[1][2] Roles and responsibilities of a typical CHRO can be categorized as follows: workforce strategist, organizational and performance conductor, HR service delivery owner, compliance and governance regulator, and coach and adviser to the senior leadership team and the board of directors.
Whereas CHROs once focused on organizations human resources in just one or two countries, today many oversee complex networks of employees on more than one continent and implement workforce development strategies on a global scale.
Rather than focusing exclusively on human resource issues and service delivery, CHROs must concentrate on creating strong talent pipelines to both enhance organizational decision-making and secure future growth.
According to an annual survey conducted by the largest industry group for CHROs, the HR Policy Association in the United States, top CHRO concerns over the years fall roughly into three broad categories: talent, capabilities, and culture.
In a separate survey of over 200 U.S. and European CHROs, University of South Carolina professor Patrick Wright[8] found that nearly all participants cited 'talent' as the top priority on their CEO's agenda for HR.
Cultural issues include organizational change, agility, social networking, ethics and values, innovation, customer focus, employee engagement, diversity and inclusiveness, and multiculturalism.
Ensuring that the values of the company are communicated and understood at all levels, providing clarity as to the expected behavior of all employees and the development of a high performance culture are important aspects of the CHRO role.
In The Chief Human Resource Officer, Defining the Role of Human Resource Leaders, Eva Sage-Gavin, former CHRO for the Gap emphasizes this point saying, "... at the end of the day, you and your team are the experts at talent management and must be able to understand and identify good versus great talent… Identifying critical positions, the great attributes needed to fill them, and prioritizing recruiting strategies accordingly was the key to success, whether I was working with engineers, apparel designers, or international operations management.
The only thing that stays is the institutional learning and the development of the skills and the capabilities that we have in our people.’”[20] Other leading CHROs emphasise additional aspects of HR leadership, such as delivering results with a global team – a major challenge identified by Hugh Mitchell,[21] – and developing and communicating an employee value proposition that will differentiate the company in its efforts to attract and retain the caliber of talent needed to achieve its business objectives, as emphasized by Michael Davis, former CHRO for General Mills.