There's a difficult balancing act at the heart of HR right now.
Organizations want to move faster, become more productive, and make the most of artificial intelligence. Employees want stability, meaningful work, opportunities to grow, and some reassurance about what the future holds.
HR leaders are expected to deliver both.
You're being asked to prepare the workforce for roles that are still evolving, help managers lead teams through uncertainty, and build a strong workplace culture across increasingly complex organizations. You're also expected to demonstrate that investments in people are contributing to business performance.
And you're expected to do all of this while the definition of work itself is changing.
New research suggests the gap between organizational ambition and employee experience is widening.
PwC's Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2026 found a growing divide between employees benefiting from AI and new opportunities and those who feel increasingly uncertain about their future. Trust in management had fallen by seven percentage points year over year.
Meanwhile, McKinsey's HR Monitor 2026 found that just 11% of organizations take a long-term approach to workforce planning, despite the rapid changes underway.
At Unily's Unite 26 conference, one theme kept resurfacing: Successful transformation depends as much on how people experience change as it does on the technology driving it.
New research from Unily and Gallup shows just how much that experience of work matters.
In a study of 2,305 U.S. workers, employees with a good digital workplace experience were 3.1 times as likely to be engaged and 5.5 times as likely to strongly recommend their employer compared with employees with a poor experience. They were also considerably less likely to report frequent burnout.
Yet only 1 in 5 employees has a good Digital Workplace Experience.
The State of the Digital Workplace Experience
The findings don't suggest technology alone determines whether employees thrive. They point to something more fundamental: The systems, information, relationships, and opportunities employees encounter every day are closely connected to their experience of work.
As we look toward 2027, we believe HR has an opportunity to influence those experiences more directly.
The most effective HR strategies won't simply help people adapt to a changing organization. They'll put people at the heart of transformation, helping organizations adapt to the people who make them successful and empowering those people to drive organizational change from within.
1. HR Will Move From Managing Change to Shaping How Work Is Redesigned
AI is redesigning work itself. HR leaders need a seat at the table where those design decisions are made.
For years, HR has played an important role in supporting organizational transformation, from digital transformation programs to restructures, through effective change management.
A new technology is introduced, a business is restructured, or a process changes. HR helps communicate the change, prepare employees, and manage the transition.
But AI presents a different challenge.
When technology can take on parts of a job, organizations need to reconsider how responsibilities are distributed, which skills matter, and where human judgment remains essential.
These aren't decisions that can be left entirely to technology teams.
At Unite 26, Nikki Turner-Harding, Country Head, UK and Ireland, at The Adecco Group, described the challenge of introducing AI into an organization where employees were understandably concerned about what automation might mean for their roles.
Rather than beginning with productivity targets, the organization involved employees in identifying repetitive tasks and exploring where AI could give them more time for the parts of their jobs that required human judgment, creativity, and relationships.
It's an important distinction.
Employees are more likely to see the possibilities of transformation when they have a meaningful role in shaping it.
And HR is well positioned to make that happen from the ground up.
Deloitte's 2026 Global Human Capital Trends report shows this opportunity. It found that 85% of leaders consider organizational adaptability critical, yet only 7% believe they're leading in helping their workforce continuously grow and adapt.
The research also suggests that organizations taking a predominantly technology-focused approach to AI are more likely to miss opportunities for stronger returns than those taking a human-centered approach.
In 2027, we expect HR leaders to become more influential in decisions about how work is designed, not simply how changes are implemented.
That means asking different questions. Which activities should be automated? Which capabilities should be strengthened? What new opportunities could emerge for employees? And how do we ensure that efficiency gains don't come at the expense of meaningful work?
2. Skills Development Will Become a Continuous Part of Work, Not a Separate Activity
When jobs are changing faster than training programs can keep up, learning needs to work differently.
Most organizations understand that AI will change the skills their employees need, and many are already investing in upskilling and reskilling.
The harder question is how to prepare people for a future that's still taking shape.
Traditional learning and development models aren't always well suited to that challenge.
Employees are assigned courses, complete training modules, and return to their jobs. But the opportunity to apply what they've learned may be limited, and the next change may arrive before the training has made much difference.
