Six priorities for HR leaders in the GCC right now
A regional survey from WTW has shed light on the most important imperatives for HR leaders in 2026. Mohamad El Armali, Senior Director at WTW, walks through the top six priorities identified and shares his perspective on how organizations can translate them into action.
1) The AI conversation has matured
No single topic generated as much energy in the survey as AI and Gen AI. References to AI appeared across nearly every category of response, from total rewards specialists exploring AI-driven pay analytics to HR directors grappling with what it means for workforce planning, and CHROs asking fundamental questions about governance and accountability.
The conversation has matured considerably. AI was featured in more than half of all responses, making it the most emerging theme across every function and seniority level. A year ago, many organizations were still asking whether to adopt AI in HR. Today, the question is how and how responsibly.
Respondents spoke of leveraging AI to improve hiring efficiency, automating performance insights, using AI-enabled platforms for data-driven decision-making, and building an AI ecosystem across HR functions and enterprise systems.
“AI will require redesigning work at system level, with leadership judgement in hybrid human-machine organizations.”
Yet the sophistication of the responses signals a healthy tension. Leaders are not simply adopting AI tools; they are asking harder questions. Who is accountable when AI makes flawed people decisions? How do you preserve human connection, purpose and ethics as technology takes on more of the HR workflow?
One CHRO captured it eloquently: “2026 is about the overarching challenge of integrating technology while preserving human connection – and HR’s role as the workplace architect.”
What this means in practice
Organizations are investing in AI for recruitment (reducing time-to-hire, improving the quality of hire), performance management, reskilling identification, and HR operations efficiency.
At the same time, they are building governance frameworks – defining the boundaries of ethical AI, establishing accountability for AI-driven decisions, and ensuring localization remains a sovereign capability play, particularly in markets where Emiratization and Saudization compliance intersects with digital transformation.
2) Talent: Retaining what matters most
Talent retention was mentioned by approximately one in four respondents. The concern is not just about headcount; it is about retaining the right people in critical roles at the right time.
The responses reveal a nuanced understanding of what retention actually requires in 2026. Leaders are moving away from the idea that compensation alone retains people. Instead, they are weaving together a retention architecture that encompasses total rewards, career growth, employee experience, wellbeing and a sense of belonging.
“HR will focus on ensuring the right talent is available, productive, engaged and compliant – through workforce planning.”
Several leaders connected retention explicitly to the evolution of their national workforce agendas. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, managing the complexity of Saudization compliance while simultaneously retaining expat expertise in transition periods is a live operational challenge. In the UAE, questions around the influx of expatriates and its effect on salary competitiveness are shaping compensation strategy.
The current regional context has added a harder dimension to this conversation. When business conditions deteriorate rapidly, HR leaders face a challenge that sits alongside retention: managing workforce costs responsibly, making decisions about which roles are truly critical, and protecting key individuals while the broader organization restructures. Retention and cost management are not opposites – done well, they are two sides of the same workforce strategy.
What this means in practice
Retention strategies in 2026 are multi-layered. They include redesigning total rewards to be more competitive and personalized, strengthening succession pipelines so high-potential employees see a future, building manager capability (since managers remain the single biggest driver of voluntary attrition), and investing in the employee experience across the full lifecycle – from onboarding to career pathing, and offboarding.
3) Reskilling and capability building for a future-ready workforce
Closely tied to both the AI agenda and the talent retention challenge is a pervasive recognition that the skills required to thrive in 2026 are fundamentally different from those that got people to where they are today. Reskilling and upskilling featured in approximately one in five responses, with a particular emphasis on equipping employees and HR professionals, with the capabilities needed to work alongside AI rather than be displaced by it.
Respondents spoke of building ‘future-ready, horizontal capabilities beyond software’ – including systems, hardware and cross-functional domains. Others focused on the leadership layer, recognizing that the manager capability gap is one of the most urgent problems in the region: coaching is still largely absent in non-governmental companies, and building a coaching culture is seen as a critical and underinvested priority.
“Building a future-proof, skills-based workforce needs capability building and reskilling.”
The theme of internal mobility also emerged strongly. As agentic AI shifts how work is structured, leaders are investing in mechanisms to move talent across the organization dynamically, aligning skills to opportunity rather than locking people into static roles. This is fundamentally a workforce architecture challenge, and it requires a shift from job-based to skills-based thinking.
What this means in practice
Organizations are developing multi-year reskilling roadmaps, adopting skills frameworks and job architectures as the backbone of talent decisions, and investing in learning infrastructure that goes beyond traditional learning and development programs. Leadership development – particularly equipping middle managers for coaching, hybrid team performance and change leadership – is seen as a critical accelerator.
4) Pay transparency and rewards redesign
Pay transparency was among the most precisely articulated priorities in the survey – raised by approximately one in five respondents. The detail with which they described it reflects how seriously the profession is taking it. The language ranged from ‘pay transparency implementation’ and ‘salary transparency’ at one end, to highly operational responses involving regular pay audits, job architecture frameworks, calibration panels and pay-decision audits.
This is no longer purely a European regulatory story. While CSRD (the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which includes mandatory pay gap disclosures) and EU Pay Transparency Directive requirements were referenced, leaders in the GCC are also voluntarily moving toward greater transparency – driven by a recognition that opacity around pay is a retention risk. Employees who do not understand how pay decisions are made are more likely to leave, and more likely to feel treated unfairly.
