From HR Leader to Strategic Co-Pilot: The CPO’s Role in the Next 5 Years - Secrets of a Chief People Officer

As a CPO mentor, I find myself sitting with aspiring or current Chief People Officers, and over the past year a common theme emerges: the sheer weight of responsibility that comes with the role today. In my view, this weight has grown in response to increasing business complexity, rising workforce expectations, and external disruptions—from technological advancements to societal pressures like wellbeing, inclusion, and sustainability. One mentee put it simply:

"I feel like I’m wearing a dozen hats at once—strategist, conscience, coach, culture builder, and firefighter."

It’s a valid reflection. The role of the Chief People Officer (CPO) has undergone a profound shift. It's been quite some years since HR was confined to processes, policies, employee relations, and (sometimes) payroll. As we entered the second decade of the century, the role of the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) embedded into organisations, driven by the growing recognition that culture and engagement directly impact business performance. The shift was further accelerated by external pressures like the pandemic, where HR leaders became central to guiding resilience and enabling transformation.

As we head into 2025, we've seen the role shift further in the last 5 years, and the idea of the CPO is now becoming embedded as a key Board-level leader, recognised for their role in influencing strategy and enabling transformation. This evolution aligns with Gartner's CHRO model, where the CPO must now be a “Leader of Human Capital and Culture”, while also “shaping enterprise-wide change” and acting as the “trusted advisor to the CEO and leadership team”. ?CPOs are increasingly partnering with CEOs, taking seats on Boards, and driving conversations about sustainable growth, talent competitiveness, and people strategy. Here’s what I believe is next for the role, and how CPOs can lead in the second half of this decade.

The CPO as the Conscience of the Business

The CPO has an increasingly visible role as the conscience of the organisation. While CEOs drive growth and CFOs guard the numbers, the CPO holds a mirror to the organisation—challenging decisions that may compromise culture (in the true meaning of the word) wellbeing, or long-term sustainability. The CPO must drive culture and purpose throughout the organisation, ensuring accountability across the leadership team. Culture isn't just an HR initiative, it’s not just a set of values, it requires active leadership ownership. A key part of this role is holding up what I call “the invisible costs”—burnout, turnover, and declining engagement—that often get overlooked when chasing short-term targets. Let’s look at culture a bit more.

Culture: From Buzzword to Business Asset

As CPOs, we are often tasked with defining, protecting, and scaling culture. However, while we set the framework, accountability for culture ultimately sits with leaders across the organisation. Leaders define culture through their actions, decisions, and behaviors.

The role of the CPO is not to carry culture alone but to act as the?architect and enabler—designing the framework, holding leaders accountable, and providing the tools, insights, and challenge to ensure culture aligns with business strategy. It’s about embedding culture into decision-making processes, leadership practices, and daily operations so it becomes a lived experience, not a set of values stuck on a wall.

“Culture isn’t what you say—it’s how decisions get made when no one is looking.”

However, culture is far more complex. It operates at multiple levels:

• Organizational culture: Shared values, beliefs, and norms at the macro level.
• Team culture: Behaviours and dynamics specific to teams.
• Subcultures: Legacy norms, geographies, or functional differences.

The role of the CPO as the ‘culture architect’ is not to carry culture alone but to embed it systemically—aligning it with leadership behaviors, strategy, and operational decisions.

“Culture is not just the result of leadership behaviours—it’s a systemic outcome. Policies, incentives, and decision-making processes must reinforce the values we want to see.”

Driving People Experience: Moving Beyond Processes to Impact

There’s often a misconception that the CPO owns the people experience end-to-end. In reality, the design of the experience sits with us, but its delivery happens through managers, leaders, and the organisation’s culture. And it’s here that the evolving role of the CPO must focus.

The people experience cannot be reduced to a set of processes or transactions. It must be intentionally designed to feel cohesive, meaningful, and aligned with the organisation’s purpose and values. A great people experience should meet the needs of employees at every stage—from onboarding and career development to performance feedback and offboarding and alumni—and balance both?consistency?and?human connection.

"We know employees don’t leave companies—they leave managers. I’m not there to deliver every part of the people experience myself, but I am there to challenge, coach, and enable leaders to deliver it."

Key Insights:

• Managers as Stewards of the Experience: Leaders and managers are often the most critical touch-points in an employee’s journey. Equipping them with the right tools, training, and mindset enables them to embody the organisation’s culture while delivering a positive, human-centred experience. Managers must understand that they own their part of the people experience—and the CPO’s role is to empower them to deliver.

• Intentional Design, Not Transactions: A poorly designed people experience feels fragmented and reactive. Instead, a systemic and intentional design ensures experiences are seamless, personalised, and meaningful. It’s about creating moments that matter, from first candidate interaction to exit interviews, while eliminating points of friction along the way.

• Metrics as Organisational Health Indicators: Retention, engagement, and wellbeing metrics are signals of organisational health. When these indicators fall short, they reflect gaps in leadership, culture, or support systems—not just HR’s effectiveness. CPOs need to look beyond the surface and diagnose root causes, helping the organisation to act with precision.

