Why HR needs to step up its game

A century ago, work was unsafe and openly adversarial. Strikes were common. Turnover was extreme. Productivity suffered. HR—then called personnel—was created to manage this instability. Its job wasn’t to make work fulfilling. It was to reduce friction between employees and the company, keep people on the job, and protect output.

As companies matured, so did HR. The function expanded to include hiring, pay, benefits, training, grievance handling, and legal compliance. On paper, this evolution gave HR a broad view of how people experienced work—and the potential authority to shape it. But that authority was never fully claimed. Instead, HR generally settled into administering systems and policies designed by others—especially the C-Suite.

In a recent Wall Street Journal interview, University of Virginia business school professor Allison Elias explains how this history is experienced today. Employees don’t see HR as a driver of better leadership or a healthier workplace. They see a function that listens but rarely acts, collects feedback but seldom follows through, and lacks the authority—or the courage—to intervene when leadership behavior is the root of the problem.

Employees today doubt whether HR has the power and standing to influence how individual leaders actually lead—especially when leadership behavior openly undermines trust, clarity, dignity, or psychological/emotional safety. Over time, that gap between listening and acting has become the narrative.

The good news: HR now has the opportunity to reinvent its role in organizations—but it must step fully into it.

Well-being drives performance

Over the past year, remarkable research has shown that employee well-being has a direct and profoundly positive impact on organizational performance. The newest study comes from Irrational Capital: drawing on more than a decade of public and private data, they found companies ranking highest in employee well-being significantly outperform their peers in long-term stock appreciation. Over an 11-year period, firms in the top tier of employee well-being outperformed those in the bottom tier by nearly six percentage points. By contrast, companies that excelled primarily on pay and benefits outperformed by just over two points.

What’s now empirically clear is that how people feel about their day-to-day work experience—and their direct managers—matters far more than what they are paid to tolerate it. And, if well-being drives performance, then feedback must be continuous, actionable, and tied directly to leadership accountability.

A real voice

What employees are craving is a real voice. They want to be routinely asked for honest feedback—not once a year or even semi-annually via traditional engagement surveys proven to have little if any impact—but through focused pulse surveys that capture how they are experiencing work week-to-week. They want to know that their input is heard, considered, and has real influence. That feedback should flow not just to individual managers and senior leadership, but also to HR itself—so the function can monitor patterns, hold leaders accountable, and ensure employee well-being is protected at every level of the organization.

When survey results show managers are consistently uncaring, unsupportive, or otherwise undermining employee well-being, HR must willingly intervene—coaching leaders to improve or, when necessary, removing them. This is where HR can finally claim the role it has long been empowered to play: shaping how leaders lead, embedding well-being into daily work, and ensuring organizations operate for people, not just for goal achievement.

The ‘How’

The tools for this already exist. Pulse surveys can be deployed one day and summarized the next, delivering real-time insights to managers, senior leaders, and HR. This immediacy creates a rare opportunity: HR doesn’t need to wait months for engagement reports to act. Every piece of feedback becomes a lever to correct course, reinforce positive leadership, and make tangible improvements in how people experience work.

What’s critical is that HR can—and must—be the true guardian of this ecosystem. That means more than administering surveys or running reports. It means owning the operation—owning well-being. It means creating a culture where employees know their voice carries weight—and consequences. It means ensuring that workplace leaders understand the practices that contribute to well-being and that there are real teeth—accountability—in its oversight. It must celebrate managers who excel, coach managers who fall short, weed out those who don’t improve, and embed well-being metrics into how leaders are evaluated and rewarded.

It must be clearly understood that this is not merely a moral imperative; it’s a business imperative. When people have their needs consistently met for belonging, safety, growth, appreciation, and respect (the key drivers of well-being), organizations see measurable gains in retention, commitment, collaboration, creativity, and profitability.

Claiming power

The truth is workplace leadership practices are in dire need of transformation. Evidence abounds that traditional methods deplete people rather than energize them—and HR has both the access and authority to lead the needed change throughout their organizations.

For HR leaders, the question is simple: will you fully claim the power your role affords? Will you leverage real-time feedback, hold leaders accountable, and transform the employee experience? Doing so will not only improve performance and profitability—it will permanently elevate HR from a back-office function to the strategic force every modern organization needs.

The moment is now. Employees are speaking. The data is clear. The tools exist. HR, step into your power! Shape how leaders lead. Protect well-being. Drive performance. Make your mark: ensure work is safe, meaningful, humane—and create organizations that truly flourish.