The HR and Work Trends That Will Matter in 2026

Welcome to HR Disrupted with me, Lucy Adams. Each episode will explore innovative approaches for leaders and HR professionals and challenge the status quo with inspiring but practical people strategies. So if you're looking for fresh ideas, tips, and our take on the latest HR trends, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Hi. So we're recording this at the end of 2025, and so it feels like the right time to think about what's going to be happening for HR people next year in 2026. And to do this, I am delighted to be joined by my co founder at Disruptive hr, Karen Moran. Hi, Karen. Hi, Lucy. And I think your cat, Buster might be making an appearance at some point. It looks like staring at me. Well, it's that time of year where we can't chuck them out, can we? We can't chuck our pets out. So let's get into it. You know, when we're talking to HR teams at the moment, Karen, there seems to be a bit of a. Well, no, not a bit of a. Quite a strong sense of unease. Yeah, it's not panic, exactly. It's more that feeling of, you know, we know things have shifted, but the way we're still expected to do. HR hasn't quite caught up. You know, careers feel different, performance feels harder, leaders are stretched, AI is everywhere, and HR's kind of right in the middle trying to make sense of it all with systems and practices that were probably designed for a much more stable world. Yeah. And I don't want to kick off with a negative, but what do you think the biggest risk to HR is at the moment? I think it's. Yeah, again, we don't want to be sort of too doom and gloom about it, but I think that it isn't that HR people don't know it's all changing. They can see it. But I think we're still kind of trying to solve all of these new problems with the old ways of doing things, you know, and I think we need that real shift now. Yeah, those kind of old tools, old processes, old practices. And, you know, you and I have kind of worried for years that they never really delivered, but they certainly don't seem to be delivering now, do they? So this episode is all about four trends that we think HR really can't ignore as we head into 2026. And these are not big, shiny predictions, are they? They. They're more kind of patterns that we're seeing everywhere, backed up by data, but also some real innovative organizational practice that we're seeing. And so let's kind of Kick off with the first trend, which is about work and careers fitting real lives. You know, one of the phrases we've heard a lot, for example, in 2025 is job hugging. You know, job. Job hugging always gets talked about as if it's a motivational problem, as if people have suddenly become disengaged. You know, it was used to be called quiet quitting, and it's now got a new set of buzzwords, job hugging. But when you look properly, that's not what's going on, is it? No, I think the, the job hugging and why it's slightly different to the quiet quitting is that it is about risk. I think people are staying put, not necessarily because they're sort of loving their jobs, but they just feel leaving is just too risky. You know, we've got higher living costs everywhere, housing feeling out of reach to a lot of our young people. The job market feels very unpredictable. And I think we've seen a lot of organizations who have struggled in the last few years and they keep talking about, you know, loyalty and family and values, and then they're kind of, obviously have no choice but to make big redundancies overnight. So I think staying put for a lot of people is, you know, why I would move, but it just feels a bit safer to stay that security. Yeah. And I think it's, it's, it's bigger than just the, I'm going to go, I'm not going to go and get another job. It's also a lot of people could push for the next role within their existing company, the bigger job, the promotion. Yeah, but they're choosing not to because I think, you know, we recognize that that step up often comes with longer hours, possibly less flexibility and definitely more stress. And for many people, that trade off doesn't feel worth it anymore, doesn't it? And it's not about being lazy. It's that people kind of want more of a life. Yeah, perhaps we always wanted it, but we were too scared to ask. Yeah, I think that's where the flexibility now really matters. And we've got to stop thinking about flexibility being a perk. You know, it's that, that if we think about the return to office mandates we've seen with our clients over the last year, and I think that really does signal a kind of a moment, because not that people hate going to offices, some people do, but it's that blanket rule that we don't trust you when we had so much trust during the pandemic. I think people are kind of revolting. Against that. Yeah, I think they are. And for, you know, the HR people we speak to, they're kind of quite despairing, aren't they? Yeah, you know, they're, they're saying, you know, my CEO just doesn't get it. He or she, usually a he. Yeah. Is, you know, is absolutely adamant that everyone's got to come back into the office. And, and it's, you know, partly trust, partly ego. You know, they don't like to not be able to see everybody. And, and that kind of, you know, zoom is a very more democratic medium, isn't it, than someone having the corner office. And I do really sense that despair from HR where they recognize this tension between a CEO that's saying, you know, everybody's got to be back in the office and recognizing that people are really wanting that flexibility. And we're also seeing