HR Leaders Need a Seat at These 3 Tables
HR is transforming, and one area ripe for a shift is collaboration. HR leaders who invest time and resources into their relationships with these three functions will be uncovering a competitive edge.
Work looks different in 2025. As innovation speeds up, expectations are rising for everyone—including the HR function.
New hires are needed to satisfy skill requirements, change management teams are operationalizing to adjust for new functions, and replacing old systems to make room for new solutions has become a priority.
Most HR leaders are trying to continue with business as usual, shepherding their teams through ambiguity and preparing the workforce for a big change—all while trying to figure out their landing plan for the future. But what’s at the bottom waiting for us when we land? And most importantly…do we have a parachute?
The only way to get these answers is to be in the rooms where the conversations are happening and where decisions are being made, ensuring there’s a plan in place before jumping.
Strategic business leaders should be looking to HR for more than taking marching orders for AI implementation. . Instead, they should be activating HR to have an influence, partnering closer than ever to align objectives with the HR function’s strategy and ensuring they have the ability to execute on company goals.
The future of the business is no longer an HR problem.—it's an “everyone” problem. Here are three areas where HR should have a seat at the table.
Taking HR From Cost Center to Strategic Partner
Finance may be obvious to some, but you’d be surprised how underrated this cross-functional relationship is—and how much their alignment benefits organizations.
It’s easy to want to shy away from this connection point because in some ways, it raises more questions than answers. But those questions can be the difference between you and your competitor who is outpacing you.
The future of the business is no longer an HR problem—it's an “everyone” problem.
HR teams are constantly trying to strike the right balance between hiring, talent strategies, employee experience programs, benefits packages, and so much more. With that many plates spinning in the air at once, it’s going to take a forward-thinking HR leader to ask the pertinent performance questions, like:
What return on investment have our quarterly hires had year-to-date?
Do we anticipate any drops in productivity, and if so, how can we get ahead of those?
What is our retention rate costing us?
These questions are critical to business success, because they lead to insights that impact the bottomline and put HR at the forefront of revenue-realization opportunities. When finance and HR co-create on people analytics, they can uncover insights like:
Increased hiring accuracy. A strong return on investment for quarterly hires year-to-date, up 25% from last year because of a shift to requiring skills data in applications, which increased the accuracy of hiring.
Proactive talent engagement. Productivity typically drops in Q2 due to summer holidays, so a new talent engagement strategy is being implemented to keep employees active, increasing productivity year-over-year by X%.
Diagnosing retention issues. The retention rate is costing the company $X per year, due to low employee satisfaction rates at the one-year mark. This step of the employee journey has the biggest drop-off, prompting a deeper diagnosis of the root cause.
Not only does this position the HR function as a strategic collaborator, it proves to the business that HR is not looking for vanity metrics. They're looking for proof points, and if what they’re doing isn’t working, they’ll pivot.
HR teams need to be informed of the impacts that their decisions are having on the business—otherwise, everyone loses. In fact, a 2023 report highlighted that while 57% of organizations agree that people analytics leads to better business outcomes, only 23% often or always integrate business data with HR data. What a missed opportunity.
This underscores the significant, yet often untapped, potential for collaboration. When financial analytics uncover critical insights that are useful to HR teams, like retention risks or productivity downturns, it can have a tangible impact on performance.
Key Takeaways
The opportunity: A closer partnership between HR and finance means smarter, more informed execution as innovation speeds up.
The risk: The lack of a close partnership between HR and finance means misaligned success metrics that don’t drive bottom-line impact, leading to inefficient resource allocation and missed opportunities for growth.
HR is not looking for vanity metrics. They're looking for proof points, and if what they’re doing isn’t working, they’ll pivot.
Legal and HR Navigate AI Woes
In many ways, the HR and legal functions share similar responsibilities when it comes to the workforce.
They both enforce guidance and policies that protect the employee and the employer, advise the business on different options to minimize risk and ensure the right policies and procedures are in place to meet compliance standards.
The relationship between HR and legal is very much an advisor-consultant-style one. And with AI, this partnership should be going deeper than ever before.
