Five shifts from HR Tech 2026 that HR leaders should be paying attention to.
I came back from HR Tech 2026 in Las Vegas excited about what’s happening in our industry. AI was everywhere. Vendors were demonstrating new capabilities, conversations about digital employees were becoming more real, and the possibilities for HR technology seemed endless. But I also came home with a question:
Is our thinking keeping up with the technology?
I’ve spent more than 20 years working in HR and benefits, helping organizations evaluate, implement, and improve their technology. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that new technology doesn’t automatically mean progress.
Some of the most interesting conversations I had at HR Tech weren’t about the latest product announcements. They were about how organizations are making decisions, how AI is changing our assumptions, and whether we’re prepared to take advantage of what’s coming.
Here are five shifts that stood out to me.
1. HR Leaders Need to Take Ownership of Technology Decisions
The CFO has entered the chat.
As HR technology decisions become more complex, with AI changing the landscape and a growing need for organizations to reevaluate their entire tech stack, CFOs are taking a more active role in the process. During the Women in HR Tech roundtable I facilitated, we discussed the challenges HR leaders face when making technology buying decisions.
My message focused on three things:
- Find your voice: Ask the right questions.
- Own the decision: We’re solving business problems.
- Build the business case: No surprises.
The vendor is not your consultant. Vendors know their products, but they’re there to sell them. HR leaders need to understand the business problem, define requirements, and ask the questions that help them make an informed decision.
And the business case must go beyond subscription and implementation fees. It needs to account for integrations, data conversion, internal resources, ongoing support, contingency, and the value the organization expects to achieve.
Finance shouldn’t be brought in only when it’s time to approve the budget. Involve them early, keep them informed, and help them understand the investment well enough to champion it.
There’s another important distinction: Productivity gains aren’t automatically cost savings. Saving 1,000 hours of administrative work may create valuable capacity, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into a reduction in payroll expense. We need to be clear about what we’re measuring and what value we’re promising.
And remember, taking ownership doesn’t mean having all the answers internally. Sometimes the smartest leadership decision is bringing in the right expertise, whether that’s someone on your team or an external advisor.
Something to consider: Could your leadership team explain and defend your next HR technology investment if you weren’t in the room?
2. AI Is About Expanding Capabilities, Not Just Reducing Headcount
Much of the conversation around AI continues to focus on efficiency, productivity, and reducing costs. Those are important considerations. But I believe we’re limiting our thinking if that’s where the conversation ends.
At dinner one evening during the conference, a fellow attendee challenged me with a question: How do you get an HR leader excited about AI when it could cost her her job?
It’s a fair question. Some jobs will change, and some may disappear. But my answer was simple: we don’t have a choice. AI is here, and avoiding it won’t prevent those changes. The HR leaders who embrace it, learn it, and help shape how it’s used are the ones who will be best positioned for what comes next.
What excites me most about AI isn’t doing the same work with fewer people. It’s what organizations can accomplish that they couldn’t before. That might mean improving go-to-market strategies, using AI agents to take on work teams never had the capacity for, or giving people the time to think strategically instead of getting buried in administrative tasks.
That requires a shift in mindset. Rather than starting every AI conversation with how many positions we can eliminate, we should also be asking how technology can expand our capabilities and create new opportunities for the business.
And we need to measure those outcomes honestly. Hours saved, work eliminated, capacity created, improved service, and actual financial savings are not all the same thing.
Something to consider: Are you evaluating AI primarily by what it can reduce, or by what it can make possible?
3. Digital Employees Are Changing How We Think About the Workforce
One of the most interesting ideas discussed at HR Tech was the emergence of digital employees.
We’re moving beyond AI tools that respond to prompts toward agents that can perform tasks, interact with systems, and carry out work with increasing autonomy.
Think about what that means for HR.
If an AI agent is performing work in your organization, who owns it? Who authorizes its access to employee information? Who determines what decisions it can make independently? And who is accountable when something goes wrong?
Organizations will need to think about digital employees in much the same way they think about other resources performing work, while recognizing that the controls and responsibilities will be different. That includes assigning a human sponsor, defining permissions and limits, monitoring performance and costs, maintaining an audit trail, and knowing when an agent should be modified or deactivated.
These decisions can’t sit with IT alone. HR, IT, Security, Finance, and business leaders will need to work together. HR has a significant opportunity to help shape how digital workers are introduced, governed, and managed.
Something to consider: If your organization introduced digital employees tomorrow, would you know who was responsible for them?
4. AI Is Challenging How We Think About HR Data and Technology
For years, HR technology strategies have focused on systems of record, integrations, and moving data between platforms through established connections. Many organizations are still working through long data consolidation projects. By the time those projects are finished, much of the data is already outdated, and AI can now do a significant share of that work.
But the bigger issue I heard at HR Tech wasn’t where data lives. It was who can safely access it.
One HR leader at a large organization shared that her compensation team still enters certain pay data manually, because they’re concerned the wrong people could see it. A previous security issue made the team cautious. I’ve seen the same pattern with a client that chose to keep one employee group on a separate system after salary information was exposed.
These are understandable reactions. But manual entry and separate platforms treat the symptom, not the root cause. The real issue is security.
And this is becoming more urgent. Data can no longer flow top down from a single team. It has to work across the organization. More departments, and increasingly AI agents, will need access to the information they’re authorized to see. In the future, an agent may be doing the very work those teams are doing manually today. That only works if security is designed correctly from the start.
Security will need to be revisited. Not to lock data down, but so the right people and the right agents can use it safely.
This also changes how we evaluate technology. Some vendors aren’t building AI into their products. Instead, they plan to give clients access to their data and leave the AI work to them. That approach may work for some organizations, but it’s important to understand it going in.
Data quality, privacy, security, and governance matter more than ever. But the traditional approaches to achieving them may no longer be enough.
Something to consider: Is your organization protecting sensitive data by limiting access, or by securing it in a way that allows the right people and AI agents to use it?
5. Vendors Are Moving Quickly With AI. Are Organizations Ready?
If there was one thing that was impossible to miss at HR Tech, it was the pace of AI innovation among vendors.
I believe vendors should be pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. Organizations, including technology providers themselves, need to immerse themselves in AI, experiment, and rethink how they operate. But there’s a difference between what a vendor can demonstrate and what an organization is actually using.
Having AI capabilities in your platform doesn’t mean your employees are adopting them. And purchasing another AI solution doesn’t mean your processes, data, or teams are ready to take advantage of it.
This is what I call AI Aura: AI only works as well as you work with it. Your mindset, your expectations, your data, and the time you put in all matter.
What are organizations using today? What’s working? What’s not? Are we seeing meaningful changes in how work gets done, or are we still largely talking about what the technology could do? These are questions HR leaders should be asking their vendors and their own teams.
Start by understanding what you already have. Explore the capabilities available in your existing systems. Identify where AI could solve a real business problem or create a new opportunity. Then determine what needs to change internally to make it successful. And don’t assume the process you’re automating is the process you should keep.
Something to consider: Are you preparing your organization to take advantage of AI, or simply waiting for your vendors to deliver the next feature?
The Bigger Question
I left HR Tech optimistic about the future of HR technology.
But I also came away convinced that we need to challenge some of our long-standing assumptions about how HR operates, how we make buying decisions, how our systems connect, and what our organizations are capable of accomplishing.
AI gives us an opportunity to rethink all of it.
That doesn’t mean HR leaders need to become experts in every emerging technology. It means staying curious, asking better questions, challenging the status quo, and bringing the right expertise to the table. We have an opportunity to shape what comes next rather than simply react to it.
Technology is advancing. Are we willing to advance our thinking along with it?
