Productivity Blog

Good CHRO Transitions Build Relationships. Great Ones Build Organizational Readiness. (i4cp login required)

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:45:00 GMT

What I have learned from advising CHROs through the moments that matter

As a senior advisor for i4cp, I spend a great deal of time with CHROs in moments that matter. One of the most consequential is stepping into a new role at a new company. In mentoring conversations and candid exchanges with executives making that move, I have noticed a consistent pattern: good transitions and great transitions often begin with many of the same activities, but they are guided by very different questions.

A good transition builds relationships, listens carefully, learns the culture, and gains command of the HR agenda. A great transition does all of that and uses it to form a clear view of whether the organization can deliver its strategy.

That distinction matters because the CHRO is not simply the leader of HR. The CHRO is a full member of the C-suite, bringing expertise in people, organization, and culture alongside business acumen. The role is to help the leadership team see and act on the human and organizational conditions that will enable or constrain the organization's performance.

Start with the business, not the HR function

Before evaluating programs or redesigning processes, understand how the company creates value. How does it compete? Where is growth expected to come from? What strategic bets are the leadership team making? Where is execution already proving difficult?

Every strategy carries assumptions about leadership, skills, ways of working, decision rights, and culture. The new CHRO should make those assumptions visible, test them against reality, and identify the few organizational capabilities that matter most. This is the shift from viewing people practices as an internal agenda to viewing human capability as a source of stakeholder and business value.

Look for constraints, not just symptoms

Turnover, inconsistent leadership, declining engagement, hard-to-fill roles, and stalled transformation efforts are important signals. But they are rarely the whole diagnosis. A great CHRO asks what in the organizational system is producing those outcomes.

That means examining where critical work gets stuck, which capabilities are scarce, how decisions are made, what leaders are held accountable for, and whether structure, incentives, talent, and culture reinforce the strategy…or work against it. The point is not to create an exhaustive inventory. It is to find the pivotal constraints: the few people- and organization-related conditions that disproportionately affect execution.

Use listening to build a point of view

Listening tours are valuable, but listening is not the end product. Pattern recognition is. When leaders across functions describe the same friction, when employees encounter barriers senior executives do not see, or when stated priorities diverge from daily choices, the CHRO is learning where the operating system of the organization is breaking down.

The best transitions turn those patterns into an evidence-based point of view: where human capability is enabling performance, where it is constraining performance, and which decisions will create the most value. That is a more useful outcome than a long list of observations or an early rush to announce initiatives.

Create ownership beyond HR

Another pattern separates good from great: ownership. If a capability gap is framed as an HR problem, the organization will wait for HR to solve it. But strategy execution is an enterprise responsibility. The CHRO's job is to help the C-suite name the tradeoffs, assign clear ownership, and connect people, organization, and culture decisions to business outcomes.

This does not diminish HR's accountability. It elevates it. HR brings the discipline, data, and expertise to diagnose the system and design interventions; business leaders own the choices and behaviors required to make those interventions work.

What great looks like after 90 days

By the end of the first 90 days, a great CHRO may not have every answer, nor should they pretend to. But the CHRO should be able to articulate a small number of consequential insights:

What the business strategy requires from the organization.
Which leadership, workforce, operating-model, or cultural capabilities are most critical.
Where the most important constraints and risks sit.
Who owns the decisions and actions needed to address them.

The roadmap follows from that diagnosis. The point of view comes first.

The question I encourage new CHROs to answer is simple:

What are the three most significant people and organization related constraints on this company's ability to execute its strategy?

Not the three biggest HR issues. The three biggest business issues with a human-capability dimension.

If a new CHRO can answer that question with evidence, align the C-suite around the implications, and establish clear ownership for action, the transition is no longer merely good. It is beginning to create enterprise value.

That is the opportunity in a CHRO transition: not simply to learn the organization, but to help it become more capable of delivering its ambitions through people, organization, and culture.

Continue the conversation

The most effective CHROs accelerate their learning by comparing notes with peers who have navigated similar business, talent, and leadership challenges. Those conversations turn experience into insight, and insight into better choices.

If you're stepping into a new CHRO role, or preparing for one, consider joining your peers at the i4cp Next Practices Now Conference, where senior HR and business leaders come together to discuss what's actually working in leadership, culture, workforce strategy, and organizational performance. Hope to see you there!

What Are the Best HR Conferences to Attend in 2027? (i4cp login required)

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 15:00:00 GMT

Which HR conference is the best?

That's a tough question to answer, because… it depends.

When choosing an HR conference, it's easy to be dazzled by sponsor showcases, massive expo halls, and celebrity speakers. But the best events are those that put HR practitioners and their real-world challenges at the center of the agenda. Whether you're focused on technology, strategy, culture, or talent acquisition, we've compiled a short list of the most valuable HR conferences to attend over the coming year—each catering to a different audience and need.

In order of time of year:

i4cp Next Practices Now Conference (March 2027)

Best for: Senior HR executives and CHROs seeking strategic insights; executive peer networking

Unlike sponsor-heavy conferences, i4cp's annual event is deliberately practitioner-first, with leaders from some of the world's top companies sharing actionable strategies and no expo hall. Sessions focus on aligning HR with business outcomes, organizational agility, and future-of-work research. If your role involves influencing the C-suite or driving strategic HR transformation, this is the most valuable HR leadership conference to attend.

Workhuman Live (April 2027)

Best for: Culture, DEI, and employee experience leaders / director level.

Workhuman Live focuses on recognition, connection, and building a more human workplace. It's practitioner-driven, with HR leaders sharing how they've designed programs that strengthen culture and improve engagement. If your priorities include retention, belonging, and people-first leadership, this is one of the most relevant HR events in 2026.

SHRM Annual Conference & Expo (June 2027)

Best for: HR generalists, compliance experts, and professionals seeking broad HR exposure.

The SHRM Annual Conference is the largest HR gathering in the world, drawing tens of thousands of attendees across all levels and specialties. While its scale means heavy sponsor presence, it also offers unparalleled breadth—compliance updates, I&D, leadership development, and more. For junior to mid-level professionals seeking comprehensive HR development, SHRM is still a cornerstone event.

Talent Connect (TBD - Likely September 2027)

Best for: Talent acquisition, recruiting, and employer branding professionals.

Talent Connect is LinkedIn's flagship event for talent and talent acquisition leaders. Sessions feature real-world recruiting strategies, sourcing innovation, and employer brand case studies, along with other talent-related subjects. It's especially useful for companies looking to maximize their use of LinkedIn's recruiting tools while learning from peers in the TA community.

HR Tech (October 2027)

Best for: HR technology leaders, HRIS managers, and anyone evaluating new HR software.

HR Tech is the largest and longest-running conference dedicated to HR technology. While the expo floor is massive, the real value comes from practitioner-led sessions and case studies that show how organizations are implementing systems for recruiting, learning, analytics, and employee experience. If you want a deep dive into the future of HR systems and AI in HR, HR Tech is the must-attend event.

Unleash World (TBD - Likely October 2027)

Best for: Global HR leaders and organizations with an international workforce.

Unleash World is Europe's premier HR event, bringing together practitioners and futurists to explore global talent challenges, workforce technology, and the changing world of work. With an international audience, it's ideal for benchmarking against companies outside the U.S. and gaining insights into cross-border HR strategy.

Final Takeaway: Which HR Conference Is Best for You?

HR Tech → best for HR technology solutions and systems.
i4cp Next Practices Now → best for senior leaders driving HR strategy and culture change.
Unleash World → best for global HR perspectives.
LinkedIn Talent Connect → best for talent acquisition.
Workhuman Live → best for employee experience and culture.
SHRM Annual → best for broad, all-around HR development.

The "best" HR conference depends on your role and goals. Whether you're leading digital transformation, shaping organizational strategy, or building a people-first culture, there's a conference designed to help you move forward.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best HR conference for technology in 2027?

The HR Technology Conference (HR Tech 2027, Las Vegas) is the premier event for HRIS leaders and anyone evaluating new HR systems, analytics, and AI in HR.

What HR conference is best for senior HR leaders?

The i4cp Next Practices Now Conference (Scottsdale, AZ) is designed for CHROs and executives, focusing on strategy and aligning HR with business outcomes.

Which HR conference is best for global HR professionals?

Unleash World (Paris, France) offers global perspectives on talent, workforce strategy, and HR technology.

What HR conference focuses on company culture and employee experience?

The i4cp Next Practices Now Conference focuses heavily on organizational culture and strategy, and is emceed by Kevin Oakes, author of Culture Renovation. Workhuman Live is dedicated to recognition and workplace culture as well.

Is SHRM's annual conference worth it?

SHRM Annual (June 2025) is the largest HR event, offering broad coverage across compliance, leadership, and HR best practices. It's ideal for HR generalists and professionals seeking wide-ranging learning opportunities. It is not a good investment for CHROs and senior HR leaders.

This article was last updated on August 31, 2026.

Prove It or Lose It: Why HR Needs an ROI Story (i4cp login required)

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 17:01:00 GMT

Many organizations invest heavily in programs without fully understanding their effects. Based on more than 11,000 ROI studies conducted or reviewed by ROI Institute, the main cause of program failure is a lack of business alignment.

We see the HR version of that problem constantly. Teams build upskilling programs, implement new compensation and benefit strategies, they can even predict future talent needs, but when someone asks what all of it is worth, the answer is often: That's hard to quantify.

But it's not.

That's the gap that i4cp's People Analytics Board set out to close. Following a year's worth of exploration and discussion in partnership with the ROI Institute, they recently published a new guidebook (for i4cp members), titled The ROI for People Programs: A Guide for Non-Analysts. And it's why we're writing this: too many HR leaders are being asked to prove their value but either don't have the time or the bandwidth to do it.

What ROI actually is (and isn't)

The biggest misconception about ROI is that it's a finance exercise, reserved for CFOs or those with advanced statistics degrees. It isn't.

ROI, done well, is a discipline anyone can learn: a conservative, evidence-based comparison of what a program delivered against what it cost, built to hold up under scrutiny.

There is a half-century of history supporting ROI methods and calculations for HR programs.

Doing this well requires isolating what a program actually requires, what it actually caused, converting those requirements and outcomes to money using the most credible values available, and reporting the result honestly, intangibles included. The math is straight forward and can be found in popular books like ROI Basics, Proving the Value of HR: How and Why to Measure ROI, and Investing in People.

Why we built the guidebook

The idea came out of conversations with People Analytics leaders. Some had challenges with using ROI in storytelling to influence action; others were so busy putting out fires and reports, their teams didn't have time to think about ROI analysis. But this type of analysis is exactly what leaders need to know: People Analytics can drive top-line organizational performance as well as bottom-line cost savings.

In addition, HR leaders from other functions came to us and wanted to learn how to conduct an ROI study so they could prove the value of their work.

The ROI Institute generously shared their methodology, including templates, and step-by step instructions to achieve a credible ROI calculation that a non-analyst could actually pick up and use on their next project.

Importantly, we also included a handful of short case studies. And the stories we collected as a board for this research were inspiring.

Leadership development delivers a 47% ROI

A precision-manufacturing company launched a four-day leadership workshop for 970 first-level managers, with each participant selecting two KPIs to improve using the competencies with their team. A sample of 72 managers was evaluated using the ROI Methodology®.

Impact data were collected through action plans covering safety, retention, quality, productivity, and cost. Effects were isolated using participant estimates adjusted for confidence, and data were converted to money using standard values (24%), expert input (63%), and estimates (13%).

