The Findings
Busy Work ≠ Valuable Work
Back-to-back meetings and packed to-do lists—on the surface, it looks like a workforce firing on all cylinders. But our survey results tell a different story. It reveals staff too stretched with relentless checklists to focus on the work that actually matters.
“Activity is not the same as value,” says Roger Philby of Korn Ferry. “Organizations are great at measuring activities but find it much harder to connect the dots to value.”
Now what?
The way work has been designed isn’t working anymore. But leaders can fix it.
Valuable work is work that supports your strategy. If it doesn't, stop doing it.
Not everything on the to-do list genuinely needs to get done. The leaders getting this right are ruthless about what stays and what gets dropped.
Hours logged and meetings attended don't tell you anything. What was actually achieved?
People give their best when they understand why their work matters and can see the difference it makes. It's what drives performance.
The AI Productivity Problem
For leaders, AI seems like a superpower. For workers, it’s become a super-burden.
CEOs love how AI quickly digests and summarizes the data and details that used to take them hours to absorb. But the people tasked with using AI for deliverables? They’re mostly finding it a time-suck, not a time-saver.
“You can’t just tell people that AI is valuable,” says Julia Maddox of Korn Ferry. “You have to give them the space to discover for themselves the ways it can add value to their work.”
Now what?
AI isn't going anywhere. The challenge is how to make it work for everyone, at every level of the organization.
Ask what work needs a human, what AI can own, and how the two can work together. Then redesign around those answers.
Give people the opportunity to experiment and figure out when AI helps with their work versus when it's nothing more than a checkbox task to keep the leadership team happy. Then let them stop doing the latter.
AI's biggest benefit isn't reducing headcount. It's taking the repetitive, low-value work off people's plates, leaving them time to focus on the work humans are much better at, such as judgment and innovation.
Leaders can't just hand AI down the chain and walk away. The people doing the work need training, time, and resources to get results out of AI.
The Two-Job Job
Roles are disappearing—cut, restructured, “replaced by AI.” But the workload doesn’t really disappear from the human workforce. The AI takes on a few key aspects of the role, but the remainder gets redistributed to staff who feel they’re now doing two jobs instead of one.
Most people don’t mind going above and beyond sometimes. And as long as they have capacity, they’ll take on more and stretch into new territory. The problem is when the stretch becomes permanent without any acknowledgment, reward, or honest conversation about what’s changed.
“Can we sustain people feeling like they’re permanently working two jobs?” asks Jenna Young of Korn Ferry. “Will you keep your highest performers? Will you see the quality of work that sets a company apart? Not for long.”
Now what?
Asking people to take on more is sometimes necessary. But leaders need to make sure that the stretch is temporary and the gain is worth it for both the business and the worker.
If someone has been absorbing extra responsibilities for months, that's not a temporary arrangement anymore. They're going to burn out or walk out. Take an honest look at what's needed and redesign their role properly.
If someone takes on twice the responsibility, they should be fairly compensated for it. Underpaying people for extra work is a fast track to losing them.
More work without clear guidance is a recipe for failure. Make sure people know what's expected, how to deliver it, and how long they'll be expected to handle the extra workload.
Gen Z and millennials are carrying extra-heavy loads right now. If they can't see growth, fair reward, and a path forward, they won't stick around to find out if things get better.
Clocked In, but Checked Out
In just one year, motivation across the global workforce has dropped by 9 percentage points. The reason isn’t hard to find.
Workers aren’t staying for the work anymore. They’re now staying for pay, job security, and a feeling of being treated fairly. The work itself—the thing that creates the kind of energy that leads to growth—has dropped off the list.
“Being able to connect to something bigger than yourself—that feeling of caring about the company mission and the impact of your work. That’s the fuel that drives ROI,” says Young.
Now what?
The workforce hasn't given up. It's waiting for organizations to give them something worth showing up for.
Most companies have a reason to exist beyond profit. Find it, articulate it, and make sure it walks the halls, not just in a mission statement, but in the way work gets done every day.
Abstract purpose doesn't move people. Real moments do. The leader who shows their people the business impact of their work will get more from them than if they're left in the dark, unclear if their work is making a difference.
Cost-cutting and restructuring create savings, but they don't create the kind of passion that powers productivity. And passion is what separates a workforce that delivers the bare minimum from one that goes above and beyond to deliver growth.
People can handle a lot. But feeling like they're not being paid or treated fairly isn't one of them. Be open about pay and make sure people know where they stand.
Cost-Cutting Is Killing Innovation
There’s nothing wrong with chasing efficiency. The problem is mistaking it for a destination.
Cutting costs can create the conditions for growth by freeing up money, but it doesn’t create growth itself. That requires experimentation and the willingness to try things that might not work—the very things efficiency culture tends to discourage.
“Efficiency tells you what to cut. It doesn’t tell you what to build,” says Philby. “And the best organizations understand the value of both.”