that those kind of different choices that people want to make around their life and their work in, in this rise of the, the side hustle. Another bit of jargon. Yeah. For those of you that aren't familiar with side hustles, this is where people have got a project or maybe a little business on the side or maybe it's that they're doing a charity role or. But that sense of I've got something else. Yeah. Other than the job that I do used to be, you know, 8:30 to 5:30 or whenever it was. So it's that people aren't just staying in their jobs, but they're quietly building something alongside them. And this isn't because they've checked out, but because it kind of feels sensible not to put all of their security, income and even their identity into one role. Yeah. And I think we see a lot of organizations kind of really reacting to badly. You know, it's almost like they see it as, you know, a loyalty issue. Yeah. But, you know, I think work doesn't feel as secure as it once did. I think people have more passions than perhaps they did in terms of hobbies or being able to make money from hobbies that maybe they didn't weren't able to do once. And I, like there's a Shopify, have taken a much more grown up view. So they're kind of saying, yep, you can have your side projects as long as there's no conflict of interest and the day job still gets done, then we're going to support. They also saw it in another way of, you know, if people are, if our people are, you know, passionate about something, they're learning, they're experimenting. That's not Actually a threat. That's a capability for us that we can benefit from. Yeah. And back to where we started with sort of seeing, you know, these old tools to engage people in the workplace. Actually. What about embracing what is their passion and saying, how can we channel some of this back into the organization? I think Warner Music did this as well, didn't they? They saw a lot of people that were leaving maybe to set up their own label or doing DJing, and because they couldn't, they felt they couldn't accommodate it within their day job at Warner Music. And then Warner Music said, actually this is crazy. Why don't we allow for greater flexibility, retain these great people, but also the fact that they're out there finding new music, they're engaged in the music industry in ways that perhaps we couldn't be as a corporate. This is a huge benefit to, to us. And I think sometimes we kind of blame Gen Z, don't we, for, for a lot of the. They get blamed for everything, those lazy lot. Yeah. Oh, we've heard so much of this. And clearly whilst there are some challenges, there are different expectations. You know, we're also seeing issues around increased mental health amongst younger people that, you know, we struggle sometimes, as you know, our generation to, to get. But I did a kind of LinkedIn little poll recently and it got so many responses and I was just genuinely wanting to understand, do we, do we think Gen Z is a, is a problem for our generation? You know, the people who are perhaps in managerial senior roles. And I was really fascinated because what came back was that yes, there are some challenges, but they're not this huge problem that we actually make out, you know, that every generation gets accused of being entitled. What's different is the context. Economic uncertainty, constant change and seeing, you know, loyalty is not always rewarded. You know, you talked about, oh, we're your family, and then you get, get rid of people overnight. Well, families don't do that when things get tough, do they? We might want to get rid of the odd family member when things get tough. But that's not how it works. That's not how it, that's not how it works. So I think this, the kind of Gen Z expectations kind of make sense in that new economic context. The, the context of uncertainty and seeing perhaps the loyalty of their parents not being rewarded and then thinking, well, shouldn't it be two way? Yeah, well, and we're all gonna have to work a lot longer. So this is a big deal, isn't it? And I think the, I think the organizations that are responding in a better way, are kind of giving sort of listening to those people and saying, right, how can we make things better for you? You know, not necessarily. It's always going to be up the promotion ladder. So we've got organizations like Unilever, they've got their internal AI talent marketplace so people can go on short term gigs or projects or do little sideways moves rather than forcing that promotion. And HSBC have kind of really shifted to instead of that linear career path, it's about career experiences. So progression for them is framed around, you know, getting AI skills or exposure. And it's not all about job titles, which obviously some people might feel means that they get more work out people without having to give them more money. But you know, we, you know, it's still of benefit if you want it. Yeah. And I think HR's role here isn't to ensure that everyone gets the promise of a big long career. It's about honesty. It's about designing careers that reflect real lives, giving people options. You know, some people want to grow fast, some people want stability, some people want greater flexibility. All of them are valid. And ensuring that our career development options can cater for all of those. Okay, let's have a look at a second trend now. And it's about teams. And this one kind of feels obvious, but I think we agree, don't we, that we still often get it wrong in organizations in hr. You know, we know that most work gets done in teams and