Total monetary benefits: $538,640

Fully-loaded costs: $365,260

BCR: 1.47 | ROI: 47%

Intangibles included improved engagement, satisfaction, and reduced stress — planting in executives' minds that leadership development is an investment, not a cost.

Culture transformation drives 1,066% ROI

A State Department of Corrections engaged a consultant to lead a three-year Culture Transformational Journey across 7,005 employees. Every employee attended a one-day Culture Alignment workshop, supported by 350 Culture Champions who modeled, coached, and facilitated the change.

Impact data were collected via an all-employee survey and agency records. Five measures were converted to money: turnover, productivity, work quality, efficiency (time savings), and innovation. Effects were isolated using participant estimates adjusted for confidence.

Total monetary benefits (3-yr): $148.1M

Fully-loaded costs: $12.7M

BCR: 11.66 | ROI: 1,066%

Intangibles included stronger teamwork, safety, engagement, trust, and career development — reinforcing that culture is a mission-critical investment, not a cost.

A Redeployment Story

About a decade ago, Alexis and her team at a Fortune 500 global company, found that approximately 30% of those who received pink slips were rehired within 1-3 years. They isolated the cost to the business for every boomerang at ~$140,000, between direct costs associated with the exits and costs associated with the rehire process, a significant sum and an incentive for the business to focus on redeploying as many of these people internally as possible, to avoid that combined cost that delivered no value to the business.

Because Alexis also oversaw workforce planning efforts, she had insight into where people could move into open roles or soon-to-be open roles instead of out the door. As the matching improved and recruiting processes changes facilitated placement of those whose jobs had been eliminated, the successful redeployment rate climbed from roughly 30% to roughly 80% of affected employees.

Changing those results so dramatically didn't come from just one project, but rather a suite of coordinated efforts, including better exposure to relevant internal opportunities, recruiting processes that accelerated offers for people in redeployment, a culture of temporary developmental assignments that built skills and networks.

Once isolated and converted to a dollar figure, the hard cost-avoidance number served as an incentive for that coordinated redeployment effort that might never have been supported otherwise.

Of course, there are intangible benefits to investing in people in an organization in this way - but demonstrating the clear, financial impact smooths the path to implementing these interventions.

What People Analytics Leaders Need to Know

A hiring model that closed vacancies faster. An upskilling push. A redeployment effort. Most People Analytics teams are sitting on a version of one of these stories.

People Analytics is so much more than reporting. Proving value is how People Analytics can earn their next investment. Teams that can't show ROI get treated as a cost center. Teams that can, get funded, scaled, and asked back to the table for the next big decision.

Most importantly, even when analysis shows no financial return on investment, this method will help identify why, exposing problems with customer service, for example, or a lack of training. Either way, the discipline pays off: a clear answer instead of a guess, and a next move instead of a stall.

Cummins’ Intentional Culture: Five Actions for Turning Culture into a Competitive Advantage (i4cp login required)

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 15:10:00 GMT

As part of i4cp's commitment to helping organizations become future-ready, we're continuing our series on Future-Ready CHROs…leaders who are deliberately shaping cultures that enable their organizations and people to thrive amid constant change.

Few companies illustrate the importance of culture quite like Cummins, a Fortune 500 company ranked #137 in 2026, with approximately 70,000 employees. Yet "culture" is one of those words that everyone uses, and few people define the same way.

For Marvin Boakye, Chief Human Resources Officer, the definition is refreshingly simple:

"Culture is what you practice, what you promote, and what you permit."

That definition has become the foundation for a much larger effort at Cummins to make culture more intentional, teachable, and measurable.

The effort is particularly relevant given the evolution that is underway at Cummins. The company has progressed significantly beyond its traditional identity as an engine manufacturer, with employees operating around the world and businesses spanning power generation, transportation, industrial applications, and emerging energy technologies. Its customers increasingly depend on Cummins as a technology and power-infrastructure partner, including amid the rapid growth of data centers and AI.

That kind of evolution puts a premium on organizational adaptability, yet Boakye isn't approaching culture as something that needs to be "fixed." In fact, it's quite the opposite.

Cummins has enjoyed a healthy culture for some time, and the company has received significant external recognition for it. The challenge, Boakye believes, is keeping that culture future-ready, and making sure that a strong culture is intentional enough to remain an advantage as the business, and the industries they serve, continue to evolve.

"Every organization has a culture, whether they know it or not," Boakye recalled a longtime Cummins board member telling him. "Very few organizations have an intentional culture."

That observation stuck.

"So, we have continued as an organization to say, what does it mean to have an intentional culture?" Boakye said. The answer has evolved into five distinct actions.

1. Create a Clear Set of Values

The first step toward an intentional culture is clarity.

Organizations can have lengthy lists of values, but that doesn't necessarily mean employees understand them or even remember them when they need to make a decision. Cummins has therefore focused on making its values clear enough that they can become part of everyday behavior.

The company's experience has reinforced a basic principle: values cannot simply be words displayed on a wall. They need to provide guidance in the moments when people are actually making decisions, which is particularly important for a company as large and global as Cummins. A cultural framework needs to resonate across geographies, functions, and levels of the organization.

The work is also evolutionary. Cummins is currently preparing for the next evolution of how it talks about its values, building on what it has learned from putting its culture into practice.

That willingness to continually refine the framework is part of what makes the culture intentional. The goal isn't to find the perfect set of values and declare victory. It is to continually ask whether the organization's stated values help people operate and execute effectively, and whether those values remain relevant to where the company is headed.

2. Practice the Behaviors That Make Values Visible

Values tell people what matters, but behaviors show people what that looks like day-to-day. That distinction is central to Cummins' approach.

As the company has worked through its culture, it has translated values into specific behaviors that employees can observe and apply. In some cases, Cummins has gone further by defining different levels of proficiency for specific behaviors depending on the role.

That creates considerably more clarity than simply telling someone to "live the values."

It is also why Cummins has engaged employees in the process. Boakye said the company solicited feedback from employees to understand what they are learning and experiencing, even though it was understood that leadership would own the culture.

That distinction is important: employee input helps inform the culture, but leaders are responsible for making it real.

3. Lead by Modeling the Culture You Expect

People experience culture through their leaders. Cummins therefore made a deliberate decision that leaders would be the primary models of the culture.

"If you're going to be a leader in Cummins," Boakye explained, "there's three things that you need to be able to do to demonstrate this culture."

Self-awareness
Authenticity
Vulnerability

For many leaders, particularly those who grew up in a traditional corporate environment, that can feel like a significant departure from the leadership model they were taught. Boakye included himself in that group.

"We were taught, be tough. Never show emotion," he said. "Don't admit that you're wrong."

Cummins is deliberately challenging that notion. Leaders are expected to acknowledge mistakes, talk openly about what they are learning about themselves, and be willing to express uncertainty or even fear.

Boakye recalled being able to tell his leadership team, "We're about to go through something. I'm scared."

That kind of vulnerability might traditionally have been viewed as a sign of weakness. At Cummins, he says, the opposite has happened.

"When our leaders do that, it actually creates greater relationships and more trust."

The company began this work with its senior leadership team and then extended it to the next 10,000 people leaders. And there is an important reason for putting leaders at the center: while the business environment continues to evolve, the core of the culture is sustained by what leaders do repeatedly.

4. Develop Yourself So You Can Coach Others

In addition to modeling the culture, Cummins also expects leaders to coach others to represent the culture as well. That requires leaders to continually develop themselves first.

"Developing yourself so that you can coach others" became the fourth action in Cummins' framework.

The development work is highly experiential. Leaders regularly practice self-awareness, authenticity, and vulnerability. They practice giving and receiving feedback. They practice talking about emotions.

For an organization with a strong engineering heritage, that last element might sound unusual. Boakye acknowledges that it can feel foreign.

But Cummins has found that learning to talk about emotions, and then connecting those conversations to the business, can be a powerful differentiator.

"Every time we did that, it continues to increase the level of trust that we have with our team members," Boakye said.

The point isn't emotional expression for its own sake. It is developing leaders who are sufficiently self-aware to understand their own impact, authentic enough to build trust, and vulnerable enough to create an environment where others can learn, experiment, and grow.

And then teaching them to coach those capabilities in others.

5. Measure Whether Culture Matches Intent

The final action addresses perhaps the biggest weakness in most culture efforts: measurement.

"You needed to treat culture and measure culture in the same way that you measure your finances," Boakye advised.

Cummins uses engagement surveys to measure specific elements of culture. Leaders conduct listening sessions and "cafés" to understand what employees are experiencing. Leaders are expected to share what they learn back with the organization.

The company's global analytics team has also developed talent-risk analysis using a set of variables that Boakye said is about 90% accurate in identifying patterns associated with employee risk. But perhaps more important than any individual metric is what Cummins has done with accountability.

The company has wrestled with the question of what accountability actually means in the context of culture. After trying different definitions, it has embedded accountability into its evolving values framework.

The executive leadership team now has a set of accountability metrics that are published and reviewed quarterly with the CEO. Those measures encompass business performance, equitable outcomes, and how effectively leaders are delivering on the values and behaviors that matter to Cummins. And the measures cascade.

Boakye receives his own metrics, shares them with his team, and expects his team to make those metrics their own. That is a meaningful shift from treating culture as an engagement score or an HR initiative.

Instead, culture has become part of the operating system.

Culture in the Age of AI

Intentional culture isn't about constantly reinventing the organization. It is about actively renovating the culture by being deliberate about what needs to be preserved, and what needs to evolve as the business environment changes.

The next frontier for Cummins' culture work may be AI.

Boakye believes AI will play a significant role across virtually every part of HR, including talent assessment, development, and employee services. Cummins is already using AI to make it easier for employees to get answers in the language and format they need. But Boakye sees an even more interesting opportunity: teaching AI the culture.

The company is exploring ways to feed its methodologies, onboarding practices, values, and behaviors into AI models. The potential application is powerful.

Imagine a leader asking an AI-enabled coach for advice on a situation and receiving an answer grounded not simply in generic leadership principles, but in Cummins' own values and behaviors. AI could potentially respond with something like: That approach is inconsistent with the values and behaviors you've established.

In that sense, AI could become another mechanism for making culture teachable and scalable. The biggest obstacle isn't necessarily technology. It's adoption.

Employees naturally have concerns about what information they're entering, what happens to it, and how it will be used. Cummins is therefore working to build comfort and confidence with AI as part of its broader development cycles.

That work will also require the very cultural capabilities Cummins has been developing: adaptability, openness, trust, and a willingness to learn.

To be Future-Ready, Working on the Culture is Never-Ending

There is an appealing irony in Cummins' approach.

The company is deliberately trying to make its culture more intentional while simultaneously recognizing that culture can never be completely perfect. It has to continue to evolve.

Boakye describes culture work as a constant journey of learning, adjusting, and adapting. That mindset is particularly important for an organization navigating technological change, energy transition, AI, and new demands from customers and employees. It also explains why Cummins is beginning to think differently about the talent it brings into the organization.

The company has learned that technical competence alone doesn't always predict success for senior external hires. Some highly capable leaders struggled because they found it difficult to adopt Cummins' culture.

In fact, Cummins is increasingly asking:

How adaptable are you?
Are you willing to embrace the culture?
Are you willing to go through a journey that might teach you new things about yourself?

That may ultimately be one of the most important capabilities in an organization that intends to remain future-ready.

