New research quantifies gains in recruiter productivity (up to 119%), hiring speed (up to 57% faster) and recruiting costs (up to 61% lower)

The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HCKT), an ROI-led AI transformation firm, today announced AI World Class HR benchmarks – new research that quantifies how artificial intelligence (AI) is redefining workforce performance and reveals a growing gap between organizations pursuing AI-enabled, process-led transformation and those that simply automate existing human resources (HR) processes.

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Talent acquisition provides one of the clearest examples of how AI creates enterprise value because improvements in sourcing, screening, hiring and onboarding reinforce one another across the recruiting process. While many organizations focus on automating individual recruiting activities, AI World Class reveals a larger opportunity: redesigning the entire end-to-end talent acquisition process around AI. Across candidate sourcing, screening, interview coordination, hiring and onboarding, improvements reinforce one another. Better decisions upstream reduce effort downstream, creating value throughout the process. The results are significant. AI World Class modeling shows recruiting costs per hire can decline by up to 61%, while recruiter productivity improves by up to 119%. The time to fill positions drops by up to 57%. These gains are not driven by a single automation. They result from reimagining how work flows across the entire talent acquisition process.

These new benchmarks extend The Hackett Group’s AI World Class research introduced in May, which identified performance advantages of up to 75% for organizations pursuing process-led AI transformation. The HR benchmarks show how those advantages translate into measurable gains across critical hire-to-retire processes – improving organizational capability, workforce agility, talent effectiveness and business performance.

The research points to the next phase of enterprise AI adoption being defined less by technology deployment and more by organizational capability, marking a shift in how organizations compete. As organizations face continued pressure to deliver more value with fewer resources, accelerate growth and address persistent talent shortages, HR leaders are increasingly expected to strengthen organizational capability, accelerate skills development and help the business adapt more quickly to changing workforce demands.

"Most organizations are still trying to justify AI investments one use case at a time," said Lee Derryberry, principal and HR Transformation practice leader at The Hackett Group^®. "Our research shows the greatest returns come when organizations redesign end-to-end processes enabled by AI, allowing improvements to compound across HR as a whole."

The new benchmarks span critical hire-to-retire processes, including talent acquisition, workforce development, employee services, workforce management and internal mobility. Together, these processes shape workforce capability, employee experience and business performance. AI World Class HR benchmarks quantify where process-led AI transformation can create the greatest value and establish future-state performance standards for organizations pursuing AI-enabled transformation.

Talent acquisition provides one of the clearest examples of how AI creates compounding value. Improvements across sourcing, screening, hiring and onboarding reinforce one another, creating measurable gains in recruiter productivity, hiring speed and recruiting effectiveness.

The results are significant. AI World Class modeling shows recruiting costs per hire can decline by up to 61%, recruiter productivity can improve by up to 119% and time-to-fill can decrease by up to 57%.

The benefits continue well beyond recruiting. Better hiring decisions create stronger foundations for workforce development, internal mobility and long-term employee performance. AI World Class organizations achieve internal fill rates that are up to 101% higher, provide up to 160% more training hours and increase HR self-service by up to 187%, creating capacity for HR teams to focus on higher-value strategic and business partnering activities.

"The real value of AI isn’t automating recruiting. It’s stronger organizational capability," said Franco Girimonte, principal at The Hackett Group^®. "Organizations that redesign hire-to-retire processes around AI build more agile workforces, accelerate skills development and enable HR to become a more strategic business partner."

While talent acquisition demonstrates the opportunity, similar patterns emerge across the broader AI World Class benchmark portfolio. The benchmarks span 16 end-to-end enterprise processes and identify where process reinvention can unlock the greatest gains in cost, productivity, speed and business performance. The most significant value is created when organizations redesign how work flows across an entire process enabled by AI rather than focusing on isolated automation opportunities.

The AI World Class benchmarks are grounded in more than 30 years of benchmark data, process intelligence and transformation experience drawn from leading global organizations, including 98% of the Dow Jones Global Titans, 97% of the Dow Jones Industrials and 90% of the Fortune 100.

The AI World Class HR benchmarks are available exclusively through The Hackett Group^®. Download the AI World Class HR report to learn how process-led AI transformation is creating a growing organizational capability gap and where HR leaders can create the greatest workforce value.

About The Hackett Group^®

The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HCKT) is an ROI-led, AI enterprise transformation firm that helps clients enable AI world-class performance. Its experts and engineers leverage proprietary AI delivery platforms – Hackett AI XPLR™, ZBrain™, XT™, AIXelerator™ and AskHackett™ – to accelerate and enhance the delivery of the company’s solutions and services.

The AI platforms are powered by the company’s domain-specific Hackett Solution Language Model informed by Hackett Process and Performance Intelligence – including Digital World Class^® benchmark metrics, best-practice process flows and service delivery model solution frameworks, which accelerate and enhance the delivery of its services. The Hackett Group’s proprietary insights are based on benchmarking results from leading global organizations, including 98% of Dow Jones Global Titans, 97% of the Dow Jones Industrials and 90% of the Fortune 100. Visit www.thehackettgroup.com

Trademarks

The Hackett Group^®, quadrant logo, and Digital World Class^® are the registered marks of The Hackett Group^®.

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This release contains "forward-looking" statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Statements including without limitation, words such as "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "seeks," "estimates," or other similar phrases or variations of such words or similar expressions indicating, present or future anticipated or expected occurrences or outcomes are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not statements of historical fact and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company’s actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Factors that may impact such forward-looking statements include without limitation, the ability of The Hackett Group^® to effectively market its digital transformation services, our ability to transition our capabilities to support generative artificial intelligence (AI)-related consulting services and solutions and other consulting services, our ability to effectively integrate acquisitions into our operations, our ability to manage joint ventures and successfully cooperate with our joint venture partners, competition from other consulting and technology companies that may have or develop in the future, similar offerings, the commercial viability of The Hackett Group^® and its services as well as other risk detailed in The Hackett Group’s reports filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The Hackett Group^®does not undertake any duty to update this release or any forward-looking statements contained herein.

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