one of the most important roles in making hybrid work successful. Organizations therefore need to equip managers with the skills required to lead distributed teams effectively. This includes strengthening capabilities around inclusive communication, remote coaching, performance management, and employee well-being conversations.

3. Create Clear Hybrid Norms

Hybrid workplaces function better when employees clearly understand how work is expected to happen. Organizations should define collaboration expectations, office attendance norms, meeting etiquette, communication practices, and availability guidelines. Clear norms help reduce confusion, improve coordination, and create consistency across teams.

4. Prioritize Inclusion

In hybrid environments, organizations must ensure that workplace culture remains inclusive regardless of where employees work from. Employees should have equal access to participation opportunities, visibility, recognition, and decision-making. A strong culture cannot become dependent on physical presence alone.

5. Measure Employee Experience Continuously

Hybrid workplace strategies should continue evolving based on employee feedback and workplace realities. Organizations should regularly assess employee sentiment, trust levels, collaboration effectiveness, burnout risks, and inclusion experiences. Continuous listening helps leaders understand what employees need and improve hybrid work practices over time.

The Future of the Hybrid Workplace

Hybrid work is no longer an experiment. It has now become a part of the broader evolution of work itself. But the future will not belong exclusively to hybrid, remote, or on-site models. It will belong to companies that build:

High-trust cultures

Flexible leadership

Inclusive employee experiences

Strong manager capability

Intentional collaboration systems

The future of work is less about location. It is more about experience and how organizations understand this will be better positioned to attract talent, strengthen engagement, and sustain business growth.

Conclusion

The conversation around hybrid workplaces should not become a debate about whether one work model is universally better than another. Different organizations, industries, and roles require different approaches based on the nature of work, operational needs, and employee expectations.

What matters most is not simply where employees work from, but how they experience work every day. Employees are more likely to thrive when they experience trust, fairness, flexibility, clarity, inclusion, and meaningful leadership within the organization.

At Great Place To Work research consistently shows that workplace culture shapes employee experience far more powerfully than workplace location alone. Organizations that create high-trust cultures are often able to drive stronger collaboration, engagement, retention, and performance across all work models, whether hybrid, remote, or on-site. Because ultimately, great workplaces are not defined by where employees work. They are defined by how employees experience work.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a hybrid workplace?

A hybrid workplace is a work model where employees split their time between remote work and physical office or on-site work.

What are the benefits of hybrid workplaces for employees?

Hybrid workplaces can improve flexibility, work-life balance, autonomy, and productivity while still enabling collaboration and in-person connection.

What are the benefits of hybrid workplaces for employers?

Employers can benefit through improved talent attraction, employee engagement, agility, productivity, and operational flexibility.

Is hybrid work better than on-site work?

Not necessarily. Different work models suit different industries, roles, and business needs. The success of any work model depends more on culture, trust, leadership, employee experience, and most importantly on role-based requirements.

How can organizations make hybrid workplaces successful?

Organizations can strengthen hybrid workplace success by focusing on trust, manager capability, inclusion, communication clarity, and continuous employee listening.

With the technology landscape evolving rapidly, it is equally crucial for businesses to ensure they have people with the right skill set. In many cases, businesses seek new candidates to fill gaps, which is a good option, but it also means added expenses and time to onboard new people and get them into the rhythm of the organization.

However, a better option is to build an effective employee training and development program within the organization to help it scale faster. This can help businesses save time and the costs involved in recruiting new employees. It also keeps existing employees motivated, prevents burnout, and encourages an innovative approach.

At Great Place to Work®, we help CHROs discover the gaps in Training and Development and take the next steps to implement effective programs. This blog will explore the definition, scope, and some best practices for employee training and development.

What Does Employee Training and Development Mean?

Employee training and development is a defined, structured process that helps employees build their skills and knowledge, expand their capabilities, and learn about the latest developments in their work. In common parlance, training refers to enhancing employees’ skills to perform their current jobs better. At the same time, development focuses more on acquiring soft skills, preparing to take on leadership roles, and overall growth.

Employee training

Programs that offer employee training help employees understand new techniques and skills, deepen their knowledge of compliance requirements, enhance their customer service skills, and improve operational performance.

Some examples of employee training include:

How to use a software or tool after it has been deployed or upgraded

Using a completely new tool or software after it has been implemented

Training on sales techniques and negotiation skills

Programs to improve safety at the workplace and ensure compliance

Managing customer queries better and more quickly to save time and get better feedback

Knowledge transfer sessions to understand a product better

Employee development

Employee development programs lay the groundwork for employees to take on better roles, move up the hierarchy, and develop the softer skills required for leadership. Some examples of employee development programs include:

Coaching on leadership skills like emotional intelligence, active listening, etc

Programs on how to become an effective mentor to others

Programs to aid succession planning

Young executive board, executive development, strategic planning, etc

Cross-functional knowledge sharing to enable a broader perspective

How Do Employee Training and Development Benefit the Organization?

Any business that wants to lead the pack, stay relevant, remain profitable, and become future-ready must invest in employee training and development. The usual practice is for the HR department to work in tandem with leadership to create training programs that help employees and the business grow. An analysis to show what high-performing companies do differently will validate the need for effective employee training and development programs.

Here are some of the direct and indirect benefits of employment training and development:

#1. Better performance

Trained and educated employees are likely to understand processes and perform better as a result of extensive training. The likelihood of errors also reduces dramatically. There is less guesswork and more informed decisions.

#2. Increased engagement

Employees are motivated and better committed when they see the continued investment the business makes in enhancing their skills. The chance to learn, share tips, and improve their knowledge is a great way to build a positive workplace culture.

#3. Employee retention

When a business invests time and resources in employee development, employees feel a sense of belonging, which increases retention. Often, employees see training programs as a way to advance their careers, which increases their commitment to the company.

#4. Effective succession planning

Companies want continuity in the skills and knowledge of their leaders about the business, its products, its vision, and purpose. With training and development programs, it becomes easier to identify potential leaders and develop them within, making succession planning easier.

#5. Increased adaptability

When the workforce is trained in new technologies and stronger skills, they are better prepared to face changes in the industry. It becomes easier for employees to take on an innovative approach when their foundational knowledge is robust.

#6. Better inter-departmental cooperation

With training and development programs, employees are likely to meet and interact with other departments (such as budgeting for marketing needs, which requires both the finance and marketing teams to attend). This ensures that each department has a deeper understanding of what the other does, thus increasing inter-departmental collaboration.

#7. Improved brand image

A company known for offering excellent training and development programs, being innovative, superb employee retention, and consistent performance will develop a positive brand image.

#8. Reduced risk

When employees are extensively trained on safety procedures, emergency protocols, and compliance requirements, risk management becomes easier. There are likely to be fewer instances of data loss, breach of contract, or other compliance issues.

How to Create and Implement Effective Employee Training and Development Programs?

The creation of an effective employee training and development program starts with the identification of clear objectives, leadership buy-in, extensive planning, and effective implementation.

Step #1: Identify business objectives

The first step would be for the HR department to work with department heads to review current employees, map their existing skills, and identify improvement areas. This will help identify the business objectives, including goals such as reducing time spent on customer calls, closing more deals, and updating technology. All these objectives must be mapped to business outcomes.

Step #2: Analyze gaps

This step could involve talking to people, launching a survey, or conducting tests to understand the current situation and identify skill gaps. For instance, today AI is involved in answering basic customer queries, and customer-facing teams must be trained to handle them in tandem with the software.

The process of identifying gaps can include feedback loops, performance reviews, surveys, exit interview inputs, etc.

Step #3: Segment training types

Training requirements can vary by employee group. For instance, the training process for newcomers will require a general approach. Technical skill enhancements will require specific training from industry or in-house experts. For managers, the training will focus on conducting efficient meetings, communicating effectively, listening, and avoiding bias. The sales team needs both product and negotiation skills.

Step #4: Decide on the training methods

Training is about imparting knowledge in a way that makes it easier to consume, without infringing on their work time, while keeping it interesting. Some methods include classroom training, self-learning platforms, virtual sessions, one-on-one coaching, peer coaching, and gamification.

Step #5: Collect and analyze effectiveness

When deciding which training and development programs to launch, it is crucial to determine the metrics to track, establish mechanisms to collect data, and analyze the data. For instance, when there is a training program for handling customer queries, the data to look at would include time to resolve queries, improved customer feedback, etc.

How to Identify Training and Development Needs?

Here are some factors to consider while identifying training and development gaps and creating programs.

Look for performance gaps in employees from a particular department. For instance, if the accounts department makes invoicing errors due to their inability to use the accounting software.

The introduction of a new technology or system in a company warrants training for all those who will work on it.

If the organization has plans to expand its business, acquire a new business, or move to a new territory, it is important to have a training program to support these efforts.

The introduction of new safety, legal, or compliance standards requires training of the relevant personnel.

When the company wants to develop leaders internally, it is critical to have leadership development programs to support succession plans.

Build a Culture of Training and Development as Part of the Business Strategy

Identifying training and development needs in an organization is a continuous process. The HR department, along with the leadership team, can make training part of the strategy to reward high-performing employees.

Training and development are an investment in the business’s future growth, enabling it to withstand future challenges and changes. Wondering how to get started? Consult with the team at Great Place To Work. The team will help you assess training and development requirements, conduct impartial employee surveys, provide culture consulting services, and offer tailored solutions.

Want to take the next step? Click here to connect with our team.

