At the 2026 annual meeting of the National Association of State Personnel Executives (NASPE), held in Seattle from July 19 to July 22, conversations about artificial intelligence were a major theme. Attendance at this year’s conference was similar to last year with 32 states, 29 corporate partner organizations and ten nonprofits and other organizations in attendance.

At last year’s conference, the air was filled with both puzzlement and panic as HR directors faced an onslaught of information from vendors who were eager to talk about the ways AI could change their lives. This year the conversation indicated that AI use currently appears to be most prevalent in state HR for improving documents, modernizing job descriptions and assisting employees with organizational and writing tasks. 

While Leslie Scott Parker, NASPE’s executive director, noted that state HR departments are still approaching AI slowly, there is a general acknowledgement “that if you aren’t providing AI resources in your employees’ work, they’re going to be using it anyway.” The key, she added, is not just providing AI tools but also clear policies on their appropriate use.

The nature of the conversation about AI in 2026 got somewhat more specific than last year. It revolved around the ways AI was causing classification systems to change, and its impact on the skills that employees need to succeed. This not only came up in terms of employees’ current jobs, but in the most effective ways for states to engage in succession planning. 

One issue that sparked discussion about classification systems is the knowledge that AI will bring about changes in job functions and the importance of flexibility in classification systems. “We need to update our classifications to reflect the use of AI and how AI may change jobs. That was a common theme,” said Byron Decoteau Jr., director of State Civil Service in Louisiana and a former NASPE president. Although AI use has not yet taken off in HR in his state, he said it was still generating discussions.

While states differ greatly in the way they’re organized, many have spent years adjusting classification systems to avoid inconsistency in the way jobs are categorized. Adding to Decoteau’s comments, Chris Deer, State Civil Service deputy director, noted that AI can be a powerful tool to “find commonalities between job classifications and point out redundancies to ensure that classifications are being used in a uniform and consistent manner across the state government.”   

Beyond the focus on AI, the annual meeting served as a reminder of the way that pressing HR issues in past years have changed and ways in which they haven’t. Some examples:

• Staff shortages. Not surprisingly, the troubling staff shortages and hiring dilemmas of the Covid and post-Covid years are gone, although there continue to be areas in which hiring is difficult, including corrections, social work, health care (particularly nurses) and IT.

• Skills-based hiring and succession planning. In the last few years, the discussion heavily revolved around changing HR culture to downplay the requirement for college degrees and focus on the skills needed for a job. Now, the issue is more about how to document and measure skills, and how to facilitate training to develop skills while already on the job. 

• Time to hire. This year’s conference included acknowledgement of improvements to the hiring process, with a presentation by NEOGOV detailing how one state had reduced hiring time from more than 100 days to 53 days. This kind of improvement notwithstanding, extended hiring processes in state government are still widely acknowledged to need continued work. The current average state government hiring time, according to NEOGOV, is 101 days.

• Other recruitment and hiring issues. While states are recruiting more aggressively than in the past, improvement is still needed in staying engaged with job candidates after applications are submitted.

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