Q3 2026 Human Resources Leadership Review: People Decisions Shape Strategy

Acquisitions Need the CHRO Before Signing

People are a key source of value in an acquisition, yet most buyers do not assess them until after the deal is signed. A recent PwC survey found only 16% of companies assessed the leaders and talent they were buying beforehand.¹ By then the price is set and the people who made the business worth buying are harder to retain.

When the CHRO joins the deal team early, the buyer can name the leaders who will run the combined business, identify the people it most needs to retain and map operational synergies between the two organizations. Each of those findings can change the deal. A thin leadership team at the company being acquired can lower the price. A plan to keep essential employees adds to the cost. Those decisions shape what the acquisition is worth for years after closing.

Companies hiring a CHRO should look for someone who has helped evaluate human capital in acquisitions before signing and can tell the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) plainly which people the company cannot afford to lose. The strongest Head of Total Rewards candidates have built retention plans that kept key people through an integration at a cost the business could defend.

AI Put Organization Design on the CHRO’s Agenda

As companies invested in AI, CHROs gained influence over how organizations must adapt to achieve a return on the investment. FactSet made the connection explicit in July, when it named Di Hirji, former Chief People Officer of S&P Global Market Intelligence, its Chief People & Workforce Transformation Officer. CEO Sanoke Viswanathan tied FactSet’s AI strategy to organizational design and to how its people work with AI agents, software that completes tasks autonomously.

Much of that design work starts with the manager’s role. As managers focus on deploying AI agents alongside their teams, someone must be accountable for the agents’ output. The CHRO and the Chief Information Officer (CIO) are best placed to redesign that role together.² Done well, the redesign gives each agent a named owner, shifts managers’ time toward judgment and decisions and prompts a review of management layers that mainly relay information. Companies that make these decisions before rolling out AI widely are better positioned to see results and less likely to lose experienced leaders along the way.

Strong candidates for Head of Organizational Effectiveness have redesigned roles around new technology and can demonstrate results in output, cost or speed. Candidates from companies further along with AI implementation can shorten the learning curve for a company just starting.

CHROs See Succession Risk First

The CHRO tracks who is close to retiring and who is ready to step up, so a thinning bench usually reaches the CHRO’s desk before anyone else’s. Benches tend to thin in common ways: management layers cut without a plan to develop leaders, senior executives retiring close together and leadership development offered to only a handful of high-potential employees. When a critical role opens without a successor in place, strategy can stall while the company searches, delaying decisions, unsettling the team left without a leader and giving competitors time to move.

Seeing the risk early gives the CHRO time to act before a role opens. An external search belongs alongside every review of internal talent. It shows how internal candidates compare with strong leaders in today’s market. When an internal successor is still the right choice, the company will know it chose the best person, not just the most familiar.

The strongest Heads of Talent treat succession as a standing business priority. They review internal and outside talent on a regular schedule, well before a vacancy, and prepare internal candidates for broader roles.

The Road Ahead

Many CFO decisions show up in results within a few quarters, while CHRO decisions often take years to appear. The right ones pay off in ready successors and organizations that hold up through change. That wait can make the CHRO’s choices harder to defend early. It also reflects the role’s weight, since few executives shape the company’s future over a longer stretch.

Three priorities belong in 2027 planning:

• People priorities in the AI budget. Only 19% of US CHROs said the expected effects of AI were built into workforce and financial planning across their company.³ Joining the two plans puts people decisions on the same cycle as budgets.
• 2027 restructuring leadership check. Before management layers are finalized in next year’s budget, CHROs should confirm which remaining roles will develop the next generation of leaders.
• Successor coverage as a CHRO measure. Track the share of critical roles with a named successor, from inside or outside the company.

SOURCES

¹ PwC, “PwC’s 2026 M&A Integration Survey,” September 29, 2026 (PwC) | ² Keith Ferrazzi and Wendy Smith, “Your next manager may have three employees and 19 agents. Who’s accountable?” October 8, 2026 (Fortune) | ³ The Conference Board, “Survey: CHRO Confidence Remains in Positive Territory, But Continues to Inch Down,” October 1, 2026 (PR Newswire)

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