The CHRO’s New Frontier

Irrespective of industry, location, or growth rate, companies getting HR transformation right are 27% more profitable than those that aren’t, noted Josh Bersin (Founder & CEO at The Josh Bersin Company) in his opening keynote at UNLEASH World 2025’s CHRO Summit.

HR is no longer a back-office function; it’s a strategic lever that drives business outcomes.

Bersin urged leaders to rethink how they hire, build, and redeploy talent, asking: Are we improving talent density and overall productivity, or simply hiring incrementally in a linear way?

He encouraged attendees to imagine their companies from scratch: to justify every role and every skill, and to embrace change as a constant, ongoing process.

From Innovation to Intention with Skills at the Core

Isabelle Minneci (Deputy Chief Human Relations Officer at L’Oréal) and Gina Vargiu-Breuer (Chief People Officer at SAP) went on to illustrate what this future-ready HR function looks like in practice.

For Minneci, the path to transformation centers on skills-driven organizations and new ways of working. She also shared how her company has embraced AI over the past two years through a dedicated task force, developing a framework for responsible AI to maximize impact while reducing fear.

Today, 60% of the L’Oréal workforce is upskilled in AI, enabling the removal of transactional tasks so employees can focus on work that truly matters.

Vargiu-Breuer emphasized the importance of change agility, and a growth culture, stating that SAP’s focus was on redesigning leader selection and making upskilling and reskilling a priority.

She described an in-house skills taxonomy of 8,000 skills, alongside AI-driven personalization tools that anchor learning journeys and succession planning to these.

The takeaway was clear from both senior leaders: skills are the new currency at work.

Designing the Human & Machine Workforce for HR

At one of the intimate roundtable sessions during the CHRO summit, Kyle Forrest (Principal, Human Capital at Deloitte) guided CHROs through the need to look at roles, workflows, and team structures – redesigning HR for impact and when it’s appropriate (or not) for AI tools to be utilized.

The group discussed the challenge of deciding if organizations should build traditional shared services or leapfrog directly to AI-enabled operations.

It was clear that many organizations begin with talent acquisition or HR operations, then expand to HR business partners and learning & development.

Ultimately, leaders shouldn’t be afraid of getting started, as there are enough proof points and examples in existence today.

Taking a ‘today is the worst it will ever be,’ approach and mindset is best to hit the ground running.

Skills Strategy & Workforce Planning

David Wilson (CEO & Founder at Fosway Group) focused his session on skills strategy as a key priority for CHROs.

Most around the table were organizations that felt they were mid-journey in becoming skills-based (noting they also felt stilted or slow to progress), and while acknowledging the path is complex, all agreed that skills must deliver business outcomes, not just HR outcomes.

One professional services firm noted that the typical skills taxonomy is inadequate for staffing; they track over 2,500 skills in their technical staff and keep skills for staffing/work allocation decisions separate from internal skills for HR decisions.

To move forward, HR must be the unlock for interoperability between technology and people, connecting skills, work, and business impact, not only for operational decision-making but also for C-suite conversations on future capability and business resilience.

Employee Experience in the Age of Flexibility, AI, and Burnout

During the CHRO Summit, Stacia Garr (Co-founder and Principal Analyst at RedThread Research) hosted a session that reframed HR’s responsibility around worker experience in the age of AI, flexibility, and burnout.

The core prompt: Should HR lead the redesign of work itself as GenAI transforms how work gets done?

Participants agreed: HR must lead to ensure attention to human outcomes.

We see the current use of AI tends to optimize efficiency (automating administrative tasks, generating content, or improving scheduling), but this could be to the detriment of the workforce as we witness a growing sense of disconnection and erosion of wellbeing and engagement.

HR must not forget to prioritize rethinking work design, tackling systemic burnout, and building intentionality and agency into the employee experience as AI becomes all-consuming.

Leaders have the opportunity to become the architects of possibility, creating workplaces that are sustainable, human-centered, and adaptable to ongoing technological change.

Operationalizing Talent Intelligence at Scale

The discussion led by Sam Schlimper (Managing Director, Talent Advisory at Randstad Enterprise) focused on operationalizing talent intelligence.

As in Wilson’s conversation, many organizations felt there was a gap when looking at the promise of skills-based HR and the reality because of data gaps, trust and transparency issues, and lags in SaaS platforms themselves.

As HR and talent leaders look ahead, the challenge remains of how to embed data fluency, orchestration capability, and human insight at the core of the operating model, enabling both people and machines to make better, faster, and fairer decisions.

Data is our superpower — but only if we can see it, trust it, and connect it to the work that matters.

Strategic HR by Design

The fifth roundtable, led by Jess Von Bank (Global Leader, HR Transformation and Technology Advisor at Mercer), highlighted a key theme of the day: HR is moving from back-office operator to strategic powerhouse.

Zooming into leading HR functions, it’s clear that tweaking processes won’t cut it.

HR is moving from back-office operator to value architect by treating talent like a strategic portfolio, segmenting employee “customers” by needs and skills, and designing experiences that earn measurable returns.

Top performers are those who work closely with CIOs and CFOs, speaking the same language to modernize technology and shift culture, earning HR a seat at the CEO’s right hand.

The challenge remains: legacy culture, risk aversion, and underused technology slow progress.

Von Bank’s mandate was clear: upskill the people function, embed it into the business, and tell a sharper value story to justify bolder, faster reinvention.

The CHRO’s Imperative: Architect the Future, Don’t Await It

Across keynotes, panels, and roundtables during the UNLEASH World CHRO Summit, one message resonated: the future of HR will be architected, not inherited.

To thrive in the decade ahead, CHROs must:

• Redesign work to amplify human capability alongside AI.
• Operationalize skills and link them to business outcomes.
• Embed data fluency across the organization.
• Not just include, but prioritize employee experience while driving efficiency.
• Elevate HR’s influence with business acumen and courage.

The leaders who embrace this orchestration of people, machines, and meaning with courageous leadership won’t just survive the future of work; they will shape it.