The HR Revolution: Reclaiming a Seat at the Business Table

The world of work is changing rapidly, and, according to SHRM President and Chief Executive Officer Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, HR must change with it.

At SHRM26 in Orlando, Taylor said that the HR profession is facing a defining moment. As businesses grapple with artificial intelligence, economic pressures, and shifting workforce expectations, he said HR must move beyond its traditional role and become more deeply embedded in business strategy.

This is one of the “moments that test every profession,” Taylor said.

Those tests, he suggested, are already underway. Taylor cited his conversations with Fortune 500 CEOs and shared a concerning statistic: Roughly 30% of those CEOs he’s spoken with reported seeing little value in HR. Despite the critical work that HR professionals perform every day, a perception problem is threatening the profession's influence, Taylor warned.

“We do have to acknowledge that something serious is happening to our profession,” Taylor said, noting that many business leaders are losing confidence in HR's ability to drive organizational success.

Part of the challenge stems from HR's unique position within organizations. The function often serves as a bridge between employee interests and business objectives, placing practitioners in the middle of competing demands. “HR is stuck in the middle of people and CEOs,” Taylor said, “trying to protect the people and trying to protect the business.”

He acknowledged that many HR professionals experience this tension daily. Yet, Taylor argued that the profession's future depends on embracing — not avoiding — that tension.

HR has traditionally been recognized for advocating on behalf of employees, but Taylor emphasized that business leaders increasingly expect the function to demonstrate how workforce decisions contribute to organizational performance. “The CEO is HR's critical customer,” he said.

There is a “steady, underground cadence that quietly, actively, and seriously questions our value,” Taylor said. The solution, he argued, is not to retreat into familiar responsibilities but to redefine the profession's role.

“We need a revolution to take back HR,” he said.

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Connecting Talent Strategy to Business Results

Organizations need to re-examine the relationship between technology and talent, Taylor said. As organizations invest heavily in AI and automation, he warned that some leaders feel forced to choose between workers and technology. “With so much pressure to build and implement AI, there's less money to spend on people,” Taylor said. 

That reality makes it even more important for HR leaders to articulate the value that employees create for the organization. Taylor urged practitioners to become fluent in the language of business performance and return on investment (ROI).

HR needs to be “able to explain the value and ROI for each and every one of our employees,” Taylor said, arguing that doing so allows the profession to protect employees while simultaneously helping the business succeed.

To accomplish that goal, Taylor said HR professionals must deepen their understanding of business operations and goals — not just workforce management. 

“We've got to become experts on work itself,” he said. “We have to see what's coming next and get the business ready for it.”

That forward-looking mindset is increasingly important as CEOs seek clearer evidence of HR's impact. “Right now, more than ever, CEOs want to understand HR's impact on business performance,” Taylor said.

A Broader Vision for HR's Future

Taylor highlighted SHRM's HR-X framework as one effort to help organizations measure HR's contribution to business outcomes. Describing it as “the first research-validated standard for measuring how HR drives business performance,” he said the framework helps connect workforce decisions directly to organizational results by measuring the maturity of an organization’s HR function.

Citing SHRM research, Taylor said the standard can improve business performance by approximately $62,000 in additional revenue per employee for each one-point increase in HR maturity. HR-X is “guided by human expertise and powered by AI,” he said.

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Taylor described a future in which HR becomes the central authority on work, workforce strategy, and organizational effectiveness. “I envision a world where this work — this expertise — will be under the domain of HR, and we will be tasked with all things work,” he said.

Achieving that future will require bold action. “We can, and we must, make ourselves essential to the future of business,” Taylor said.

Revolutions, he acknowledged, are rarely comfortable. But for HR professionals willing to embrace change, he offered an optimistic conclusion: “We absolutely can unleash a revolution that will open incredible new doors to the future of HR.”