Five Lessons for HR Leaders to be "Future-Ready"

Cummins' experience offers a useful roadmap for organizations that want to move culture from aspirational to intentional:

1. Define culture simply.

If employees can't explain what culture means, it is difficult to make it intentional. Cummins' "practice, promote, permit" definition gives leaders a common language.

2. Make values visible through behaviors.

Values become meaningful when employees understand what they look like in practice, and what proficiency looks like in different roles.

3. Put leaders at the center.

Employees experience culture through their leaders. Leaders therefore need to model the culture rather than simply communicate it.

4. Develop leaders so they can coach others.

Culture becomes scalable when leaders can help other people develop the capabilities needed to live the culture.

5. Measure culture against intent.

If culture is a competitive advantage, it should be measured, discussed, and held accountable with the same discipline applied to other aspects of business performance.

Perhaps the biggest lesson from Cummins is that intentional culture isn't about creating a perfect culture. It is about creating enough clarity and discipline to know what the organization stands for, how those principles should show up in behavior, how leaders should model them, how people can develop them, and whether the culture people experience actually matches the culture the organization intends to create.

That is a much higher bar than simply having values on a wall.

And for a company navigating as much change as Cummins, it may also be one of its most important sources of future competitive advantage.

Hilton’s Hospitality Mindset: Creating a Competitive Advantage Through Culture (i4cp login required)

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 21:12:00 GMT

As part of i4cp's commitment to helping organizations become future-ready, we're continuing our series on Future-Ready CHROs…leaders who are creating cultures that prepare their people and organizations to thrive amid constant change.

A true trailblazer in this area is Hilton, one of the world's most recognizable hospitality companies, and Laura Fuentes, Hilton's Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, who has helped shape one of the world's most celebrated workplace cultures.

This past year the company was named the #1 World's Best Workplace by Great Place to Work and Fortune (its second time in three years at the top), among many other accolades. In fact, Hilton is the first and only hospitality company to have reached #1 on both the Fortune U.S. and World's Best Workplace lists twice.

While Hilton's journey to the world's best workplace took several turns, Fuentes' own career path has been anything but traditional. She began as a civil and structural engineer, earned an MBA, worked at McKinsey and Capital One, and eventually moved into HR through workforce analytics. After joining Hilton 13 years ago, she became CHRO in 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic brought the travel industry to a virtual standstill.

Today, Fuentes leads Hilton Supply Management in addition to her HR responsibilities and is preparing to move into a new role as Hilton's Chief Brand Officer later this year. She also serves on the board of Chipotle and several other organizations.

But perhaps the most interesting part of her story is how she describes Hilton's culture journey: not as a destination, but as an operating discipline that is continually renovated.

A Culture Built for Scale

Hilton is a complex organization and building a unified culture is an impressive accomplishment.

Founded more than 100 years ago by Conrad Hilton, the company today operates over 9,400 properties across more than 144 countries and territories, spanning 28 brands. More than 500,000 team members work under the Hilton flags, although more than half are employees of Hilton's franchise partners.

Like most franchise structures, creating a unified culture can be a challenge since Hilton doesn't control some aspects of employment practices across its franchise network. At the same time, the guest expects the Hilton experience to be consistent regardless of who technically employs the person delivering it.

"Anything we put out from a culture perspective, our owners have to be on board, and it has to deliver an ROI for them because we are shepherding their resources and their investments. So we want to be really wise stewards of that," Fuentes explained.

That means culture has to be carefully curated, and it has to simultaneously create value for team members, owners, guests, and the business. Hilton's culture aims to ensure team members feel connected to something larger than themselves. Fuentes says the organization then spent years systematically working toward that ambition.

The result is a culture that has become one of Hilton's most recognized competitive strengths. But Fuentes is quick to emphasize that HR didn't create it alone.

Fueled By Your Feedback

For HR leaders, one of the most important lessons from Hilton's journey is deceptively simple:

HR alone doesn't build great culture.

"HR can be the architects, and we can put together the scaffolding," Fuentes said. "But culture is what our team members experience every single day."

Hilton spent years using employee feedback and external benchmarking to understand where the experience was falling short. Fuentes recalls that when she first joined the company, Hilton was receiving good, but not great, results from its employee surveys and Great Place to Work benchmarking.

For roughly six years, the company wasn't making the lists it wanted to be on.

Rather than dismissing the data, Hilton used it as a roadmap. The organization addressed specific gaps in programs and benefits but discovered that programs alone weren't enough. Leaders had to understand and embrace them, encourage employees to use them, and be held accountable for creating the experience Hilton wanted.

"We didn't want to just be the best in hospitality," said Fuentes. "We wanted to be the best employer, full stop."

One particularly effective tactic was remarkably simple: when Hilton changed its team member travel program based on employee feedback, communications from the CEO and Fuentes carried a visual stamp which said, "fueled by your feedback."

Employees could see that their voice had led to an actual change, ultimately creating a virtuous cycle: listen, act, communicate, and then listen again.

As part of this cycle, Fuentes believes there are two responsibilities at the heart of building great cultures: listening and storytelling. She calls HR leaders (and more broadly, organizational leaders) the "Chief Listening Officers" and "Chief Storytelling Officers."

Listening happens at scale through surveys, but it also happens one-on-one. Some of Hilton's most impactful programs have emerged from individual conversations with team members, and the power of storytelling is what made those experiences visible.

Those stories are relayed through town halls, digital communications, messages to general managers, and even physical spaces in its hotels. For Fuentes though, storytelling isn't limited to a polished corporate communication. It is the accumulation of small moments in which leaders inspire people, recognize them, connect them to the mission, and help them see themselves as part of something larger.

"It's all these micro-moments where you inspire someone through your words and the shared experience of your team members," said Fuentes.

That matters because Hilton's culture is ultimately tied to a larger purpose:

"To fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality."

As one of the most concise, memorable, and unique vision statements in the global hospitality industry, it draws from the writings of Conrad Hilton. Fuentes sees that vision statement as a powerful connection between individual work, the company, its communities, and society.

From "Great Place to Work" to "Great Place to Stay"

Hilton has also been deliberate about connecting culture to business strategy.

"Our culture and HR strategy is literally based on the four pillars of our business strategy, which have been constant for the last 15 plus years," Fuente observed. "And we look to HR to expand our culture, to drive success with our customers, to grow our network and drive performance. Everything that we do ties to those strategic pillars."

The company tracks outcomes such as turnover, engagement, productivity, reputation, usage, and cost. That discipline has led Hilton to think about its ambition in a slightly different way.

It wants to be not only the best place to work, but also the best place to stay.

And that connection is important. Employee experience and guest experience are not separate agendas…culture plays a huge part in how the business delivers its brand promise. Talent practices, leadership behaviors, and day-to-day employee habits directly influence the guest experience Hilton promises.

Fuentes moving from CHRO to Chief Brand Officer is maybe one of the best visible representations of this important bond.

A Hospitality Mindset Can Work in Any Industry

That idea comes through particularly clearly in Hilton's inaugural workplace culture trends report: The Hospitality Mindset: A New Blueprint for Culture and Performance for Any Industry, which applies principles traditionally associated with guest hospitality to the workplace.

Fuentes says Hilton wanted the report to be useful beyond hospitality, to identify trends that were both timely and timeless. The company also commissioned independent research that found consumers pay more attention to brands that treat employees well and are more willing to pay more for and recommend brands known for treating their employees well.

The report identifies five shifts shaping the workplace:

Mutual mentorship - moving beyond traditional top-down mentoring toward 360-degree learning, where an intern and CEO can learn from one another.
RTO (Return to opportunity) - reframing the return-to-office debate around the value of in-person connection, community, learning, and relationships.
AI anxiety to AI agency - helping employees move from fearing AI to feeling empowered to use it.
The Chief Host Officer - applying the principles of great hospitality to leadership: anticipating needs and helping people feel seen, welcomed, and valued.
The meaning multiplier - connecting people to a purpose larger than themselves, creating a cycle of greater engagement, innovation, and performance.

The "Chief Host Officer" concept may be the most distinctly Hilton idea of the five. A great host anticipates what guests need, creates an environment where they feel welcome, and pays attention to the details that shape their experience. Fuentes believes great leaders should do the same for their employees.

Learning Out Loud

Hilton is also applying the Chief Host Officer mindset to one of the biggest cultural challenges facing organizations today: effectively leveraging artificial intelligence.

Rather than beginning with mandates, Fuentes says Hilton first worked to understand how AI was already being used across the organization and where the business could benefit from AI.

The company identified three primary opportunities: improving the guest experience and personalization at scale, creating new forms of distribution and "agentic commerce," and improving efficiency and productivity in the back office.

From there, Hilton launched AI learning curriculums designed for different levels of fluency, established governance around enterprise tools, and used storytelling and recognition to encourage experimentation.

One particularly interesting example was an internal AI summit where employees shared their early use cases in three-minute presentations. The goal wasn't to transform Hilton's AI strategy in one afternoon. It was to create a culture of "learning out loud."

And there is solid evidence that the approach is working but despite the improvement, Fuentes knows there is still work to do.

"We don't have certainty," she said. But leaders can provide clarity, context, and a willingness to acknowledge what they know, what they don't know, and what they are learning. That may be one of the most important cultural capabilities an organization can build in an era of rapid technological change.

The Power of Visibility

When asked what distinguishes Hilton's best leaders, Fuentes returned to principles rooted in the words of founder Conrad Hilton. Great leaders, she said, do three things:

" Dream big. Inspire others. Make it happen."

Dreaming big provides inspirational vision. Inspiring others creates followership. And making it happen means delivering results.

Fuentes has seen those behaviors repeatedly in Hilton's general managers around the world, including leaders operating through war, natural disasters, economic uncertainty, and political instability. The behaviors are intentionally simple enough to become common language across the organization.

And visibility matters.

Fuentes points to one practical behavior that great Hilton GMs consistently demonstrate: walk the floor. Don't hide in the office. Get to know your people. Listen to them. Find their stories. Then use those stories to inspire others.

She offered a powerful example from a trip to Portugal, where a Hilton team member approached her after a town hall and shared a deeply personal experience involving a devastating loss. He also explained where Hilton had fallen short in supporting him.

Fuentes listened.

Then she took the story back to her team, which worked with the employee to develop a new program called Crisis Concierge, now available to support team members facing similar circumstances.

The program has helped dozens of employees. But Fuentes believes its cultural impact is much larger.

"Maybe 150 have used this program," she said. "But guess what? 500,000 believe in our culture because we did this."

That is the essence of the Hilton approach: listening becomes action; action becomes a story; the story creates meaning; and meaning strengthens culture.

The Journey Never Ends

Perhaps the most important revelation from Hilton's culture journey is that the company doesn't consider the journey finished.

Fuentes emphasizes that culture has to keep evolving, undergoing continuous renovation as the environment changes. The same organization that spent years pursuing excellence in its employee experience is now asking what that culture needs to look like in the age of AI.

Her advice to HR leaders is equally relevant. Stop assuming you have all the answers. Instead, ask better questions.

"The future belongs to the curious," Fuentes said.

That means being willing to sit with uncertainty, challenge assumptions, and resist becoming too comfortable with the way things are.

At the same time, she believes organizations should double down on what makes them distinctive, particularly the human elements that technology cannot easily replicate.

"What is your unique contribution to the world in this moment?" she asks. "And figure out what is your promise to your people."

When those two things come together, she believes performance and profits follow.

