"For decades, HR professionals were denied their "seat at the table" in company leadership. But during the COVID pandemic, it became abundantly clear that the C-suite could no longer ignore chief people officers, who guided companies through existential business challenges, including lockdowns, remote work, and the Great Resignation. Now, a quieter and more structural shift is underway. The seat remains, but the authority attached to it is moving elsewhere."
"Across the Fortune 500, HR is reaching an inflection point that looks strikingly similar to the one marketing faced in the late 2000s. When digital tools made it possible to measure return-on-investment at a granular level, brand intuition lost ground to performance metrics, and CMOs who could not quantify impact saw budgets migrate toward finance and analytics. HR is now facing its own version of that moment."
"With workforce strategy becoming a question of cost, output, and automation rather than engagement and belonging, finance, operations, and technology leaders are increasingly setting the agenda. It's already playing out: CTOs are effectively rewriting job descriptions by determining which workflows can be automated. Operations leaders are sourcing work through professional services firms, freelance and talent platforms, offshore delivery centers, and automation software."
HR rose to prominence during the COVID pandemic by guiding companies through lockdowns, remote work, and the Great Resignation, securing a seat at the executive table. That seat now faces a shift in effective authority as companies prioritize labor as an investment defined by cost, output, automation, and ROI. CTOs, operations, and CFOs are increasingly making strategic workforce decisions: automating workflows, sourcing labor through external platforms and delivery centers, and treating talent spend with financial discipline similar to R&D or infrastructure. AI is beginning to absorb parts of HR’s mandate, altering recruiting and job design dynamics.
Read at Fortune
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]