🏃 The AI 'Pacesetters' leaving everyone else behind

CEOs have moved past asking whether AI works and landed on a much less comfortable question: are we moving fast enough? 

That question is already changing budget conversations, hiring plans, and headcount decisions, and it is about to land squarely on HR's desk.

COMING UP

• 📊 41% of small business HR teams say analytics, not recruiting, is AI's biggest 2026 payoff

• 💡 Citi handed 180 HR employees a hackathon and told them to "go crazy" with AI

• ⚖️ 43% of employees feel secure in their jobs while 63% of employers say no layoffs are planned

• 🏃 Just 13% of companies qualify as AI "Pacesetters," despite near-universal CEO optimism

[Free eBook] 2026 ATS Comparison Guide

SSR recently released a 2026 ATS Comparison Guide to help HR and recruiting teams quickly compare top applicant tracking systems like Greenhouse, Pinpoint, Teamtailor, Workable, ClearCo, and more.

Inside, you’ll find:

• Side-by-side ATS feature comparisons

• Pros, cons, and expert product reviews

• Best-fit recommendations by company size and hiring needs

Whether you’re scaling hiring, replacing a clunky system, or simply trying to understand what’s out there, this guide gives you a clearer way to evaluate your options.

 📰 Latest in HR News

• Edward Jones pushes back on lawsuit challenging diversity program

• 100,000 job cuts as 2026 Volkswagen layoffs remain boardroom priority

• Accenture: Most companies are doing AI wrong, creating “human debt”

• Microsoft's severance package hits up to 39 weeks of base pay, reports say

📊 41% of SMB HR teams say analytics is AI's best 2026 bet

For lean HR teams already stretched across multiple roles, AI's most obvious use case, drafting job posts or answering emails, isn't where they expect the biggest return.

When small business HR leaders were asked where artificial intelligence will actually move the needle this year, the answer wasn't recruiting or content. It was turning scattered employee data into something they can finally act on.

The SMB Analytics Bet, In 4 Numbers:

• 📈 38% of SMB HR teams picked recruitment and hiring as the next-best AI opportunity. That puts automation's next stop beyond dashboards and into the hiring funnel.

• 🧷 70% of small businesses say AI won't lead to headcount changes this year. These teams are treating AI as a productivity boost, not a staffing decision.

• 🇺🇸 61% of US-based HR leaders picked reporting and analytics as AI's top 2026 opportunity, well above the 41% global average.

• 🛠️ Just 24.7% of small businesses currently use dedicated data or analytics tools like Power BI or Tableau. Most teams plan to chase that analytics edge with the general AI tools they already have.

Read more: HR Partner: The State of AI in Small Business HR, 2026 Industry Report

💡 180 HR employees, 35 teams, and one "go crazy" AI hackathon

Most banks treat AI experimentation as something IT handles while HR waits for the rollout.

Citi's head of HR AI took the opposite approach, handing the wheel directly to HR staff and telling them to ignore the industry's usual risk-averse instincts, at least for the length of a hackathon.

What came out of it says as much about unlocking internal talent as it does about the tools themselves.

What HR Can Learn From Citi:

• 🗓️ Participants had just 10 working days to build a first draft. A tight timebox still produced usable AI prototypes once teams were freed from the usual red tape.

• 🏆 10 finalist teams pitched live to a panel of six judges. Even a highly regulated bank can run a real innovation competition inside its HR function.

• 🧭 Winning ideas now move to risk, legal, model governance, and audit for scaling. Hackathons can generate ideas fast while formal governance still catches up afterward.

• 📣 Smaller-scale builders from the hackathon are now presenting at town halls and AMAs. One-off winners are turning into an ongoing internal AI training pipeline for HR.

Read more: HR Brew: Citi's HR leaders hosted a hackathon to jumpstart AI adoption

[Next Week] Scaling HR Without the Growing Pains: Building the Infrastructure You’ll Need Before You Need It

In this webinar, we're digging into what scalable HR infrastructure actually looks like...and how to build it before you desperately need it.

From disconnected systems and patchwork processes to the hidden risks that come with rapid growth, we'll explore what it takes to set your HR function up to support the business at every stage, not just the one you're in right now.

⚖️ 43% of employees feel secure while 63% of employers plan zero layoffs

Job security is starting to feel like two different conversations happening at once.

Employers are telling themselves the workforce is stable, while employees are building a backup plan just in case.

Neither side seems aware the other is doing this, and that is already showing up in application volume.

Why Employers and Employees Are Living In Two Different Job Markets:

• 🏃 85% of employees say they'd immediately start applying elsewhere if they felt their job was at risk. That's a fast, active response, not passive worry.

• 💸 Only 31% of employees report an actual pay increase in the last six months, even though 48% of employers say they raised pay organization-wide. The two sides are reading the same budget cycle very differently.

• 🔄 67% of employers reported losing staff in the past six months. "No layoffs planned" doesn't mean no one is leaving on their own.

• 🔍 49% of employees plan to actively job search in the next six months despite employers reporting stable headcount plans for 2026.

Read more: Morgan McKinley: 2026 Workplace Trends Report, The New Employment Equation

🏃 91% of CEOs are optimistic on AI. Only 13% of companies are ready.

CEO confidence in AI has jumped, and so has the fear of falling behind on it.

That mix of optimism and urgency is pushing new investment decisions through the pipeline fast, and HR is often the function asked to make those decisions real.

CEOs Say They're Ready For AI. Their Companies Aren't:

• 🔍 65% of CEOs fear their business is missing AI opportunities due to underinvestment. That pressure is likely to show up as demands on HR to move faster on tools and training.

• 🧠 53% of CEOs say their own understanding of AI is no longer a barrier, up from just 26% a year ago. That shifts the blame for slow progress elsewhere in the organization.

• 🎯 Talent and skills upskilling ranks as CEOs' #2 AI priority for 2026, right behind infrastructure. That puts HR squarely in the middle of the readiness gap.

• 📚 AI-ready "Pacesetter" companies report 75% staff AI proficiency, compared to just 16% everywhere else. Most workforces are further behind than their CEOs may realize.

Read more: Cisco: How CEOs See AI in 2026