Key Takeaways for HR Leaders

Hilton's experience offers several lessons for organizations seeking to build a future-ready culture:

Start with a big ambition. Hilton's culture journey began with a clear aspiration to create an extraordinary, unified culture, not simply to improve engagement scores.
Make culture everyone's job. HR can architect the experience, but leaders create it through their everyday behaviors.
Listen, then act. Employee listening only builds trust when people can see what changed because they spoke up.
Turn culture into common language. Simple but catchy concepts such as "Chief Host Officer," "meaning multiplier," and "dream big, inspire others, make it happen" give leaders language they can remember and use consistently.
Connect culture to business performance. Hilton evaluates people initiatives through the same lens it applies elsewhere in the business: value, scalability, strategic alignment, and measurable impact.
Use storytelling as an operating mechanism. Stories make strategy and culture relatable and memorable…and allow employees to see themselves as part of both.
Create AI agency, not just AI governance. Training, experimentation, recognition, and transparency can help employees move from anxiety toward empowerment.
Keep renovating. Even a highly recognized culture cannot stand still. New technologies, new generations of workers, and changing business conditions require constant adaptation.

Hilton's culture journey demonstrates that hospitality is more than a customer-service philosophy. It can become a leadership model, a talent strategy, a brand strategy, and ultimately a business strategy.

For Fuentes, the goal is not simply to create a great place to work.

It is to create an organization where people believe they are part of something meaningful, where leaders take responsibility for the experience they create, and where culture helps the business perform today while preparing its people for whatever comes next.

As she put it near the end of our conversation: "Double down on the humans, and double down on your differentiators."

That may be one of the simplest - and most powerful - formulas for becoming future-ready.

Acceleration Through Culture Transformation: How Northwestern Mutual Is Preparing for the Next 165 Years (i4cp login required)

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Snapshot

Organization: Northwestern Mutual
Industry: Financial services
Headquarters: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Employees: Approximately 8,300
Focus: Enterprise culture transformation to support modernization, speed, and alignment

The Business Context

For more than 165 years, Northwestern Mutual has helped families and businesses achieve greater financial security. The financial services company, ranked No. 109 on the Fortune 500, serves more than 5 million clients across the United States. It is the nation's leading direct provider of life insurance and one of the top independent broker-dealers of investments. Focused on growth, relevance and competitiveness, company leaders saw opportunities to accelerate how leaders align, make decisions, collaborate and execute across the enterprise.

At stake was the company's ability to move with greater speed, clarity and consistency while preserving the strengths that have defined its legacy.

Culture Ownership at the Top

From the outset, the effort was embedded within Northwestern Mutual's broader transformation agenda: increasing execution discipline, evolving its operating and workforce model, and strengthening enterprise alignment and accountability.

The expectation was explicit: Culture change starts with leaders. How leaders make decisions, set priorities, collaborate, and show up every day determines whether the organization can execute strategy at the required pace.

Kelly Culler, executive vice president and chief people officer, emphasized that this was not anHR initiative operating alongside the business. It was integral to how the business needed to operate.

"The work started immediately. As we onboarded a new CEO and formed a new leadership team, we used that moment to be clear about how we needed to operate differently. We were already talking about culture, not as a separate initiative, but as part of how the business would move forward. We did not waste time." said Kelly Culler

The message was clear: To move faster, leaders would need a shared set of operating behaviors to guide decisions, tradeoffs and accountability.

The Business Reality: What to Preserve, and What Must Change

Leaders began with listening. Northwestern Mutual conducted an enterprisewide listening effort, including surveys, focus groups, and input from leaders across roles and levels, to understand how culture was experienced, not just how it was intended. The work was supported by i4cp Consulting and informed by its research-based Culture Renovation approach and external benchmarks.

The result was a credible fact base that clarified both what to preserve and what needed to change.

As Culler noted, "When the data comes directly from employees, it changes the conversation. It is no longer an opinion or a hypothesis. It becomes a reality leaders have to work with."

Employee feedback was consistent and nuanced. Employees expressed strong pride in the company's legacy, purpose, and stability, which they wanted to preserve. At the same time, they called for greater speed, clarity, and trust to meet evolving business and client demands. This dual mandate, preserving what differentiates the organization while addressing what slows execution, became a defining principle of the transformation.

Co‑Creation with Leaders and the Business

Culler and her senior leadership team worked directly with the findings to identify the cultural shifts needed to support the company's strategy.

i4cp Consulting supported the process through benchmarking, research insights from other organizations, and facilitated working sessions that helped leaders navigate tradeoffs and enterprise priorities.

Through workshops and enterprise input, leaders co-created a culture architecture grounded in real business decisions rather than aspirational language. The process helped translate employee sentiment into actionable operating behaviors and a practical framework for execution.

The resulting culture pillars were:

Connect with purpose
Act with ownership
Advance what's next

Each pillar was supported by observable behaviors tied to prioritization, decision‑making, collaboration and accountability.

"When we stopped talking about culture as an HR concept and started talking about how work gets done, it resonated," Perrone said. "The pillars gave leaders practical language for decision-making, prioritization and daily execution."

Leader‑Led Activation and Accountability

Culture activation was embedded into leadership practices rather than added as a separate initiative. The chief people officer aligned the effort with senior team development, leadership expectations and enterprise priorities, beginning with the executive team.

"Alignment is more than agreement in the room. Each leader had to understand what this required of them and own their part of it. That is when it became clear: this was not HR's culture strategy. It was their leadership strategy."

To reinforce accountability, Northwestern Mutual established a culture scorecard aligned with existing leadership metrics. The focus was on outcomes leaders could influence over time, including:

Decision clarity and speed
Quality of collaboration across the enterprise
Follow‑through on commitments
Leader role modeling of the culture pillars

"As part of that accountability model, culture is measured at the line-leader level and then rolled up, giving leaders visibility into adoption and reinforcing that culture is managed with the same discipline as other business priorities," Perrone said.

As senior leaders modeled the behaviors, they reinforced a clear message: Expectations apply equally at the top. Culture is managed through visibility, reinforcement and accountability.

The Result: A Leadership‑Owned, Future‑Ready Foundation

The outcome is not a one‑time initiative, but a durable, leadership-owned foundation that includes:

A culture architecture aligned with the company's legacy and strategy
Clearly defined leadership behaviors co-created across the enterprise
Measurement and reinforcement mechanisms that support sustained execution

"We are still early, but the signals are encouraging," Culler said. "Leaders are beginning to use a more common language around decisions, ownership, and how teams work together. That is the work that has to happen before you see broader culture change take hold."

How i4cp Consulting Supported the Work

i4cp Consulting:

Designed the enterprise listening approach
Synthesized findings into a clear case for change
Applied external benchmarks and high-performance workplace research
Facilitated leadership discussions on priorities and tradeoffs
Helped translate insights into actionable behaviors and culture architecture
Supported the design of measurement and reinforcement mechanisms

"Partnering with i4cp helped us turn strong data into a clear case for action," Perrone said. "It gave us a unifying voice and connected culture to how the business needs to operate."

Why This Approach Aligns with i4cp Research

Northwestern Mutual's approach reflects several patterns consistently associated with strong cultures and higher organizational performance, including broad employee listening, leadership behaviors aligned with strategy and disciplined measurement over time.

Most notably, culture is managed as a business priority, reinforced by the chief people officer and co-created across the organization.

By combining strong internal leadership with external research and advisory support, Northwestern Mutual has built a system for execution designed to help the organization adapt, perform, and thrive for the next 165 years.

ADT’s Culture Renovation®: How CHRO Dave Scott Turned a Corporate Initiative into a Business Operating Model (i4cp login required)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 15:07:00 GMT

As part of i4cp's commitment to helping organizations become future-ready, we're initiating a series on Future-Ready CHROs. This series will feature heads of HR who are committed to creating a culture that fosters an agile workforce…a workforce which embraces—and even exploits—whatever the organization encounters in the future.

First up: ADT, a leading provider of smart home and business security solutions.

ADT's Culture Renovation®: How CHRO Dave Scott Turned a Corporate Initiative into a Business Operating Model

When a current company's name has the word "telegraph" in it, you know it has some history...but also a tremendous amount of agility and adaptability to endure through to today.

Originally founded as American District Telegraph, ADT has spent more than 150 years adapting to a changing world while staying true to its mission of protecting what matters most. ADT was founded in 1874 following a nighttime burglary that inspired a telegraph-based alert system for homes. Today ADT powers smart home platforms, AI‑enabled monitoring centers, and a workforce of more than 12,000 people serving six million households and businesses across the U.S.

While ADT has always leveraged the latest technology, Dave Scott, ADT's Chief People and Administration Officer, told i4cp's Next Practices Weekly audience that technology alone doesn't sustain an organization's success. Culture does.

When Scott originally arrived at ADT, culture was already a topic of conversation, but it lacked coherence and operational integration. His day‑one assignment was to change that.

"My boss, Chairman of the Board, President and CEO Jim DeVries, handed me a list of five priorities, and number one was to define our culture roadmap with intentionality," Scott recalled. "I remember freezing for a moment. Here I was, walking into a 150-year-old company and being asked to help shape its culture. It was both humbling and daunting."

One of the outside sources Scott turned to was i4cp, and the company's extensive work on how to morph culture into a healthier, more productive environment. Leveraging i4cp's ground-breaking Culture Renovation® research, Scott and his team began to diagnose the current state, identify gaps, and build a roadmap.

The turning point came when ADT stopped treating culture as a corporate initiative and started treating it as a business operating model. Culture was no longer something to communicate. It became a strategic capability embedded in how the company operated.

A Nonlinear Path to HR Leadership

Scott's career path itself was agile and involved several pivots.

"I've had a chance to do a lot. I've been a professional clown, I worked at Chuck E. Cheese, I was a balloon artist," he joked during the session. He later served in the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Coast Guard before entering HR through Walmart, where he spent two decades rising to lead major parts of the U.S. HR organization.

That robust and varied background shaped his leadership philosophy. "I realized I had a passion for this work, and a passion to lead an HR team," he said. After serving as CHRO at Dish Network, Scott joined ADT nearly three years ago, taking on a broad portfolio that today includes HR, real estate, corporate security, investigations, environmental health and safety, and even facilities issues.

"If it comes to HR strategy, I'm the first phone call. If you have a light out in your workspace, I'm also the first phone call."

Understanding ADT's Legacy to Shape Its Future

Scott believes culture work must be grounded in organizational identity. ADT's history provided a powerful anchor, and the legacy of connection and protection still defines the company.

"We're backed by the world's best 24x7 monitoring centers," Scott noted. "We've got 12,000‑plus team members that stand on call to serve our subscribers on a daily basis."

But serving such a diverse workforce—from field technicians starting their routes at 7 a.m. to monitoring center employees handling life‑threatening events—requires a culture that is real, relevant, and lived.

"This can't be a binder. This can't be a corporate‑led initiative," Scott emphasized. "It has to matter to a technician or to an overnight monitoring center team member."

The Power of Co-Creation

Given the organizational diversity, Scott realized that defining the culture roadmap the CEO requested needed to get embedded into the everyday workflow.

"We wanted to talk about how ADT evolved the culture from a corporate initiative into a business operating model." That language resonated deeply with ADT's CEO, executive team, and board because it connected culture directly to performance, customer experience, and strategic execution. But Scott knew he needed the buy-in of the entire organization if it was going to stick.

"It couldn't be an HR initiative. It had to be something to which the entire organization felt a level of ownership."

To do so, Scott created a "co-creation mentality" with the workforce and enlisted their help.

"Culture is built with the employees, not for the employees," Scott advised. "The team members built this product. And so, when it got reproduced, it was kind of like, 'Well, of course that's what our culture means.'"

