People strategy becomes a cross-functional bottleneck
6 minutes
July 29, 2026
HR is aligned in theory, fragmented in practice.
That's the pattern in this year's CHRO data. The challenge isn't strategy. It's executing across functions HR doesn't control and through legacy processes that slow coordination at scale. Thirty-eight percent of CHROs say their workforce strategy simply cannot keep up with the pace of disruption and change. The plan isn't failing. The system around it is.
Talent leadership now extends beyond HR's boundaries
CHROs are no longer just running HR functions. They're increasingly responsible for orchestrating a dynamic ecosystem, rebalancing internal talent, external hires, and contingent labor. That's a fundamentally different job than the one most HR operating models were built to support.
On Talk Talent to Me podcast, Quentin SaLay, Chief Global People Officer at Freewheel argues that workforce strategy succeeds when leaders from every function come together as systems thinkers, not siloed decision-makers.
"You have to invite everyone to the table. Everyone brings their particular expertise of what is happening today and to predict what the future may look like. Having engineering, revenue, finance, all of these organizations represented at the table, we are then positioned to talk about all of these things and build that future as not as individual leaders in the organization over their respective domains, but as systems thinkers,” said Quentin SaLay, Chief Global People Officer at Freewheel.
“You can't have the product organization creating projects that the engineering leader says, ‘Hey, we can't support that. It's not on our roadmap.’ You also have to have the revenue officer there to say, ‘Let's talk about how this is going to make us money.’ You to have marketing there to talk about how we position it to make us money. It’s so critical to have all the players at the table to approach this all as leaders of the system to move forward, " SaLay shared on LHH's Talk Talent To Me podcast.
The modern CHRO is increasingly expected to lead this kind of enterprise-wide collaboration. The role now depends on influencing decisions beyond the boundaries of HR, even though HR's structure and authority were never designed for that level of cross-functional leadership.
Where the coordination breaks
The data traces the fracture points precisely:
- Talent planning is CHROs' lowest-performing capability, with only 35% satisfaction, the single worst-rated area in the entire performance survey.
- Only 34% of CHROs say their organization is highly effective at using workforce data to inform hiring and workforce-planning decisions.
- Only 36% say workforce data helps leadership align around strategic business decisions quickly.
- Only 42% believe their leadership team is united around a common vision for the organization and 44% are satisfied with collaboration across the enterprise overall, meaning a majority aren't.
None of these numbers describe a missing strategy. They describe a coordination problem, the same one Erin Wilson, Head of Talent at Rox, described in blunt terms. "Getting everyone to use the ATS is the bane of my existence,” because, as Wilson explained, people don't want dashboards, they want answers.
Systems built for reporting don't answer the questions cross-functional stakeholders are actually asking. That gap between "here's a dashboard" and "here's an answer" is where a lot of good strategy quietly dies.
The build-buy-borrow response
CHROs and C-suite agree on 2026 initiatives: Flexible staffing, workforce intelligence, and AI-enabled work
The Adecco Group, 2026 Business Leaders Research, Q14: In which of the categories listed are you taking significant initiatives to improve your people and talent strategy?
While CHROs and the broader C-suite agree that increasing contingent workforce capacity is the top people strategy initiative for 2026, leaders are not abandoning internal talent development. In fact, 41% of CHROs say their talent strategy will shift toward building skills internally to strengthen long-term workforce resilience, even as 31% report their organizations primarily address skill gaps through external hiring.
Together, these findings point to a deliberate build, buy, and borrow talent approach. Contingent labor provide the flexibility needed to meet immediate business demands, external hiring fills critical capability gaps, and internal upskilling is intended to strengthen organizational resilience over time.
The challenge, once again, lies in execution. If cross-functional coordination, workforce planning, and data visibility are already slowing talent strategy today, can organizations develop new skills quickly enough to reduce their dependence on external talent tomorrow?
Managers are becoming talent architects without the full blueprint
One additional pressure point compounds the bottleneck: line managers are increasingly being asked to serve as the front line of hiring, career development, and workforce planning, often without the training, tools, or experience to do so effectively.
