The Chief People Officer of the Future

The Adecco Group and UZH CLFW — March 2022

The Center for Leadership in the Future of Work and The Adecco Group engaged in a joint research project to explore how people management is changing. 

The report, ‘The Chief People Officer of the Future: How is the Top People Management Role Changing as the World of Work Evolves?’, draws upon the views of 122 senior people management executives from 10 countries and regions to outline three main findings:

• The changing role of the Chief People Officer - from traditional "people manager" to a dual focus on tech/data on the one hand, and fundamentally human aspects on the other.

  • On average, 86.9% of people management executives believe that understanding data and people analytics will be a crucial competency for HR leaders over the next five years.

  • However, when executives imagined the future in twenty years instead of five, they put a higher priority on human skills.

• Understanding and improving employee emotions is key to productivity gains - but executives lack adequate solutions

  • Almost 70% of executives believe that the top benefit of improving how employees feel at work is increased productivity and performance.

  • Only 21.3% of people management executives said that their company assesses employees’ emotional skills — and 0.0% said that their company trains employees on emotional skills.

• Bringing people back to work in a world of talent scarcity - returnships myths need to be unpacked

  • While 68.9% of HR executives said their company offers support to reintegrate working women back to the workforce.

  • Only 40.1% said that they offer similar support for other workers returning after caring for adult dependents.

Authors: Prof. Dr. Lauren Howe, Prof. Dr. Jochen Menges, The Adecco Group, The Innovation Foundation