As part of this effort, like many organizations who have successfully changed culture, Scott enlisted a team of "culture champions," which consisted of influencers and energizers…employees throughout the organization who helped evangelize the culture efforts.

"Their job is to amplify it in their work and their language, and it helps connect us from the frontline to the executive leadership team."

Ultimately, ADT's culture renovation centered on three principles:

1. Clarity of Purpose

ADT articulated a cultural identity called BLUE, rooted in protection, trust, and service. It was intentionally simple and actionable, with each letter representing a desired behavior: Bold, Lead, Unite, and Elevate. More importantly, the framework provided a common language for decision-making, leadership expectations, and day-to-day execution across the enterprise.

2. Consistency Across the Enterprise

Scott's team ensured BLUE showed up in technician ride‑alongs, monitoring center workflows, leadership development, and frontline coaching. Culture became embedded in operating rhythms rather than episodic events.

3. Credibility Through Action

Employees needed to see leaders modeling the culture. Scott emphasized that culture must be "real enough to matter," which meant removing barriers, improving tools, and aligning incentives.

The Role of Research and Community

Scott's exposure to i4cp's research on culture began at Next Practices Now, i4cp's annual conference for HR leaders, where he talked with i4cp's consulting team. That conversation led to deeper engagement, including culture diagnostics, executive briefings, and ongoing advisory support.

"It really also gave us the backing to say there's a science behind how we do this."

Beyond the research, he credits the i4cp community with helping ADT accelerate its journey. "It led to a lot of the thoughts that we'll talk about again here this morning," he told the audience.

Leaders are using the BLUE framework to guide decisions, reinforce accountability, and align teams around common priorities. Technicians and monitoring center employees report a stronger connection to the company's mission and the role they play in delivering it. Culture is no longer viewed as an HR initiative. It has become part of ADT's operating vocabulary, and a foundational element of how the business executes its strategy.

The renovation also strengthened alignment across the executive team. As Marshall Bergmann, i4cp's SVP of Consulting, noted during the session, the operating‑model framing "is language that resonates with your CEO, your executive team, your board."

Scott's approach demonstrates a core insight from i4cp's research: culture renovation succeeds when it is leader‑led, employee‑owned, and operationally embedded.

Key Takeaways for HR Leaders

ADT's journey offers several lessons for organizations seeking to renovate culture:

Start with identity. A 152‑year legacy became a strategic asset, not a constraint.
Make culture operational. Embed it in workflows, leadership behaviors, and frontline experiences.
Use research to build credibility. Diagnostics and benchmarking helped ADT prioritize and sequence change.
Ensure culture matters to every role. If it doesn't resonate with the frontline just as much as it does with leadership, it won't stick.
Lead visibly. Scott's broad remit allowed him to connect culture to real operational issues, from safety to facilities.

Becoming Future-Ready

ADT's culture renovation is a model of how legacy organizations can evolve without losing their identity. By turning culture into a business operating model, Dave Scott and his team created a framework that strengthens performance, deepens employee connection, and helps ensure a 152-year-old company remains ready for whatever comes next.

This is culture work at its most practical and most human. And it is exactly the kind of culture adaptability i4cp research shows high‑performance organizations adopt to thrive in the future.

For more information on i4cp's Culture Renovation® services, see i4cp Consulting Services - Culture Change Consultants.

Will AI replace HR? The data says that’s the wrong question. (i4cp login required)

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT

New i4cp research shows HR headcount is holding steady, but the work underneath it is transforming fast. Organizations pulling ahead are redeploying talent rather than cutting it.

Despite widespread predictions that AI will eliminate large segments of HR, the data tells a different story. According to new research from the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), 57% of organizations have made no change to HR headcount in the past 12 months. Across HR overall, more organizations are increasing staffing than decreasing it. The myth that AI will replace functions within HR has yet to materialize.

What the data does show is a quieter and more consequential pattern: Inside those flat headcount numbers, the work itself is being redesigned. And whether that redesign happens matters to the business. i4cp found that leaving HR roles unchanged is negatively correlated with both future readiness and market performance. Organizations that leave HRBPs, shared services, and COEs largely unchanged are less likely to be future ready, and deliver the strategic insight, decision support, and more personalized services that the business now demands.

For CHROs, the question is not whether AI will reduce HR headcount. It is whether HR is doing the right work as business expectations continue to evolve and climb.

What the headcount data actually shows

The role-level numbers reveal where the movement is:

Among HR business partners, 17% of organizations are increasing staffing, while 9% are decreasing.
Among Centers of Excellence, 16% are increasing staffing, while 13% are decreasing.
Shared Services are the only role where staffing cuts outnumber additions: 20% decreasing vs. 18% increasing. Though, those from future-ready organizations were twice as likely to report that their HR functions are increasing shared services staffing.

The HR headcount findings come from i4cp's global survey of 1,338 business and HR leaders, focused on organizations with more than 1,000 employees. The numbers undercut some of the loudest narratives about the future relationship between AI and HR, and they deserve a careful read: HR teams are being asked to do more, deliver it faster, and ground it in better data, often with exactly the same number of people.

Why future-ready organizations are adding shared services staff

Shared services is the one area of HR where more organizations are cutting than adding staffing, and the pull toward AI-powered self-service explains some of that. But, as noted above, the more revealing number sits underneath it: Future-ready organizations — those rating highest on i4cp's three dimensions of AI readiness, skills readiness, and culture readiness — are twice as likely to be increasing shared services staffing (35% vs. 16%).

Why would the organizations furthest along the AI maturity curve be growing the function that AI is supposedly automating away? It's likely because they've repositioned it. In future-ready organizations, shared services operates as the delivery engine for AI-enabled HR. The survey shows their shared services teams concentrating on higher-value work: driving adoption of AI-enabled self-service tools (42%), maintaining HR knowledge bases and the AI models behind them (32%), and converting HR service and workforce data into insights and recommendations (32%). In these organizations, shared services are being rebuilt around the AI to better distribute value.

Redeployment is the real story

The pattern of flat HR headcount paired with the changing work of HR shows up across the function. i4cp's data reveals where the reclaimed time is going. In future-ready organizations, AI is significantly increasing the time HR spends analyzing data for insights (52%), advising on strategy (47%) and quality-controlling AI outputs (38%). The least future-ready organizations report time shifts at a fraction of those rates; for strategy advising and quality control, roughly a third or less.

Allianz Life has gone further than most in making this systematic. The multinational financial services firm added a sixth "B" — bots — to its long-standing 5Bs strategic workforce planning framework: buy, build, borrow, bind and bounce. AI now appears in every job description, and AI upskilling is embedded in employees' goals and performance reviews.

"We do not want to get to the bounce B, and if we do, shame on us," said Bill Ryan, vice president of people and culture and head of learning and development, "because we should have already forecasted that, and we should have, in the build B, been reskilling and upskilling that talent before it got to the redundancy standpoint."

Ryan's standard treats reskilling as a forecasting obligation: Anticipate which roles AI will displace, and build the new capability before the redundancy conversation ever starts.

How should HR leaders respond to AI's impact on HR jobs?

HR leaders should respond to AI's potential impact on the function not by protecting headcount, but by redesigning what the headcount does. The research points to three moves that separate organizations redeploying talent from those simply holding steady:

Redesign HR roles around judgment work, not transactions. i4cp recommends rebuilding HRBPs as strategic advisers, shared services as an employee experience and service intelligence hub, and centers of excellence as product and platform owners.
Reskill and redeploy talent ahead of displacement, not in response to it. Following the Allianz model, forecast which roles AI will change and build the new capability before the redundancy conversation ever starts.
Assess your own function first. Demonstrated personal and functional AI readiness is HR's entry ticket to influencing enterprise AI decisions.

Organizations that redesign HR roles, reskill ahead of displacement and assess HR's own AI readiness are already redeploying talent into higher-value work. The ones still debating whether AI will replace HR are holding the same headcount and yesterday's work. Those unwilling to reexamine and shift roles within HR will be stuck doing yesterday's work.

See how future-ready organizations are redesigning HRBPs, centers of excellence and shared services for AI-enabled work in i4cp's new report, The AI-Enabled HR Operating Model for Future-Ready Organizations. For organizations that are not yet enterprise-wide members, an executive brief is available for download.

AI Isn't Waiting for HR to Catch Up (i4cp login required)

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT

The gap splitting HR in half comes down to how much AI actually gets used, not who has access to it

83% of leaders say AI is reshaping what the business expects from HR. But ask HR how much strategic lift AI has actually delivered, and new data from i4cp shows 46% say: none.

While HR functions are living through more pressure, 73% say their headcount is the same or smaller than it was two years ago, and 57% aren't using AI beyond pilots and individual use cases. They simply don't have the resources or capabilities to keep up.

The Gap Is About Scale, Not Access

Almost every HR function has AI in some form at this point. But only 10% of HR functions have scaled AI across multiple processes or made it core to how they operate. Everyone else is still working case by case. Individual, one-off uses of AI rarely show up on a P&L. Impact comes from scale.

The 10% of HR Functions That Scale AI Are Already Seeing Strategic Gains

The HR functions that have scaled AI are seeing changes that go beyond efficiency. AI is reshaping roles, tasks, workflows and decision-making, especially in organizations that have moved beyond pilots and isolated use cases.

63% of HR functions that are operationalizing AI across many processes say AI has meaningfully changed HR job roles, compared with 26% of other HR functions.

90% say it's changed their day-to-day tasks, compared with 48%.

When asked specifically about strategic impact, 83% of this group say AI has boosted it, more than double the 39% of other HR functions.

The functions on the other end aren't just behind; 16% aren't using AI at all.

Scaled AI in HR Is More Common in Future-Ready Organizations

i4cp defines a future-ready organization as one built on three capabilities:

AI readiness — the ability to responsibly use AI to improve decisions and execution
Skills readiness — a workforce equipped for both today's strategy and what's coming
Culture readiness — an organization that embraces transformation

HR functions that scale AI tend to exist within organizations that have already invested in the conditions that make AI work: data infrastructure, a change-tolerant culture, and workforce skills.

Our survey data showed the more HR scales AI, the more likely they are to be highly effective (according to their self-assessed score on an index of questions related to HR effectiveness) and exist within a future-ready organization.

Restructuring HR Won't Improve Effectiveness on Its Own

The instinct, when a function is under pressure, is to reorganize: flatten a layer, stand up a new center of excellence, redraw the reporting lines. The data doesn't support that instinct. There is no positive statistical relationship between any normative HR structure and HR effectiveness, even after controlling for size and resources. The traditional three-legged stool (HRBPs, centers of excellence, and shared services) is still the most common structure, at 46%, but it predicts nothing about whether an HR function is effective or future-ready.

If HR Restructures, Start with Workflow Redesign

The structural question worth asking is whether HR's structure effectively delivers what the business needs. Every organization gets there differently, because every organization's workflows are different. In practice, that means starting with process mapping: understanding how work actually gets done today. Then, identifying where AI can augment or automate, to create the biggest value. The goal is an HR operating model where AI does real work — and structure serves that work, not the other way around.

The Real Divide Is Who's Leading Enterprise AI Implementation

Here's the structural difference that does show up in the data: whether HR has a seat at the head of enterprise AI implementation.

When HR co-leads that implementation with a cross-functional group, 58% of respondents say AI has boosted HR's strategic impact.
When IT leads alone, that drops to 39%.
When it's cross-functional but HR isn't in the room, it falls to 20%.

