As technological advancements, shifting labor markets, and evolving employee expectations reshape the HR landscape, you’re at the forefront of navigating these changes. Your mission is to align your strategies with broader business goals.

A good place to start? Data. 

Gartner’s survey of over 1,400 HR leaders across 60+ countries highlights five key priorities for 2025. These priorities do more than define areas of focus—they reflect broader, industry-wide HR trends reshaping the landscape. 

Explore these priorities to uncover five current trends HR leaders can leverage this year.

Key HR Priorities for 2026

Per Garner, HR leaders’ top five priorities are:

1. Leader and management development
2. Organizational culture
3. Strategic workforce planning
4. HR technology
5. Change management

The 3 Pressure Points Driving These Priorities

To add more context, let’s set the stage by discussing why those priorities have become so important. What exactly fueled the need for them?

1. Lack of Alignment Between HR and Business Planning

The majority of CEOs surveyed cite growth as their top priority for 2025. However, a significant challenge persists—only 28% of HR leaders agree that HR strategic planning is fully integrated with business planning. This misalignment hinders a company’s ability to achieve its full growth potential.

Integrating HR functions into your overall business planning can be a game-changer for sustainable growth. It’s about building stronger leadership, fostering a culture that embraces agility, and implementing strategies that align talent development with broader business goals. 

2. Generative AI

The rapid rise of AI in the workplace is creating more confusion than clarity. Business leaders are banking on AI to boost productivity by 23% in the next 12 to 18 months. But here’s the reality: Nearly half of employees (47%) say they have no clue how to hit those targets, and 77% feel AI tools are actually dragging them down and piling onto their workload​.

This disconnect is where HR leaders like you come in. You have the power to set the stage for success by researching and exploring ways to integrate AI tools into your workload, setting precedence and promoting innovation.

3. Labor Shortages

The global labor market faces significant disruptions, with over 85 million jobs projected to go unfilled by 2030. Additionally, 23% of jobs worldwide are expected to change over the next five years in response to industry transformation, including AI. 

HR leaders must engage in strategic workforce planning to address talent shortages and align their efforts with long-term organizational needs.

2026 HR Trends That Put Emphasis on Priorities

Let’s take a moment to revisit the priorities: 

1. Leader and management development
2. Organizational culture
3. Strategic workforce planning
4. HR technology
5. Change management

So, how can leaders proactively address these HR management trends? Turn each priority into practice—consider actionable steps that will guide you. 

The good news is that we’ve done the work for you and accompanied each practice with relevant data from Gartner. 

Start using these five essential HR management trends to position your company for long-term success.

1. Evolving Leadership Roles

HR professionals play a pivotal role in aligning talent and business objectives. As businesses scale, so must leadership responsibilities. A good place to start is your development programs. 

For context:

• Just 36% of HR leaders believe their current leadership development programs effectively prepare leaders for future challenges.
• Only 23% of HR leaders feel confident that their emerging leaders are capable of meeting the organization's future needs.

Solution

HR leaders can help enhance leadership development programs by:

• Implementing connection-based learning models. Instead of leaning on traditional seminars and lectures, encourage individuals to apply skills in daily roles and then engage in discussions or workshops with peers about their experiences. That way, leaders can learn from one another through real-world application.
• Offering mentoring and coaching for both hard skills (the technical skills required to do a job) and soft skills (like communication, time management, and critical thinking). Facilitate regular interactions between mentors, peers, and leaders to gather feedback and refine skills over time, ensuring leadership development aligns with evolving business needs.

2. Promoting a Culture Focused on Agility

Over half of HR leaders believe managers at their organizations fail to enforce the desired vision of culture within their teams. At a time when businesses prioritize growth, agility should be front and center in workplaces.

Managers play a pivotal role in bringing this cultural agility to fruition (they account for 70% of team engagement). They must set the example but don’t have to do it alone; HR leaders can step in and offer support and guidance.

Solution 

Encouraging managers to weave agility into their culture requires pairing agility with specific behaviors. 

This effort depends on the specific needs of your organization but may include: 

• Accountability: Taking ownership of a new role or responsibility
• Collaboration: Promoting peer connections to drive innovative solutions
• Transparency: Inviting peers to an open dialogue about newly updated workflows or solutions 

Let’s also not forget the power of rewards and recognition. Recognizing managers who successfully integrate agility into their team’s culture will reinforce their efforts and encourage others to follow suit. 

Read about employee recognition trends to further optimize your strategy.

3. Driving Strategic Workforce Planning

Integrating HR functions into overall business planning isn't just a best practice—it's a strategic necessity for ensuring long-term growth and adaptability. 

Doing so can help your team future-proof the workforce against the labor shortages discussed. Considering that 61% of HR leaders state that their workforce planning efforts are limited to a one-year plan, explore solutions that include a step-by-step method. 

Solution
A phased approach to strategic workforce planning might look something like this:

• Launch pilots (short-term): Focus on immediate talent needs by establishing pilots that address headcount planning, L&D requirements, and contingent labor.
• Expand scope (mid-term): Gradually expand to include skills, labor trends, and automated processes, ensuring better scalability and adaptability.
• Scale and integrate (long-term): Implement enterprise-wide solutions involving internal talent marketplaces, job sentiment analysis, and predictive planning.

This progressive approach offers the opportunity to center efforts on achievable steps while preparing for future challenges.

4. Gaining Real Value from HR Technology

You’ve probably invested a lot into HR technology, but if it’s not managed right, those tools can end up feeling more like obstacles than assets. Many organizations are caught in a cycle of limited integration, patchy training, and systems that just don’t work well together​.

Here’s how you can help your organization get real value from AI and HR technology:

• Improve system adoption: Choose intuitive tools and streamline processes to reduce frustration and boost productivity. When a tool is easy to use, you’ll see more buy-in from stakeholders.
• Develop transparent partnerships: Build strong, ongoing relationships with tech vendors through regular check-ins and strategic planning. Vendors who truly understand your pain points are better equipped to offer tailored solutions.
• Expand HR staff capabilities: Provide continuous training to help your team see AI as a valuable resource instead of a headache. With the right knowledge, your team can turn AI from a roadblock into a game-changer.

By taking a more holistic approach to this HR technology trend—addressing the employee experience and ensuring tools are working for them, not against them—you can transform AI from a productivity blocker into a productivity booster.

5. Optimizing Change Management

As organizations face rapid shifts, traditional change management practices are proving insufficient. Many employees report change fatigue, resulting in lower engagement, psychological safety, and retention rates.

Solution
This concern is another great opportunity for HR leaders to step in and align talent development with business objectives. 

Activate change champions and strengthen resilience by:

• Identifying key influencers: Dig into organizational analyses to spot highly motivated employees who can drive change. Don’t forget to tap into team managers’ insights to help identify these key players.
• Accurately analyzing initiatives via feedback: Work with your leadership team to gauge the impact, readiness, and value of change initiatives before launching them.
• Building resilience: Encourage managers to help their teams become more adaptable, focusing on building their ability to roll with change instead of just requiring that they follow along.

By recognizing influential figures, organizations can better navigate complex change landscapes and sustain performance over time.

Pave Your Way to a Phenomenal 2025 and Beyond

HR teams have a lot of responsibility, but they also have the unique power to initiate transformative changes in a business. By adapting to current and future HR trends in 2025 and beyond, you can take a considerable step towards nurturing and safeguarding the long-term success of the workforce and organization. 

For more guidance, we encourage you to learn more about how Awardco’s renowned recognition solution can optimize your strategies this year. Plus, don’t miss out on valuable takeaways from our latest webinars and events.