Tech news

There is a structural tension at the heart of hybrid work in 2026 that no scheduling policy alone can resolve. Organizations have accepted that work happens across offices, homes, and time zones simultaneously. What many have not yet accepted is that the employee experience infrastructure built for an office-first world, the onboarding programs, the engagement rituals, the feedback mechanisms, the manager relationships, fundamentally does not transfer to a distributed model without being rebuilt, not just replicated. The organizations trying to close the gap are doing it using AI-powered HR tools that personalize the experience of every employee at a scale no manual HR team could achieve. This is the transformation underway in HRTech in 2026 and understanding it clearly requires looking at what is actually being built, what it is delivering, and what role HR leaders must play in governing it. Why engagement and retention are board-level issues Gartner’s October 2025 CHRO survey...

Match2 solves hiring’s biggest problem: disconnected candidates and companies Match2 , the platform powering the Universal Candidate Profile, announced its integration with the Phenom Marketplace, making it available to the thousands of employers who rely on Phenom to power their talent experience. This partnership brings Match2’s Universal Candidate Profile , Direct Talent Network (DTN), and Talent Connector platform into the Phenom hiring ecosystem, creating a more connected, personalized hiring experience across employers’ career sites. The integration extends the Phenom experience with a portable profile that travels with candidates across every employer they choose to connect with — giving them continuity across career sites for the first time. By combining AI-powered matching, interactive apply, and persistent candidate connectivity, Match2 helps employers capture, qualify, and stay connected with talent, while giving candidates a portable profile that is recognize...

New integration closes the reimbursement gap for teams domestic or abroad: expense data flows to global payroll with local compliance automatically enforced and built to scale. Expensify, Inc. , the easiest way to manage expenses, corporate cards, and travel, announced a strategic partnership with Playroll, a global HR platform that makes it simple to hire, pay, and manage global teams compliantly. The new integration closes the reimbursement gap for global teams – expense data flows to payroll in local currency with compliance automatically enforced across 180+ countries. Expensify’s expense platform directly to Playroll’s global payroll infrastructure, in a single workflow from receipt to reimbursement. Approved expenses flow into the next payroll run in each country, are processed in local currency, and are reconciled against payroll in real time. The partnership includes a new integration that connects Expensify’s expense management platform with Playroll’s ...

As AI moves throughout the workforce, organizations are under increasing pressure to show tangible returns. Leadership teams are no longer asking if AI should be deployed, but how it will improve productivity, reduce friction and drive better business outcomes. Yet for many organizations, those returns are still difficult to quantify. The challenge is not AI’s potential, but how it is applied. When intelligence is layered onto disconnected systems, its impact is inherently limited. Even when valuable insights emerge, without automated workflows and consistent, rules-based decision logic applied throughout the employee life cycle, critical information can become unclear and fail to translate into effective decisions. Automated decisioning means workforce decisions follow a single set of policies, rules and data. This ensures decisions are carried out uniformly across payroll, time management, talent and compliance.   A Forrester study commissioned by Paycom reported a projected thr...

Humanforce , a leading global provider of intelligent, AI-driven Human Capital Management (HCM) for frontline and flexible workforces, has announced the launch of Smart Scheduling. Smart Scheduling is an advanced AI-powered rostering and scheduling experience that aligns labor to forecasted demand. Smart Scheduling reduces roster management time by up to 70% and can help lower labor costs by 15% through precise shift staffing. Labor remains one of the highest costs for businesses, especially in frontline industries such as aged care, hospitality, events & stadia, healthcare, childcare, retail, and beyond. Yet many organizations still rely on static or manual rostering processes that can’t keep pace with fluctuating demand or tightening compliance obligations. “For frontline industries, the roster is where cost, compliance and experience collide. Smart Scheduling turns that complexity into action — aligning labor to demand while making scheduling fairer and more predict...

The Nekoosa School District has announced a new partnership with Edustaff, a leading provider of educational staffing services, to enhance the district’s ability to recruit, place, and retain high-quality substitute teachers, paraprofessionals, and support staff across its schools. The collaboration is designed to ensure continuity of instruction and student support throughout the academic year. Under the agreement, Edustaff will manage the full lifecycle of substitute and support staff recruitment — from sourcing and credentialing to scheduling and compliance — leveraging its proprietary technology platform and deep network of education professionals. This allows Nekoosa administrators and principals to focus on their core mission of delivering an exceptional learning experience for students. Edustaff brings decades of experience partnering with school districts across the Midwest to address the persistent challenge of staff shortages. The company’s approach combines personali...