SHRM26 Debrief · AI, Data & Tech · #3746

State of the Workforce 2026: What to Keep, What to Change, and What AI Is Actually Doing to Your Employees

with Kris Erickson

▶ Watch on the SHRM portal ~86 min, distilled

employee engagementleadership effectivenessAI adoption

"When employees don't trust AI, they become what they are calling coasters. People who are actively disengaged, who will not give their best work, yet they remain in the organization itself."

What it was about

Drawing on a 10-million-respondent, three-year rolling workforce database, the speaker argues that surface-level conditions (work arrangements, generational makeup, AI adoption) are shifting fast, but the core human predictors of engagement and leadership effectiveness are stable. Organizations win by shoring up those fundamentals and treating AI adoption as a trust and change-management problem, not a technology rollout.

By the numbers

males entered the workforce at three times the amount of females

Women's National Law Center statistic on workforce entry, late 2025/early 2026

seven-point engagement delta

engagement gap between on-site and remote/hybrid workers

80% of the workforce by 2034

projected share of workforce that will be millennials and Gen Z

Key notes

Track the 15 predictors of engagement across three tiers (foundational, bridge, heart) instead of relying on the old 'drivers of engagement' model, since foundational factors prevent disengagement but don't drive it.
Treat leadership effectiveness (measured by 'I believe my manager is an outstanding leader') as a distinct, more stable metric from engagement. Build its four predictors, active communication, integrity and trust, growth orientation, and relational strength, into performance reviews and 360s.
Segment engagement data by gender, organizational level, generation, and work arrangement, since aggregate numbers hide major divergences (e.g., male vs. female senior leaders, on-site vs. remote/hybrid).

The contrarian takeRemote and hybrid workers score higher on leadership effectiveness than on-site workers, contradicting the assumption that management requires in-person, day-to-day contact ('management is a contact sport'). It appears remote/hybrid arrangements signal higher trust from leaders, which workers reciprocate with more positive perceptions of leadership.

Take this back Monday

Do this for your team

Ask your team directly how they feel about AI at work (using something like a Readiness/Initiative/Success/Expectation pulse) instead of just tracking usage.

Say this in your next leadership meeting

Good AI strategy is good people strategy — if employees don't trust AI, they quietly disengage as 'coasters' while staying employed.

Watch out for

Treating pay, respect, and stable work arrangements as afterthoughts rather than foundational predictors that must be shored up before bridge and heart factors can matter.
Mandating AI usage or tracking AI usage in a way that kills trust, rather than building organic adoption through early adopters and knowledge-sharing.
Assuming return-to-office mandates improve outcomes. The 2024 RTO push increased on-site work but triggered backlash, and it didn't improve leadership-effectiveness scores, which stayed higher for remote/hybrid workers.

Fun fact · Kris Erickson

Before co-founding WSA, she held executive consulting roles at Kenexa, IBM, and Gallup, and served as VP of HR at a Nashville cancer diagnostics company.

If this landed, see these

↳ Go deeperThe Leadership Clarity Gap: Why "Authentic Leadership" Fails Without DefinitionDefines exactly what 'outstanding leader' means, closing the gap this session's engagement data leaves open.⇄ The counterpointRight Hire, Right Growth: A Practitioner's Unfiltered Look at AI Across Hiring and RetentionAI has already broken some of the old, supposedly stable signals, like resumes and annual reviews.✦ The unexpected oneAchieving Results: Success Through Purposeful Future-Ready LeadershipTurns the same stable leadership predictors into a tidy formula: EQ plus IQ plus XQ.