2026 CHRO Survey

The 2026 CHRO Survey captures insights from nearly 200 HR leaders, benchmarking how top-performing organizations are evolving people strategy, talent systems, and organizational design in an AI-driven, resource-constrained environment. Spanning areas from executive influence and workforce planning to talent acquisition, HR tech, and culture, the report highlights what separates top performers—from building scalable “people systems” and elevating the CHRO as a strategic peer, to investing in manager quality, data infrastructure, and AI-enabled work redesign.

What emerges is a clear shift from programs to systems and from strategy to execution. Leaders are navigating constraints in bandwidth, change capacity, and manager effectiveness while rethinking how work gets done in the age of AI. At the same time, persistent challenges—fragmented data, inconsistent processes, and human resistance to change—underscore where transformation efforts stall, offering a practical roadmap for building more scalable, resilient, and high-performing organizations.