Now what?
Cost-cutting and innovation aren't enemies. They can go hand in hand. But you need to find the right balance.
It's just the starting point. The question is what you do with the time you've gained. If the answer isn't to use it for growth or innovation, you've missed a trick.
Innovation doesn’t happen under pressure. It happens when people have the space to try things and get them wrong, and then go back to the drawing board and try something else. That space has to be protected.
Only half of the surveyed workers say their managers encourage experimentation. But if managers aren't allowed to create the conditions for innovation, then it won’t happen. Give managers the support they need to let their teams experiment.
The most innovative companies invest more in research and development than their peers. And they grow faster. That's not a coincidence.
Managers Are Maxed Out
The hardest job in the business just got harder. From above, there's pressure to deliver outsized results with minimal resources. From below, there's a workforce that's overloaded and running out of motivation.
In the middle, absorbing all of it, are the managers, who are overwhelmed and undervalued. And when managers can't perform at their best, neither can the people they lead.
“Being a manager can feel like the worst job in the world, yet it’s among the most valuable for the business,” says Philby. “When managers burn out, you lose the glue that holds everything together.”
Now what?
Managers are the backbone of every business. The organizations that invest in managers now will be the ones people want to work for in the future.
Getting a management role shouldn't mean figuring it out alone. Train managers properly before you give them people to look after.
Managers are doing too many jobs at once. They’re expected to lead, coach, strategize, and support well-being all at once. Something has to give, and organizations need to make that call.
More than half of managers say they're exhausted. That fact should be treated with the same urgency as a revenue miss because that's what it will lead to.
The manager pipeline is thinning. If organizations keep treating the role as dispensable, they won't have capable managers when they need them most.
How We Did It
For our third annual global workforce survey, Korn Ferry surveyed more than 16,000 professionals to understand how they really feel about work today. The 2026 survey included participants at every career level, from entry-level positions to CEOs, and from 11 major markets: Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, UAE, UK, and USA.
Frequently Asked Questions
Workforce planning insights can help you consider issues impacting today’s workers, which could lead to high attrition and/or make it more difficult to attract new talent.
Start by considering where your organization is becoming too dependent on overstretched people:
- Look at teams that have been affected by layoffs to see how work is being distributed across remaining team members.
- Check if managers still have the time and space to lead or if they're exhausted from too much work.
Once you’ve identified them, consider ways you could help resolve the issue, such as by:
- Redesigning overloaded roles
- Discussing with leaders how to more fairly reward people if their responsibilities have grown
- Developing a pipeline that will ensure managers are ready to step into bigger roles when they become available or needed
This helps protect critical capability and keeps the workforce ready to deliver as business needs change.
As Korn Ferry’s Workforce 2026 survey report shows, replacing roles with AI could be negatively impacting your long-term pipeline. Right now, workers are already overloaded, so asking them to take on new skills or responsibilities is unlikely to work.
If entry-level and management pathways keep shrinking, the organization may save money now but struggle to fill critical roles later. Talent acquisition leaders should do their best to protect those feeder routes and look for the right learning and development solutions to help people gain the skills needed for the future.
Start by fixing the conditions that make learning impossible. Korn Ferry’s Workforce 2026 survey report shows employees are overloaded, and AI is often adding work rather than removing it.
Development programs should be built into the flow of work, with protected time to practice new skills and clear opportunities to apply them. Managers also need the capacity to coach and help their reports cement their new skills.
Without that support, training risks becoming one more task for an already stretched workforce.
Many organizations are running too close to capacity, so take a closer look to see if yours falls into this category. If so, consider how Korn Ferry’s Workforce 2026 survey report highlights how people who are too busy are rarely able to deliver meaningful results or innovations.
That leaves little room to execute growth plans. Workforce 2026 also shows that AI and cost-cutting are often adding pressure instead of releasing it, so look at what you’re asking individual contributors and managers to deliver when it comes to AI.
Are the deliverables they’re being asked reasonable within their workload? Have you allowed time for learning and upskilling of the tools? And have you factored in reporting from your people to determine if these are the right AI tools for their needs, or if something else might ultimately be better?
Sustainable growth depends on creating capacity before demanding more output. That means redesigning work, protecting management capability, and reinvesting efficiency gains in innovation.
Korn Ferry’s Workforce 2026 survey report shows that development can't succeed when people have no time in their workload to learn. Employees are already stretched, while many managers lack the time to coach them.
L&D leaders should focus on the roles the organization will struggle to fill next, then create clear development routes into them. It should be clear how the learnings will ultimately lead to career progression.
Visit the Korn Ferry Talent Suite page to see how its solutions connect talent acquisition with wider workforce decisions. The platform brings together workforce data and Korn Ferry intelligence to support hiring, development, and deployment through a shared view of roles and talent.
You can also explore Korn Ferry’s Talent Acquisition services for guidance on linking recruitment strategy to workforce planning and future business needs.
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