Careful plan design, managing high-cost categories and leveraging alternative approaches can help employers contain costs while avoiding wholesale disruptions and maintaining overall employee engagement.

To keep empathy from becoming a buzzword, this expert says, HR needs to help their orgs embed the concept in leadership and policies.

HR must help CEOs by guiding workforce strategy, clarifying talent costs, building AI literacy across leadership and evolving culture alongside technology. "You need to become much more of an enterprise leader, a true strategic navigator," said Peter Aykens, chief of research at Gartner.

Editor-in-chief Paul Wilson explains how HR Executive will continue to move forward as the world for HR leaders rapidly changes.