What is the purpose of HR?

Lately, I have been reading a lot about the future of the HR function, its limitations, the various possible reconfigurations and transformations, and even its inevitable disappearance.

I was about to make my modest contribution when I realized that this reflection was pointless if we didn’t first ask ourselves about the role of the HR function, what we expect from it, in short, its purpose, because, ultimately, everything else depends on that.

So let’s start at the beginning, but first let’s try to understand how this function has evolved to arrive at the current situation before exploring several options and sharing my own understanding based on my experience.

• The HR function has evolved from an administrative role to a strategic function in response to industrial, social, and technological transformations, without any real increase in resources.
• Despite the constant expansion of its responsibilities (compliance, training, strategy, AI, diversity), the HR function remains understaffed and under-resourced, which limits its ability to meet expectations.
• The HR of tomorrow is set to become a key player in collective performance: strategists, designers of work environments, ethical guarantors of AI, skills managers, and architects of ecosystems.
• The goal of HR is not to produce HR activities, but to create value for all stakeholders by reconciling the business’s economic objectives with the human needs of its employees.
• Concrete examples show that the real impact of HR comes through its involvement in the organization of work, cooperation with operations, and direct action on the “work system” rather than on peripheral mechanisms.

A brief history of the HR function

It all began at the end of the 19th century with the rise of industrialization and what I call the era of personnel administration. Businesses had to manage large workforces, often with few skills and subjected to harsh working conditions. This was the era when the role of personnel management emerged, with a primarily administrative mission: drawing up contracts, paying wages, managing schedules, and ensuring discipline.

This role also had a paternalistic mediating function: the company sometimes provided housing, a canteen, or medical assistance, but more often than not, this was done with a view to control rather than emancipation. In the 1930s–1950s, with the rise of labor law, collective agreements, and unions, this management became more structured: the “personnel department” became the point of contact for social partners and the administration.

At this stage, the focus was not yet on viewing people as a lever for performance or development, but rather on ensuring compliance, order, and continuity of production.

This period lasted until the 1960s, when occupational psychology began to emerge. Under the influence of social sciences and motivational theories (Maslow, Herzberg, McGregor), HR was no longer limited to administrative tasks: people began to talk about training, evaluation, and integration. The “human factor” was now seen as a lever for performance.

It was in the 1980s and 1990s that “human resource management” took hold. The vocabulary changed: people were no longer just a social constraint, but a resource to be managed, optimized, and developed. Information technology made it possible to automate payroll, freeing up time for HR development. It was also a darker period, with an increase in redundancy plans and retraining, which saw the HR function take on a strategic role in restructuring.

From the 2000s onwards, people began to talk about the strategic function of HR. Under the influence of globalization and the war for talent, HR became a business partner. It talks about “strategy,” relies on performance indicators, promotes the employer brand, and becomes more professional (Ulrich model: HR Business Partner, centers of expertise, shared services).

The late 2010s saw the emergence of employee experience, at a time when everyone was talking about “experience.” With digital technology and the transformation of working methods, the function is now interested in engagement, employee experience, corporate culture, and organizational agility. Quality of life at work, diversity, and social responsibility are now part of its remit.

And today? That’s precisely the topic of the day, with HR both augmented and questioned

Artificial intelligence, hybrid working, new relationships at work, and the quest for meaning are shaking up the function. It is being called upon to go beyond compliance and administration to become a designer of work environments, a human capital strategist, and also an ethical guarantor of the use of technology.

Resources that never kept pace

At first, things were simple: personnel management involved administrative and legal tasks with a clear scope (payroll, contracts, discipline). Resources were modest, but so were expectations.

Then, as the role expanded, the function was called upon to manage social relations, oversee training, secure restructuring, then develop the “employer brand,” integrate diversity, rethink the employee experience, and now anticipate the impacts of AI on employment and skills.

Each new era has added responsibilities without necessarily removing the old ones.

The resources, however, have not followed the same curve.

Automation (payroll, administration) has freed up time, but not enough to absorb all the new tasks. Meanwhile, HR staffing levels, as a proportion of the number of employees, have changed little in many organizations. We often still have 1 HR person for every 70 (at best) but more often 100 to 150 employees.

