Overview

The 2027 State of People Strategy Report, published by Lattice on September 9, 2026, examines changing priorities, challenges, and practices among human resources (HR) professionals as organizations respond to developments in artificial intelligence, performance management, employee engagement, workplace culture, human resources technology, and workforce strategy. The report is based on a survey of 1,358 HR professionals and compares findings with results from previous years to identify emerging trends.

Key findings in the report:

• 55% of respondents said they had considered leaving the HR profession this year, and 39% of them said it’s due to feeling undervalued at work.
• 47% of HR say they regret a recent tech purchase. The top reasons are functionality and integration issues.
• 38% of HR teams say performance is their top priority, while engagement hits a five-year low: the percentage describing themselves as fully engaged and energized declined from 41% to 30% from prior reports.
• More than half of HR leaders said employees were being asked to do more work without additional pay.

The report also examines increasing organizational expectations for HR leaders to help guide AI adoption and finds growing use of AI within HR technology and performance-management processes.

The report is part of Lattice's State of People Strategy annual research series. Lattice describes the series as an annual industry report designed to examine the priorities and experiences of HR and people teams. The inaugural report was published in 2020, followed by reports in 2021, a 2022–2023 edition, and reports for 2024, 2025, 2026, and 2027.

The recurring research enables comparisons of HR priorities and practices over time, including changes related to employee engagement, performance management, technology, organizational culture, AI, and the role of the HR function.

Although titled the 2027 report, the research was conducted in 2026 and the report was published in September 2026. The title reflects the period toward which the report's findings and HR priorities are directed.

Methodology

The 2027 report is based on responses from 1,358 HR professionals collected between April 2 and June 11, 2026. Respondents represented organizations of different sizes and industries and were located in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and other markets.

Lattice analyzed the responses and compared them with findings from previous years to identify changes and trends. Percentages in the report are rounded to the nearest whole number.

The respondent population is weighted toward senior HR professionals. Approximately 33% were vice presidents or heads of human resources or people functions and 57% were director-level professionals or human resources business partners.

The U.S. accounted for approximately 65% of respondents. Software and information technology was the largest industry represented (29%), followed by retail and trade and professional and business services, each at 12%, and manufacturing at 11%.

The report provides useful recurring industry data, particularly for examining trends across editions, but it should not be interpreted as a nationally representative survey of all human resources professionals. The published methodology does not specify a probability-sampling framework, response rate, survey weighting, or margin of sampling error. Findings are therefore most appropriately understood as industry-sponsored survey research reflecting the respondents included in the study.

Key 2026 Findings

• Performance management became the top HR priority
  • 40% of respondents identified performance management as a priority, narrowly surpassing employee engagement at 39%.
  • This was the first time in the report series that performance had overtaken engagement.
• AI moved from discussion toward experimentation and use
  • 42% of white-collar HR teams reported either experimenting with or regularly using agentic AI.
  • Among high-performing HR teams, 50% reported regularly using agentic AI, compared with 6% of teams that were falling short of their goals.
• HR professionals reported stability alongside dissatisfaction
  • 79% percent felt their jobs were secure, 93% expected HR headcount to remain stable or increase, and 90% expected budgets to remain stable or increase.
  • 41% said they had considered leaving the HR resources profession during the previous year.
• Technology modernization became a larger priority
  • 25% of HR teams identified updating their technology infrastructure as a priority, up 10 percentage points from the previous year.
  • 36% reported pressure to consolidate technology tools.
• Workload and compensation pressures were evident
  • 43% of respondents said employees were being given additional responsibilities without additional pay, while 48% said employees were pushing back against these so-called “dry promotions.”
• Generational differences emerged in attitudes toward work and technology
  • Report identified differences among generations in attitudes toward return-to-office policies, AI,  technology adoption, and the purpose of HR work, suggesting that multigenerational workforce issues were becoming increasingly relevant to people strategy.

Earlier Reports / Findings

Earlier editions of the State of People Strategy series document changes in HR priorities from the pandemic-era transition to remote work through growing attention to performance, employee engagement, skills, technology, and AI.

