HR priorities for 2026 – top tips for a great year

Robert Shore: Hello, and welcome to the Brightmine podcast, formerly known as the
XpertHR podcast. Brightmine is a leading provider of people data, analytics and insight, offering employment law expertise, comprehensive HR resources and reward data to meet every HR and organisational challenge and opportunity. You can find us any time of the day or night at www.brightmine.com

Hello everyone. My name is Robert Shore, and today we are going to be talking about HR priorities for 2026. To do this, I am joined by Brightmine content managers, Bar Huberman and Sheila Atwood, who will be offering expert guidance on practical
strategies to navigate the challenges of the year ahead. And they’ll both be drawing on Brightmine research to do this. And so we will have some unique insights to share.

And a little later, I’ll also be joined by Brightmine’s CEO, Scott Walker, who will be talking about one of the big themes of recent years – and no doubt future years – AI. But first, Bar.

Bar Huberman: Hi Robert.

Robert Shore: Our recent 2025 HR departments’ research asked, ‘What will be the
main issue or initiative your organisation’s HR function will focus on in the next 12 months and how do you plan to approach it?’ And I think we’ve got some answers to that. So let’s start with the headline. What came out as the number one priority for teams in 2026?

Bar Huberman: Developing great managers – that’s the headline for 2026. It’s been
a consistent focus for HR teams for many years and 2026 is no exception, as our survey shows. It’s the most commonly reported initiative for the year ahead.

This isn’t surprising. Organisations have long recognised that managers play a pivotal role in employee engagement, retention and overall business performance.

Robert Shore: And why is this such a big issue? Why haven’t more got more of a
handle on it by now?

Bar Huberman: Well, we’re asking more and more of managers all the time. Lead
change, deal with performance issues, all at lower cost while still producing business results. Gartner Research found that managers juggle 51% more responsibilities than they can handle.

But there’s also the issue that doesn’t go away, and it won’t come as a surprise to most of our listeners that managers are often promoted for being good at their job rather than leading a team of people. But HR teams don’t necessarily have the time to train line managers in everything that comes with management responsibilities. This is backed up by our 2025 line management research, which found clear skill gaps. For example, only about 40% of HR professionals believe line managers effectively manage employee conduct and behaviour, and fewer than half think managers handle absence and performance management well.

Robert Shore: Okay. So lots of issues to address there. What can HR do to close
those gaps?

Bar Huberman: Well, I’ll focus on two practical tips. So, the first one is targeted
training programmes. Focus on the specific skills managers struggle with. You can use EOS results to understand what these are, whether it’s handling conduct issues, managing performance, managing absence, psychological safety. Be laser-focused on training needs.

And the second tip is accessible resources. So make sure managers have access to checklists and resources they can refer back to when having difficult conversations, for example.

At Brightmine we’ve got a full set of training guides that can help, each with a Powerpoint presentation, and in each one there are handy tips or checklists you can give to managers when they need something to start with.

Robert Shore: Great. So we’ll put a link to that, of course, in the show notes. What
else stood out in the research?

Bar Huberman: The second dominant theme was compliance, especially preparing
for the Employment Rights Bill. Some HR teams are already making policy decisions to make sure they’re ready, and if HR teams want to get ahead they can check out our recent podcast episode on the Employment Rights Bill and my how-to guide on HR planning for the bill. Both resources dive deeper into what these changes mean and
how to prepare.

Robert Shore: Yes. So on this theme, on 27 November the Government confirmed
a major change to the unfair dismissal rights under the Employment Rights Bill. I should say we are recording this on 3 December. Who knows what will happen in the interim. So what’s the headline as things stand?

Bar Huberman: If you’ve been following the progress of the Employment Rights Bill in
Parliament, you’ll know that there have been a few weeks of parliamentary ping-pong, and there have been some particular sticking points that the House of Commons and House of Lords can’t agree on. So on 27 November the Government confirmed that,
following meetings with trade unions and business leaders, they won’t be introducing the Day One right to claim unfair dismissal as originally proposed. Instead, the ERB will reduce the qualifying period for unfair dismissal claims from two years down to six months.

