Scott Wenger

Staffing firms need to make adaptability an organizational priority as artificial intelligence reshapes their capacity, clients’ expectations and competition, VP of Research Brian Wallins said in the keynote presentation at SIA’s 2026 CollaborationX conference in Dallas.

As technology advances and competition intensifies, a distinct advantage will belong to companies that learn and adjust quickly, Wallins said. “Adaptability is the sustainable advantage,” he explained. “Because in an environment moving this fast, the advantage doesn’t belong to the company that predicts the future most accurately. It belongs to the company that can adjust fastest as the future reveals itself.”

That requires a planning rethink. Firms can maintain long-term strategies, but their operating roadmaps need flexibility as opportunities emerge.

“The old model was to find a route, lock the assumptions, execute the plan,” Wallins said as the annual conference kicked off Sept. 30. “The adaptive model is different. Take a step. Learn, adjust and then take the next step. The destination can stay clear, but the path has to become more flexible.”

The ability to absorb change is as crucial as access to technology, he said. Most firms still lack AI training.

“It’s more about behaviors around learning, adopting workflows and changing ways fast enough to use it well,” he said. “The speed of learning has become just as important as the speed of innovation.”

Investment patterns reflect the shift. The median share of staffing revenue devoted to technology has increased 163% since 2012. An upcoming SIA survey found 84% of staffing firms planned to increase technology spending over the next 12 months, up from 73% in the previous year’s survey. The same upcoming SIA survey found 40% of staffing firms had already implemented AI agents into their workloads.

For recruiters, the change means redistributing work. Humans should spend more time on relationships, judgement and persuasion. Human validation also becomes part of the job.

“It’s not really about, ‘Does AI replace the recruiter?’ It’s, ‘What does the agent do? And what does that make the human more valuable for?’” Wallins asked.

The implications extend to how firms package, deliver and price services. As AI and automation place even greater value on outcomes, clients gain more options for getting work done. Staffing firms increasingly face competitors that may not resemble staffing businesses, while digital workers or blended human and digital teams could become service offerings.

The uncertainty surrounding AI also matters for demand, he said. “This is important because staffing doesn’t just rely on employment; it needs movement,” he said.

Demographics add another reason to reconsider existing models, with US population growth slowing while the number of prime-age workers relative to retirees continues to fall.

Slower workforce growth increases the importance of productivity, positioning AI as an accelerant to generating more output per worker. Lower costs for professional work could also encourage greater consumption, challenging the assumption that automation necessarily means fewer jobs without eliminating displacement risks.

For staffing firms, adaptability means recognizing where these changes create opportunities to serve clients differently.

“We can use AI and automation to make the existing model faster — we can source faster, screen faster, schedule faster,” Wallins said. “The bigger opportunity is to ask, ‘What can we now build that wasn’t possible before?’ New ways to deliver capacity, solve client problems, new ways to create value.”

This article was originally published in Staffing Industry Analysts’ Global Daily News.

Photo: Scott Wenger