• 2025 Report
  • Focused heavily on the relationship between HR professionals and managers.
  • 91% of high-performing HR teams reported meeting most or all managers' needs, compared with 41% of teams falling short of their goals.
  • Learning and development was also prominent: 68% of respondents said learning and development opportunities would be central to their employee-engagement strategies.
  • AI adoption remained relatively limited, with 15% of teams having moved from evaluating AI to implementation.
    The 2025 research Identified substantial skills challenges; 77% of HR teams and 68% of managers said skills gaps were preventing organizations from promoting internally as often as they would like.
• 2024 Report
  • Relative stability following several years of disruption.
  • 64% of HR professionals described themselves as fully engaged
  • 65% expressed confidence in their job security
  • Most reported stable or increasing budgets and staffing.
  • 41% of surveyed organizations had experienced layoffs during the prior year.
  • Performance management rose substantially as a priority, while the research increasingly emphasized whether HR teams could demonstrate business impact.
  • Among teams exceeding their goals, 82% said they were confident in connecting HR programs to business outcomes, compared with 40% of lower-performing teams.
  • AI was becoming a mainstream consideration, with 76% of teams already exploring AI solutions.
• 2022–2023 Report
  • Examined HR strategy amid the transition to hybrid work, high employee turnover, economic uncertainty, and increasing concern about retention.
  • A majority of HR leaders were placing greater emphasis on employee retention than talent acquisition.
  • Growing interest in connecting compensation with performance.
  • 83% of HR leaders said linking pay and performance was important.
  • More than half reported investing in greater pay transparency, while 61% reported increasing efforts to reduce bias in performance reviews.
• 2021 Report
  • Reflected the continuing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the emerging “Great Resignation.”
  • 51% of respondents reported higher-than-usual employee turnover, and employee-initiated turnover was among the most important measures used to assess human resources success.
  • Emotional exhaustion and burnout were also major concerns, cited as a leading HR challenge by 42% of respondents.
  • Emphasized organizational resilience and the increasing responsibilities placed on HR teams as organizations adjusted to rapidly changing workforce conditions.
• 2020 Report (inaugural)
  • Captured the abrupt transformation of work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Based on a survey of 570 HR and people professionals, the research identified remote work, employee morale, mental health, engagement, and manager support as immediate organizational concerns.
  • Nearly 60% of respondents identified emotional exhaustion as a leading challenge for themselves or their teams.
  • The shift to remote work was particularly significant.
  • 42% percent of respondents said their organizations planned to change their policies to provide employees with remote-work options after the immediate crisis ended.
  • Highlighted the growing importance of managers in maintaining communication, morale, engagement, and performance in distributed workplaces.

Taken together, the reports show an evolution in HR priorities: pandemic response, remote work, burnout, and turnover in 2020–2021; retention, hybrid work, compensation, and performance in 2022–2023; business impact, manager effectiveness, and skills in 2024–2025; and AI, technology, performance pressure, workload, and the changing role of HR in 2026–2027.

Funding / Partners

The State of People Strategy Report is produced by Lattice, a for-profit HR technology company that provides software and AI-enabled tools for performance management and other HR functions.

Lattice identifies several content partners for the 2027 report.

The report incorporates perspectives from HR practitioners, Lattice customers, members of its Chief People Officer Council, and other HR experts.

Resources

Barth, J. (2026, September 16). More than half of HR professionals are considering leaving HR, survey finds. HR Executive Newsletter.

Lattice. (2026). 2027 state of people strategy report: People strategy is the strategy. 2027 State of People Strategy Report

Lattice. (2026, September 9). Lattice's 2027 State of People Strategy Report: AI-native performance is reshaping HR. Culture determines who leads. Report announcement

Lattice. (n.d.). State of people strategy reports. State of People Strategy annual report archive

Lattice. (2025). 2026 state of people strategy report: People + AI succeeding together. 2026 State of People Strategy Report

Lattice. (2024). 2025 state of people strategy report: Strengthening the HR-manager relationship. 2025 State of People Strategy Report

Lattice. (2023). 2024 state of people strategy report: Connecting HR to business impact. 2024 State of People Strategy Report