66% of future-ready organizations formally involve HR in enterprise AI implementation as a co-lead, a cross-functional partner or the lead itself.

HR's implementation leadership means AI skills get built into job requisitions before they're needed. It means the workforce gets trained to use AI safely and effectively. And it means someone is actually thinking about what AI implementation does to the humans doing the work.

What HR Leaders Need to Know

Scale is the real AI divide in HR.

Access to AI is now common, but scaled use is rare. Only 10% of HR functions have operationalized AI across multiple processes or made it core to how they work. That matters because strategic impact shows up when AI changes workflows, roles, and decisions.

Restructuring HR is not the lever. Redesigning work is.

The study found no positive statistical relationship between common HR structures and HR effectiveness. That makes the "Should we reorganize?" question less useful than "Where does work create value, slow down, duplicate effort or require better decisions?" AI-enabled operating model work should start with process mapping and workflow redesign, then structure can follow.

HR needs to co-lead enterprise AI, not wait for implementation to arrive.

HR's role in enterprise AI implementation is strongly tied to strategic impact. When HR leads or co-leads AI implementation, workforces are far better prepared to use it well.

For CHROs, the takeaway is simple: AI is now workforce strategy.

Learn more in i4cp's research on the AI-enabled HR operating model for future-ready organizations.

CEO Led M&A Through the Lens of Culture (i4cp login required)

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 15:39:00 GMT

How Oregon State Credit Union Reframed Deal Readiness Before the Deal

Snapshot

Organization: Oregon State Credit Union

Industry: Credit union / financial services

Employees: 350

Global Reach: United States

Key Result(s):

Gary Schuette II and OSCU's leadership team elevated culture from a post-close concern to a decisive pre-deal factor, equipping the board with the missing lens it needed to determine not just whether the deal made financial and strategic sense, but whether it could actually succeed in practice.

Introduction

When Oregon State Credit Union (OSCU) began preparing for potential mergers or acquisitions, the work started with a CEO‑led strategic readiness question: How do we make better decisions about a deal before we're already committed to one?

Gary Schuette II, president and CEO, and the leadership team made a deliberate choice that shaped the entire effort: culture would not be treated as a downstream integration issue. It would be addressed before a letter of intent—while strategic options were still open, risks could still be mitigated, and leadership could make better‑informed judgments about whether a potential deal would work in practice.

"Culture is my #1 priority: to protect and enrich it. If that's true, then at OSCU, we have to approach things differently including by making culture a core part of any M&A conversations." - Schuette

This approach reflects a growing body of i4cp research showing that culture change—and, by extension, execution during integration—is most effective when driven by the CEO and examined as rigorously as financial or operational considerations. From this perspective, culture is not a post‑close communications issue. It is an operating system that shapes how decisions are made, how work moves, and how quickly organizations adapt once a deal begins.

The question, then, is not simply whether a deal looks attractive on paper, but whether the combined organization can execute when it matters most.

The Challenge

Like many organizations exploring M&A, OSCU faced a familiar challenge: culture was widely acknowledged as important, but it was typically addressed late in the process—after strategic direction was set and transaction momentum made course correction difficult.

Leadership wanted a clearer, earlier view of risk and fit—a way to understand not just values alignment, but whether ways of working, decision‑making norms, and execution discipline would support or undermine success if a transaction moved forward.

The challenge was how to treat culture as a legitimate form of diligence—one that could meaningfully inform whether a deal should proceed, not simply how it should be integrated.

The Solution Roadmap

i4cp's approach with OSCU was grounded in its long standing research on culture change, including multi‑year studies across thousands of organizations that identified critical leadership actions required to sustain culture change. Culture Renovation® consistently shows that culture change must be CEO‑driven to meaningfully shape strategy, execution, and decision‑making.

That same lens was applied to the M&A context. Culture was not treated as a values statement or a post‑close communications issue. Instead, it was framed as an operating system, expressed through leadership behavior, decision‑making norms, collaboration patterns, process discipline, and employee experience.

Rather than waiting for a deal to trigger culture work, OSCU chose to establish a clear baseline before any transaction discussions formally began.

Frameworks

Establishing a Cultural Baseline

The work began with a culture assessment using i4cp's proprietary Healthy Culture Index^TM (HCI) to establish a baseline view of Oregon State Credit Union's current culture, including cultural strengths and weaknesses.

"At OSCU, we value our rich culture. Taking the time to clearly define it ensures we know exactly what we want to preserve and carry forward as we enter a merger or acquisition." - Paige Jackson; Senior Vice President, Human Resources

Several strengths emerged clearly: a strong culture identity grounded in member focus and cooperative values, high levels of trust and engagement, and consistent strengths in collaboration, learning, and performance orientation across departments and tenure groups.

Rather than treating these findings as abstract cultural attributes, leadership viewed them as indicators of how work currently gets done—and which elements would be important to protect in any future integration scenario.

How Work Gets Done: Ways of Working

In addition to the Healthy Culture Index^TMassessment, Oregon State Credit Union and i4cp conducted a Ways of Working assessment measuring 15 dimensions of how work happens day to day—including decision-making, collaboration, process maturity, data use, technology adoption, and workload.

With 115 of 133 invited employees responding, the assessment provided a highly representative view across functions, tenure, and job levels. This allowed leadership to look beyond averages and understand where experiences of execution were consistent—and where they varied in meaningful ways.

Leadership and Transparency

Several practices emerged as stable strengths forming a strong operating foundation:

Member focus and customer orientation
Collaboration and cross‑functional coordination
Learning and talent development
Performance orientation and goal setting

In an M&A context, these practices were viewed as potential accelerators of integration rather than sources of risk.

The assessment also surfaced execution‑oriented practices that represented opportunities to strengthen readiness:

Decision‑making speed and follow‑through
Process maturity and standardization
Use of data and analytics
Technology adoption and digital fluency
Workload and pace

"At OSCU, we welcome opportunities to better understand our organization and intentionally strengthen where it matters most. This work not only sharpens who we are but also guides how we evaluate potential merger and acquisition partners—helping us identify where their strengths can complement and elevate our own." -Jackson

Importantly, these practices showed meaningful variation by role level. Managers generally reported more positive experiences than individual contributors, while executive leadership responses reflected a wide range of perspectives on execution‑focused dimensions. Leadership interpreted these differences as signals of where clearer expectations, greater alignment, or more consistent operating discipline could strengthen performance—particularly during periods of change.

The Result

In an M&A context, these findings helped leadership distinguish between cultural and operational strengths that could accelerate integration and execution practices that might require earlier attention.

Strong member focus, collaboration, learning, and performance orientation provided a stable foundation for bringing organizations together. At the same time, opportunities to strengthen decision‑making, process consistency, data use, technology adoption, and workload management became especially important during integration, when speed, clarity, and consistency tend to matter most.

"The findings improve our odds of success. We can pinpoint the areas of natural compatibility that will provide foundational sources of trust. And, at the same time, we can pinpoint the areas where we need to spend more time building alignment and clarity." -Schuette

Reframing the Board Conversation

These insights were synthesized into a board‑level briefing focused on cultural readiness and due diligence preparedness. What made the discussion notable was not only the content, but the frame: culture was not presented as a softer people topic alongside the deal. It was treated as core strategic work led from the top. The strategy and data led to complete alignment between the board and executive team, that all future M&A transactions should include a culture assessment as part of the due diligence process.

Ultimately, we agreed that culture is core to it all. We should bring the rigor that we expect in financial performance and systems performance to our culture. Culture is the hard stuff." -Schuette

Board members drew on their own M&A experience, connecting the findings to real situations where culture and ways of working either enabled success or quietly undermined it. As Paige Jackson, senior vice president of human resources at Oregon State Credit Union, reflected afterward:

"The feedback from the board and Gary was fantastic. The realization and experiential stories coming up from board members to share with Gary were really valuable for both of them. Lots of comments that this is the real work and the most important work around an M&A to get right, and some comfort that we are approaching it differently than other credit unions."

How to Replicate Success

Oregon State Credit Union's experience illustrates a broader lesson from i4cp's research: CEOs and boards should think differently about M&A by treating culture as part of pre-deal diligence, not as a post-deal integration exercise.

Culture is not a soft variable. It is the operating system that determines how quickly decisions are made, how effectively leaders align, and whether value is protected or eroded during integration.

"Culture has an outsized impact on performance, which is true on both the downside and upside. I recommend getting culture on your radar in the M&A process as early as possible because otherwise, you're not seeing the full picture." -Schuette

By addressing culture and ways of working before the deal, Oregon State Credit Union positions itself with clearer risk visibility, a stronger leadership language for evaluating fit, and board-level confidence that all risks are being identified and mitigation strategies are being developed.

The case suggests a practical shift for CEOs: if culture determines whether strategy can be executed, then cultural diligence belongs at the front end of M&A decision-making, where it can shape judgment, strengthen readiness, and reduce the risk of discovering too late that the deal will be harder to execute than it appeared.

The question is not whether culture will affect your deal. It will. The question is whether you addressed it in time to matter.

The variable that's derailing your M&A returns (i4cp login required)

Tue, 26 May 2026 17:00:00 GMT

M&A activity is surging. U.S. deal value hit roughly $1.6 trillion in 2025. Europe rose about 37%. And yet between 70% and 90% of mergers fail to deliver their expected value. Up to 60% of those failures are tied to poor cultural integration. This keeps happening for a reason.

The question nobody asks

Every deal has a value thesis. The combined entity becomes more efficient, enters a new market, accelerates growth. Deal teams model the revenue projections, the cost synergies, the market opportunity. What they typically don't model is whether the people will actually do what the thesis assumes.

That's the culture question. And in most acquisitions, it doesn't get asked until the deal is already done. That's why this was a central theme of our session at the People Synergy Summit 2026, where Terry Waters, CEO of i4cp, Anirvan Sen of Fifth Chrome, and I made the case that cultural due diligence belongs baked into the deal process itself.

Here's a scenario that plays out more often than most deal teams would like to admit: clear signals of cultural risk surface during an acquisition: leadership misalignment, disengaged employees, a track record of unresolved complaints. The information gets to the person running the deal. The response? "We've got a people problem. Our strategy will take care of it."

Believing that a strong strategy will fix a culture problem is one of the most common, and costly, miscalculations in M&A. There's also a structural reason this keeps happening. Raising culture risk early can stop the acquisition entirely, and that's a conversation most deal leaders would rather avoid. So the pattern becomes: close the deal, assume it'll work out, explain the shortfall later.

What the numbers actually depend on

Every acquisition has a projected outcome- maybe $100 million in new revenue over five years, maybe a 20% reduction in operating costs. Those projections are built on assumptions about whether the people will actually do what you're counting on.

If your top performers leave because the cultures don't mesh or if the acquired team resists new processes to name a few, your projections are overstated. If people don't work the way the deal assumes, the projected returns won't materialize.

Think about it this way: if you knew going into a deal that you were likely to lose a significant portion of the target's key talent, you'd either pay less for the company or invest more upfront in retention. But without cultural due diligence, you often don't know until the people are already submitting applications and returning their laptops.

Culture is everything

Here's the finding that deserves more attention: when cultural factors are considered only after the deal is signed, success rates are extremely low. When they're considered during the investigation phase, outcomes are much stronger. In fact, organizations that prioritize culture synergies in M&A are eleven times more likely to outperform their peers, according to i4cp research.

