3 key trends for business services companies in Poland in 2026.

how leaders are closing the confidence gap and redesigning work for growth

The 2026 business services landscape in Poland is undergoing a major shift. As companies move beyond traditional hiring to focus on productivity and technological maturity, leaders must navigate a new reality. This article breaks down three essential trends reshaping the sector: leveraging AI for measurable outcomes, establishing direct managers as anchors of trust, and prioritizing employee autonomy to boost retention. Learn how organizations can bridge the talent confidence gap, redesign work structures, and maintain a competitive edge in an evolving, skill-first global market.

Poland’s business services sector is rapidly redefining how work is structured and delivered, as talent, technology and work design converge in new ways. The sector is shifting away from headcount-driven growth toward a model shaped by transformation, agility and technological maturity.

This transition away from headcount-driven growth carries significant economic weight. As a primary engine for the future of work, the sector in Poland comprises 2,180 centers, 1,270 businesses and nearly 500,000 specialists, making it a critical contributor to the nation’s GDP. This ecosystem has evolved into Europe’s most significant hub for specialized global business services (GBS), IT and R&D centers, managing mission-critical processes for over 280 of the world’s largest companies.

As the sector moves beyond relying on headcount for growth, pressure on productivity is intensifying. The latest analysis from The Hackett Group shows that while GBS workloads are forecast to grow by 15% this year, staffing growth is projected at just 10% — a 5% productivity gap that must be bridged through technology to achieve more with fewer people.

This reflects a broader change in how global delivery models are designed. According to Deloitte, since 2020, cost reduction as a primary driver has declined by half — from 70% to 34% — as organizations increasingly prioritize productivity, performance and outcomes.

a structural turning point

Workloads are expanding faster than workforce growth — forcing a shift in how work gets done. To understand its impact, this analysis draws on the 2026 ABSL Talent Report — a comprehensive census of more than 200,000 employees across Poland — and Randstad’s 2026 Workmonitor, a global labor market report based on insights from 27,000 workers, 1,225 employers and 3 million job postings across 35 markets. Together, these sources reveal eight critical signals reshaping the market:

1. Growth-hiring disconnect — growth no longer requires headcount
   

   ABSL research reveals that, while 39.0% of employers in Poland are using automation to offset rising costs, fewer than one in five (18.6%) plan to increase headcount by more than 10% by Q1 2027 — signaling a clear decoupling of growth and hiring. 
   
   

2. Execution gap — investment does not translate into impact
   

   ABSL’s research shows 80% of employers in Poland have increased investment in automation or digital tools, but 57% report no significant workforce impact — signaling that the focus must shift from investment to integration.
   
   

3. AI visibility gap — employee insight outpaces leadership recognition
   

   A 32-point disconnect has emerged: According to the Workmonitor research, 64% of talent in Poland report AI productivity gains, compared to 32% of employers — a wider gap than global levels. Employees are already using AI in their day-to-day work, but these gains are not yet fully visible. 
   
   

4. Workforce maturity — a shift to specialist-led models
   

   With 51% of the workforce aged 35+, specialist roles dominate Poland’s employment structure, positioning it as a high-value hub. As entry-level roles decline, a more experienced workforce is driving greater stability than in other global markets. 
   
   

5. Targeted recruitment shifts — talent pools are narrowing
   

   66.5% of firms now prioritize hiring within the city of location or its immediate proximity, according to ABSL, narrowing talent pools and intensifying competition for local talent.
    

6. Flexibility friction — retention risk from RTO mandates
   

   Return-to-office mandates are creating measurable workforce risk. ABSL reports that 33.8% of businesses in Poland report declining talent attraction and retention, while 49.4% report reduced employee satisfaction and engagement. 
   
   

7. The reskilling mandate — AI drives role disruption
   

   ABSL research also shows that nearly a third (32.2%) of employers in Poland expect up to half of their workforce to require reskilling or role redefinition by 2030 — signaling the scale of AI-driven workforce transformation. 
   
   

8. The cost-value gap — strategy overtakes cost efficiency
   

   With 89.0% of employers in Poland citing rising wages and regional instability as key threats in ABSL’s study, the focus is shifting from cost efficiency to strategic value creation.
   
   Together, these signals point to a fundamental shift in how work is designed, delivered and experienced.
    
   

   A clear disconnect is emerging between business ambition and workforce experience.
   

   
   

bridging the talent confidence gap

Randstad’s 2026 Workmonitor research shows that while 95% of employers globally expect growth, only 51% of workers share that optimism. In Poland, the pattern differs: Employer confidence is lower at 70%, while worker optimism is slightly higher at 58% — creating a more balanced, yet still misaligned, outlook.

