LinkedIn Skills on the Rise 2026: The 10 fastest-growing skills in Human Resources
Our annual list of Skills on the Rise in Human Resources highlights the 10 fastest-growing skills that HR professionals should be investing in to get ahead in today’s world of work.
As the HR landscape rapidly evolves, so do the skillsets needed for success. AI Literacy (No. 2) and Operational Efficiency (No. 4) showcase how HR teams are leveraging new tools to optimize processes and maximize their impact. Meanwhile, Organizational Change Management (No. 9) and Culture Development (No. 10) underscore the role these professionals play in helping their organizations navigate broader workplace changes. The ranking uses the same methodology as our U.S. Skills on the Rise list, but reflects members within the specific job function versus the entire country.
And these insights are just the beginning. You can read more about each skill and start honing your expertise through a related LinkedIn Learning course (free for all members until March 23).
Check out the 10 fastest-growing skills in human resources — and join the conversation using #SkillsOnTheRise.
You can read our full methodology at the bottom of this article. This list is based on LinkedIn data and was produced by LinkedIn data scientist Yao Huang in partnership with editors on the LinkedIn News team (Juliette (Faraut) Bell, Sarah McGrath, Emily Bruck and Juliette Schiff).
You can also see the Skills on the Rise in Arts & Design, Business Development, Education, Engineering, Finance, Healthcare, HR, IT, Marketing, Media & Communications, Program & Project Management and Sales.
What it means: Employment law and compliance is the practice of ensuring that companies’ employment practices — like wages and employee records management — are aligned with local, state and federal laws and regulations.
💡 Learn how to align management practices with legal standards to protect organization from risk (free LinkedIn Learning course until March 23)
What it means: AI literacy encompasses the ability to understand and effectively utilize AI tools and technologies for business purposes. In HR roles, professionals can leverage AI for tasks like scheduling interviews or analyzing workforce data.
💡 Learn to leverage AI to amplify your communications impact (free until March 23)
What it means: Client prospecting is the process of identifying and engaging with potential individuals or businesses to convert them into clients. As self-employed career paths like independent consulting become more common, this skill helps professionals build their own client portfolio.
💡 Learn client acquisition strategies to build your own business (free until March 23)
What it means: Operational efficiency involves streamlining individual, team or business operations to improve productivity and quality. By using tools to reduce manual tasks and optimizing workflows, HR teams can focus efforts on high-impact areas.
💡 Learn to streamline operations and boost productivity (free until March 23)
Related skills include HR Analytics
What it means: Data analytics is the process of interpreting workforce data — such as headcount, tenure and performance trends — to improve HR policies and strategies and inform decision-making.
💡 Learn how to use data to drive smarter HR decisions (free until March 23)
Related skills include Full-Cycle Recruitment
What it means: End-to-end recruitment refers to the multi-step process associated with hiring a new employee — including planning and defining the scope of the role, interviewing and evaluating potential candidates and eventually onboarding the new hire.
💡 Learn to adopt AI tools throughout the talent acquisition process (free until March 23)
What it means: New hire training involves ensuring that new employees are properly introduced to all relevant aspects of the company — including information on company values and corporate structure, necessary technology and workflows specific to an employees’ organization or direct team.
💡 Learn how to use gamification to create engaging employee trainings (free until March 23)
What it means: Cross-functional collaboration is communicating and working with members of different teams across an organization — including clearly defining roles and responsibilities and working toward a shared goal.
💡 Learn to drive stronger results through cross-team collaboration (free until March 23)
What it means: Organizational change management is the strategy for guiding employees through company changes like digital transformation or workforce restructuring. It requires strong guidance from internal teams to ensure that employees are adequately informed about and prepared for the transition.
💡 Learn how to lead teams through change and uncertainty with confidence (free until March 23)
What it means: Culture development is the intentional shaping of an organization’s shared values, behaviors and beliefs in order to foster a positive work environment.
💡 Learn to build a culture that supports employee engagement and company success (free until March 23)
List Methodology
LinkedIn measures the year-over-year growth of skills based on two pillars: skill acquisition and hiring success. Skill acquisition measures the growth of a given skill being added to member profiles. Hiring success measures the growth of a given skill possessed by members who have been hired in the past year. Growth rates for all metrics are measured by comparing LinkedIn data from December 1, 2024 to November 30, 2025 to the same period in the previous year (December 1, 2023 to November 30, 2024). To be ranked, skills must have had sufficient representation and activity volume over the analysis period.
Data is normalized across all skills. Language skills, basic digital literacy skills and overly broad skills are excluded.
In looking through the top 10 skills on the rise, what I see is that valued skillsets are not just technical or relational. It’s integrating the two together. This makes sense to me as human judgment is the bridge between these pieces; a skill that leads to good decisions.
Even though this study is US centric, Employment Law and Compliance is very critical for India in the context of the 4 Labour Codes.
Plenty of value in this list, but surprised that something like "Career Development," Leadership Training," or "ContinuousLearning" isn't on here. Companies and Orgs that cultivate a culture of continuous learning and growth will naturally outperform those that don't due to the resulting authentic employee engagement, regardless of industry or sector.
I can't stress how important organizational change management skills are and how underutilized they are across organizations. In my experience, change management is a buzzword to executives with no appreciation or understanding of what change management is - it's about the change each individual person has to make. To further that, if change is about individual change at everyone's own pace, for different reasons, with different skills and capabilities, then think about how significant this becomes in shaping a culture in an organization. Without enabling change management across an organization, equipping people with the proper CM skills, you are not building a change-enabled muscle into the DNA of the organization. Instead, change management gets left up to a CM function, likely tied to HR, and becomes the scapegoat when cultures don't change or transformations fail. A strong organization will have CM integrated into their everyday activities and continually empower and enhance their people's CM capabilities.
My work coaching leaders across industries brings an almost unanimous feedback - the skill that HR needs to master first is still the very fundamental one of being a highly valued professional. They are not perceived as strategic partners, though named as such. Building trust, relationships, and contributing to the business strategy is still at the top of my list.