McKinsey's HR Monitor 2026 found that 24% of employees surveyed hadn't participated in any training while more than half received performance feedback only once a year or not at all. Both point to performance management and employee development that aren't keeping pace with change.
These findings suggest that the challenge extends beyond the availability of learning content.
PwC's 2026 workforce research found that a substantial proportion of employees feel excluded from the opportunities emerging around AI. Its analysis identified a large group of workers experiencing less access to development, weaker confidence, and growing uncertainty about their prospects.
The Unily and Gallup research reveals the same gap when it comes to AI. Almost three in four employees (72%) haven't participated in any training or learning activities from their organization on how to use AI tools for their work in the past six months. As AI reshapes roles, that's a skills gap HR can't afford to leave open.
The State of the Digital Workplace Experience
In 2027, we expect organizations to place greater emphasis on helping employees learn continuously, within the flow of their work.
That might mean providing guidance when someone encounters an unfamiliar task, helping managers coach employees through new responsibilities, or making it easier for people to explore internal mobility opportunities beyond their current roles.
The experience of learning will need to become more flexible, too.
At Unite 26, Alshaya shared how it had rethought training for its frontline retail workforce.
Rather than relying on lengthy desktop-based learning, the organization introduced shorter, mobile-accessible experiences that better reflected how its employees worked.
People learn in different ways and have different opportunities to engage with employee development. Someone working on a shop floor faces very different constraints from an office employee who can dedicate an afternoon to training.
Generative AI is creating new possibilities for adapting information and learning materials into formats that suit different needs, from articles and videos to audio-based experiences.
Beyond technology, employees also need time to learn, opportunities to practice, and managers who support their development.
3. The Employee Experience Will Become More Adaptive to Individual Needs
For years, HR has worked to make employee experiences more personalized. The next opportunity is making them responsive to changing circumstances.
Think about how different an employee's needs can be over the course of a year.
They might go through onboarding with a new organization, move into a management role, take parental leave, relocate, or begin working in a completely different part of the business.
Each transition creates new questions, responsibilities, and support needs, yet many employee experiences remain relatively static.
People are directed toward the same HR portals, policy libraries, and standardized processes, regardless of what they're trying to accomplish.
Personalization has helped organizations make information more relevant to different employee groups, but relevance isn't quite the same as responsiveness.
Personalization makes an experience relevant to who someone is. Adaptivity makes it responsive to what they need right now.
Imagine a new manager being able to ask a question about handling a difficult conversation and receive appropriate guidance without searching through multiple HR resources.
Or an employee returning from parental leave accessing an experience that brings together relevant policies, practical next steps, and support tailored to that transition.
Organizations could also create dedicated experiences for new workforce initiatives or changing employee needs without lengthy development projects.
And employees could increasingly choose how they engage with information, whether that's reading an article, watching a short video, or listening to an audio explanation.
For HR, the significance isn't simply convenience.
McKinsey's HR Monitor 2026 highlights a growing gap between what employees expect and how organizations respond. Its findings suggest that improving employee experience increasingly depends on addressing practical needs, fairness, and the realities of everyday work.
More adaptive experiences could make organizational support easier to access at the moments when employees need it most.
4. Managers Will Become the Critical Link Between AI Transformation and Employee Trust
Employees don't experience organizational strategy through a presentation. They experience it through their manager.
When an organization announces a major transformation, employees naturally have questions.
What does this mean for my role? Will my responsibilities change? What skills will I need? Is my job secure?
A company-wide announcement can explain the strategy, but it rarely answers every personal concern.
Those conversations often fall to managers who may be navigating exactly the same uncertainty as their teams.
They're expected to communicate confidently about changes they don't fully understand, support employees through unfamiliar situations, and maintain performance while learning new ways of working themselves.
It's a demanding position.
PwC's 2026 workforce research paints a concerning picture of the relationship between employees and leadership.
Across its global sample, trust in management fell by seven percentage points year over year. The research also identified overstretched managers as a barrier to helping employees navigate change and develop new capabilities.
The Unily and Gallup research also points to a wider challenge around clarity.