Closing this gap requires rethinking how work is designed, managed and experienced. Increasingly, leaders are acting as architects of change, and three core pillars are shaping what Randstad calls the Great Workforce Adaptation:

1. AI agility — closing the gap between adoption and outcomes
   

   76% of talent in Poland say they feel confident using the latest technology, compared to 69% of talent globally — yet 52% of talent in Poland believe AI adoption will benefit companies more than themselves, compared to 47% of talent globally, highlighting a gap between capability and perceived personal impact.
   
   

2. Manager-led trust — the direct supervisor as a stability anchor
   

   69% of talent in Poland say they have a strong relationship with their managers, slightly less than the global average of 72% of talent — reinforcing the manager’s role as a trust anchor.
   
   

3. Autonomy premium — independence as a core retention driver
   

   34% of talent in Poland have left roles due to a lack of independence, compared to 25% of talent globally — highlighting rising expectations for flexibility, ownership and control over work, particularly as the sector shifts toward more knowledge-intensive, higher-value roles.

Together, these insights point to a clear path forward. By embracing a transformation mindset, organizations can move beyond traditional headcount models to unlock sustainable, capability-led growth — aligning how work is designed, how skills are developed and how leaders operate. The organizations that do this fastest will define the next phase of global delivery.

trend 1:
AI agility — closing the gap between adoption and outcomes

Transformation is no longer top-down, it’s bottom-up. Talent is leading, not the organization.

Globally, AI investment is outpacing adoption — but in Poland, talent is adopting AI faster than organizations. Employees are already integrating AI into daily workflows and realizing productivity gains that leaders are not yet recognizing. According to Randstad’s 2026 Workmonitor research, 64% of talent in Poland report that AI improves productivity, compared to just 32% of employers — a far wider gap than 62% of talent and 54% of employers globally. This disparity highlights a growing disconnect between workforce experience and leadership perception.

Businesses are investing heavily in AI and automation, yet these investments have not produced a visible impact on the workforce. Although 80% of employers in Poland have increased investment in digital tools, 57% report no significant workforce impact, according to ABSL. The lack of visible workforce impact reveals an additional challenge: Even where capability exists, organizations are struggling to integrate and scale AI effectively.

AI is reshaping how work gets done. It is no longer confined to specific initiatives or technical teams — it is being applied directly at the task level by employees across functions, often outside formal structures. Productivity gains are emerging in a fragmented, often untracked way, challenging traditional models of oversight, measurement and performance management.

Poland is facing a more pronounced dual AI gap: Productivity is being generated but not fully recognized, while investment is increasing without delivering consistent results. As AI becomes embedded in task execution, closing this gap will require organizations to better align how work is performed, measured and improved.

the AI perception gap

In Poland, a clear gap is emerging between workforce experience and leadership perception:

• • Higher digital confidence: 76% of talent in Poland feel confident using the latest technology, compared to 69% of talent globally.
  • AI perception gap: Double the percentage of employees in Poland expect AI to impact more than half of tasks (60%), compared to 30% of employers — a significantly wider gap than 53% of talent and 58% of employers globally.
  • Economic pressure is accelerating adoption: 47% of talent in Poland are taking on second jobs to manage costs, compared to 40% of talent globally.

 Organizations continue to invest in automation and AI at scale, yet many do not see a measurable impact on the workforce yet. The challenge lies not in a technology gap, but in a lack of visibility and integration — a challenge that will define the next phase of transformation.

the productivity paradox 

The result is a structural disconnect between how productivity is created and how it is captured. Employees are using AI to work more efficiently; however, without formal recognition or integration, the value created remains fragmented and inconsistently applied. In many cases, this adoption is happening outside formal workflows. Workmonitor data shows that 64% of talent in Poland report AI is improving their productivity, while only 32% of organizations recognize this impact — compared to 62% of talent and 54% of organizations globally. This gap reveals a disconnect between how work is performed and how it is managed.

This gap between individual adoption and organizational integration creates a systemic inefficiency: Productivity gains are realized at the individual level, but are not scaled across teams or embedded into operating models. Over time, this limits the return on AI investment and slows the shift toward more efficient, capability-led organizations.

 Closing this gap requires a fundamental shift in focus. Leaders must move beyond technology investment to understand how work is performed — how employees are using AI at the task level, where time is being saved and which practices are driving real efficiency.

To turn individual productivity gains into repeatable workflows and consistent performance, organizations must create mechanisms to identify, validate and scale these practices — from capturing task-level automation to standardizing high-impact processes.