Budgets have remained tight, and the HR function rarely has the political clout to demand the same investments as IT or marketing (Human capital? Less well endowed than technological capital).

Paradoxically, the Ulrich model (see below), while giving the illusion of strengthening the function, has in reality often reduced proximity to the field and fragmented roles.

The HR function has thus become a “receptacle” for multiple expectations, legal, social, cultural, strategic, and technological, but it remains structurally under-resourced, which explains its sometimes reactive, even defensive image, when its role should be forward-looking and value-creating.

What role will HR play in the future?

Let’s quickly take a look at some of the leading voices on the subject.

From compliance manager to human capital strategist. Dave Ulrich was one of the first to put forward this vision: HR is not simply a support function but a strategic partner, responsible for translating business challenges into talent and organizational policies. In his approach, HR is not limited to responding to the needs of the business, but works with it to build the future (How HR Can Shape Business Strategy and Prove Its Impact (with Dave Ulrich) and Dave Ulrich Discusses Employee Experience, Personalization and the Impact of AI).

From employee experience to the design of work environments. Laszlo Bock, former HR Director at Google, sought to demonstrate in his book Work Rules! that the mission of HR is to create environments where people give their best, not through control but through organizational design. The future of HR is less about administrative management and more about the ability to imagine and test environments that align well-being, performance, and innovation.

From administration to data and AI. When discussing HR in the age of technology and AI, we must look to Josh Bersin, who believes that the HR function is becoming an analytical one. It must master social data, people analytics, and, in the future, generative and predictive AI to inform its decisions. But this technology must be accompanied by an ethical and human role, otherwise AI will only amplify bias and opacity (People Analytics, A Complex Domain, Is About To Be Transformed by AI.).

From job to skills flow. Peter Cappelli points out that the traditional model, based on fixed jobs, is outdated. Tomorrow’s HR departments will have to manage constantly changing skill portfolios, match internal supply and demand, and think of employment as an adaptable flow, which redefines training, mobility, and compensation (Skills-based hiring: Where we stand heading into 2025).

From centralized function to ecosystem architect. McKinsey and BCG refer to HR as a “platform function.” The challenge is to connect employees, managers, external partners, technologies, and communities in a fluid ecosystem. HR is becoming less of a controlling service and more of an architect that connects and simplifies (HR’s new operating model).

From the shadows to governance. Finally, Deloitte emphasizes that the HR function can no longer be seen as merely executive. With the rise of AI, ESG issues, diversity, and new ways of working, it must sit at the heart of governance, alongside finance and strategy. In this vision, the HR director becomes a co-leader, not a “support” function (2025 Global Human Capital Trends).

In summary, the HR of tomorrow will be strategists, designers of work environments, ethical guardians of AI use, skill flow managers, and ecosystem architects. They will move from a logic of compliance to a logic of shared value creation, for both the business and individuals.

But what is the purpose of HR?

But we have only talked about the “how”, not the “why”. As I said in the introduction, before asking ourselves what role and future organization HR should have, we need to take a step back and ask ourselves what its purpose and objective are, because its raison d’être is not to manage contracts, set up training plans, or deploy payroll tools.

The purpose of HR has never been, is not, and will never be to do HR, but to contribute to something bigger, and if this is not the case in a given business, that may already explain part of the problem.

Returning to Dave Ulrich, the HR function only makes sense in its ability to create value for stakeholders, namely employees, managers, customers, investors, and communities. He explains very clearly that it is not the sum of HR activities that counts, but the value they generate outside the function (What Makes an Effective HR Function?). In another analysis, he emphasizes that the evolution of human skills and organizational capacity is the main lever for this value creation, which places the HR function at the heart of the business’s sustainability (Dave Ulrich: Harnessing the evolution of human capability to create value).

On the practitioner side, Laszlo Bock has shown that the role of HR is to build environments where individuals can grow, learn, and thrive. In his presentations, he reminds us that giving meaning to work and ensuring that everyone sees their contribution as part of a larger mission is a fundamental task of HR (Laszlo Bock’s 6 Tips for Building a Better Workplace).

