From AI’s impact on HR itself to the quiet erosion of workplace culture, The People Space discusses Gartner's four priorities that will test CHROs’ courage and clarity in 2026 and why, despite feeling stretched thin, HR’s adventure is only just beginning
Summary
Gartner’s 2026 CHRO priorities highlight four shifts: AI’s transformation of HR itself; the rise of AI as a workforce alternative; the need to mobilise leaders for growth through ungovernable change; and the erosion of culture as a performance enabler. HR leaders must redefine their operating models, engage the C-suite on human–machine design, address weak leadership mindsets, and rebuild performance culture from the inside out.
The year CHROs felt like Bilbo Baggins
“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” Bilbo Baggins, The Lord of the Rings
Mark Whittle, vice president at Gartner Business and Technology Insights, opened his Symposium 2025 keynote with that line and the audience knew exactly what he meant.
“Many of us are worn down,” he said. “Some of you are just done. You’re looking at all the uncertainties coming with AI and you’re thinking: where’s Frodo so I can give him this damn ring already?”
It was a fitting metaphor for HR leaders who, at the close of 2025, feel both fatigued and indispensable. “The fact that we’re stretched and overwhelmed means we’re still in the game,” Whittle added, quoting an ex CHRO he had recently met. “It’s a good thing. Game on. It’s our turn to step into the adventure.”
Every year Gartner surveys 426 CHROs and 105 CEOs and senior executives, combining those findings with expert interviews to map the people function’s emerging agenda. The 2026 priorities reveal a profession at a crossroads. Gartner’s 2025 CEO and Senior Executive Survey shows CEOs remain fixated on growth – 53% cite it as their number one priority and 77% say they are pursuing cost-efficiency measures. CHROs, meanwhile, face the reality of how these ambitions are achieved.
Given this context, here are four defining priorities for HR in 2026.
1. Harness AI to revolutionise HR
AI has moved from experimental to existential. AI is now the CEO’s top new initiative for the C-suite to lead, even while they themselves have low AI savviness. And what about AI in HR? Well, two years ago just 19% of HR leaders were implementing AI. By mid-2025 that figure had tripled to 61%, according to Gartner’s global benchmarks. And 92% are now piloting or implementing AI within the function its research finds.
But Whittle cautions that speed and progress are not the same thing.
“Don’t confuse a few pilots for a plan,” he warns. “Don’t confuse activity for reinvention.”
The data tells a similar story. Gartner’s Hype Cycle for AI in HR 2025 places more than half of all AI-in-HR technologies at the early Innovation Trigger stage while Generative AI in HR has already entered the Trough of Disillusionment. CHROs are investing heavily but struggling to prove value.
The stakes are clear: up to 50% of HR work will soon be automated or run by AI agents and 100% will be augmented, believes Gartner. Without a deliberate strategy the function risks shrinking into an efficiency machine rather than a strategic force.
To avoid that fate Gartner proposes an AI-infused HR operating model built on four elements:
- Innovation command centre – a small hub, led by an HR product or strategy leader, to oversee HR’s AI transformation
- Evolved centres of excellence – from generic solutions to hyper-personalised HR products such as adaptive learning paths or contextual feedback
- AI-powered operations – rather than pushing transactions anymore HR operations will be about managing, training and improving the AI systems that do this work
- Augmented HR business partners – partners who, with AI taking the admin load, can extend their reach from one per 423 employees to as many as 1,200 and drive human-centric strategic transformation in the business.
Whittle notes that HR has already automated the ‘easy’ stuff. Now AI is ready to help with the complex work too but HR’s role has to evolve. In other words, HR’s value will lie in design and decision, not delivery.
“HR is at a crossroads,” Whittle says. “We can let the business paint us into a corner or we can reinvent ourselves. I, for one, would like to stay on the payroll.”
Key takeaway:
Create a clear vision and roadmap for an AI-enabled HR operating model that builds capacity for innovation and transformation rather than just compliance.
2. Shape work in the human–machine era
If AI is transforming HR it’s also redrawing the organisation itself. Gartner’s latest data shows 27% of organisations have redefined job roles or skills because of AI, 24% have redeployed employees and 10% have replaced some workers entirely.
“AI is increasingly being seen as a viable alternative to human talent,” Whittle says. “The key word is seen because this has not become a reality for most of us yet. But what's new are the emerging questions like, is AI a talent segment? Meaning, is AI equivalent to a human?”
That shift is happening against a tougher economic backdrop. 51% of HR leaders have slowed hiring, 37% frozen recruitment and another 37% laid off staff. The combination of economic caution and AI enthusiasm means CEOs are tightening human budgets to fund digital innovation.
Gartner describes this as a fundamental reframing of the workforce: one where AI becomes a talent segment in its own right.
The firm’s human–machine matrix visualises two critical dimensions shaping the future of work:
- Whether AI performs the work or assists human work
- Whether work stays the same or is transformed by AI
Across these axes four realities emerge – automation, augmentation, redefinition and coexistence – all of which will play out simultaneously.
