How Do You Feel About the Future of HR? Introducing Insights from the Inaugural GHRLE Offering

by Dave Ulrich, Professor (dou@umich.edu), Dick Beatty , Professor (dickbeatty@comcast.net), Patrick Wright , Professor (patrick.wright@moore.sc.edu) and Cori Jones , Program Manager (Cori.jones@moore.sc.edu)

Effective business and HR leaders constantly anticipate, prepare for, and create the successful future organization. The future of work will be shaped by external trends and conditions (see figure 1).

To respond to this changing context, confidence in HR’s future ranges along a continuum from low to high (figure 2).

Let us share why we are in the high confidence camp. We have just completed our inaugural eight-day in-person offering of the Global HR Leadership Experience (GHRLE), an overall one-hundred-day learning journey. We leave this learning experience with very high confidence in the future of HR for four reasons.

1. HR insights (ideas, inquiries, and investments) matter. HR’s future is less about HR tools and practices and more about outcomes that matter with evidence showing impact of HR on all stakeholders:

• Business financial results: impact on cash flow, EBIDA
• Business strategy realization: ability to define and achieve strategic goals
• Employee outcomes: retention, productivity, sentiment, professional growth
• Customer share: increased revenue from targeted customers and net promoter score.
• Investor confidence: increased market value through intangibles and lower cost of capital 

When business and HR leaders focus on HR investments that have a clear impact on stakeholder value, they don’t just “know the business”; they shape and create it, thus increasing confidence in HR’s future contribution.

2. HR will be addressing new and relevant issues. To deliver value to stakeholders, numerous innovations across a four-step logic to HR delivering more value (context, strategy, human capability, and personal change) can be identified with specific innovations and actions in each step (figure 3).

In the human capability area, we recognize exciting innovations that research and practice suggest will deliver future value with AI being a driving factor for each of the innovations below.

• Talent: personalization, measurement, accountability, mental health, learning, match strategy to people
• Organization: capabilities of agility, culture, information, analytics
• Leadership: at all levels, with competencies as strategic insights, disciplined execution, personal authenticity, succession
• HR function: evolve business partner and operating model, HR processes as products, and evolve HR competences

We have confidence in HR because today’s HR leaders share a commitment to creating stakeholder value through ever evolving and innovative human capability investments.

3. HR Leaders of Today. We created GHLRE with guidance from an amazing advisory board. In the eight-day in-person session, we had 27 presenters/facilitators (figure 4) on the above topics (see overview in figure 5).

Figure 4: Facilitators/Faculty for GHRLE

Presidents of HR Associations: Tim Bartl (CHRO/HRPA); Peter Cheese (CIPD); Peck Kem Low (WFPMA), TV Rao (NHRD), Amy Schabacker Dufrane, Ed.D., SPHR, CAE (HRCI), Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP (SHRM)

Leading CHRO's: @Bill Conaty (GE); Mirian Graddick-Weir (Merck) Pam Kimmet (Manulife), Nickle LaMoreaux (IBM); Donna Morris (Walmart); Christy Pambianchi (Caterpillar); Tim Richmond (AbbVie); Paige Ross, Ph.D. (Blackstone)

HR and business thought leaders: Dick Beatty Ram Charan ; David Green 🇺🇦 ; Jessica Johnson Rita McGrath Rob Ployhart Charles Tharp Dave Ulrich Erin Wilson Burns Patrick Wright Arthur Yeung

These facilitators have amazing insights on the emerging issues noted above, but even more, we were inspired with the humanity of these HR thought leaders who:

• See HR work as a calling and not just a job, leading to personal passion, commitment to helping others (next generation) succeed, and the desire to develop a credible HR profession.
• Are grounded in shaping, and driving the business by knowing changing context, stakeholders, and business strategy.
• Focus forward and do not recycle ideas but spiral ahead with new ideas by being curious, reflective, and experimental.
• Care about others so that when asked to share their driving identity or purpose, they include a desire to influence others in a positive way.

Our confidence in the future of HR increases because so many of today’s HR thought leaders understand context, create new content, and have personal passion and commitment for future leaders.

4. Next-Generation HR Leaders. Our greatest confidence in the future of HR comes from engaging next-generation leaders (see Figure 6 for inaugural class).

Those who attended GHRLE are an amazing cohort of individuals who possess four characteristics of high-potential future leaders:

• Ambition. Success requires ambition and the willingness to pay a personal price to learn, grow, and develop. Many participants have worked in multiple organizations and in different roles. Their career mobility implies that they are willing to stretch and experiment in their career. They are willing to invest in their personal career development by continuing to learn and grow.
• Ability. The next-generation HR leaders we met demonstrated abilities in delivering on expectations as exceptional individual contributors with the ability to manage others. They will create and master new insights that deliver even more value. As they move ahead in their career, they will have abilities to not only lead others directly but build systems that deliver value to stakeholders. HR’s pipeline is filled with exceptional talent!
• Agility. With the changing work context and evolving issues for HR impact, these next-generation leaders are willing to learn from the past, but they are also focused on creating the future. They are curious about what has to be done, willing to experiment with new ideas and actions, and committed to increasing HR’s contribution with new ideas. Their agility will keep the HR field “fresh.”
• Achievement. Results matter. Ambition, ability, and agility need to be coupled with achievement. The next-generation HR leaders we met are dedicated to achieving both economic and social success.

As we engage with the participants in GHRLE, they listen carefully and respectfully to today’s thought leaders, but they recognize that they will each have their personal journey and story. They will continually reinvent the HR profession, which gives us remarkable confidence in the future of HR.

The Best is Yet Ahead

We continually believe that the best is yet ahead, and our confidence in HR is magnified as we see that HR matters with innovative insights implemented by today and tomorrow’s HR leaders. We should also mention that our confidence increases even more as we meet with undergraduate and graduate students at the University of South Carolina Darla Moore School of Business choosing HR as a career. Their commitment to making a difference is compelling and exciting.

 GHRLE is a remarkable learning journey. An enormous thanks to the Advisory Board, faculty facilitators, and mostly to participants who give us great confidence in the future of HR.

Please join us as we continue to build this next generation of HR leaders. Our next offering will be April 27–May 5, 2026, with our amazing host at the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. Contact Cori Jones, Program Manager (Cori.jones@moore.sc.edu) for more information.

Dave Ulrich is Rensis Likert Professor Emeritus at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, and a partner at The RBL Group, a consulting firm focused on helping organizations and leaders deliver value.