Summary: AI is evolving from simple assistants to ‘superagents’ that could eliminate up to 30% of HR workflow steps. This won’t ‘decimate’ HR, rather it will free teams up to focus on strategic work and become application developers managing AI infrastructure. This year, CHROs should prioritise training teams, identifying high-value use cases and executing deployment strategies. The future is HR performed more effectively with superagent support, not HR replacement.
As AI helps transform the workplace, people leaders remain in the hotseat.
Why? Because today’s Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) is expected to guide both employees and corporate leadership into a new era. Drawing on our proprietary data at The Josh Bersin Company – daily engagement with more than 3,000 organisations, and ongoing dialogue across the fast-evolving HR technology ecosystem – we’ve identified several 2026 priorities for CHROs.
These action plans, which we frame as ‘imperatives’ to reinforce their urgency, centre on the imminent next steps required as AI rapidly evolves. There’s genuinely no hyperbole when we say that we’re on the threshold of a new era for enterprise, one that redefines how HR will operate in an AI-powered future.
That change is being driven by the rapid scaling up of AI from relatively simple assistants to not just semi-autonomous agents but ‘superagents’.
From model T to flying cars
One useful way to understand this metamorphosis is the evolution of the automobile. We started with basic mechanics that didn’t do that much to streamline the experience for the human driver. But, over time, layers of technology have been introduced that have simplified more and more driving tasks. Today, fully autonomous vehicles are already on the road.
The next step is equally profound: AI will begin examining how cars work to identify efficiencies and integration opportunities. I have no doubt these will be improvements that would never have occurred to us as humans. That’s because AI sees vehicles as transportation systems, not as metal shells built around fragile occupants. Who knows what better ways of designing and operating cars will emerge?
Superagents will do the same. They will identify far more efficient ways to deliver work than what has long been justified as ‘how we’ve always done it around here’ (often in processes that date back to the era of IBM Selectrics).
How will superagents impact HR?
In HR, this means AI tools will soon move beyond streamlining individual tasks to effectively replacing entire segments of the org chart. In a recent deep dive, we identified more than 100 potential HR agents capable of doing exactly that.
What’s genuinely revolutionary here is that these 100 agents can easily be grouped into much smaller sets of superagent ‘families’ across core HR tasks like employee services, recruiting, performance management, coaching, L&D, and workforce management.
That consolidation alone could eliminate up to 30% of the workflow steps you need today. The result is an organisation and team leading the delivery of dramatic improvements in employee services, with hundreds of traditional processes automated.
The future of humans in HR
Should this be read as HR being decimated and devalued? Quite the contrary. Automating 30% of workflows does not automatically imply 30% fewer people. The more accurate interpretation of these changes is to see that as the superagents automate core HR processes, HR teams gain the freedom to restructure, coordinate with IT, and rapidly accelerate AI adoption.
This positions HR as the clear owner of practical AI deployment across the enterprise.
In fact, the superagent revolution may be the catalyst HR professionals have been waiting for – freeing up time to focus on hiring, coaching, and managing the organisation’s AI infrastructure. As this unfolds, the majority of HR teams will in fact become application developers, building and managing their own people-management agents.
By 2027, we expect higher-performing companies and more engaged employees. We anticipate that organisations will leverage the impact and creativity of their AI-empowered ‘superworkers’ to generate even higher levels of revenue and profit per employee, by allowing them to focus on work that is creative and top of license.
But this future won’t arrive on its own. We have to actively make it happen.
Baby steps to achieve huge payback
The way to establish these new baselines of efficiency and productivity is to seize the day. Start building the right tech stack to make all this practical. Invest in skills, and learn how to operationalise this enormous new toolset for process improvement and autonomy.
In other words, if the conversation in meetings still centers on, ‘should we move to AI?’ rather than exactly when and how to make the transition, companies risk falling behind. In 2026, AI will be everywhere: in our phones, computers, vehicles, and wearable devices. As a result, business leaders and professionals alike will need a working understanding of AI’s imperfections, architecture, and the quality of the underlying data.
For CHROs, this means pivoting (in the next few months) to a completely new corporate mission focused on:
a) Training teams to use and build with AI.
b) Identifying high-value AI assistant, agent, and increasingly ‘superagent’ use cases.
c) Executing AI deployment strategies to drive growth.
Key takeaways
Our analysis of organisations leading this transformation shows that these priorities can be broken down into actionable steps that make the vision achievable:
- Build a unified AI architecture: No one wants to manage 100 agents from 100 vendors. Design a coherent, scalable AI ecosystem, and use superagents to collect and consolidate agents.
- Embrace the era of the corporate citizen developer: AI will not be built by coders or even coding AI, but by everyone. Enable the whole organisation to build apps, rather than waiting for vendors to develop them.
- Plan for job transformation, not job destruction: Some roles will disappear, many more will emerge. More than 30 new job titles have already appeared within HR and IT.
- Put employee care at the center: As AI’s impact intensifies, employee trust, wellbeing, and fairness become critically important. Refocus on mission, purpose, and internal development.
- Move beyond traditional ideas about talent management: Retire outdated models and usher in true talent density across the organisation. Slow hiring, and improve internal upskilling and performance.
- Prepare for AI-powered digital leadership: Look to help spin upvirtual ‘digital twins’ to coach, guide, and scale leadership in radical new ways (think, AI-driven leadership built from your own current, or even past, leaders).
- Start an AI-driven learning revolution: Continuous, personalised, AI-powered learning will be standard. To make the most of it, deprioritise courseware and shift toward dynamically generated learning and knowledge.
- Integrate your recruitment AI investments: Consolidate tools and fully connect the talent acquisition tech stack.
- Plan for a significant HR market disruption: The vendor system is poised for a big reshuffle, so be ready to identify and back the new winners. Some incumbents will vanish and many will be acquired.
- Invest in LLM quality, not just access: Large language models vary widely in value; invest in data labeling, quality, external validation, and internal data governance.
- Lead the AI transformation: Last but not least, step up and become the company officer who drives AI adoption for the organisation’s broader success.
Remember to think positively: not everything will change or go away. HR will still exist, still matter, and be at the heart of organisational success.
The difference? HR will be performed far more effectively, with the help of superagents.
Josh Bersin is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Josh Bersin Company, which provides human resources, talent management, and HR technology insights to over 3,500 organisations worldwide.
