2026 Trend Collection – Reading the Signals

Reading the Signals

In Partnership with Workhuman

The theme of this series is finding the signals in the noise around HR and workforce data. Most organizations are drowning in HR data and starving for insight.  They are generating a glut of signals every day about productivity, alignment, organizational health, culture, and future — in how people collaborate, who gets recognized, where strengths sit, and where teams are disconnected from strategy. Most leaders never learn to read them.

This series brings senior leaders, CHROs, and practitioners together around a single question — what are the signals that best help us to measure and manage the modern workforce? Each episode can look at this from a different angle: talent development, culture resilience, leadership pipeline, AI adoption, workforce alignment. The connective tissue is the idea of finding the right signal sources to feed AI and make better decisions — with a particular focus on the power of recognition as that source of Human Intelligence.

FEATURED PODCASTS

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Are You Feeding AI the Wrong Data? The Leadership Signals You’re Missing

In this special HR Happy Hour episode, Steve and Trish welcome Tom Libretto, President of Workhuman, to explore why traditional HR data often tells only part of the story, and how recognition data can provide a more human, contextual view of skills, collaboration, influence, leadership potential, and organizational impact.

Featured topics:

• Why organizations need to think as carefully about what they feed AI as they do about the AI technology itself
• What zero-party data is and why recognition can provide an unusually rich source of human intelligence
• How AI and recognition data can help identify future leaders years earlier than traditional succession planning
• What HR leaders should consider as they build a richer, more trustworthy data foundation for AI-powered workforce decisions

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How Work Gets Done Now, and the Signals for How to Measure It

In this episode of the HR Happy Hour, Steve and Trish welcome KeyAnna Schmeidl, Chief Human Experience Officer at Workhuman, for a conversation about what leaders can learn when they look beyond traditional reporting and start paying attention to the human signals inside everyday work.

Featured topics:

• Where traditional HR and productivity metrics fall short
• How recognition data can uncover hidden contributors, connectors, mentors, and emerging leaders
• The role recognition can play in succession planning, internal mobility, and identifying future leadership potential
• How leaders can build workforce dashboards that combine historical, real-time, and forward-looking information

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What Signals is Your Culture Sending Out into the World?

In this episode of the HR Happy Hour, Steve and Trish welcome Saima Rashid, Chief Marketing Officer at Workhuman, for a conversation about the evolving role of employer brand and how recognition data can provide a much more authentic view of workplace culture.

Featured topics:

• Why employer brand is ultimately shaped by the lived employee experience
• How recognition data provides real-time, human insight into how work gets done
• Why authentic employee advocacy must be earned rather than orchestrated
• How AI can help uncover new insights from recognition data

🎧 Listen to the Podcast    ▶️ Watch on YouTube

Is the Culture You Have the Culture You Think You Have? How to Read the Culture Signals

In this episode of the HR Happy Hour, Steve and Trish are joined by Meisha-ann Martin, VP of People Research at Workhuman, for a conversation about moving beyond stated values and getting a clearer picture of how culture actually shows up across an organization.

Featured topics:

• The gap between organizational intentions and employee experiences
• The relationship among vulnerability, recognition, and psychological safety
• How language data can uncover burnout risk, bias, and cultural misalignment
• Why measurement should come before analytics