Not every HR trend reveals itself straight away.
September’s headlines cover everything from resilient hiring intentions and skills-based recruitment to upcoming employment law reforms. On the surface, they appear to belong to separate conversations. Look more closely, however, and they all point to the same reality: employers are operating in an environment where workforce decisions face greater scrutiny.
Whether organisations are deciding who to hire, how to assess talent or how to respond to new legal obligations, assumptions are increasingly being replaced by evidence, planning and accountability.
For communications and marketing professionals working with HR audiences, that’s an important development. The most valuable content is becoming less about identifying the latest trend and more about helping employers approach the practical decisions that sit behind it.
As we move into October, these are three trends worth paying attention to.
Among rising employment costs, political change and continued economic uncertainty, many expected employer confidence to weaken significantly during 2026.
Instead, the latest ManpowerGroup Employment Outlook Survey found the UK’s Net Employment Outlook sits at +23% for Q4 2026, remaining more than double last year’s level. Employers continue to report plans for growth, particularly across information technology, construction and real estate sectors.
What’s notable is not simply that organisations are still hiring, but more so where attention is being focused. The strongest hiring intentions are concentrated within specific sectors, regions and larger organisations. Recruitment activity is continuing, but employers appear increasingly selective about where they invest headcount and which skills justify new roles.
For HR marketers, this creates an opportunity to move beyond broad discussions about talent shortages. The more interesting story is how organisations make workforce investment decisions when resources are tighter and expectations are higher.
Content focused on prioritisation, workforce planning and identifying critical capability is likely to feel more relevant than content that treats recruitment growth as the objective in itself. Increasingly, the challenge is not whether organisations will hire, but rather, deciding where hiring delivers the greatest value.
Skills-based hiring originally gained traction as employers looked for alternatives to degree requirements and traditional experience-based screening. Now, it’s shaping workforce planning, learning and internal mobility.
CIPD’s latest ‘Resourcing and talent planning report’ found that 55% of employers have already adopted skills-based hiring, while a further 23% intend to move in that direction over the next year.
Recruitment teams are using skills to assess candidates, whilst learning teams are using them to guide development. Workforce planners are using them to identify future gaps and internal mobility programmes are using them to connect people with opportunities across the organisation. The result is that skills are becoming a common language across HR.
For communications teams, this creates a much richer narrative than simply reporting on the rise of skills-based hiring. Many HR leaders are actively trying to connect previously separate activities through a skills lens.
That means content exploring how skills data informs hiring, learning, workforce planning and talent mobility simultaneously is likely to resonate more strongly than content focused on a single HR discipline. Organisations increasingly want integrated thinking because their workforce challenges themselves are becoming more interconnected.
October marks the next phase of the Employment Rights Act rollout, with changes including longer employment tribunal claim deadlines, stronger protections against workplace harassment and further trade union reforms.
While these changes are legal in nature, the challenges they create are largely operational. Extending tribunal claim deadlines from three to six months places greater emphasis on record-keeping and workplace processes. New harassment provisions require employers to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment and increase responsibility for the actions of third parties such as customers and clients.
The common theme is preparation. Employers are being asked not only to respond when issues arise, but to demonstrate the steps they took beforehand to prevent them.
For HR audiences, legislation is rarely the most difficult part. The bigger challenge is implementation. Policies can be updated relatively quickly. Embedding new expectations into manager behaviour, workplace culture and day-to-day decision-making takes considerably longer.
For communications and marketing professionals, this creates a valuable opportunity. Many organisations have already read the headlines and understand that change is coming. What they’re increasingly looking for are practical examples, implementation advice and insight into how other employers are preparing.
Content focused on execution rather than explanation is likely to carry more value as organisations move from understanding the regulations to applying them.
What September’s HR trends mean for your content strategy
September’s trends all point towards organisations taking a more considered approach to workforce decisions.
For HR-focused PR and marketing, three themes stand out this month:
As we head into October, HR leaders are balancing growth plans, skills challenges and new legal responsibilities simultaneously. Content that helps them understand how those pressures overlap, rather than treating them as separate issues, is likely to feel the most relevant and useful.