Robert Shore: Right. So six months instead of two years. Why is that significant?
Bar Huberman: It’s a big change. The original proposal would have given everyone
starting a new job the right to claim unfair dismissal from day one, which would have likely led to a big increase in tribunal claims. But the change means that the right to claim unfair dismissal will only apply from six months. But it’s still a huge change from what we have now, and means employees will gain protection from unfair dismissal much earlier. Employers won’t be able to rely on a long buffer of two years anymore. Decisions following the first six months of someone’s employment will carry more legal risk.

Robert Shore: Right. So what should employers be doing in 2026 to prepare, then?

Bar Huberman: A really important thing to do now is to make sure you have robust
probation procedures in place. Without them, someone could slip into Month 7 of their employment and gain full protection while still being unsuitable for the role. I talk a bit more about how to start preparing for implementation of the Employment Rights Bill in 2026 in my how-to guide on Brightmine, called How to lead HR planning for the Employment Rights Bill.

Robert Shore: And of course we’ll put a link to that in the show notes. What were some of the other themes, then, that stood out from Brightmine’s research?

Bar Huberman: Future planning was a big theme, and this is likely to be down to many factors, like AI and economic volatility. As AI reshapes the workplace and organisations are dealing with more external change than ever before, we’re seeing businesses respond by prioritising areas such as succession planning and strategic transformation.

AI is changing the way work gets done. But we don’t know exactly how it’s going to play out, what skills will be needed to meet future demand, especially as organisations are constantly having to adapt to external shifts. Our research tells us that leading employers are engaging in succession planning so they can identify risks, gaps and what they need to do to mitigate those risks.

But what’s really important is that these sorts of strategies are flexible and you can adapt them as business changes. This means involving business leaders to regularly review talent needs to meet shifting demands, rather than having static talent reviews, say once a year.

Robert Shore: Okay. So tell us more about strategic transformation.

Bar Huberman: Well, organisation design and restructure was mentioned by more than a third of respondents to our survey as a priority for 2026. HR is central to this transformation. HR is uniquely positioned to align structure, roles and capabilities with future needs, while managing the people impact of change. And with rapid shifts in technology and skills and the ways of working, getting the design right is really important. One respondent summed it up by telling us their goal is to “ensure the operating model is fit-for-purpose to deliver the business strategy for the next five years.”

At Brightmine we’re currently putting together a guide on organisation design, which should be ready in the New Year, so watch out for that.

Robert Shore: What else came through strongly in the survey?

Bar Huberman: Lots of our respondents identified culture as a top priority. More and
more, organisations are seeing culture as an enabler of success. If people feel their employer reflects their values then they’re more likely to want to bring their whole selves to work and give their best. This is backed up by our employee experience and culture research in 2024, which found that around two-thirds of organisations are focusing on culture and values to improve the employee experience.

Robert Shore: Okay. So HR likes this. Is management going to go with it? How can
HR convince leadership that culture is something that’s worth investing in?

Bar Huberman: You have to show them the data. Research shows that organisations
with strong cultures outperform others in productivity and retention. So for example, those with a highly inclusive culture report high productivity and retention rates compared with those who don’t focus on inclusion

One suggestion I would give is to look at data by team or function. So look at survey results, retention data, productivity data, inclusion data for particularly successful teams and those that are struggling.

Robert Shore: Anything else to highlight from the survey?

Bar Huberman: The final point I wanted to highlight is that performance management was identified as a separate initiative in the survey for more than a third of organisations. Fewer than half of HR professionals think managers do it well, according to our line managers’ research from earlier in the year. And with the Employment Rights Bill introducing changes to unfair dismissal rights from 2027, as we’ve already mentioned, proactive performance management will be essential.

Robert Shore: Or 2026, of course, with the unfair dismissal rights. Now look, in the
title we promised some top tips. So Bar, give us a top tip for improving performance management.

