Beyond the Seat at the Table: Why the People Function Must Reconnect with Its Purpose
How disconnected leadership at the top of the People function undermines trust and erodes organizational resilience.
Human Capital Management—long viewed as an operational discipline—has evolved into what I will call the People function: a strategic partner expected to shape decisions that impact both people and business outcomes.
And yet, many organizations continue to struggle to align people strategy and business strategy in a meaningful and sustainable way, particularly in today’s volatile, hybrid workforce environment.
Over the past decade, we have seen repeated cycles of aggressive hiring followed by layoffs, role redundancies, and reactive restructuring. These patterns often reflect a deeper issue: an inability to anticipate workforce needs while fully accounting for the human impact of business decisions before they are made. In an already uncertain environment, this reactive approach quietly erodes trust long before it appears in engagement data or financial results.
Why the Function Has Changed—But Not Always Matured
The People function has evolved in response to real and lasting shifts: new generations entering the workforce with different expectations around purpose and leadership, sustained market volatility, and growing social, technological, and well-being pressures affecting how work is experienced.
On paper, the mandate of the People function has expanded significantly. In practice, its maturity has not kept pace with its influence.
Having worked across multiple industries as a People Partner, one pattern has remained consistent: a persistent disconnect between people needs and business priorities. Culture is often positioned as the bridge between the two—but culture cannot be declared, rolled out, or delegated. It is built slowly through consistency, credibility, and accountability from leadership. This is where many organizations continue to fall short.
When Culture Becomes a Talking Point
Leaders within the People function are often tasked with “owning” culture. Yet culture does not live in policies, engagement surveys, or internal communications; it lives in daily leadership behavior and decision-making, especially at the executive level.
In hybrid and increasingly AI-enabled environments, connection no longer happens through proximity. It must be intentional. When leadership relies on process, frameworks, or messaging in place of presence, the gap between intent and impact widens.
I have witnessed leadership within the People function—and across the executive teams it supports—struggle to maintain that proximity. In some cases, leadership styles unintentionally prioritize process, optics, or executive comfort over genuine human engagement, while still promoting a narrative of connection and care.
The result is predictable: disengagement rises, trust erodes, and the credibility of the People function weakens.
The Uncomfortable Reality
In some organizations, the very leadership structures designed to strengthen culture end up contributing to its erosion.
This disconnect has led many experienced HR professionals to step away from the field—not due to a loss of commitment to people, but because leadership models limit their ability to create meaningful impact. Research consistently shows rising burnout within People teams since 2020, with lack of executive alignment cited as one of the most significant drivers.
When the People function lacks real influence, or when its most senior leaders are disconnected from the workforce, the role becomes performative rather than transformative. At that point, the function exists to manage perception, not to shape outcomes.
A Seat at the Table—and What Came With It
The People function has come a long way—from being viewed as an administrative necessity to earning a seat at the table where critical business decisions are made that directly affect an organization’s most valuable resource: its people.
That seat introduced the HR Business Partner model, designed to bridge the gap between senior leadership and the workforce. When implemented well, this model works. I have seen it provide leaders with both strategic guidance and grounded, human-centered insight, enabling organizations to navigate growth, complexity, and change more effectively.
At the same time, this shift has revealed a less frequently acknowledged challenge: leaders at the top of the People function can struggle to remain connected to the people they are meant to advocate for. Empathy becomes conceptual rather than practiced. The human dimensions of leadership—listening, presence, and humility—can fade under the weight of governance, dashboards, and executive pressure.
Where the Disconnect Begins
One of the most overlooked barriers to building cultures of trust and perseverance is the disconnect at the top of the People function itself.
When senior leaders operate at a distance, decisions become insulated. Human impact is considered only after outcomes are finalized. In an era of continuous transformation, employees are not resisting change; they are exhausted by change delivered without context, care, or credibility.
As a result, the People function can drift toward enforcement and messaging rather than connection, advocacy, and foresight. Employees notice. They recognize when culture is discussed but not practiced, when empathy is referenced but not demonstrated, and when perseverance is expected without being modeled.
Over time, trust weakens, and organizational resilience erodes quietly—long before it becomes visible in attrition or performance metrics.
What Stronger Cultures Actually Require
For executives serious about building trust and long-term resilience, the answer is not additional frameworks or more refined messaging. It is a fundamental shift in how leadership within the People function shows up.
A few changes make a meaningful difference:
- Recenter People Leadership on Connection, Not Control
- Governance matters, but trust is built through presence, listening, and context-driven decision-making.
- Ensure Senior People Leaders Remain Close to the Workforce
- Connection cannot be delegated. Proximity to employee experience—especially during periods of uncertainty—must be expected and supported at the highest levels.
- Treat Workforce Planning as a Core Business Discipline
- Reactive people decisions increase organizational risk. Predictive, thoughtful workforce strategy reduces disruption and signals care for both people and performance.
- Use Authority to Advocate, Not Just Approve
- The People function must surface human impact in real time, not after decisions are finalized. Influence only matters when it is exercised.
- Model the Culture You Expect Others to Live
- Trust, empathy, and perseverance must be demonstrated within leadership itself. Sustainable cultures require leaders who protect—not exhaust—their teams.
These shifts do not require perfection. They require courage, consistency, and accountability at the top.
The Path Forward
The People function cannot fulfill its promise if those leading it remain disconnected from the people it exists to serve. In today’s workforce, culture is no longer defined by what organizations say; it is shaped by what employees experience during uncertainty.
Strategy without proximity weakens trust. Enforcement without empathy undermines perseverance. If organizations want resilient cultures, executives must ensure that leadership at the top of the People function remains present, accountable, and human—especially when it is hardest to do so.
