Poland’s modern business services (BSS) sector is undergoing its most fundamental transformation since its accession to global supply chains. The latest Hays 2026 Salary Report paints a picture of a market that is definitively breaking away from the label of ‘Europe’s back-office’. The era of simple, transactional processes based on pure cost arbitrage is giving way to an advanced technological ecology in which the primacy of expertise over labour volume is becoming the new paradigm.
Algorithmic revolution in the employment structure
Underpinning this change is the unprecedented adoption of artificial intelligence. In just twelve months, the percentage of workers in the sector using AI tools has risen from 37% to 60%. This is not just a tool evolution, but a structural upheaval. Automation is successively cannibalising simple administrative tasks, resulting in the extinction of quantitative recruitment projects. Instead of competing on the price of a man-hour, Poland is starting to bid on the quality of intellectual capital.
The new currency of competence: Hybrid and Expertise
Despite the ongoing transformation, the sector is not losing its growth momentum, although it is changing its vector of expansion. As many as 82% of organisations plan to actively recruit, focusing, however, on highly specialised profiles. The current needs landscape is defined by three pillars:
- Technology: the dominance of AI, machine learning (63%) and data analytics.
- Strategy: People management and business analysis (66%).
- Adaptability: Ability to permanently re-skill and operate in a hybrid model.
Investors, who only a few years ago were locating IT support centres in Poland, are now looking here for cyber-security architects and specialised software engineers. This shift is creating a specific market tension: with an increasing number of applications, as many as 41% of companies report a critical shortage of specialist competences.
Outlook: Towards a high value-added economy
Although the process of phasing out simple processes raises natural concerns in regions heavily dependent on the traditional BPO model, in the long term it is a healing process for the Polish economy. The shift from task execution to strategic value creation positions Poland as a mature technology market.
Success in this new reality will depend on the synergy of the public and private sectors in the area of workforce retraining. Poland enters 2026 with moderate optimism, turning quantity into quality and cheap labour into a unique synergy of human intelligence and algorithms.
