HR's next job is improving decisions: Four lessons from The Age of HR

The Age of HR is a substantial anthology. It covers everything from AI and workforce analytics to leadership, culture, governance and organisational capability.

With so many contributors it would be easy to treat it as a collection of separate perspectives. Yet a number of common themes emerge. The strongest is that HR's future influence is less about owning people processes and more about improving the quality of organisational decisions.

Several contributors return to the same question from different angles. How does HR help organisations make better decisions about talent, skills, leadership, culture, work design and technology? How does it connect those decisions to outcomes that matter to employees, customers, investors and boards?

Here are four lessons that stand out.

1. Activity is no longer enough

For much of HR's history success has been measured through delivery. Recruitment targets met, managers completing training, improving engagement scores and new programmes launched.

The measures still have some value but executive teams increasingly want to know what changed as a result of these activities taking place.

Labcorp EVP, CHRO Anita Graham and Utah State University management scholar Mike Ulrich argue that HR needs to move from activity metrics towards business impact. Their example is simple. Reporting that 90% of managers completed training tells leaders something about delivery. Showing that manager training correlated with a 12%

increase in team productivity tells them something about value. 

This distinction runs through several chapters. HR can usually describe its inputs: hiring volumes, learning hours, wellbeing participation, leadership programmes and AI pilots. It’s more difficult to show whether these inputs improved growth, customer delivery, productivity, innovation, retention, risk management or organisational performance.

This does not mean every people initiative needs a perfect financial calculation attached to it. But it does mean HR needs to become clearer about the outcomes it is trying to influence and the evidence it can provide that progress is being made.

The contributors suggest that activity is increasingly viewed as the starting point rather than the destination. Delivery matters. Impact matters more.

2. Start with value creation, not HR best practice

One of the most useful ideas in the book comes from University of Michigan’s Dave Ulrich. He suggests adding two words to HR initiatives: "so that".

• Implement AI so that what improves?
• Develop leaders so that what changes?
• Invest in skills so that what becomes possible?

The exercise sounds deceptively simple but in practice it forces HR to connect people decisions with business outcomes and stakeholder value.

Director of the Human Resources Policy Institute at Boston University Peter Fasolo and Adam Steinbach, associate professor of strategic management at the Darla Moore School of Business, make a similar argument through what they call outside-in thinking. Their view is that HR should begin with how the organisation creates value and then work backwards to the capabilities required to deliver it.

That shifts the conversation considerably. Rather than starting with frameworks, processes or best practice leaders start by examining customers, markets, competitive advantage, growth ambitions and strategic priorities.

The questions then become more commercial. Where does the organisation create value? Which capabilities matter most? Where are the talent bottlenecks? Which workforce risks could undermine delivery?

This theme appears repeatedly throughout the anthology. Strategic HR is becoming less about optimising HR and more about understanding the business deeply enough to influence the conditions that drive performance.

3. The boardroom conversation is changing

Several contributors argue that boards are spending increasing amounts of time discussing issues that sit naturally within HR's field of vision: succession planning, workforce capability, culture, leadership risk, AI and organisational resilience.

Yet LAS Advisory Services president Laurie Siegel suggests HR can still make these conversations harder than they need to be. Drawing on decades of board experience she argues that HR often relies on language that obscures rather than clarifies the implications for the business.

Her criticism of "HR-speak" will resonate with many leaders. The issue is rarely a lack of information but instead is about translating people issues into language that supports decision-making.

Darla Moore School of Business professor Patrick Wright adds useful context. He traces how the CHRO role has evolved alongside changing board priorities. Executive pay, succession planning, culture, workforce safety, return-to-office policies and AI have all pulled HR closer to the centre of strategic conversations.

The implication is that boards increasingly want insight into organisational capability. Can the workforce support the strategy? Which skills are becoming scarce? Where are the emerging risks? What capabilities will matter most over the next three to five years?

These are board questions but they are increasingly becoming HR questions too.

4. AI raises the stakes for HR judgement

AI appears throughout The Age of HR but the anthology is measured in its treatment of technology. The strongest message is that AI raises the importance of judgement.

Dave Ulrich argues that AI creates most value when combined with human ingenuity. Graham and Mike Ulrich emphasise workflow design, workforce readiness and culture. Other contributors focus on trust, capability, governance and leadership. Together they point towards a common conclusion. AI makes weak organisational thinking easier to spot.

Deploying a tool is relatively straightforward. Deciding which work should change, which capabilities matter, how trust will be maintained and where accountability sits is considerably harder.

This is why so many contributors return to decision-making. Organisations adopting AI face choices about jobs, skills, governance, leadership, performance and risk. HR sits close to many of these decisions.

The technology may be new but the underlying challenge is familiar. Organisations still succeed or fail according to the quality of the choices they make.

The future HR role may look different

The Age of HR does not argue that culture, wellbeing, leadership, inclusion or employee experience matter less. If anything, many contributors see them becoming more important. But what changes is the expectation placed on HR.

Future of HR founder JP Elliott writes that execution excellence is now a baseline expectation rather than evidence of strategic value. Several contributors make similar arguments in different ways. HR's influence increasingly depends on its ability to connect people, work, leadership and capability to the outcomes the organisation is trying to achieve.

The clearest message to us? The strongest HR leaders will spend less time defending the importance of people and more time helping organisations understand how people create value. This may prove to be the profession's most important shift of all.