Chief People Officer 2030: Developing a Toolkit for the Future of Leadership
March 18, 2025 – HR leaders are deep into the evolution of their roles, shifting from back-office operational experts to strategic business partners. Every day, they navigate transformation on multiple levels—within their roles, their function, their organizations, and the broader business environment. The Covid-19 pandemic kick-started the pace of change, but volatility since, including geopolitical and economic volatility, new workforce expectations, new stakeholder expectations, and step changes in digital tools—most notably AI—means that change hasn’t slowed. Chief people officers (CPOs) are having to reinvent both themselves and their functions in real time, according to a new report from Heidrick & Struggles’ Emma Burrows, Sandra Pinnavaia, Sharon Sands, Brad Warga, Jennifer Wilson, and Darren Ashby. The firm provides insights from more than 50 CPOs at leading companies suggest three areas where CPOs should focus as they evolve their role and function to deliver both strategic and operational performance.
“This evolution has created an inherent tension in HR,” the report said. “The function is still responsible for foundational operations related to people, such as making sure employees are paid properly and on time, extending benefits, and negotiating labor contracts. But it is also responsible for attracting, developing, promoting, and retaining game-changing talent; making sure the right talent is in the right places; ensuring the organizational design makes sense; and supporting a thriving culture, to name just a few of its remits.”
CPOs need a new tool kit to transform themselves and their function in the context of their transforming organizations. Further insights from these discussions, combined with Heidrick’s research and ongoing conversations with additional CPOs around the world, suggest three focus areas for CPOs to build the expertise, relationships, and function needed to thrive in 2030: delivering impact with leadership liquidity and a dynamic workforce; channeling innovation and enhanced productivity with AI; and fostering resilience and inclusion.
The key challenges for CPOs today
CPOs have indicated five challenges reshaping their role and responsibilities. By deftly addressing these challenges, Heidrick explained that CPOs can ensure organizations better support their leaders and are prepared for the future.
1. Building the capabilities and capacity to meet the new strategic mandate.
CPOs are often key strategic partners within the executive leadership team. Heidrick sees that companies increasingly want a CPO who can consider, and transform when needed, the organization’s design, its leadership, and its people strategy in response to the company’s particular situation as it changes over time—leaders who build for the business, not for HR alone.
“The shift in the title, from CHRO to CPO, in many organizations underscores the degree of change in the HR function and the broader strategic remit of these leaders,” the firm said. “This shift in the role is also leading to the evolution of the HR function because the function needs to support the CPO differently. Because so much is net new and many changes are affecting the entire enterprise, CPOs today must be systems thinkers; competently executing the responsibilities of the HR function is no longer nearly enough. The organizations winning in 2030 will have CPOs who are true business leaders, who shape the top line versus focusing on traditional bottom-line management. This requires CPOs to get deep into strategic conversations—on workforce planning, talent attraction, development, and retention, succession planning, and business outcomes—all while navigating generational shifts and leadership dynamics. In this rapidly evolving talent landscape, they must lay out future workforce plans that take into account location strategies, cost–benefit analyses, skills-based hiring, and contingent labor.”
Heidrick also noted that CPOs must be at the heart of the overall company agenda and build high-value, influencer relationships across the executive team, including an elevated relationship with the CEO. “Many CPOs are partway there, striving for stronger, more productive partnerships, but they are not always finding the most-senior leaders open to meaningful debate and dialogue,” the report said. “CPOs do often indicate that they are finding key co-strategists in the CEO’s direct reports and division leaders. As the CPO spends more time on strategic matters, other leaders within the function need to step up on the traditional HR operations side. The function must drive short- and medium-term development plans for the organization, as status quo is not an option. Some do this by establishing a program office to manage multiple projects.”
Related: Finding HR Leaders and Diversity Chiefs Remains Hot Spot for Executive Recruiters
In addition, CPOs must ensure that they themselves and other functional leaders develop their knowledge about emerging opportunities, risks, and technologies to maintain high performance, according to the Heidrick report. Many HR functions also need to shift the balance of their employees toward people with strong digital skill sets as data and AI play a larger role in HR operations, and HR analytics must shift toward predictive analytics skills to be useful in CEO decision making.