In the same vein, Ulrich proposes concrete actions to help HR focus on the essentials: linking each activity to a visible and measurable impact on collective performance and stakeholder outcomes (Six Actions for HR to Create More Stakeholder Value).

We can therefore say that the ultimate goal of the HR function is twofold. On the one hand, ensuring the sustainability and performance of the organization by guaranteeing that skills, culture, and working methods are aligned with the strategy. On the other hand, preserving and developing human potential over the long term by creating conditions for meaning, growth, and fulfillment.

Ultimately, the goal of HR is to reconcile two logics that do not naturally coincide: the economic imperatives of the organization and the human aspirations of those who work there. This is, admittedly, a very complicated balance to achieve, especially with limited resources, and only if one is willing to take on the challenge and not limit oneself to one pillar.

My own experience: the importance of “at the same time” and the operational impact of HR

Let’s now talk about my own experience and convictions, which confirm, through practice, the theories I have just mentioned. In hindsight, if I wanted to post-rationalize, I would place myself between Ulrich and Boch, although when I had to chart my course, I thought in terms of the mission to be accomplished for the business without even considering what others might have said on the subject. I even think I went further than them in terms of the impact on the business’s performance, based on the principle that when faced with a wait-and-see attitude, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

Of course, this is only one individual experience, in a specific context, at a specific business, and it is only worth what it is worth, but since it happened, it’s worth talking about.

My belief has always been that we can improve the quality of recruitment, invest in people ops, training policy, personal development, career management, and career paths, but that this is not worth much when, after putting so much energy and money into recruiting and developing employees, all this effort is ruined by the system of work.

Let me put it another way: as HR professionals, even though we have invested in everything I have just mentioned and are also trying to have a competitive salary policy, can we turn a blind eye when we see that the talent potential available to the business is being damaged, wasted, and destroyed by management, managers, work organization, processes, operating procedures, and overall what I would call “the system”?

I understand that some people say, “That’s their problem, I wash my hands of it, I deliver a finished product and its user does what they want with it”. But we can also consider that if the user misuses it, the costs will fall back on us: costs in terms of attrition, deterioration of health at work, disengagement… which will then be accounted for as HR costs, and it is us who will be held responsible. In the end, even if the initial loss is felt by the business, the bill will end up being paid by the HR function.

I have become convinced that, as HR professionals, we cannot simply accept that when we give the business a potential of 100, we end up with a result of 90, 80, 70 or even less, and say to ourselves, “I don’t care”. We can’t turn a blind eye and say “it’s not my problem”, because it’s everyone’s problem. Indeed, if we are responsible for the cycle from entry to exit, we are also responsible for what happens in between, when people are working and are not in the hands of HR but of the business, because at some point, we will have to clean up the mess, if there is one.

So do what Moderna did and merge IT and HR (HR and IT merger: Moderna redesigns its organization for and with AI), create a People function, separate from the old “personnel” function, create a People Ops function to replace HR, as Bolt has done (Why Bolt eliminated traditional HR and reset with a new People Ops approach), appoint a Chief of Work (Do we need a chief of work?), and invest heavily in the employee experience, in addition to or alongside the traditional HR model. Do it alone or through partnerships and internal collaborations, it doesn’t matter, but have an impact on work as it is conceived and as it happens (People are everywhere in the workplace, but HR is nowhere when it comes to work). But I don’t think the current situation can last.

Yes, sometimes it will create friction, sometimes it will be a struggle. But not fighting for it means that you don’t believe in your role, your contribution, or your responsibility for the business’s performance. Or that you think it’s better to keep your job quietly than to defend people and the business’s performance.

And why fear conflict, after all? I am convinced that some CEOs or business unit managers would be happy to hear this message and see HR reaching out to them to work together (HR and Operations: the only viable duo to lead the employee experience).

I’m not saying it will be easy or comfortable, but I am saying it is worth doing.

Since nature abhors a vacuum, and there was demand in certain professions, I began to focus on work design, helping managers with the functioning and organization of their teams’ work, their approach, and their processes. I pushed for the streamlining of tools that were wasting a lot of time and the simplification of numerous processes. I implemented a cross-functional approach to the continuous improvement of methods and work organization, etc.