Practical Insight: I’ve seen firsthand how redefining accountability for the people experience can shift mindsets and outcomes. For example, moving away from form-driven annual or bi-annual reviews and introducing regular manager-led check-ins and feedback tools built around the idea of the manager as a coach, organisations empower leaders to take ownership of their teams’ experience, resulting in measurable gains in engagement and retention. The key is to position the CPO as a guide, not the sole driver.

By focusing on enabling leaders, challenging processes, and diagnosing health indicators, we move beyond transactions to build people experiences that inspire, engage, and retain talent.

Partnering for Growth: The CPO as the CEO’s Co-Pilot

The CPO role has expanded because organisations now realise that?people are strategy. Partnering with the CEO requires stepping beyond traditional HR boundaries to influence product, technology, and market strategy.

The role of the CPO is no longer about operational delivery alone. Instead, it is about aligning people and organisational capability with the evolving needs of the business. As companies face increasing complexity, transformation agendas, and disruption, the CPO has become a?strategic enabler—working side-by-side with the CEO and leadership team to ensure that people strategy fuels growth, resilience, and competitive advantage.

“If I’m not contributing to business strategy, I’m not doing my job. I need to know where the business is going, challenge decisions where necessary, and bring insights about what the organisation—and its people—need to succeed.”

Key Insights:

• Shaping Transformation Agendas: CPOs play a critical role in ensuring people, culture, and leadership capabilities are central to transformation efforts—whether it’s entering new markets, adopting new technologies, or scaling operations. By aligning talent and capability planning with strategic goals, the CPO enables growth to happen intentionally, not reactively.

• Diagnosing Underperformance: People and culture often hold the answers to why transformation stalls or why growth targets are missed. The CPO’s role is to uncover these root causes—whether they lie in leadership gaps, misaligned structures, or disengaged teams—and provide solutions that unlock performance.

• Challenging Assumptions: A key role of the CPO is to bring an informed, people-focused lens to strategic conversations. For example, challenging assumptions about organisational readiness, capability gaps, or cultural misalignment ensures businesses make decisions that are sustainable and people-centred.

Practical Insight: I’ve seen how a focus on leadership succession planning and aligning talent with transformation goals can directly impact strategic outcomes. For example, aligning the organisation’s leadership model to support the growth strategy accelerated execution and reduced time-to-impact. The key was ensuring that leadership capability was not a secondary consideration but a central enabler of the transformation agenda.

Supporting the CPO Role for the Future

However, it’s important to note that not all organisations are allowing the CPO role to evolve in this way. Despite the growing awareness of its strategic importance, many businesses still limit the role to operational or transactional responsibilities. This often results in missed opportunities to leverage the CPO’s expertise in leadership development, succession planning, and talent strategy as critical drivers of growth.

As we look ahead to 2025, leadership development must become a?top priority?for HR leaders. Organisations that fail to invest in developing future-ready leaders risk falling behind, as they will lack the capability to navigate complexity and drive transformation. CPOs must actively advocate for this shift—pushing for leadership development to be seen as a core component of business strategy, not a standalone HR initiative.

The evolving role of the Chief People Officer reflects the increasing complexity of modern businesses and the growing list of responsibilities placed on leaders. As I’ve mentioned, many CPOs today feel as though they are wearing a “dozen hats”—strategist, culture architect, coach, talent enabler, and transformation leader—all while balancing traditional HR operations.

This expansion of the role is necessary but comes with challenges. To succeed, organisations must ensure the right?structure, systems, and support?are in place to enable the CPO to fulfil this broader remit effectively. Without this, the risk of burnout, fragmented focus, and limited impact becomes very real.

“The role has become broader because the demands on organisations are greater. But the question leaders need to ask is: Are we enabling our CPO to deliver at this level?”

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Key Recommendations:

• Clarify Expectations: Organisations must clearly define the strategic responsibilities of the CPO and ensure operational tasks are appropriately delegated. In my experience, achieving this clarity often requires direct conversations with CEOs and Board Chairs. I’ve even used tools such as the Gartner CPO model to facilitate these discussions and set clear expectations about the role's scope and strategic impact.

• Align Structures with Purpose: The CPO cannot drive change alone. Leadership structures, governance, and systems must align to support the people agenda. Equally, the CPO must be adequately resourced, both in terms of team structure and budget, to deliver on this expanding remit. Too many organisations still view the CPO role as transactional, making people functions an easy target for budget cuts during cost-saving exercises. Yet, the remit remains unchanged, and this mismatch is where we see rising stress, burnout, and limited impact. Businesses must rethink their approach. For organisations seeking greater flexibility and efficiency, fractional and consulting resources can accelerate outcomes without the commitment of full-time, permanent costs. These options can support the CPO in scaling leadership development, organisational transformation, or critical people initiatives more effectively.

The evolving CPO role is not just a response to business needs—it is a proactive move towards sustainable success. When organisations fully embrace this, the CPO becomes a?key driver of transformation—ensuring that people, culture, and strategy align to deliver business outcomes.

This is the challenge—and the opportunity—that lies ahead. For organisations and CPOs alike, the question is clear:?Are we ready to embrace what’s next?

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