Workforce and future skills
·
8 min read
Key findings
Korn Ferry's survey reports 43 per cent of companies planning to replace roles with AI, targeting entry-level roles (37 per cent) among others.
The release does not state the base of the 37 and 58 per cent figures, so they describe intentions without a stated denominator.
Most leadership development happens on job assignments and through relationships, so training records show little of where current leaders learned their judgement.
A learning map of today's critical role holders shows which sources of judgement a cut would remove.
The exposure can be sized from five internal records: intake, time to promotion, expected vacancies, internal fill rate and external fill cost.
If the answer to the fourth question is nothing, the business is choosing to give up that learning, and the record should say so with a name beside it.
An HR adviser asked to support a decision to stop hiring graduates or junior staff can ask the business to name the early-career learning it gives up. The adviser can also ask which mid-level and senior roles that learning has fed. The company's own records show what the loss would do to its leadership pipeline.
Three pieces of evidence make the exposure visible.
Where current leaders learned their judgement
How many critical roles went to people who joined at entry grade
What an external hire costs and how long that person takes to become effective
Each can be built from records the business already holds.
The Leadership Pipeline Warning
Korn Ferry's 2026 Talent Acquisition Trends research supplies figures that HR Executive and BambooHR News have reported.
The firm surveyed 1,674 external global talent leaders at all levels and 230 of its own talent experts.
Its press release of 28 October 2025 says 43 per cent of companies plan to replace roles with AI.
These plans target operations and back-office work (58 per cent) and entry-level roles (37 per cent).
The release does not state the base for either of those two figures.
HR Executive describes the 37 per cent as the share of companies replacing entry-level roles. The release wording is used here.
The release also says 11 per cent of leaders consider their executives well prepared to lead through the AI transition.
Korn Ferry argues that early-career roles are where people learn how the business works and begin to form judgement.
HR Executive reports the same warning, naming culture, processes and institutional knowledge.
The survey measures plans. The leadership gap Korn Ferry predicts is a forecast, so the proposal has to be tested against the company's own history.
The Explicit Decision
A proposal to cut junior hiring usually arrives as a decision about tasks that software can now perform.
Those roles also did a second job, which was to teach people how the business works.
Furnham, MacRae and Reed note that repeating one task improves performance on it only to a certain level.
The experienced employee learns how to get the job done inside the delays, paperwork and politics around it. That knowledge comes from doing the real work.
When software takes the routine work, the exceptions that remain are where people meet those obstacles. A full cut moves the exceptions to senior people with no one alongside to learn from them.
The adviser can ask the business to treat the second job as a separate decision.
For each role proposed for removal, the business answers four questions in writing.
Which tasks go, and which of them gave people contact with customers, exceptions or senior decisions
What people in the role learned beyond the task itself
Which mid-level and senior roles are held by people who started there
What will teach the same things in future, and who owns that answer
If the answer to the fourth question is nothing, the business is choosing to give up that learning, and the record should say so with a name beside it.
The choice may still be the right one.
A Learning Map Exercise
The third question can be answered with the business's own people.
Browning and Van Velsor of the Center for Creative Leadership note that most leadership development happens outside the classroom. It happens on job assignments and through relationships with others.
Training records therefore show little of where current leaders acquired their judgement. The exercise asks the leaders directly.
The critical roles below the executive team are the place to start. Succession below the executive team describes how to find them.
List the mid-level and senior roles the business treats as critical
Pull each holder's career history from HR records, including the first role and the grade at joining
Interview each holder for thirty minutes about the early job that taught most, who taught it, and the first decision owned
Code each answer by kind of learning, such as customer contact, exceptions or process knowledge
Count how many of the sources sat in entry-level roles, and mark the ones the proposal removes
The output is a table of critical roles against sources of learning. One column shows what the cut would empty.
Holders who joined from outside are included. Their answers show how the business has coped without its own entry route.
A Finance Example
Take a finance function that proposes to stop hiring graduates into accounts payable and ledger reconciliation. Software now matches invoices and posts routine entries.
