- with Inhouse Counsel
- with readers working within the Retail & Leisure industries
The Lewis Silkin Future @ Work 2026 report examines how organisations are navigating an era defined by accelerating uncertainty.
Rapid advances in AI, geopolitical instability, regulatory fragmentation, demographic shifts and changing workforce expectations are reshaping today's business environment. Change is now constant, and increasingly unpredictable and complex. Our key finding is that, while many organisations express confidence in their ability to manage disruption in the short term, the future of work will require businesses to take strategic action now to build long-term organisational and workforce resilience and preparedness.
Our survey data shows that, for most employers, HR and workforce planning horizons rarely extend further than 12 months. Longer-term planning is constrained by a range of immediate pressures, both inside and outside of the organisation. Regulatory change, geopolitical uncertainty and economic pressures sit alongside day-to-day delivery demands, internal resistance to organisational change, competing priorities across functions and widening recruitment and retention challenges.
As a result, employers are prioritising short-term outcomes, despite recognising the need for long-range, strategic thinking. This compressed approach to planning creates a widespread perception of preparedness, but also obscures deeper capability gaps, particularly in leadership, skills, workforce design, and organisational culture. This is the readiness gap at the heart of the report: high confidence sitting alongside limited or constrained foresight.
AI is the most prominent driver of change. Organisations anticipate significant benefits, especially in productivity, decision-support, and employee and customer experience. Yet implementation remains uneven and often reactive. While many employers are putting foundational elements in place (data improvement, reskilling, governance frameworks), fewer than half are investing at the scale required for sustained transformation. Spending continues to skew heavily towards technology over workforce development, widening the tension between technical ambition and human-centred capabilities.
Geopolitical and regulatory volatility heighten this reactivity. Political uncertainty, shifting employment and immigration rules, and inconsistent cross-border frameworks make long-term workforce planning difficult. Organisations are adapting through risk management, compliance strengthening and scenario planning, but maturity varies widely.
The report also identifies strong reasons for optimism. Organisations are experimenting with new career architectures, skills-based workforce models and more integrated forms of governance. Employers increasingly recognise the value of stronger employee voice in driving engagement, organisational culture as a source of resilience, and wellbeing as essential to the design of work itself. ESG and DEI commitments, while unevenly embedded, are increasingly linked to trust, engagement and competitive advantage.
The organisations best positioned for the future are those able to shift from reactive short-termism to deliberate long-term capability-building: aligning people, technology and regulation at a strategic level; investing in leadership and human-centred skills; embedding wellbeing and inclusion into operating models; and treating uncertainty not as disruption, but as a core condition to be managed with foresight.
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