You’re probably hearing two competing narratives right now: on one side the board and CFO are asking where AI will deliver leverage next year, and on the other your team is still wrestling with spreadsheets and four different systems that don’t talk to each other. Somewhere in the middle sits the real work, which is figuring out where AI can remove friction without creating new risks, where it can make hiring and performance feel more fair, and how you can show progress in quarters rather than in a hand-wavy “transformation” timeline.
Table of Contents
Where HR Really Stands with AI in 2026
A few realities are worth keeping in view. Lattice’s State of People Strategy 2026 Report shows HR leaders leaning into AI for efficiency, and a clear push to connect AI use to business outcomes rather than novelty. 72% percent of high-performing HR teams use four or more HR tools, and almost half (49%) use six or more tools—double the average for all survey respondents. HR.com’s Future of Recruitment Technologies 2025-26 report highlights AI adoption rising fastest in applicant tracking systems (78%), but more advanced tools such as recruitment analytics (35%) and video interviewing (31%) remain relatively rare.
Gallup adds a practical angle that tracks with what many of us see, managers are adopting AI at roughly twice the rate of individual contributors, which means the change story is often strongest at the top while the daily workflow wins still need to be earned on the front line.
As my colleague Susan Anderson noted in her webinar earlier this fall, The Bold HR Leader: Navigating AI, Trust, and Change, optimism about AI’s potential is widespread, but scaling success depends on trust, explainability, and skill. AI can elevate decision quality, but only when people understand how it fits into the flow of work—not just the tech stack.
AI Budget and Board Expectations
Boards and CEOs aren’t shy about funding AI where business value is clear. According to KPMG’s 2025 Global CEO Outlook, 71% of CEOs say AI is a top investment priority, while 69% plan to allocate 10–20% of their budget to AI in the next year. KPMG also found that CEOs now expect ROI from AI within one to three years, a faster timeframe than in recent years.
According to Gartner’s forecast, worldwide AI spending is expected to reach $1.5 trillion in 2025, with infrastructure and application software being major drivers. Gartner also warns that many “agentic AI” projects will be scrapped because they lack clear business value or proper integration. Most organizations will only realize value if they pick very specific use cases and wire them into existing systems with care.
For HR teams, these numbers don’t just mean “AI is big,” they paint a picture of strategic timing. Boards and C-suites are saying “we’ll fund AI,” but they’re also asking “Where will it actually move the needle?”
In my opinion, the research suggests that the real value in AI doesn’t come when you bolt it on like a side project, it comes when you integrate it into key workflows, align it with measurable business outcomes, and build governance, transparency, and human oversight into the process.
How to Choose: Three Tests for Any HR AI Tool
If your team is considering AI, the smart move isn’t necessarily the flashiest tool. It’s the tool that:
- Covers a real pain point (e.g., repetitive manual hiring tasks);
- Maps into an existing system (your ATS, HRIS, onboarding platform); and
- Has data flows, user training, governance and metrics baked in from the start.
In other words, spending in AI is happening (and happens fast), but if you skip the preparation, the integration budget, or the change management piece, you might join that growing list of initiatives that under-deliver.
Employee Engagement and Trust: The “So What”
Employees aren’t engaged by technology on its own. They’re engaged when work is clearer, feedback is fair, career progress is visible, and managers have time to coach. AI can help on those fronts if you deploy it like a good operations partner, not a silver bullet.
Think: résumé parsing that reduces manual screening, interview copilots that surface job-related questions and reduce bias drift, nudges that remind managers to give timely, specific feedback, and analytics that highlight flight risk signals early enough to do something human about them. The trick is to make AI invisible where it should be invisible, and explainable where decisions affect pay, promotion, or opportunity.
Deloitte’s research is blunt on this point, trust is the currency that determines whether talent will accept AI-informed decisions, so transparency and human override aren’t nice to have, they’re table stakes.
AI Bill of Rights
An AI Bill of Rights in HR is a policy framework that publicly defines:
- How AI will and will not be used in talent processes (e.g., recruiting, performance, promotions).
- What employees’ rights are around consent, explanation, correction, and human oversight.
- How the organization ensures fairness, accountability, and appeal.
SMART Goals for HR Professionals – AI Edition
This brings me to 2026 AI goals for HR that are truly SMART.
Most HR leaders can recite SMART in their sleep—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. You’ve probably coached more managers through writing them than you’ve written yourself, and yes, you’ve probably reminded a few to actually enter them into the system before the quarter ends.
