HR trends 2027: the 7 issues that will shape HR leaders' agendas

HR trends 2027 come down to seven topics: belonging that sits with the team rather than the company, mental health still under strain, artificial intelligence settling unevenly into HR teams, EU-imposed pay transparency, a lighter CSRD framework that does not remove the need to offer meaning at work, an HR budget under constant pressure, and managers running on empty. Here is what each of these trends changes in practice for an HR director in 2027. Several of the figures come from French studies, and we say so each time.

The collective can no longer be taken for granted

The sense of belonging is moving towards the team. According to the 2026 HR Barometer by United Heroes x OpinionWay, a survey of employees in France, 44% of employees describe their company as an archipelago of islands linked by bridges, against only 17% who still see a united continent. The team belonging score reaches 7.4 out of 10, against 6.9 for the company as a whole. The direct consequence: 69% of employees would protect their close team even if the company suffered for it. The split between head office and the field comes first among perceived tensions, at 42% on average and up to 52% in large groups. A second indicator from the same barometer measures how solid the collective bond is: here, mid-sized companies of 250 to 4,999 employees are the most affected, with 51% of employees describing the bond as fragile.

For an HR director, this changes the focus. Large annual corporate events are no longer enough to build a collective if the local team remains the only level where it is truly lived. In 2027, the challenge is to give teams themselves the means to keep that bond alive, instead of relying only on moments organised from head office. A practical step: map where the collective really sits in your organisation, team by team, before deciding where to invest.

Mental health is still under-addressed

The 2025 Fragilités barometer from Malakoff Humanis finds that 21% of French employees are in psychological distress. The same institute's 2025 Absenteeism barometer shows that 42% of employees took at least one sick leave in 2024. And the gap between words and action remains clear: according to the 2024 quality of work life barometer by Qualisocial and Ipsos, 88% of employees consider quality of work life a priority, but only 48% think their employer takes it seriously.

That 40-point gap is the first thing to address in 2027. Companies that talk about well-being without measured, sustained action lose credibility. A practical step: replace one-off initiatives with regular tracking of a few simple indicators, shared with teams, to show that well-being is managed.

Artificial intelligence is entering the HR function, but unevenly

According to the 3rd edition of the OpinionWay barometer for Kelio, published in March 2026 on a sample of 306 HR managers in French private companies with 20 employees or more, the use of artificial intelligence by HR went from 9% in 2024 to 28% in 2025, then 33% in 2026. But this progress hides a wide gap: 64% of HR directors use it, against only 34% of operational HR managers. And 29% of HR managers say they have no plan to bring in AI, against 7% two years earlier.

For an HR director, the 2027 task is therefore to close the gap with the field. A practical step: train operational HR teams first, not only the leadership, and pick one or two concrete use cases before trying to automate everything at once.

Pay transparency is becoming a legal requirement

The European pay transparency directive, 2023/970, published on 17 May 2023, was due to be transposed into national law by early June 2026. France is running late: the transposition bill was presented to the Council of Ministers on 10 September 2026, with adoption expected in autumn 2026 and entry into force in 2027. It requires, among other things, showing a pay range at the recruitment stage and regularly publishing gender pay gaps.

Companies are not ready. According to a 2026 Figures and YouGov survey of both employers and employees, 93% of employers support the principle of pay transparency, but only 12% feel fully ready to apply it. Nearly half of companies, 49%, have no formal pay grid. On the employee side, the demand is already there: 83% of working people wanted salaries shown in job ads, according to a 2023 LinkedIn and Welcome to the Jungle survey.

The directive applies to employers in every EU member state, whatever the pace of national transposition. It does not cover staff based only in the UK. If you employ people in the EU, a practical step is to start auditing your pay grids now and to prepare internal communication on pay gaps, so you do not discover the subject on the day national law requires it.

CSRD is receding, the expectation of meaning is not

The European simplification package known as Omnibus raised the CSRD application thresholds to 1,000 employees and €450 million in net turnover, with both criteria required. This reform, in force since March 2026, takes about 80% of the originally targeted companies out of scope. In practice, most EU companies with 200 to 999 employees are no longer subject to a direct CSRD reporting obligation.

But this regulatory retreat changes nothing about what employees expect. According to the Deloitte Gen Z and Millennial Survey 2025, 92% of millennials and 89% of Gen Z say meaning is important to their job satisfaction. And 44% of Gen Z have already turned down an employer for ethical reasons or because of their convictions, according to Deloitte 2024. Yet 43% of French employees do not know their own company's CSR policy, according to the United Heroes Employee Engagement Observatory 2024 run with OpinionWay. For an HR director, CSRD is no longer the urgency it was, but CSR remains a retention factor when it is visible inside the company. A practical step: keep running and communicating your CSR policy to teams, whatever the regulatory calendar says.

The HR budget stays under constant pressure

The pace of change is not slowing. According to a Gartner survey reported by Harvard Business Review in May 2023, employees went through five times more major changes a year in 2022 than in 2016, and their support for those changes had fallen to 43%, against 74% in 2016. A Gartner press release from November 2023 even puts the drop in individual performance linked to change fatigue at 27%. Disengagement has a direct cost: €14,840 a year per disengaged employee, according to the 2024 IBET index from Mozart Consulting, a French study. And a FLASHS survey for Swapn, published in January 2026, shows that 35% of French employees are considering leaving their job in 2026.

For an HR director, every budget line in 2027 has to be justified by a measurable effect on engagement and retention, rather than by stacking one-off initiatives. To move from trends to trade-offs, our guide HR budget 2027: which tools to prioritise sets out the method line by line.

The manager, the link under strain

The manager remains the unavoidable relay for team cohesion, but is running on empty. According to Gallup's global State of the Workplace study, manager engagement fell to 22% in 2025, from 31% in 2022, and this drop is what pulls global engagement down to 20%, its lowest level since 2020. The 2026 HR Barometer by United Heroes x OpinionWay confirms this at French level: only 46% of managers genuinely invest in their team's cohesion, and 37% of employees, 48% among managers themselves, say their manager has to bend company rules to maintain that bond.

A collective engagement solution like United Heroes answers this need: it gives managers and their teams ready-to-use moments, challenges or series of challenges, instead of leaving them to invent everything. In the same barometer, United Heroes users report a positive impact on their sense of belonging at 80% and on their mental health at 88%, according to the figures published on our offer page. A practical step: equip managers with one or two simple, recurring cohesion formats, rather than asking them to reinvent every key moment.

Turning these trends into budget priorities

Taken one by one, these seven trends can feel overwhelming. The useful exercise for an HR director is to set them against their own 2027 budget: which lines address the split in the collective, mental health, the expectation of meaning and the pressure on managers, and which are only habits renewed with no measured effect. That is exactly the purpose of our HR budget 2027 guide, which helps you turn this diagnosis into concrete trade-offs.

Frequently asked questions

Take it further

On well-being and mental health, our quality of work life page sets out the practical levers. On social bonds at work, our cohesion page presents our approach. On supporting reorganisations, our transformation page completes the picture. And for a broader look back at HR innovation, our article 8 HR innovations to watch in 2024 remains a useful reference.