The talent management models most organizations operate today were built around assumptions of relative stability. Capability programs followed annual cycles. Succession pipelines were planned on multi-year horizons. Learning strategies were anchored to roles expected to remain durable long enough to justify the investment.

Those assumptions held for a long time. They became embedded in HR systems, L&D calendars and governance models. For the conditions they were designed to support, they worked well. As operating environments have become less predictable, however, the fit between those assumptions and current realities has weakened.

Accelerating AI adoption, geopolitical supply chain fragmentation, regulatory change, and compressed technology cycles are not short-term disruptions. They now shape the day-to-day operating context. Many of the talent systems organizations have invested in over the past decade were designed for a different set of conditions.

What the Data Tells Us

Brandon Hall Group’s Talent Management Progression Model for Empowering HR Excellence identifies four phases of organizational progress: Reactive or Ad Hoc (9.2 percent), Standardized (35.6 percent), Strategic (37.9 percent) and Optimized (17.2 percent). More than half of organizations now operate at the Strategic or Optimized level. That reflects meaningful progress.

Looking more closely at what those levels represent under volatile conditions, however, reveals a more nuanced picture.

Phase 2 (Standardized) and Phase 3 (Strategic) organizations have made substantial investments in building aligned and consistent talent systems. These include structured processes, defined career frameworks, integrated performance management and documented links between talent activity and business outcomes. These are significant achievements and they provide clarity and scale.

Both phases, however, were designed around planning horizons that assume a reasonable degree of predictability. Phase 3 organizations align talent initiatives to business goals that are typically set annually or over multiple years. Phase 2 organizations emphasize consistency through standardization, which is effective for repeatability but can slow responsiveness when conditions change more quickly than expected.

Brandon Hall Group’s analysis of award-winning talent management programs reinforces this pattern. The most widely implemented practices include LMS platforms, goal setting processes, career progression frameworks and succession planning. These practices form the backbone of many well-run talent organizations. At the same time, they reflect an architecture optimized for stability-oriented planning.

Capabilities that support faster adjustment are still less common. Workforce forecasting frameworks, continuous performance assessment, internal talent marketplaces, and AI-powered skill mapping remain relatively rare. These capabilities are more characteristic of Phase 4 organizations, which currently represent a smaller portion of the field.

A Structural Tension in Talent Architecture

Brandon Hall Group has described a recurring pattern in talent architecture. Once systems are established, they tend to reinforce internal consistency and efficiency. Governance structures protect existing curricula. Content libraries grow with limited retirement. Succession plans reflect current organizational designs more than emerging capability needs.

These systems are not failing. They are operating as intended, based on assumptions that emphasized predictability and longer-range planning. As external conditions become more fluid, the gap between how talent systems operate and how quickly organizations need to adjust becomes more visible.

This is not a critique of Phase 2 or Phase 3 organizations. It is an architectural observation. The progression model itself points toward the challenge. Phase 4 organizations are characterized by data-informed decision-making, AI embedded across talent functions and talent management operating as a more proactive contributor to business change. In more volatile environments, these characteristics increasingly function as requirements rather than aspirational features.

Organizations that are making this shift tend to share a common trait. They redesign talent systems not simply to deliver programs more efficiently, but to support ongoing recalibration as conditions evolve.

The Adaptive Model: Shortening Speed to Capability Readiness

Brandon Hall Group has identified a consistent differentiator among higher performing talent organizations: a measurable reduction in speed to capability readiness.

In more traditional models, capability gaps surface during periodic reviews, programs are designed and delivered on scheduled cycles and impact is assessed at completion. By the time that cycle closes, the underlying need may already have shifted.

Organizations operating at higher progression levels reduce this lag through a series of structural choices. The technology decisions they make reflect this operating model.

• Continuous skill sensing replaces periodic assessment. Rather than mapping competencies against a static framework once a year, adaptive organizations track skill signals dynamically. Brandon Hall Group Diamond-level Smartchoice® Solution Provider NovoEd’s skills analytics dashboard and NovoAI capability give L&D teams real-time visibility into skill development across the organization, including AI-powered speech analysis and key phrase tracking inside Practice+ that deliver immediate feedback on skill proficiency, not after a supervisor observation or a post-program survey.
• Modular learning replaces course-based curricula. Fewer than one-third of current award winners have implemented modular or microlearning content, a gap that carries real strategic cost. NovoEd’s Learn+ supports cohort based and self-paced programs, blended delivery, and global scale while allowing organizations to adjust learning pathways as business priorities shift. Direct LMS integration enables organizations to build on existing infrastructure rather than replace it.
• Practice based learning complements content delivery. The gap between course completion and performance under pressure is where much training investment loses impact. NovoEd’s Practice+ addresses this by enabling employees to record scenario responses in video-based practice rooms and receive AI powered feedback on clarity, confidence, and effectiveness before performance actually counts. Managers add structured, rubric based feedback on specific skill areas, creating guidance that is concrete and actionable.
• Structured mentoring replaces informal knowledge transfer. Mentorship programs appear in more than half of award winning organizations, though quality and scalability vary NovoEd’s Mentor+ uses AI enabled matching to connect employees with mentors based on development needs and organizational priorities. This brings greater structure and consistency to relationships that are often informal.

When Learn+, Mentor+, Practice+ and NovoAI operate as a unified system with shared data and integrated workflows, feedback loops shorten and signals become easier to act on. This functions not as a bundle of tools, but as an operating foundation that supports more frequent adjustment and accelerated speed to readiness.

Rethinking the Platform Question

Organizations at Phase 2 and Phase 3 progression often use learning platforms primarily as content libraries and completion trackers. These platforms deliver programs that have already been designed and approved through existing governance processes. This helps explain why LMS adoption remains high while frustration with learning’s business impact persists.

Phase 4 organizations approach the question differently. Rather than asking whether a platform delivers existing programs effectively, they ask whether it allows programs to be adjusted as quickly as business needs change.

Marriott International’s Chief Learning Officer has described the challenge succinctly. Reaching scale while maintaining quality required blended program design supported by a platform capable of handling multiple modalities at once. That constraint reflects what Phase 4 looks like in practice and aligns with how an integrated platform such as NovoEd is designed to operate.

Naming the Challenge

Organizations rarely fix problems they have not clearly identified.

Stability bias is not a failure of effort or investment. It reflects systems that were thoughtfully designed for conditions that emphasized predictability. For many organizations operating at Phase 2 or Phase 3 progression, the opportunity lies in extending those systems to support faster sensing, shorter feedback loops and more frequent recalibration.

Organizations that have made this shift are not simply more advanced in talent management. They are better aligned with speed-to-capability requirements shaping 2026 and the years ahead.

The data supports that conclusion.

The post Volatility Is Now Structural: Why Talent Strategies Built for Stability Are Under Strain appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

The Problem: The Static Architecture Trap

Most organizations built their talent systems for a world that no longer exists. That was one where job descriptions held steady for years, skill requirements shifted gradually and a two-year leadership development program could keep pace with the business. That world is gone.

Brandon Hall Group research reveals a sobering reality: 56% of organizations remain stuck in the earliest two phases of talent management maturity, operating with reactive or merely standardized approaches to workforce capability. Only 7% have reached optimized operations where talent management consistently drives competitive advantage. The gap between where organizations are and where volatility demands they be represents the single most consequential problem in human capital management today.

We call it the Static Architecture Trap, the condition in which talent systems are structurally designed for stability rather than the pace of capability change confronting the business. Processes designed for stability become liabilities in volatility. Organizations caught in this trap don’t just fall behind on skills; they lose the capacity to adapt at all.

This is the first installment in our six-part 2026 Volatility Research Perspective, examining how leading organizations are redesigning talent architecture from the ground up.

Five Design Principles for Volatility-Ready Talent Systems

Drawing on our Talent Management Progression Model for Empowering HR Excellence and analysis of award-winning talent management programs, Brandon Hall Group identifies five design principles that distinguish organizations capable of thriving through continuous change.

