I am seeing more senior HR leaders “Open to work” than I am comfortable with.

Not juniors.

Not early-career HR.

Experienced People Directors and Heads of HR.

A year ago, the conversation was clear.

HR would need to step up as growth enablers in a polycrisis. More legislation, more uncertainty, faster change, and rising expectations of work.

2025 delivered all of that.

What I did not expect to see was this signal.

Senior HR professionals quietly becoming available at scale.

And to be clear, this is not because the value of HR has diminished or because senior HR leaders are opting out.

If anything, it is the opposite.

Many are highly employable, experienced, and clear on the value they bring.

They are becoming available because the system around them is not set up to let them do their best work.

Yes, the pressure on People teams has intensified.

CIPD research over the past year has consistently highlighted rising expectations on HR, from employment reform through to AI, workforce risk, and organisational resilience.

But something else is happening too.

In many organisations:

• HR is still expected to absorb complexity on behalf of the business
• Manager capability has not caught up with reality
• People issues are escalated late rather than handled early
• HR becomes the safety net rather than the system designer

You cannot ask HR to be more strategic while simultaneously thinning capacity or expecting managers to “figure it out”.

This is not an HR capability problem.

It is a system problem.

Prediction

In 2026, organisations will be forced to choose.

Either they invest seriously in manager capability and rebalance the load, or they will continue to lose senior HR talent.

The role of HR will not shrink.

The support structures around it must evolve.

HR need to redesign workforces for the future, not be removed from the process.

Move from gatekeeper to growth leader.

Don’t just react to change—lead it. Equip yourself with the full data set and strategic recommendations found in our latest research. [Access the 2025 Trend Report for the full analysis].