Cultural assessment should start in pre-deal screening and continue through due diligence, integration planning, and post-close monitoring. That means asking specific questions early:

Will our culture embrace or resist an acquisition?
What cultural synergies need to be present in a target for this to work?
How does the acquired organization's culture complement or contradict ours?
How will we unify the culture if we move forward?

What this means for your next deal

Get ahead of the culture misfit:

Develop an acquisition playbook focused on the three critical phases of the acquisition process: diligence, post-merger integration, and value creation.
Incorporate a culture health assessment into your due-diligence process.
Audit whether your integration infrastructure can support your current deal pace.
Identify the early behavioral signals your HR team is tracking post-close and take action.
Run 30-day and 90-day surveys post close and share results directly with the acquired team.
Determine if your culture is ‘change ready' to ensure your organization is ready for the coming change.

Straight up: Culture is what determines whether the deal delivers what you projected.

See how ready your workforce is to adapt quickly to disruption according to three core capabilities of a change-ready culture. Download the executive brief, Building a Future-Ready Organization with a Change-Ready Culture.

Why Change-Ready Culture is a CEO Issue (i4cp login required)

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:20:00 GMT

I've spent more than 30 years in the change management field, working with frameworks such as Kotter's Eight Steps, ADKAR, and McKinsey's 7S framework. Each offers valuable guidance, but they all focus on the same core question: How do we execute a change initiative successfully?

That is no longer the most important question. Today, the critical issue is whether an organization's culture can absorb continuous change at the speed its strategy demands. When it cannot, execution slows, friction rises, talent burns out and competitors gain an advantage.

That question drove the research behind i4cp's Building a Future-Ready Organization with a Change-Ready Culture study, explored in a recent webinar with my colleague Katheryn Brekken, Ph.D. The findings point to a fundamental shift in how leaders should think about change.

From Managing Change to Building Capacity

Traditional change models are designed to manage discrete events. A change-ready culture is an organizational capability that enables companies to adapt repeatedly. This is not about a single transformation. It is about building a repeatable capacity to execute through disruption.

Drawing on eight years of research, four studies and input from more than 2,000 global participants, i4cp identified three core dimensions that determine whether culture accelerates or undermines change: adaptability, cohesion and agency.

Adaptability: Turning Learning into Action

Adaptability reflects how the organization learns, adjusts, and creates value as conditions shift. It includes practices such as personalized learning, knowledge sharing, and encouraging intelligent risk-taking.

In practical terms, adaptability determines how quickly a company can redeploy talent, integrate new technologies, respond to market shifts, and convert strategy into execution.

One thing I've noticed across the organizations we work with: adaptability gets a lot of attention these days in part due to the growth-mindset movement. Yet few build the systems needed to scale learning. Organizations talk about "fail fast" without building the structures that actually let people share and learn from those failures. i4cp research shows that the most effective teams are 3.5X likely to reward prudent risk taking than their lower-performing peers.

The Finnish-based mobile game company Supercell developed a learning ritual early in its history to celebrate when products fail to gain traction—marking those moments with champagne (The Team Network Effect, 2024). The company now operates a "Team Lab" for its gaming teams, incorporating team psychologists and stress testing collaboration under pressure. Most companies celebrate adaptability rhetorically, but those that can sustain continuous change build systems that allow learning to scale.

Cohesion: The Hidden Constraint on Change

Cohesion reflects the strength of trust, transparency and productive collaboration across the organization. This is where I see many organizations fall short, and it was one of the most striking findings in our research.

In i4cp's webinar, 57% of participants said change in their organization feels fatiguing, "there's been too much for too long." That is not simply a workload issue, it's a breakdown in cohesion. When cohesion erodes, the impact is immediate: slower decision-making, reduced discretionary effort, weaker cross-functional execution, and increased risk of talent loss. Without cohesion, every transformation carries an invisible tax.

Organizations that have thrived amid consecutive transformation actively invest in cohesion. They institutionalize practices such as rapidly integrating new hires, maintaining transparency, and ensuring teams remain energized and aligned.

Agency: Turning Strategy into Action

Agency refers to the ownership, autonomy, and decision-making authority employees have to execute change. It is often the weakest dimension and one I find most difficult for senior leaders to address.

Without agency, decision-making bottlenecks at the top. With it, organizations accelerate execution by empowering those closest to the work.

Pfizer's "pilot in command" model during the pandemic illustrates this principle. Cross-functional teams operated with a single accountable decision-maker, clear objectives, and direct alignment to enterprise goals, which compressed the distance between decision and action.

Why the Three Dimensions Must Work Together

Organizations that excel across all three dimensions are more likely to outperform their peers on key market metrics over a five-year period, according to i4cp data.

That result was not surprising. Companies combining adaptability, cohesion, and agency respond faster, execute with less friction, and sustain change without exhausting the organization.

A learning culture alone is insufficient if trust has eroded. High trust alone is insufficient if employees lack real authority to act. These three capabilities reinforce each other, and when one is missing, the entire system strains.

Consider a client currently navigating the shift from traditional manufacturer to software -as -a service. The company is investing in growth mindset training, revising performance management to recognize knowledge sharing, and encouraging leaders to model learning, rather than simply endorse it. That's adaptability executed well.

But adaptability alone is not enough. Weak cohesion accelerates change fatigue. Weak agency creates decisions bottleneck at the top. That is when transformation stalls and value capture slips.

Where Do You Start?

The first step is an honest diagnosis. Leaders cannot align around what needs to change without first knowing where the organization stands. Is adaptability strong, but agency weak? Is cohesion the factor quietly undermining every transformation initiative?

For CEOs and executive teams, this is not a culture exercise. It is an execution diagnostic.

To support that process, i4cp has developed a Change-Ready Culture Assessment. The assessment takes five to seven minutes, and scores results across all three dimensions. As a self-assessment, it reflects the respondent's perspective, but it's a meaningful starting point for the conversations that matter most.

The more important question is not whether more change is coming. It is whether your culture accelerates transformation or quietly taxes every strategic move.

Take the assessment here. To discuss results and research-based guidance on where to focus first, contact i4cp Consulting Services for a complimentary 30-minute debrief. In a market defined by disruption, the companies that prevail will not be those with the best change management teams. They will be the ones with the cultural capacity to keep adapting while competitors stall.

Decision Architecture: The Real Work of Strategic HR (i4cp login required)

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 13:00:00 GMT

Ask most HR leaders what "future readiness" means and you'll hear familiar answers: adopting AI, building skills-based talent strategies, and modernizing the operating model.

All of that matters. But many organizations quietly assume that better tools and programs will naturally lead to better people decisions.

They don't.

The uncomfortable truth is this: most organizations don't struggle because they lack HR capability. They struggle because leaders make inconsistent, biased, or poorly informed people decisions—often despite having access to good data and sound recommendations.

Research by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) consistently shows that high-performance organizations differentiate themselves not by the sophistication of their HR programs, but by how clearly decision ownership and accountability for people outcomes are defined.

That was the core reframe offered by John Boudreau and Pete Ramstad in a recent i4cp conversation. Consider a typical HR mission statement: "HR will create a future-ready workforce." Now revise it: "Leaders, managers, and employees will create a future-ready workforce, supported by decision frameworks designed by HR."

That shift is not semantic. It's structural.

In the first version, HR owns outcomes. In the second, HR architects how decisions get made—while leaders remain accountable for the decisions themselves. This is the difference between delivering HR services and shaping enterprise performance.

Why Most Strategic HR Efforts Stall

Boudreau and Ramstad posed a question most HR strategies avoid: Does it matter how advanced your HR programs are if leaders still make poor people decisions?

The best analytics in the world don't matter if leaders ignore them. Succession plans collapse when executives override them based on gut feeling. Performance systems fail when managers lack the capability or accountability to act on what they see.

"Typically, HR's value has been measured by the quality of its programs. The more meaningful measure is the quality of decisions those programs enable when HR isn't in the room." - Pete Ramstad

Future-ready organizations understand this. Research from MIT's Center for Information Systems Research has repeatedly found that decision rights,not technology, are the hardest organizational capability to get right. Competitive advantage doesn't come from better dashboards. It comes from clarity about who owns decisions, why those decisions matter to the business, and how they are made.

In these organizations, leaders own talent decisions. HR designs the decision architecture—the data, guardrails, shared language, and expectations that make good decisions repeatable and bad ones harder to justify.

From Dashboards to Accountability

Most organizations still treat people metrics as HR-owned artifacts. HR collects the data, builds the reports, and presents the insights. Leaders review them, nod, and move on.

That isn't strategic HR.

"In high-performing organizations, people outcomes—retention, engagement, internal mobility, bench strength—are owned by line leaders and embedded directly into business scorecards. HR owns the integrity of the data and the decision frameworks, but leaders are accountable for results." - John Boudreau

This distinction matters because managers account for the majority of variance in employee experience and performance. Gallup's 2025 State of the Global Workplace research attributes roughly 70% of engagement variability to managers—not HR programs. i4cp's Culture Fitness research reinforces this finding: high-performance organizations are significantly more likely to hold line leaders accountable for employee outcomes such as retention, development, and mobility.

It's a widely recognized principle in organizational leadership that employees don't leave companies—they leave managers. Yet most organizations still measure these outcomes as if HR controls them.

When accountability shifts, behavior follows.

The HRBP and CoE Inflection Point

This is where the work gets uncomfortable.

If HR's role is to architect better decisions, then HR business partners must be fluent in data, decision logic, and business trade-offs. Yet analytics and decision influence remain the single largest capability gap among HRBPs. i4cp's HR Capabilities in the New Era of Work research consistently identifies people analytics as the top development gap—creating a disconnect between what HR is expected to deliver and the capabilities many teams actually have.

That gap undermines everything else. HRBPs cannot teach leaders to make better people decisions using frameworks they don't fully understand. This also presents a challenge to traditional HR Centers of Excellence (CoEs), which must reframe their value proposition to include not only building HR processes that are valid and evidence-based, but also teaching the frameworks that underpin those processes. As Pete Ramstad said, "HR functional leaders in CoEs such as development, staffing, performance and remuneration are typically chosen and evaluated to have high personal expertise in their functional areas. The best organizations will also expect those leaders to be excellent at teaching others what they know."

i4cp research shows that organizations that prioritize strengthening the analytical capability and business acumen of HRBPs see measurable returns: better leadership decisions, higher trust, stronger engagement, and improved retention. But this requires moving beyond static competency models and event-based training toward real-world decision capability.

What This Means for CHROs

Future-ready CHROs are not focused on perfecting HR's internal machinery. They are focused on improving enterprise outcomes through the decisions others make.

This requires a shift:

From ownership to influence
From delivering answers to designing frameworks
From reporting metrics to building decision capability

Recent research from MIT Sloan Management Review underscores this shift, noting that sustainable advantage increasingly comes from organizations that design better decision environments—not just better individual decisions.

The real work of strategic HR is not making talent decisions. It is designing the conditions under which better talent decisions consistently emerge across the organization.

The Real Test

Pete Ramstad and John Boudreau suggest CHROs, Boards, CEOs and C-suite teams ask themselves one question:

If HR stepped out of the room tomorrow but left the decision frameworks, data access, and accountability structures in place, would your leaders still make good people decisions?

If the answer is no, the challenge isn't technology or structure. It's decision capability.

The HR organizations that endure disruption will not be those that control the most processes. They will be those that build decision-capable leaders at scale supported by clear frameworks, credible data, and disciplined accountability.

That is decision architecture.

That is strategic HR.

