When Fewer People Want the Job: What October 2025’s HR Headlines Signal to the C-Suite | Leadership Redesign
- Zenia Pearl V. Nicolas
- Oct 7
- 4 min read
Updated: 9 hours ago
In the first week of October 2025, three stories cut through the noise for HR and business leaders: fewer employees are volunteering to manage, governments’ workforce turmoil is spilling into private-sector operations, and large enterprises are pushing ahead with full-stack HR-tech modernization. Together, they point to a single strategic task for the C-suite: redesign leadership and work systems so people will actually choose to lead and equip those leaders with modern, explainable tools.
The leadership pipeline problem just got louder
HR Dive’s Oct. 1 “Deep Dive” frames a trend insiders have been whispering about for months: “No one wants to step up to the plate, data suggests.” The feature describes “‘conscious unbossing,’ a “growing reluctance – especially among Gen Z – to step into management roles,” attributed to stress, thin support, and minimal pay uplift. One CPO quoted in the piece cautions: “A strong individual contributor doesn’t always make for a strong manager or leader of people,” arguing that companies must invest in manager capability rather than default promotions. hrdive.com
Why it matters for CEOs/boards: If capable mid-career talent increasingly opts out, succession plans stall, execution slows, and culture erodes. The article’s prescription, alternative expert tracks, lateral growth, and rebuilding the manager role, isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s risk management for strategy execution. hrdive.com
Public-sector disruption is hitting employer operations — this month
SHRM’s shutdown brief (updated in early October) states plainly: “The federal fiscal year ended at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, October 1 … resulting in a federal shutdown. Under the Antideficiency Act, agencies must halt all but essential services.” It adds immediate employer impacts: “Private employers and contractors experience delays in permits, grants, and services like E-Verify. Federal agencies (EEOC, NLRB, OSHA) suspend most functions, pausing investigations and data releases.” SHRM
Why it matters for CFOs/COOs/CHROs: Whether you sell to the U.S. government, hire with E-Verify, or rely on agency guidance, these pauses cascade into cash-flow timing, compliance risks, and workforce planning, right now in October. Build contingencies in your people-ops runbooks (hiring freezes, alt-ID checks allowed by law, grievance/charge handling when agencies pause) and tighten message discipline to avoid trust slumps when processes stall. SHRM
Enterprise HR stacks are modernizing fast with cloud HCM and embedded AI
Two corporate announcements in the same week underscore where large employers are investing:
Telenor Shared Services + Infosys: The partners announced a program “to modernize its HR operations with a new Oracle Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM) solution,” aiming “to standardize HR processes, enhance employee productivity and experience.” Oracle’s HCM lead said the collaboration helps “drive the future of their HR operations … to improve employee productivity and enhance employee experience.” Financial Times Markets
Progress Software (Costa Rica CoE): The company said it has “doubled its workforce in Costa Rica, growing teams across … human resources and workplace operations,” positioning the site as a regional hub for an “AI-powered product portfolio.” Financial Times Markets
Why it matters for CIOs/CHROs: These are not small pilots; they are end-to-end platform moves with explicit productivity and employee-experience goals. If your managers are overwhelmed, part of the cure is redesigned roles, the other part is systems that make management easier (clear workflows, skills visibility, fair pay ranges, transparent feedback). October’s announcements show peers are buying, integrating, and scaling now. Financial Times Markets
What great companies will do in Q4?
Re-spec the manager job. Use data from stay interviews and promotion declines to strip low-value admin work, right-size spans of control, and add coaching time. HR Dive’s reporting makes clear the perceived ROI of supervision is broken; fix the work before you market the role. hrdive.com
Offer dual career architectures. Build parallel expert paths with equivalent prestige/comp (publication, patents, platform ownership, customer impact) so advancement ≠ headcount alone. hrdive.com
Modernize the HR stack with guardrails. Cloud HCM plus embedded AI can lift productivity if you publish model purposes, human review points, and error-handling playbooks. Take a page from this week’s implementations: end-to-end standardization and experience metrics are the point, not AI for AI’s sake. Financial Times Markets
Scenario plan for government stoppages. Map which of your processes rely on paused agencies (E-Verify, EEOC, NLRB, OSHA) and pre-draft employee and customer comms that are candid and time-bound. SHRM’s October brief is explicit about where delays bite. SHRM
The leadership conversation continues in Jakarta
As organizations recalibrate what it means to lead in 2025, the question is no longer “Who wants to manage?” but “How can we make leadership worth choosing again?”This conversation moves beyond headlines at HRX Indonesia 2025 — where CHROs, CEOs, and HR innovators across Asia will exchange strategies to rebuild trust, rehumanize performance, and future-proof leadership in the age of AI.
References
Colvin, C. (2025, October 1). Workers are avoiding advancement. How can HR adjust when no one wants to lead? HR Dive. https://www.hrdive.com/news/conscious-unbossing-workplace-trend/760946/
Dayforce. (2025, October 1). New Dayforce podcast makes sense of work – One piece at a time [Press release]. Markets Insider/GlobeNewswire. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/new-dayforce-podcast-makes-sense-of-work-one-piece-at-a-time-1035242273 markets.businessinsider.com
Infosys. (2025, October 3). Infosys collaborates with Telenor Shared Services to modernize its HR operations with a new Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM) solution [Press release]. Financial Times—Markets (PR Newswire syndication). https://markets.ft.com/data/announce/detail?dockey=600-202510030625PR_NEWS_EURO_ND__EN89492-1 Financial Times Markets
Progress Software. (2025, October 1). Progress Software expands presence in Costa Rica with new center of excellence [Press release]. Financial Times—Markets (GlobeNewswire syndication). https://markets.ft.com/data/announce/full?dockey=1330-9538022en-2503OT4F314FV8259K4KTSMH5C Financial Times Markets
Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). (2025, October). Navigating the 2025 government shutdown (advocacy explainer). https://www.shrm.org/advocacy/navigating-the-2025-government-shutdown SHRM
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