Why “we tried ChatGPT” is no longer enough — and how Hungarian HR can move from the European middle pack to the front row

From experimentation to implementation

When ChatGPT launched in early 2023 and the generative AI market exploded, Hungarian HR leaders could roughly be sorted into three camps: the “we need to look at this,” the “we’ll deal with it later,” and the “this won’t be that significant” crowd. Three years on — spring 2026 — those proportions have shifted radically. KPMG’s 2025 CEO Outlook survey reports that 83 percent of Hungarian large-enterprise CEOs say their company is actively using at least one generative AI solution, and 65 percent plan significant investment in the next 18 months.

What changed: in 2023, HR teams were mostly experimenting with ChatGPT for job ad drafting. In 2024, contractual pilot projects started for specific tasks (CV pre-screening, chatbots for employee questions, interview summaries). By 2025, most larger enterprises had some AI component integrated into workforce planning and performance management systems. 2026 is the year of implementation: the question is no longer “should we do this?” but “who is responsible?”, “where does the talent who can manage this come from?”, and “how do we measure real ROI?”.

“Three years ago my team asked: does AI understand what we tell it? Now they ask: do we understand what AI tells us?” — Hungarian financial services HR director, February 2026

The Hungarian specificity: where are we now?

Middle-tier catch-up

Standard & Poor’s November 2025 European HR Tech survey places Hungary in the middle tier of Central and Eastern European countries for AI-enabled HR solution adoption — behind the Czech Republic and Poland, but ahead of Slovakia and Romania. Hungarian HR leads the regional average where large multinationals deploy global systems (HR Tech platforms, SAP SuccessFactors, Workday, etc.). Where it lags: in the small and medium enterprise sector, where the price-value ratio of AI tools has not yet convinced leadership.

My experience with Hungarian webinar audiences mirrors this exactly: HR leaders of companies below 100 employees still say “we’re thinking about AI,” while companies above 500 have had it deployed for years. The gap is not technical (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini are equally available to a 30-person company), but organisational: who understands it, who rolls it out, who measures the impact.

Four stages of HR AI adoption

Individual experimentation. The HR staffer logs into their personal ChatGPT account and generates job ads, question sets, feedback. Cheap, fast, but not safe: sensitive employee data can reach public models. Sixty to seventy percent of Hungarian HR teams are still here.
Enterprise tool rollout. The company licenses a corporate AI platform (e.g. Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT Enterprise, Claude for Teams) that meets data security standards. HR staff use it in a corporate environment, but still for individual tasks. Forty to fifty percent of Hungarian large enterprises sit here.
Process integration. AI is embedded in HR processes: CV screening, interview summarisation, onboarding chatbot, performance review preparation. Not individual but process-level use, producing measurable efficiency gains. Fifteen to twenty percent of the Hungarian market is here.
Strategic embedding. AI helps answer strategic HR questions: workforce planning, capability gap analysis, organisational design, talent segmentation. This is no longer “HR using AI,” but “HR co-deciding with AI.” Three to five percent of the Hungarian market is here, mostly Hungarian subsidiaries of large multinationals.

The 2026 paradox: simultaneous demand and fear

“We want it, but who will replace us?”

When I work with HR leaders in webinars, they often ask a hard question: “If I introduce AI into HR, am I the first to be replaced?” The answer is nuanced. The transactional, repeatable HR tasks (CV screening, answers to simple questions, administration) can be substantially automated. But these tasks have so far made up much of the HR junior and mid-level role. So yes: the number of HR generalist profiles will decrease.

At the same time, HR’s strategic role strengthens. When a CEO doesn’t know how to redesign the organisation for the AI era, how to reskill existing staff, how to change the reward structure for new roles, what culture is needed so people can work with AI — an HR leader can answer these. But not a “traditional” HR leader; one who understands technology, understands change management, and can speak business language.

The new HR profile

The Hungarian HR leadership profile in demand in 2026 is markedly different from 2019. In almost every exec search project where we look for an HR director, four competencies are now shared: AI literacy (not necessarily coding, but knowing the capabilities and limits), analytical skill (at least fluent use of HR metrics), change management experience (because every company is transforming), and the ability to build psychological safety (because AI tests it).

What has moved lower in priority: traditional HR administration experience, manual handling of payroll and bonus cycles, knowledge of paper-based processes. Not because these don’t matter — but because today they are handled by AI tools and specialised service providers, and the HR leader needs to own the strategic picture.

Where are Hungarian companies actually applying AI?

