The CHRO agenda is changing.What does that mean for the HR leaders expected to deliver it?

The remit of the CHRO has expanded considerably. AI, workforce redesign, organisational capability, leadership, culture, skills and productivity are no longer simply “HR priorities”; increasingly, they sit at the heart of how organisations expect to grow, transform and remain competitive. The CHRO, or Chief Human Resources Officer, is pivotal in steering these strategic priorities to ensure competitive advantage.

There is rightly a lot of discussion about how the CHRO role itself is changing, but I’ve been thinking about a slightly different question: what does this expanding agenda mean for the HR leaders underneath them who are expected to turn it into reality?

A much broader agenda for HR

Some of the latest research makes the scale of this shift particularly clear.

McKinsey’s HR Monitor 2026 describes this year as a turning point for the People function. Its research highlights persistent gaps between operational planning and strategic foresight, between training and meaningful skills growth, between employee expectations and organisational responses, and between experimenting with AI and achieving scaled impact. In other words, the challenge is no longer simply about making HR processes work well; it is increasingly about whether the function can help the organisation anticipate what it will need next.

Gartner’s 2026 research points in a very similar direction. Based on insights from 426 CHROs across 23 industries, it identifies four major priorities: transforming HR through AI, redesigning work for a human-machine workforce, enabling leaders to drive growth through uncertainty, and embedding culture in a way that genuinely supports performance. Gartner also describes the CHRO mandate as expanding as organisations respond to AI, growth pressures and changes in the employment relationship. The CHRO mandate must now encompass strategies for integrating AI, fostering growth, and evolving employment dynamics.

Deloitte’s 2026 Global Human Capital Trends adds the broader business context. Seven in ten leaders say their primary competitive strategy over the next three years is to be fast and nimble, while the ability to adapt the organisation and workforce to change (and to move people and resources more quickly) are identified as critical drivers of success.

Taken together, these reports paint a fairly consistent picture: businesses need to adapt faster, deploy capability differently and rethink how work gets done, and HR is increasingly expected to help lead that change. The HR function now plays a critical role in guiding businesses through rapid transformation and capability deployment.

A strategy still needs people to deliver it

What I find particularly interesting is what this means for the layer underneath the CHRO. If the agenda at the top of HR is becoming broader and more closely connected to business transformation, then the people responsible for delivering that agenda inevitably need to operate differently too. The conversation is no longer only about whether someone is excellent within their own HR discipline; it is increasingly about whether they can understand the wider organisational context around that discipline.

That might mean being able to understand how technology is changing the work an organisation does, what capabilities the business will need in two or three years, how leaders should take people through repeated periods of change, or how data can support better decisions. These are much bigger questions than simply delivering an HR process well.

This is also where I think hiring conversations are becoming more interesting. Rather than asking only whether someone has held a particular title before, there is more value in understanding the kinds of problems they have actually been equipped to solve.

Broader does not have to mean everything to everyone

There is a risk, though, in how organisations respond to this expanding agenda. It can be tempting to keep adding requirements to individual roles. We want someone strategic but happy to be hands-on; commercial but technically strong; comfortable with data but excellent with people; capable of leading transformation while keeping BAU running smoothly; able to influence senior stakeholders while still getting into the detail.

None of those requirements is unreasonable on its own. But put enough of them into a single job description and eventually we are searching for someone who may not realistically exist.

I don’t think the answer is that every HR professional suddenly needs to become a generalist capable of doing everything. Arguably, the opposite is true. As the People agenda becomes broader and more complex, organisations may need to become more deliberate about which capabilities they really need, where those capabilities should sit, and how the different parts of the People function work together.

That is a very different question from simply asking, “Who can we hire to do all of this?”

What this means for HR hiring

For those of us working closely with HR leaders and hiring teams, I think this is going to be one of the most interesting shifts to watch.

The question is increasingly less about whether someone has previously held exactly the same title and more about the context in which they have operated and the outcomes they have delivered. Has an HRBP genuinely worked through organisational change? Has someone helped redesign how a team or function operates? Can they connect a people challenge to a commercial outcome? Have they built capability rather than simply delivered a programme? Can they operate effectively when the answer is not already defined?

Those questions tell us far more about whether someone is equipped for the environment they are moving into. And perhaps there is a wider question for People leaders too. If the agenda at the top of HR is evolving this quickly, are the roles, capabilities and structures underneath it evolving at the same pace?

There is only so far we can go by asking individuals to become broader. At some point, we also have to ask whether the function itself has been designed for what the business is going to ask of it next.

I’d be really interested to hear how other HR leaders are approaching this.

Are you seeing HR roles becoming broader in your organisation – or are you becoming more deliberate about where different capabilities should sit?

About the Author

Danielle Degen, Head of HR Recruitment at Career Moves

Danielle works with organisations to build HR teams across generalist and specialist disciplines, from HR leadership and People Partner roles to Talent, Reward, L&D, People Analytics and Change & Transformation.

With over 10 years’ experience recruiting HR and People professionals across permanent, fixed-term and temporary roles, she draws on an extensive HR network and day-to-day conversations with employers and candidates. This gives her an on-the-ground perspective on how the People function is evolving, the capabilities organisations are looking for and the changing demands placed on HR leaders.

Connect with Danielle on LinkedIn

Further reading

McKinsey — HR Monitor 2026: A turning point for the people function Read the McKinsey report

Gartner — 2026 HR Trends: 4 Strategic Priorities for the Modern CHRO Read the Gartner research

Gartner — Future of Work Trends for CHROs in 2026 Read Gartner’s future-of-work research

Deloitte — 2026 Global Human Capital Trends Read the Deloitte report