AI usage is on the rise, and is the time for the HR and legal partnership to take on a new challenge together. As workforces embrace this new technology, the opportunities are as large as the risks.Together, they have to identify what legal risks AI is posing to the company in order to avoid any potential downfalls. They must be the mechanism that keeps AI usage in the safe zone of benefitting their organizations, while keeping everyone’s AI interaction risk-free.
That’s a big task.
This means:
Collaborating on employee AI usage policies that are clear, ethical, and legally compliant.
Defining the compliance policies that need to be rolled out for new AI-powered technology, especially concerning data privacy and algorithmic bias.
Co-creating the learning and development training on new technology for employees, ensuring they understand the ethical and compliant use of AI in their roles.
As AI continues its rapid ascent in the workplace, so do the legal and ethical complexities that come with it. According to McKinsey, 93% of businesses are planning to increase their AI investments over the next three years. With states like Illinois, Colorado and California enacting laws to govern the use of AI in employment decisions, HR and legal having joint oversight is no longer optional—it's imperative to avoid significant legal and reputational risks.
93% of businesses are planning to increase their AI investments over the next three years
according to McKinsey.
Key Takeaways:
The opportunity: A proactive and deeply integrated partnership between HR and legal ensures ethical and compliant AI adoption, transforming potential liabilities into competitive advantages through responsible innovation.
The risk: A siloed approach risks legal oversight, regulatory fines, and damage to employee trust and brand reputation due to unchecked or biased AI applications in the workplace.
IT and HR Co-Create the Digital Employee Experience
For too long, the relationship between HR and IT has been largely transactional—HR needs a new system, IT implements it. New hires are onboarded, IT handles their system setup.
But in a world where technology underpins nearly every aspect of the employee experience, this dynamic needs to evolve into a true strategic partnership.
HR is the voice of the employee, and IT is the enabler of the digital workplace. In 2025, one doesn’t exist without the other.
HR relies on IT to select, integrate, secure, and maintain crucial, mission-critical tools. Without IT's deep understanding of infrastructure, data security, and system integration, HR initiatives can stumble before they even begin.
When it comes to the AI era, this partnership means:
Working together to select and implement new HR tech that is intuitive, secure, and truly enhances employee productivity and engagement.
Collaborating on robust data governance frameworks to protect sensitive employee information, especially as AI tools increasingly process and analyze HR data.
Partnering to provide employees with the necessary training and support to effectively leverage new technologies, ensuring that tech investments translate into tangible productivity gains.
A 2025 report indicates that 60% of employees feel capable of effectively working alongside AI tools in their current roles. While this is a testament to effective collaboration between HR and IT in preparing the workforce, it’s also a call to action: ensure the right technological infrastructure is set up, or your employees will outpace you.
While commendable, when employees take technology advancements into their own hands, it creates a world of risk that IT, legal, and HR are on the hook for. Getting ahead of AI adoption ensures that your people are empowered to use the right tools for their work and the security of the business.
Key Takeaways:
The opportunity: A deep partnership between HR and IT enables the seamless integration of transformative technologies, leading to enhanced employee experiences, improved productivity, and a future-ready workforce.
The risk: A fragmented or reactive relationship risks technology silos, security vulnerabilities, and a failure to fully leverage innovative tools, ultimately hindering HR’s ability to drive business value.
Getting ahead of AI adoption ensures that your people are empowered to use the right tools for their work and the security of the business.
It’s All in the Collaboration
The future of work isn't a distant concept. It's happening now. When business leaders empower their HR function by proactively partnering with the finance, IT, and legal functions, they also inherently empower their human workforce.
For HR leaders, stepping into these cross-functional conversations isn't just about expanding influence—it's about leading with foresight and ensuring the entire organization is equipped to navigate rapid change.
By actively collaborating with finance, legal, and IT, HR isn't just building a parachute; it’s helping design the landing strip for a successful, human-centric future.
How are you fostering these critical partnerships within your organization today?
Top talent is at risk: 75% of industries currently show an increase in high-potential voluntary turnover. Understand the potential market impact and strategies to retain your strongest performers in this Workday report.
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