2. Developing the perspective and agility to manage the leadership pipeline and workforce.
With CPOs having a more strategic role, they have greater insight into, and influence and impact on, the company’s ability to reach its goals, according to the Heidrick report. “This means taking a longer-term perspective than ever before—but also one that is able to change rapidly in response to strategic and market shifts,” the firm said. “It requires a deep understanding of how to respond to changes in talent markets, the need for reskilling, the potential of more fluid labor markets, and the options for organizational redesign. It also requires the ability to treat the company’s leadership pipeline holistically and as a long-term strategic asset, rather than the traditional model of siloing functions such as executive attraction, retention, development, and succession planning.”
Why Chief People Officers Can be Great CEOs
There is a growing shift in the way that companies view their people and culture function. No longer simply the human resources department or another cost center, the name change appears to be helping people and culture become recognized as the strategic business partner they always were – one that not only enables but also plays a crucial part in helping to drive organizational success, according to a new report from TRANSEARCH International. “A chief people officer can play an integral role in the executive leadership team, and often serves as a key advisor to the CEO) – a trusted right hand,” said the study. “Certainly, the pandemic elevated the role of human resources further, inspiring CPOs (and other leaders) to think about the well-being of their people and innovative ways to ensure their organizations continue to have a positive culture.”
This last point is a particular pain point—not only for CPOs but also for CEOs and board members. According to a recent Heidrick & Struggles survey, CEOs and boards of more than a third of companies around the world have low confidence in their organization’s ability to meet its strategic goals. These leaders particularly lack confidence in their executive succession and leadership planning: nearly half aren’t confident those processes are positioning their organization well for the future. Many executives at other levels have pointed to failures of connection between individual leader development and succession planning as a particular problem.3
In another survey, CPOs cited several significant barriers to improving executive succession planning, and just four percent said their executive succession planning is as effective as it needs to be. CPOs also cite failures in their leadership development programs. Executives’ number one suggestion for improving promotion and succession planning processes is linking these processes more closely to individual executive learning and development plans. But if doing that were straightforward, CPOs would have made the changes already.
“Another area where traditional structures and practices are inhibiting transformation is in benefiting from more fluid labor markets at every level,” the Heidrick report said. “In a rapidly changing environment, where new skills can be required for leaders and the whole workforce with little notice—such as the sudden emergence of gen AI two years ago—interim employees can be a significant part of the solution. But in most cases, this kind of hiring resides in procurement or within functional lines of business, which disrupts planning and budgeting for fractional and project-based workers.”
3. Navigating change, innovation, and stability in a cost-constrained environment.
CPOs are tasked with guiding the workforce through transitions, including technological advancements such as AI to reinvent the employee experience, while maintaining employee well-being and preventing burnout, the Heidrick report explained. This includes fostering adaptability and building resilient leadership pipelines for the future, all in a cost-constrained environment. As one CPO said recently, “Every year we have less and are asked to do more.”
“At the beginning of Covid, it seemed that the need to find this kind of balance might be temporary,” the Heidrick report said. “It is clear now that it is persistent, as organizations learn to live with volatility in an era of permacrisis. Wars, climate crises, and political upheaval are near constant, and their effects are felt within businesses—for example, in terms of employee mobility, cross-national teaming, and engagement. CPOs face an urgent question of how they can bring a workforce together when more and more people won’t even talk to one another.”
This reality requires CPOs to provide more simplicity and clarity than ever, so people can focus on what’s in front of them and keep executing, according to the Heidrick report. “There is no single approach to supporting people and the business during volatility; each situation requires adaptability, instinct, and cultural sensitivity, particularly with a globally diverse workforce,” it said. “CPOs should balance empathy and neutrality, offering support while maintaining focus on business objectives. Navigating all this is requiring CPOs and the HR function to evolve their traditional models and methods in these areas as well, which is something many still struggle with.”
4. Adjusting to generational and workforce trends.
Shifts in workforce demographics—including the rise of Gen Z, remote and hybrid work preferences, and the growing use of on-demand experts and gig workers—all require CPOs to adapt engagement, retention, and talent management strategies, the Heidrick report pointed out.
