Toronto – October 17, 2026 -- Only 19% of employees worldwide feel confident using AI tools, according to the 2026 State of Recognition Report from the Achievers Workforce Institute, which argues that timely, specific recognition is missing infrastructure in AI transformation programs.

Global – October 17, 2026 -- Sixty-eight percent of organizations now say executive leaders view compensation as strategic to business success, according to Payscale's 2026 research, as the vendor pushes a shift from annual compensation management to continuous "compensation intelligence." Brandon Hall Group analysts assessed the strategy after Payscale's 2026 Compference and Analyst Day.

Global – October 17, 2026 -- Only 17% of organizations have reached the top phase of Brandon Hall Group's Learning and Development Progression Model, where AI adoption spreads widely across L&D, while 39% still lack the foundational enablement infrastructure for it.

Global – October 17, 2026 -- Eighty-five percent of HCM Excellence Award-winning recognition programs have deployed dedicated recognition platforms with dashboards and reporting, yet far fewer have built the layer that tells managers what to do with that data, according to Brandon Hall Group analysis.

Southern Utah – October 17, 2026 -- O.C. Tanner's Institute released its 2027 Global Culture Report at the company's Influence Greatness 2026 conference. The report draws on nearly 26,000 employee perspectives across 23 countries and covers four areas: organizational compassion, growth cultures, active trust and innovation. The event took place at Black Desert Resort, and a Brandon Hall Group analyst attended as an invited guest hosted by O.C. Tanner.

Paris – October 17, 2026 -- SAP intends to acquire TechWolf, a skills-intelligence vendor that Brandon Hall Group says surfaces in nearly every in-depth enterprise skills discussion it holds with clients.

TechWolf's context graph is meant to ground SAP's Joule agents

SAP says TechWolf's context graph can serve as a grounding layer for agent queries. According to SAP, that foundation can make token usage more efficient and make Joule more intelligent in skills-based hiring, workforce planning and role redesign.

Global – October 17, 2026 -- Brandon Hall Group began tracking Workforce Intelligence as a distinct HCM technology category in 2025, arguing that vendors using the term are often describing different capabilities.

Chicago – October 17, 2026 -- Early-tenure attrition at key Advocate Health sites fell from more than 70% to as low as 16% after the system added coaching for new hires. The result is one of several outcomes in a Brandon Hall Group review of 27 HCM Excellence Awards Excellence in Practice blueprints from 11 patient-care organizations. The firm presented the review at the WMHH Summit in Chicago.

Chicago – September 28, 2026 -- Explorance has released Metrics That Matter (MTM) 10.0, a platform update built to help learning and development teams prove that training programs close organizational skills gaps.