Recruitment and selection

The most frequent areas: generating and optimising job ads, pre-screening and ranking CVs, preparing initial interview questions based on candidate background, automatic transcription and summarisation of interview recordings, candidate communication via chatbot. At large-enterprise scale these together save 25–35% of recruitment team time, which in the Hungarian market translates to HUF 30–50 million per year savings at a 1,000-person company.

Learning and development

AI-based learning platforms generate personalised content based on employees’ development needs. Particularly effective for language skill development (English, German), professional training (finance, IT, compliance), or soft skill training. At the Hungarian HR Association autumn 2025 conference, several case studies showed AI-based training reducing costs by 40–60% while participant competency gains improved measurably.

Performance management

Increasingly, companies use AI to help prepare performance review cycles: feedback summaries, trend analysis, development plan generation. This is a sensitive area — employees have a right to know that an AI also reads their review. GDPR and the EU AI Act (2024) set precise boundaries that Hungarian HR must know.

Workforce planning

The biggest strategic benefit is here, and yet it is the least applied area. AI tools can model: what happens if we grow by 200 people? Where do we source them? In which regions do we find suitable talent? How do wage costs evolve? What training investment is needed for new competencies? Today these questions are answered from HR leaders’ heads, based on experience. In three years, co-deciding with AI will be the new normal.

What does this mean from an Executive Search perspective?

In the past 18 months two new position categories have entered my projects, neither of which previously existed in Hungary. One is the “Head of People Tech” or “HR Technology Director” — a leader who runs HR technology systems (including AI tools) and builds the HR team’s technological capability. Pay range: HUF 25–40 million annual base, plus bonus. The other is the “AI Ethics & Compliance Lead” within HR — a specialist overseeing responsible AI use, fluent across legal, technological, and ethical questions.

HR leaders who proactively develop themselves in these areas today will be among Central Europe’s most sought-after candidates in three years. Those who don’t will be marginalised — not immediately, not dramatically, but quietly, as they are no longer invited to the next round of searches. The technology-culture gap between rising and slowing HR careers is not yet visible, but by 2028 it will be sharp.

Practical recommendations for leaders

1. Start with your own role

Before recommending AI tools to the HR team, the HR leader should try them in their own work: strategic memos, presentation decks, competency framework creation, board presentations. If the HR leader cannot speak competently about their own AI use, they won’t have credibility when they ask the team to do the same.

2. Make the “we don’t do that” list explicit

Define precisely what the company WON’T do with AI: we don’t feed it candidate personal data, we don’t use it for final selection decisions, we don’t replace coaches or mentors. The HR team needs clear limits — partly for their own safety, partly for ethical operation.

3. Invest in HR team AI training

At least 40 hours of professional training per year on AI tools, the AI Act, data security, responsible use. This is still cheaper than waiting for the HR team to become obsolete and having to bring in external talent. Quality training is available on the Hungarian market from HUF 100,000 per person for 15-hour programmes.

4. Measure ROI

We don’t introduce AI because it’s fashionable, but because it produces measurable value. Before every AI project, define: what time savings, cost reduction, quality improvement do we expect? Measure against it after 6 months. What doesn’t produce results, stop it bravely.

5. Build partnerships with IT and Legal

HR cannot solve AI implementation alone. It requires IT security, data protection (DPO), legal opinion on the AI Act, and finance for ROI measurement. The cross-functional team is not a choice but a condition.

Where is Hungarian HR headed in 2027–2028?

Two futures are emerging. One: a Hungarian HR that moves at its own pace but in a structured way — by 2028, 60–70% of Hungarian HR teams integrate AI into daily work, and a few standout domestic companies (likely financial services and energy) showcase solutions of European benchmark quality.

The other possibility: a fragmented, two-speed Hungarian HR where multinational subsidiaries follow global standards, the Hungarian mid-market falls behind, and Hungarian-owned companies’ talent attraction continues to decline. This is the worse scenario, and not inevitable — but it requires that today, on April 16, every HR leader ask themselves: “Where am I and my team on the four stages of AI adoption? And what am I doing today to advance?”

AI will not take over HR. But HR staff will need to be very different in 2028 than today — and the HR leader who starts managing this now is three steps ahead of the competition.

Sources

About the author: Márta Ocskay is the founder of HR Executives, an Executive Career Advisor, Certified Business Coach and HR Expert. With decades of strategic HR advisory experience, she supports clients in compensation system design, organisational development and executive career planning.

Contact: marta.ocskay@hrexecutives.hu

AI in HR: 2026, the Year of Implementation