The foundations of work are already cracking. Only 21% of employees worldwide are engaged. Leadership pipelines are thinning, succession plans are stalling and critical roles sit vacant just when they matter most. AI is shrinking the half-life of skills from years to months. These fractures in execution, culture and advantage point to one conclusion: HR must move beyond policy and process to deliver foresight, evidence and influence — or risk losing its place in shaping the future of work.
I spoke with Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practice at London Business School and one of the world’s leading thinkers on the future of work, about what this means for leaders and organizations. In my first Forbes article from our conversation, we explored how the talent playbook is expanding from build and buy to bridge, borrow and AI.
This second piece turns the lens inward. It is a wake-up call for HR itself — and why the function risks losing influence in the very future of work it should be shaping.
From my conversation with Gratton, five shifts stand out as essential for HR to remain influential in shaping the future of work. Each reflects a gap where the function has relied on old habits — and where leaders now need to act differently.
Shift 1: From Reaction to Foresight
“They should be able to give [CEOs]
a sense of long-term trends,” Gratton said. “Within the next two or three years, these are some of the things that you should be anticipating, thinking about, reflecting on.”
Her point is clear: HR cannot afford to be reactive. It must constantly scan for demographic shifts, industry disruptions and technology curves, then translate them into concrete actions today.
Take the example of a CHRO at a global manufacturer. Rather than waiting for attrition reports, she partners with her CFO and CIO to build a rolling five-year skills forecast. Together they identify which jobs are most exposed to automation and where retirement cliffs will hit hardest. Instead of handing executives another dashboard, she presents a reskilling strategy tied directly to the capital plan. That’s HR shifting from reports to decisions.
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs reports show a clear pattern: skills gaps are now one of the biggest barriers to business transformation. Technology is moving too fast for an “after-the-fact” response to work. By the time gaps show up on a dashboard, it’s already too late. What organizations need is foresight — the discipline of anticipating where skills will rise, where they will fade, and how to prepare people before the cliff arrives. That’s how you build a workforce that can adapt and stay competitive.
HR leaders should build forecasting routines into business planning cycles and collaborate across finance and technology functions. Avoid treating foresight as a one-off project; it loses impact if it isn’t embedded and updated.
Shift 2: From Instinct to Insight
Strategic foresight only matters if it’s paired with evidence. Gratton argues that HR’s influence is weakened by its inability to ground leadership choices in data. Without that rigor, critical calls get reduced to preference.
“HR folk say they want to transform,” Gratton said. “They know they can’t carry on doing the same thing forever. The challenge is the how, not the intent.”
That “how” is where evidence matters. Consider a company evaluating automation risk. A CHRO could present broad workforce numbers — or act as a strategic translator by showing which roles will decline, which new skills will be needed and what it will cost to reskill at scale. The decision shifts from opinion to evidence, and HR shapes the business outcome.
Gratton believes that HR leaders should invest massively in building people analytics capabilities that link directly to business outcomes. Avoid drowning leaders in dashboards — insight without relevance is just noise.
Shift 3: From Cultural Choreography to Authentic Narrative
Gratton also points to another missed lever: shaping the organization’s story.
“Stories are how humans interact with each other in the world,” she said. “A great CEO does that… they talk about their relationship with the world, what’s important to them, what they want things to be.”
In hybrid and distributed environments, a coherent story isn’t optional. It is the cultural anchor that sustains purpose across geographies, employment types and leadership changes. Yet too often, HR leaves this work to others — and culture fragments in the process.
HR leaders should co-create and reinforce the organizational narrative with executives and managers at every level. Avoid reducing culture to slogans or values campaigns that don’t connect to daily work.
Shift 4: From Systems Runners to Systems Architects
From years of working with HR leaders, Gratton highlights two core capabilities that remain rare:
- Analytics: “This is not a group that knows very much about data analytics,” she said.
- Design thinking: “Design thinking hasn’t really taken root… OD groups have mostly been pulled out of companies. That sort of change management and design thinking has gone.”
To those, she adds observing the system — the ability to see how work actually flows, how technology is used and where human value is created.
In my experience, this is where the best CHROs stand apart. They don’t only have business acumen — they see systems in ways others can’t. They act as leadership ethnographers, noticing how people and processes move together. They can zoom in to micro interactions and operational detail, then zoom out to see the larger picture that functional leaders, immersed in their own priorities, often miss. That dual lens makes them invaluable systems architects, and CEOs value that ability.
The gaps show up most clearly in performance management. Gallup recently surveyed Fortune 500 CHROs and found that only 2% strongly agree their performance management system inspires employees to improve. Employees tend to share this view — just one in five say their reviews are transparent, fair or inspire better performance.
These numbers are a stark signal: without new capabilities, HR will keep running systems that look functional but fail to drive impact.
HR leaders should treat every system as a prototype — redesign, test, and adapt based on how employees actually experience it. Avoid assuming that because a system runs smoothly, it is delivering value.
Shift 5: From AI Bystanders to AI Shapers
Generative AI, Gratton warns, is only widening the gap.
“It’s an existential threat that particularly sits with the HR department, because… often the whole generative AI experimentation, learning is bypassing HR,” she said.
Gallup found that 93% of CHROs in its roundtable said their organizations had started using AI, but only 15% of U.S. employees said their employer had communicated a clear plan for how it will affect their work. That disconnect is where anxiety grows and where HR’s absence is most visible.
Momentum is rising fast. According to Gartner, the share of HR leaders actively planning or already deploying generative AI jumped from 19% in mid-2023 to 61% by early 2025. At the employee level, adoption is also accelerating: Gallup data shows U.S. workers using AI at least a few times a year nearly doubled, from 21% to 40% in just two years.
Yet clarity still lags adoption. While 44% of employees say their organization has begun integrating AI, only 22% report seeing a clear plan, and just 30% say their company has even basic guidelines. That leaves a gap where employees experiment without guardrails and HR’s voice is largely missing.
This is where Gratton feels HR should step in. The opportunity is not only to draft policies but to connect AI adoption with talent strategy — mapping tasks, anticipating new skills and guiding development. Used this way, AI becomes more than a compliance issue. It becomes a transformation tool for productivity, capability and resilience.
The Cost for HR of Sitting Out the Future
Gratton’s warning is blunt: HR’s relevance won’t disappear in one dramatic moment. It erodes in increments — in meetings missed, in projects decided without HR.
The real audit is unavoidable: What foresight, analytics, design and AI capabilities exist today? Where are the gaps? How quickly are they closing?
“If you’re not in those conversations, someone else will be,” Gratton told me. “And they’ll decide the future for you.”
The foundations of work are already shifting. Either HR shapes what comes next, or it becomes the function left explaining decisions it never made.