Bar Huberman: It’s really important to create a feedback culture from Day One of
someone’s employment. Make two-way conversations between managers and teams a normal part of working life, where the manager is giving praise for what’s going well but also discussing what the employee could have done better. This will help to make
sure any performance issues can be nipped in the bud, but will also create opportunities and an open environment for employees to raise challenges more easily. This culture builds mutual understanding of priorities and standards but also of issues, reducing the risk of misunderstandings.

Again, this can be difficult in hybrid or remote environments but the risks of not doing so are great, and we have guidance on giving and receiving feedback, as well as managing teams in the hybrid world that give real practical guidance to help managers make those conversations a part of their everyday.

Robert Shore: Wonderful. Thank you. Right, let’s move onto reward at this point and have a check-in with Sheila on what is on the reward professionals’ agenda for the year ahead. We should probably start with a mention of pensions salary sacrifice, not strictly a 2026 issue but something that reward professionals are going to be following closely, I think.

Sheila Atwood: It is, and I also remember saying in the webinar I recorded at the end
of October with you, Robert, that I didn’t think the Government should go ahead with it.

Robert Shore: And then what did they do? What’s been announced?

Sheila Atwood: So, the amount of salary that can be sacrificed for pension contributions that’s going to attract those tax and national insurance benefits, that’s going to be capped at £2000 per year per employee. This is from 6 April 2029.

Robert Shore: Okay. And do we know how many people that’s going to be impacting?

Sheila Atwood: Well, our research shows that 71% of organisations offer pension salary sacrifice. If we do a little bit on the numbers, so if we take, let’s say, a worker on the median annual salary of just over £31,5000 (according to the annual survey of hours and earnings) from April 2025, if they put £2000 into their pension via salary sacrifice, that equates to about a 6.3% contribution.

So, lots of people earning at that level, perhaps they are unlikely to be contributing 6% or so into their pension but you can see that anyone earning over the median or contributing more than 6% is very likely to be sacrificing more than £2000 a year, and therefore they are going to be impacted by this change.

Robert Shore: And what sort of reaction has there been to the announcement? Widespread applause?

Sheila Atwood: Pretty much unanimous condemnation to be honest, Robert. And from both sides, because of course employers have national insurance savings they can pass on, and employees are encouraged to save more into their pensions, and at a time when there are deep concerns around the level of retirement savings.

Robert Shore: So should employers be doing anything now?

Sheila Atwood: Well, 2029 is a long way away. So for now, making sure that employees know that this change isn’t happening yet and they maintain their current savings levels or increase them perhaps, is sound advice. And of course, who actually knows where we will be in 2029?

Robert Shore: Okay. After that small diversion, let’s have a look at things happening more immediately. Of course, the other announcement that came in the budget – or rather the day before – was of a 4.1% increase in the national living wage.

Sheila Atwood: That’s right. So the national living wage rate – that’s paid to employees aged 21 and over – that’s going to rise by 50p to £12.71 an hour, which is an increase of 4.1%, as you say.

Robert Shore: Now, that’s lower than previous years, so presumably that’s more fitting in with employers’ pay increase plans?

Sheila Atwood: Well it is the lowest increase in the national living wage since April

Of course, that was the post-Covid year, as the April 2020 increase had already been announced prior to the pandemic. If we put that one aside, 4.1% is the lowest rise since October 2015, but then that was only for six months as the uprating moved to April from 2016.

So if we make a comparison between national living wage increases and the median pay rise each year, it is also true that the gap between the two is narrowing as well.

Robert Shore: Yeah. So where will they be in 2026?

Sheila Atwood: So, this 4.1% national living wage increase in April 2026, that compares with the currently predicted 3% overall increase that employers are looking to make to pay. Now, this is the smallest gap between the two measures than in the past two years. So out of that 3% pay budget that organisations are currently predicting, organisations are potentially going to have to award their lowest-paid workers a 4.1% rise, and that leaves other people within their organisation likely to receive less than 3% to allow for this. And that’s when you get pay rates between those job roles at the lowest end of the salary distribution, they really start to get squeezed, which isn’t very motivating for those workers slightly further up the pay
scale.

