Why clear CHRO priorities keep stalling in 2026

 

New research from The Adecco Group's 2026 Business Leaders study, drilling into the responses of 500+ Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs) across 13 countries, paired with unscripted interviews from LHH's Talk Talent To Me podcast, surfaces a consistent finding: CHROs know exactly what matters this year. Building trust. Getting ahead of AI. Closing the skills gap. Planning the workforce properly.

The problem is that only 4 in 10 CHROs are confident their organization is actually ready for the AI era. Even though nearly 8 in 10 say AI hasn't reduced headcount yet, CHROs are seeing these barriers materialize across five execution challenges in 2026.

2026 People & Talent Strategy Execution Challenges

Key takeaways

• Trust is the #1 people priority for 2026 as 35% of CHROs rank improving employee trust, engagement, and transparency above every other initiative, ahead of AI adoption (31%) and digital capability-building (33%).
• AI Agents are now the single most pressing issue, ranked #1 both today and five years out across all C-suite respondents. Leaders are primarily focused on AI agent use cases that automate workflows, boost employee productivity, accelerate decision-making, and act as intelligent assistants across customer-facing, operational, and business functions.
• CHROs are least satisfied with talent planning (35% satisfaction) and workforce trust (38%), two capabilities this year's priorities depend on most.
• The barriers haven't changed, they've hardened: complexity of change, ROI uncertainty, and a lack of reliable systems and data consistently rank as the top three obstacles to improving people strategy.

CHROs rank AI agents as their #1 most pressing issue in 2026

Ask a CHRO in 2023 what kept them up at night and "talent scarcity" was near the top of every list. That's over. In this year's data, talent scarcity falls to fifth place if you ask a CHRO, and sixth if you ask for the C-suite consensus. In its place, AI Agents ranked the #1 most influential megatrend both today and in five years, ahead of digitization, automation, and even geopolitical uncertainty.

That explains why AI adoption, job redesign, and human-AI collaboration now dominate the 2026 priority list alongside trust.

Competitive advantage comes from trust-led AI transformation. Organizations that earn employee buy-in while redesigning work around human-AI collaboration will be able to scale change faster and realize productivity gains sooner.

What CHROs say matters most this year

When CHROs rank their own top talent strategy priorities for the next 12 months, the list mostly aligns to the broader C-suite agenda.

CHROs and the C-suite agree: Trust, skills, and AI define the 2026 talent strategy priority list

The Adecco Group, 2026 Business Leaders Research, Q3: What are your organisation's top priorities for developing the people strategy over the next 12 months?

C-suite is in full agreement that trust sits at the top of the workforce priority list. Leadership knows that no other priority lands without workforce trust, engagement, and organizational transparency. That instinct is correct, and the data backs it up repeatedly.

Where the blueprint breaks: three barriers that haven't moved

The obstacles standing between CHROs and these priorities are strikingly consistent.

• Complexity of change: For the C-suite overall, the #1 barrier to improving people and talent strategy is simply the complexity of the change itself (30%).
• ROI uncertainty: C-suite and CHROs agree on unclear or unproven commercial value as a top-three barrier to improving people strategy.
• Speed of change: The pace of disruption is outrunning the ability to build a long-term strategic approach, cited by CHROs as their second-biggest barrier.
• Unreliable systems and data. Rounding out the CHRO top three is a lack of reliable IT systems or data, particularly for workforce planning. This barrier sits in seventh place on the C-suite’s list of talent strategy barriers.

Layer in the barriers to digital transformation specifically, and the picture sharpens further: 33% of C-suite leaders cite a lack of executive understanding of new technology as the #1 obstacle, followed by an inability to scale digital solutions at speed (30%) and a lack of in-house technology talent (29%).

Similar barriers are slowing both digital transformation and talent strategy according to C-suite

The Adecco Group, 2026 Business Leaders Research, Q13: What are the biggest barriers preventing you from improving your people and talent strategy overall?

The execution gap, in CHROs' own words

This is where the satisfaction data gets uncomfortable. Of every capability area measured, CHROs rank themselves least satisfied with talent planning (35%) and workforce trust (38%), the two areas their own top priorities depend on most directly. Only 39% say they have an effective strategy for forecasting future skill gaps.

Put plainly: the areas CHROs care about most in 2026 are the same areas where they rate their own organization's performance the worst.

The three-year blueprint emerging from the data

Three patterns separate the organizations closing this gap from the ones stuck in it.

• Proactive, not reactive. Organizations that build trust and communicate the AI roadmap before disruption hits report meaningfully stronger outcomes than those explaining after the fact.
• Skills-first, not role-first. The data consistently rewards organizations that track capabilities (e.g., data literacy, critical thinking, problem-solving), over job titles.
• Integrated, not siloed. The widest performance gaps in this research separate organizations that connect trust, data, and skills strategy from those managing each in isolation.

That blueprint sounds simple. Executing it is exactly where the next five articles in this series pick up, starting with the cross-functional bottleneck that stalls talent strategy before it even reaches the workforce.

Next in this series

Execution challenge #1: People strategy becomes a cross-functional bottleneck, examining why HR alignment breaks down the moment it has to cross into workstreams.

Frequently asked questions

What is the top CHRO priority for 2026? Improving employee trust, engagement, and organizational transparency, cited by 35% of CHROs, ahead of AI adoption and digital capability-building.

Is AI reducing headcount, according to CHROs? No, not broadly. Nearly 8 in 10 CHROs (77%) say AI has not reduced their workforce headcount. However, roughly 4 in 10 expect this to change within the next 12 months.

Why do CHRO priorities keep stalling despite clear strategy? Execution barriers include complexity of change, ROI uncertainty, unreliable workforce data, and lack of executive understanding of new technology. There’s consensus across C-suite leadership most of these rank as top obstacles in 2026.

 

 

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About the research:

In the Minds of CHROs: 2026 Execution Gap is based in The Adecco Group, 2026 Business Leaders Research (CHRO respondents, 13 countries) and Talk Talent To Me, an LHH sponsored podcast.

2,000 C-suite executives (500 Chief Executive Officers, 500 Chief Human Resources Officers, 500 Chief Technology Officers, 250 Chief Operating Officers, 250 Chief Financial Officers)

13 countries (100 Canada, 300 US, 100 Belgium, 150 France, 150 Germany, 100 Italy, 100 Netherlands, 150 Spain, 100 Sweden, 100 Switzerland, 150 UK, 250 Australia, 250 Japan)

Industries (350 Aerospace and Defense; 350 Automotive and Transport, Logistics, Mobility and Manufacturing; 350 Healthcare, Life Sciences and Pharma; 350 Energy, Clean Technology and Utilities; 300 Technology; 300 FMCG, E-commerce, Retail and Consumer Goods and Supply Chain)