Without this shift toward capturing and scaling AI-driven productivity, organizations risk allowing productivity gains to remain invisible — or not captured at all — reinforcing the very gap they are trying to close.

what this means for leaders

For Poland’s business services sector, the risk is not a lack of capability, but a failure to capture and scale what already exists. As employees increasingly use AI to optimize their own work, productivity gains risk remaining informal, fragmented or not connected to enterprise performance.

Organizations must create structured ways for these practices to surface — enabling employees to share how they use AI, and translating those behaviors into repeatable workflows. This requires making AI usage visible, standardizing high-impact workflows and enabling teams to share and scale what works. Without this, efficiency gains will remain invisible or inconsistently applied.

The scale of expected workforce change is also significant. With a growing share of organizations anticipating large-scale reskilling by 2030, the sector will need to move beyond task automation toward full role redesign — aligning skills, work design and performance expectations to an AI-enabled operating model.

how leading organizations are responding

Leading organizations can close the gap between individual productivity and enterprise performance by making AI-driven work more visible, structured and scalable.

• • Standardize task-level gains.
    Identify how employees are already using AI to save time and translate those practices into repeatable workflows across teams
  • Make productivity visible and shared.
    Create transparency into how automation improves day-to-day work, ensuring gains are recognized not just at the organizational level, but by employees themselves.
  • Embed AI into how work is designed.
    Move beyond experimentation to redesign roles and workflows around augmentation, making AI a consistent part of how work gets done.
  • Align performance to new ways of working.
    Update how productivity is measured to reflect AI-enabled efficiency, ensuring gains are captured, reinforced and scaled
    

As organizations work to make productivity more visible and scalable, a second challenge becomes critical: Ensuring that these changes are understood, trusted and adopted by the workforce. This places a new demand on managers — not just as operators of performance, but as architects of trust in an AI-enabled workplace.

trend 2
manager-led trust — the direct supervisor as a stability anchor

The manager is now the anchor of stability amid constant change.

In an unpredictable environment, the direct manager has become the primary source of stability. As operating models evolve and expectations shift, managers translate change into something employees can understand, trust and act on. Execution now depends less on structure and more on the manager.

 While organizations continue to invest in technology and redesign work, employees rely on their immediate managers to make sense of those changes in day-to-day work. In many cases, the manager relationship matters more to employees than the organization itself. But, according to Randstad’s 2026 Workmonitor research, 69% of talent in Poland say they have a strong relationship with their manager, compared to 72% who say the same globally.

Trust is what enables consistent execution. However, this reliance is increasing even as expectations of managers are expanding. Managers are no longer responsible only for delivering outcomes — they are expected to create clarity, maintain engagement and navigate the human impact of constant change. This creates a growing gap between organizational expectations and manager capability.

the trust dynamic

Randstad Workmonitor data highlights both the strengths — and the risks — of this dynamic for employers in Poland:

• • High foundational trust: 72% of talent believe their manager has their best interests in mind.
  • Manager proximity advantage: Employees report high trust in their managers (72%) and peers (75%).
  • Hybrid resilience: Only 62% of Polish employers report challenges with hybrid collaboration, compared to 81% of employers globally.
  • Multigenerational reliance: 77% of talent believe that working with colleagues from different generations broadens their perspectives, and 68% want to see management spend more time improving team collaboration.

 At the same time, gaps remain in how organizations fully leverage these strengths. While most employers recognize the importance of a multigenerational workforce, fewer actively treat it as a driver of performance, limiting the impact of collaboration.

 Together, these dynamics reinforce the manager’s role as the central connector between strategy and workforce experience — and highlight the risk if that connection weakens.

what this means for leaders

For Poland’s business services sector, manager effectiveness is becoming a primary driver of operational consistency and retention. As work becomes more fluid and less structured, the manager-employee relationship plays a central role in maintaining alignment and performance.

 At the same time, this shift exposes a clear risk for organizations. Without the right support, managers become a bottleneck — expected to absorb change without the tools or capability to implement it effectively. This includes strengthening capabilities in coaching, communication and decision-making to help managers translate change into day-to-day execution.

 Organizations must therefore invest in the manager role not just as a delivery function, but as a critical layer of the operating model — responsible for enabling trust, stability and execution in an evolving workplace.

how leading organizations are responding

Employers can strengthen the manager role to create consistency, trust and alignment at scale.

