A market project on the future of work, grounded in public-company reality and private-company signals.
Project 2030 tracks where HR technology is headed as payroll, workforce identity, benefits, finance operations, global employment, and frontline work converge.
Project 2030 follows public-company performance, private-company signals, product shifts, regulatory changes, and category movement across the systems that shape work.
India's four Labour Codes, operative centrally from November 2025 with state-level rollout through 2026, require employers to enforce a 50% basic-wage floor in total CTC, settle full-and-final wages within two working days of separation, maintain fully digitized payroll records, and align with the new Income Tax Act 2025 and its renamed TDS forms effective April 2026, per ADP India's compliance guidance.
Why it matters. Simultaneous wage-structure, tax-reporting, and digital-records mandates affecting the world's most populous workforce create a major compliance upgrade cycle for HCM and payroll platforms serving multinational employers operating in India.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA, P.L. 119-21) requires employers to separately report qualified tips and FLSA-mandated overtime premium pay on updated 2026 W-2 forms using new Box 12 codes, ending the IRS's 2025 transition relief, with SECURE 2.0 Roth catch-up contribution rules and new immigration compliance fees also taking full effect in 2026.
Why it matters. Mandatory W-2 reporting changes in 2026 require payroll system updates across virtually every U.S. employer, creating near-term demand for payroll software compliance modules and managed-payroll services.
A global Adecco Group study of 2,000 C-suite executives across 13 countries, covering 8.6 million workers, found that while 45% of leaders expect AI agents integrated into workflows within 12 months, only 22% are highly confident their organizations are building the future-ready capabilities needed, and just 36% say their talent strategy clearly demonstrates that AI will create rather than eliminate employee opportunities.
Why it matters. The gap between executive AI ambition and workforce readiness identified across 13 countries represents a structural demand signal for HCM, learning, and workforce-intelligence platforms addressing change management at scale.