Hello Community,

According to the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Perception Survey 2025–2026, 50% of respondents anticipate a turbulent or stormy global outlook over the next two years. Over the next decade, that figure rises to 57%.

For HR leaders, these findings raise some practical questions.

This week's edition explores how workforce planning can become a continuous process, helping organizations recognize changes early, prepare for different scenarios, and make better workforce decisions.

🌟 In case you missed it: You still can enroll in “Women Leading AI Transformation,” a 5-week Micro Certificate Program facilitated by Malvika Jethmalani. This program prepares HR professionals to lead AI transformation as a business discipline. ➡️ Learn more and enroll

In March 2020, organizations discovered how quickly carefully developed workforce plans could become outdated. Budgets, hiring targets, and business priorities changed almost overnight.

Six years later, circumstances may be different, but business strategies still need enough flexibility to absorb shocks and respond when priorities change. Workforce planning needs to keep pace.

Rapid advances in AI, particularly agentic AI, are enabling organizations to make more informed predictions, reorganize work, improve productivity, and explore new business models.

However, we are not seeing the full benefits yet. According to Gartner research cited by Cornerstone, only 28% of AI initiatives fully deliver their expected ROI. One major challenge is the significant organizational change required to ensure people have the right skills, support, and capacity to put AI to work.

To respond quickly, organizations need a connected view of their workforce. Bringing together information about employees, skills, roles, capacity, and business needs provides the foundation for continuous workforce intelligence, scenario planning, and informed decisions

1️⃣ Recognize: Monitor changing business conditions and identify when workforce assumptions need to be revisited.

2️⃣ Understand: See which skills and capabilities are available across the organization, including opportunities for internal mobility.

3️⃣ Prepare: Model different business scenarios and assess their implications for workforce needs, costs, and capacity.

4️⃣ Act: Evaluate options such as reskilling, redeployment, hiring, automation, and work redesign.

5️⃣ Reassess: Track emerging workforce gaps and adjust plans as new information becomes available.

Cornerstone just introduced Cornerstone Workforce Planning, combining workforce intelligence with agentic AI to help organizations continuously evaluate changing business needs, model workforce scenarios, and identify actions before capability gaps become business problems.

Speaking of preparing for what's next, we're also getting ready to bring the HR community together in person.

Join us on March 10, 2027 in Scottsdale, Arizona, for one day of immersive learning, with workshops the day before. You'll leave with practical ideas, new perspectives, and relationships that continue long after the event ends.

Trent Cotton, Tracie Sponenberg, and Angela Briggs-Paige will act as MCs! Seats are filling up quickly. More than 150 HR leaders from companies including Hubspot, Marriott Vacations Worldwide, Citi, First FarmBank, Blue Origin, Quantum HR Labs, and more, have already registered. And if you need to convince your boss, our CEO, Enrique Rubio, has prepared a downloadable letter to help your organization approve BUILD Conference.

📍 Where: Scottsdale, Arizona

📅 Optional workshops: March 9

🎤 BUILD Conference: March 10

🎟️ Early-bird registration: $199 | Group rates available

And if you're looking to build practical AI skills before the year ends, we have three bootcamps coming up.

Check the upcoming bootcamps led by Enrique Rubio and end this year building new AI skills you can apply immediately at work.

*Premium membership required.

Before deciding what to learn next, it helps to understand where your capabilities stand today.

The Capability Assessment is available now to Premium and Premium Plus members.

This new tool helps you understand where you stand across the HR Global Capability Framework and AI Global Capability Framework. You will work through five complex business cases dynamically created based on who you are and the work you do, and assess your capabilities across 36 domains, including 18 HR capabilities and 18 AI capabilities. After taking this assessment, you will see whether you're at the Foundational, Intermediate, or Advanced level across each domain.

You’ll receive a detailed report that helps you identify where you are today and where you may want or need to grow.

To start the assessment, log in to the Hacking HR LAB, switch to “Try new design”, and then visit Tools / Capability Assessment.

➡️ Take the Capability Assessment

(Don’t forget to send your feedback to help us improve!)

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