• • Redefine the manager role around experience, not oversight.
    Expand expectations beyond task delivery to include coaching, communication and team-level alignment — ensuring managers actively shape how work is understood and experienced.
  • Operationalize flexibility at the team level.
    Equip managers to define how hybrid work functions in practice, creating clear team-level norms that reduce ambiguity and improve collaboration.
  • Activate multigenerational collaboration.
    Structure knowledge exchange across generations — combining digital fluency with experience to strengthen decision-making and adaptability.
  • Align manager metrics to trust and team performance.
    Shift performance measures toward engagement, retention, collaboration and team effectiveness — reinforcing the manager’s role as a driver of consistency and trust.

As organizations strengthen manager-led trust to stabilize performance, a new tension emerges: Even with strong leadership, traditional work models are no longer aligned with what talent expects. This shifts the focus from stability to autonomy — and from managing work to redesigning it.

trend 3:
the autonomy premium — independence as a core driver of retention

Autonomy is becoming a primary driver of retention. Organizations must adapt or risk losing talent to more flexible work models.

Talent expectations are reshaping what drives retention and how success is defined at work. The traditional career ladder is giving way to rising expectations for autonomy and choice in how work is structured and fits into individual lives.

 Rather than viewing careers as linear progressions within a single organization, talent increasingly expects choice, variety and ownership in how work is structured and experienced. As a result, organizations are still structured for stability, while talent is making decisions based on autonomy and choice. In fact, according to Randstad Workmonitor research, 49% of talent in Poland would refuse a job without flexibility.

While many employers support new ways of working in principle, far fewer enable real ownership over when and how work gets done — creating a widening gap between workforce expectations and existing operating models.

 This shift goes beyond when and where work happens. Increasingly, employees expect greater influence over the work itself — including the projects they take on, how they contribute and how their careers evolve.

 Autonomy is no longer a preference — it is a condition of retention. As a result, retention is no longer driven by compensation or career progression, but by how effectively organizations enable autonomy and meaningful choice in how work is done.

the autonomy shift

Workmonitor data highlights how strongly this move toward independence is reshaping workforce expectations in Poland:

• • The portfolio pivot: 47% of talent in Poland want a portfolio career, switching sector and jobs throughout their careers, while 45% prefer a traditional linear path — globally, 38% of talent prefer portfolio careers, and 41% prefer a linear path.

  • The autonomy premium: 34% of talent have left a job due to a lack of independence — nine points higher than the global average (25%).

  • Flexibility as a requirement: 49% of talent in Poland would refuse a job without flexibility in location or hours, compared to 43% of talent globally.

  • Work-life balance as a retention driver: 51% cite work-life balance as a primary reason for staying, outweighing pay and job security, compared to 46% of talent globally.

Together, these dynamics make the shift clear: talent is prioritizing independence, choice and alignment with personal priorities — not just stability — and making career decisions accordingly.

what this means for leaders

For Poland’s business services sector, autonomy is becoming a defining factor in competitiveness. As the workforce becomes more experienced and selective, organizations that fail to enable independence and choice in how work is structured risk losing talent to more flexible models of work.

At the same time, this shift presents a clear opportunity. Organizations that embed autonomy into how work is designed — rather than treating it as a benefit — can strengthen retention, increase engagement and unlock more diverse forms of contribution. This includes enabling internal mobility, expanding project-based work and giving employees greater input into how work is assigned and experienced.

This requires moving beyond standardized career models toward more dynamic, experience-based approaches — aligning work with how employees want to live, not just how organizations need to operate.

how leading organizations are responding

Organizations can redesign work to embed autonomy while maintaining performance, accountability and cohesion.

• • Enable internal mobility and portfolio careers.
    Create internal marketplaces and project-based work models that allow employees to move across roles, teams and assignments — providing variety and independence without leaving the organization.
  • Shift to outcome-based performance models.
    Measure success based on outputs and impact rather than time or presence — enabling more flexible and adaptable ways of working.
  • Embed flexibility as a core design principle.
    Make flexibility in location, hours and work structure a standard part of the operating model, not a negotiated benefit.
  • Personalize career paths at scale.
    Move away from rigid, one-size-fits-all career progression toward individualized growth paths that reflect different life stages and priorities.
    

the path forward

The Great Workforce Adaptation is reshaping Poland’s business services sector. Businesses that align technology, leadership and work design with how work is actually experienced — making productivity visible, strengthening manager-led trust and enabling autonomy — will be best positioned to close the confidence gap and drive sustainable growth. Those that do will define the next generation of global delivery.

To learn more about these trends, access the Randstad 2026 Workmonitor research.

*This content originally appears in the Association of Business Services Leaders (ABSL) Business Services Sector in Poland 2026 report, and is published here with permission from ABSL.