Still, the framework endures because it works. SMART goals turn vague aspirations into commitments you can track, discuss, and celebrate. In 2026, as HR teams balance human connection with intelligent automation, this structure matters more than ever. It keeps goals grounded in reality—measurable, visible, and tied to outcomes that move both people and business forward.
Below are examples you can plug into your 2026 plan. Each one names an owner, a metric, a baseline, and a quarter-by-quarter arc, and each one assumes controls and change management live alongside the technology.
SMART Goal 1: Cut Time-to-Slate in Recruiting Without Hurting Quality
- Specific: Reduce median time from requisition approval to first qualified slate by 30% in roles that use AI sourcing and screening, with quality tracked by onsite-to-offer ratio.
- Measurable: Current average is 14 days from requisition to candidate slate and 3.2 days from onsite to offer. Target: 10 days to slate and maintain at least a 3.0-day onsite-to-offer average.
- Achievable: Apply to five repetitive job families where historical data exists.
- Relevant: Frees recruiter capacity for relationship work and reduces aging requisition pileup.
- Time-bound: Pilot in Q1, expand in Q2, standardize in Q3.
Guardrails: Document model prompts and scoring rules, enable human review for any rejection, and publish candidate notice that explains automation and rights to review.
SMART Goal 2: Improve Manager Feedback Quality Through Assisted Coaching
- Specific: Increase percentage of employees receiving monthly, behavior-based feedback entries from 28% to 65% by using an AI coach that drafts feedback examples tied to role competencies.
- Measurable: Review counts per month and employee-level sentiment on “I receive helpful feedback” item.
- Achievable: Piloting with two divisions ensures a manageable rollout and early feedback loop. Managers already using structured feedback templates will serve as peer champions, reducing resistance and sharing best practices. The AI tool integrates with existing performance systems, so adoption focuses on behavior change, not new logins or added administrative work.
- Relevant: Quality feedback is one of the strongest predictors of engagement, retention, and growth readiness. By making feedback easier to give and more consistent across teams, this goal directly supports broader organizational priorities around performance enablement, manager effectiveness, and employee development—areas consistently identified in engagement surveys as needing improvement.
- Time-bound: Roll to two divisions in Q2, company-wide by Q4.
Guardrails: Managers approve every note employees can see and comment on and privacy rules exclude sensitive topics.
SMART Goal 3: Reduce Regrettable Attrition in Year One by Using Early Signal Analytics
- Specific: Lower first-year regrettable exits from 14% to 10% by flagging risk signals, onboarding friction, and sentiment dips, then triggering human outreach.
- Measurable: Weekly risk queue SLA, intervention notes, month-over-month exit trend.
- Achievable: The data foundation already exists in our current HRIS, engagement, and onboarding systems, allowing the analytics layer to surface early warning signals without new infrastructure. HRBPs and people managers will pilot the process with a defined intervention playbook, focusing on realistic outreach volumes per week. The goal leverages existing talent analytics and employee listening programs, building capability rather than new workload.
- Relevant: Early attrition is one of the clearest indicators of cultural alignment, onboarding quality, and manager effectiveness. Reducing regrettable turnover strengthens institutional knowledge, saves replacement costs, and signals a mature, data-informed approach to retention. This initiative directly supports business continuity goals and reinforces HR’s role as a strategic advisor on workforce stability and engagement.
- Time-bound: Activate dashboards in Q1, publish monthly review in ELT beginning Q2.
Guardrails: No automated adverse actions, strict access controls, and explicit purpose limitation in policy.
SMART Goal 4: Make AI Use Auditable and Explainable
- Specific: 100% of AI-assisted people processes documented with purpose, data sources, fairness tests, escalation paths, and retention settings, with an annual review.
- Measurable: Complete a lightweight “FRIA-lite” dossier for each use case and pass internal audit by Q3.
- Achievable: Most HR and talent teams already rely on vendor AI in recruiting, performance, or learning tools — this goal focuses on transparency, not reinvention. Partnering with Legal, IT, and Risk, the HR function will use existing policy templates and vendor documentation to create a centralized inventory of AI use cases. Training HRBPs and system admins to maintain these records ensures sustainability without adding new headcount or technology.
- Relevant: As regulations and emerging U.S. frameworks take shape, HR’s ability to demonstrate fairness and explainability in people decisions will define organizational trust. Documenting AI use isn’t just a compliance safeguard; it strengthens credibility with employees, auditors, and candidates alike. It’s a tangible way to show that innovation and accountability can coexist, and that governance is a strategic enabler, not a bureaucratic barrier.
- Time-bound: Inventory in Q1, testing in Q2, audit in Q3.