This confirmed my belief about the employee experience. Focus on quality of life at work and peripheral issues, and you will have no impact, employees and managers will see you as a decorative element. But if you start to focus on what matters to them, on the reality of work as it happens, then things change. Both your impact and the way others see and even value you (2023 Employee Experience Barometer: the employee experience confronted with its contradictions and Employee experience is useless (if it is not linked to the business)).

In the end, the convergence between HR and operations was so necessary that I ended up overseeing both, ensuring a common and consistent policy (with IT as the partner of choice). At least as meaningful as a merger with IT, which has been talked about a lot lately (Should Your Company Merge Its CHRO and CTO Roles?) but which, in my opinion, is only the tip of the iceberg. What matters is co-creation, cooperation, and co-responsibility, not merger, whether with IT or anything else. But if the latter makes things simpler and resolves internal disputes and silo problems, then so be it.

Here’s an anecdote. There used to be a colored border on business cards depending on the job, and support functions had their own color. The day I took up my position, my president handed me my new cards, and from then on, HR had the same color as “business” functions such as sales, operations, marketing, etc. He said to me: “I know it’s in your DNA, but at least I’m sure you won’t forget the kind of impact I want you to have. And it will make sure that everyone understands your guiding principle, even if it comes as a surprise at first”. I didn’t need that to weight within the Executive Committee, but at least it clarified things and got the message across to the other functions.

It may be a professional bias because I come from operations and the business side, but you can’t be at the heart of the essential component of the work, in other words, the men and women who make up the business, and be uninterested in what happens to them, what we do with them, and, in a way, our investment in them once they are working. In the absence of volunteers to move forward with a co-lead model, I was offered the opportunity to take on both roles in order to move forward in line with the business’s vision. I was happy to do so.

And since we’re talking about impact, because ultimately that’s what HR is criticized for, today less than 10% of businesses are able to correlate HR data with business metrics. (Is People Analytics the Next Job to Be Outsourced by Technology?). From my point of view, this is completely unacceptable, but before measuring, you have to be legitimate in order to stick your nose in. But, once again, I don’t know of any CEO who would criticize their HR director for having this concern.

We could draw a parallel with the automotive industry: sometimes concept cars are manufactured that look good and perform well on paper, but are not intended to be driven on the road. In a business, the role of the HR director is not to design prototypes of perfect employees to show off, but to take care of people immersed in a very real and demanding work environment. And even less to entrust them to poor drivers.

Believing that we “take care of people” is only part of the story. If you just want to take care of people, there are a thousand ways to do it, especially in the non-profit world, but in a business, you take care of people in a work environment and context where they are expected to deliver value for the organization, and it is this second part that makes all the difference (How I Stumped a Panel of EX Experts).

In other words, we cannot simply take care of people without considering the context in which they live, because it is this context that will either destroy or enhance their potential.

Finally, with each of my decisions, I asked myself, “What will be the added value for the people on the ground and the customers?” This helped me a lot to sort things out and prioritize because, in fact, the goal of a business is the customer, and everything that is done must serve those who serve them, then those who support them, and so on (Do you have a delivery model for management? and Can we turn the pyramid upside down without the customer?).

Bottom Line

This article is less structured and balanced than usual, but I believe that feedback is best written as ideas come to mind, without being proofread or edited.

In short, we all know that we expect more from HR than just administrative tasks, and HR professionals know this better than anyone. But we still need to give them the means to meet our expectations and create a real link between the creation and development of potential (HR) and its transformation into real value (business lines and operations).

To achieve this, many argue for the merger of HR with something else, others for the virtual disappearance of the function, but I don’t think that’s the only solution, nor the best one for that matter.

What matters is creating real synergies and collaboration between all these people and, if this cannot be achieved, handing over the keys to a revamped HR function either to an HR professional who is passionate about field operations or to an operational professional who is passionate about people.

This brings us to the subject of the future of the function from a purely organic and organizational point of view, but we will discuss this in more detail in a future article.

To answer your questions

In this series

What is the purpose of HR?

After the role, the place: how the HR function can evolve organically

Three concrete scenarios for the evolution of the HR function

Image credit: Image generated by artificial intelligence via ChatGPT (OpenAI)