CFOs are prioritizing employee compensation, with 71% planning to increase it in 2024 above the inflation rate. Employee compensation is the second most important area, with 82% of CFOs planning an increase in 2024, although most are planning to give 4% to 9% increases, which is a decrease from last year.

Worldwide contact center (CC), CC conversational AI, and virtual assistant end-user spending are projected to total $18.6 billion in 2023, an increase of 16.2% from 2022, according to Gartner, Inc. Near-term investment growth rates for AI and virtual assistants are expected to dip as business volatility creates a lengthening of decision cycles. Longer-term, generative AI will accelerate contact center platform replacement as CX leaders look to improve the efficiency of customer service operations and the overall customer experience.

Despite the current economic uncertainty, 72% of high-tech leaders in the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe have plans to grow revenue in 2023, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc. Furthermore, nearly half of those leaders believe they will be able to outperform their competition this year.

With a tumultuous global economy, HR technology leaders face a balancing act in 2023 and must anticipate greater levels of accountability and demand for measurable outcomes to justify new technology investments - including skills management, learning experience platforms, and internal talent marketplaces.

Due to the economic uncertainty across most industries and markets, 92% of HR leaders are prioritizing budgeting and cost optimization initiatives, according to a benchmarking survey by Gartner, Inc. While HR leaders face increasing pressure to drive business value and manage costs, only 20% consider how HR cost optimization efforts can contribute to the organizations’ cost savings overall.

In 2021, artificial intelligence (AI) augmentation will create $2.9 trillion of business value and 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity globally, according to Gartner, Inc.

Aligning a company’s workforce with the desired culture can improve performance against revenue goals by 9 percent, according to a new report from, Gartner Inc. However, only 31 percent of human resources (HR) leaders believe their organizations have the necessary culture to drive performance.

Most organizations are undergoing a digital transformation that directly impacts how they do business, yet 70 percent of employees have not mastered the skills they need for their jobs today, and 80 percent of employees do not have the skills needed for their current and future roles, according to Gartner, Inc.

Speech recognition will reach the Plateau of Productivity within the next two years and six other technologies will reach mainstream business adoption in the next two to five years according to the 2018 Gartner, Inc. Hype Cycle for the digital workplace.

Emotion artificial intelligence (AI) systems are becoming so sophisticated that Gartner predicts that by 2022, personal devices will know more about an individual's emotional state than his or her own family.