“Ensure HR and compensation models comply with evolving regulations and remove bias.”
The responses also reflected a deeper shift: the move from pay transparency as a disclosure exercise to pay equity as an ongoing governance discipline. Leaders described wanting to standardize job and skills frameworks to anchor pay bands, tie pay to objective criteria rather than negotiation outcomes, as well as measure outcomes using median pay ratios, unexplained pay gap percentages and retention rates of underrepresented groups.
Allowances structures were also featured, particularly the need to benchmark transportation, housing and other benefits components against market, and to understand where organizations are ahead, aligned or behind. For organizations with significant commission-based sales populations, the review of incentive plan design was also flagged as a priority.
What this means in practice
Total rewards leaders are building the infrastructure for transparency – job architectures, salary bands, pay equity dashboards and governance frameworks. They are linking pay strategy to business goals, communicating changes transparently to employees, and treating pay equity as an executive accountability issue, not just an HR compliance task.
5) Employee experience, wellbeing and a culture of belonging
The pandemic-era wellbeing agenda has not faded, it has deepened. Across the survey, leaders described a holistic ambition: to integrate employee experience across the entire lifecycle, from onboarding through career development to exit, and to treat wellbeing (physical, mental and financial) as a business performance issue rather than a benefit add-on.
Mental health, burnout and financial wellness featured prominently, cited by approximately one in five respondents, with leaders recognizing that sustained productivity requires proactive investment in these areas. Several respondents also highlighted the importance of belonging – not just diversity and inclusion – as a metrics exercise, but as a lived cultural reality that determines whether people bring their full selves to work.
“Diversity, equity and inclusion and belonging operationalization is an important priority in 2026.”
The hybrid and remote work dimension added texture to the wellbeing conversation. Leaders described needing to design collaboration norms and manager training for distributed teams, recognizing that the employee experience in a hybrid environment is fundamentally different, and that the default norms of the office era no longer apply.
What this means in practice
Organizations are redesigning the employee experience as a deliberate architecture, mapping every touchpoint across the employee lifecycle and asking how each one either reinforces or erodes engagement. Wellbeing programs are becoming proactive rather than reactive, addressing stress and burnout before they become retention problems. DEI is moving from aspiration to measurable accountability.
6) Organizational transformation and the HR function itself
The final theme is perhaps the most inward-looking – but it was present throughout the survey in various forms. HR leaders are not just trying to solve people’s problems inside their organizations; they are also rethinking what HR itself should look like, how it should operate, and what role it should play as a strategic function.
Responses touched on operating model redesign – right-sizing structures, reviewing organizational hierarchies for efficiency, and shifting from a country-by-country perspective to a regional lens. Leaders also described the need to transform HR technology infrastructure, implementing HRMS platforms that enable data-driven decision-making and create the analytics backbone for everything else on this list.
“2026 is about HR strategy bridging the gap between HR today and HR tomorrow.”
There is also a regional dimension that cannot be overstated. Many organizations in the GCC are operating in the context of national vision agendas national vision agendas that create a specific set of HR obligations around localization, workforce nationalization and capability building as a sovereign priority. HR leaders are being asked to navigate these requirements while simultaneously building globally competitive talent practices.
Several respondents spoke of wanting to shift HR from a policies-and-frameworks function to a genuine business partner and architect, designing systems that enable the business rather than policing compliance. One leader described this elegantly as the shift from ‘HR policies and frameworks to an HR constitution’: “a set of principles that guide decision-making rather than a rulebook that constrains it.”
What this means in practice
HR functions are investing in their own transformation – upgrading technology stacks, building people analytics capabilities, redesigning operating models, and developing HR professionals themselves as strategic business partners. The function is being asked to lead change rather than just support it.
Conclusion
Taken together, the responses from senior HR leaders paint a coherent and compelling picture. The GCC HR agenda in 2026 is defined by the intersection of three forces: the technological disruption brought by AI, the talent and workforce pressures that are only intensifying, and the growing expectation – from regulators, employees and boards alike – that HR demonstrates measurable, accountable outcomes.
These are not siloed priorities. The organizations that will navigate 2026 most effectively are those that understand how these themes reinforce each other. AI without strong governance creates risk. Reskilling without a compelling rewards proposition fails to motivate. Pay transparency without a coherent culture of trust creates anxiety rather than confidence. Employee experience without leadership capability at the manager’s layer remains a promise rather than a reality.
The leaders who responded to these shifts are not waiting for the world to settle before they act. They are building, experimenting and leading through uncertainty – and they are looking for conversations that match the seriousness and ambition of the challenges they face.
The survey of WTW was conducted prior to the conflict currently reshaping the region. While the conflict naturally impact priorities, at WTW we believe that the priorities captured remain a relevant foundation for the period ahead.
About the author
Mohamad El Armali is a Senior Director in the Work & Rewards practice of WTW, advising governments and regional organizations on HR transformation, total rewards, career framework, AI in HR, transactions, and broader people programs. He is certified in the Global Grading System and serves as WTW’s Work & Rewards Job Evaluation Champion for the MENAT.
