HUMAN CAPITAL PULSE: TECHNOLOGY · ISSUE 5 · MAY 2026
A monthly Human Capital benchmark for HR and People leaders in Technology: the sector's talking points and how culture, workforce and talent compare across your peers, built on Deltabase data covering 5,500+ companies and 11M employee reviews.
Editor's note
May showed that AI adoption is a management problem before it is a technology one. Microsoft's Work Trend Index found leadership alignment lagging employee use, Amazon staff were reported to be inflating AI usage to hit targets, and Google faced a union recognition request from UK staff after a vote at DeepMind. Our data adds a twist: AI skills share does not track how employees rate their workplace technology. This month's Spotlight: Meta vs Arm.
Leroy Hall, Deltabase
The month in three
1. Microsoft: AI users are ahead of their leaders
What happened: Microsoft's 2026 Work Trend Index, based on 20,000 AI users in ten countries including the UK, found only 26% say their leadership is clearly and consistently aligned on AI, while 65% fear falling behind if they do not adapt quickly. Among the most advanced "Frontier Professionals", 85% have a manager who openly uses AI, against 64% of other users.
The Deltabase lens: Culture: Agility & Bureaucracy is negative at all ten peers; Google scored −83.1% and Microsoft −71.6% in 2025, although Microsoft's Empowered score improved from −16.3% to −9.1%. Workforce: Transformation roles make up 5.7% of IBM's workforce and 5.5% of Microsoft's, against 0.9% at Alphabet.
So what: Adoption follows managers. Measure leadership alignment on AI, not just licence usage.
2. Amazon staff "tokenmaxxing" to meet AI targets
What happened: Amazon staff were reported to be running unnecessary tasks through MeshClaw, an internal AI agent tool, to raise their token usage, after the company set a goal of more than 80% of developers using AI each week and tracked consumption on internal leaderboards. Amazon says usage will not factor into reviews, but staff believe managers are watching.
The Deltabase lens: Culture: Amazon's employees rate workplace technology well: Tech in Workplace NSS rose from +34.9% to +36.4% in 2025. Workforce: Tech roles make up just 10.9% of Amazon's workforce. Talent: 10.3% list software development skills and 7.2% Python.
So what: Usage targets measure activity, not value. Pair adoption metrics with outcome and sentiment measures so they cannot be gamed.
3. Google rejects voluntary union recognition in the UK
What happened: Google declined a request from the CWU and Unite for voluntary recognition for collective bargaining on pay, hours and holiday, after an employee-organised vote showed support for unionisation at DeepMind. It offered talks through Acas instead; if they fail, the unions can apply to the Central Arbitration Committee.
The Deltabase lens: Culture: Google's Purpose NSS improved from −55.9% to −23.3% in 2025, while Work-Life Balance slipped from −15.4% to −20.3%. Workforce: Alphabet's monthly turnover was 0.62% in April 2026, its lowest month of the year so far.
So what: Recognition requests are now live for UK tech employers; know your purpose and workload sentiment before Acas talks.
Stat of the month
+58.1%: Arm Holdings' Tech in Workplace NSS in 2025, the highest in the peer set, though 15.5% of its staff list AI skills, against 34.7% at Salesforce, where the score was +9.1%.
| Company | Talent: share with AI skills | Talent: share with machine learning skills | Culture: Tech in Workplace NSS 2025 |
|---|
| Salesforce | 34.7% | 7.6% | +9.1% |
| Microsoft | 32.4% | 12.4% | +26.2% |
| Alphabet (Google) | 23.5% | 14.5% | +19.9% |
| Meta Platforms | 19.1% | 13.6% | +14.7% |
| Arm Holdings | 15.5% | 12.5% | +58.1% |
| Amazon | 5.8% | 3.8% | +36.4% |
Source: Deltabase Talent data, share of workforce listing each skill (skills overlap and are not added together). Deltabase Culture data, Employee Net Sentiment Score (−100% to +100%), Tech in Workplace topic, 2025 (Alphabet culture figures are based on Google LLC reviews).
Spotlight: Meta vs Arm
Scale against focus. On Culture, Arm's NSS reached +37.9% in 2025 (415 reviews), the highest in the peer set, while Meta's fell from +16.8% to +7.5% (2,835 reviews). The gap is widest on Work-Life Balance: +35.4% at Arm against −65.3% at Meta. On Workforce, Arm employs 11,824 people against Meta's 165,000; 42.5% of Arm's workforce sits in Tech roles and 31.9% in Engineering & Maintenance, against 30.6% in Tech and 15.5% in Marketing at Meta. Monthly turnover in April 2026 was 0.48% at Arm and 0.90% at Meta. On Talent, 30.7% of Arm staff list Python skills, against 21.5% at Meta.
For your People team
- Measure AI adoption by outcomes and sentiment (Tech in Workplace, Empowered), not by token counts or leaderboards.
- Brief managers first: equip them to use AI openly and to set quality standards for AI-assisted work.
- Prepare for union recognition requests: know your Purpose and Work-Life Balance scores and your Acas process.
See how your Human Capital compares with your Technology peers. Book a 30-minute benchmark walkthrough across culture, workforce and talent. Book a walkthrough →
Sources: The Letter Two (5 May 2026); Silicon UK, citing the Financial Times (13 May 2026); The Star, citing Reuters (20 May 2026); Deltabase Culture data; Deltabase Workforce data; Deltabase Talent data; Deltabase Employee Turnover data.