Lawyers, finance directors and sales leaders are entering HR – and the organisations hiring them are pulling ahead
The next generation of HR leaders may never have studied human resources. According to Simon Fenwick, global head of talent acquisition at Fisher & Paykel, the profession's future belongs to people who have built careers elsewhere – in law, finance, sales and commercial operations – and are now stepping into people functions with a fundamentally different lens.
"I've seen some real success where it's been people who've come from revenue or growth areas, or sales areas, or have come from legal teams that have stepped in," Fenwick told HRD. "They've grasped the basics but they're able to think more strategically around the broader impacts to the business around the decisions that are being made for people and capability."
It is a striking claim, but one gaining traction across the global HR community. What was once a transactional cost centre has become a strategic engine room for growth, risk management and organisational resilience. The profession did not gain that influence by accident – it was earned as the commercial environment changed fundamentally, and it is reshaping who gets recruited into HR in the first place.
The old skill set no longer fits
Fenwick's core argument is that HR has simply outgrown its original capabilities. As automation absorbs routine administrative work – compliance paperwork, case management, onboarding logistics – what remains demands a different capability profile altogether.
"The skill sets of people in the people and capability HR space have actually become more like human experience advisors versus policy advisors," he said. "We've moved from 'what's the policy, how do we design around the policy' to 'the policy is there and we've got to adhere to it, but actually how do we create the experience that's going to drive the business forward?'"
That shift is being felt at the highest levels of the profession. Ben Mansour, award winning HR lead at Anglo American, described the evolution in equally direct terms.
"HR has moved definitively from a traditional support role into a role that is genuinely operational and strategic," Mansour said. "In periods of uncertainty and disruption, it's increasingly HR that leaders are turning to to provide stability, clarity and confidence for the workforce."
Research published alongside HRD Readers' Choice Awards found that 42% of respondents came from non-traditional or unspecified roles – reinforcing that workforce capability strategies must now account for diverse career pathways, not just conventional HR tracks.
For Fenwick, who has navigated the talent landscape across Australia, the United States and New Zealand over more than three decades – including senior roles at Facebook and the Publicis Group in New York – this is structural, not cyclical.
He pointed to professionals from legal, finance and commercial backgrounds as particularly well-placed to lead modern people functions, not because they know HR policy, but because they understand how businesses actually work.
"I can think of some HR leaders in New Zealand that I've met that haven't come from the traditional path that are really smart leaders," he said. "They understand how the business operates, they understand the impact of the decisions that are being made."
AI is accelerating the transformation
Artificial intelligence is compressing the timeline for this shift. Fenwick described a tiered operating model now emerging across organisations, where automation handles what he calls "basic HR work," freeing senior practitioners to focus on strategic decisions with real business consequence.
"Technology and the advancements with AI are allowing organisations to simplify a lot of what I call that basic HR work," he said. "So that's being automated, it's being made much more efficient. And so that's elevating and lifting the function of HR into that strategic space."
CHROs are no longer limited to traditional HR functions, with their roles expanding to encompass business strategy, digital transformation and organisational culture. According Paycom's HR Trends and Priorities for 2026 report, 82% of HR professionals agree the department will increasingly blend its role across IT, analytics and people support.
The same report revealed that 84% of HR professionals believe data and tech-driven decision-making will become a core competency for HR teams, 84% predict HR will play a more strategic role in driving business decisions and leading organisational transformation, and 84% believe AI and automation will significantly reshape HR’s role.
Fenwick argued this makes the case for non-traditional entrants even stronger. A finance professional who can read a business case, or a lawyer who instinctively understands risk and employment regulation, may be better positioned to lead in this environment than a career HR generalist.
"As HR professionals, we have to have that mental agility," he said. "How do we self-educate and what do we need to do to make sure that we are educating ourselves so we can have those conversations? The organisations that are struggling are the ones that aren't thinking, 'we need to evolve and we need to change because the business is headed in that direction.'"
What this means for HR hiring globally
The implications stretch well beyond any single market. According to Korn Ferry's 2026 CHRO survey, growth and market expansion are the top priorities for global HR leaders, yet 60% say economic uncertainty will have the biggest impact on their businesses – a dual pressure that demands exactly the commercial and strategic capability Fenwick described.
The result, he predicts, will be HR teams that are leaner but considerably more influential. Smaller headcounts, higher stakes, and a much stronger expectation that every person in the function can hold their own in a boardroom conversation.
Fisher & Paykel – a 98-year-old company with approximately 4,500 employees globally – is itself evidence that long-term workforce thinking pays off.
For organisations still waiting for the traditional pipeline to deliver strategically capable HR leaders, Fenwick's message is blunt: the profession is not waiting for permission to change. The question is whether the organisations hiring into it are ready to change with them.