Guardrails: Publish a plain-language employee FAQ on where AI is used and how to request human review.
How Mitratech Helps
Mitratech simplifies AI governance by embedding compliance, auditability, and explainability directly into your HR tech ecosystem. With ARIES™, our agentic AI trained on real-world compliance workflows, teams can document every AI-assisted action automatically, from sourcing to adjudication, creating an instant audit trail. Our integrated HR and compliance solutions help you demonstrate fairness, manage data retention, and maintain visibility across every system you use.
When AI accountability becomes part of your daily operations, you don’t just stay compliant, you build trust.
SMART Goal 5: Lift Recruiter Capacity Without Adding Headcount
- Specific: Automate routine candidate updates, scheduling, and background check status notifications so each recruiter can handle 25% more requisitions at the same service level.
- Measurable: Requisitions per recruiter, candidate NPS in post-offer survey.
- Achievable: Recruiters already use multiple point tools for communication, scheduling, and background checks. This initiative consolidates and automates those workflows within existing platforms. By integrating candidate messaging, screening updates, and scheduling into one automated flow, recruiters recover hours per week otherwise spent on manual coordination. Early pilots with high-volume roles will validate efficiency gains before expanding to all regions. The plan prioritizes incremental automation, not wholesale process change, ensuring adoption feels additive, not disruptive.
- Relevant: Recruiter capacity directly affects both time-to-fill and candidate experience, two metrics tied to revenue and brand reputation. With hiring demands fluctuating and budgets tightening, scaling recruiter output through intelligent automation allows HR to sustain growth without burnout or extra headcount. This goal aligns with broader talent strategy priorities—delivering a faster, more fair and more responsive candidate journey while giving recruiters time back for the strategic, high-touch work that drives quality of hire.
- Time-bound: Pilot two regions in Q2, global rollout by Q4.
Guardrails: Verify accessibility and mobile experience for candidates, translate all communications.
What to Automate Now, and What to Leave to Humans
Automate now:
- Candidate screening logistics and interview scheduling
- Drafting structured interview questions tied to competencies
- Background check status notifications and candidate explainers
- Policy and handbook Q&A with citations and links
- Summarizing performance notes into draft review sections for manager approval
Leave to humans:
- Final decisions on hiring, promotion, compensation, and termination
- Calibration sessions and performance narratives that set context
- Sensitive employee relations investigations
- Coaching around growth, potential, and readiness
SMART Goals for HR
If your week looks anything like mine, you’ve probably spent more time in calibration meetings and offer reviews than in any quiet corner thinking about your own 2026 SMART goals.
Most of the examples I’ve shared so far lean toward talent acquisition, where AI pilots, efficiency gains, and candidate experience all collide in interesting ways, but there’s a much bigger canvas here. Whether you’re running L&D programs, leading an HRBP team, or helping your organization build a culture of feedback that actually sticks, the way you set and track your goals shapes everything from engagement to executive trust.
Here are some examples to help you get started, a mix of AI-driven ideas and classic, human-powered goals that keep HR grounded in what really matters:
Examples of SMART Goals for HR Coordinator
HR coordinators often sit at the heart of the action—juggling candidate logistics, onboarding paperwork, and a constant stream of “quick questions.” SMART goals help turn that chaos into structure.
SMART Goal for HR Coordinator 1: Streamline Onboarding Logistics
- Specific: Reduce new-hire paperwork completion time from 5 days to 2 by moving all forms into a digital onboarding system.
- Measurable: Track completion time per hire in the HRIS.
- Achievable: Collaborate with IT to test the new platform by Q2.
- Relevant: Faster onboarding improves day-one readiness and first-week engagement.
- Time-bound: Launch the digital process company-wide by July 2026.
SMART Goal for HR Coordinator 2: Improve Candidate Experience
- Specific: Raise candidate satisfaction scores from 78% to 90% by creating a consistent communication template for all interview stages.
- Measurable: Use post-interview surveys to track progress monthly.
- Achievable: Partner with recruiting leads to finalize templates in 4 weeks.
- Relevant: Positive candidate experience strengthens employer brand.
- Time-bound: Roll out by the end of Q1 2026.
Examples of SMART Goals for Learning and Development
For L&D leaders, 2026 will be about scale and personalization—making learning feel both high-tech and deeply human.
L&D SMART Goal 1: Personalize Learning with Data
- Specific: Use engagement analytics to identify three key skill gaps per department and design targeted learning paths for each.
- Measurable: Track participation rates and post-training skill assessments.
- Achievable: Leverage the LMS’s built-in analytics and a quarterly cadence for review.
