Leading through uncertainty: A CHRO's guide to building resilient organizations

We’re not facing one crisis—we’re facing many, all at once. Inflation, geopolitical tension, climate shocks, supply chain volatility, tariff upheaval, AI disruption. These aren’t isolated events. They’re interconnected and compounding, reshaping how businesses operate and how people experience work.

This is the era of polycrisis: overlapping disruptions interacting and colliding in unpredictable ways, amplifying uncertainty at every level.

And people have felt it. Since the pandemic, pressure on organizations and their workforces, has steadily mounted. Fatigue, disengagement and misalignment are becoming chronic across industries. These human factors pose an organizational challenge as urgent and complex as margin compression or supply chain bottlenecks.

Financial levers may help businesses manage short-term volatility. But true resilience demands something deeper: the ability to systematically anticipate, absorb and adapt to disruption without compromising on quality, growth or innovation.

Resilience depends fundamentally on people—the ones who nurture and maintain customer relationships, manage supply chains and build and run the technology. And it's a capability many organizations are actively investing in. Over two-thirds of the 3,000 C-level executives we surveyed in our recent Pulse of Change study said their organization’s skilling and talent strategy has significantly enhanced resilience over the past six months.

Resilience, in other words, is more than a structural characteristic—it’s a human capability. We've previously explored how organizations can build this capability across the enterprise by empowering people with the trust, skills and tools needed to grow stronger through disruption.

This article builds on those insights but adopts a more focused lens, homing in on the unique role of CHROs in cultivating people resilience. Developing a “crisis-agnostic” organization starts with enabling your people to adapt, lead and thrive—and CHROs are best positioned to activate that shift. This is achieved by reinventing HR itself into a more agile, insights-driven function.

That’s why CHROs are essential to realizing resilience in every industry and at every level of the enterprise.

The shifting role of the CHRO and the dual imperative

The role of the CHRO has evolved significantly in recent decades. Once focused primarily on traditional HR responsibilities tasks like recruitment, compensation and policy enforcement, CHROs are now widely recognized as strategic enterprise leaders.

This shift—accelerated by the pandemic, when people resilience became a priority across the economy amid the rise of remote work—underscored the CHRO’s growing influence in shaping agile, empowered workforces. Increasingly, they are also playing a central role in rearchitecting operating models—aligning talent, structure and technology to drive resilience across the enterprise.

Uniquely positioned at the intersection of talent, technology and strategy, CHROs today are key drivers of transformation and ideally placed to help their organizations thrive through disruption.

No other function reaches every employee across the entire enterprise. That unique vantage point gives HR both the responsibility and the opportunity to lead from the center.

But this capability does not activate on its own. To hardwire resilience across every level of the enterprise, CHROs must make good on a complex dual mandate: build resilient, adaptive operating models and reinvent HR itself into a faster, more intelligent and value-focused function.

1. Build a more dynamic and resilient workforce and organization

Enterprise resilience depends not only on skilled people, but also on how their organization is designed to adapt. Yet in today’s climate, our Pulse of Change research found that most organizations are less prepared to manage disruption than they were at the start of the year—especially when it comes to talent-driven disruption.

 That’s why CHROs must shape not just workforce capabilities, but the broader operating model by designing structures, processes and new ways of working to support agile leadership, collaboration and growth.

 Underpinning all of this is leadership. CHROs play a critical role in equipping leaders at every level to handle ambiguity, make decisions at speed and foster a culture of adaptability. Recent research across 1,460 Global 2000 companies highlights the distinctive value CHROs bring to this effort. They lead the C-suite in people and culture capabilities—such as emotional intelligence, talent development and engagement—and are on par with peers in enterprise execution.

But today, organizations are investing 3X more in technology than in people—potentially eroding resilience when it’s needed most. And while CHROs still lag peers in technology, data fluency and financial acumen, the same analysis shows they’re evolving faster and more broadly than any other C-suite group.

CHROs must build these capabilities to make informed workforce decisions, shape talent strategies, and help people navigate uncertainty. That means shifting from reactive approaches to more forward-looking ones—designing talent strategies that align with evolving business needs across short-, medium-, and long-term horizons. Doing so requires investing in real-time insights, workforce sensing, and scenario modeling to anticipate where skills will be needed—and when.

Equally important is embedding integrated change and engagement capabilities. These teams allow organizations to respond quickly and intelligently to disruption, measure change intensity and impact, and create measurable returns on workforce investments.

Organizations like Marriott International offer compelling proof. The company transformed its HR foundation through mHUB, a cloud- and AI-enabled platform that now supports more than 200,000 hires annually and has facilitated over 18 million learning completions. This digital backbone helps Marriott scale workforce capabilities, personalize development and adapt quickly to shifting priorities.

