“Organizations are no longer navigating waves of change. They’re operating in a constant current. The question is no longer how to manage individual initiatives, but how to design organizations that can absorb sustained, overlapping change.”
2026 People & Change Insights Report
Work is changing faster than organizations are designed to absorb. This year’s research examines how leaders must redesign their organizations for constant change.
Change Is No Longer Episodic. It’s Structural.
Drawing on five years of data and perspectives from more than 400 professionals, this year’s report examines how organizations are navigating sustained, overlapping change rather than isolated transformation.
AI is embedding into workflows while structures adjust under cost pressure. Managers are being asked to translate that complexity into day-to-day clarity as expectations continue to evolve.
Yet change is still often scoped one initiative at a time. When efforts stack up without a clear view of their combined impact, strain shows up across priorities and roles. This report explores what it takes to move beyond managing change in pieces and instead design organizations built to sustain it.
The Three Defining Insights for 2026
Drawing on five years of data and perspectives from more than 400 professionals, this year’s report identifies three shifts shaping how organizations must operate going into 2026.
- AI Is Redesigning Work Faster Than Organizations Are Redesigning for People
- Why Smarter Change Planning Is Critical Going Into 2026
- The Manager Role Is Becoming More Human, and Organizations Need to Support That Shift
OUR RESEARCH APPROACH
How We Examined the Change Environment
Each year, Propeller examines how organizations are experiencing and navigating change through a combination of quantitative survey data and qualitative interviews with senior leaders across industries.
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400+
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US-Based Professionals Surveyed
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59%
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senior management and executive respondents
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88%
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of respondents are actively managing or leading change
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5
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years of longitudinal change data
Insight 1
AI Is Redesigning Work Faster Than Organizations Are Redesigning For People
AI is no longer a peripheral experiment. It is entering core workflows, influencing how tasks are sequenced, how decisions are made, and how responsibilities are distributed. Organizations are adjusting structures and operating models in response, yet roles, skills, governance, and enablement systems are not evolving at the same pace.
The result is growing misalignment between how work is changing and how people are supported to deliver it.
78% of respondents say AI has already changed how work is defined and organized across teams and functions.
Insight 2
Why Smarter Change Planning Is Critical Going Into 2026
In 2025, actual levels of change exceeded prior-year predictions across every major category tested, including technology implementations, learning initiatives, and organizational restructuring. This pattern reflects a broader issue: change is still frequently planned one initiative at a time, without a clear enterprise view of cumulative impact.
Heading into 2026, leaders must shift from reactive forecasting to more disciplined, system-level change planning.
On average, organizations underestimated total change by 11 percentage points across major categories in 2025.
Insight 3
The Manager Role Is Becoming More Human, and Organizations Need to Support That Shift
Managers now sit at the intersection of AI-driven work redesign and sustained change saturation. They are responsible for translating strategy into daily execution while sustaining engagement, well-being, and performance.
As the manager role becomes more judgment-driven and relational, organizations must rethink expectations, capacity, and support systems to match that reality.
47% of managers cite balancing productivity with employee well-being as a top challenge.
What's Inside the 2026 Report
- Five years of trend data on how organizations are experiencing and forecasting change
- Research-backed analysis of AI’s impact on work design and structure
- Patterns behind change underestimation and saturation
- Data on how the manager role is evolving under sustained transformation
Download the 2026 People & Change Insights Report
AI is changing how work gets done, and change is stacking up across the organization. This report provides a grounded view of where pressure is building and what leaders need to redesign going into 2026.