- Relevant: Personalized learning increases skill application and retention.
- Time-bound: Complete first department rollout by June 2026.
L&D SMART Goal 2: Foster a Learning Culture
- Specific: Increase employee participation in voluntary learning programs by 40%.
- Measurable: Track enrollment and completion data in the LMS.
- Achievable: Partner with department heads to promote learning during team meetings.
- Relevant: Builds internal mobility and retention.
- Time-bound: Achieve goal by December 2026.
How Mitratech Trakstar Helps
With Trakstar, learning and development goes far beyond tracking completions. It helps HR and business leaders create personalized, engaging learning experiences that drive real behavior change. Designed for effortless content delivery and real-time insight, Trakstar makes it easy to see which skills are growing, where learners are thriving, and how development directly supports retention. By turning learning into something employees choose to engage with—not just something assigned—Trakstar helps organizations make goals measurable, meaningful, and achievable.
SMART Goals Examples for HR Business Partner
The HRBP job is a constant balancing act between “strategic partner” and “human fire extinguisher.” One minute you’re mapping out workforce planning with Finance, the next you’re fielding a call about someone’s manager who “just needs a little coaching.” You’re expected to drive culture, influence business outcomes, and somehow still get the paperwork right.
That’s the paradox of modern HR business partnership; it’s strategic and deeply operational. The best HRBPs aren’t just reacting to issues, they’re shaping the systems that prevent them in the first place. But making that shift from tactical to truly strategic isn’t magic, it’s measurement, delegation, and time protection.
These SMART goals reflect where a lot of HRBP teams are heading in 2026: spending less time chasing tickets and more time driving clarity, capability, and trust across the business. They’re practical, measurable ways to earn influence and make your impact visible.
HRBP SMART Goal 1: Increase HRBP Strategic Influence
- Specific: Shift HRBP activity mix to at least 60% strategic work (workforce planning, coaching, etc.) and 40% transactional by end of year.
- Measurable: Track time allocation through HRIS task tagging and quarterly self-assessments.
- Achievable: Delegate repeatable admin tasks to shared services or automation tools.
- Relevant: Positions HRBP team as proactive business advisors, not reactive problem solvers.
- Time-bound: Achieve rebalancing target by Q4 with mid-year checkpoint in Q2.
HRBP SMART Goal 2: Strengthen Manager Capability and Consistency
- Specific: Partner with department heads to roll out a quarterly “Manager Effectiveness Check-In” process that blends pulse data, one-on-one templates, and coaching resources.
- Measurable: Achieve 85% completion across all people leaders and a 10-point improvement on “My manager gives clear, actionable feedback” in engagement surveys.
- Achievable: Pilot in two high-growth teams before expanding company-wide.
- Relevant: Builds leadership bench strength and reduces manager-driven turnover.
- Time-bound: Launch pilot in Q1; roll out globally by Q3.
For more examples you can borrow (or steal outright), check out last year’s 25 SMART Goals for HR Professionals. It’s still one of the most read resources on practical goal setting that actually works in real organizations.
Where to Start on SMART Goals for HR If You’re Already Stretched Thin
If your week feels like one long meeting with email breaks, you’re not alone. Setting goals sounds great until it’s 6:00 p.m. and you’re still catching up on approvals, follow-ups, and one more “quick question.”
Progress doesn’t have to start with a full strategy deck. Sometimes it just starts with choosing what’s stealing your time and giving it a structure that helps you get some of it back. Start with the work that feels repetitive, the kind that eats hours and leaves no trace. For most teams, that’s scheduling, collecting interview debriefs, tracking background checks, or fielding the same policy questions over and over again. Pick two or three of those and decide to make them easier this quarter. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just better.
Once you’ve identified the big time drains, decide where your “source of truth” lives. If your ATS says one thing and your HRIS says another, pick which one wins. Connect your automations there, not everywhere. The biggest mistake I see is teams spinning up another tool to fix the first five, and by next summer, that new one is the problem.
It also helps to write a short, plain-language note about where you’re using AI in your HR systems and why. Not a policy novel, but a one-pager that says what data you touch, how people can ask for a human review, and how long you keep their information. That kind of transparency makes people trust the process, especially when the tech behind it feels new or fuzzy.
Finally, before you share a big success story, measure what matters quietly for a few weeks. Track one or two outcomes, maybe time to slate, candidate satisfaction, or recruiter load, and share them with your business partners. A simple chart that shows improvement speaks louder than any memo.