Robert Shore: Yeah. So let’s pick up on that point about employee motivation. Can you give us some examples of how reward might help there?

Sheila Atwood: Nice segue, Robert. Because employers are talking a lot about how they can use reward as a motivation tool. Investment, of course, doesn’t stop at the reward package. Many organisations are going to be focusing on opportunity, training and development when it comes on ways to motivate. But reward is often going to be seen as that starting point. And we see that clear emphasis on organisations talking about rewarding performance. And when it comes to high performers, organisations are going to need to reward but also incentivise this cohort. And when talent is scarce, they’re a group you’re going to want to retain.

Robert Shore: So how might employers do that?

Sheila Atwood: A couple of ways that organisations can look at this high-performing group. First, by salary. If we give pay, higher pay rises based on performance rating to those people, with of course the supporting processes that Bar talked about earlier.

Second, through incentive payments. So talking about bonus payments here. Typically they’re going to be linked to particular outcomes such as personal and business performance.

And then thirdly through the benefits package. So a high performer perhaps has the pick of where they want to work. So a competitive benefits package that matches, if not exceeds, the competition in terms of where they could go and work will help to ensure that that overall package on offer is enough to retain and motivate them. And
we hear a lot from organisations that are really thinking about directing their attention and resources to those who deliver the most value.

Robert Shore: And of course organisations don’t have a never-ending supply of resources, do they?

Sheila Atwood: You’re right, Robert. And the external environment at the moment means that organisations are having to be pretty careful with the budgets they have for reward and incentive activities.

Robert Shore: And when you say that, Sheila, what data are you drawing on?

Sheila Atwood: So, we’ve just talked about that national living wage increase from next April that exceeds the predicted pay award that organisations are looking at. But also the economy isn’t give much to employers. The OBR has downgraded its GDP forecast for 2026 by half a percentage point to 1.4%. On inflation, at the time of recording October figures were available to us but they do, as expected, show that inflation did reach peak in late summer and it’s now on a downward trend. On that point, that’s really going to ease the pressure on organisations from employees on pay awards. We did hear from organisations worried about meeting employee expectations on pay rises versus cost-of-living increases, so pointing out that the expected path of inflation is downwards, perhaps to around 2.5% by mid-2026, would be a good thing to indicate.

Robert Shore: So, how can organisations make sure they’re being competitive on pay?

Sheila Atwood: Well, lots of organisations that we spoke to mentioned a focus on affordability and pay. So I would urge any in a similar situation to really check on your salary levels compared to the market. So we often hear about organisations worried about the market rate, when in fact their salaries do compare quite favourably. You can use a salary benchmarking tool such as Compensation Planning from Brightmine, of course, Robert, to actually check where you sit against the market.

Robert Shore: Yes. Thank you for mentioning that at Brightmine we do have precisely such a tool. I’ll put a link to that in the show notes too. How are organisations using benefits, though, as a reward incentive?

Sheila Atwood: Well, organisations do regularly tell us that benefits is when they know that they probably haven’t been able to fully meet those employee expectations on salaries and salary rises. But also, more generally, actually to ensure that they’re offering a wide and varied package of benefits to their employees. One of the things mentioned was adapting to different generational expectations, and benefits actually can really help organisations to do this. But also wrapped up in this is the desire that was mentioned, to give employees choice and control in their benefits. Benefits do offer opportunity for organisations to provide something at low cost to themselves as well.

Robert Shore: Such as?

Sheila Atwood: Well, pension salary sacrifice is the obvious one there, but of course
there are some changes down the line that I’ve already talked about. There are other salary sacrifice options. Cycle-to-work schemes and electric vehicles still remain popular.

