Future of the CHRO: Top HR Priorities That Will Drive Business Impact in 2023

Human resources (HR) is having more than a moment. Ever since being tapped at the pandemic’s onset to mitigate talent challenges, the office of the CHRO is leading the movement to establish business value in all things related to managing the workforce—from employee engagement to flexibility, benefits to mental health, and more. Because after all, for an organization to succeed, they need people with the right skills—a realization that was magnified by having to navigate the acute impact of the pandemic and its long-lasting effects.

Consequently, HR has more than just a seat at the table. They’re at the helm, steering companies alongside the rest of the C-suite to become more inclusive and holistic in the business strategy.

As for what CHROs will be facing in 2023, the following insights from business and HR leaders reveal a sharpened focus on creating a workplace that’s in step with the pace of change.

Navigating a Tight Labor Market Requires Partnership Across the C-Suite

HR partnering with finance and IT has always been ideal, but in the coming year, the partnership is a must in navigating the tightening labor market in 2023. Each function in the C-suite brings strengths and unique insights into rethinking talent strategies that drive business impact.

Here’s what Ida Quamina, managing director, Workday persona and innovations lead at management consulting company Huron, said at Workday Rising.

“Everybody is looking at how we deal with the talent situation differently. And that’s not just a situation for the office of the CHRO. Normally when we talk about talent, we think that’s a CHRO problem, right? Well, it’s a full C-suite collaboration that is really going to make us successful on how we get through the next talent renaissance and look at this differently.”  

Quamina continued: “That means that the C-suite has a role in every piece of talent. The CHRO is the one that’s guiding, developing. The CFO is the one that’s making sure we’ve got the financial resources in place to be able to support that. The COO is building the infrastructure and the operations to make sure that we can guide our talent. And the CIO is enabling the technology that allows us to be successful with the things that we want to be able to do.”

Taking an AI/ML Skills-Based Approach to Uplevel Operations

During the “Great Resignation”—when workers were quitting their jobs en masse—many cited stalled career growth, such as learning new skills, among the top reasons for quitting a job. While salary still matters in job satisfaction, workers made it clear that “money talks” isn’t the whole conversation. Employees place high value on nonmonetary benefits, such as the opportunity to build new skills, as a reason to stay at a job.

Taking it a step further, using artificial technology/machine learning (AI/ML) to augment a skills-based approach empowers not only an individual worker with career growth, but also the organization as a whole. 

Consider this: With technology built on AI/ML, companies can identify the skills gap between what the current workforce can do and what’s needed for a project. And companies can fill the skills gap with help from AI/ML technology. For example, if the company doesn’t have enough capable workers for a project, AI/ML can help identify workers with adjacent competencies who can go through training to obtain the required skills.

In other words, by leveraging AI/ML to create a workplace culture where workers are given opportunities for skills building and career development, companies gain workers who can adapt to workforce disruptions and drive business growth. 

“When organizations are focused on identifying and growing skills across their workforce, they no longer need to put individuals in defined, compartmentalized roles to be able to address dynamic business needs,” says Chris Ernst, chief learning officer at Workday. “Employees will be matched less by their reporting lines and more by their skills and interests—which will allow businesses to get work done in a much more inclusive, agile, and flexible way.” 

Leveraging Employee Feedback to Foster Engagement

The business landscape is always changing, but what has remained constant is the high value of the workforce. Employees continue to be a company’s greatest asset in determining company growth. But to bring out the most value from their workforce, companies will need to fine-tune their approach to increasing engagement. Employee sentiment captured as data in an employee survey can guide how leaders can create a workplace culture that fosters engagement.

“Employers should test their mettle this year and, to gain a competitive edge, listen closer than ever to the evolving needs of their people and respond with urgency,” says Phil Chambers, general manager at Workday Peakon Employee Voice. “The companies that get ahead in 2023 will overcome rising burnout risk, disengagement, and ongoing attrition by keeping up the investment in people and taking their team of loyal and engaged employees along with them, through good times and bad.” 

Making Adaptability Fundamental to the Business

Company leaders know the importance of adaptability in the future of work, but the push in 2023 will be taking adaptability beyond the aspirational and infusing it into the company’s foundation.

HR will continue to play a huge role in driving a systematic approach to adaptability. With agile technology tools and processes as the foundation to foster productive experimentation, companies will naturally bring out the adaptability, skills richness, and digital savviness of their workforce. As a result, workers become empowered to quickly and easily navigate career growth, meet business needs, and drive ongoing digital transformation.

John Boudreau, senior research scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, described agile processes in this way when speaking at the “Office of HR: The Power to Adapt Through the Evolution of Work” keynote at Workday Rising:

“Realize that work is going to be perpetually obsolete and perpetually upgraded, just like your phone, just like your automobile, just like other products,” Boudreau said. “We have learned now that work is going to change fast. So you can see, I hope, that starting with, ‘We don’t know what work is going to look like in the future; we don’t know what the right policy is’ does not mean chaos.”

After navigating these past years filled with unprecedented disruption, business leaders have come to fully support what HR leaders have known all along: Lasting success must center on people. Looking ahead, HR leaders must dive deeper in connecting business value and growth to everything related to talent. Among other things, that will involve creating workplace environments and setting up systems that bring out the agility of the workforce. Clearly, they’re transforming more than the workplace. HR leaders are also transforming their roles—and are more than ready for it.