Ask the Analyst: What one practice should HR borrow from another function in 2027?

Every week for The Briefing, UNLEASH’s weekly intelligence email for senior business decision-makers, we ask our community of analysts – the true HR experts – to solve the biggest workplace challenges.

This week we asked: What one practice should HR borrow from another function in 2027?

Here’s the analysts’ perspectives.

David Green, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Insight222:

HR should borrow Finance’s discipline of treating every investment as a hypothesis about value.

Finance rarely asks, “How many activities did we complete?” It asks what changed, whether the investment delivered the expected return, and what we should do differently as a result. HR still too often measures activity: training completed, hires made, engagement survey participation rate.

In 2027, as organisations make significant investments in skills, AI, workforce transformation and employee experience, that won’t be enough. HR should define the business outcome upfront, agree with Finance how value will be measured, track whether it materialises, and reallocate resources when it doesn’t.

Not every people outcome can be neatly expressed in financial terms, but every significant investment should have a clear rationale for how it contributes to organisational performance. That requires HR to become as comfortable stopping or redirecting investment as launching the next initiative.

After years of asking for a seat at the table, perhaps the more important question is what HR does with the money once it gets there.

Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer and Principal Analyst, Brandon Hall Group:

In 2027, HR should adopt product management discipline from Technology and Engineering.

For too long, HR has operated through programs with defined start and end points. A new initiative launches, the organization measures success, and then moves on.

Technology and engineering functions operate differently. They build products with clear ownership, continuous feedback, measurable outcomes, and ongoing improvement.

HR needs to adopt the same discipline. Treat talent acquisition, onboarding, learning, and performance management as continuously evolving workforce products rather than isolated initiatives. Each should have an accountable owner, a roadmap, clear performance metrics, and a process for adapting to changing business needs. This becomes especially important as AI accelerates.

By adopting a product management mindset, HR can move beyond deploying technology and launching programs to continuously improve workforce capabilities and demonstrate measurable business value. HR's defining transformation in 2027 is moving from delivering programs to owning outcomes.

Peter Tiliakos, Principal Analyst, Strategic Advisor, GxT Advisors:

HR should borrow continuous customer discovery from product management in 2027.

Make it a regular practice to watch employees and managers use the services HR provides. Follow a pay question through to resolution. Watch someone change a shift or access a benefit. Ask where they got stuck, what they did next, and who had to help.

Payroll makes this especially tangible. An accurate, on-time payment is essential. So is an employee’s ability to understand it and get a clear answer when something looks wrong. Those interactions are where trust is earned.

Give HR leaders a recurring appointment with that reality. Bring Payroll, IT, Finance, and Operations into the discovery process, assign someone to fix the problem, and check back with the people experiencing it.

As HR invests in AI, this practice should guide what gets automated and how success gets measured. Time saved inside HR means little if employees or managers inherit the effort.

For 2027, my advice would be to spend more time observing the experience you deliver. Make that evidence part of every investment decision.

Rebecca Wettemann, CEO and Principal Analyst, Valoir:

One of HR’s biggest challenges right now is the speed at which AI is changing work, and the need to optimize the workforce dynamically.

In 2027, HR should be borrowing from the Sales playbook and start managing talent like a pipeline instead of like inventory.

In the age of AI, once a quarter is not enough for talent assessments or workforce planning. Sales organizations don’t wait until the end of the quarter to figure out whether they’ll hit their numbers. They’re continuously tracking opportunities, conversion rates, and probabilities, as well as gaps between projected demand and support.

HR should be applying the same discipline to workforce planning. Sales would never accept a pipeline report that was updated once a year or even once a quarter, based on self-reported information, and disconnected from revenue forecasts.

HR should be building internal dynamic pipelines that track emerging skills, employee readiness, and future needs and use that data to forecast demand, invest in development, and measure conversion – not just count heads.