The point isn’t to overhaul everything at once. It’s to create small, visible wins that make your work a little lighter, your data a little cleaner, and your team a little more confident that progress is happening, even when the pace doesn’t feel fast enough.
Career Development Goals Examples
If you’ve ever coached someone through a promotion cycle while quietly realizing you haven’t updated your own development plan in two years, you’re in good company. HR people spend so much time fueling other people’s growth that their own sometimes gets pushed to the edge of the calendar.
Career goals hit differently when they’re about curiosity and courage, not checklists.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
- Earn a certification or analytics credential not to pad your résumé, but to hold your own in a meeting with Finance or Legal.
- Shadow a business leader and see how your workforce plans actually land in the field.
- Take ownership of one messy, cross-functional project and turn it into a case study worth bragging about.
- Present at an internal all-hands or an HR conference (not to impress, but to share what’s working and what’s still hard).
- Build a micro-community of peers who challenge your thinking about AI, fairness, and culture.
- Create your own “career dashboard” so you can actually see the impact your work has on people and performance.
Growth doesn’t happen when things slow down; it happens when you give yourself permission to learn in motion.
Personal Goals for HR Professionals
HR runs on empathy, and empathy, when unmanaged, can quietly run you into the ground. The hardest part isn’t the work itself, it’s remembering that you’re part of the culture you’re building.
Personal goals for HR professionals look like creating space to think, to recover, and to be fully present with people, not just available to them. They’re small, daily choices that keep you in the game long enough to keep making it better.
Here’s what they can look like:
- Protect one afternoon a week with no meetings, no Slack, no triage—just thinking time.
- Mentor two newer HR pros a year and let their energy remind you why you started in this field.
- Pause before reacting when conflict lands in your inbox; not every problem needs an instant solution.
- Read something outside HR; neuroscience, behavioral economics, design, anything that sharpens how you understand people.
- Automate one repetitive task each month, even if it’s tiny, and give yourself back those five minutes a day.
- Track your own engagement, not just everyone else’s. When your spark starts to fade, treat it like data, and act on it.
Strengthening Compliance
If you’ve ever spent a Sunday night catching up on state labor updates or skimming through a new handbook draft over coffee, you know compliance isn’t a task you check off once a year. The laws shift, the risks evolve, and HR teams become the quiet force making sure everyone stays in step.
In 2026, compliance work looks less like reacting to updates and more like building systems that prevent the scramble in the first place. That means tightening controls, increasing transparency, and making compliance a shared responsibility… not just an HR checklist item.
Here are a few practical goals many HR teams are focusing on in the coming year:
- Increase policy awareness and completion rates by ensuring all employees finish mandatory compliance training within the next quarter and understand how it applies to their roles.
- Improve data security posture by conducting quarterly reviews of access rights, minimizing manual data handling, and closing gaps identified in recent audits.
- Review and refresh key HR policies such as remote work, leave management, and anti-harassment so they reflect new federal and state guidance and use clear, accessible language.
- Strengthen compliance visibility through internal audits and shared dashboards that surface trends before they become findings.
- Centralize documentation in one secure location to reduce missing or outdated forms and make audit prep less reactive.
- Track and communicate progress so business leaders see compliance as a measurable performance metric, not background noise.
Mitratech’s compliance ecosystem, including Tracker I-9, AssureHire, and ARIES™, helps HR teams stay ahead of shifting regulations without adding extra hours to their week. With automated updates, built-in alerts, and secure documentation workflows, you can keep your organization compliant, calm, and audit-ready every day of the year.
HR Goals for 2026
If you’ve read this far, you’ve already done the hardest part, which is slowing down long enough to think about what progress should actually look like next year. SMART goals for HR aren’t just a performance management tool, they’re a way to bring focus and clarity when everything around you feels like it’s speeding up.
AI might be changing how we get work done, but the purpose of HR hasn’t changed. It’s still about helping people do their best work, building trust, and creating systems that make things clear and fair. The tools just give us new ways to do it.
So start with what’s real. Pick one process that slows your team down, one outcome that matters to your business, and one metric that helps you see if things are moving in the right direction. Small steps compound faster than big transformations ever do.
At Mitratech, we see that pattern in the teams we work with every day. The ones that make progress don’t chase trends or rush to automate everything. They build structure, keep people in the loop, and make compliance and clarity part of how they work, not an afterthought.
If you’re planning your 2026 HR goals and want to compare notes, our team is happy to share what we’re seeing and what’s working across organizations that look a lot like yours. Real progress starts with a conversation, and we’d love to be part of that one.
Let’s talk about where you want to take your HR goals next year.