And actually, something we’ve seen in the research over the last couple of years is flexible working is often being mentioned when talking about benefits. It ticks a lot of those boxes that I’ve mentioned so far: choice, control for the employee, low cost for the employer and a focus on wellbeing.

Robert Shore: Anything else on low cost when it comes to reward? I imagine that creates a conundrum for employers.

Sheila Atwood: I imagine it does. It’s always mentioned a lot of times when we ask employers about their reward priorities.

But another initiative that I’ve not mentioned yet is the employee recognition scheme. Now, recognition has a key role to play in employee satisfaction and motivation, and therefore of course performance. Options here, they range from a simple thanks as part of a day-to-day recognition programme, to an informal scheme within the team, to maybe a more formal, corporate option that often features awards. One organisation talked about ‘in-the-moment recognition’ and that falls in that day-to-day bracket of low or no cost, but actually being frequent and in-the-moment can have a big impact.

Robert Shore: Bar, you’ve got your hand up at this point. I think there’s something you’d like to say?

Bar Huberman: That manager-to-employee and employee-to-employee recognition
can often be the most powerful but it doesn’t always come naturally and it can be forgotten about in high-pressure environments, particularly in hybrid or remote setting. So think about ways of building that into your culture. You might want to create and share videos about teams that do that well, or include something around
this in managers’ objectives.

Robert Shore: And again, we promised listeners tips, Sheila. So give us a tip.

Sheila Atwood: That’s easy. So while we’re on benefits, let’s think about maximizing the existing benefits within your organisation. So one organisation told us that its priority for this year is around ensuring visibility to all employees and that usage is maximised with a cost-neutral impact. So review what you’ve got, check the data on usage, swap out any unused benefits that those are going to have the biggest impact on the largest number of people, and make sure you tell people about what you have.

Robert Shore: Thank you so much, Sheila, and thank you so much, Bar. Now we welcome to the show, as trailed at the beginning, Brightmine’s CEO Scott Walker. His specific subject is the AI revolution. So Scott, obviously AI has been one of the big themes for some years now and is going to continue to be a theme for the future. But say in this coming period, how should HR be preparing for this ongoing revolution?

Scott Walker: Thanks, Robert. Great question. I think it’s interesting. There’s lots of advice and guidance that’s being written and provided for how HR departments should respond to what is an exciting but highly disruptive transformational period in our history.

And there’s lots of practical advice, like things like establish governance frameworks and programmes you can put in place to upskill your teams and how you can make sure that you’ve got transparent approaches to how you deploy AI. Lots of practical
things.

I think of this slightly differently. I’m old enough, Robert, to have lived through the last great technical revolution, which was the late nineties and the boom and realisation of the internet. And I look back to the experiences and the things that we learnt when we went through that transformation, and I see so many similarities to the transformation that’s taking place today.

And I think the reality is, is the vast majority of the workforce didn’t live through those changes in the mid- to late-nineties, and so they don’t have the learnt experiences to bring forward to this current transformation and change.

So the big thing for me is, ‘How can HR help support the organisation in creating a culture that allows individuals to step into so much uncertainty?’ And psychologically that’s very difficult to do. And we talk about – you’ve heard me talk about this in Brightmine – it’s around, ‘How do we create enough uncertainty to prompt action but how do we create enough confidence and comfort around the future state for people to step into that opportunity positively?’ And I think it’s easy to underestimate the degree of cultural shift needed to enable individuals to step into the change that’s required.

I think one of the things that’s true for…different businesses in different industries are being affected to different degrees with this technology, but all jobs in almost all industries will have some degree of change thrust upon them by the wave of innovation that’s likely to come.

And so I think if you can enter that period with that mindset that change is going to accelerate, and that for everybody change is never going to be as slow as it was today, that preparing your staff for that and allowing them to create the space for them to feel, ‘What do I need to do differently? Can I step into that position of change?’ And what’s the responsibility on HR and senior leadership to create the culture where people feel they can do that without fear of judgement? I think that’s super-important at the time that we currently face, and how we lead people through these moments of great transition will really be the indicators, the biggest indicators or the factors, that will determine whether organisations are successful or not.