1. Strategic Integration Over Administrative Alignment. Talent architecture must function as an integrated business system, not an HR program running alongside the business. Our research found that every award-winning organization demonstrated direct connections between talent initiatives and business priorities. In practice, this means workforce planning originates from business strategy conversations, not from job requisitions after strategy has already been set. Organizations at the highest maturity levels deploy predictive workforce forecasting that anticipates capability requirements across multiple business scenarios, enabling faster speed to capability building.
2. Continuous Capability Sensing. Static, annual skill assessments cannot support dynamic talent architecture. Volatility-ready organizations implement continuous feedback loops, combining real-time performance data, peer and mentor input, and AI-driven skill mapping, to maintain a living picture of organizational capability. Our research shows that 64% of award-winning organizations have adopted goal-setting processes with cascading alignment, and 43% use 360-degree feedback systems. But the differentiator at the highest maturity tier is moving beyond periodic assessment events to embedded, continuous capability validation through work observation and performance analytics.
3. Personalized, Modular Development Pathways. One-size-fits-all development programs cannot keep pace with rapidly diverging skill requirements. Brandon Hall Group research confirms that 64% of high-performing organizations implement leadership development programs and 50% create individual development plans but the leading edge goes further, deploying personalized career navigation tools, modular microlearning and AI-powered recommendations that adapt to each employee’s current capability profile, career aspirations and the organization’s evolving needs. The development architecture must be composable: capable of being assembled, reassembled, and personalized in real time.
4. Collaborative Knowledge Networks. In volatile environments, knowledge concentrated in individuals or static repositories becomes a critical vulnerability. Award-winning organizations build structured mentoring programs (57% prevalence), coaching systems (43%), and cross-functional project assignments (29%) that distribute knowledge across the organization. The most advanced organizations treat knowledge transfer as a continuous, networked process rather than an event, using collaborative learning cohorts, peer feedback and structured mentoring relationships to ensure institutional knowledge flows freely and new capabilities propagate rapidly.
5. Adaptive Technology Ecosystems. Technology must enable, not constrain, the speed of organizational adaptation. Our data shows that 64% of award-winning organizations have implemented comprehensive learning management systems, with advanced implementations adding AI-powered tools (22%), real-time dashboards (36%) and scenario-based practice environments. However, the defining characteristic at the highest maturity level is technology that doesn’t just deliver content but orchestrates entire talent ecosystems: connecting learning, mentoring, practice, assessment, and career pathing on integrated platforms that adapt as business conditions change.

The Volatility Readiness Maturity Model: Reactive — Integrated — Adaptive

Based on our four-phase Talent Management Progression Model and evidence from award-winning organizations, Brandon Hall Group has developed a three-tier Volatility Readiness framework to help organizations diagnose where they stand.

Tier 1: Reactive. Talent activities are crisis-driven and administratively focused. Hiring fills immediate vacancies. Development is generic and sporadic. Succession planning, if it exists, consists of emergency replacement lists. Technology relies on spreadsheets and disconnected systems. Knowledge lives in individual heads. Brandon Hall Group research places roughly 56% of organizations in this band (encompassing Phase 1 and Phase 2 of our Progression Model). These organizations are structurally unable to anticipate or respond to rapid change; they can only react after the gap has already damaged performance.

Tier 2: Integrated. Talent management achieves strategic alignment with the business. Data-driven decision-making becomes standard practice. Succession pipelines are actively developed. Integrated technology platforms connect performance, learning and career functions. Assessment is comprehensive and multi-source. This corresponds to Phase 3 (Defined/Strategic) of our Progression Model, where 37% of organizations operate. Integrated organizations can respond effectively to change but still depend on human coordination to detect and adapt to new conditions.

Tier 3: Adaptive. Talent systems proactively anticipate and adjust to change. Predictive analytics forecast capability requirements before gaps materialize. AI-powered platforms deliver personalized development at scale, connecting learning, mentoring and practice in continuous loops. Knowledge networks self-organize around emerging needs. Development pathways reconfigure dynamically. Only 7% of organizations currently operate at this level but they represent the model for volatility readiness. These organizations don’t just respond to change; they are architecturally designed to absorb it continuously.

Where Does Your Organization Stand?

Ask yourself three diagnostic questions:

• When your business strategy shifts, how quickly can your talent system reconfigure development priorities: days, months, or never? Reactive organizations may take quarters or longer. Adaptive organizations reconfigure in weeks or days because their architecture was built for it.
• Can you see your organization’s real-time capability landscape: Who can do what, who is developing toward what and where the gaps are emerging? Reactive organizations rely on manager intuition. Adaptive organizations have living, data-driven capability maps continuously updated through integrated technology.
• Does your development architecture connect learning, practice, mentoring and feedback into a single continuous experience, or do these exist as separate programs? Reactive organizations run isolated training events. Adaptive organizations operate integrated ecosystems where every development interaction reinforces the others.

If your answers land mostly in the Reactive category, you are caught in the Static Architecture Trap. If you are Integrated, you have the foundation but volatility will outpace coordination-dependent systems. If you are Adaptive, you are among the 7% positioned for sustained competitive advantage through talent.

Building Toward Adaptive: Where Technology Makes the Difference

Reaching the Adaptive tier requires technology platforms purpose-built for continuous change — platforms that integrate learning, collaborative practice, mentoring, and AI-driven personalization in a single ecosystem rather than bolting together disconnected point solutions. NovoEd is one example of a platform exemplifying Adaptive-tier capabilities: its integrated Learn+, Mentor+ and Practice+ products create the kind of continuous development loop, combining cohort-based collaborative learning, structured mentoring relationships and scenario-based skill practice with AI-enabled personalization that enables organizations to develop talent at the speed the business demands. NovoEd is a Brandon Hall Group Diamond Smartchoice® Preferred Provider.

The architecture matters. Organizations that invest in Adaptive-tier infrastructure don’t just develop skills faster. They build the organizational capacity to keep developing skills faster, no matter what changes next.

The post Designing Talent Architecture for Continuous Change appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

After spending several days with customers, executives, product leaders, consultants and industry experts at Explorance World 2026, I left with a different perspective on where the learning measurement market is heading.

For years, the challenge facing learning and talent organizations was collecting data. Organizations worked to increase survey participation, improve measurement practices, establish meaningful benchmarks and gain visibility into learning effectiveness. Today, most organizations face a different challenge. They have access to more information than ever before. Learning systems, employee listening platforms, assessments, surveys, operational systems,and performance tools generate a constant flow of data. The challenge is no longer gathering information. The challenge is determining which information matters, how it should be interpreted and how it can be used to improve business outcomes.

That challenge surfaced repeatedly throughout Explorance World 2026.

The conference theme, Wired to Know: Listening in the Age of Intelligence, provided an appropriate backdrop for discussions that ranged from employee listening and workforce performance to learning effectiveness, governance, benchmarking and organizational change. While the topics varied, the conversations consistently returned to a common objective: helping organizations derive greater value from the information they already possess.

What became increasingly clear throughout the week was that Explorance is positioning itself around this evolution. The discussions were not centered on collecting more feedback or generating more reports. They focused on helping organizations create greater clarity, make better decisions and strengthen the connection between workforce investments and business performance.

Listening Is Becoming a Strategic Capability

One of the most thought-provoking moments of the conference came during Samer Saab’s opening keynote. While many organizations continue to focus their listening strategies on surveys, assessments and periodic feedback programs, Saab challenged attendees to think differently about what it truly means to listen.

His message was not that organizations need more feedback. Rather, it was that organizations need to become better at recognizing, interpreting and acting on the signals that already exist across the enterprise. Employees, learners, customers and stakeholders are constantly communicating through comments, experiences, behaviors and interactions. The challenge is not a lack of information. The challenge is determining which signals matter, understanding them in context and responding quickly enough to make a meaningful difference.

What made the keynote particularly compelling was how effectively it connected to many of the conversations that followed throughout the week. Whether the discussion focused on learning measurement, employee experience, workforce performance, or organizational effectiveness, the underlying objective remained remarkably consistent. Organizations are searching for ways to move beyond collecting information and toward using that information to improve decision-making.

In conversations with customers following the keynote, I heard many of the same concerns. Leaders are navigating increasingly complex environments, managing competing priorities and facing growing expectations to demonstrate impact. They are looking for ways to identify issues earlier, understand workforce needs more clearly and respond with greater confidence. The ability to transform feedback into actionable insight is becoming just as important as the ability to collect it.

In many respects, Samer’s keynote established the foundation for the entire conference. The theme Wired to Know: Listening in the Age of Intelligence was not simply about listening more frequently. It was about elevating listening into a strategic organizational capability that helps leaders understand what matters most and proactively act on signals that improve outcomes for employees and the business.

Customers Are Raising the Bar

One of the most valuable aspects of the conference was participating in the Metrics That Matter (MTM) Customer Advisory Board discussions. The board provided a clear view of market direction, highlighting practical realities and future possibilities.

The discussions were candid, thoughtful and remarkably consistent.

During a brand exercise, customers were asked to describe MTM using three words. Their responses included expert, partner, reliable, credible, valuable, future-focused, dedicated and invested. When asked about the platform’s greatest benefit, customers highlighted methodology, consistency, trust, ROI, value, focus, answers and in-depth feedback.

What struck me about these responses was they were not dominated by technology. Customers were not talking just about features. They were talking about confidence, expertise and trust. Those are important distinctions because they suggest that organizations increasingly value interpretation and guidance as much as measurement itself.

