ELMO 2026 HR Industry Benchmark Report — Australia

Our flagship report is now in its seventh year, and this year, the lens is sharper. We surveyed 904 HR professionals across Australia to understand what’s really happening with AI in the workplace. Not the ambition. The reality. The findings reveal three persistent gaps between AI adoption and measurable workforce impact.

What’s inside the ELMO 2026 HR industry benchmark report

The AI Capability Gap 

Adoption is near-universal, 82% of Australian organisations now use AI-enabled tools and 93% of HR teams are personally using AI. But over half use it only occasionally, fewer than one in five can measure its impact extensively, and of those who expected AI to be transformative in 2025, less than half said it delivered.

Theme 1: Readiness vs effectiveness 

Australian HR professionals are individually strong with AI. But organisational foundations, data integration, system centralisation and workflow embedding haven’t kept pace. Only 23% have a fully centralised system. The individual capability is there but the infrastructure to scale it isn’t.

Theme 2: Leadership expectations vs HR reality 

Leadership expects HR to lead AI education, change management, governance and impact measurement, and HR feels highly accountable. But only 1 in 4 HR leaders say they’re fully equipped to deliver. The gap isn’t competence. It’s resourcing: skills, budget, time and tools.

Theme 3: Adoption vs measurable impact 

96% of HR professionals report tangible improvements from AI, but the gains are largely operational. Only 17% can measure outcomes extensively, and just 19% say AI is deeply integrated into workflows. The shift from admin automation to strategic AI is the defining challenge of 2026.

Benchmark findings Workforce growth expectations, turnover rates, time and cost to hire, training spend, salary movement, budget allocation, including comparisons to 2025. You might be surprised where the changes are!

Download the Australian report

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Unpack the findings — live

The AI Capability Gap: Why adoption isn’t translating to impact 

Thursday 26 March | 12pm AEDT | 60 mins

Dr Amantha Imber and ELMO’s Chief People Officer Anne Tosky will interrogate what the data means in practice. Amantha’s day job is helping organisations turn GenAI from a shiny object into daily productivity gains. Anne leads AI transformation at ELMO as “customer zero.” Together, they’ll explore why behavioural change may be the real bottleneck, and what the highest-performing organisations are doing differently.

Register for the webinar →