It’s been a busy 12 months for people professionals. In January, US president Donald Trump’s anti-EDI executive orders had ripple effects for businesses across the world and ad agency WPP’s return to office plans were met with pushback from employees.
Former Astronomer CPO Kristin Cabot briefly became the most famous HR chief in the world in July after an ill-timed embrace with the company’s then CEO.
Meanwhile, the UK government continued with its agenda of strengthening workers’ rights, eventually getting the Employment Rights Act passed through parliament in December.
Below, People Management reflects on the biggest HR stories of 2025.
The past year saw a scaling back of EDI programmes in response to Trump’s condemnation of diversity initiatives as discriminatory and ‘woke’. In January, Trump pledged to bring an end to the US government’s “radical and wasteful” diversity programmes and signed several executive orders banning EDI training.
Following this, a wave of major US companies including Meta, McDonald’s and Walmart rolled back their EDI programmes, and UK firms soon followed suit. Half (54 per cent) of UK businesses changed their approach to EDI in response to Trump, while 28 per cent have reduced or abandoned their EDI initiatives in the past year, according to law firm Freeths.
While diversity and inclusion remain important, the conversation around EDI will continue to be reframed by politics in 2026.
Hybrid...
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