The most revealing discussion occurred when participants were asked what they wanted MTM to become known for in the future. The responses included ROI, bottom-line impact, helping learning organizations earn a stronger seat at the table, improving learning effectiveness, providing directional answers and serving as an intelligence layer between learning and the business.

The phrase intelligence layer appeared repeatedly throughout the conference and captured the broader direction of the discussions.  The discussion also brought up a groundbreaking paradigm; moving from measurement as the outcome to measurement as the evidence for how organizations are moving up the L&D value curve.

Learning leaders today are expected to contribute to workforce readiness, organizational transformation, capability development, productivity improvement and business performance. They are being asked to communicate value in ways that resonate with executive stakeholders. That requires more than measurement. It requires context, evidence and the ability to connect workforce initiatives directly to business priorities.

The customer feedback extended beyond strategic aspirations and into practical recommendations. Participants discussed the need for enhanced reporting capabilities, dashboard modernization, integrations with platforms such as Slack, Microsoft Teams and Workday Peakon, further support for LMS transitions, stronger report generation capabilities and clearer standards around emerging technologies.

Taken together, the feedback reflected organizations that are looking for simpler ways to navigate increasingly complex environments while strengthening their ability to demonstrate impact.

The Evolution of MTM Reflects the Evolution of the Profession

The roadmap discussions provided additional context for many of the priorities raised during the advisory board sessions.

Historically, learning measurement platforms were designed to answer questions about effectiveness. Did learners participate? Did they learn? Did they apply what they learned? Did learning contribute to business outcomes?

Those questions remain important, but they no longer represent the full scope of what organizations expect from measurement systems.

Throughout the roadmap sessions, Explorance leaders described an evolution from a measurement platform to an intelligence and decision layer. Discussions included skills intelligence, predictive intelligence, workforce optimization, advanced analytics, benchmarking and stronger connections between learning investments and organizational outcomes.

What is significant about this vision is it recognizes that measuring learning alone is no longer sufficient.  Linking learning outcomes to business outcomes is the imperative.

In conversations throughout the conference, customers rarely spoke about wanting more reports; they spoke about needing greater clarity. Customers wanted to understand where to invest resources, where performance risks existed, where opportunities could be captured and how they could better communicate business value to senior leaders.

This mirrors what Brandon Hall Group continues to observe across the market. As learning organizations become increasingly accountable for business outcomes, the demand for intelligence, context and evidence continues to grow. The roadmap presented at Explorance World reflects that reality and reflects a future in which measurement serves as the foundation for better decision-making rather than the final destination.

MTM Learning Excellence Awards

One announcement that deserves particular attention was the introduction of the MTM Learning Excellence Awards. At first glance, these awards appear to be a recognition program. They reflect something much more significant. The awards were about organizations demonstrating exceptional performance in learning effectiveness, value and impact.

The ability to identify top-performing organizations requires access to extensive comparative data and a methodology capable of evaluating performance consistently across organizations. Explorance’s benchmarking capabilities have been built over many years and are based on a substantial body of learning measurement data. The awards represent a visible expression of Explorance’s ability to transform organizations into performance powerhouses and how expectations within the learning profession continue to evolve.

The awards clearly showed that organizations can demonstrate measurable value, with supported data-driven decision-making.  These breakthrough organizations showed that aligning learning with business priorities and providing evidence of impact can be accomplished.

Understanding Feedback at Scale

Another important area of discussion involved the challenge of deriving meaningful insight from qualitative feedback. Virtually every organization collects comments from learners, employees, customers and stakeholders. These comments often contain valuable information, yet extracting consistent insight from large volumes of qualitative data remains difficult. The discussions surrounding MLY provided a practical example of how Explorance is addressing this challenge.

MLY analyzes employee comments and generate signals for determining employee sentiment. MLY’s capabilities help organizations understand how people feel, what issues are driving those perceptions, what actions respondents are suggesting and where potentially concerning situations may require additional attention.

Organizations often possess enormous volumes of feedback that never receive meaningful analysis because of the effort required to review and interpret it. As a result, valuable information remains buried within evaluations, surveys and open-ended comments.

The ability to identify patterns, surface recommendations, recognize emerging concerns and understand sentiment at scale helps organizations to act on data not just collect it. This capability aligns closely with many of the broader conversations taking place throughout the conference around listening, organizational responsiveness and ultimately improving organizational effectiveness.

Trust Matters as Much as Capability

While many industry discussions focus primarily on functionality, some of the most important conversations at Explorance World centered on trust.

Conversations around governance, accountability, privacy, compliance, transparency and responsible technology practices (particularly AI) surfaced repeatedly throughout the week. These discussions reflected concerns that many organizations are currently navigating as they evaluate technology investments (including AI) and determine how information should be managed.

Explorance’s principles emphasize human oversight, accountability, diverse perspectives and responsible governance, particularly for AI. Rather than positioning technology as a substitute for human judgment, the company’s approach to AI reflects the belief that technology should support decision-making while maintaining appropriate oversight and control.

The conference also provided transparency into how customer information is managed, including data retention practices, customer control over data usage, infrastructure considerations, governance processes and compliance efforts. Explorance’s approach includes risk assessment, auditing, security testing, operational controls and continuous improvement initiatives designed to support customer trust and regulatory requirements.

These topics are becoming increasingly important considerations for organizations evaluating technology partners. In many purchasing decisions, trust now carries more weight than functionality.

Final Reflections

What Explorance World 2026 revealed is that learning measurement and survey usage is entering an exciting transformational phase.

Organizations are still measuring effectiveness, collecting feedback and evaluating outcomes. However, the expectations surrounding those activities have changed. Leaders increasingly want measurement systems that help them understand priorities, communicate value, identify opportunities, support decisions and strengthen organizational performance.

Explorance’s strategic direction is thoughtfully aligned with customer expectations and market needs. Throughout the week, customers consistently described a desire for stronger business alignment, clearer evidence of impact, better decision support and more actionable intelligence. Explorance’s roadmap discussions, future investments, benchmarking initiatives, governance practices and product strategy all pointed toward those same objectives.

For organizations seeking to strengthen the connection between listening, learning, workforce performance and business outcomes, the conversations taking place throughout Explorance World offered a useful perspective on where the market is heading, what capabilities will matter most in the years ahead. Explorance is uniquely positioned to address an ever-changing market and rapidly evolving organizational needs.

The post What Explorance World 2026 Revealed About the Future of Listening and Measurement appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

With its announcement of Workforce AI, Cornerstone has gone all in on AI transforming work, hoping it will pay big dividends with prospects and clients.

A look back at Cornerstone

First, a bit of history on the company.

Cornerstone OnDemand was founded in 1999 in Santa Monica, California, originally as CyberU, with a focus on online corporate learning and employee training. Over time, the company expanded beyond eLearning into a full workforce development and talent management platform that includes performance management, skills intelligence, career development, compliance training and workforce analytics. Cornerstone became publicly traded in 2011 under the ticker symbol CSOD and grew into one of the largest enterprise learning technology providers in the world. The company expanded its market position through major acquisitions — Saba, EdCast, SumTotal, SkyHive and TaleSpin — adding capabilities in learning experience platforms, AI-powered workforce analytics, skills intelligence and immersive learning technologies. As a result, Cornerstone has evolved from a traditional learning management system into a broader AI-driven workforce agility platform focused on helping organizations identify skill gaps, personalize employee development and prepare workers for the future of work.

In 2021, Cornerstone was acquired by Clearlake Capital in a deal worth approximately $5.2 billion and shifted its focus toward AI-powered workforce agility, helping organizations identify skill gaps, reskill employees and prepare for the future of work.

Today, the company is the juggernaut in the industry, one of the largest providers of corporate learning in the world. According to Cornerstone, a person is learning something every three seconds on their platform and based on their number of users, 2% of the world’s population learns on their platform.

To put things into perspective, Cornerstone sees the market as a $100 billion TAM and they are eager to claim their share of it.

Cornerstone has not been without its struggles. Trying to differentiate itself in a highly commoditized market has been a challenge. The LMS market is a super-saturated landscape with hundreds of providers. Technological innovation was not an industry standard and most functionality looks exactly the same irrespective of the provider’s attempt to offer compelling demonstrations and explanations for why their tool is best in class. Over the years, Cornerstone has offered their view of the world through feature releases and platform extensions aimed at addressing pressing problems for buyer. The market reaction was mixed. Cornerstone’s best efforts led to a murky and somewhat undefinable approach to how buyers’ needs were being addressed. Cornerstone’s efforts to elevate their place in the market left buyers wondering if the company was moving away from wanting to be a perennial LMS favorite to wanting to be something else. The challenge for buyers was understanding what was the something else.

