Support for workers’ needs is a differentiator between high- and low-performing employers in a year that will be defined by accelerating change, SHRM researchers found in a series of two recent surveys of U.S. employees and HR professionals.
The HR organization’s 2026 “State of the Workplace” report, which queried more than 1,800 HR professionals and more than 2,000 workers, found evidence of a “chasm” between organizations that effectively address employee needs and those that don’t, Alex Alonso, SHRM’s chief data and analytics officer, said during a Jan. 8 press conference.
Results of the survey showed that 72% of HR respondents said workers had higher expectations of employers than in the past. However, among workers who graded their employers positively in addressing needs, 91% reported job satisfaction, compared to 44% who said their employers were ineffective at doing so.
Retention also emerged as a concern for negatively-graded employers. More than half of employees at organizations that did not do well at meeting employee needs said they were at least somewhat likely to leave their job within a year.
Employers can improve their odds of excelling in this area by investing in the development of leaders and managers, James Atkinson, VP of thought leadership at SHRM, told reporters.
A separate SHRM report, “CHRO Priorities and Perspectives,” analyzed survey responses from 129 CHROs. That report found CHROs expected leadership transparency and management of multigenerational workforces to become more prevalent workplace trends in 2026.
CHROs have historically made manager development a core part of their roles, Atkinson said, but the rest of the C-suite has gradually realized how important this work is in preparing for unprecedented change.
Close alignment between CHROs, other execs on AI
The vast majority of CHRO respondents, 92%, said they expected greater AI integration into workforce operations, and 84% expected to see an increase in AI-specific upskilling. Atkinson said those points show close alignment between CHROs and the rest of the C-suite on AI, particularly given data from a SHRM survey of CEOs where most respondents planned to prioritize AI integration in 2026.
But there is some concern among CHROs about AI’s use in HR-specific contexts like recruiting, where increasingly automated processes might lead to AIs interacting with one another only to sideline human input.
“What we’re seeing [...] is a little bit of trying to recalibrate that and figuring out where humans need to play a greater role in the process,” Atkinson said.
Industry observers have identified several potential HR functions as candidates for some degree of automation in 2026, including talent development. But skills are a particularly tricky target, Atkinson noted, because they tend to be “messier” than the list of qualifications that typically appear on a resume. That hasn’t stopped employers from experimenting with AI to create more dynamic and personalized learning experiences, he added, though such examples are few and far between.
Conversely, SHRM found that 68% of organizations expected to use AI tools to monitor and evaluate employee performance.
More broadly, HR will be tasked with grounding AI in stakeholder value, Alonso said. He noted that this is deliberately distinct from shareholder value because employers seek to drive value in the wider communities in which they operate.
