03 Dec HR’s Untapped Influence: How we work informs what we can do

Over the last several months, we have gathered some of the top HR and culture leaders for monthly dinners Industry Nights to forge meaningful connections, share fresh perspectives, and tackle the toughest challenges shaping the future of work.

During one recent evening, we invited over 20 executives to discuss people-led strategies to improve business outcomes. This post explores one of the insights that emerged from this dynamic community of leaders and also includes some actionable steps you can take. Enjoy!

Want to drive change?

In today’s fast-paced business environment, most organizations aren’t prioritizing culture, employee experience, or innovative ways of working nearly enough. Instead, many teams are still finding themselves stuck debating things like return-to-office policies and clocking hours—discussions that, quite frankly, are missing the bigger picture. 

But there is also immense pressure on business performance, return on investment, efficiency, manager effectiveness, and growth. For HR teams, this is where the real opportunity lies for repositioning HR teams as strategic levers for the business, connecting the dots between business performance and workforce engagement.

The question is: how many HR, change management, and transformation teams will take advantage of this opportunity? If your organization isn’t thinking about culture and ways of working as strategic levers with concrete business cases, you’re not off to the right start.

The Missed Opportunity

Many organizations treat culture as a static checkbox: a two-day offsite here, a new training program there. But these methods aren’t moving the needle for CEOs looking for real change. The fact is, companies that embrace culture as a competitive advantage have the opportunity to leapfrog their competitors, accelerate innovation, and increase employee engagement. So why isn’t this happening more often?

It’s easy for HR teams to fall back on what’s familiar: the same development programs, the same partners, and the same large consultancies. This is comfortable but ultimately leads to stagnation. We see it all the time—HR departments scramble to restructure, hoping to be viewed as strategic business partners, but without changing the underlying approach, they end up in the same place.

What’s missing is critical thinking that balances the mindset of a CEO with that of a designer. Instead of thinking about HR as just managing people and processes, think of it as the engine for innovation and growth. After all, your people are your business.

Building a Culture That Fuels Growth

There’s a maturity curve to culture building. In startups, the focus is on survival—scaling the founder’s vision and achieving growth. But once you hit 100+ employees, the focus should shift. For companies with 100 to 1,000 employees, the priority is laying the groundwork for a healthy, productive workplace. This is the time for HR to experiment and define what the company’s culture truly stands for.

At 1,000 to 5,000 employees, there’s an immense opportunity for creative experimentation. This is where organizations can refine their ways of working to support innovation at scale. For companies with more than 5,000 employees, the challenge becomes building a resilient, self-sustaining engine—one that can adapt and evolve without constant intervention.

Training programs, flashy town halls, and endless meetings won’t create the kind of culture that drives transformation. What will? A co-created organization that taps into the collective intelligence of employees, customers, and even communities. This is what we call a “regenerative” business—an ecosystem that replenishes itself through sustainable practices, transparency, and real empowerment.

Actionable Steps for HR Leaders

Here’s where HR can play a pivotal role in shifting this dynamic:

1. Refresh your playbook: HR should act as a strategic advisor to the CEO and recommend tools that genuinely support culture and innovation. Break free from old playbooks and think critically about how different tools can create real impact. Just because you’ve done it before, think critically about whether it’s meeting the needs you’re seeing now.
2. Learn the Language of Influence: Every organization has its own center of influence, whether it’s sales, product, or operations. HR needs to understand where power lies in the business and learn to speak that language to be seen as strategic partners.
3. Reassess Your Partners: While large consultancies have their place, they often default to scalable, repeatable solutions that don’t address your unique challenges. Don’t be afraid to challenge your partners and explore more specialized or boutique firms that can offer bespoke solutions aligned with your culture.
4. Advocate for Experiments, not Answers: Static roadmaps must be replaced with well defined outcomes and empowered teams. Focus on creating opportunities to test and learn with your employees, rather than programs you can roll out to them. Invite them as co-designers of the journey.

Moving Forward: The Co-Created Organization

The organizations that will thrive in the coming years are those that engage their employees, customers, and communities in solving their most critical challenges. Co-creation—whether through deeper listening, transparency, or mission-based teams—unlocks innovation and empowers your workforce to align with business goals.

The future of work is not about returning to old norms; it’s about reimagining what’s possible. As HR leaders, you have the opportunity to lead this charge. The question is: Will you take it?

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This article is part of our series on HR, change and transformation. Check out past issues, and sign up for our newsletter to get future issues sent directly to your inbox.