Adding to Cornerstone’s challenges was the integration of clients from top rivals that had made a clear decision not to work with Cornerstone. Migration of these customers to the Cornerstone platform has not been without its problems and has led to clients choosing to work with other providers.

Cornerstone has been through several organizational and leadership changes which has resulted in inconsistent messaging and positioning of its company and its products. Adam Miller, the founder of Cornerstone, was an aggressive and forward-thinking leader and pushed Cornerstone into the spotlight with a commanding presence and talk track that made the claim that Cornerstone was the original LMS learning technology and its unified technological platform was the only one natively built. After Miller, the message was not as crisp or compelling and with a series of acquisitions, the natively built unified platform claim was no longer true.

The New Cornerstone

Cornerstone has entered a new era and mindset.

Cornerstone’s leadership team is led by Himanshu Palsule, who serves as Chief Executive Officer. Under his leadership, the company has accelerated its focus on AI-powered workforce development, skills intelligence and enterprise learning solutions. Other key executives include Dave Arkley, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer; Vincent Belliveau, Chief International Officer; Mini Peiris, Chief Marketing Officer; Carina Cortez, Chief People Officer; Guna Jayaraman, Chief AI Officer; and Himanshu Baxi, Chief Development Officer. The leadership team also includes Michael Pawlyszyn, EVP and Chief Revenue Officer for the Americas; Eric Lee, SVP of Services and Support; and Ed Kaufman, General Counsel. Together, the executive team oversees Cornerstone’s global operations, AI strategy, product development, customer success and workforce transformation initiatives.

Palsule has the Adam Miller bloodline, a progressive and hard driving leader who set out to redefine the vision and mission of the company. His vision is simple yet powerful — “Human^AI: The intelligence to know. The wisdom to act.” Pasule set out on a worldwide client listening tour, he wanted to understand their needs and where Cornerstone met their needs or fell short. The result has been a remarkable transformation of the company and leadership. Palsule has placed Cornerstone back in the conversation as a leading provider and top of mind again for buyers. Palsule claims that every three seconds someone learns on the Cornerstone platform and based on the number of users, 2% of the world’s population learns on Cornerstone. Workforce AI is the culmination of Palsule’s and his team’s efforts to reimagine Cornerstone in the middle of a massive disruption led by AI. We will talk later about how this new vision is coming to light. First, let’s talk about AI.

AI Impact on Learning

In November 2022, AI felt like a clever magic trick. ChatGPT could write prose, answer questions and it shocked people with how human its responses sounded. What happened next was unexpected. In just a few years, AI evolved from a replacement for search and a chatbot into a creative partner, research assistant, coder, designer, tutor, mentor, strategist and a digital co-worker. LLMs went from just generating text to creating images, reasoning through complex problems and bringing an unprecedented understanding of the world through voice, vision and context. The evolution wasn’t just a technological breakthrough; it changed the way we think and act. In a minute, we went from saying “Can AI actually do this?” to “What happens when everyone has this level of access to information on demand?”

AI has also made its revolutionary impact on corporate learning. Gone are the days of instructional designers working with single desktop authoring tools leveraging subject matter experts to develop traditional courses to place on an LMS. Now, any piece of content can be transformed into a course in a matter of minutes. Building expertise and experience over time has given way to instant access to knowledge allowing anyone to develop and deliver learning content. AI didn’t just bring speed to content development, it created a platform to instantly leverage institutional knowledge, contextualize it and deliver it in a variety of constructs almost instantly.

The impact of AI has been revolutionary. Now every employee is a source and consumer of learning. Knowledgebases in organizations that were difficult if not impossible to access due to siloed technological infrastructure could now be accessed, curated and integrated into learning content with a simple prompt.

AI’s impact has significantly changed the content market. A $400 million content market has been turned upside down and inside out. With instant access to knowledge and the endless opportunity to recreate and repurpose content, content providers are now being forced to rethink their business models. Content development now can be developed at unprecedented scale but also at significantly lower cost.

AI Progression

Organizations are at different stages of AI application. Our research with 1,000 organizations has shown that 46% of organizations are at the beginning of their journey.

Why is this important? The opportunity to transform the workplace with AI is directly connected to an organization’s readiness and stage of progression. The benefits of AI are clear but one out of two organizations are still understanding the impact of AI and are working through pilots to better understand how to use and govern AI in their organizations.

The opportunity to transform workforce readiness through AI is evident. Brandon Hall Group Excellence Award® winning organizations (organizations that are highly progressive in the use of AI) report that future capability building is a top three focus in their learning strategy needs.

AI is not just a technology for skills building and elevating workforce readiness. It is a fundamental rethink in how to approach work and the skills requirements needed by people vs. what can be accomplished using AI. The impact for the L&D and talent functions is a fundamental shift from enabling the development of the workforce to being the hub for workforce intelligence, driving workforce readiness and improving business performance.

Cornerstone’s Future

There are players in the market responding to the change in learning created by the AI disruption. Docebo, Absorb, Cypher learning, Arist and Workday’s Sana, along with a host of smaller nitch providers, are trying to flex and show they are harnessing the power of AI for their clients. SAP SuccessFactors and Oracle are also making significant investments in AI and bring a new and holistic approach to leveraging AI in skills development and building workforce capacity.

The market is not without advancements made by major LLMs and AI companion functionality in workforce technologies (Microsoft and Adobe).

Cornerstone is positioning itself at the center of one of the most important shifts happening in workforce technology: the move from traditional learning management systems to AI-powered workforce intelligence platforms. Rather than focusing solely on courses and compliance training, the company is redefining learning as a strategic business capability tied directly to workforce readiness, skills intelligence, organizational agility and long-term business transformation.

This evolution reflects a larger reality facing organizations today. Jobs are changing faster than ever, technical skills are becoming increasingly commoditized and the most valuable capabilities are shifting toward human judgment, adaptability, critical thinking, creativity and leadership. In this environment, companies can no longer rely on rigid career paths or static job descriptions. Career journeys are becoming more fluid, nontraditional talent backgrounds are gaining value and organizations must rethink how they identify, develop and deploy talent across the enterprise.

Cornerstone’s Workforce AI strategy is designed to address this challenge directly. At the core of the platform is an AI-powered skills graph that combines signals from people data, work outcomes, learning activity and workforce systems to create a dynamic understanding of employee capabilities. Importantly, the platform emphasizes “Human AI” AI-generated skills intelligence that is validated and refined by human input.

The company’s broader vision is that workforce systems should no longer operate in silos. Through Workforce AI, Cornerstone is integrating data across HR systems, project management tools, engagement platforms, learning systems and external labor market intelligence with partners like Salesforce and AWS. The result is a unified workforce intelligence layer capable of identifying skills gaps, supporting internal mobility, accelerating onboarding, enabling proactive coaching and helping organizations align talent strategies directly to business needs.

Cornerstone has an impressive reach into data. Built on a world-leading workforce intelligence foundation.

• 28 TB of global labor market data ingested and processed daily
• 150T computations made against 1B profiles and 5B job roles
• 190+ countries tracked in daily labor market model updates

What makes this particularly compelling is that Cornerstone is not simply layering AI onto legacy systems. The company is fundamentally repositioning itself from an LMS provider into a workforce intelligence company. Executives acknowledged that traditional learning budgets and organizational structures are already beginning to shift, with AI-driven workforce discussions increasingly moving beyond the CLO and into conversations with CHROs, CIOs and CFOs. This reflects a growing belief that workforce readiness is now a core business issue rather than a standalone HR function.

The platform’s design also recognizes that the future workforce will require greater organizational speed and adaptability. AI-powered “Readiness Agents” such as the Internal Mobility Agent and Embark Navigator Agent are intended to help organizations place the right talent into the right work faster, personalize development at scale and respond more dynamically to changing business demands. Rather than relying on annual workforce planning exercises, organizations can begin operating with continuously evolving talent intelligence powered by real-time data and AI inference.

Examples shared during the Cornerstone Connect event reinforced how this strategy is already being applied in practice. Deloitte’s collaboration with Cisco demonstrated how AI-driven skills intelligence can help organizations identify workforce gaps, accelerate upskilling efforts and support more agile project-based staffing models. The discussion highlighted a growing need for organizations to move quickly while still ensuring humans remain central to decision-making. AI may surface patterns, recommendations and opportunities, but human leaders continue to provide the context, judgment and ethical oversight needed to guide workforce transformation effectively.

The broader implication is that organizations may need to rethink not only how they train employees, but also how they hire, develop and expose talent to leadership opportunities. Companies increasingly recognize that long-term competitive advantage will not come solely from technology investments, many of which may quickly become outdated, but from building adaptable, highly skilled people who can evolve alongside technology. As one theme throughout the event suggested, businesses do not transform themselves, humans transform businesses.

