Dive Brief:
- HR has expanded beyond its original functions and become a more integral part of broader organizational goals, resulting in many HR teams taking on “a more consequential mandate without the support to match it,” according to the 2027 State of People Strategy Report from HR software firm Lattice.
- The study found that 55% of HR leaders said they have considered leaving their professions over the past year due to feelings of being undervalued (39%), always working in crisis mode (35%) and general burnout (34%). Another 21% cited concerns about being replaced by artificial intelligence.
- Nonetheless, there are indications that corporate support systems may be catching up, albeit slowly. More than half of HR leaders (52%) said they expected to see increased head counts over the next six to12 months, and an additional 54% said they expected budgets to grow over the same time period.
Dive Insight:
These results were compiled following a 2026 survey of more than 1,300 HR professionals at companies throughout the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, Germany and other global markets. HR leaders have become a critical touchpoint as AI implementation has shifted performance and productivity metrics, but there hasn’t been an equivalent change in the resources they’re given, the report indicated.
“As AI rewrites how companies operate, HR becomes central to business transformation,” Sarah Franklin, CEO of Lattice, said in a statement. “This is no longer about running better people programs with bolted-on AI. It’s about redefining how work happens, how performance is defined, and how organizations build the capability to win in an AI-native world.”
Importantly, the research found that some of the same qualities that attract people to HR roles can create pain points when there’s not sufficient organizational support.
In terms of job satisfaction, HR leaders said that what mattered most to them was helping people grow (56%), being a trusted advisor (54%) and impacting every level of their organization (52%). These are the same job functions “that leave them overextended when they’re under-resourced,” the report said.
The strain may be impacting workplace efficiency, according to a March report from Perceptyx, which found that 95% of HR leaders said they had maintained or increased their listening efforts over the past year, but just 27% reported being confident that employee feedback programs were providing the right business results.
Overworked HR teams are also being tasked with reinventing their roles in order to stay relevant. Mercer’s Global Talent Trends for 2026 report found that 35% of HR leaders and 30% of C-suite leaders surveyed said that it was important to revamp the HR model this year because HR functions are shifting from being service-oriented to being the driving force of company-wide change.