yet many organizations still obsess over individual performance. You know, individual ratings, individual objectives. And that mismatch causes a lot of the frustration we see. You know, the evidence is really clear. Gallup's research, for example, shows that team engagement is one of the strongest predictors of performance. And there was some research by Atlassian that shows that even very capable people struggle in unhealthy teams. And yet there we are still asking leaders to judge individuals once a year instead of fixing how the team actually works. Yeah, I think it's fascinating, isn't it? And I think that maybe one of the mistakes that we've made is that we've not actually been as clear as we could have been about what is it that we expect leaders to do. The leaders role in a team. And so we're seeing organizations now kind of realizing this. So we've got Microsoft, you know, they've moved away from the kind of individual performance rating. For them it's all about team, team goals, team learning, team contribution. And the role of the leader is to, is to create that Kind of the clarity about where we're going, what we need to deliver, how do we remove all the barriers that are getting in the way? Not that kind of ranking of individuals. And I think it's ing. They've kind of organized more around kind of agile squads so they have like shared accountability for their outcomes and the performance conversations focus on what's working in the team and what's not. Not just, you know, you know, how an individual looks on paper. Yeah. And we know that, you know, even great leaders can't control performance. What they can do is to create the cond for great performance. And of course that means being clear on team priorities, about what matters most right now about trade offs and what good looks like for the team. Yeah. And probably tackling poor performance in that as well. There's nothing that will drag a team down more than a poor performance being ignored. And we've seen this kind of move towards things like health checks. So again, it's less about HR kind of designing things from the center, but more about giving managers tools that they can use themselves. So Atlassian as an example, use these kind of team health checks where the team regularly sort of pause and say, how are we doing? What's getting in the way? What's one or two things that we could do differently next week to improve? And it's much more around, less about measurement, more around what are we actually going to do differently. And I think again our role in HR is to give useful data to leaders. You know, we don't really do that enough. You know, it could be pulse feedback that comes from their team that's ideally owned by the leaders. It's simple ways to understand like Personas about how different people work best in a team. And I've seen that Vodafone are a great example here. So they're using AI to help managers with flagging things like where a team's particularly overloaded or where work's getting stuck so that managers can quickly kind of step in and sort it out. So I think they're the sorts of things that get teams working better. Yeah, and it's a very different role for hr, isn't it? You know, instead of managing the performance management process and ensuring that every individual's got an objective or a set of objectives and then they've got a rating and the paperwork's been done, it's about creating tools and insight for leaders to really understand how they can get the best from their team. And that's quite a different role for us, isn't it, it is, yeah, scary, but we can do it. Yeah. And, and, and you mentioned AI, and of course, you know, we. It's the law now. You have to mention AI if you're doing a podcast about trends for hr. And. But I think we want to kind of take a little bit of a different look at it because obviously we know AI is here. It's been here for a while. And, you know, the real shift perhaps isn't the technology itself, it's the pace of it. And AI is changing how work gets done faster than most HR systems can adapt. So, you know, we're moving from jobs to work. We're moving from fixed role to fluid tasks and skills. And Josh Burson argues that, you know, organizations need to stop designing around jobs and start designing around work tasks and skills because AI is reshaping parts of role faster than the job structures can keep up. McKinsey's also done some great research here, and it shows that it's not whole jobs that are disappearing, but large chunks of work within roles are changing, which kind of puts huge pressure on how organizations and HR plans reskill and deploy people. Yeah, I mean, I don't think we've ever been any good at workforce planning anyway. Even when things were stable, we still struggled with it because it's almost impossible, isn't it? But I think that's where the traditional approaches just start to crack in terms of workforce planning. And so we can see organizations like IBM, they break work down now into tasks and skills, and then AI is used to decide, right, what should be automated, where do we need to reskill, where do we need to move that person to a different role? And I think the risk for us in HR isn't, is if we're not in the room when those decisions are made. Oh, I totally agree with that. You know, I think if we see AI as a kind of an IT rollout, then it becomes someone else's agenda, doesn't it becomes the tech team that are managing it and, you know, and it becomes treat. Treated then as a, as an efficiency and, and it becomes more about cost cutting. But when AI is seen as a work