Cornerstone’s strategy reflects this balance between technology acceleration and human development. The company appears to recognize that while AI can dramatically improve workforce visibility, scalability and responsiveness, the lasting value still comes from enabling people to grow, adapt and contribute in more meaningful ways. In a market increasingly crowded with point solutions and AI experimentation, Cornerstone is attempting to differentiate itself by creating a unified workforce intelligence ecosystem designed to keep humans at the center of workforce transformation while leveraging AI to operate with greater speed, precision and agility.

The post Cornerstone Announces Its Bold New Idea to Reimagine Workforce Readiness appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

Payroll has always been one of the most important functions inside the enterprise, but it has rarely been viewed as a strategic differentiator. For years, organizations focused their innovation efforts on talent acquisition, employee experience, learning and workforce management while payroll remained largely transactional and reactive.

That dynamic is beginning to change.

UKG’s recent announcement introducing agentic capabilities within UKG Pro Pay marks an important step forward for the payroll technology market and for workforce technology overall. More importantly, it highlights how UKG continues to push beyond traditional HCM functionality toward intelligent workforce orchestration.

The announcement, unveiled at Payroll Congress 2026, positions payroll as a real-time operational system capable of identifying issues proactively, streamlining workflows and improving both compliance and employee trust. That is a meaningful shift in the market.

You can read the full announcement here.

What makes this especially significant is not simply the addition of AI functionality. Nearly every enterprise technology provider is discussing AI today. The real differentiator is how effectively providers apply intelligence within operational workflows that matter most to organizations.

UKG understands that distinction clearly.

Payroll is one of the most complex and sensitive operational processes in any organization. Errors affect employees immediately. Compliance mistakes create financial and legal risk. Delays erode trust quickly. At the same time, payroll teams are managing growing complexity tied to labor regulations, overtime rules, union requirements, shift premiums, global workforce structures and increasingly dynamic scheduling models.

Traditional payroll systems were not designed for this level of complexity or speed.

UKG’s latest innovation reflects a broader vision for how workforce technology should operate moving forward. Rather than relying on payroll administrators to identify problems after processing occurs, UKG is positioning Workforce AI to help organizations detect anomalies earlier, automate portions of issue resolution and reduce manual intervention across the payroll lifecycle.

That is an important evolution.

The workforce technology market is moving beyond systems that simply capture and report information. Organizations now expect platforms to help drive action, reduce friction and improve operational execution in real time. UKG’s direction aligns closely with that market shift.

This is particularly relevant for organizations with large frontline workforces.

Industries such as healthcare, retail, manufacturing, hospitality, logistics and public services face constant workforce variability. Scheduling changes, absenteeism, labor shortages, compliance demands and fluctuating staffing needs create operational pressure every day. Because UKG already operates at the center of workforce management for many of these organizations, the company is uniquely positioned to connect workforce data directly into payroll intelligence.

That operational connection matters.

Many vendors can introduce AI assistants or productivity tools layered on top of HR systems. Fewer have the workforce data, operational scale and workforce management expertise necessary to apply intelligence directly to labor operations and payroll execution.

This is where UKG’s strategy stands out.

The company has spent years building deep capabilities in workforce management, scheduling, timekeeping, employee experience and workforce intelligence. Its latest payroll innovation demonstrates how those capabilities can now work together more cohesively inside a unified platform strategy.

From an industry perspective, this is not incremental positioning. It reinforces UKG’s broader transition from a workforce management provider into a comprehensive workforce technology platform company.

That evolution is important because enterprise buyers increasingly want connected ecosystems rather than fragmented solutions. Organizations are under pressure to simplify operations, reduce administrative overhead and improve visibility across HR, payroll, workforce management and employee experience functions.

Disconnected systems create operational inefficiencies that organizations can no longer afford.

UKG’s Workforce AI strategy appears designed to solve for that challenge by embedding intelligence directly into day-to-day workforce processes instead of treating AI as a standalone feature set.

Another important aspect of this announcement is the emphasis on guided orchestration rather than unchecked automation.

Organizations remain cautious about fully autonomous decision-making in sensitive areas like payroll. Accuracy, governance, compliance and accountability still require human oversight. UKG’s approach appears focused on helping payroll professionals work faster and more effectively while maintaining visibility and control throughout the process.

That balance is likely to resonate strongly with enterprise buyers.

Many organizations are still determining how aggressively they want to operationalize AI across workforce systems. Solutions that improve efficiency while preserving transparency and governance will likely gain traction faster than systems positioned as fully autonomous replacements for human decision-making.

The employee experience implications are also significant.

Employees may never see the technology behind payroll operations, but they immediately feel the impact when something goes wrong. Payroll accuracy remains one of the clearest indicators of organizational reliability and trustworthiness. In frontline industries especially, pay issues can negatively affect morale, retention, engagement and overall workforce confidence.

By focusing Workforce AI on proactive issue prevention and operational efficiency, UKG is aligning innovation with one of the most human outcomes in the workplace: ensuring employees are paid accurately and on time.

That connection is strategically smart.

This announcement also reinforces UKG’s growing market momentum around AI-enabled workforce operations. The company has consistently expanded its vision beyond traditional HCM boundaries and continues investing in capabilities that connect workforce intelligence, operational data and employee experience together in practical ways.

At Brandon Hall Group, we evaluate providers not only on innovation, but also on execution, market relevance and long-term strategic direction. UKG’s latest announcement strengthens its position across all of those dimensions because it demonstrates both technological maturity and a strong understanding of evolving workforce needs.

Importantly, the company is focusing its AI investments on operational outcomes that organizations care deeply about: reducing complexity, improving efficiency, minimizing compliance risk and strengthening employee trust.

That focus matters.

The next phase of workforce technology leadership will not be defined simply by who has AI capabilities. It will be defined by which providers can apply intelligence in ways that improve operational performance at scale.

UKG is positioning itself well for that future.

This is one of the reasons UKG continues to be recognized as a Brandon Hall Group Smartchoice® Preferred Provider. Organizations evaluating workforce technology partners increasingly prioritize providers that combine innovation leadership with operational expertise and enterprise execution capability.

UKG’s latest announcement reflects a larger industry trend toward intelligent workforce orchestration, real-time operational support and connected workforce ecosystems. Payroll is becoming an increasingly important part of that transformation.

UKG has taken a strong step forward in defining what that future should look like.

The post Why UKG’s Latest Payroll Innovation Signals</br> a Turning Point for Workforce Technology appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

The experience management market is entering a new phase. For years, organizations invested heavily in listening programs, dashboards, surveys and sentiment tools. But the pressure now is different: Leaders do not just need more feedback. They need faster decisions, measurable business impact and systems that help teams act before customers leave, employees disengage or markets move on.

That was the central theme I heard during the April 29 Qualtrics analyst briefing, where I had the opportunity to hear directly from Qualtrics product leaders Aaron Bowen, Ricardo Lopez and Ellen Loeshelle. Qualtrics is positioning itself around a clear message: Experience is no longer a function of the business. Experience is the business. The company’s recent developments reinforce that direction, including Jason Maynard’s appointment as CEO in February and Qualtrics’ planned $6.75 billion acquisition of Press Ganey Forsta, a move that strengthens its position in healthcare, benchmarks, regulatory compliance and industry-specific experience data.

For Brandon Hall Group, this matters because HR, leadership, learning and business leaders are increasingly being asked to prove the connection between experience and outcomes. Through the Brandon Hall Group Institute, we help corporate HR professionals access the research, advisory and benchmarking needed to make those connections. For solution providers, offerings such as Smartchoice® Preferred Providers, TotalTech and Agency! by Brandon Hall Group® help strengthen positioning, visibility and market relevance.

Market Context: A Competitive, AI-Accelerated Category 

Qualtrics competes in a crowded market where customer experience, employee experience, market research, contact center intelligence and AI-driven orchestration are converging. Four peer companies stand out:

• Medallia: A major enterprise experience management competitor with capabilities across customer experience, employee experience, digital experience, contact center analytics, journey analytics and experience orchestration. Medallia emphasizes AI-powered insights, intelligent alerts and recommended actions, and has been recognized as a Leader in Forrester’s Customer Feedback Management evaluation.
• Sprinklr: Strong in unified customer experience management, especially social, digital, marketing, advertising and omnichannel contact center use cases. Sprinklr’s AI-native platform focuses on breaking down silos across customer-facing teams and connecting interactions across 30-plus voice, social and digital channels.
• SurveyMonkey: A broad survey, forms and market research platform used by more than 260,000 organizations. Its strengths include survey creation, AI survey generation, online forms, market research, integrations and access to large global panels for research.
• Workday Peakon Employee Voice: A focused employee listening and engagement platform that uses AI-powered listening, personalized dashboards and analytics to help organizations understand employee sentiment, address feedback and tackle burnout.

