In 2027, CHROs will look to deliver the growth and productivity that CEOs are seeking while minimising risks to the organisation, according to Gartner.
Mark Whittle, Vice President Analyst at Gartner, shared how leading organizations are approaching workforce skills at Gartner HR Symposium/Xpo in London.
“As leaders today push their organisations to achieve more, faster, and with less CHROs, must ensure that their workforces are capable of meeting these expectations while simultaneously minimising risk,” says Mark Whittle, vice-president analyst in the Gartner HR practice.
Whittle identified four critical priorities that CHROs must address next year to ensure the health of their organization:
HR excellence requires speed to value, not just efficiency
Most organisations today find that the needs of the business are evolving faster than HR can deliver.
“Many HR functions are trying to close that gap to the business by doubling down on process efficiency,” says Whittle. “This makes HR faster at executions, but not faster at delivering value. Leading organisations are looking outside of HR for answers and they’ve found they can accelerate the right kind of value speed by adopting product principles.”
Human accountability is essential no matter what work AI takes on
Today’s matrixed organisations blur ownership, while most corporate cultures reward teamwork and consensus. However, when it comes to AI, neglected accountability creates new organisational risk.
Enterprise AI agents are not just eliminating work, they systematically escalate ambiguity, judgment, and recovery work to human employees. Yet a July 2026 Gartner survey of 297 CHROs found that only 24% of leadership teams are aligned on who should be accountable for AI agents.
True accountability demands that humans remain the gatekeepers of AI, enforcing values, preserving trust, and stepping in when needed.
Fewer, differentiated skills carry most of the weight
The July 2026 Gartner survey revealed that while 67% of CHROs report increased expectations for employee productivity, organisations are simultaneously eliminating some middle management layers and not hiring as many entry level employees.
“A more load-bearing workforce heightens performance risks,” says Whittle. “While there are several levers HR can pull to alleviate some of the weight, the most critical tool is to focus on fewer skills that differentiate the organisation’s value. This ‘less is more’ strategy is critical in an environment where the number of skills per job keeps rising every year.”
Once leaders identify the business capabilities that set their enterprise apart and drive competitive advantage, they can determine the workforce skills that their talent delivers to underpin each differentiated capability. Progressive organisations also acquire and mobilise employees with “skills promise” – the willingness and ability to learn from a minimum viable skills foundation – not just skills proficiency.
The leader role is not designed or supported for disruption
Currently, CEOs’ ambition exceeds leaders’ ability to execute against it. A May 2026 Gartner survey of 203 CEOs and other senior business executives found that 63% are radically redesigning the operating model to accelerate financial returns from AI. Unfortunately, their senior leadership is struggling to meet these expectations due to entrenched ways of working, lagging team performance, and critical knowledge gaps.
HR must work with leaders to embrace “deliberate disruption” as a capability by continuously abandoning legacy behaviours and ways of working that no longer create value and replacing them with ones that better align with evolving business needs.