Dive Brief:
- Business leaders across North America and Europe plan to accelerate their global hiring but face hurdles such as finding talent and employee engagement under strain, according to Atlas HXM’s Global Atlas Report for 2026.
- A December 2025 survey of 425 senior HR, legal, finance and operational leaders across the U.S., U.K., Canada, Netherlands and Ireland revealed that nearly half (49%) of organizations with an international workforce said attracting and retaining international talent is very or extremely challenging. More than a third (37%) of U.S. leaders expressed a similar frustration, the global business management platform said.
- As global expansion and AI adoption speed up, employee engagement has also faltered: 69% of survey respondents find it challenging to keep their international workforce engaged, citing higher turnover and job-hopping (50%); cultural friction affecting collaboration (50%); burnout (48%); and quiet quitting (48%).
Dive Insight:
Hiring globally has always brought challenges, such as navigating visas and managing payroll across borders, but in 2026, “who you hire — and where you find them — is becoming just as difficult,” Atlas HXM CEO Jim McCoy stated in a post.
The problem is that many organizations are sticking with traditional, oversaturated markets and relying on inconsistent job titles and salaries that are out of sync with local benchmarks, the report suggested.
The report recommended that instead of relying on “the usual suspects” — saturated talent markets such as Canada and Europe — organizations seek out untapped labor pools like those in the Middle East and North and sub-Sahara Africa.
Also, as organizations expand internationally, employee engagement has become fractured, in large part because team members are in different time zones, with different cultural norms or local employment-related expectations, all of which can fragment collaboration, the report found.
On the other hand, one challenging factor — regulatory uncertainty — is not deterring hiring growth across borders. Two-thirds (67%) of organizations in the U.S. said that due to changing immigration policies, they’re accelerating workforce and hiring decisions, and almost all (92%) said they feel prepared to navigate new or changing immigration policies.
Their confidence is likely based on having a flexible workplace model that relies less on visa mobility and more on external legal and compliance advisories, the research indicated.
Given that traditional workforce strategies are designed for a world that no longer exists, companies should update their models, according to a February report from labor market intelligence firm Lightcast.
For instance, two-thirds of job postings globally require a university degree, but only approximately a third of workers have one, per the report. Additionally, because the impact of AI differs across industries and roles, employers need to adopt specific strategies to meet these needs, which degree-based hiring is failing to do.
The problem may be compounded by findings that AI skills now surpass traditional IT and engineering as the most difficult for employers to find globally, ManpowerGroup recently reported. Western European countries are facing especially stark shortages, while the U.S. is slightly below the global average, ManpowerGroup said.