Resilient organizations also challenge their own structures. Traditional cost centers, rigid hierarchies and static KPIs must be reimagined. CHROs have an opportunity to refresh location strategies and clarify who makes which decisions under what circumstances—then embed those choices into organizational structures that can flex as conditions evolve.

This requires CHROs to work cross-functionally to align talent models with operating models, ensuring the workforce can pivot quickly as business needs shift. CHROs can also work closely with the CEO and other CxOs to reimagine the operating model—for example, by establishing cross-functional talent pools that can shift between business priorities—helping the organization move faster, unlock new value, and build a more future-ready enterprise. The broader implications of fluid boundaries and adaptable structures is something we explored in our recent article on Reinventing Enterprise Models in the Age of Gen AI.

BT Group, for instance, consolidated over 200 legacy HR systems into one global platform, improving hiring, onboarding and talent deployment while saving nearly one million productivity hours annually.

2. Reinvent the way HR delivers

HR itself must become a model of resilience. Reinvention means moving beyond administrative tasks to building an HR function that is intelligent, agile and insight-driven.

That transformation starts by evaluating HR’s current processes through a resilience lens. Where are the weak points? Which systems must scale in a crisis? What behaviors or legacy models are holding HR back?

With those insights in hand, CHROs can double down on value. That means sharpening focus on business-critical outcomes —like rapidly redeploying talent to critical projects or preserving leadership continuity—clarifying what HR does/doesn’t do, and ensuring interventions are measurable and insight-led.

Reinvention also demands a new operating model. Product-based squads, agile pods, and consulting-style HR teams can support unplanned business needs while accelerating critical initiatives—like talent mobility, leadership development, and upskilling.  These flexible models are key to building the agility needed to adapt and respond—no matter what disruption comes next.

At the same time, integrating technology with purpose is key. Gen AI and intelligent platforms should be deployed not as bolt-ons, but as foundational tools that enable personalized experiences, real-time decision-making and future-ready operations.

Cisco provides a vivid example. By replacing a cumbersome HCM system with an integrated Workday suite—and combining that with governance reform and cultural transformation—Cisco accelerated the rollout of new HR capabilities by 60% and delivered measurable value faster.

At Accenture, the results of HR reinvention are similarly compelling: a 9% reduction in HR cost as a share of revenue, a 20% increase in productivity, and a 30% increase in speed to hire. These aren’t future ambitions. They’re measurable outcomes, delivered now.

A CHRO’s call to action: Now | Next | Later

Building resilience at scale is a continuous capability, requiring CHROs to act across multiple time horizons and balance urgent fixes with long-term transformation. The framework below provides a practical guide on where to start now, how to evolve in the months ahead and what to institutionalize over time.

 Now (0–3 months): Establish clarity and responsiveness

• Activate purpose-led leadership: Equip leaders with stabilizing behaviors—courage, curiosity, connection.

• Rethink team structures and decision rights: Clarify who decides what, where, and how fast, to enable quicker action and unlock organizational agility.

• Identify workforce risks and skill gaps: Use real-time diagnostics to map sentiment and capabilities, then deploy AI-powered tools to quickly upskill for in-demand roles.

Next (3–18 months): Realign strategically

• Redesign enterprise roles and structures: Partner across the C-suite to rearchitect how work gets done, using Gen AI to automate tasks and reshape operating models.

• Embed integrated change: Activate behavioral science, influence networks, and purpose-driven messaging. Accenture research found that companies with advanced change capabilities are 2.1x more likely to achieve successful transformations.[6]

• Strengthen leadership: Continuously coach and measure leaders to build trust within teams and boost engagement.

Later (18+ months): Institutionalize resilience

• Invest in real-time talent platforms: Dynamically match skills with evolving work.

• Democratize learning: Make AI-enabled learning part of daily workflows.

• Adopt modular HR models: Enable responsiveness through pod structures and consulting-style HR teams.

 Your HR reinvention starts now

With both of these shifts—empowering people resilience and transforming HR’s own operating model—CHROs can drive lasting change and position their organization to thrive, no matter what the next disruption brings.

Start with a six-week HR resilience diagnostic to identify critical gaps—and unlock measurable value.

Let’s work together to power your next chapter.

Authors

Jennifer Thomas, Senior Managing Director, Global Transformation Lead, Accenture - Strategy

Gaston Carrion, Managing Director, APAC Market Lead and HR Transformation Lead Accenture - Talent & Organization

Samuel Holmes, Managing Director, EMEA Operating Model & Organizational Design Accenture – Talent & Organization