Frequently Asked Questions

How often should a company work on training and development?

Training and development are continuous processes that must be updated in response to the company’s changing needs and shifts in the business climate. Often, it could include tweaking and updating current training materials as per changing requirements.

What are some of the current trends that require training support?

Some recent trends in training include Artificial Intelligence, Microlearning, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Soft Skills, and Hybrid Learning.

How does training and development support business growth?

Training and development help current employees upskill, reduce recruitment costs, improve productivity and performance, and increase revenue and customer retention.

How does offering training and development motivate employees?

When a company offers smart, innovative training and development programs, employees feel supported, engagement rates go up, they see a clear path for growth, and this motivates them to do their best and strengthens their commitment to the company.

Imagine coming to work every day, not out of obligation, but because the workplace genuinely feels welcoming and nurturing. Such feelings do not come from a fancy office or a competitive salary alone. It’s what happens when a company treats its employees like its biggest strength.

The reality in most Indian workplaces today is quite opposite. Wellness “programs” are a fruit bowl nobody touches, a health talk nobody attends, a PDF policy nobody reads. The intention is fine, but they fall far short of what employees are actually looking for.

The good news is that organizations that take employee wellness seriously see real results: Better retention, stronger engagement, higher productivity, and a workplace culture where people genuinely thrive. Research from Great Place To Work® India found that leaders who genuinely listen to their teams drive 3.7x higher intent to stay. That’s not a soft metric; that’s retention.

Why Health and Wellness Activities at Work Matter More Than Ever?

People’s experience with work has shifted significantly. Heavy workloads, no real off switch, and an always-on culture that treats exhaustion as dedication. The stress isn’t obvious; it just builds up until someone burns out or moves away.

Organizations that recognize this transition early on are those that create environments in which employees want to stay. When employees feel encouraged not only professionally but also as individuals, the difference is visible everywhere. This can be seen in how they approach work, how they treat their coworkers, and how long they choose to stay.

What India’s best workplaces understand: wellness is not an HR initiative; it refers to leadership behavior. True wellbeing is seen in appropriate workloads, leader behavior, clear boundaries around work hours, and real conversations about burnout, not only in policy documents. Having said that, here are 25 employee health and wellness activities that leading companies are currently implementing.

Physical Wellness Activities

Physical health is the baseline. When employees are chronically tired and in pain, everything else feels like an uphill battle.

1. On-Site or Virtual Fitness Classes

Morning yoga, lunchtime Zumba, on-demand strength training – the format matters less than the flexibility. Provide opportunities for people of all fitness levels, not simply those who exercise regularly. Participation becomes the norm rather than the exception when new hires are given a “First Step” challenge or when employee fitness stories are highlighted on internal channels.

2. Gym Membership Tie-Ups and Fitness Reimbursements

Subsidized memberships for employees by partnering with national fitness chains or local gyms near the office, or a monthly reimbursement for remote and hybrid employees, covering gym fees, home equipment, or fitness app subscriptions. It sends a signal that physical health matters regardless of where you work and is worth more than the cost.

3. Step Challenges and Active Competitions

Organizations should encourage activities like step challenges through some fitness apps that can help employees take care of their health even during workdays. Moreover, such competitions can be held at the department-level or company-wide level.

4. Walking Meetings and Movement Breaks

Prioritize walking meetings intentionally into the weekday arrangement. It should be implemented from the leaders to their sub-ordinate while keeping small-groups talks or one-on-one meetings as walking meetings. Organizations should also introduce some movement breaks to reduce sedentary behavior and refresh brainpower throughout the day.

5. Nutritional Counselling and Healthy Eating Programs

Access to a certified nutritionist, either individual or group sessions, along with better cafeteria choices and planned team potlucks where staff bring dishes. Healthy eating works better as a group activity than a solo discipline.

6. Sleep Education Workshops

One of the most ignored elements in health and wellness activities is sleep education, particularly for employees working in the UK or US shifts. Companies can help participants by giving access to sleep tracking tools and guiding them through daily practices. Moreover, regular workshops on sleep hygiene, blue light exposure, and other activities can provide proper information to the employees that can be beneficial in the long run.

7. Ergonomic Workplace Assessments

Poorly arranged workstations are a silent and cumulative health threat. Musculoskeletal problems that impact productivity and health can be avoided with professional ergonomic assessments provided to both remote and in-office personnel, followed by the necessary equipment modifications (keyboard trays, monitor stands, lumbar-support chairs). Because physiotherapy is more expensive than prevention.

Mental and Emotional Wellness Activities

This is the trending topic in 2026 as many of the Indian organizations have already started working on mental and emotional wellness activities. However, companies should primarily focus on an open, honest, and continuing environment that eventually helps in real transformation.

8. Mindfulness and Meditation Programs

Structured mindfulness programs, whether provided through guided in-office sessions, application subscriptions, or virtual group meditation, equip employees with practical methods to reduce stress and retain focus.

Training team leaders to add brief mindfulness moments into daily stand-ups or meeting openers embeds the practice into the flow of work. When mindfulness is normalized at every level of the company, its impact is magnified dramatically.

9. Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs)

EAP is good only when people use it. 24/7 confidential counselling, crisis support, legal assistance, and family counselling – if employees don’t know it exists or don’t feel safe using it, the budget is squandered. Clear communication and visible leadership endorsement are what make EAPs function rather than merely exist.

10. Stress Management Workshops

A single motivational talk on stress does not qualify as a stress management course. Building a regular series of workshops that demonstrate employees practical skills, like deep breathing methods, progressive muscle relaxation, time management strategies, boundary-setting, and burnout avoidance, gives enduring benefit.

Furthermore, personalized stress evaluations can help employees identify their specific triggers and build meaningful coping methods.

11. Mental Health Days as a Formal Policy

Formally, recognizing mental health as a legitimate justification for taking time off is one of the most effective signals a company can send. Clear mental health day guidelines, where leave can be taken without stigma, informal discouragement from management, or the requirement for a reason, reflect institutional commitment to psychological welfare.

To accomplish this, manager training is necessary for ensuring these policies are experienced uniformly across all teams and levels.

12. Resilience-Building and Emotional Intelligence Training

In a world of continuous change, the capacity to adjust without losing equilibrium is invaluable for employees at every level. Training all employees in emotional self-regulation and empathy enriches individuals and changes how teams communicate with one another.

13. Buddy Assistance Programs

Buddy Assistance Programs are structured peer-support initiatives where employees are paired with colleagues who can provide guidance, encouragement, and informal support during day-to-day work experiences. These programs help employees feel more connected, supported, and comfortable navigating workplace challenges.

Starting a new role, managing pressure, or adapting to changing responsibilities becomes significantly easier when employees know they have someone they can rely on. Unlike formal reporting structures, buddy systems create a safe space for open and honest conversations without fear of judgment.

Financial Wellness Activities

Financial stress does not remain at the door when employees arrive at work. It follows them into every meeting, every decision, and every deadline.

According to a 2024 SoFi survey, one in four employees reports that financial concerns directly affect work productivity. Organizations that support employees in achieving financial stability are investing directly in their focus, performance, and loyalty.

14. Financial Literacy Workshops

Financial literacy workshops are sessions designed to help employees understand and manage personal finances better. They typically cover basics like budgeting, saving, debt management, taxation, and long-term financial planning.

Financial stress often affects focus and productivity at work. By offering practical, real-life financial guidance, organizations help employees feel more confident and in control of their financial decisions. This leads to lower stress levels, better decision-making, and improved overall wellbeing.

15. Retirement and Provident Fund Planning Seminars

Retirement and provident fund planning seminars help employees understand long-term savings, retirement goals, and the benefits of structured financial planning. These sessions simplify complex concepts and make future planning easier and more actionable.

Many employees, especially early in their careers, are unsure about how to plan for retirement or manage provident fund contributions. These seminars provide clarity and encourage consistent long-term savings habits. When employees feel secure about their financial future, it builds trust and strengthens their connection with the organization.

16. Budgeting Tools and Application Subscriptions

Subscriptions to trustworthy personal finance tools, along with brief, accessible learning modules on financial habits, provide employees with the practical skills needed to apply financial literacy in their daily lives. The combination of instruction and practical components regularly outperforms either strategy in isolation.

17. Financial Help Desk

Providing employees access to financial advisers who expertise in common debt challenges, like credit card obligations, personal loans, and managing numerous financial responsibilities simultaneously, deals with a genuine and major source of workplace stress.

Some businesses push this further through organized financial help or salary advance initiatives with equitable terms, creating credibility through genuine responsiveness to employee needs.

Social & Community Wellness Activities

Being in the good cause is the real experience of something meaningful, and it is one of the biggest sources of employee engagement. Cultural activities, mentorship, and appreciation of culture create employee engagement, increase individual performance and retention. Here are some of the activities listed below:

18. Employee Resource Groups (ERGs)

Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are employee-led communities within an organization that bring together people with shared identities, interests, or life experiences to create support, connection, and inclusion at work.

ERGs represent one of the most strategically beneficial wellness investments an organization can undertake. When they function effectively, they act as a bridge between employees and senior leadership, helping surface real employee needs, influence workplace culture, and drive meaningful organizational change.

These groups often focus on areas such as mental and physical wellness, women’s leadership, working parents, LGBTQ+ inclusion, and early-career professionals, ensuring that diverse employee voices are heard and supported.

Strong ERGs are built on leadership support, adequate resources, and alignment with organizational values, making them a powerful driver of belonging, engagement, and overall employee wellbeing.