Suppose the map shows that the finance director, the controller and two regional reporting managers all started in those roles.
Their interviews describe the same experience. They chased mismatched invoices through procurement, suppliers and business units until the cause was found.
That work taught them how each group behaves under pressure and where the numbers go wrong.
The software clears the routine matches, and exceptions work remains. Under a full cut it falls to a senior accountant, with no one to learn from it.
The finance director now has to say where the next controller will learn what a mismatched invoice teaches.
One answer is a first year spent on the exceptions the software cannot clear, beside a named senior reviewer.
The leadership gap Korn Ferry predicts is a forecast, so the proposal has to be tested against the company's own history.
Options Short Of A Cut
The business has more choices than a full cut or the current intake.
Four options keep part of the learning at lower cost.
Smaller intake. A reduced cohort, sized from the number of mid-level vacancies the company expects to fill internally
Rotation. Two or three functions in the first two years, so early-career staff see decisions in several places
Apprenticeship. Each junior works beside a named senior and rises by stages, as Coyle describes in the Florentine guilds
Rebuilt first-year learning. The role is redesigned around small decisions and work the software cannot clear, with a senior sponsor
Sparkman treats early-career planning and succession planning as one continuous path from entry-level roles to senior leadership. Both belong in the same workforce plan, as workforce planning after the headcount freeze sets out.
Korn Ferry makes the same case for rebuilt roles. It recommends ownership of small decisions, senior sponsors and earlier stretch assignments.
Sponsor pairs need more than a matching exercise. Mentoring beyond the matching exercise covers what the pair has to settle.
Ericsson's research on deliberate practice supplies a test for each option. Coyle summarises it as working on technique, seeking constant critical feedback and shoring up weaknesses.
The adviser can ask whether the junior receives senior feedback on a decision that the junior owned.
Sizing The Exposure
A gap that opens in five years can be priced from five records the business already holds.
Entry-grade intake for each of the last ten years, and how many of each cohort remain
The average time from joining to the first mid-level role
Mid-level and senior vacancies expected each year, from retirement and attrition forecasts
The share of those vacancies filled internally now
The cost of one external fill, including search fees, salary premium and months to full productivity
Sparkman names time to productivity as a key metric for workforce planning, and onboarding records usually hold it.
If intake stops this year, the first missing cohort would have reached mid-level after the average time to promotion.
From that year the internal fill rate falls. The roles that go external each year, multiplied by the cost of one external fill, give the annual exposure.
Finance can check every input, because each comes from the business's own records.
The saving from the cut belongs beside that figure, so the leadership team sees both.
If the map shows most critical roles were already filled from outside, the exposure is small. The adviser should say so.
Furnham, MacRae and Reed note that experience compounds, because more experience brings more offers of experience.
The calculation counts roles and leaves that effect out, so it errs on the low side.
Evidence For The Leadership Team
The leadership team needs five items, each with its source and its limits.
Internal origin. The share of critical roles held by people who joined at entry grade
Learning map. The sources of judgement that the cut removes
Exposure. Roles expected to go external each year and the cost of each fill
Pipeline visibility. Korn Ferry's Talent Suite research reports 87 per cent of organisations can see leadership potential at C-suite level, and fewer than 3 in 10 for mid-level and emerging leaders
External context. The Korn Ferry survey, with the missing base for two of its figures declared
Korn Ferry states no sample for the visibility figure.
The first three come from the business's own records. They go first in a one-page brief, with the Korn Ferry context last.
The visibility figure explains why a gap would be found late. The cohort that would have filled it is already missing by then.
Only 11 per cent of leaders say their executives are well prepared for the AI transition. That suggests many leadership teams have not yet had the pipeline question set out for them.
A Leader Who Has Decided
Some leaders will have decided before the adviser is asked.
The adviser accepts the decision and asks for three smaller commitments instead.
A named owner for the pipeline risk, recorded in the workforce plan
A review date and an indicator, such as the internal fill rate for mid-level vacancies
A pilot in one or two functions that keeps a reduced intake or a rebuilt first year
Three replies are common, and each has a factual answer.