Technology Differentiators

Qualtrics’ differentiation is increasingly tied to how it connects experience data, operational data and AI-enabled action.

• Experience Agents and service recovery: Qualtrics is advancing AI agents that can detect issues, understand context, reflect brand voice and help resolve customer concerns before escalation. In the analyst briefing, Qualtrics highlighted TruGreen, where AI agents inside the survey experience helped deliver personalized, in-the-moment responses, increased human agent capacity by 33% and supported a projected $500 million growth opportunity over five years from retention improvement.
• Human-first intelligence and industry-specific data: Qualtrics emphasized that its models are trained on experience data and are being strengthened by industry-specific benchmarks and regulated-sector expertise. This is especially relevant as the company moves deeper into healthcare through the Press Ganey Forsta acquisition.
• Market research acceleration: Qualtrics is investing in synthetic panels, synthetic personas, research design agents, video and audio analysis, adaptive conversational feedback and agentic workflows. The practical value is speed: testing concepts in hours rather than weeks while preserving enough rigor to support business decision-making.

Ideal Customer Profile

Qualtrics is best aligned to organizations where experience data must drive measurable business outcomes:

• Enterprise healthcare systems and regulated industries: Healthcare, insurance and public-sector organizations that need trusted data governance, benchmarking, patient/customer listening and compliance-sensitive experience management.
• Large, location-based businesses: Hospitality, restaurants, retail, home services and travel companies with thousands of frontline employees and customer touchpoints. These organizations benefit from location-level recommended actions, online reputation management and frontline employee listening.
• Enterprise contact centers: Organizations with high interaction volume that need automated summaries, text analytics, agent coaching, redaction, resolution intelligence and service recovery agents.
• Global HR organizations: Large employers seeking to improve engagement, productivity and retention through lifecycle listening, conversational feedback, personalized manager recommendations and action-plan accountability.
• Research-driven organizations: Product, brand, insights and marketing teams that need faster concept testing, audience outcomes, UX research and human plus synthetic research capabilities.

Analyst Perspective

Qualtrics’ market position is strong, but its strategic challenge is execution. The company is not simply trying to be the best survey platform. It is working to become an intelligence and orchestration layer for customer, employee and market experience.

That is the right ambition. Many organizations are drowning in signals but still struggling to act. Qualtrics’ own briefing made this point clearly: operational data explains what happened, experience data explains why, and the combination helps leaders decide what to do next.

The opportunity for Qualtrics is significant because it is addressing three urgent executive priorities: proving ROI, reducing time to action and connecting experience programs to business value. Its risk is equally clear: Competitors are also moving quickly and buyers will increasingly expect AI capabilities to move beyond insight generation into measurable operational outcomes.

Qualtrics is well-positioned for enterprise organizations that want to mature beyond listening programs and into action-oriented experience management. The most compelling part of the strategy is not the AI alone. It is the combination of AI, workflow, industry context and business outcome alignment. That is where the next phase of experience management will be won.

The post Qualtrics and the Shift from Listening to Outcomes appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

TL;DR: Talent agility isn’t about moving fast. Instead, it’s about building integrated systems that allow organizations to assess, develop and redeploy people in response to changing business needs. Brandon Hall Group research shows that award-winning organizations treat talent management as a connected business system, not an HR program, combining strategic alignment, experiential development, personalized learning paths and multi-level measurement to build workforces that can adapt at the speed the business requires.

Defining Talent Agility Beyond the Buzzword

Every organization wants an agile workforce. Few can define what that actually means, or even measure whether they have one.

Talent agility is the organizational capacity to identify, develop and deploy the right capabilities at the right time. It requires knowing what skills exist today, anticipating what skills will be needed tomorrow and closing the gap before it becomes a crisis.

That sounds straightforward. In practice, it requires a level of integration across talent systems that most organizations haven’t achieved.

Why Traditional Approaches Fall Short

Most organizations manage talent in silos. Learning sits in one system, performance management in another, succession planning in a third. Career development happens informally, if at all.

The result is predictable: When business priorities shift, organizations scramble. They can’t quickly identify who has the capabilities they need. They don’t know which skills gaps are most urgent. And they lack the infrastructure to develop people fast enough to keep pace.

Brandon Hall Group research on award-winning talent management programs reveals the scale of the problem. Only 42% of organizations report above-average to excellent alignment between learning and business goals. When learning and talent systems operate independently, alignment becomes nearly impossible to sustain.

What Agile Talent Systems Look Like

Organizations that demonstrate real talent agility share a common trait: They treat talent management as an integrated capability-building system rather than a collection of separate programs.

The most effective organizations connect learning management, goal-setting, career progression and succession planning into a unified infrastructure. These aren’t standalone tools. Instead, they function as components of a single system. When goal setting connects to career pathways, career pathways connect to succession planning and succession planning connects to learning investments, organizations gain the visibility and responsiveness that talent agility demands.

Building Agility Through Assessment

You can’t develop what you haven’t measured. Brandon Hall Group research on award-winning team development programs found that a majority conduct pre-program self-assessments and skills gap analyses, while many layer in competency mapping, 360-degree feedback and team effectiveness assessments.

The most sophisticated organizations combine these approaches, pairing self-assessment with stakeholder feedback, competency evaluation with performance data and individual capability measurement with team diagnostics. This multi-source approach creates the accurate, actionable baseline that agile talent decisions require.

Experiential Learning as an Agility Accelerator

Classroom training alone doesn’t build agility. Skills must be practiced, applied and refined in real work contexts to transfer into actual capability.

Brandon Hall Group research confirms this. Among award-winning team development programs, 71% use interactive and experiential workshops as their primary development approach. Scenario-based exercises, action learning projects and one-on-one coaching are also common features.

Organizations that rely primarily on formal instruction will always lag behind those that embed development in the flow of work. When employees learn by solving real business problems, capability development and business value creation happen simultaneously.

Manager Involvement: The Multiplier Effect

Talent agility depends heavily on managers. They control application opportunities, feedback quality and accountability for skill development. Without active manager involvement, even well-designed talent systems lose their impact at the point of execution.

Yet Brandon Hall Group research shows that time is a significant or heavy constraint on manager involvement in learning for more than half of survey respondents. Organizations building talent agility must address this tension directly, not by adding responsibilities but by simplifying how managers support development through structured conversation guides, performance support tools and clear accountability metrics tied to existing goals.

Measuring Talent Agility

This is where most organizations struggle. They can measure training completion rates. They can track engagement survey scores. But measuring talent agility requires connecting inputs to outcomes across multiple dimensions.

Based on Brandon Hall Group research, effective measurement frameworks address four levels:

• Participation and Engagement Quality — Not just completion, but depth of involvement, including individual development plans and talent pool creation.
• Capability Development — Measuring actual skill gains through competency-based assessments, 360-degree feedback and assessment centers.
• Behavior Change and Application — Tracking whether new capabilities transfer to workplace performance through real-world application that can be observed and measured.
• Business Impact — Connecting talent activities to operational outcomes. Award-winning programs delivered financial impacts ranging from $75,000 to over $1.9 million through improved operational efficiency, reduced time-to-proficiency and enhanced customer experiences.

The organizations that measure across all four levels gain something the others don’t: evidence of whether their talent systems are actually producing the agility the business needs.

Technology as an Enabler, Not a Solution

Technology infrastructure matters for talent agility, but it’s an enabler, not a substitute for strategy. The key is integration. When learning platforms connect to performance systems, performance data informs development recommendations and dashboards give both employees and managers visibility into progress, technology creates the information flow that agile talent decisions require. Without integration, even sophisticated tools produce fragmented data that hinders rather than helps.

Making Talent Agility Operational

Organizations ready to build genuine talent agility should focus on three priorities.

First, connect the systems. Learning, performance management, succession planning and career development must function as integrated components, not independent programs. Brandon Hall Group research consistently shows that organizations achieving exceptional results operate these as a unified system with shared data and aligned objectives.

Second, invest in the application layer. Experiential learning, coaching, manager involvement and action learning projects are what convert knowledge into capability. Without them, training investment doesn’t translate into organizational agility.

Third, measure what matters. Move beyond activity metrics to capability and impact metrics. Track skill application rates, time to proficiency, succession pipeline readiness and the business outcomes that talent investments are designed to produce.

EI Powered by MPS designs learning ecosystems that connect formal development with on-the-job application, manager enablement and sustained performance support. These are the integrated approach that talent agility requires.

As a Brandon Hall Group Platinum Smartchoice® Provider, EI Powered by MPS partners with organizations to build adaptive talent systems that respond to shifting business priorities and deliver measurable capability growth.

