In this age of accelerated technology advances, workers must be regularly reskilled or upskilled – and HR leaders are no exception, according to the study, "The Future Chief People Officer: Imagine, Invent, Ignite," by SHRM's HR People + Strategy and Willis Towers Watson.

"There must be a commitment on the part of HR leaders to continue to evolve in order to ensure that the business maintains its competitive advantage — however, HR leaders can't go it alone," the authors write. "This also requires the same commitment from their C-suite peers, the CEO and the board to transform the work of HR and radically reset expectations for the CPO role."

More than 500 executives including CPOs, corporate board members, CEOs and other C-suite executives participated in the study, which consisted of a survey, in-depth interviews and focus groups.

The study found that CPOs need to further develop the digital business acumen to understand how technical skills fit into the workplace and how to make best use of people as their organizations implement digital technologies "to unlock greater business value." CPOs must also prioritize continuous learning and reskilling across the enterprise, and also elevate HR decision science to progress from anecdotal to evidence-based thinking.

However, only about a third (35 percent) of the survey respondents believe that future CPOs are getting the development they will need in these three key areas.

"When comparing their organization's progress in these areas versus other organizations, CEOs have a more optimistic view than CPOs, perhaps suggesting that CEOs do not fully appreciate the development gaps in the next generation of HR executives," the authors write.

Indeed, there is a disconnect between how the top brass and HR leaders view the progress that has been made in key development areas: embracing technology that builds a consumer experience for employees (51 percent of CEOs believe this, compared to 36 percent of CPOs); moving from episodic training to perpetual reskilling (51 percent CEOs, versus 31 percent CPOs); and leading with data-driven insights (43 percent CEOs, versus 27 percent CPOs).

"This study serves as a call to action for HR executives and their C-suite peers to imagine, invent and ignite the change required to chart a new path forward for the CPO," the authors write. "Our research reveals five pivotal imperatives that highlight the skills, behaviors and experiences needed to capture the opportunities and meet the challenges in the new world of work."

Those five partitives are:

Push boundaries to evolve and power more agile ways of working to ensure that both the organization and HR will be able to respond in a nimble manner to an ever-changing business environment.
Unleash digitalization to understand how technology is changing the nature of work and how it can free talent from administrative and operational tasks, allowing individuals to focus on higher value activities. It's also critical to understand how digitalization can be used to deliver a consumer-grade employee experience that will increase engagement and productivity of the workforce.
Embrace perpetual work reinvention to optimize the use of talent and automation. Organizations must put continuous learning and reskilling at the heart of the new employment deal as work is continuously reinvented and skill requirements shift.
Rethink culture and leadership to lead people in more fluid organizations where talent on the front lines is empowered to innovate and where the entire workforce feels vested in a common purpose.
Elevate decision science to make evidence-based decisions and demonstrate the impact of talent decisions on company value, performance and growth.

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HR, C-Suite need to double down on skills training for workers

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