19. Team-Building and Community Volunteering

Team-building and community volunteering activities are initiatives that help employees connect outside of daily work tasks while contributing to shared experiences or social causes.

These activities can include volunteer days, team lunches, cultural celebrations, themed gatherings, or friendly sports events between teams. Such experiences help build stronger relationships that go beyond formal meetings and work interactions.

When planned inclusively and scheduled thoughtfully, these activities encourage higher participation and make employees feel more connected and valued. For remote and hybrid teams, virtual engagement activities ensure that distance does not reduce a sense of belonging or collaboration.

20. Mentorship and Cross-Functional Learning Programs

Structured mentorship programs, connecting employees across departments, roles, and seniority levels, simultaneously foster professional development and social belonging. Employees who have access to a mentor report more confidence, higher engagement, and stronger organizational commitment.

Moreover, clear guidelines for mentoring relationships, training for both mentors and mentees, and regular check-ins are the structural factors that determine program success.

21. Recognition and Appreciation Culture

Consistent recognition, not just for big wins, but for everyday effort impacts how employees see their work. A peer recognition program where anybody can publicly praise a colleague, along with managers who give specific and timely appreciation, create an environment where people feel genuinely valued. Recognition should be a daily habit, not an annual awards function.

Lifestyle and Holistic Wellness Activities

The most effective wellness initiatives do not treat health as a set of distinct categories. They realize that wellbeing is a whole-life experience and give support across every facet of how employees live and work.

22. Wellness Challenges and Habit-Building Campaigns

Wellness challenges and habit-building campaigns are structured activities that encourage employees to adopt healthier daily routines in a simple and engaging way. These can include hydration challenges, digital detox days, gratitude journaling, mindful eating weeks, and similar initiatives.

These programs help keep wellness active and ongoing without overwhelming employees. Participation should always be voluntary, with a focus on progress rather than perfection. When designed with team participation in mind, they also help build a sense of community and shared motivation across the organization.

23. Flexible Work Arrangements

Flexible work arrangements refer to policies that give employees greater control over where, when, and how they work, based on role expectations and business needs. This can include remote work, hybrid models, flexible hours, or outcome-based performance structures.

Flexibility has become a baseline expectation, especially for Gen Z and millennial employees, who value autonomy and control over their work and time. When organizations shift from attendance-based management to trust-based, outcome-driven models, it reduces stress and increases ownership and productivity.

However, flexibility must be supported with clear role expectations, defined outcomes, and strong manager trust. Without clarity, flexibility can create confusion instead of empowerment.

But flexibility without clarity creates anxiety. Role outcomes, goal-setting frameworks, and real manager trust are prerequisites. Get those in place first.

24. Learning Sabbaticals and Wellbeing Leave

Learning sabbaticals and wellbeing leave are extended time-off policies that allow employees to step away from regular work responsibilities to rest, learn, volunteer, or focus on personal growth.

These initiatives reflect a strong message of trust and respect, showing that employees are valued beyond their daily output. By giving people space to recharge or pursue development opportunities, organizations help prevent burnout and support long-term wellbeing. This, in turn, strengthens employee loyalty and retention.

25. Manager Wellbeing Training and Leadership as a Wellness Lever

Manager wellbeing training focuses on equipping leaders with the skills to actively support employee mental, emotional, and professional wellbeing. It includes building emotional intelligence, improving communication, and creating psychological safety within teams.

The manager plays the most critical role in shaping an employee’s day-to-day experience at work. When managers hold regular check-ins, recognize effort, manage workload effectively, and lead with empathy, wellbeing becomes part of everyday leadership rather than a separate initiative.

Investing in manager capability is one of the most effective ways to strengthen workplace culture, as it ensures that care, trust, and support are consistently reflected at every level of the organization.

How to Build a Wellness Program That Actually Works?

Identifying the right activities is the starting point. Translating them into a culture-shifting program requires intention, structure, and sustained organizational commitment.

Begin with employee research – Surveying employees about their wellness needs, current barriers to participation, and preferences for program design generates the data required to make informed decisions. What resonates with a technology workforce in Bengaluru may differ substantially from what is most relevant for a manufacturing workforce in Pune. Employee input should shape priorities, not assumptions.

Secure visible leadership support – Wellness programs succeed when organizational leaders champion them through active participation, not merely through forwarding communications. Leaders who speak openly about their own wellbeing practices and create genuine psychological space for others to prioritize health set the cultural tone that no program design can replicate.

Design for inclusion – Wellness activities must be accessible to all employees, regardless of role, location, shift timings, physical ability, or life stage. Programs that effectively serve only certain employee segments are incomplete wellness strategies.

Communicate with consistency – Even well-designed programs fail to deliver impact when employees are unaware of or unclear about what is available. A multi-channel communication strategy, supported by wellness ambassadors at the team level, sustains awareness and engagement throughout the year.

Measure, review, and refine – Tracking participation rates, gathering regular employee feedback, and monitoring organizational indicators such as absenteeism, attrition, and engagement scores enable continuous improvement. Programs that are not generating the intended impact should be revised or replaced. Wellness is a living organizational practice, not a fixed annual initiative.

Wellness as a Cultural Commitment, not a Corporate Benefit

Great Place To Work India works with hundreds of organizations across industries to support the development of high-trust, high-performance workplaces. Wellness policies serve a purpose. However, employees’ lived experience is the more powerful determinant of culture. Employees notice whether workloads are reasonable. They notice whether managers ask how they are doing and genuinely listen to the answer. They notice whether mental health leave is truly accepted or quietly discouraged.

The transition from wellness as a stated commitment to wellness as a daily lived reality is what distinguishes the great workplaces from others. The health and wellness activities presented in this article are not merely programs. They are expressions of an organizational culture that regards employees as whole human beings, not simply productive resources.

The most effective HR leaders in 2026 will integrate well-being into performance conversations, embed it into leadership behavior expectations, and use data to refine their approach continuously. In an environment where talent is the ultimate competitive advantage, the organizations that genuinely invest in the well-being of their people will be the ones best positioned to sustain excellence.

Conclusion

The 25 best health and wellness activities for employees address every dimension of what it means for someone to actually thrive at work. None of them are complicated; they just require consistent follow-through.

Regardless of whether an organization is implementing a single new activity or undertaking a comprehensive review of its wellness strategy, the foundational requirement remains the same: listening to employees, understanding their needs, and taking consistent and meaningful action.

A great place to work is not built through policy alone. It is built through the daily accumulation of decisions that demonstrate, unambiguously, that people matter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the most effective health and wellness activities for employees?

Activities that genuinely improve employee wellbeing include flexible work options, mental health support, fitness programs, wellness challenges, financial planning sessions, and recognition initiatives that make employees feel valued every day.

Why are workplace wellness programs becoming more important?

Because employee expectations have changed. People are looking for workplaces that support their mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing, not just performance. Strong wellness programs also help reduce burnout, improve retention, and boost engagement.

How can organizations encourage employees to participate in wellness activities?

The biggest factor is culture. Employees participate more when leaders actively support well-being, programs are flexible and inclusive, and wellness is treated as a normal part of work rather than an occasional HR activity.

What are the key areas every employee wellness program should cover?

A well-rounded wellness program should support physical health, mental wellbeing, financial stability, social connection, and work-life balance. Focusing on only one area rarely creates a long-term impact.

Do employee wellness activities really improve retention and productivity?

Yes, employees who feel supported are more engaged, motivated, and likely to stay with the organization long-term. Wellness initiatives create healthier teams, stronger workplace relationships, and better overall employee experience.

Competition and technological changes are constant factors in any given market. One aspect that helps a business thrive amid changing circumstances is the effective use of its resources, especially human resources.

In today’s market, a business must have the right recruitment strategy to attract, develop, and retain the best talent. Recruitment today is more than putting up an advertisement, screening candidates, interviewing them, and making an offer. While the process remains the same, there is a lot of strategy involved in the backend.

The reason for this shift is simple: today, candidates are more aware of their options and spend as much time evaluating the business as the business does evaluating them. Add to that aspects like evolving technology, changing work styles, and intense competition, and the need for recruitment strategies becomes evident.

This blog will explore what recruitment entails, best practices for recruitment, and how to make retention part of your strategy. This is where the Great Place to Work® team helps by providing services such as culture consulting.

What Do Recruitment Strategies Mean?

Recruitment strategies are the plans, tactics, and methods organizations use to attract the right talent, evaluate and hire them, and retain them to help the company grow and remain competitive. With well-thought-out recruitment strategies, companies can hire faster and better, reduce turnover, and build future-ready teams.

Apart from aligning with the core business values and growth plans, recruitment strategies will also include the following elements:

Building a realistic, appealing, and humane employer brand across various channels

Fine-tuning sourcing methods, harnessing the latest technology to track the process better

Engage with candidates for the entire lifecycle, from the offer letter stage to the exit interview

Leveraging recruitment and employee feedback-related analytics to refine strategies

What Are the Different Types of Recruitment Strategies?

In most companies, the HR department and the leadership team will develop recruitment strategies aligned with the company’s growth plans. The idea is to gather input from leadership to ensure that new talent is recruited on time and that existing talent is nurtured and retained.

Retention is becoming an important element of overall people strategy, and according to a report, ‘Today only 51% of organizations have implemented any innovative or non-traditional retention strategy.’ Considering this, many organizations have made it a part of their people strategy.

