For 16 years, Cornell University’s school of Industrial and Labor Relations has offered a program focused on the “modern CHRO.” Promising HR leaders are nominated by their CEO or CHRO to participate in the professional program, which offers development training in areas like board management, executive compensation, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG).
The demands of the CHRO role look different today than they did a decade ago, said program director Karen Siewert. Historically, HR departments haven’t been viewed as revenue generating. But in 2024, aspiring CHROs have to be deeply intertwined with the business, something that Cornell has tried to stress in its four-month program, according to Siewert.
“In order to enable the business, you need to understand the business,” Siewert told HR Brew. This type of exposure is particularly relevant given the “fast” and “constant” pace of change many organizations are enduring in the current economy, she added.
A historic shift in the labor market that occurred after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic helped spur an evolution in the CHRO role, as more companies started to see the top HR job not primarily as an administrative function, but one with “direct implications to value,” Neel Gandhi, a partner with McKinsey focusing on HR and talent strategy, told HR Brew. Companies have increasingly appointed HR leaders who can advise them on workforce planning, for example, or make strategic decisions based on the future needs of the employee population.
“What we’re seeing more of these days is CHROs who have spent some real time in the business,” said Gandhi, cutting their teeth in “line roles” that are tied directly to an organization’s core business, rather than HR business partner roles.
In conversations HR Brew had with more than a dozen CHROs and CPOs, understanding the ins and outs of how their company operates was consistently cited as a competitive advantage.
Bridging business with HR. Chelsea Trombino, CPO at healthcare company Thirty Madison, didn’t start her career in HR. Nevertheless, she developed an understanding of how business and HR objectives are connected when she transitioned into her current role.
When Trombino joined Thirty Madison as chief of staff in 2020, one of her first jobs was to help lead the company’s Series C fundraising round. In this role, Trombino, who started her career on Wall Street, had to “ramp up really quickly on how the business operates, and how we pitch the value of that business…and what our growth [was] going to look like.”
Understanding her company’s business objectives “has made me way more effective as an HR leader,” said Trombino, who was appointed as Thirty Madison’s CPO in December 2021, following a six-month stint as interim head of people. “I can bridge what we’re trying to accomplish as a business to our talent strategy, and how we get the most out of our people to deliver on that.”
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She saw firsthand how business imperatives can influence HR decisions when Thirty Madison merged with Nurx, a female-focused healthcare provider, in 2022. Bringing two companies together can be complex from an HR perspective, as leaders have to consider how to integrate benefits, compensation, and tech stacks, as well as figure out how two different cultures come together, Trombino said. An understanding of what Thirty Madison’s business was doing, what the work entailed, and which roles were necessary helped her advise on organization design and structure post-merger.
Sitting side-by-side with finance. Reporting to different leaders in her company has helped Faith Rottmann Johnson, VP of global HR, talent acquisition, and corporate social responsibility at IT services firm TEKsystems, integrate herself within the business. In her 20 years at the company, she has reported to people who now serve as SVP of sales, SVP of talent services, and even CEO of Allegis Group, TEKsystems’s parent company.
Today, Johnson reports to TEKsystems’s chief financial officer (CFO). Not only does this allow her to relay what’s happening with the business back to her team, but it also compels her fellow leaders to involve HR in the early stages of decisions that are likely to affect TEKsystems staff.
If TEKsystems’s SVP of sales is thinking about changing compensation, moving a function, or combining functions, for example, they might approach Johnson’s team first to discuss how this decision will affect employees. Her team can then advise on issues like risk mitigation, or a strategy around retention, to help sales “move their business forward further” with HR in mind, she said.
Katya Laviolette, CPO at 1Password, echoed the importance of integrating CHROs and CPOs with key leaders in departments like finance.
“As a CHRO, if you’re not tied at the hip with the CFO and CEO…then you’re not going to have a lot of fun and probably not going to have a lot of impact,” she said. A CHRO’s role is to understand where the business is heading, and illustrate how the department’s programs align with this direction. Cultivating strong relationships with the CEO, CFO, and board members is important, as is pushing back or challenging these leaders when necessary, she added.
Laviolette, who mentors other HR leaders, said the ability to “connect the dots” is a common theme among those who see success in the field.
“HR is embedded within the business, and they’re able to see how the business strategy connects to HR strategy, and so forth,” she said.