This week’s briefing on HR and HR technology developments and trends, for HR and people teams at small and medium-sized businesses across Europe.
Big picture: recruiting turns agentic
The clearest signal of the week is that hiring technology is moving from single-task automation to connected AI agents that work across the whole recruiting funnel. At RecFest USA on 22 September, recruitment marketing firm Joveo unveiled what it calls the first agentic recruiting platform to link sourcing, candidate engagement, screening, scheduling and interviewing into one coordinated workflow, rather than automating each step in isolation. The direction was reinforced on 15 September when HR Executive and HR Tech named their 2026 Top HR Products of the Year: the 14-strong shortlist leans heavily on agents, including Eightfold’s AI Interviewer, ICIMS’s AI Sourcing Agent, Phenom’s Voice Screening Agent and Insygna’s Agentic Workforce Management. Recruiters keep approval rights and can override agent actions within set budgets and rules, so the emphasis is on freeing up judgement calls, not removing them.
Why it matters: most of these tools are still enterprise-priced and enterprise-first, but the pattern (agents handling admin, people keeping the decisions) is the template vendors will bring down-market next. SME HR teams do not need to buy in yet, but it is worth asking any HRIS or ATS supplier where agentic features sit on their roadmap, and agreeing internally, now, which HR decisions must always keep a human in the loop.
On the radar
Award season: HR Tech names its top products of 2026. On 15 September, HR Executive and HR Tech revealed 14 winners of their annual Top HR Products awards, chosen from new or significantly enhanced tools launched in the past year. Winners span recruiting, workforce management, compensation benchmarking and HR operations, including ADP DataCloud, Workday, Oracle, Greenhouse, Paychex and Visier. They will be honoured at the HR Icons Awards Evening on 19 October, ahead of the HR Tech conference in Las Vegas.
Pitchfest: 33 finalists chase HR tech’s biggest startup prize. HR Tech 2026 has selected 33 companies from more than 80 applicants for Pitchfest, its startup competition, split evenly across talent acquisition, core HR and human capital management, and post-hire talent management. Finalists share $40,000 in prizes, described as the largest purse in the industry, with the winner also receiving an exhibit package for next year’s event.
Pay transparency: enforcement catches up across the EU. The EU Pay Transparency Directive’s 7 June 2026 transposition deadline has now passed, and the European Commission has confirmed there will be no further extension, but member states remain at different stages. The Netherlands has pushed its national rules back to January 2027, Poland is still drafting job-evaluation legislation, and Malta’s obligations have applied since August 2025. For SMEs operating across more than one EU country, the practical rules employees are entitled to still depend on which member state’s transposition has actually landed.
HR tech watch
Skello raises €200m to scale workforce management across Europe. Paris-based Skello, which builds scheduling and workforce-management software for frontline and shift-based teams, confirmed a €200m investment on 24 July, led by Bridgepoint alongside existing backers Partech and XAnge. The company, which serves around 30,000 businesses and 700,000 daily users from hubs in Paris, Lille and Barcelona, plans to use the funding to expand across Europe, invest in AI and pursue targeted acquisitions, alongside roughly 100 new hires this year.
For SME HR teams
None of this week’s developments require an SME to act immediately, but two threads are worth carrying into planning conversations. First, if agentic AI is on a vendor’s roadmap, ask now how it handles approvals, audit trails and human override, since that governance question will only get harder to retrofit later. Second, if the business employs people in more than one EU country, check each country’s pay transparency transposition status individually rather than assuming one EU-wide deadline: some obligations are already live, others will not land until 2027, and getting this wrong is a compliance risk with genuine teeth.
Sources
- HR Executive and HR Tech reveal 2026 Top HR Products of the Year
- HR Tech 2026 announces 33 contestants for its Pitchfest startup competition
- Joveo to unveil an agentic recruiting platform at RecFest 2026
- Ogletree Deakins on the EU Pay Transparency Directive’s 7 June 2026 deadline
- Consultancy.eu on Skello’s €200 million investment and European expansion plans
HR Radar is a weekly informational summary of publicly reported HR and HR technology developments and trends. It is not legal or professional advice.