Here are some of the different recruitment strategies to consider while creating one:

#1: Internal recruitment from within the company

As part of this strategy, a company will fill vacancies by seeking candidates within the organization. It can be from the same team, another department, or a different geography. The company can float an internal communication asking people to apply.

Steps to make internal recruitment effective:

Map career paths within the organization to understand who can transition into newer positions.

Ask managers to evaluate employees on their current and potential performance to fill in roles.

Keep an updated dashboard of performance appraisals and skills evaluations to assess people.

Create a process to evaluate skills for different roles that can be used for initial evaluation.

Some of the benefits of recruiting from within the company are:

Less training and orientation required

Improves the morale of employees

Reduces fatigue from job roles

Shortens the recruitment process

Saves on hiring costs

Encourages people to pursue growth

#2: Recruitment through external sources

Another part of the recruitment strategy can be to seek candidates from a broader talent pool. External options include advertisements, job portal postings, social media, network outreach, and other sources.

Steps to make recruitment through external sources effective:

Talk to the team that works in the department to understand the context of the job role.

Draft the job placement content carefully to ensure it is attractive, realistic, and comprehensive.

Look at ads and job descriptions of companies in the same industry to understand what is working for them.

Keep track of which job placement content performed best in the past to attract relevant candidates so that it can be replicated in the future.

The benefits of recruiting through external sources are:

Broader talent pool to choose from

Brings a fresh point of view to the company

Helps add new skills and perspectives to the team

#3: Referrals from existing and ex-employees

Often, companies ask existing or former employees to refer candidates for certain roles. This kind of recruitment works best when the role requires a high level of specialized skill or is sensitive and requires strict confidentiality.

Steps to make referrals from existing and ex-employees effective:

For ex-employees, start an alumni forum where they can interact and communicate with each other. This can also be the space to share job vacancies.

Formulate a lucrative and realistic referral bonus scheme and share it with current and ex-employees.

Keep updating the company intranet site with current vacancies so that employees know which positions are open.

Create and maintain a weekly cadence of a consolidated email about all open posts.

Here are some benefits of recruitment through referrals:

Speeds up the recruitment cycle and lowers the recruitment cost

More chances of a cultural fit due to the connection with existing employees

It motivates existing employees, as they may also get a referral bonus

#4: Campus recruitment for freshers and interns

Organizations regularly visit colleges and campuses across the country, depending on their requirements. This recruitment method allows the company to do some soft publicity and share its values with a larger audience.

Steps to make campus recruitments effective:

Start by looking at top performers with the right attitude and aptitude within the company to determine which colleges and institutions they belong to.

Discuss with these top performers about what they like about the company.

Contact these colleges and institutions for the company’s recruitment drive.

If possible and willing, have alumni of these institutions participate in the pre-recruitment presentation during the campus recruitment process.

Here are some benefits of campus recruitment:

Getting access to a larger pool of candidates with the latest skills

It is an economic way of hiring people with the right qualifications

Onboarding freshers and orienting them with the company culture is easier

#5: Recruitment outsourcing to consultants

Organizations either go with smaller, individual recruitment consultants or a recruitment process outsourcing company to handle their recruitment requirements. Under this option, companies gain the advantage of third-party expertise, which also removes personal bias from the recruitment process.

Steps to make recruitment outsourcing to consultants effective:

Create a database of specialist recruitment consultancy firms based on the company’s needs.

Onboard them on a per-candidate basis with a clear understanding of mutual terms.

Discuss the requirement with the consultant to understand if they have done similar placements in the past.

Share specific skills required and provide an understanding of the soft skills that work well with the company culture.

Some of the benefits of outsourcing recruitment include:

Increased access to a qualified talent pool

Expert or streamlined interview processes

Reduces the burden on company resources

#6: Diversity recruitment

Under this recruitment strategy, the company focuses on deliberately recruiting candidates from diverse backgrounds with the right skills and qualifications. Diversity in hiring ensures that the company benefits from different viewpoints and creative inputs.

Steps to make diversity recruitment effective:

Analyze the current workforce to understand the gaps and plan the diversity hires accordingly.

Understand what kind of support they will need to work well in the organization.

Craft the job description to show the organization’s openness to diverse candidates.

Be prepared to create the right support when diversity hires join the company.

Benefits of this strategy include:

Promotes a more tolerant and accepting culture

Encourages innovation and different thought processes

Improves the company’s brand image

#7. Find and leverage unconventional sources

Often, companies restrict themselves to known sources and limit the types of employees they can hire. While effective, this strategy overlooks talent that is not strictly conventional but offers substantial experience and skills. This could include gig workers, freelancers, retirees, people with disabilities, ex-convicts, etc.

Steps to make recruitment from unconventional sources effective:

Determine which of the unconventional categories will work for the current company structure.

Look at genuine sources to recruit people who bring in the right skills and experience, with the culture fit.

Prepare the existing team to work well with the unconventional hires to ensure cohesive working.

Provide continuing support to enable synchronized working of all the teams without any issues.

Benefits of this strategy include:

Access to hitherto unexplored talent that is willing and affordable

Good public image for the company to be seen as supporting the community

Brings in diverse points of view and fosters a culture of innovation

Helps strengthen the employer brand across various platforms

#8. Work on employer branding offline and online

The company’s employer branding is one of the best vehicles for recruitment. As part of the recruitment strategy, it is critical to keep working on the employer brand. This means a consistent, sincere, genuine, and positive online presence.

Steps to make the employer brand recruitment strategy effective:

Empower the brand image with a mix of customer testimonials and case studies online.

Seek and share input from existing and erstwhile employees on social media platforms.

Float a scheme where employees are rewarded for improving engagement online.

Host events regularly to interact with peers, consultants, and potential candidates.

Benefits of this strategy include:

A positive employer branding will help attract the best talent in the industry consistently

Helps cut down the recruitment-associated costs and quickens the process

Positive employee perception of the company’s brand encourages productivity and innovation

It helps with employee and customer advocacy across the industry

The Best Recruitment Strategies Going Forward

In conclusion, effective recruitment strategies will make all the difference to a company’s growth and competitive position. Keep in mind factors like employer branding, building a talent pipeline, designing flexible work options, improving the candidate experience, streamlining recruitment, and training interviewers in the best techniques.

Companies that consistently evaluate their culture, promote diversity, and seek employee feedback are more likely to have effective recruitment strategies, attract and retain the best talent, and stay ahead of the competition.

At Great Place To Work, our team helps companies transform their organization with the right inputs. Want to know how to take this forward? Click here to connect with us.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best time to evaluate recruitment strategies?

It is best to keep constant tabs on the efficacy of the company’s recruitment strategies to ensure corrective action can be taken. Investing in technology to track data can be a good way to identify patterns and take corrective action as needed.

Is it possible to improve the employer brand with a smaller budget?

Yes, it is possible to improve the employer brand with a limited budget. The company can do simple things like posting engagement activities on social media, creating genuine employee testimonials and sharing them online, encouraging thought leaders to share insights, and maintaining a real and regular presence on social media.

Why is it important to have the right mix of recruitment strategies?

Each company has different requirements depending on its industry, structure, and the type of product or service, and the same set of strategies may not work for it. It is crucial to consider company and industry-specific requirements when deciding on the right mix of recruitment strategies.

How to use technology for recruitment to collect the right data?

Technology can play a huge role throughout the process. It helps parse the information in the resumes and create a record of how many were selected from the lot. Another data point is tracking how many offer letters were issued versus how many candidates joined. Factors such as age, qualifications, skills, and demographics can be tracked and correlated with rejection, acceptance, tenure, and other outcomes.

At which stage should a company focus on employer branding?

Employer branding is a continuous, dynamic process that helps a company attract the best talent while reducing hiring costs and improving conversion rates. Companies should always focus on employer branding.

Some organizations bend under pressure. Others build through it. The gap between the two rarely comes down to strategy or resources. It almost always comes down to leadership. Not leadership as a title or a position in an organizational chart. Leadership is a practiced set of skills that show up daily in how managers communicate, how they make decisions, how they respond to failure, and how they create the conditions for others to give their best.

Great Place To Work® India’s research, conducted across 540 IT companies and 3.4 lakh employee voices, puts hard numbers to what many organizations sense but struggle to prove: the leadership skills managers carry determine business outcomes, not just culture scores.

What Are Leadership Skills?

Leadership skills are the specific behaviors, capacities, and decision-making patterns that allow an individual to guide, influence, and build others toward shared outcomes. They are distinct from technical expertise or functional knowledge. A brilliant engineer or a sharp analyst does not automatically become an effective leader. Leadership skills are learned, practiced, and refined over time.

Also Read: 5 Leadership Levels That Shape Workplace Culture

In the workplace, leadership skills show up in concrete moments: how a manager responds when an employee shares a concern, whether a senior leader makes decisions that others can understand and trust, whether a team feels psychologically safe enough to flag a problem before it becomes a crisis.

Great Place To Work’s research identifies 9 core leadership behaviors that matter most to employees across India’s workforce:

Hiring & Welcoming: Attracting the right people and ensuring they feel genuinely included and valued from the very first day.

Caring: Being genuinely present for the team, not just operationally available but personally invested in their wellbeing and growth.

Celebrating: Recognizing contributions consistently and making people feel seen and appreciated for their effort and hard work.

Inspiring: Helping colleagues understand how their role connects to larger business goals and a purpose that goes beyond day-to-day tasks.