design issue by us in hr, then we become central to that conversation. Absolutely. And I think our kind of, you know, our understanding of how human beings behave, feel, are motivated, that's where we start to add the value. Working with leaders to say, what is the work that really matters? What is the work that humans could stop doing? But where does it matter that we have people with good judgment, with creativity, with you Know, emotional intelligence, where's that going to add value? You know, And I think they're not the technology questions, they're the kind of the people questions. Yeah, and. And we're also already seeing some organizations and HR teams, you know, approach these in very, very different ways, aren't we? Yeah, I think we've got like Accenture. AI has helped them decide what should be automated, where should we restart skilling, and workforce planning becomes about workflow, not necessarily job titles. And back to the Vodafone example, they're sort of the HR team are supporting managers with little prompts and insights. So it's not about. It's to give them better judgment rather than kind of controlling things. Yeah. So I think what we're kind of trying to say here is that if we don't step into this space, if we in HR don't step into this space, decisions about work and people will still get made. They just won't be made by the people experts. Right, so final trend then is about kind of pulling all of this together, I suppose. You know, HR shifting from managing people to designing better work. You know, for years our role's been about managing people through systems, policies, frameworks, annual cycles, all built for stability and certainty and trying to provide guarantees. But that world's just gone. Right. You know, work is now fast, it's messy, it's constantly changing teams, reform roles, shift AI removes chunks of work. And often the biggest barrier to performance isn't people, it's how the work is designed. So designing better work means us in HR stopping sort of asking the question, how do we manage people? And starting to ask about what, how the work is being set up and what's getting in the way. Yeah, it's just, it's so common sense. But we seem to really struggle with it, don't we? But if we think about organizations like HubSpot, you know, we always talk about their kind of three word policy of use, good judgment, you know, that's the idea they design for trust first, not compliance. And at Netflix, the same fewer rules, more context, clear expectations, that kind of response, personal responsibility, but your trust as an adult to kind of get things done, to act, challenge. I think that's those sorts of organizations that we know are doing very well. They've kind of, they've. They've just got the secret. That's what they're doing. Yeah. And I think what they've all got in common, these organizations, is that they didn't start by changing HR processes. They started by redesigning how the work actually gets done. And so I think, you know, say it's a simple question, it's obviously a complex question, but I think the big question for us in hr going into 2026 is are we spending our time trying to manage people or designing work that works. And that's quite a fundamental question. I think that HR professionals need to, well, hopefully want to get their heads around and want to be at central too, because as you say, otherwise it's going to happen elsewhere. So if we had to sum up the four trends, be about work and careers no longer fitting neatly into people's lives. And so people are starting to be more pragmatic. It's not that they're being disloyal, they are staying put, they're protecting their flexibility and they're building meaning elsewhere when organizations don't offer that movement or that trust. Second trend is that great work doesn't happen because of brilliant individuals. It happens in well led teams. So performance improves when leaders create clarity and trust and the right conditions, not when HR asks them to rate people once a year. Yeah, trend three, AI is of course already reshaping work. And I think the real risk for us in HR is that if work gets redesigned quietly and we keep hiring, developing and managing people against jobs that actually either don't exist now or will no longer exist in the future. And then our final trend is our role in HR shifting in a great place, less managing people through process, more designing work that actually works for real human beings and the business demands. So, first of all, we want to wish you a very, very happy 2026. It's set to be a challenging, but hopefully really exciting, exciting one. And also we're going to be taking a bit of a break from our podcast. Life has become incredibly busy and we just need to take a little bit of a break from it. But you can still continue to get lots of stuff from Disruptive HR if you like our thinking and you like what we do. If you go to our website, disruptive hr.com then you can go to the Insights and you can get plenty of of materials there. But if you're interested in diving into this, this topic in a lot more detail and indeed all of the other topics that we've talked about over, over the last few years and the ones that we're going to be talking about in the future, then you can join the Disruptive HR club where you get huge amounts of learning and resources and tools and you can join us on that for just £49amonth. And you can cancel at any time. Details of how to join the club are in the show notes. So I think that's it. So just Happy New Year, everybody, and here's to a great one. Bye.