Explore research and advisory insights from Brandon Hall Group at www.brandonhall.com.

To design integrated learning and talent solutions with built-in agility, connect with EI Powered by MPS at www.eidesign.net.

Talent agility is more than a program. It’s a capability built through integrated systems, experiential development and measurement that connects people growth to business results.

The post What Talent Agility Really Means (And How to Measure It) appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

Most AI roadmaps look impressive.

Pilots are underway. Copilots are deployed. Budgets are allocated. Boards are informed. And yet, very few organizations are seeing sustained, enterprise-level impact.

In my recent conversation with Ross Crooke, SVP, BTS Europe, and Fredrik Schuller, EVP and Global Head of Centers of Excellence at BTS, one theme surfaced repeatedly: AI is not stalling because of technology. It is stalling because of leadership.

The first wave of AI adoption has centered on personal productivity. As Ross noted, organizations are seeing strong uptake in tools like Copilot, ChatGPT, and Claude. Individuals are drafting faster, researching faster, synthesizing faster.

That matters. But personal productivity rarely redesigns work. It improves tasks without challenging structure.

The organizations moving ahead are doing something harder. They are giving teams both permission and responsibility to experiment. As Ross put it, if leaders limit teams to a single top-down tool, they unintentionally constrain creativity. AI maturity requires confidence at the front lines, not just compliance.

That is where many roadmaps quietly stall.

The conversation shifted when Fredrik reframed the issue. AI expands what is possible. The real question is whether leaders are clear about what is desirable and impactful. Without that clarity, AI becomes fragmented. Teams optimize locally. Enterprise transformation never materializes.

The difference between acceleration and reinvention lies in outcomes.

When organizations stop asking how to automate current workflows and start asking what outcomes need to be reimagined, productivity gains compound. Fredrik described teams completing projects with smaller groups, lower risk, improved quality, and dramatically shorter cycle times. In some cases, productivity improvements are measured in multiples, not percentages.

That kind of change does not come from incremental tool adoption. It comes from redesign. And redesign exposes a deeper constraint: management systems.

Many organizations still reward delivery over evolution. Yet, as Fredrik emphasized, breakthroughs come through retooling and iteration. Leaders must clear obstacles rather than control outcomes. They must create space for experimentation without sacrificing accountability.

This is the inflection point.

Some debate whether AI will produce meaningful productivity gains at scale. Ross is clear that the “productivity paradox” narrative does not match what he is seeing. Where workflows are redesigned, gains are significant. Where AI is layered onto existing processes, impact plateaus.

That is the dividing line. The question facing leaders is no longer which tool to standardize on. It is this: Where are we willing to rethink how work gets done?

Organizations that treat AI as a software rollout will see incremental gains. Organizations that treat AI as an operating model shift will redefine performance.

If this tension reflects what you are seeing internally, I encourage you to watch the full discussion with Ross Crooke and Fredrik Schuller. The examples and insights go deeper into how organizations are moving from isolated pilots to enterprise reinvention.

You can access the session here.

AI is not waiting.

The question is whether leadership is.

The post Most AI Roadmaps Aren’t Failing. They’re Stalling. appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

Learning professionals have spent decades making promises they couldn’t quite keep. We’ve talked about personalized learning experiences, proving business impact, and creating systems employees actually want to use. The technology just wasn’t there to deliver at scale. That’s changing.

A recent conversation with the leadership team at Thrive Learning showed how deliberately they’re building toward a future that makes sense for how people work. The discussion revealed a company focused on solving real problems rather than chasing trends.

The Market Reality: Too Many Systems, Not Enough Integration

The learning technology landscape has become increasingly fragmented. Organizations juggle learning management systems, learning experience platforms, communication tools, HR systems, and knowledge repositories. Each promises to solve a piece of the puzzle, but none talk to each other in meaningful ways.

This creates real problems. Employees don’t care about technology stacks. They want quick answers, they want to develop skills that matter, and they want it without logging into a dozen different systems.

The competitive landscape reflects this challenge:

• Cornerstone OnDemand offers comprehensive talent management but struggles with user experience and complex implementations requiring significant partner support.
• Degreed pioneered the learning experience platform category with strong content aggregation and skills focus, but organizations still need a separate LMS for compliance and structured learning management.
• EdCast (now part of Cornerstone) provides personalized learning and knowledge sharing, yet lacks the core LMS functionality most organizations require for mandatory training and compliance tracking.
• Docebo delivers solid LMS capabilities with AI features, but the platform can feel disconnected from broader employee experience needs and lacks native mentoring or performance support tools.

What Makes Thrive Different

Thrive launched in recent years and has grown rapidly to serve organizations globally across multiple industries. The company works with brands spanning retail, hospitality, manufacturing, professional services, and government sectors.

The platform combines LMS and LXP capabilities in a single system that customers can configure based on their maturity level. Different organizations use it in completely different ways, from pure compliance tracking to full social learning environments.

Three innovations stand out:

An AI assistant searches across your entire tech stack, not just learning content. The tool can pull answers from various systems including HRIS platforms, communication tools, and internal knowledge bases. It provides performance support in the flow of work, answering questions about company policies, upcoming meetings, and learning requirements.

Advanced analytics capabilities help organizations move beyond completion tracking. By integrating with business intelligence tools, the platform gives L&D teams access to sophisticated data visualization. This approach helps teams demonstrate business impact rather than just tracking course completions.

Automated migration tools make switching from legacy systems straightforward. The company has built connectors that migrate users, content, and completion data from major platforms, helping customers get up and running quickly.

Strategic Acquisitions Signal Intent

Recently, Thrive made two acquisitions revealing where they’re heading. First came a mentoring and coaching platform acquisition that brought expertise in AI-powered matching and program development. This added human connection and development capabilities to the technical platform.

Shortly after, they acquired a smart intranet platform. This addition brings together workplace tools like calendars, messages, and project management systems with AI-powered personalization and federated search.

These acquisitions are building blocks for a unified employee experience hub. The vision includes smart tiles and interactive widgets that let employees complete tasks without switching applications. The federated search capability works across this entire connected ecosystem.

Who Benefits Most

Global enterprises with complex requirements appreciate the scalability. The company works with organizations ranging from small teams to large global workforces across multiple markets and languages. The platform supports dozens of languages and meets enterprise security standards.

Mid-market organizations represent a significant portion of the customer base. Companies in this segment use the platform for structured learning pathways, frontline communication, and knowledge management without lengthy implementation timelines.

Hospitality and retail businesses benefit particularly from the mobile-first design. White-labeled apps put learning and company information directly on employees’ devices. The interface mimics social media, which matters when your workforce expects consumer-grade experiences.

Heavily regulated industries need robust compliance tracking without sacrificing user experience. The platform delivers manager dashboards, real-time tracking, and automated reporting to satisfy compliance requirements while social learning features drive voluntary engagement.

Fast-growing smaller organizations can access capabilities previously reserved for large enterprises. The offering provides the full platform with reduced implementation scope, making it accessible to companies building their HR functions.

What This Means for the Market

The convergence of learning, communication, and employee experience isn’t theoretical. Major players across the industry are making similar moves. But learning technology providers like Thrive may be better positioned to lead this evolution than traditional HR systems because they’ve always focused on engagement and user experience rather than purely on data tracking and process enforcement.

The real test will be execution. Building an integrated employee experience platform is complex. Many have tried. Success requires not just good technology, but the operational excellence to serve customers ranging from small businesses to large global organizations.

Thrive’s approach of combining organic innovation with strategic acquisitions positions them to address the challenge of fragmented workplace technology. The company is betting that organizations want fewer systems, not more, and that learning platforms can become the connective tissue for the broader employee experience.

Whether that vision comes to fruition remains to be seen. But the direction is clear, and the market need is real. Organizations are tired of duct-taping solutions together. They want technology that works the way people actually work.

Brandon Hall Group helps organizations navigate the rapidly evolving learning technology landscape. The Brandon Hall Group Institute provides corporate HR and L&D professionals with research, frameworks, and peer insights to make better technology decisions. For solution providers, our Preferred Provider Program, TotalTech advisory services, and Marketing Services help position innovations effectively in this competitive market.

The post Thrive Learning: Building the Connected Employee Experience Through Strategic Growth appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

At UKG Aspire 2025 in Las Vegas, UKG unveiled a variety of groundbreaking innovations designed to transform how organizations manage their workforce, with a particular focus on frontline employees who represent nearly 80% of the global workforce. From AI-powered intelligence hubs to innovative recognition platforms, these announcements demonstrate UKG’s commitment to creating a more intelligent, connected, and employee-centric future of work with their Workforce Operating Platform.