Among employees receiving weekly digital communications from senior leaders, 54% said those messages were only somewhat helpful or not helpful at all in understanding organizational priorities.
More communication isn't necessarily creating more understanding.
At Unite 26, Tess Jennings of First Tech Federal Credit Union shared how her organization navigated a merger that created a credit union of 2 million members and 3,500 employees. Rather than relying on top-down announcements alone, First Tech recruited a cross-functional group of change champions through a call-out on its intranet, gave them "the why" behind the change, and equipped them with resources to cascade to their colleagues.
It's a lesson that applies directly to managers. They're the champions of their own teams who can turn organizational messages into conversations that actually make sense.
Employees need space to ask difficult questions and receive credible answers, even when the organization hasn't resolved every uncertainty.
In 2027, we expect HR to place greater emphasis on helping managers translate organizational change into meaningful conversations with their teams.
That includes equipping them with reliable information, practical guidance, coaching skills, and permission to acknowledge uncertainty.
5. Employee Well-Being Will Become a Question of How Work is Designed
You can't solve every workplace problem with another well-being initiative.
Organizations have made important progress in recognizing employee well-being.
Mental health support, flexible work arrangements, employee benefits, and employee assistance programs have become familiar parts of the human resources agenda.
But what happens when the work itself is contributing to the problem?
An employee might have access to excellent support services while spending their day navigating confusing processes, switching between disconnected systems, and struggling to find the information they need.
Those frustrations can accumulate.
Unily and Gallup found that 38% of employees with poor Digital Workplace Experiences reported feeling burned out always or very often, compared with 11% of those with good experiences.
The research doesn't establish that digital workplaceproblems cause burnout. But it does reinforce the importance of looking at the everyday conditions in which employees work.
Technology is only one part of that picture.
Unclear priorities, unnecessary approvals, unrealistic workloads, and constant interruptions can all make work more difficult than it needs to be.
McKinsey's State of Organizations 2026 makes a related argument: Sustainable organizational performance requires attention to management practices, culture, employee health, and well-being.
Its research also suggests that organizations struggle to sustain performance improvements when they fail to invest in the conditions that support people over time.
In 2027, we expect more HR leaders to approach employee well-being through the lens of work design.
That means collaborating with IT, operations, and business leaders to identify sources of unnecessary effort and rethink how work gets done.
It also means challenging the assumption that productivity improvements should always result in employees doing more.
If AI saves someone two hours a week, what happens to that time?
Does it create space for more meaningful work, development, and better decisions? Or does the organization simply increase expectations?
The answer will shape how employees experience AI-driven transformation and whether generative AI becomes a source of opportunity or simply more pressure.
6. Culture Will Need to Be Experienced, Not Simply Communicated
An organization's culture isn't what it says in its values statement. It's what employees experience when they're trying to do their jobs.
Most HR leaders understand the importance of workplace culture, but maintaining a strong sense of connection is becoming more complicated.
Organizations are increasingly distributed. Teams work across locations, time zones, and functions, and remote work and hybrid work models are now part of everyday life for many employees. Employees may spend much of their working lives interacting with digital systems rather than colleagues, and remote working can make the informal moments that build culture harder to come by.
AI adds another dimension.
As technology takes on more tasks, organizations will need to think carefully about where employees build relationships, learn from one another, and develop a sense of belonging.
Deloitte's 2026 Global Human Capital Trends found that 65% of organizations believe their culture needs to change significantly because of AI.
The report introduces the idea of cultural debt: The gradual accumulation of unresolved questions about trust, fairness, accountability, and human relationships as organizations adopt new ways of working.
The Unily and Gallup research shows just how much impact a strong digital culture can have.
Employees with good Digital Culture but poor Digital Enablement reported engagement of 38%, compared with 17% among employees with good Digital Enablement but poor Digital Culture. Employees with both reported the strongest outcomes overall.
In other words, access to effective tools matters but so does whether the digital workplace helps employees feel connected, recognized, and able to grow. If anything, it’s this connected workplace that can make a bigger difference to employee experience.