No Bandwidth for Change: Malaysia Airlines Rebuilds Culture & Cohesion (i4cp login required)

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 13:17:00 GMT

To turn the company's finances around, Malaysia Airlines' HR focused first on renovating its culture.

When Dato' Mohd Khalis joined Malaysia Airline Berhad in 2018 as Group Chief Human Capital Officer, the organization wasn't short on plans—it was short on belief.

The company had a new CEO. Captain Izham Ismail had no financial background when he was handpicked for the role a few months prior.

Years of disruption—financial strain, a government takeover and layoffs—had left the culture toxic and resistant to change. Employees were depleted, skeptical and stretched thin, and even well-designed transformation efforts were likely to stall under the weight of exhaustion.

To turn the company's fortunes around, Khalis knew a cultural transformation had to take place.

"There were a lot of things that needed to be fixed in the organization: processes, equipment, even integrity issues here and there," he said. "But you can't do that if you don't fix the morale of the people first. At that moment, they were a group of people who had given up hope."

While the board and new CEO focused on financials, Khalis focused on building cohesion and a workforce that could come together and commit to the changes that needed to be made for the good of the company.

Eight years later, 2025 marked the company's third consecutive year of net profit.

The challenge

Malaysia Airlines carried the weight of being a national symbol—and the scrutiny that comes with it. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, financial trouble had already become part of the airline's operating reality, including a near-bankruptcy moment that led to significant government ownership. The next two decades brought a cycle of turnaround plans and uneven results. A profitable year would be followed by steep losses; a new leader would arrive, launch a reset, and then watch momentum stall in the face of cost pressure, competition, and political complexity.

Then, in 2014, Malaysia Airlines suffered two major disasters: the disappearance of MH370 and the downing of MH17. The airline was uniquely vulnerable in the aftermath because it was already battling financial difficulties. Public faith and internal morale took another direct hit at the same time the business was fighting to survive.

In the wake of those tragedies, the organization was not only grieving—it was destabilized. The share price dropped sharply, and doubts about the airline's survival multiplied. Structural pressures mounted: high operating costs, fuel volatility, intense competition, political interference and powerful unions.

In 2015, the government nationalized the airline, buying out remaining minority shares and rebranding it as Malaysia Airlines Berhad (MAB). The reset came with sweeping internal consequences. The Malaysia Airlines Employees Union (MASEU)—a major force inside the company—was disbanded. The restructuring included a high-profile CEO retrenchment and nearly one-third of the workforce cut—about 6,000 jobs.

By the time Khalis arrived, he walked into the residue of all of it:

A company that had been through "many transformations… and nothing worked."
A workforce dealing with transformation fatigue and cynicism—made worse by feeling publicly condemned while watching the government inject money into the carrier.
Scarcity so extreme it became symbolic: Khalis recalled buying his own ream of paper to print.

The turnaround: restore cohesion before demanding change

Instead of leading with structural change, HR focused on rebuilding the emotional and cultural prerequisites for transformation. An exhausted workforce doesn't adopt new ways of working; it protects itself.

In Malaysia Airlines' case, the early work wasn't about "rolling out agility." It was about restoring enough belief, identity, and capability for employees to participate in a turnaround rather than brace against it.

Foster gratitude

One of Khalis' earliest interventions was unconventional: he brought in a religious teacher to spend time with employees. While that was not unusual in the region, his instructions were different. He asked the teacher not to preach, but to listen, steady emotions, and reset perspective by encouraging reflection on gratitude.

"In many religions, the structure of the prayer is that before you ask anything from God, you praise and count your blessings," Khalis said. First, you thank Him, then you ask."

He explicitly instructed the teacher to be inclusive, engaging employees across backgrounds and beliefs. The intent was not religion; it was morale.

Gratitude became a foundation for cultural renewal. In demoralized organizations, employees often anchor on what has been lost—security, pride, colleagues, and certainty. Gratitude provided a counterweight: a reminder that employment still existed for many, that the airline still operated, and that survival was not guaranteed.

Khalis' logic was practical. When people are consumed by bitterness or fear, they conserve energy and disengage. When they can reconnect to what remains—and to the possibility of rebuilding—they are more willing to commit effort. Gratitude created the conditions for commitment.

Build pride

After stabilizing the emotional temperature, HR turned to identity.

Khalis began opening town halls with the national anthem. The point wasn't ceremony; it was reconnection. Many employees felt publicly condemned and privately defeated. The anthem reminded them of the meaning of serving as the national carrier.

"It reminded them you're part of the nation. That's why they own you. That's what differentiates you from other airlines like AsiaAir," Khalis said. "Your responsibilities go beyond just P&L. Suddenly they felt that purpose. That's why we are here."

HR reinforced that message with a company song, created in partnership with a well-known songwriter--with no budget. The simplicity mattered. The airline's workforce included strong subcultures and status boundaries; a shared song cut across role, rank, and function.

Pride served a second purpose: it shifted the perception that change was being done to& employees. Instead, the turnaround became something employees were doing for the airline. That shift—from compliance to ownership—is critical in organizations that have seen critical transformations fail before and stopped believing.

Develop people

Once emotional capacity and shared purpose began to return, HR focused on capability.

Employees were trained in more effective ways of working, including Lean- and Agile-style approaches and cross-functional problem-solving. The goal was to convert renewed energy into execution: clearer priorities, faster improvement cycles, stronger collaboration, and less reliance on heroics.

Development also reduced the perceived risk of change. In depleted environments, change feels like chaos. Capability turns change into a set of learnable practices.

The sequence—gratitude, pride, then development—helped convert a worn-down workforce into one capable of absorbing new expectations. It did not eliminate the difficulty of transformation, but it rebuilt the capacity required to attempt it without collapsing under fatigue.

The result

The turnaround work began showing up first in operational and people metrics—engagement, service quality, reliability—and later in financial performance.

As execution improved, leadership was able to move from "stabilization" language to a growth plan with measurable financial ambition.

Operational and workforce indicators strengthened
People engagement rose sharply from the earlier baseline to the later measurement period.
Customer satisfaction improved and stayed elevated.
Reliability improved (notably on-time performance).
Net promoter score climbed from a low baseline to a strong positive level.

In December 2025, the company announced a five-year plan marking a shift from survival to performance, with a goal of nearly doubling revenue to more than RM24 billion by 2030.

Conclusion: Prepare the way for transformation

Malaysia Airlines' experience underscores a critical lessons; transformation often fails before implementation because the organization is running on empty. Attempting change without rebuilding emotional bandwidth can backfire. It amplifies fatigue, deepens cynicism, and hardens resistance.

The more effective sequence is the one HR pursued here. Before a strategy reset can succeed, the culture must be restored. Only then can a workforce confidently and effectively execute new strategies to& transform and strengthen the company's future.

What Retail CHROs are Doing About AI, Skills, and the Future of Work (i4cp login required)

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 13:00:00 GMT

I recently moderated a CHRO panel in Seattle featuring leaders from Costco, Starbucks, and Nordstrom, three iconic retailers with very different models, but a shared reality: their workforce is overwhelmingly frontline, customer-facing, and human-centered by design.

The conversation was framed around i4cp's 2026 Priorities & Predictions research, specifically these four overall market predictions:

1. Companies increasingly use AI-driven layoffs as a strategic lever

2. Skills become the new operating system of work

3. Digital work twins won't seem like science fiction

4. Workforce design becomes more fluid and adaptive

But what stood out was how consistently the CHROs pointed to a deeper truth: the future of work isn't being driven just by tech headlines, but is being built through execution discipline, governance, and culture.

AI hasn't driven layoffs in retail—but it is beginning to reshape work in the sector

One of our most debated predictions is that companies will increasingly use AI-driven layoffs as a strategic lever. While many large enterprises are now more openly talking about workforce reduction as a deliberate outcome of AI adoption, none of the panelists' organizations have used AI to eliminate roles. Workforce reductions, where they occurred, were driven by strategy shifts or organizational simplification, not AI integration. That said, AI is beginning to change how work gets done in high-volume, hourly workforce environments.

With over 50 case studies published since 2024, i4cp offers the largest library of real-life stories on AI in HR—clear, practical, and easy to apply.

At Nordstrom, a virtual agent now handles high-volume, low-complexity service tasks like order status and returns. As CHRO Lisa Price shared, the goal is twofold: reduce customer friction and free up human agents for nuanced interactions. Starbucks echoed this at scale. Tools like Green Dot Assist help store partners access information in the flow of work, designed to enable more human connection, not replace it. As Starbucks CHRO Sara Kelly put it, "Humans own the work. AI is enhancing the work." Across all three companies, AI is viewed as a productivity multiplier, not a headcount reducer.

Skills matter but pragmatism rules

One of the predictions that resonated with the entire group was i4cp's prediction that skills will become the operating system of work. Our recent study on Skills-Based Talent Practices found that only 12% of large organizations report systematic effort and sustained investment in skills-based practices, while 44% remain in the planning or pilot stage. The CHROs agreed: this is a journey, not a checkbox.

At Costco, the priority is leadership capability, especially with an aging workforce and expansion underway. Brenda Weber shared that their new Leadership Academy uses simulations designed for operational environments to develop frontline managers. Nordstrom is co-creating shared skills profiles with other employers and focusing internally on five critical career pathways where demand is highest. Starbucks is cataloging skills role by role while aiming to fill 90% of retail leadership positions internally within three years. AI is already supporting high-volume hiring, especially where prior experience isn't required. The common thread? No one is "boiling the ocean." Skills strategies are anchored in clear needs and operational realities.

Explore i4cp's AI Case Studies in Hiring.

Digital work twins? Not so fast

The prediction that generated the most unease among our panel was that digital work twins, or AI tools that can own tasks end-to-end and simulate or execute work on someone's behalf, will no longer sound like science fiction.

All three CHROs expressed deep hesitation, especially for judgment-driven, people-centric roles. As Brenda Weber of Costco put it, "If it misses the nuance and gives the wrong advice, I don't get to blame my twin." Still, AI is being used for preparation and simulation, from interview screening to board Q&A rehearsal. The line is clear: AI can assist, but accountability stays with the human.

An adaptive workforce is about governance, not gigs

Our fourth prediction focuses on fluid, modular, adaptive workforce design. In practice, the panel made clear that this looks far less like an internal gig economy and far more like tight prioritization, clear governance, and faster decision-making.

Starbucks shared perhaps the most explicit example, describing how they reduced more than a thousand active initiatives down to a single-page set of priorities, supported by weekly governance forums and CEO-level oversight. No project gets resourced without passing through that system. Nordstrom is testing "micro-squads" in tech—small, AI-augmented teams to accelerate development. Costco, meanwhile, leans on informal flexibility: managers shift or share talent based on capability rather than title. Different approaches, same principle: agility comes from clarity, not chaos.

Culture is the force multiplier

One theme ran through every topic—AI, skills, org design, compensation: culture. Each CHRO emphasized that values, leadership behavior, and trust are what enable real change. Sara Kelly put it simply: "If you stay true to your mission and values, you can navigate a lot of change. When companies don't, that's when it breaks." This echoes our extensive research on culture: technology may accelerate change, but culture determines whether it sticks.

Future readiness hinges on a change-ready culture. Read i4cp's latest research.

Bold leadership in a brave new world

For large retailers, and other industries with hourly, customer-facing workforces, the future of work isn't being driven by bold declarations or the latest buzz. It's being methodically built through prioritization, discipline, governance, skill-building, and values-led leadership. It's being built by bold leaders like these. In organizations where the human experience is the product, that bold leadership may be the most important success factor!