The 12 HR predictions of 2026: what leaders will obsess over (and what will actually drive results)
If 2025 was the year HR got pulled into every conversation about AI, productivity, and cost, 2026 will be the year HR becomes central to how organisations actually function.
The shift underway is subtle but significant. Organisations are moving away from standalone programmes and toward work design, governance, capability, and execution discipline. In that shift, HR’s role expands - not as just the owner of “people initiatives,” but as the architect of systems that make strategy real.
Here are PeopleEX’s 12 HR predictions for 2026 - grounded in global research, shaped by our work across Australia and New Zealand, and focused on what will genuinely move organisational performance.
1) AI becomes an operating model decision, not a technology one
Organisations will stop asking whether they should “use AI” and start asking how work should be structured in a human–machine system.
The hardest problems will not be technical. They will be organisational:
What work is automated?
What work requires human judgment?
Where does accountability sit when AI influences decisions?
HR will be most effective when it treats AI as a work design and governance challenge, not a digital rollout.
2) Workflow redesign overtakes role redesign as the priority
Traditional role-based thinking can’t keep pace with how fast work is changing. In 2026, leading organisations will start with end-to-end workflows, then design roles, skills, and technology around them.
This shift allows organisations to:
Remove friction and duplication
Target automation where it actually helps
Clarify decision rights and escalation paths
HR’s value lies in making these workflows workable for humans, not just efficient on paper.
3) Skills finally replace jobs as the core planning currency
Skills-based organisations have been discussed for years. In 2026, they become unavoidable.
The reason is simple: tasks change faster than jobs.
Workforce planning will increasingly focus on:
Capability coverage
Skill scarcity and risk
Build / buy / borrow decisions
The organisations that succeed won’t over-engineer skills frameworks - they’ll build just enough structure to support mobility, learning, and redeployment.
4) Recruitment is rebuilt around signal, speed, and trust
Recruitment is already at a breaking point. Candidates are fatigued. Hiring managers are overwhelmed. Employer brand damage travels fast.
By 2026, recruitment functions that perform well will:
Use better indicators of capability (not proxies like credentials)
Shorten decision cycles dramatically
Be explicit about how AI is used in screening and selection (we also need better AI-based screening tools, a human is still very much needed in this process!)
Trust — with candidates and the market, along with the human touch to really test at the screening stage — becomes a core recruitment outcome.
5) Leadership capability becomes the primary performance constraint
Most organisations don’t fail because of strategy. They fail because leaders can’t sustain execution through constant change.
In 2026, leadership development shifts from programmes to embedded capability:
Decision-making under uncertainty
Prioritisation and trade-offs
Psychological safety and accountability
Leading AI-augmented teams
HR impact here comes from simplifying expectations and enabling leaders to lead well in real conditions and amongst constant change - normalise change.
6) Managers are treated as HR’s primary “customers”
Organisations are finally confronting a hard truth: if managers are overloaded, unclear, or unsupported, everything else breaks.
In 2026, effective HR teams will:
Design tools and processes for managers, not around them
Reduce administrative burden
Provide clear, usable guidance for performance, feedback, and change
Manager experience becomes a leading indicator of organisational health.
7) Culture becomes measurable because performance pressure demands it
Culture stops being abstract when results are on the line.
In 2026, culture work becomes credible because it is:
Defined in observable behaviours
Embedded in performance systems (auditors are now putting it on their spreadsheets, yup!)
Measured through friction points, not slogans
HR’s role is to connect culture directly to how decisions are made and work is prioritised.
8) Pay transparency and compliance complexity intensify
Across Australia and New Zealand, organisations face rising expectations around pay equity, transparency, and defensibility - often across multiple jurisdictions.
By 2026:
Job architecture becomes a governance tool
Reward decisions require clearer rationale
AI in employment decisions attracts closer scrutiny
HR teams that succeed will think systemically, partnering closely with legal, finance, and technology.
9) Sustainability moves from narrative to organisational discipline
In 2026, sustainability stops being something organisations talk about and becomes something they must operationalise.
This means:
Clear ownership for sustainability outcomes
Alignment between strategy, workforce decisions, and long-term viability
Moving beyond values statements to execution discipline
HR plays a key role in ensuring sustainability is reflected in capability, workforce planning, and leadership expectations - not just reporting.
10) CE performance is embedded into governance — because governance should help to drive results
CE performance will increasingly be treated as a governance issue, not a cultural one.
This is the critical shift.
Governance is the highest-impact intervention an organisation has if it wants to drive results — and CE outcomes will follow good governance, not goodwill.
By 2026, leading organisations will:
Embed CE measures into executive scorecards and incentives
Assign CE accountability to roles with real decision-making power
Integrate CE considerations into investment, restructuring, and workforce planning decisions
HR’s role is to design the people systems that make CE performance unavoidable, not optional.
11) Employee experience becomes “professional experience”
Perks and engagement initiatives lose some relevance in 2026. What matters is whether work feels clear, achievable, and worthwhile.
Employee experience will be defined by:
Role clarity
Quality of tools and workflows
Trust in how AI and data are used
Access to development that actually improves performance
HR’s task is to reduce cognitive load, not quietly increase it.
12) Entry-level work is reshaped, not eliminated
Despite the fear narrative, entry-level roles do not disappear in 2026, they change shape.
Some routine work is automated. At the same time:
Junior employees take on higher-value tasks earlier
AI provides scaffolding and support
Supervision, coaching, and quality control become critical
Organisations that invest here build stronger talent pipelines. Those that don’t simply push risk downward.
What HR leaders should do now
To be ready for 2026, HR leaders should focus on six moves:
Redesign workflows, not just roles
Build a practical skills spine
Strengthen governance around AI, pay, and CE performance
Treat managers as the primary audience
Embed sustainability into decision-making systems
Focus relentlessly on execution, not activity
A final word from PeopleEX
The organisations that will perform best in 2026 are not the ones doing more HR - they are the ones doing better-designed HR.
When people, performance, sustainability, and governance are aligned, results follow.
That is where HR creates its greatest value.
This article draws on research from Gartner, the World Economic Forum, Korn Ferry, Microsoft Work Trend Index, SHRM, ADP, Gallup, and regulatory guidance across Australia and New Zealand, alongside PeopleEX’s advisory experience supporting organisations through workforce, governance, and sustainability transformation.
