What’s next for HR technology in the Age of Context?

Twenty percent 

Here is a question worth sitting with. After two decades of investment in the future of HR technology, from learning platforms to performance systems and engagement surveys, why are so few people engaged at work? 

Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 puts global employee engagement at 20%, down from a peak of 23% in 2022. Gallup estimates the cost at roughly $10 trillion in lost productivity, about 9% of global GDP. 

Organizations are not short of technology. Most run more HR tools than ever. What they are short of is context: tools that understand the work, the person and the moment, and show up right there. 

That shift is now underway. We call it the age of context. 

How learning technology evolved 

Learning technology has moved through three eras. Each one solved a real problem, and each one left a problem behind. 

The library era

The first LMS was a system of record: a catalog of courses, a completion log and a compliance report. It answered the question “did people finish the training?” It never asked whether anyone got better at their job. 

The platform era

Next came suites: learning first, then performance, then engagement. They were often bought separately and run as separate destinations, so more capability meant more logins. People were asked to leave their work to develop, then go back to work and forget most of what they’d learned. 

The assistant era

Then generative AI arrived, mostly bolted on. Chatbots answer, summarize and draft when asked. That’s useful, but it’s reactive: they wait for a prompt, know only what’s in it, and stop once they’ve produced an output. An assistant can write a course outline. It can’t notice that a team’s skills are slipping.

Why HR technology hasn’t improved engagement 

The problem was never a shortage of features. It was distance. Development lived in one system, performance in another, and sentiment in a survey that came round once a year. None of them could see the work itself. 

Managers feel this most. Gallup reports that manager engagement has fallen to 22%, down nine points since 2022. In Gallup’s words, managers “are increasingly only as engaged as those they lead.” The people we ask to coach everyone else are running on empty, and they often prepare for a one-to-one from memory. 

So here’s a question: when one of your managers walks into a review, what do they actually know about that person’s progress, skills and goals? And how many places did they have to look to find it? 

What the age of context looks like 

In the age of context and the future of HR technology, learning, performance and engagement stop being separate destinations. They become one connected signal that runs through the daily work. Three things change. 

• AI acts instead of waiting to be asked. Agentic AI coaching takes the initiative in the flow of work. It spots what’s changed, draws on the organization’s data and brings the next step to the person who needs it. The agent does the work; the person makes the call. 

• Context comes from the work itself. Coaching is grounded in the organizational context that already exists: roles, reporting lines, teams and goals, alongside live signals from learning, performance and engagement. A generic model gives generic advice. Context-aware coaching can actually develop someone. 

• Development happens where people already are. There’s no separate portal to visit. It happens in Teams, SharePoint and Copilot, the tools people use every hour. 

Gallup’s 2026 research points the same way: the strongest drivers of AI adoption at work are how well AI fits into existing systems and whether managers lead it. The future of HR technology isn’t more AI. It’s AI with context.

What the age of context changes for employees, managers, leaders and IT 

Employees get development grounded in their actual role, skills and goals. It’s recommended as they work, so they don’t have to hunt through a catalog. 

Managers arrive at every one-to-one and review prepared. Recent check-ins, goal progress, learning activity and sentiment are already in front of them, and they get coaching that makes their feedback specific and focused on development. 

Leaders see one view of organizational health across learning, performance and engagement. In the future of HR technology, they can ask why a trend is moving instead of waiting for the next dashboard. 

IT stays in control. When coaching lives inside the Microsoft 365 tenant, employee data stays in the governed environment IT has already approved. In the future of HR technology, there’s no new data-residency question and no shadow AI. 

And on the decisions that matter most, such as who gets promoted or what a review says, a human stays in control by design. 

Five questions to ask before your next HR technology decision 

1. Does the AI wait to be asked, or does it act in the flow of work? 

2. Is its coaching grounded in our organization’s context, or in a generic model and a prompt? 

3. Do learning, performance and engagement share one signal, or do they live in three systems? 

4. Where does our employee data go when the AI uses it? 

5. Is the AI included, or is it metered on top? 

Why I’m excited about the future of HR technology 

At HumanX Amsterdam in September, we previewed what we’re building next: the next wave of agentic AI coaching for the age of context, built natively into Microsoft 365. 

For years, workforce development has run to a calendar: the annual review, the quarterly course, the yearly survey. This next wave makes it a daily habit instead. It brings learning, performance and engagement signals together across Microsoft 365. It spots skill gaps, recommends the learning that closes them, and coaches each person in the context of their role, skills and goals. 

That’s how you get the most out of your people. It’s also how you get more impact for the business, because development stops being a report of completions and starts showing up in performance. 

As our CEO, Rasmus Holst, put it: “The real opportunity is in redefining work using AI and context to help people perform at their best.” 

That’s the future we’re building for. I think the next few years will matter more for workforce development than any period since the first LMS. 

Where Zensai is going 

Zensai is the Human Success company, trusted by 2,000 organizations. We solve three problems that hold workforce development back: 

• Too many tools. Learning, performance and engagement run on one system, so the signal is shared instead of split three ways. 

• Too far from the work. Everything lives inside Microsoft 365, in Teams, SharePoint and Copilot, so there’s no new login and no new habit to build. 

• AI that only answers. Our agentic AI coaching is already live, and it’s included at no extra cost. It recommends development paths, prepares managers for one-to-ones and coaches on feedback. 

We’ll soon be piloting exciting new agentic coaching updates that take all three further. Stay tuned for the upcoming beta. 

We’re not adding AI to HR tech. We’re rebuilding HR tech around what AI makes possible.