Unily’s latest whitepaper on the future of the workplace reveals how employee experience (EX) has become the new business operating system: the determinant of how quickly an organization can move, adapt, and deliver.
As emerging technology and evolving employee expectations shift business models at speed, the HR trends emerging today will shape tomorrow’s most resilient, high-performing organizations.
Here are some of the key HR trends for 2026 and beyond – an era where the department is undoubtedly a performance infrastructure.
HR trend 1: Building trust and confidence to enable AI adoption
AI is changing how people work – moving from enhancement to engine, becoming embedded in workflow.
However, adoption is uneven. A Gartner study saw 77% of CEOs say AI would be ushering in a new business era, but Unily research shows that 32% of employees have never used an AI tool at work, meaning C-suite expectations aren’t yet being matched by workforce usage.
Meanwhile, Adecco’s Global Workforce of the Future study found that 40% of employees are worried about the long-term impact of AI on their job security.
That anxiety poses a real barrier to engagement and change-readiness. For HR leaders, there is a real need to create psychological readiness for AI, where employees feel safe to experiment and learn.
This means fostering open dialogue about uncertainty and building trust in human-machine collaboration.
There is also a need to design ethical guardrails, with the concept of AI Councils – where HR, IT, Legal, and Communications leaders jointly define ethical guardrails – beginning to come to the fore.
As Samantha Rope, SVP HR NEEMEA at The Adecco Group noted at Unite 25:
“Removing the fear and really enabling employees to understand the real impact and opportunity for AI is important, and HR leaders have a critical role to play. AI will be an enabler and an empowering tool that helps build human capability. But if you’ve got somebody that’s fearful and you force them into a learning route, they won’t benefit, because they’re not psychologically safe.”
HR leaders must create the readiness by meeting people where they are and designing tailored learning journeys.
Unily’s whitepaper has some real-world examples of this; with the message coming across loud and clear: the move to an AI-enabled enterprise cannot succeed unless it is also a trust-enabled enterprise.
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HR trend 2: Continuous listening > annual surveys
Traditional engagement surveys can’t keep up with the pace of change. Today’s employees expect the same level of responsiveness from their workplace as from consumer technologies.
Enterprises now need continuous listening systems – digital nervous systems that provide live employee feedback.
Examples highlighted in the whitepaper include:
- CVS Health, who utilize an AI sentiment engine categorizing thousands of employee comments daily
- Wipro, who use pulse surveys after policy changes to shape messaging in hours
The payoff is real. According to Deloitte, in organizations where feedback is heard and acted upon, 90% of employees say they are more likely to stay.
This emphasizes that employee listening isn’t soft, it’s smart.
HR trend 3: Fluid EX ownership across functions
This is a trend that impacts HR – but not only HR.
The EX landscape is becoming too complex for any single function to own.
Therefore, one of the major trends set to take flight is the rise of functional fluidity. This is the next evolution of EX governance. It’s a model where multiple functions – particularly HR, IT, and Internal Communications – lead together.
You can also think of it as an employee enablement function – a function whose job isn’t to manage programs, but to remove friction, connect insight with action, and accelerate organizational velocity.
This will also demands a broader portfolio of skills. These include:
- Technological fluency: Confidence in AI-native platforms and automation
- Data literacy: Predicting future-readiness and influencing insight-led decisions
- Operational agility: Rapid iteration based on signals from the workforce
This will also lead to new measurements of success. Key questions will be around how quickly an organization adapts, responds, aligns, and performs.
Additional KPIs will include:
- Time-to-belief: How quickly employees understand strategy
- Activation rate: How broadly a change is adopted
- Experience influence score: How EX is supporting business priorities
- Resilience levels: How stable trust in the business stays during disruption
When it comes to functional fluidity, the goal isn’t necessarily about ownership – it’s clarity and delivery of business outcomes.
EX moves from engagement to enablement
Historically, EX was evaluated by engagement and sentiment. But the new EX mandate is clear:
Can people move at the speed the business requires?
When employees understand strategy, trust systems, and have access to the right resources, they work faster and smarter. When they can’t, friction stalls progress.
Today, the most forward-thinking HR leaders focus on designing experiences that help employees turn intent into action, at pace.
HR trends 2026: Get deeper insights
From AI governance to continuous listening to manager enablement, the HR trends shaping the years ahead reflect one of the biggest step-changes in recent decades.
Unily’s full report explores these trends in depth, along with insights from global brands and industry experts.
Download the full report and get a head start on your 2026 planning:
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