Workday + The Josh Bersin Company
Navigating the Shift to HR 2030™: an exclusive research partnership between Workday and The Josh Bersin Company.
HR 2030 is not a new set of tools. It is a new operating model that redefines HR as the engine for dynamic business growth, powered by AI and networks of agents. The question for business and HR leaders today is no longer "How do we adopt AI?" It is "How do we apply it, systematically, at scale, across the full people agenda?"
The Workday + The Josh Bersin Company HR 2030 research partnership brings together JBC's 30 years of research, benchmarks, and advisory insight with Workday's governed platform for people, work, skills, finance, decisions, and agents.
The goal? To provide a practical path from vision to action.
Learn more about the research partnership, read the new report, and connect with The Josh Bersin Company team to begin your HR 2030 journey.
From Service Function to Operating System for Business Growth
The obstacle to the AI-powered future is not technical; it is organizational.
Companies need a way to dynamically redeploy people, redesign workflows from the ground up, and match their rate of change to technology's. The companies that win will build what we call talent density: a model where every employee is a superworker, leveraging and managing always-on AI agents to generate far more value than they could alone.
HR 2030 redefines what HR offers the business and how its contribution is measured. Where the traditional HR function assessed transactional efficiency through metrics like cost per hire, time to fill, and headcount ratios, the HR 2030 function considers its contribution to growth focusing instead on success indicators like revenue per employee, speed of capability deployment, and capacity unlocked for higher-value work.
Strategy
A guide to HR 2030
Get started with research-grounded clarity. The HR 2030 Playbook provides actionable clarity by mapping the intersection of business urgency and AI opportunity, giving CHROs defensible starting points relevant to their industry & organization's nuances, not generic advice.
Read the PlaybookTechnology
A well-organized tech stack
Plan a governed foundation, not a sprawl of tools. The HR 2030 reference architecture brings workforce data, business processes, decisions, and agent activity together in one trusted environment, so every capability you add compounds rather than complicates.
Learn MoreExecution
The clear path forward
Follow a sequenced path from early wins to enterprise impact with the Start, Next, Future roadmap. Discover how initial AI investments in talent acquisition, employee services, and learning connect to create a dynamic HR operating model built to scale revenue per employee, not just reduce cost.
What the Research Actually Reveals.
The Playbook goes well beyond vision by surfacing specific patterns, thresholds, and decision points HR leaders must consider. Josh Bersin Company and Workday leaders emphasize that...
The AI Maturity Gap is Wider than You Think
Bersin Company research shows 68% of surveyed HR organizations are still operating at Stage 1: adding AI assistants to existing workflows without redesigning the work itself. The Playbook maps all four stages of HR AI transformation and identifies the critical inflection point at Stage 2 to 3, where roles and work change fundamentally rather than incrementally.
Your Role is About to Change, but in Surprising Ways
The Playbook's AI Opportunity Matrix plots every major HR function across two axes: percentage of headcount and AI displacement potential. HR's influence and size are set to grow in core strategic functions, and headcount-heavy roles will face redesign pressure that must be addressed purposefully.
Transformation Starting Points are Not Universal
The Playbook provides concrete, industry-specific entry points backed by real business cases. Learn from a healthcare system that avoided $169.7M in costs through dynamic workforce planning and a financial services firm that cut recruiting costs by 98% using mobility agents.
CHROs Need Partners for the Journey
One of the Playbook's sharpest findings: partnering with the CIO and CFO early in the process is the structural prerequisite for scale. Establishing shared governance standards, technology alignment, and financial models for AI investment must happen before agent deployment, or the architecture will not hold.
Inside the Playbook by the numbers
HR 2030 demands action, not just awareness. Grounded in research and real-world insights, The Playbook equips you with:
200+
Agentic HR use cases
7
Step CHRO action plan
9
HR growth metrics
4
Anchor superagents
A Time-Sensitive Strategy
HR 2030: A Practical Path from Vision to Adoption
The window to get AI architecture right is open now, but not for long. Organizations are already adopting AI, but they must strategize their governance approach and purposefully map out their tech stack before agents proliferate and sprawl sets in.
HR 2030 is not a fixed destination but an ongoing program built to help leaders move with the pace of change rather than behind it.
HR 2030 is an ongoing research program designed to move with the pace of change — not behind it. JBC contributes the research foundation: 30 years of benchmarks, frameworks, and advisory intelligence built specifically for HR leaders. Workday contributes the operational foundation: a governed platform trusted by more than 11,500 organizations to run their workforce data, business processes, and now, their agents. The research partnership exists because the journey requires both.
Why Now is the Time to Plan for HR 2030
The cost of waiting is compounding
AI enables strategy, it is not the whole strategy
4 anchor superagents influence the entire architecture
HR 2030 Research Initiative
Dynamically enable your people. Strategically govern the technology.
The new HR 2030 Playbook is the third report in JBC's ongoing HR 2030 research series, and the first co-created with Workday.
Building on the Agentic HR Blueprint's foundational vision and the Multiagent AI Architecture report's governance framework, it answers the question both papers left open: where do you actually start? Together, Workday and The Josh Bersin Company provide CHROs a sequenced path from early AI wins to a dynamic HR operating model that compounds over time.
“I've always believed HR can be the biggest lever a company has for growth. Working with Workday, we will help organizations build this HR function of the future — not just dream about it. ”
— Josh Bersin, Founder & CEO, The Josh Bersin Company
Build Your Organization's HR 2030 Playbook
Transitioning to an agentic HR operating model requires clear sequencing, technology alignment, and change leadership. This new research partnership lays the foundation for a path forward that's focused on business results.
How to Use the Playbook:
Identify the starting point of your HR 2030 journey.
Plan how to work through the three core stages of transformation.
Plan for a future of dynamic workforce planning and enablement.