How to ensure your 2026 HR priorities are business-led

Summary

This guide explains how HR should build its 2026 priorities by starting from the business priorities, not HR’s usual frameworks. It argues HR must ask leaders what keeps them awake, listen carefully, speak in commercial language, quantify people impacts in financial terms, and secure ongoing stakeholder buy-in so HR activity drives measurable business results. Practical steps include clarifying business goals, linking people measures to outcomes, prioritising for impact, planning reviews, and celebrating wins.

Key Points

Start with business leaders’ priorities — ask “what keeps you awake at night?” rather than opening with HR workstreams.
Build relationships by listening and probing before offering solutions; that wins buy-in later.
Translate people issues into business language and financial terms (eg. calculate the cost of regrettable leavers).
Create measures and milestones that link HR actions to commercial outcomes and schedule regular review meetings.
Prioritise ruthlessly: pick quick wins to build credibility and drop activities with low business value.
Collaborate on a framework of leading and lagging indicators (engagement as a leading measure, retention impacting costs/profitability).
Track, communicate and celebrate HR achievements so the function is seen as a driver of business success.

Why should I read this?

Because if you’re planning HR for 2026 and don’t want your initiatives to be ignored, this is the practical checklist. It’s short, sensible and tells you how to stop talking HR jargon and start talking about money, risk and results — the things the business actually cares about. Read it, use it, and thank us later.

Author style

Punchy and practical: the piece rips up the usual HR-first playbook and replaces it with a business-first approach. If you care about HR being taken seriously at board level, this guide is prescriptive and useful — not airy trend-spotting.