Speaking: Communicating with clarity and honesty while creating an environment where open dialogue is welcomed, and differing views are never penalized.

Sharing: Using data insights to make fair and transparent decisions so that information flows equitably and people trust the process.

Listening: Genuinely hearing alternative perspectives before acting, making people feel truly understood rather than simply heard.

Developing: Investing in the long-term capability of individuals, building their confidence and readiness to think and execute at scale.

Thanking: Expressing sincere and timely gratitude in ways that reinforce trust, belonging, and a culture where people know their efforts matter.

Taken together, these are not only soft skills. They are business-critical competencies with a measurable impact on performance, retention, and growth.

How Do Leadership Skills Directly Impact Business Performance?

People are the drivers through which every business strategy gets executed. Strategy lives in documents, but execution lives in people. And how people execute depends almost entirely on the leadership environment they work within.

When Great Place To Work analyzed data across Certified™ and non-certified companies, the gap was quite visible. Employees working at Certified workplaces rate their leadership experience significantly higher, scoring 25% higher than in typical workplaces. That gap does not stay confined to culture surveys. It translates directly into whether employees choose to stay, innovate, adapt, and go the extra mile.

Employees who experience positive leadership are 61% more likely to intend to stay; compared to just 39% among those who do not. That difference is the business case for leadership development.

The research also reveals a compounding effect. When employees have strong confidence in their leadership’s judgment, 87% show significantly positive responses to AI-related experiences, meaning they are excited about new tools, open to learning, and hopeful about change. Leadership trust does not just retain people; it determines how readily an organization can absorb transformation.

The impact of leadership is also not uniform across levels. Individual contributors score their leadership experience at 55%. C-level executives score it at 78%. That 23 percent gap is one of the most underappreciated risk factors in Indian organizations today.

Top Leadership Skills That Drive Business Success

Across industries and generations, employees share a remarkably consistent picture of what they need from their leaders. The skills below are not aspirational checklists; they are the behaviors that show up in the data as the true drivers of trust, performance, and retention. Understanding them is the first step to building leadership that actually works.

1. Purpose Alignment

People do not just want to do their jobs. They want to know why their job matters. The most effective managers are the ones who take time, whether in a quick team to huddle or a one-on-one conversation, to connect everyday work to a bigger picture. When employees understand how their contribution fits into something meaningful, they bring more energy, stay more focused, and push through challenges more willingly. Moreover, employees most frequently identify aligning their work with a clear purpose as the experience that best reflects their current manager.

2. Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

Great managers pay attention to people, not just performance. They notice when someone is struggling. They ask the right questions. They create space for honest conversations. This is what empathy looks like in a workplace setting, and it is quite questionable practice as well.

When employees feel genuinely understood by their manager, they are more likely to speak up early, take initiative, and stay committed even when things get hard. Empathy and emotional intelligence ranked highest at 44% among the qualities that will define great leadership in 2030.

3. Consistent Recognition and Trust-Building

A simple thank you at the right moment can do more than a formal reward program. What employees want is to feel seen for their effort, consistently and fairly.

The problem in many workplaces is not only the absence of recognition but also the inconsistency of it. When some individuals are celebrated while others doing equally good work are overlooked, it quietly damages the trust within a team. Managers who make recognition a regular habit, not an occasional gesture, build teams that genuinely want to give their best.

4. Strategic Decision-Making

Employees are not just frustrated by bad decisions. They are frustrated by decisions that feel unclear, unexplained, or disconnected from reality.

What builds confidence in a leader is not perfection but transparency. When managers communicate clearly about what they decide, why they decide it, and what it means for the team, people feel informed and respected. That clarity is what allows teams to move quickly and execute well without second-guessing every step.

5. Adaptability

Things change, plans fall apart, and unexpected challenges come up. What employees remember is how their leader responded. Did they step in or step back? Did they adjust or hold rigidly to a plan that was no longer working?

Adaptable leaders do not have all the answers but they stay calm, stay present, and help their teams navigate uncertainty without panic. That steadiness is what gives people the confidence to keep going when things get difficult.

6. Tech Readiness and AI Literacy

Employees are not just looking for leaders who understand technology. They are looking for leaders who help them feel confident about it. Change brings anxiety, and when a manager is visibly comfortable with new tools and willing to guide the team through them, that anxiety reduces significantly. Leaders who engage openly with technology, including AI, signal to their teams that learning and adapting is safe. That is more empowering than any training program.

7. Psychological Safety

When employees do not feel safe to speak up, the best ideas within an organization remain unheard. Psychological safety creates the conditions for honest, productive dialogue at every level. It enables individuals to raise concerns before they escalate, respectfully challenge decisions without fear of repercussion, and acknowledge gaps in knowledge without hesitation.

Leaders who build this environment do not simply improve team morale. They build organizations that are sharper, more responsive, and better equipped to handle complexity.

8. Active Listening and Openness

There is a meaningful difference between a manager who hears what an employee says and one who actually listens to. Active listening means engaging with what is being shared, asking follow-up questions, and being genuinely open to changing course based on what you learn. When employees feel truly heard, they trust their leader more, communicate more honestly, and raise concerns earlier. When they feel ignored, they stop sharing, and organizations lose access to some of their most important signals.

9. Integrity and Reliability

At the end of the day, employees want to know they can count on their manager. They want consistency, fairness, and follow-through. They want a leader who says what they mean and means what they say. Integrity is not about being liked. It is about being trustworthy. And in high-pressure environments where change is constant, a reliable and fair manager becomes the anchor that holds a team together.

How Do These Skills Improve Business Performance?

When employees experience all nine behaviors in combination, the business outcomes are not marginal. They are multiplicative:

Business Outcome	Multiplier Effect
More likely to adapt quickly to organizational change	2.3x
More likely to look forward to coming to work	2.3x
More likely to intend to stay long-term	2.1x
More likely to receive innovation opportunities	1.9x
More likely to put in extra effort	1.7x

These outcomes are consistent across IT, BFSI, Retail, Manufacturing, and Pharma, suggesting the relationship between leadership quality and business performance is not industry specific. When employees trust their manager, they communicate openly and problems get caught early. When people feel valued, they keep giving their best without burning out. When leaders create psychological safety, teams take the small risks that lead to real innovation. All of these are the compounds of the above-mentioned business outcome.

Conclusion

Leadership skills are not a soft business investment. They are direct drivers of retention, adaptability, innovation, and extra effort. Great Place To Work India’s Voice of India 2025 study and the 9 Leadership Behaviors analysis across six sectors and thousands of companies make this connection explicit and quantifiable.

The organizations that will outperform in 2026 and beyond are the ones that treat leadership development as seriously as product development or financial planning, with rigor, measurement, iteration, and investment.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the link between strategic thinking and profitability?

Strategic thinking drives focus on high-value opportunities and faster adaptation, which is a key to executing strategy and improving profitability.

Can leadership skills improve employee engagement and retention?

Yes, employees with positive leadership are significantly more likely to stay and remain engaged.

How does emotional intelligence affect organizational success?

It builds psychological safety, enabling open feedback, faster problem-solving, and stronger innovation.

How long does it take to develop strong leadership skills?

With consistent feedback and coaching, noticeable improvements typically occur within 6 to 12 months.

Human Resource (HR) management is an essential part of a business, as it helps manage people, who are among the most important resources. However, most businesses group the HR function with administrative functions rather than a strategic one.

Today, businesses have recognized that HR plays a crucial role and the strategic value it brings to the business. At Great Place to Work®, our services enable organizations to understand how the HR function will influence the company’s growth trajectory.

What Is a Broad Outlook of Overall HR Functions in an Organization?

Administrative, wellbeing, and compliance

Which HR Functions Impact Business Outcomes?

Having defined the overall functions of an HR department, let’s dive into the functions that specifically impact business outcomes. Here are some of the main HR-related responsibilities that impact business outcomes:

HR Responsibility	What the Human Resource Department Does and How It Helps
Recruitment	The HR department undertakes this process by talking to various stakeholders and understanding their needs. With smart recruitment, HR ensures that personnel with the right skill set and attitude join the company, keeping its operations running seamlessly.
Training and development	As part of their responsibilities, the HR department understands employees’ changing needs and creates L&D programs to help them scale. With the right training, employees are prepared to meet challenges, and the company remains compliant with the local laws and regulations.
Employee engagement programs	People need to be seen, heard, and appreciated in a work environment to continue performing well. The HR department identifies employees’ needs, designs engagement programs, and implements them to keep them motivated and engaged.
Manpower planning	Planning for manpower requires a balance between people shortage and over-hiring to ensure continued operations and cost control. The HR department plans for manpower by understanding the business’s cyclical nature and ensuring the required staff is always available.
Planning and strategy contributions	Today, decisions are not based on intuition or gut instinct, especially when it comes to human resources. The HR department maintains people-related metrics to support the leadership in strategic decision-making.

Below is a detailed description of each of these responsibilities and their impact on the company’s bottom line.

Strategic acquisition of talent

The HR department plays a pivotal role in this aspect. They use their assessment skills to glean the skills and attitude of prospective candidates to ensure they fit the role. It is a role that involves keen observation, bargaining skills, and a deep understanding of business impact.

Impact on bottom line:

High-quality hires ensure that the business remains productive and profitable.

The company saves on hiring costs and can serve customers seamlessly.

