HR insights based on real market conversations with leaders between April 2026 and June 2026.
Across conversations with leaders over the last quarter, the clearest theme is that transformation activity remains high, but it is happening in a more pressured and uneven environment. Leaders described organisations managing multiple change agendas at once, often against a backdrop of cost pressure, restructuring, delayed programmes, shifting priorities, and very stretched teams. In a number of cases, the volume of work has increased while clarity, governance, and decision-making have not always kept pace, creating fatigue across leadership teams and functions.
A consistent pattern is that organisations are still redesigning structures, refining operating models, and trying to become leaner, more commercially effective, and more skills-led. Several conversations pointed to duplicated activity, overly layered structures, and the need to better define what should sit centrally versus what should sit closer to the business.
In parallel, major systems work continues to feature heavily, including HR technology upgrades, ERP programmes, and broader digital enablement. These initiatives are often taking longer than expected, but they remain central to unlocking efficiency, better data, and more scalable ways of working.
From a people perspective, hiring is becoming more selective and outcome-led. Rather than broad-based growth, organisations are prioritising investment where there is a clear link to efficiency, future capability, or commercial value.
Overall, the market feels active but inconsistent: businesses are still spending where there is a clear strategic case, but most are doing so in a more controlled, selective, and outcome-focused way.
What I am hearing across the market is that change and transformation remain firmly on the agenda, but the shape of that activity continues to evolve. Cost pressure is still a defining feature, and organisations are being asked to deliver more with less while managing increasingly complex change portfolios. At the same time, there is a sharper focus on future capability, with businesses investing selectively where there is a clear link to efficiency, workforce readiness, or commercial value.
This shift is also changing what organisations need from HR and transformation leaders. The emphasis is moving toward people who can connect strategic thinking with practical delivery, build alignment across functions, and help teams sustain momentum in more complex conditions.
This wider picture is consistent with current market commentary, which points to companies using more flexible and specialist capability to maintain momentum under tighter budgets. The challenge is not whether organisations understand the need to change. The challenge is whether they have the leadership capacity, governance, and delivery discipline to keep pace with it.
Retail and consumer-facing businesses
In retail and consumer-facing businesses, transformation is heavily cost-led, with organisations balancing margin pressure, complex legacy structures, and the need to become more commercially focused. There is clear appetite for large-scale end-to-end change, but often a preference for smaller, more agile external partners rather than large consulting firms.
Industrial, engineering and infrastructure-related environments
In industrial, engineering, and infrastructure-related environments, there continues to be significant operating model redesign, integration activity, systems implementation, and organisational simplification, often alongside restructuring and consultation activity. These sectors are also wrestling with how HR can move beyond an operational support role and play a fuller part in organisation design, workforce strategy, and future skills planning.
Professional and business services
In professional and business services, as well as more complex multinational environments, transformation remains active but often fragmented, with central programmes sitting alongside numerous local initiatives. This is creating demand for stronger programme governance, clearer ownership, and better connection between systems change and people change.
Technology-enabled and digital businesses
In technology-enabled and digital businesses, hiring remains tightly controlled, but critical transformation and capability needs have not gone away. Instead, organisations are looking for flexible ways to access specialist talent, particularly where they need support around AI, data, operating model change, or cross-border leadership complexity.
Transformation is becoming a permanent operating condition
Transformation is increasingly embedded in the way organisations operate, rather than being treated as a discrete programme with a clear beginning and end. Multiple workstreams are running at once across systems, structures, leadership, and culture, which is placing greater pressure on governance, prioritisation, and leadership capacity.
Selective hiring is replacing broad-based growth
Demand is strongest where organisations need targeted capability in transformation, data, AI, workforce planning, reward, and commercially minded HR leadership. Many businesses remain cautious on permanent headcount, so hiring decisions are being scrutinised more closely and linked more directly to measurable impact.
Skills-based thinking is moving up the agenda
Skills-based workforce planning, job architecture, internal mobility, and future capability needs are coming up repeatedly as areas of investment. Leadership capability is also becoming more prominent as organisations look for leaders who can combine strategic judgement with hands-on delivery.
AI is influencing both ambition and readiness
AI is part of almost every conversation now, although maturity levels vary widely. In some businesses it is still largely exploratory, while in others it is beginning to influence operating model decisions, workforce design, learning strategy, and productivity expectations.
Flexible capability is being used to maintain momentum
Interims, fixed-term hires, extensions, and project-based support are being used to keep transformation moving without adding unnecessary permanent headcount. This is particularly important where organisations are running concurrent programmes under tighter budgets, leaner teams, and greater governance pressure.
Overall, the market feels healthier than it was this time last year, but it is by no means uniformly strong. Activity is there, particularly around transformation, but it is coming through in bursts rather than with complete consistency.
Businesses are still committing to change, especially where it supports efficiency, capability building, systems enablement, or future workforce readiness, but they are doing so with far greater scrutiny around cost, timing, and measurable value.
For change and transformation leaders, that means the market continues to reward those who can combine strategic judgement with credible delivery, operate effectively in ambiguity, and help organisations translate broad transformation ambition into practical execution. As we move through the next quarter, the differentiator will be how clearly organisations connect transformation ambition with the governance, capability, and decision-making conditions needed to deliver it.
Written by Amelia Black, Senior Director in BIE’s People & Culture Leadership Practice