Skills development is one area where many talent leaders are actively rethinking traditional approaches. On Talk Talent To Me, Maura Quinn, VP of Early Talent Acquisition at Liberty Mutual, described how rapidly evolving workforce demands are forcing organizations to redesign talent pipelines and development programs around future skills, not current roles.
"The interesting thing is it's just constantly changing. We're redesigning some of our development programs, thinking about the skills students are learning today, the jobs we'll have five years from now, and how those align. The skills are shifting. Our jobs are shifting. We're working with universities and partners to understand what the future looks like, not just six years from now, but six months from now,” said Quinn.
Quinn's perspective underscores a broader challenge facing organizations: developing talent can no longer be treated as a static HR program. It requires continuous coordination across business leaders, managers, educators, and employees to anticipate emerging skill needs and translate them into actionable development pathways.
This is the human cost of a cross-functional strategy that hasn't been fully built cross-functionally. The people closest to execution are often left to bridge coordination gaps that exist across functions, systems, and leadership teams.
Organizations are testing collaborative, co-designed approaches to workforce transformation.
While less than half have embedded these practices consistently across the enterprise, many more are beginning to experiment with them. Rather than relying on strategy alone, these organizations are building the infrastructure needed to sustain execution, creating shared ownership, stronger alignment, and greater resilience when change inevitably arises.
New work redesign practices are gaining ground, but not yet mainstream
The Adecco Group, 2026 Business Leaders Research, Q20: To what extent is your organisation using the following approaches to redesign jobs?
These practices signal a meaningful shift toward the cross-functional structures, decision-making processes, and feedback loops.
What this means for CHROs
The lesson from this data isn't "communicate the strategy better." It's to build the cross-functional infrastructure through shared data systems that answer questions instead of just displaying them, leadership alignment mechanisms that get tested before a crisis, and workforce planning that treats build, buy, and borrow as one continuously rebalanced system rather than three separate decisions made by three separate teams.
Frequently asked questions
Why do CHROs say their workforce strategy can't keep up with change? 38% cite the pace of disruption outrunning their ability to execute, driven by weak cross-functional collaboration (only 44% satisfaction), limited use of workforce data (34% effectiveness), and a lack of unified leadership vision (42%).
What is the biggest people-strategy initiative CHROs are investing in for 2026? Increasing contingent and flexible workforce capacity, cited by 50% of CHROs, the single largest initiative in this year's data, ahead of AI tools and culture investment.
Are CHROs prioritizing internal skills-building over external hiring? Directionally, yes: 41% say their talent strategy will shift toward growing skills internally, while only 31% say they primarily fill skill gaps through external hiring—though heavy reliance on contingent labor (50%) suggests this shift is still in progress.
Have questions about your workforce strategy?
Every organization is navigating workforce planning and talent strategy differently. Contact us to discuss how these findings compare with your own workforce challenges.
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Next in this series
Execution challenge #2 — AI is rewriting work faster than workforce planning, on the gap between how fast leaders are moving and how ready their workforce actually is.
About the research:
In the Minds of CHROs: 2026 Execution Gap is based in The Adecco Group, 2026 Business Leaders Research
2,000 C-suite executives (500 Chief Executive Officers, 500 Chief Human Resources Officers, 500 Chief Technology Officers, 250 Chief Operating Officers, 250 Chief Financial Officers)
13 countries (100 Canada, 300 US, 100 Belgium, 150 France, 150 Germany, 100 Italy, 100 Netherlands, 150 Spain, 100 Sweden, 100 Switzerland, 150 UK, 250 Australia, 250 Japan)
Industries (350 Aerospace and Defense; 350 Automotive and Transport, Logistics, Mobility and Manufacturing; 350 Healthcare, Life Sciences and Pharma; 350 Energy, Clean Technology and Utilities; 300 Technology; 300 FMCG, E-commerce, Retail and Consumer Goods and Supply Chain)