Having the right talent cuts down on further hiring costs due to referrals and better retention

Learning and Development

The HR department is responsible for identifying gaps in employees’ skill sets and creating programs to fill them. The right learning and development programs enable employees to upskill and help the company reduce hiring costs by filling the skill gap. Moreover, an excellent L&D program motivates existing employees to perform better.

Impact on bottom line:

Timely, compliance-driven training programs help protect data, improve skills, and ensure compliance with local laws.

Employees are better prepared to deal with emerging technologies, such as AI, which helps the business stay competitive.

Engagement, motivation, and retention

In today’s hybrid work environment, with teams working across geographies, they must be engaged, motivated, and encouraged to do their best. The HR department provides the much-needed engagement to ensure that employees develop a sense of belonging and stay motivated. Employee recognition helps build a strong culture of appreciation.

Impact on bottom line:

It has been proven that organizations with excellent employee experience attract the best, are more profitable, and innovative

Employee engagement results directly in better customer satisfaction, increasing customer lifetime value (CLV), and repeat business.

Continuous workforce planning

Many businesses today have cycles in which they need more employees and face a slack season when they can function with a skeleton team. It falls upon the HR team to plan for such situations, creating a mix that involves full-time, part-time, and gig workers. It involves a deep understanding of the business model, collaboration with leaders, and a strategic approach to workforce planning.

Impact on bottom line:

Ensures smooth operations across various seasons and cycles, keeping business expenses and revenues balanced.

Proactive planning for workforce fluctuations future-proofs the business and enables it to compete.

Data-driven decision-making

Today, HR acts as the keeper of employee-related metrics, ensuring leadership makes data-driven decisions by identifying trends to plan for the future. Factors such as productivity, retention, hiring costs, and technology adoption costs can be considered when making decisions.

Impact on bottom line:

It becomes easier to balance the workforce by using data such as revenue per employee, the cost of an outside hire vs. an internal promotion, etc.

Data-driven decision-making removes personal biases and ensures decisions for the best business outcomes.

How to Leverage the HR Department Strategically Going Forward

It is a given that with the changing work scenario, HR will continue to play a strategic role in the growth and profitability of businesses. It is time to review the HR team and ensure they have the technology, tools, and leadership buy-in to enable their strategic contributions. Here are some steps to ensure that the business benefits from the HR department’s strategic inputs:

Implement a culture of growth, learning, and meritocracy from the top down

Enable frequent checks of the employees’ pulse to understand the way forward

Invest in technology to ensure data-driven inputs from the HR department

Understand training needs and enable the HR departments to create training material

At Great Place To Work, the team helps by conducting impartial employee surveys, providing culture consulting services, and offering tailored solutions.

Want to know how to take this forward? Click here to connect with our team.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the role of HR in ensuring business continuity?

HR helps business continuity by recruiting, training, retaining, and developing employees at all levels. HR can also support business continuity by ensuring the business meets compliance requirements set by local law, especially when operating in different countries.

How does HR contribute to controlling costs?

HR can help a business cut costs at various levels. One is to hire the right people who will stay and grow with the business to cut hiring costs. Another way is to set a people-related budget for each department and ensure they stay within the limit. HR also regulates administrative, travel, and other related costs.

Why is it important to empower HR to contribute to business?

The HR department manages one of the most crucial and dynamic resources of the business – employees. And when the HR department is empowered, it can do a good job of hiring, training, and retaining the necessary talent to keep the business running profitably.

Can HR help businesses of all sizes?

Yes, HR is an important function for businesses of all sizes, though the way an HR department operates will vary by business type. In smaller companies, HR tends to function as administration and even finance, depending on the business.

Which departments can HR help directly?

HR helps almost all departments directly, whether through hiring, ensuring discipline, controlling costs, or L&D. HR acts as a hub in most businesses by providing a structure for employees to work within.

Key Takeaways:

1. Trust is not a perk. It is the foundation that determines whether employees speak up for their organization or quietly disengage from it.

2. Leaders who practice transparency, fairness, and consistent care are the primary drivers of employee advocacy in any workplace.

3. Great Place To Work® research shows that high-trust cultures produce employees who are more likely to recommend their organization, go the extra mile, and stay longer.

Consider the last time someone really recommended a workplace to a friend. Not because there was a form to fill out or a referral bonus on offer, but because something about the experience compelled them to tell others. A policy is not the source of that kind of advocacy. It comes from how a place makes people feel.

In its simplest form, employee advocacy is when employees talk favorably about a company without being asked to do so. They tell their friends about it. In discussions, they defend it. On social media, they discuss their experiences. They become unofficial ambassadors because they sincerely care about their workplace, not because HR asked them to.

At the core of all of this is an evident fact that trust comes before employee advocacy, and then leadership is followed by trust.

What Is Employee Advocacy and Why Does It Matter?

Employee advocacy is the voluntary promotion of an organization, its culture, its offerings, or its principles by its employees. This can occur informally through discussions, social media posts, recommendations, or just the way an employee discusses work during a family reunion. It can also occur formally through established programs.

Employee advocacy has a big business impact. Professionals are seen as significantly more reliable sources than the marketing channels used by a company. One of the most reliable indicators for job seekers assessing a new employer is word-of-mouth from current employees. Stronger talent pipelines, improved retention, and a more robust employer brand are all characteristics of companies with high employee advocacy.

However, it is important to note that advocacy cannot be created. It can serve as the foundation for marketing. Posts can be shared by colleagues. Referral initiatives can be started. However, unless the underlying experience is one that employees genuinely want to discuss, none of it results in true advocacy. More than anything else, the quality of leadership shapes that experience.

The Connection Between Leadership and Trust

According to Great Place To Work, a great workplace is one where employees like colleagues, take pride in their work, and trust the companies they work for. Trust in leadership is the most fundamental of these three dimensions.

“Management is honest and ethical in its business practices” is one of the best signs of overall trust, according to Great Place To Work research. The whole work experience changes when individuals feel their leaders are performing fairly; people feel more secure, they take chances, and raise their voices. Eventually, they have an emotional stake in the results.

How Leaders Shape the Conditions for Employee Advocacy?

Leaders shape employee advocacy by building a foundation of trust, visibility, and empowerment. Here are a few ways through which leaders can create conditions for employee advocacy:

1. Transparent Communication Builds Psychological Safety

One of the most recurring trends in Great Place To Work Certified™ companies is that their leaders communicate honestly and clearly, particularly when topics are unclear. They don’t wait for flawless responses. They invite others into the conversation, contribute what they know, and own up to their errors.

This type of openness has a significant impact by letting individuals know that they are trusted to share the truth. Additionally, people return the favor when they feel trustworthy. Employees progressively become active players in the organization’s story rather than passive spectators when leaders choose transparency over silence. Advocacy starts with the transition from observer to participant.

2. Structured Advocacy Programs Work When Trust Already Exists

One of the clearest signs of a high-trust culture is when companies can create official advocacy initiatives and have people actually embrace them, rather than ignore them as simply another corporate endeavor.

One of the IT companies operates an employee ambassador program with a clear goal to prepare employees to communicate their organization’s story authentically. Participants are urged to engage with the company’s social impact initiatives, stay involved with its products, share industry perspectives, and be active on social media. In addition to helping the company attract top talent, ambassadors develop their personal identity, get specialized training, and become recognized as thought leaders.

This program does not operate on a mandate. It functions because the underlying culture is one in which employees are already confident enough to speak up. And that pride didn’t just happen. Leaders who made the employees feel educated, appreciated, and invested in the company’s direction grew it consciously and continuously. What was always there was merely given form by the program.

3. Recognizing Advocacy as a Contribution Creates More of It

Leaders who openly praise employees for their advocacy provide a strong message: this company recognizes and appreciates those who go above and beyond to represent it.

Through an exclusive Social Influencer Award, a mid-sized IT company has formalized this acknowledgment. Employees who actively increase the brand’s visibility, build relationships with customers and clients, and use their personal and professional networks to tell the company’s narrative are recognized with this award. The fact that this award is linked to quantifiable contributions – such as the production of original material, the quantity of posts shared, the reach attained, and the overall impact of their advocacy distinguishes it from a general appreciation program.

By quantifying advocacy and formally recognizing it, the organization shows that it values the effort employees make to enhance its position in the marketplace. As a result, more employees are motivated to engage, and trust has increased. When something is acknowledged as valuable, others want to contribute to it.

4. Fairness in Decisions Creates Loyalty That Speaks

Even if a decision has no immediate impact on them, employees pay attention to the way it was made. When promotions seem to be based on merit, when pay structures are clear, and when policies are applied fairly across all levels and teams, these are signs that the company treats people fairly.

Fairness is more than just a moral value. It increases trust. When employees see that things are fair all the time, they feel like they belong and are loyal to the company beyond their own interests. When they talk about the organization, they say “we” more than “they.”

According to Great Place To Work data, employees who say their workplace is fair are much more likely to recommend it as a great place to work. This is the direct connection between fair leadership and employee support.

5. Genuine Care for People Makes Advocacy Authentic

Some leaders care about their employees’ well-being as a measure of success, while others care about their employees as people. The employees themselves can tell the difference right away.

Leaders who ask how someone is doing and then listen to the answer. Leaders who see when a team member is overworked and step in before they burn out. Leaders who remember and celebrate important events in their lives. These times of real care build emotional connections that no wellness program or engagement survey can match.

One of the most interesting findings that Great Place To Work observed is that employees who feel cared for by their managers are 3.7 times more likely to stay. But these employees are also some of the most vocal supporters of their company, which is more important than keeping them.