Workforce Intelligence Hub: Your Operational Command Center

UKG unveiled the Workforce Intelligence Hub, a first-of-its-kind AI-driven solution that unifies all workforce information, from employee schedules and time tracking to hiring, performance, pay, and industry trends, into one real-time view. This represents a fundamental shift in how organizations can understand and optimize their workforce operations.

The Workforce Intelligence Hub serves as an operational command center, giving executives and managers unprecedented access to the labor insights they need to make better, faster decisions about staffing, productivity, and organizational efficiency. Rather than piecing together data from disparate systems, leaders can now see a complete, unified picture of their workforce in real time.

The agentic platform delivers critical capabilities across three key areas and uses AI agents to make changes that positively influence business outcomes in real-time. It provides demand forecasting that predicts staffing needs based on historical data, business trends, and external factors like seasonality, ensuring the right people are in the right place at the right time while reducing costs and improving service delivery. It detects overtime trends and anomalies by identifying unexpected spikes or patterns in overtime usage, preventing excessive labor costs and proactively flagging potential compliance risks early. And it offers real-time visibility into shift coverage and labor gaps, helping managers rebalance workloads and reduce overtime costs.

Built on the world’s largest collection of workforce data, the hub delivers critical benchmarks to understand how the organization is performing, insights that explain what’s happening and why, and AI-driven actions to trigger changes across UKG and third-party systems in response to evolving conditions. According to Suresh Vittal, Chief Product Officer at UKG, “The Workforce Intelligence Hub provides customers with a complete view of their operation, enabling the faster, data-driven decisions that today’s business environment demands.”

Transforming Real-Time Labor and Staffing Strategies

UKG announced two innovative agentic applications designed to help organizations transform daily operations: UKG Rapid Hire and Dynamic Labor Management. These solutions address two of the most pressing challenges organizations face: hiring quickly enough to meet demand and managing labor in real time as conditions change.

These two intelligent solutions close the gap between planning and action, uncover staffing issues as they happen, and make frontline hiring as simple as ordering a rideshare. This consumer-app simplicity applied to workforce management represents a fundamental rethinking of how hiring and scheduling should work.

UKG Rapid Hire streamlines the frontline hiring process, recognizing that in industries like retail, hospitality, and healthcare, the ability to hire quickly can mean the difference between meeting customer demand and falling short. By simplifying and accelerating hiring workflows, organizations can fill positions faster and reduce the operational disruption caused by understaffing.

Dynamic Labor Management takes workforce optimization to the next level by providing real-time visibility and control over labor deployment. Rather than relying on static schedules created days or weeks in advance, organizations can now respond dynamically to changing conditions, unexpected callouts, and fluctuating demand. This agility reduces labor costs while improving service levels and employee satisfaction.

Together, these solutions represent UKG’s vision for eliminating the traditional lag between recognizing a staffing need and addressing it. In today’s fast-paced business environment, organizations can’t afford to wait — and with these new capabilities, they won’t have to.

Industry-First Network for the Frontline Workforce

In what may be the most socially significant announcement, UKG unveiled a first-to-market, AI-led experience focusing on frontline employees that connects them with a curated network of services and partners focused on supporting their wealth, health, and everyday essentials. This network addresses a critical gap in how organizations support their frontline workers.

Early collaborators include Chime, TurboTax, and OnePay, with additional providers to be announced in the first half of 2026. The network recognizes that frontline employees face unique financial and logistical challenges that traditional workplace benefits don’t always address effectively.

According to a recent UKG global study of 8,200 frontline workers, nearly half believe their organization has two cultures: one for knowledge workers who can enjoy perks like remote work and unlimited time-off; and one for frontline workers, who make up nearly 80% of the global workforce and must be present to do their jobs. This stark finding underscores the importance of creating dedicated solutions that acknowledge and address the distinct needs of frontline employees.

By connecting frontline workers with financial services, tax assistance, and payment solutions through an AI-powered interface, UKG is helping organizations demonstrate genuine commitment to supporting all employees, not just those in traditional office roles. This network approach creates a more equitable workplace experience and helps frontline workers navigate the financial complexities of their lives more easily. UKG also said it is actively exploring partners for both individual and group transportation support, with an eye on changing how organizations can help their frontline employees overcome the logistical challenge of getting to and from work.

UKG Bryte AI: Eliminating the Search for Information

One of the most universal workplace frustrations is the endless hunt for information: clicking through intranets, searching policy handbooks, and trying to remember which system houses which document. UKG unveiled a next-generation approach to operations and employee relations, leveraging its powerful UKG Bryte AI.

Building on nearly two decades of success with the UKG People Assist and UKG Document Manager solutions, UKG has infused agentic artificial intelligence (AI) throughout its solutions to help organizations dramatically reduce two of the most common questions from employees: “How do I…?” and “Where do I find….?”

The transformation is remarkable in its simplicity. With the new AI-first People Assist, employees simply ask a question in conversational format, such as “How do I request parental leave?” or “How do I update my 401 (k) contribution?”, and instantly get clear, personalized guidance with prompts to kick off the process.

Optimized for mobile so that employees can get access anywhere, at any time, the AI experiences in UKG People Assist and UKG Document Manager maximize the power of UKG’s unified People Fabric data layer. People Fabric helps UKG customers by allowing each organization to train UKG Bryte AI on any work-related process and policy, extending well beyond HR to encompass many aspects of operations and procedures.

Coupled with the world’s largest collection of work and sentiment data, this allows UKG to deliver hyper-personalized answers in real-time that are contextualized to their role and situation, making information quicker to access and easier to understand. According to Suresh Vittal, “Finding answers and documents at work should feel effortless, allowing people to quickly get the information they need to do their job, make decisions, and have an impact.”

UKG Beacon: Intelligent Recognition for Small and Mid-sized Businesses

UKG announced the launch of UKG Beacon, a groundbreaking solution that transforms how small and mid-sized businesses engage, recognize, and retain their workforce. This announcement is particularly significant because it brings easy-to-use enterprise-grade employee engagement capabilities to organizations that historically haven’t had access to such sophisticated tools.

UKG Beacon embeds Mo, an award-winning employee recognition and culture-building platform recently acquired by UKG, into UKG Ready’s comprehensive workforce data to deliver intelligent, data-driven employee engagement. This creates something entirely new: a recognition system that doesn’t just facilitate appreciation but actively suggests the right moments and methods for recognition.

UKG Beacon is available immediately and provides three powerful capabilities. It offers real-time achievement recognition, fueled by workforce data in UKG Ready, where UKG Beacon can prompt managers to send immediate recognition or automated rewards to frontline employees during key moments to celebrate. The combination of scheduling data and sentiment analysis allows UKG Beacon to proactively suggest actions and activities for employees through predictive engagement nudges. And when an employee completes a project or task milestone, UKG Beacon will recommend acknowledgement that resonates most with each individual, such as private thanks over public kudos, increasing its effectiveness through personalized, preference-based acknowledgement.

According to Chris Kiklas, GVP and General Manager of UKG Ready, “By combining Mo’s innovative recognition technology with UKG Ready’s robust workforce analytics, UKG Beacon represents a quantum leap forward in employee engagement for the small business and mid-sized market. We’re helping customers simplify work, celebrate their people in the moment, and build cultures where performance and purpose go hand-in-hand.”

The Bigger Picture: AI-Powered, People-First Workforce Management

These five announcements, all revealed at UKG Aspire 2025, paint a compelling picture of where workforce management is headed. The common thread running through each innovation is the combination of artificial intelligence, real-time data, and a genuine focus on improving experiences for all workers, from the C-suite to the frontline.

UKG is positioning itself as a leading global AI platform unifying HR, pay, and workforce management, with solutions built on the world’s largest collection of workforce data, using its people-first approach to AI. This data advantage, combined with sophisticated AI capabilities, enables UKG to deliver insights and automation that would be impossible with smaller datasets or less advanced technology.

What’s particularly notable about these announcements is the focus on democratizing access to advanced capabilities with a clear and consistent emphasis on frontline work. The Workforce Intelligence Hub gives all organizations, not just large enterprises, access to sophisticated analytics. UKG Beacon brings intelligent recognition to small and mid-sized businesses. The Frontline Worker Network acknowledges and addresses the needs of workers who have historically been underserved by technology.

For HR leaders, these innovations offer a path forward in an increasingly complex environment. Labor shortages, retention challenges, compliance requirements, and the need for operational agility aren’t going away. But with the right tools (technologies that combine human insight with artificial intelligence, that work in real time rather than looking backward, and that serve all employees rather than just some), organizations can navigate these challenges successfully.

As the workplace continues to evolve, one thing is clear: the future belongs to organizations that can harness data, deploy AI thoughtfully, and keep the frontline workforce – often the largest, most expensive, and most complex part of any operation –  at the center of everything they do. With these five major announcements, UKG is showing the path forward.

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