CPOs have to address the demands of younger workers while not alienating older generations, though our discussions suggest that this often-cited concern may be somewhat overblown. For example, Heidrick heard from one CPO that Gen Z workers demanded an on-site therapist, who was then used by employees of all generations. “So it may well be that all workers can benefit from some of the expectations of younger workers in other ways as well,” the report said. “Then there is the larger issue of navigating the balance between in-office expectations and workforce preferences for remote work. While younger employees value in-person mentorship, some, particularly parents of young children and people with physical disabilities, prioritize the flexibility and convenience afforded by hybrid or remote working arrangements.”
More broadly, more and more employees at all levels, including leadership, prefer to work outside traditional career norms. For example, Heidrick sees many data scientists and digital innovators preferring to take contract roles and move rapidly from organization to organization to keep their skills fresh.
Related: 5 Interview Questions to Ask a Chief People Officer Candidate
“Furthermore, the expectations of people who do pursue employment at a single company are also challenging traditional approaches,” the report continued. “Gen Z’s focus on gaining skills and prioritizing purpose over long-term job security, for example, is causing organizations to rethink engagement and retention strategies in a context where, our research has shown, development and promotion opportunities are an important tool. Younger workers are also demanding meaningful work opportunities and career paths that are individualized; already the phrase mass individualization is becoming familiar. So, as skill development becomes more important, leaders are seeing a trend toward in-office work for growth and collaboration, which still needs to be balanced with the other benefits workers see in remote options.”
Heidrick stresses that CPOs have to address these trends and shifts and support leaders as they do the same, leading with more care, compassion, and kindness than ever before and with a heightened focus on building resilience and bench strength in the workforce.
5. Mastering AI, technology, and data-driven decision making.
AI and other emerging technologies are becoming embedded across functions, revolutionizing work, productivity, and decision making. Most leaders say AI is being used in at least some parts of their organizations, but 51 percent of all leaders (and 54 percent of HR leaders) say they’re not adopting it fast enough. The top barrier to progress is talent, as it’s hard for companies to find the AI expertise they need, according to a separate report from Heidrick.
“It’s not yet clear how emerging technologies will fundamentally shift the HR agenda,” the report said. “But whether it’s the same job, a new context, or a role transformed altogether, what is clear is that the people function’s ability to use available technology—and to support the entire organization in learning to use it—must improve. Across the organization, CPOs need to support other leaders in leveraging AI effectively while managing its risks, such as potential workforce displacement and the need for retraining. HR leaders are perhaps more aware than many other executives that, at most companies today, AI is advancing in small steps, affecting specific processes but not causing wholesale changes in the workforce—yet. Nonetheless, AI can already create significant amounts of change, and CPOs must be able to advise on the best ways to deploy the human time that AI adoption can free up.”
One CPO, for example, found that when their organization introduced new AI tools, it saw a 15 percent increase in productivity—which immediately raised the question of what to do with that time.
In addition, Heidrick explained that job and organization design require a deep understanding of the technology, so it’s now a requirement that the HR function be literate in the capabilities of AI, big data, and large language models. “CPOs must get crystal clear on the strategic rationale for adopting—or not adopting—these tools and then stay ruthlessly focused as technologies and strategies evolve and as companies find the compelling business cases for wider implementation of AI,” the report said.
Getting from today to 2030
“Most of these challenges for CPOs are inherently cross-functional, and, as we have noted, the traditional HR tool kit doesn’t work well to address them,” Heidrick said. “CPOs know they need to fundamentally disrupt their function in order to help it, and the entire organization, transform to thrive. They are already beginning by developing their own and the function’s knowledge of and connections to the business, which is also helping change mindsets across the organization about what HR can do. But there are three other key ways CPOs can pursue transformation.”
- Driving impact with leadership liquidity and a dynamic workforce.
- Channeling innovation and enhanced productivity with AI.
- Fostering resilience and inclusion.
For leaders at all levels, many CPOs see fostering growth, development, and engagement as important to resilience. Heidrick’s research suggests that transparency about opportunities is an important element of fostering a sense of growth and connection. “Resilience and inclusion can be particularly complex on the executive team,” the firm said. “At this level, CPOs are often the glue: they advise the CEO, of course, individually and on team dynamics, and they often also act as formal or informal mentors to other C-suite leaders.”
Related: How the Chief People Officer is Reinventing HR
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief and Dale M. Zupsansky, Executive Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