6. Advocacy Does Not End When an Employee Leaves

Perhaps one of the most overlooked dimensions of employee advocacy is what happens after someone exits. Most organizations treat the last working day as the end of the relationship. High-trust organizations treat it as the beginning of a different kind of relationship.

One organization has established a formal alumni network on the stated philosophy that those who leave to explore other possibilities continue to carry the organization’s culture and legacy. They become brand ambassadors, potential future hires, business partners, and client referrals when they are respected both during and after their departure. Maintaining these connections also produces a dependable pipeline of rehires who are already familiar with the organization’s methods of operation, as culture fit and subject expertise become more crucial to business success.

The network keeps former employees engaged with welcome letters when they join the alumni group, birthday acknowledgments, work anniversary notes, festive communications, and updates on key company accomplishments. Although the touchpoints are straightforward, they provide a strong message: people mattered here.

As a result, those who have moved on still speak positively of the organization, refer others in their networks, and frequently visit again when the time is appropriate. This is the strongest type of advocacy. It isn’t driven by a current incentive or salary. It is motivated by the experience of receiving honest, dependable, and kind treatment. Only when leaders create that memory while the individual is still employed by the company does it exist.

What High-Trust Cultures Look Like in Practice?

Organizations that consistently appear on Great Place To Work Best Workplaces™ lists share several observable characteristics.

Employees feel informed – They know where the company is going, why decisions are made, and how their role fits into the larger picture. Leaders at these organizations communicate frequently and honestly

Employees feel valued beyond their output – They are recognized as people, not just resources. Leaders invest time in development, well-being conversations, and genuine connections.

Employees feel psychologically safe – They can raise concerns without fear of retaliation. They can make mistakes and learn from them. They can disagree with their manager and still feel respected.

Employees feel pride – In their work, in their organization, and in the values that are actually lived day to day rather than printed on a wall.

These are the conditions in which employee advocacy flourishes naturally. When people feel all of the above, they do not need to be asked to advocate. They do it because it is genuine.

Employee Advocacy Is an Outcome, Not a Campaign

The most significant change in perspective on employee advocacy is that it cannot be implemented. A social media toolkit, a hashtag, or a referral bonus cannot be used to create it; however, they can help with existing campaigns.

Also Read: What High-Performing Companies Do Differently?

The result is authentic advocacy. It results from a long-term culture of fairness, trust, empathy, and purpose. And every day, executives at all levels of the business either build or break that culture. When leaders prioritize transparency over spin, fairness over favoritism, genuine care over performative wellness, and specific appreciation over meaningless praise, they create conditions for employees to be proud of their workplace. The leadership formula for employee advocacy is simple. Companies that comprehend this will not just have stronger employer brands. They will have cultures that attract the right people, retain the best talent, and create something that truly represents their culture.

Explore how Great Place To Work may assist you in creating a culture of employee advocacy through certification, cultural consultancy, and the Giftwork management development program.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is employee advocacy in the workplace?

Employee advocacy is when employees genuinely promote their organization’s culture, values, or brand through social media, referrals, or everyday conversations.

How does leadership impact employee advocacy?

Leadership builds or breaks advocacy by fostering trust through transparent, fair, and supportive behavior.

What is the relationship between trust and employee advocacy?

Employee advocacy is driven by trust, employees who trust their leaders are more likely to recommend and speak positively about the organization.

How can organizations measure employee advocacy?

It can be measured using metrics like eNPS and employee surveys that track recommendation intent and overall sentiment.

What role do managers play in employee advocacy?

Managers shape daily employee experiences, making them critical to building trust and driving advocacy.

Can advocacy programs work without a high-trust culture?

No, without a strong culture of trust, advocacy programs lack authenticity and fail to deliver real impact.

Organizations are currently experiencing a recent shift. Leaders are quickly implementing digital transformation roadmaps, automation trials, and AI tools. There has never been a better chance to create workplaces that are genuinely prepared for the future since systems are changing and capabilities are growing. What successful cultures look like in 2026 will be determined by the CHROs who make the most of this opportunity and match company goals with people strategy.

The role of the CHRO has never been more consequential. The choices HR directors make this year will determine whether their companies create cultures that draw in, nurture, and retain top talent for years to come as AI transforms job roles, generational changes redefine workplace expectations, and the boundary between work and wellbeing continues to change.

This piece is not about theoretical frameworks. It is about the real priorities that CHROs across industries need to act on today, grounded in research from Great Place To Work® India’s Workplace Culture Outlook 2026 report. If you are looking for clarity on where to focus your energy and resources this year, this blog will give you clarity.

Download Workplace Culture Outlook 2026 report

What is an HR Strategy?

An HR strategy is a plan that an organization employs to connect its people practices with its overall business objectives. It discusses how a company finds talent, nurtures it, keeps it, and fosters an environment where employees can regularly give their best. In contrast to daily HR operations, which concentrate on hiring workflows, payroll, and compliance, an HR strategy is even broader and covers important issues. What type of culture are we creating? What skills are we going to need in the future? How can we ensure that the practices of our employees align with the direction of our company?

Workforce planning, leadership development, employee experience, and DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging) are all included in a well-designed HR strategy. When done correctly, it serves as a bridge between the business goals and the real experiences of its employees. That connection is more important than ever in 2026. Businesses that create the link between strategy and real-world experience are the ones that create workplaces where employees truly want to show up, contribute, and develop. CHROs are in the best position to take the lead on this actual opportunity.

How to Build a Future-Ready HR Strategy in 2026?

Building a future-ready HR strategy does not entail adding new programs to an already packed HR calendar. It is about making more informed decisions and focusing on what would truly benefit people and organizations. Here are a few priorities that must be included in a future-ready HR strategy:

1. Address Career Anxiety with Clarity and Confidence

One of the most essential things CHROs can do right now is provide employees with a clear, confident response to a question that everyone is thinking about: what does my future look like in this organization, and what role does AI play in it?

Also Read: Human Rеsourcеs Activitiеs for Employееs in 2026

According to Great Place To Work India’s report, 6 out of 10 organizations are now reporting a decline in employees eager to go the extra mile, a trend that has been accumulating for three years. The key driver is career anxiety, which stems from ambiguous expectations, rapid reskilling demands, and uncertainty about the future of specific professions.

The good news is that clarity is one of the most effective tools accessible to HR professionals. Employees’ confidence and engagement increase significantly when they understand how their jobs are growing, what skills the business will help them develop, and what growth possibilities are available. CHROs should invest in structured listening tools such as pulse surveys, town halls, and skip-level talks to identify areas of doubt and then respond transparently and purposefully.

Organizations that rapidly explain their AI adoption roadmap, coupled with a corresponding people-readiness plan, are already witnessing increased engagement. Employees do not fear change if they feel supported during this transformation. That is the opportunity HR executives have right now: to replace uncertainty with direction, fear with genuine confidence in the future.

CHROs can actively work to restore a sense of forward momentum in addition to listening. This could take the form of creating “ask leadership anything” forums where employees can voice concerns and get frank, helpful responses, holding team-level discussions about how work is changing and what that means for growth, or publishing career pathway guides that include AI-augmented roles. Employees put out their best effort when they feel heard, recognized, and guided.

2. Build AI-Enabled Career Pathways That Inspire, Not Intimidate

Careers with AI capabilities are no longer a benefit in 2026. They serve as a standard expectation for all industries. Individuals are far more likely to put in their best effort at work if they feel ready to work with AI technologies; their jobs have been properly repositioned in this new context, and they can see a feasible growth path ahead of them.

This means that CHROs need to provide relevant reskilling pathways rather than just generic upskilling initiatives. These are career paths that are directly related to an employee’s particular position, industry, and the organization’s future direction over the next two to three years. The study found that when compared to peers, Best Workplaces™ report 7% higher experience scores on career progression, team chemistry, and expectations clarity. These three are the main factors that decide whether professionals will put in their best effort or not.

The best strategy blends visible internal mobility with structured learning. Employees’ enthusiasm changes when they witness colleagues advance within the company, when they see their own abilities growing in ways that feel pertinent and appreciated, and when leadership communicates career opportunities with precision rather than ambiguous promises. When people think the company is investing in them, they make investments.

The way that job descriptions are being modified to reflect the AI-augmented nature of employment should also be examined by CHROs. Jobs that formerly required manual data processing increasingly call for strategic thought, judgment, and interpretation. It sends a strong message that the company views its employees as collaborators in development rather than expenses to be controlled when that evolution is made clear, and training is developed around it. One of the most exciting changes an HR executive can make is to reframe employees as strategic participants using AI rather than as recipients of AI.

3. Embed Wellness Into Everyday Leadership Behavior

Many organizations have established excellent wellness initiatives, including employee assistance platforms, mental health days, mindfulness resources, and physical health subsidies. These are truly worthwhile. However, research repeatedly demonstrates that an employee’s rapport with their immediate boss has a greater influence on their sense of well-being at work than any policy.

Also Read: HR Policies That Build a Stronger Organization

According to Great Place To Work, leaders who listen carefully, pose insightful questions, and relate their team’s work to a larger goal increase employee retention by 3.7 times. That is a substantial return for a behavior that requires only sincere care and attention, with no extra funding.

This significantly reframes the wellness goal for CHROs. The objective is to create a management culture where health is evident in day-to-day interactions rather than merely putting policies in place. This entails frequent check-ins that go beyond project status updates, timely and intimate moments of acknowledgment, and discussions where staff members feel truly heard rather than controlled.

