If 2025 kept HR leaders on their toes, 2026 is shaping up to demand even faster reflexes.
One moment you’re untangling AI policies, the next you’re decoding the latest disengagement trend (hello “quiet cracking”). The workplace is changing every day, and relying on stale strategies or a single annual employee survey is as outdated as thinking a free lunch will cure employee satisfaction.
But HR teams are uniquely positioned to make sure their orgs are set up to thrive. It starts with continuous, strategic listening—and making sure that you’re paying attention to trends and warning signs.
To help you keep up, we’ve pulled from our SurveyMonkey Trends 2026 research to bring you the mission-critical signals you can’t ignore. See what’s at stake and how to lead with feedback and foresight.
AI has gone mainstream (and underground)
AI use is already happening on the company clock, whether you know it or not. Our AI sentiment study shows that 43% of Americans who use AI weekly are applying it at work. But there’s a significant transparency gap: A quarter of workers are using AI without telling their managers, and senior leaders are more likely to use AI on the sly than individual contributors (43% vs. 14%).
On the one hand, HR pros seem to be scrambling to understand those on-the-job AI habits; in 2025, the number of AI-related surveys they sent increased 85% YoY¹. But only 13% of workers report that their companies offer AI training, despite high interest in building these skills.
This signals a real opportunity for HR leaders to make sure they’re modeling smart (and sanctioned) AI habits and supporting their team with clear policies and training.
The critical checklist:
- Get a baseline for AI usage: Gauge AI readiness to understand which tools are already being used and for what kind of tasks.
- Identify training gaps: Send a professional development survey to uncover which AI skills employees want to build. Once you have programs in place, ask for workshop feedback so you can continually improve training.
- Support managers: Collect manager feedback to see if leaders feel equipped to guide their teams through AI adoption.
Your engagement scores aren't telling the whole story
The disengagement struggle is real. Nearly 30% of workers report that burnout is actively hindering their productivity. This isn't just an output problem. It's a huge blow for morale, employee satisfaction, and your company culture as a whole.
HR leaders are already responding: employee engagement template usage rose 57% YoY in 2025, while employee pulse template usage surged 88%¹. This matters because surface-level team check-ins no longer cut it. To retain talent in 2026, listening programs must be hyper-focused on the employee lifecycle, from onboarding to exit.
The critical checklist:
- Prioritize continuous listening: The age of annual-only employee feedback is over. Make real-time pulse check-ins a habit, so you can catch disengagement before it leads to turnover.
- Leverage AI for sentiment insights: Use AI tools to analyze open-ended feedback for hidden burnout signals or gaps in company culture.
- Focus on motivation: Ask tactical questions about work-life balance and motivation to go beyond basic satisfaction metrics and collect more holistic insights.
The best events in 2026 will start with a question, not an invite
Events are a key part of work culture, but event fatigue can turn a mandatory workshop, town hall, or team sync into a drain.
Our research found that 70% of full-time workers attended a work-related event within the last year². About three quarters (76%) of them experienced event fatigue and nearly half (47%) attended at least one event they felt wasn't worth their time². As for the classic virtual event vs. in-person debate: about half of workers said they attended a virtual event that should have been in-person or an in-person event that should have been virtual².
For HR, a bad event is a recipe for unengaged employees, lost productivity, and diminished satisfaction. That’s why HR pros’ 2026 events mandate should be to move away from vanity metrics and high-level data and toward actionable insights.
The critical checklist:
- Ask before you book: Use event planning surveys to collect attendee expectations and topics of interest so you can tailor the agenda and make the right call on in-person vs. virtual.
- Go granular: Don’t limit yourself to just one big survey at the end. Gather session-level feedback to understand the specifics of what resonated and what fell flat.
- Close the loop: Treat post-event surveys as the start of the next engagement cycle, and share with attendees how their feedback will shape future gatherings.
- Don’t overlook meetings: Town halls and large events aren’t the only times for insights. You can boost employee productivity and engagement by prioritizing meeting feedback and workshop feedback too.
The HR takeaway
In 2026, the smartest HR leaders aren’t waiting for certainty or hoping for the best; they’re using feedback to get valuable foresight and better serve their organizations.
Ready to lead with confidence? Explore SurveyMonkey Trends 2026 for more insights and resources.
¹Template use percentages are based on template deployments, defined as any survey launched using a SurveyMonkey template that received at least 5 responses. Data compares the period of September 27, 2024-September 27, 2025 with September 27, 2023-September 26-2024.
²This SurveyMonkey study was conducted from November 4-5, 2025. We surveyed 555 adults, 18 and older, who live in the United States and are employed full-time. The sample was balanced by age, race, gender, education, and region, according to the US Census.
