Though we’re just three months into 2025, chief people officers are already looking ahead—not just to next year, but five years down the line. HR in 2030, a new report finds, must be the “glue” an organization leverages to prioritize talent in its business strategies—a mandate that, at some organizations, will require agility and a wholesale transformation of the HR function.

Heidrick & Struggles’ CPO of 2030 report emphasizes the increasingly critical role HR will play by the start of the next decade—which is going to challenge people leaders like never before.

“In a time of constant economic and organizational change, HR functions are being tasked with doing more than ever before,” says Jennifer Wilson, co-head of the Global Human Resources Officers practice at Heidrick & Struggles. “And with the pace of change only likely to accelerate, they are finding it more challenging than ever to set their organizations up for long-term success.”

3 priorities for success in HR in 2030

According to Wilson, successful HR leaders can’t be “order takers.” Rather, they need to be strategic consultants and impactful cross-functional leaders.

With that as context, the report highlights three essential areas—transformational leadership, learning and development, and artificial intelligence—that HR executives should focus on today to ensure their organization is equipped to drive business outcomes through talent strategy in 2030.

Transformational leadership

According to Wilson, HR’s shift to a more strategic platform is in large part an adaptation to today’s rapid rate of change—some of which is unprecedented, and most of which touches every part of an organization. While much of this change was likely inevitable, she explains, COVID-19 accelerated it, along with all that followed: geopolitical and economic volatility, new workforce expectations and new stakeholder expectations.

“In addition to adopting a whole new set of skills and a much broader mandate, HR practitioners can no longer think of themselves as back-office operational specialists,” she says. “They need to become full partners in setting the organization’s strategic trajectory.”

Learning and development

The Heidrick study found that 32% of HR leaders say that what executives learn in training isn’t relevant to their day-to-day work. In a broader economy that is complex and nuanced, that finding underscores the need for learning and development programs to keep pace and relevance.

“Since HR is often the only department in an organization that has a bird’s eye view of an organization’s talent needs, CPOs have a unique role to play in evolving these programs,” Wilson says. Contrary to what some assume, L&D programs should not focus merely on technical skills.

“Human skills like resiliency, teamwork, creativity and adaptability can and should be meaningful parts of L&D programs,” she says.

Artificial intelligence

Unsurprisingly, AI could present significant challenges as people leaders strategize for HR in 2030.

Fifty-four percent of HR leaders say that the technology isn’t being adopted quickly enough in their organizations—mostly due to the challenge of finding talent with the skills to use the tech. While individual HR leaders can’t do much about the external talent market conditions, Wilson says, they can train their own workforces.

“Change can be difficult, particularly when it involves technology as potentially transformative as AI,” Wilson says, adding that many workers understandably worry that the technology will replace them.

Most HR leaders, however, understand that AI is a complement to, not a replacement for, human beings. And in the coming years, HR leaders need to help workforces understand this idea, leading the conversation through the lens of the organization’s needs.

“CPOs are often well-positioned to identify what processes or aspects of the business can be improved by AI,” Wilson says, “and subsequently what type of leadership and talent will be necessary to experiment with the technology. Then, [they can] determine the best strategy with which to embed the right AI into the way they do business.”

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