With 2025 drawing to a close, organisations are beginning to set new goals and commitments for the year ahead. As priorities for 2026 take shape, HR leaders — after a year of significant operational and cultural change- are turning their attention to how they plan, build and support the workforce going forward.Throughout 2025, HR leaders faced the challenge of aligning workforce strategy with rapidly evolving business needs. Rising inflation, early-stage AI adoption, a multigenerational workforce and shifting employee expectations added complexity to an already demanding environment.
Workforce sentiment data from across EMEA in 2025 points to a growing gap between HR effort and employee experience. This gap has not emerged because HR functions are disengaged, but because some long-standing practices no longer reflect how work is actually experienced on the ground.
To tackle the underlying challenges and stay effective in 2026, HR leaders must stop doing a few things that once worked, but no longer do.What HR leaders need to pause and rethink in 2026:
- Focusing on activity instead of improvement: Across EMEA, HR teams have become highly organised and delivery-focused. Programmes are rolled out on time, dashboards are updated and targets are tracked closely. Yet this activity does not always translate into a better daily work experience for employees.
Employees tend to judge HR by simple, practical outcomes: Are priorities clear? Are decisions made faster? Is unnecessary work being removed? In 2026, HR must measure progress less by what is launched and more by whether it actually makes work easier and clearer. - Treating wellbeing as something separate from work: Employee wellbeing remains a stated priority for HR, yet many employees continue to feel stretched.
- Access to mental health support and wellbeing benefits is now relatively common across EMEA, but stress and burnout remain high. Employees are more likely to point to heavy workloads, constant change and limited control over their time than to a lack of support programmes.If well-being is to improve in 2026, HR will need to focus less on adding new initiatives and more on how work is organised, including reducing unnecessary meetings, setting clearer expectations and enabling managers to protect time.
- Relying on an annual feedback cycle: Annual engagement surveys still have a role, but they are no longer enough on their own. Employees increasingly express frustration with slow feedback cycles. By the time survey results are shared, many feel their concerns have already been normalised, ignored or quietly accepted.
Going into 2026, HR must conduct shorter check-ins, regular conversations with managers and visible follow-up. It will matter more to employees than polished survey reports and bring instant outcomes. - Stop relying on policies instead of capable managers: Many organisations operate with strong policies, particularly in regulated environments. But employees do not experience policies; they experience managers.
- Workforce data across the UK and EU consistently shows that the quality of a direct manager has a bigger impact on engagement and retention than benefits or policy frameworks. Despite this, promotion decisions are still often driven by technical ability rather than people skills.In 2026, rather than formulate policy for decision making and promitions, HR should invest in better managers, through coaching, development and clear accountability.
- Assuming flexible work is already sorted: Flexible and hybrid work are now part of everyday working life. Still, dissatisfaction remains. Employees continue to raise concerns about unclear expectations, inconsistent rules and perceived unfairness between roles. They are not asking for unlimited flexibility; they are asking for clarity and consistency.
In 2026, HR must ensure clearer role-based guidance and honest conversations about flexibility. - Stop designing HR plans without employee input: Many HR strategies are still shaped at the top and rolled out with confidence. But employee sentiment data from across EMEA shows a growing gap between how leaders describe culture and how employees experience it. This gap weakens trust.
In 2026, testing ideas with employees, piloting changes and adapting based on real feedback will be essential to maintaining credibility. - Communicating change without enough explanation: Change is constant across organisations, but communication often stops at the announcement. Employees are more open to change when leaders explain why it is happening, how it affects them and what trade-offs are involved. Updates without context tend to increase uncertainty and fatigue.
As expectations rise, transparency will increasingly be seen as a leadership responsibility, not just a communications task.
Looking ahead
The biggest HR challenge in 2026 will not be introducing something new. It will be knowing what to stop. Across EMEA, HR leaders are not facing a crisis of relevance, but they are facing a moment that demands realism.
Letting go of practices that no longer work may be the most important decision they make.