The Invisible Load: A Story of Endo, Excellence, and Organizational Change

**Stacie Baird** (0:07)
Sixty percent, we're going to start with that number. Sixty percent of CHROs now see themselves as true C-suite peers. That means equal to the CFO, the CTO, the COO, strategic partners, not support staff. And then there's the other number to consider. Twelve, twelve percent. That's how many CHROs rank among the five highest paid executives in their own organizations. So we have the most people dependent moment in business history. We have an AI reshaping every single workforce on the planet. We have employees who are exhausted, disengaged, and quietly checking out of work. And the person whose entire job it is to lead all of that, the CHRO, chief people officer, whatever you want to call it, sits at the table but isn't getting paid like they belong there. It's not a gap, it's a paradox. And it's not the only paradox we're going to talk about. Today, we're starting a three-part series on top of our AI series called the CHRO paradox. Each episode stands alone, so if you're jumping in here, you're in the right place. And if you catch all three, great. I think you'll come out with a very different picture of what's actually happening at the top of the function, the human function. Let's go and let's talk about it and dig in to the detail here. The Josh Burson Company released a major report in December of 2025 on the state of the CHRO role. They identified five paradoxes that define the role right now. And I want to give you a little bit of data that we're using as the structural part of this episode. And I think these are all really important numbers to consider. And I think these are really important numbers to noodle on as we talk about this study. 91% of CHROs cite AI and digitization as their number one concern. 30% of CHROs or Chief People Officers have a business background outside of HR. 42% move to lower level HR roles after the CHRO role seat, because they love the practice, but they don't want to leave it.
5%, only 5% of CHROs ever become a CEO at all. 78% of CHROs say roles must change to get the ROI out of AI and really modernize what we're doing with the humans inside of organizations. And 50% plus or minus of orgs have already redesigned roles due to AI and the impact. So I think these are important numbers to consider as we talk through the work and the paradox of what the data says. And I'm going to repeat some of these numbers to you, but I just wanted to capture your attention right now on the framework here.
So the first paradox that Josh Burson talked about in their report, this is only now less than about six months ago, is the influence paradox, that CHROs have never been more central to the business.
AI, workforce design, culture, and change management, they all run through strategic, let me say that specifically, strategic human resources functions.
Yet the budget doesn't follow that path, the pay doesn't follow, and the authority and the control and the autonomy doesn't follow either. You can be the most important person in the room and still not have a seat at the table when the real decisions actually happen.
Second paradox, that the pay is not matching what is expected for performance. 60% of CHROs do believe that they are C-suite peers. Again, only 12% are compensated within the top five executives. It's not a rounding error, that's not something that is easily dismissed, or there's arguments against based on who drives revenue or operations because you need people to do those things. That's a structural message about how the organization actually values people leadership versus revenue leadership.
It has downstream effects on who aspires to the role, how long they stay, and whether the function can attract new talent. This is something that I'm really concerned about, and why I'm not giving you a commercial, but why I started HX Coach, because I think some of the best people I've had on my team end up leaving the practice due to lack of pay, mobility, opportunity, etc. And just generally, the lack of reverence and respect for the practice, which leads to Paradox 3, the Diversity Paradox. The CHRO role leads the entire C-suite in gender diversity. It's 68% female. Sounds like progress. It is progress, but there's tension. The more female the CHRO role becomes, the more male the rest of the C-suite stays.
I'm going to say that out loud. I've thought this for a long time, because the function risks being perceived as a siloed support role, rather than a strategic leadership position. That's not a critique of women like myself who sit in that role. It's a critique of the C-suite that really hasn't caught up to the fact that this is not a support function. This is an active strategic partnership function.