Building a workforce for continuous change

Ecosystem development leads, with 68% of CHROs seeing significant opportunity to expand strategic alliances and partnerships, up from 50%. Revenue potential rose to 59% from 34%, and geographic expansion to 45% from 34%. CHROs see growth depending less on the size of the workforce and more on how quickly organizations can identify, access and mobilize skills from a broader mix of sources, including digital workers, contractors, partners and external specialists.

Skills and talent acquisition, retention and succession lead at 3.48 on a five-point impact scale, followed by cyber threats (3.46, up from 3.08), economic conditions (3.45), talent and labor availability (3.39, down from 3.83) and disruptive innovation (3.39, up from 2.63). Talent and technology concerns are increasingly intertwined. Organizations are being asked to move faster and adopt new technologies, while people need time to build new capabilities.

Treat AI as a workforce conversation, not just a technology one. CHROs rank better equipping the workforce (42%), improving AI governance and accountability (39%) and integrating AI with existing technologies, processes and the workforce (32%) as top priorities. That means rethinking which tasks are automated, augmented or human-led, building new skills and preparing managers to lead hybrid teams of human and AI-enabled contributors. 

Human capital management and workforce skilling remains the top investment priority at 42%, though down from 62%. Cybersecurity rose sharply to 39% from 25%, and business process improvements rank third at 33%. The mix shows CHROs focused not only on developing skills but on the conditions that let people apply them, including secure systems, effective processes and access to the information needed for sound decisions.