HR needs to be in the room where the future of work is being designed. “Are you in those conversations about how AI is redefining work for the workforce? How are you preparing your C-suite for synthesised workforce scenarios?” asks Whittle.
As he adds, even Yoda would find this moment unpredictable: “Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.”
Case study: Clifford Chance puts AI on the boardroom agenda
At global law firm Clifford Chance AI is a business model discussion. The entire C-suite takes part in evaluating how artificial intelligence affects both the firm’s strategy and its people.
To guide the conversation, leaders ask structured questions across two dimensions:
1. Business model impact
- How will AI influence our revenue and pricing?
- What will it mean for our client value proposition and brand?
- Where does AI create new growth opportunities or risks?
2. Enterprise and workforce impact
- Which core business capabilities will remain or change because of AI?
- How will this alter our workforce strategy and skills mix?
- What ethical guardrails do we need to guide AI use responsibly?
By tackling these questions collectively Clifford Chance ensures AI strategy and people strategy evolve together.
Key takeaway:
Think of AI as a workforce segment in its own right. Lead the C-suite in designing for coexistence, not competition, between humans and machines.
3. Mobilise leaders for growth in an uncertain world
If the first two priorities define HR’s structural challenge this one exposes its human cost. CEOs’ growth ambitions are colliding with economic reality, forcing leaders to walk what Whittle calls the “growth–efficiency tightrope.”
This dual mandate – grow while cutting – has left leaders exhausted. 64% of CHROs say their leaders lack the mindset to guide people through continuous change. Only 32% of leaders have achieved healthy change adoption but the few that have report double the year-on-year revenue growth of their peers.
“Leaders are the linchpin to growth,” Whittle said. “And effective leadership today is change leadership.”
The problem, Gartner’s data shows, is that change has become ungovernable: overlapping, interdependent and externally driven. Tariffs, technology, compliance, AI – they all pile up, leaving no clear beginning or end.
The solution is to routinise change, to build it into the muscle memory of leadership. That means:
- Focusing on progress, not perfection – acknowledging that outcomes will shift
- Normalising discomfort – treating the emotional response to change as natural
- Training intuition – embedding small, repeatable change practices into daily work.
But not every leader belongs on the tightrope.
“We’ve got three kinds holding us back: the underperforming, the unwilling and the unmoving,” Whittle explains. “Retrain, reassign, retire or remove.”
Key takeaway:
Help leaders routinise change and take decisive action on those who can’t. Growth in uncertainty depends on leadership fitness, not leadership volume.
4. Address culture atrophy to power performance
The final priority shifts from structure to soul. In the pandemic’s wake organisations promised empathy and flexibility. Now, under growth and efficiency pressures, many have reverted to harder-edged expectations. The result is what Gartner calls the “give more, expect less” employment deal: employees are working longer hours, with heavier workloads, less flexibility and reduced job security.
“It’s no longer the human deal,” Whittle says. “Employees give more time and effort and expect less support.”
The data backs it up. Over half of Fortune 100 desk workers are now mandated to return fully on-site, according to Fortune (July 2025). Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal declared CEOs are shrinking their workforces and they couldn’t be prouder.
For HR, this shift has cultural consequences. Less than half of CHROs say their culture drives performance, while only 43% of employees believe their culture helps them succeed. Even CEOs, citing culture as one of their top growth challenges, admit it’s not working as intended.
Yet Gartner’s research shows a clear opportunity: organisations that embed their culture intentionally – clarifying values, aligning behaviours and reinforcing them through systems –see up to a 34% uplift in performance. Everybody talks about culture, Whittle says, but few know how to operationalise it.
Three principles underpin culture that drives performance:
- Clarity of values – employees must know what matters most.
- Behavioural alignment – values must translate into daily actions.
- Operational reinforcement – meetings, metrics and systems must reflect those values.
The cultural conversation is shifting from how people feel to how people perform. “CEOs are looking to reset workplace culture, emphasising productivity and speed over flexibility and work-life balance,” says Whittle. “They're less patient with underperformers, especially as human performance is increasingly measured against AI abilities. What's clear is that there's a broad-based enthusiasm today for setting a new cultural norm around more performance-oriented work.”
Key takeaway:
Rebuild culture as a performance system. Align values, behaviours and operations to help employees and performance thrive.
The year ahead: Reinvention by design
Across Gartner’s event I heard one perspective again and again: HR stands at a defining moment. As Whittle puts it: “Be dissolved or be reinvented.”
These 2026 challenges call for HR to stop reacting to disruption and start designing for it – treating AI, culture and leadership as the raw materials of reinvention.
For CHROs the message is both sobering and galvanising: the business is demanding growth and HR must deliver it through clarity, courage and creativity.
Key takeaways
- Harness AI to revolutionise HR (AI adoption up threefold; 92% implementing)
- Shape work in the human–machine era (27% redefined jobs; 51% slowing hiring)
- Mobilise leaders for growth in an uncertain world (64% lack change mindset; 2× growth where adoption is strong)
- Rebuild culture as a performance system (embedded cultures lift performance by 34%)