As many organizations accelerate AI adoption and others face mounting pressure to retain talent amid economic pressures, McLean & Company’s new HR Trends Report 2026 warns of a growing structural risk inside the workplace: leadership capacity is no longer keeping pace with the demands being placed on them.
This report reveals that while the external world is shifting faster than ever, the internal systems designed to help organizations adapt such as leadership capability, cultural alignment, and change readiness have not kept up. The result is a widening gap between the pace of transformation and the people expected to lead through change.
“Organizations are trying to move faster than ever, but their systems for leadership, culture, and change haven’t fully caught up,” says Karen Mann, SVP, human resources research, learning and advisory services at McLean & Company. “Our 2026 data shows that HR is uniquely positioned to close this gap. By building strong people leaders, aligning culture with strategy, and taking a structured approach to uncertainty, HR can help organizations innovate while building change resilience.”
Key takeaways:
· The top HR priorities for the year that human resources leaders will need to navigate are developing leaders; enabling innovation; retaining employees; providing a great employee experience; recruiting; and controlling labor costs.
· The report signals a transition toward building internal resilience rather than chasing growth alone. This shift is underscored by innovation’s rise from 10th place in 2025 to second place in 2026, reflecting that organizations recognize that thriving through disruption requires an investment in people – not solely around controlling costs.
· HR is now expected to guide organizations through accelerating AI implementation, shifting employee expectations, and increasing economic and legislative uncertainty, all while ensuring decisions remain human-centric and grounded in organizational values.
· Leadership development remains HR’s No. 1 priority, reflecting the central role leaders play in managing change, developing talent, and sustaining innovation. Yet the data reveals a persistent capability gap.
· The findings show that when leaders are highly effective at people leadership, organizations are 2.3 times more likely to be high performers in innovation and agility. Despite this, only 35% of HR teams say they are high performing at developing the organization’s leaders.
· The report notes that values cannot remain aspirational; they must instead anchor everyday decision-making.
· Yet, the data reveals that fewer than half of organizations hold leaders accountable for acting in alignment with those values.
· Scenario planning emerges as one of the highest impact yet least adopted practices for navigating complexity. Only 22% of organizations report using a structured, documented scenario-planning approach.
· Those that do are 2.1 times more likely to be high performers in innovation and 1.8 times more likely to excel at executing strategic goals. At the same time, 70% of organizations report challenges managing change, from too many simultaneous initiatives to weak leadership accountability and gaps in change-management skills.
· AI maturity shows that more organizations are progressing into the incorporation and proliferation stages, where AI becomes embedded into everyday operations rather than treated as a pilot or experiment.
· However, the people side of AI transformation is lagging. According to the data, few HR teams arehighly effective at enabling technology adoption; change fatigue is rising, with employees; and leaders struggling to keep up with evolving tools, workflows, and expectations.