External hiring will cover it. Ask for the exposure figure for those fills and the share of critical roles already filled that way
AI will take the mid-level work as well. Then demand for mid-level roles is changing too, and the workforce plan should show it
Graduate hiring can restart later. A year without an intake leaves a missing cohort. Later hiring cannot recover the year of experience those people would have gained here
The adviser records the advice once, in writing, and the decision stays with the business. Advising a leader you disagree with covers how.
First Step
Pick the function where the proposal is furthest advanced. Run the five steps of the learning map there before the next leadership meeting.
Where The Tools Sit
In Trusted Talent Advisor, the conversation with a leader who has already decided is in component 02, The Stakeholder Conversation Toolkit. The evidence behind a workforce recommendation is built with the tools in component 06, Evidence and Impact.
The Talent Template Pack includes the critical role canvas and the business case that accompanies a workforce recommendation.
Sources
1. Korn Ferry. Korn Ferry Research Unveils Top Talent Acquisition Trends Shaping 2026. Korn Ferry.
2. Korn Ferry. Rethinking Leadership Pipelines in the Age of AI. Korn Ferry.
3. Barth, J. Automating Entry-Level Work? Mind the Leadership Gap It Creates. HR Executive.
4. Browning, H. and Van Velsor, E. Three Keys to Development: Defining and Meeting Your Leadership Challenges. Center for Creative Leadership.
5. Furnham, A., MacRae, I. and Reed, M. High Potential: How to Spot, Manage and Develop Talented People at Work. Bloomsbury.
6. Coyle, D. The Talent Code: Greatness Is Grown. Bantam.
7. Sparkman, R. Strategic Workforce Planning: Developing Optimized Talent Strategies for Future Growth. Kogan Page.
From the system
Trusted Talent Advisor sets out the full method: seven components, 51 tools, The Talent Template Pack and The Prompt Library.
See the system
Questions this answers
Does AI replacing entry-level jobs hurt the leadership pipeline?
Korn Ferry warns that it can, because early-career roles are where people learn how the business works and form judgement. The warning is a forecast, so the company's own data on where current leaders started shows how large the exposure would be.
How do you build a leadership pipeline without entry-level jobs?
Keep part of the learning through a smaller intake, rotation across functions, apprenticeship beside a named senior, or a first year rebuilt around exceptions and small decisions with a sponsor. Test each option for senior feedback on a decision the junior owns.
What percentage of companies plan to replace entry-level roles with AI?
Korn Ferry's 2026 survey reports that 43 per cent of companies plan to replace roles with AI, targeting operations and back-office work (58 per cent) and entry-level roles (37 per cent). The press release does not state the base for those last two figures.
What is the cost of cutting entry-level hiring?
No published figure applies to one company. The cost is estimated from internal records: intake by year, time to the first mid-level role, expected vacancies, the internal fill rate and the cost of one external fill. Finance can check every input.
What should HR say to a leader who has already cut graduate hiring?
Ask for a named owner of the pipeline risk, a review date with an indicator such as the internal fill rate for mid-level vacancies, and a pilot in one or two functions that keeps a reduced intake or a rebuilt first year.
How do you find out where your leaders learned their judgement?
Pull the career history of each critical role holder, interview them about the early job that taught them most, and code the answers by kind of learning. Then count how many sources sat in entry-level roles.
Keep reading
Measuring HR impact
Internal Mobility Metrics Without A Platform
Seven measures an HR adviser can build from existing records, each with a stated definition, a base and a way to read it.
7 min read
Workforce and future skills
Job Rotation As A Talent Gap Strategy
A job rotation programme closes a talent gap when the role, the person, the cover and the evidence are agreed with both managers before it starts.
8 min read
Talent reviews and succession
Seeing Talent Below The Top Team
Visibility of leadership potential drops below the top team. A cross-unit forum, run on one page per unit and a written evidence standard, is the method for seeing it.
8 min read