Robert Shore: Yes. Lots of good points there. I suppose what I ought to ask really is, how is Brightmine preparing to help HR prepare for all of this as well? What are we doing? What is the CEO’s view on this?

Scott Walker: Well of course, we have all the same challenges that our customers have. And in fact, in our industry in particular AI has completely transformed, and has the potential to complete transform, how we create value for our customers. It’s existential in the sense that it isn’t just how we do our jobs, but it equally changes how we may very well deliver value to our customers.

So if you think about the journey that we’ve been on, we first deployed artificial intelligence into our products about six years ago. And actually, over the last six years we have now deployed artificial intelligence in more and more places in our products, to the point now where there isn’t a single Brightmine product that doesn’t have artificial intelligence somewhere driving some piece of functionality. The key thing for us, of course, it’s not about using generative AI to create content. We still have our rusted experts behind the creation of our content. And that’s a fundamental different, right. It’s a, ‘How do we make sure that the expertise that sits in the brains and minds of our editorial teams and our content experts, how do we serve that to our customers in increasingly interesting, efficient and valuable ways?’

So, we’ve been living this transformation for the last six years, and certainly in the last eighteen months that transformation has accelerated through the launch of things like AI Assist and the generative chat agent that we have.

So, we have the organisational challenge that I talked about: How do we lead us all through this change? And every job in Brightmine will likely have to develop new skills as we think about, ‘How do we incorporate these technologies into our working practices?’ But we have the added opportunity and excitement of, ‘Where does it create opportunity for us to deliver different value, or value in a different way, to our customers?’ And you’ve heard us talk about this before internally, but one of the big things for us is really around, ‘How do we bring to bear the power of agents into our customer workflow?’ And so rather than having them simply use our products to find the insights they’re looking for, how do we augment that with individual agents that can help them execute their tasks? And certainly it’s an exciting year for us as we look to deploy that increasingly into our products, and our very first agent is essentially a research agent, which is AI Assist, which helps people get answers to questions. So yeah, it’s a huge thing for us. It’s an exciting opportunity and leaning into it to create even more value for customers is the thing that’s getting us excited.

Robert Shore: Yeah, absolutely. It’s good that we’re underlining that the website just gets better and better.

Scott Walker: Yeah. The interesting things is…so here’s a question for us, and we’ve been asking this question of ourselves, is, ‘In five years’ time how many of our users will still log onto a website to get an answer? Or will they look to interact with some form of agent that they’re asking a question of (whether that agent is a Brightmine agent, whether it’s an agent in a workflow application like an HCM, or whether it’s an internal agent that they’ve built in their own company) to be able to get those answers?’ So the way we deliver answers and insights is likely to transform over the next five years or so.

Robert Shore: Yeah. It’s going to be an exciting time. Now though, for 2026 specifically, Scott, can you give us your top tip?

Scott Walker: Top tip for HR in this rapidly changing and evolving world is don’t underestimate the value that you bring in establishing culture. And that culture will become so critical in allowing your people to lean into the transformation and change that’s required. And so don’t get bogged down with the details of the specifics of the things you can do. Step back, zoom out. Think about the mindset that you need your teams to adopt in order to be agile, to be critical thinking, to be able to learn very rapidly, because that pace of change is only going to accelerate. It doesn’t get talked about enough, and I think HR have a critical role to play in supporting leadership and management in organisations to help think about, ‘How do you prepare your employees’ mindset to be able to go through such a huge period of transformation and change?’

Robert Shore: Brilliant. Thank you, Scott.

Scott Walker: Thank you, Robert.

Robert Shore: And so that brings us to the end of this Trends and Tips for HR in 2026 podcast. I’d like to thank our contributors, Bar Huberman, Sheila Atwood and Scott Walker. We have, of course, resources listed for you in the show notes. And beyond that, it just remains for me to say, until next time