2026 at the Epicenter of Disruptive Innovation
Just a few years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe, fundamentally reshaping not only HR but the entire way businesses operate. It transformed how and where people work, and almost completely restructured labor markets—particularly in Korea—toward experienced, mid-career talent. Productivity improved, too.
It was a painful period, yet some argued that it merely accelerated a transformation that was long overdue—an unwelcome virus forcing passive organizations into a necessary corner.
A new year has dawned once again.
But 2026 places us at the very heart of disruption—one that surpasses even the shock of the pandemic.
As someone who studies, teaches, and advises organizations on HR through diverse client engagements, I found myself momentarily disoriented when speaking with executives and practitioners at the start of this year. Everything we have experienced and prepared for under the banner of “digital transformation” has now converged into a massive wave, radically redrawing the shoreline of traditional HR.
If the old HR roadmap followed a linear sequence—selecting top talent, developing them, rewarding performance, and managing people efficiently—the roadmap before us today resembles a non-linear maze, torn apart and reassembled by AI. We may have reached a point where many of the familiar formulas of HR management must be discarded altogether.
Key HR Themes Demanding Immediate Attention
Several HR trends already unfolding before us deserve close attention—each fundamentally challenging long-standing assumptions of traditional HR.
- AI-Augmented HR: From Tool to Colleague
The first shift is the normalization of AI augmentation.
In 2026, HR functions at global leading firms no longer rely on humans to manually input data. Agentic AI systems autonomously assess organizational health, forecast workforce gaps, and deliver real-time performance coaching.
AI is no longer just software—it has become a digital colleague supporting HR professionals’ decision-making.
At one multinational company, for example, AI analyzes employees’ skill profiles and project histories to predict voluntary turnover with over 90% accuracy, recommending optimal timing and approaches for retention conversations—often with expert-level precision.
In this environment, HR roles buried in administrative processing and data handling rapidly lose their relevance. Instead, the true value of HR may lie in a far narrower yet more critical domain: applying human judgment, ethical responsibility, and contextual wisdom to AI-generated insights.
- The End of Hiring and the Productivity Paradox
The second notable trend is the “end of hiring” and the relentless pursuit of maximum productivity per employee.
Large-scale recruitment campaigns and routine hiring cycles have largely faded. The reluctance to hire junior talent is intensifying, replaced by a desire for skill-based supply chains—sourcing specific capabilities precisely when they are needed.
Empirical research by Anthropic and Harvard Business School demonstrates that knowledge workers augmented by AI deliver dramatically higher quality and speed than non-AI users. In areas requiring advanced reasoning, the productivity of experienced professionals can effectively double—a finding supported by robust data.
The paradox is striking. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently observed that “a single individual, empowered by AI, will soon be capable of doing the work that once required dozens of people.”
As a result, leadership priorities are shifting rapidly—from “How many people should we hire?” to “How can we amplify the potential of our existing talent tenfold with AI?”
- Continuous Restructuring: Slimming Down for Growth
The next keyword may be the most painful for Korean organizations: the normalization of continuous restructuring.
Over the past two decades, I have led workforce restructurings as a senior HR executive at top-tier multinational companies in the U.S. and the U.K. Yet today’s reality differs fundamentally from those earlier experiences.
What we now see—large-scale layoffs executed amid strong financial performance—has become a new growth equation in Silicon Valley.
Microsoft announced layoffs of 15,000 employees while reporting record earnings, even closing its iconic on-campus employee library in favor of digital and AI-driven learning experiences. Google has followed a similar path, with CEO Sundar Pichai repeatedly emphasizing since 2024 the need to dismantle organizational layers and accelerate execution to fund AI investments.
In today’s tightly interconnected global business environment, it is only natural that these equations influence the policies of Korea’s largest conglomerates. Samsung Electronics has emphasized “human capital super-gaps” beyond technological leadership in its 2026 New Year address. Given domestic constraints on mass layoffs, companies are increasingly turning to permanent early retirement programs and large-scale internal reskilling, particularly toward software and AI capabilities.
Signs of a distinctly Korean model of organizational slimming—combining reskilling, redeployment, and structural redesign—are already visible at SK and LG Group. If past restructurings were akin to “wringing water from a dry towel,” post-2026 restructuring among big tech companies resembles nothing less than an engine replacement.
Beyond the Keywords: Chain Reactions and Strategic Implications
Amid these unprecedented HR trends, HR functions will continue to be challenged to assume ever more strategic and novel roles. They are being called to evolve into strategists and designers of human capital systems.
What capabilities should be developed—and how—has become an entirely new question. Traditional learning and development (L&D) models have effectively received a death sentence. Meanwhile, issues intensified since the pandemic—employee engagement, cultural friction, and the management of low performers—remain stubbornly persistent.
Individual employees, too, cannot afford complacency. Each must drive a personal reskilling revolution to remain relevant.
Over the past several decades, HR has oscillated from seniority-based systems to competency-based models, and then to job-centered frameworks. In 2026, even the concept of the “job” is dissolving, replaced by an era defined by skills.
The HR roadmap torn apart by AI is unlikely to be restored. Yet through the fractures, new opportunities are clearly emerging. What leaders and HR professionals need in 2026 is not nostalgia for past successes, but the mindset of a designer—one who wields technology as a sharp tool while reimagining how human creativity and authenticity can be redrawn on the canvas of the organization.
In an era where the “end of hiring” is proclaimed and organizational slimming accelerates, this moment may represent our final—and best—opportunity to demonstrate what truly human-centered management looks like.
