The 2026 Fosway 9-Grid™ for Talent & People Success
October 2026: Fosway Group, Europe’s #1 HR industry analyst, has released its latest Fosway 9-Grid™ for Talent & People Success. The research shows challenging economic conditions continue to impact the talent solutions market. Over 40% of HR teams report economic pressures have significantly impacted their HR budgets. And yet, there is still vendor growth being shown in talent intelligence and workforce transformation solutions – who report both customer and revenue growth in what is otherwise a stagnating market.
A few key themes have emerged from this year’s analysis that inform both the direction of the market and the focus for the solutions landscape:
- The need to transform work and the workforce for AI is reshaping the HR ecosystem too. AI is reinventing work and the task structures of work, and this is reshaping how we think about people, roles and the design of the future workforce.
- HR teams are realising that becoming a skills-based organisation (SBO) is part of the journey, not the destination. Whilst skills are still core to building a strong employee value proposition, the impetus behind being a SBO is increasingly shifting to the future of work, enabling the company and employees to transition to a more future focused AI automated work and workforce.
- AI innovation now underpins all of the main innovations in the employee lifecycle and experience. AI is impacting employee touchpoints and well as enabling new workflows. AI is changing HR operations and HR roles, and HR teams face the dual challenge of simultaneously modernising their strategic role, their operational processes the experiences they enable for employees.
- There are no easy answers to creating an effective AI-HR architecture. How AI fits together across HR, HCM and talent systems as well as the wider business IT landscape is complex. No single vendor or solution can own this problem. Nor is it an HR issue, as AI transcends both people processes and business processes. In an agentic world, the most open and connective HR solutions are the most desirable.
“The last year has seen some truly significant moves in HR focusing on powering Talent & People Success.” Said David Perring, Chief Insights Officer at Fosway Group and lead analyst in the research. “A swarm of innovators in talent and strategic workforce intelligence have progressively established themselves as the go-to providers for companies as they mobilise themselves for the future of work. AI is the key disruptor, revolutionising every part of the employee experience. It’s now a battle royale between agile specialists and lumbering giants. But as a buyer, can you afford to wait for Cloud HR platforms to catch up, or do you need to innovate now? Market dynamics are seriously in flux and 2027 looks like it will be an incredibly interesting year.”
The 2026 Fosway 9-Grid™ for Talent & People Success incorporates both Talent Suites and Specialists. Talent & People Success Suites provide a range of talent functionality, from talent acquisition through to development, performance and employee wellbeing. Specialists provide a more focused set of functionalities within Talent & People Success – for example, focusing on specific topics such as skills, talent mobility, or employee listening.
The full report can be downloaded online from 15 October.
Fosway’s CEO, David Wilson, and Chief Insights Officer, David Perring, will take questions in a live online ‘Ask The Analyst’ session on 17 November at 2pm BST. Register here for your free place today.
Find out more about Fosway’s AI Strategic Research Programme here.