What Organisations Are Asking of Their Chief People Officers

While talent, culture and workforce capability remain core responsibilities, conversations with senior people leaders suggest the mandate is broadening in important ways.

Many of the challenges facing organisations today do not sit neatly within a single function. Questions about productivity, workforce transformation, leadership capability, organisational resilience and AI adoption increasingly cut across traditional boundaries. As a result, Chief People Officers are often asked to contribute to a broader set of enterprise priorities than ever before.

Three themes stand out.

1. Leadership capability is being redefined by uncertainty

For many organisations, uncertainty has become a defining feature of the operating environment. Economic volatility, geopolitical tensions, technological disruption and changing workforce expectations are creating new pressures for executive teams. At the same time, organisations continue to pursue growth, transformation and productivity improvements.

Against this backdrop, leadership capability remains a prominent area of focus.

Technical expertise continues to matter, but many of the challenges organisations face today are not purely technical. Increasingly, they require leaders to navigate ambiguity, balance competing priorities, and make decisions without complete information.

This places a premium on qualities such as judgement, adaptability, learning agility and influence. Equally, there is growing recognition that empathy, self-awareness and the ability to lead people through uncertainty are important contributors to organisational performance.

For Chief People Officers, this raises important questions about leadership assessment, succession planning and capability development. 

2. Organisational effectiveness is moving to the forefront

A second theme is the growing focus on organisational effectiveness.

While culture remains an important consideration, the conversation increasingly extends beyond engagement scores and employee experience initiatives. Executive teams and boards are asking broader questions about organisational health, accountability, performance and resilience.

How can organisations sustain trust while driving change? How can leaders maintain pace and accountability without undermining culture? What indicators provide meaningful insight into organisational effectiveness?

These questions are placing Organisation Development, workforce capability and organisational design closer to the centre of strategic decision-making.

3. AI governance is becoming a board-level priority

AI continues to feature prominently in our conversations with CPOs, although the focus appears to be maturing.

Rather than concentrating solely on use cases or productivity gains, organisations are increasingly turning their attention to governance, risk, workforce readiness and organisational capability.
Questions about data quality, accountability and trust are becoming more prominent. In many organisations, these discussions are now reaching the board, reflecting the strategic implications of AI adoption. At the same time, a growing body of research suggests the organisations likely to benefit most from AI will be those that combine machine capability with distinctly human strengths such as judgement, creativity and empathy.

This creates a significant opportunity for CPOs.

As organisations rethink how work is performed and what capabilities will be required in the future, people leaders play an important role in helping executive teams navigate both the human and organisational dimensions of change. 

The continuing evolution of the CPO role

Taken together, these themes point to a continued evolution of the Chief People Officer role.

The most effective CPOs are increasingly operating as enterprise leaders, contributing to conversations that extend well beyond the traditional remit of the people function. Leadership effectiveness, organisational capability, governance, transformation and resilience are becoming more prominent components of the agenda.

While the priorities facing organisations will continue to evolve, one theme appears likely to endure: the need for leaders who can help organisations navigate complexity, build capability and maintain trust through periods of uncertainty and change.

For Chief People Officers, that responsibility has arguably never been more important.

These themes are also shaping the conversations organisations are having with Odgers’ People and Culture Practice. At Odgers, we work with clients to appoint and advise senior leaders across human resources, organisational development, culture and transformation, bringing deep expertise in leadership, organisational effectiveness and people strategy.
 
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