Communications takeaways from the 2025 ADP People at Work Report

To do their jobs effectively, internal comms pros need to stay on top of what’s informing employee sentiment.

The 2025 ADP People at Work Report takes a comprehensive view of what today’s employees want out of their workplaces, revealing opportunities for internal communicators to reach them and improve their employee experience. We interpreted the findings to see how internal communicators can apply them within their roles.

The desire for upskilling 

An employee who’s able to grow their skillset is more likely to advance through the ranks of a given role. In turn, employees who grow within their jobs are more likely to stay at their company. The report stated that while one in four employees felt they had the right skills to advance in their roles, just 3.8% of employees reported that they had gained new skills in the first two years of their jobs.

Professional development is an important part of many organizations’ formula for culture and employee retention. While communicators might not be directly responsible for creating upskilling offerings, they can help actively point employees in the right direction.

In a piece for Ragan last year, Lizz Summers, director of communications, rental division, at Cintas, said that communicators should view talking about upskilling as an ongoing process, not just something that can be done once and checked off a list.

“If you build a team of continual learners – a team who sees every project as an opportunity to both show off their stuff and learn and grow – you are setting yourself up as a leader, as well as setting up the organization, for greater success,” Summers said.

Summers added that communicators play a vital role in letting people know about upskilling offerings — whether they’re done in-house or externally. Comms pros should consider options like creating an ongoing newsletter for employees with upskilling avenues and fielding periodic surveys to gather sentiment to ensure the offerings are aligned with employee needs. Taking these steps isn’t just good for culture — it’s good for business, as it helps keep employees in place.

“Turnover is expensive,” Summers said. “Inefficiency is expensive. But cohesive, useful, and connective communications can get organizations past that and drive everyone toward success. And in the end, isn’t a successful organization better for everyone?”

Work location and the tie to employee engagement

Over the last few years, there have been countless arguments over the value of remote versus in-person work.

The ADP report drew a connection between work location and employee engagement. The data revealed that 16% of U.S.-based remote employees felt they were fully engaged with their roles — but that rose to 31% for hybrid employees.

In addition, there’s also the perception angle communicators need to contend with. The report stated that 35% of workers felt a sense of judgment from their colleagues for doing flex work.

While it’s not a communicator’s job to make policies about remote work, it is their job to create messaging about them that makes all employees — agnostic to the location of where the work is getting done — included in the company’s culture.

In a piece for Ragan in 2023, Laniece Williams Green, employee and leadership communications leader at Siemens Healthineers, said that communicators should seek to serve as a cultural bridge between employees in different work situations by revealing common ground in their messaging.

“Reinforcing culture isn’t just about the in-person staff meetings — there’s a lot more to it than that,” she continued. “From a comms point of view, you build culture by sharing common experiences. Share the successes, challenges and lessons — that’s something people can bond over.”

Williams-Green also offered a few ways communicators can facilitate connections between employees for increased engagement, especially for those who seek to move up the ladder. But she was sure to hedge in the fact that the approach is different for every company, and messaging needs to be deeply rooted in an existing company culture.

“For remote workers, it’s setting up opportunities like a FaceTime call with company leaders to prove they’re engaged and want to move up the ladder, even if they live and work far from an office,” William-Green said. “For in-person people, maybe that means increased flexibility in terms of office arrival times. For the best possible culture outcomes, we need to figure these pieces out.”

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. In his spare time he enjoys Philly sports and hosting trivia.