A greater investment in manager enablement is the practical impact for HR strategy. One of the most effective things a CHRO can do is train managers to have better discussions, identify indicators of stress or disengagement, and foster psychological safety within their teams. When managers do this correctly, health is integrated into the culture instead than being a supplemental initiative.

It is also worth recognizing the compounding effect that strong manager-employee relationships have across the business. Teams with high-quality management relationships report better collaboration, stronger innovation, and lower attrition. Wellness, in this light is not just a people issue. It is a performance issue, and investing in it at the management level pays returns across every part of the organization.

4. Design Flexibility Around Autonomy and Real Choice

Flexibility has moved from being a competitive perk to a baseline expectation for most of today’s workforce, particularly among Gen Z employees and gig colleagues who are reshaping what work norms look like across industries. In 2026, the question is no longer whether to offer flexibility. The more meaningful question is how to design flexibility that genuinely serves people across different life stages, work styles, and personal circumstances.

Employees today are less focused on where they work and more focused on how much control they have over their work, their growth, and their time. That distinction matters for CHROs. A flexible work policy that only addresses location without addressing autonomy over how work gets structured and delivered will miss the deeper need that employees are expressing.

The report highlights a notable paradox worth paying attention to: while millennials report high access to learning and resources, 1 in 5 still does not experience job security, particularly in sectors like IT and Biotech. Access to opportunity and psychological security are not the same thing. An effective HR strategy in 2026 addresses both, making sure that the pathways to growth are genuinely accessible and that employees feel stable enough to pursue them confidently.

The leadership challenge here is one of the thoughtful balances. CHROs need to help their organizations design flexibility frameworks that are fair across different functions and seniority levels, that support accountability without surveillance, and that allow for personalization without inadvertently creating inequity. When flexibility is designed well, it becomes one of the most powerful retention and engagement tools available. Employees who feel trusted to manage their own work are more likely to bring their full capabilities to it.

5. Elevate DEIB from a Commitment to a Measurable Culture Priority

In recent years, DEIB has been a strategic focus for businesses, and in 2026, the direction of progress is becoming evident. Organizations that have moved from considering DEIB as a stand-alone project to integrating it into daily culture assessments, people management, and leadership development are the ones that are making progress.

According to a research carried out in India by Great Place to Work, 6 out of 10 CHROs think that the best method to progress DEIB in reality is to create inclusive leadership capabilities. This is a significant and inspiring realization. Inclusion manifests and expands in everyday leadership behavior: who is invited to speak in a meeting, who gets sponsored for a stretch assignment, who feels safe to speak up, and who feels genuinely valued by their team.

The data also reveals significant room for growth and for celebrating progress where it is happening. Only 45% of CHROs feel there is scope to formally embed DEIB into their organization’s core values and principles. 2 out of 3 report that less than a quarter of their leadership teams include individuals from historically excluded groups. And only 5 out of 10 CHROs are tracking retention across diverse employee groups, which means most organizations have an important opportunity to build better measurement into their DEIB strategy.

For CHROs building strategy in 2026, the path forward is to close the gap between intent and accountability with confidence and optimism. This means setting specific inclusion goals for leadership teams, building DEIB metrics into manager performance expectations, creating safe and structured channels for employee feedback on inclusion experiences, and regularly reviewing hiring, promotion, and retention data through a DEIB lens. Organizations that do this well do not just check out a compliance box. They build cultures where diverse thinking drives genuine innovation and lasting competitive advantage.

Common Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Here are a few common challenges that CHROs are facing, along with the steps to overcome them:

Challenge 1: Rebuilding Discretionary Effort Across Teams

According to research from Great Place To Work India, organizations where all employees have a favorable work environment report 9% more discretionary effort than their peers. This effort is driven by trust, clarity, and acknowledgment. CHROs should conduct audits to determine whether senior leadership is actively fostering trust through open communication, whether managers set expectations that make employees feel capable, and whether recognition is timely and meaningful. People naturally contribute more when these foundations are secure.

Challenge 2: Investing in Manager Capability as a Strategic Priority

Manager development is frequently ignored, despite the fact that everyday interactions between managers are the most important factor in determining whether team culture is developed or not. By creating structured coaching programs, integrating recognition into management routines, and making managers responsible for the caliber of their employees’ experiences, the most progressive CHROs are establishing it as a fundamental business investment. Culture is evident everywhere, every day, when managers lead well.

Challenge 3: Making AI Adoption a Positive, Human-Centered Transition

The CHROs that successfully lead AI transitions are those who combine technology rollouts with a compelling human readiness narrative, assisting staff in viewing AI as a tool that enhances rather than replaces their creativity and judgment. The practical approaches are simple: openly communicate the AI roadmap, provide role-specific reskilling, and establish internal forums where colleagues can discuss their successful use of new tools. Businesses that take this approach are already witnessing increased creativity and engagement.

Challenge 4: Making Inclusion Real at Every Level of the Organization

The genuine cultural effort takes place in bridging the most prevalent DEIB gap between frontline manager behavior and senior leadership commitment. CHROs should establish peer accountability within teams, make inclusion a stated expectation in leadership development programs, and make sure DEIB measures are discussed in regular business meetings rather than being saved for yearly reports. At the leadership table, inclusion data receives the attention and urgency it merits when it is presented alongside performance statistics.

Conclusion

The organizations that lead with trust are the ones that will determine what success looks like in 2026. Not just technology, not only the effectiveness of the method – it is about trust. This means being open and honest with employees about how their roles and careers are changing, giving managers the tools they need to foster real human connections in the workplace, creating flexibility that respects people’s personal lives, and incorporating accountability into inclusion commitments to make progress quantifiable and apparent.

This is well-supported by research from Great Place To Work India, which shows that companies with strong levels of trust consistently report higher levels of discretionary effort, better retention, and more resilient cultures. These are competitive advantages that directly affect an organization’s reputation and business outcomes.

In 2026, CHROs will have a lot of real opportunities. The framework for creating outstanding workplace cultures is in place. Tools, data, and organizational awareness have never been more aligned. Going further into the most important areas – clarity, trust, inclusivity, and leadership capacity is currently the top focus. Everything else will follow if you get those properly.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can CHROs prepare for AI-driven team?

By focusing on reskilling, transparent communication, and building a learning culture where employees feel confident using AI tools.

How will technology impact HR strategies in 2026?

Technology will shift HR toward strategic priorities like culture, leadership, and employee experience, supported by AI-driven insights and analytics.

What are the biggest HR challenges expected in 2026?

Key challenges include managing career uncertainty due to AI, leading hybrid work cultures, and ensuring consistent, measurable DEIB outcomes.

What role does employee experience play in future HR strategies?

Employee experience will be central, directly influencing retention, engagement, productivity, and overall employer brand.

What are strategic HR initiatives?

They are structured, outcome-focused programs aligned with business goals, such as AI reskilling, leadership development, flexible work models, and DEIB initiatives.

About Us

Mission

Methodology

Our CEO

Our Team

Careers

BFSI

Information Technology

Manufacturing

Pharma & Healthcare

Retail

Construction & Real Estate

Global Capability Center (GCC)

Professional Services

Mission

Methodology

Our CEO

Our Team

Careers

CERTIFICATION

WATCH NOW

How to earn Great Place To Work Certification [On Demand]

JOIN THE LIST

FEATURED LIST

POPULAR LISTS

Employee Surveys

Change and Culture Consulting

Certification

DEIB

Best Workplaces

Leadership Capability Building - Giftwork

Blogs

Podcasts

Reports & Insights

Case studies

CHRO Interviews

Press Release

Newsroom

CASE STUDY

Events

Webinars

WhatsApp Community

What Does Women in Leadership Entail?

Why Is It Critical for Women to Become Part of the Leadership?

Challenges Women Face in Leadership Roles and Strategies to Overcome Them

Challenge #1: Stereotyping and Gender Bias

Strategy # 1: Train Leadership to Overcome Bias

Challenge # 2: Restricted Access to Leadership Roles

Strategy# 2: Create Women-Specific Tracks and Leadership Programs

Challenge # 3: Interrupted Career Path Due to Personal Reasons

Strategy #3: Enable Mentorship and Input During Such Situations

Challenge # 4: Women Needing to Balance Work and Personal Life

Strategy #4: Build a Flexible and Sustainable Hybrid Work Situation

Challenge # 5: Self-Doubts and Imposter Syndrome

Strategy #5: Offer Career Counseling and Support Services

Challenge #6: Limited Networking Opportunities

Strategy #6: Build Professional Networking Events That Are Women-Friendly and Accessible

How to Ensure the Growth of Women in Leadership Roles Going Forward?

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it crucial to develop women in leadership roles?

What are the steps to take to encourage women to take leadership roles?

What programs can support women in leadership?

What issues do women in leadership face?

What are Employee Wellness Strategies?

Why Do Companies Need Robust Employee Wellness Strategies in Today’s Environment?

#1 Changing workforce:

#2 Evolving awareness:

#3 Retention and motivation:

#4: Employer branding

#5 Empowering from within:

Why Do Companies Need Robust Employee Wellness Strategies in Today’s Environment?

#1 Changing workforce:

#2 Evolving awareness:

#3 Retention and motivation:

#4: Employer branding

#5 Empowering from within:

How to Create the Right Employee Wellness Strategy?

Step #1: Analyze the current situation

Step #2: Understanding employees’ needs

Step #3: Define wellness goals