Etihad Airways shows what it looks like when culture is experienced rather than simply communicated. At Unite 26, the airline shared how it had created a mobile employee experience that brought together workplace information, services, recognition, and opportunities for connection across a diverse workforce.
The interesting point isn't simply that recognition became digital.
It's that the organization built connection and appreciation into employees' everyday working lives, which is exactly where culture is felt.
And the results speak for themselves. The company reported more than 10,000 peer recognition interactions and 99.9% adoption following launch.
In 2027, we expect HR leaders to think less about culture as something reinforced through occasional campaigns and more about how it shows up in everyday interactions.
That includes how employees receive recognition, access opportunities, connect with colleagues, and understand their contribution to organizational goals.
7. HR Will Face Growing Pressure to Demonstrate Its Impact on Business Performance
The value of a good employee experience is increasingly difficult to dismiss. But HR still needs to show what it's achieving.
HR leaders have spent years making the case that engagement, culture, development, and employee well-being matter to organizational success.
Today, that argument is becoming more closely connected to business priorities.
Organizations want to understand how their people investments support productivity, employee retention, adaptability, and growth.
But the conversation is also becoming more nuanced as organizations increasingly can’t afford to chase quick wins to show their value.
McKinsey's State of Organizations 2026 emphasizes the importance of sustained performance rather than short-term productivity gains.
Ultimately, sustained performance looks like keeping your best people.
The Unily and Gallup research found that employees with good digital workplace experiences were 5.5 times as likely to strongly recommend their employer as a place to work compared with those with poor experiences.
They were also less likely to be looking for another job: 42% compared with 66%.
These findings are associations rather than proof of cause and effect. But they point directly to two outcomes of performance every business cares about: Hiring and retention. When employees are more likely to recommend their employer and less likely to be job hunting, organizations are better placed to strengthen talent acquisition and keep the people they've invested in. That's why the everyday experience of work deserves attention alongside traditional business performance measures.
For HR leaders, the next challenge is demonstrating the value of specific improvements.
That means connecting each initiative to a clear result. A redesigned onboarding experience should help new hires become effective more quickly. Better support for managers should show up as greater clarity and confidence across their teams. Easier access to learning should translate into the capabilities the business needs. And when AI removes repetitive work, the time it frees up should be used in ways that improve outcomes.
Proving that value requires a closer relationship between HR, IT, finance, and business leaders, along with a stronger foundation in people analytics.
It also requires moving beyond activity-based reporting.
The number of training courses delivered, communications published, or employee initiatives launched tells us relatively little about whether work has actually improved.
In 2027, we expect HR leaders to face growing expectations to connect employee experience improvements with measurable organizational outcomes, such as time to productivity for new hires, retention rates, internal mobility, engagement scores, and manager effectiveness.
What Does This Mean for HR Leaders in 2027?
There's a common thread running through these predictions.
HR is becoming more closely connected to the way work itself is designed, and it's becoming a key player in leading organizations through change.
As AI changes roles, responsibilities, and organizational expectations, the people function has an opportunity to influence decisions that will shape employees' working lives for years to come.
That means moving beyond helping employees cope with change.
It means helping organizations make better choices about how change happens.
Which parts of work should technology take on? How can employees continue to develop and contribute? What support do managers need? How can organizations reduce unnecessary pressure while improving performance? And how do we ensure that the benefits of innovation reach the entire workforce?
These aren't questions HR can answer alone.
They require closer collaboration with technology, operations, communications, and business leadership.
However, HR brings something essential to the conversation: An understanding of the people whose skills, judgment, relationships, and commitment ultimately determine whether transformation succeeds.
In 2027, the most effective HR leaders won't simply be preparing employees for the future of work.
They'll be helping create a future of work that's worth preparing for.
Explore the Research and Conversations Behind These Trends
The State of the Digital Workplace Experience: Unily and Gallup
Discover how Digital Workplace Experiences relate to employee engagement, well-being, and retention in new research involving 2,305 U.S. workers.
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Unite 26 On Demand
Hear directly from the leaders navigating workplace transformation, including stories from The Adecco Group, Etihad Airways, Alshaya, and more on Unite On-Demand.
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