New survey data points to a surprising reason HR leaders are looking elsewhere, and burnout isn't the whole story
More than half of HR leaders in the U.S. have considered leaving the profession this year. That's according to Lattice's 2027 State of People Strategy Report, which found that 58% of U.S. HR professionals considered a career change in 2026, up from 48% the year before. The top cited reason?
They felt undervalued.
That was followed by feeling like they were operating in crisis mode and burnout.
Separate research from the Society for Human Resource Management on HR professionals' own emotional exhaustion and burnout backs that up: most describe their work as emotionally exhausting, and nearly half say the job has hurt their well-being.
Christine Porath, a clinical professor of organizational behavior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School, said the finding echoed a pattern she has already documented in her own research.
"Sadly, I ran across similar statistics when I was doing research on mastering civility, and was just shocked at how few people are actually thanked by their boss, or anyone at work, each year," Porath said.
Sophie Hurcombe, Chief People and Operations Officer at San Francisco-based Lattice, said the shift comes down to how fast the role is changing.
"I think because the role is changing so much right now," Hurcombe said. "There are organizations that are trying to move faster with a lot of different things, but it also hasn't necessarily increased the support or the authority or the resources behind it for HR teams."
A bigger mandate, without more support
Hurcombe described a mandate that keeps growing without the resources or decision-making power to match it.
"If you are being asked to drive more, but you're not giving more of that support or authority to actually drive it, I think that is a really hard place to be in," she said. "HR is being asked to be the leader through a lot of AI adoption or enablement and performance pressure. They're also being asked to drive culture change. This is a huge ask."
That pressure mirrors what HRD America has reported elsewhere, with employees turning to HR amid leadership disconnect on AI use, even as many workers admit they don't trust the AI they're using.
Burnout, in Hurcombe's telling, isn't the root problem so much as a symptom of it.
"I think burnout is sort of a symptom, right? It comes through that feeling of being undervalued," she said.
People leaders are increasingly held accountable for strategic outcomes, Hurcombe explained, without always getting the influence or investment to match. When a business treats HR as a purely operational function while expecting it to solve strategic problems, the distance between what's asked of HR and what it's actually given to do it keeps growing.
What feeling undervalued actually costs an organization
According to Porath's research, whether people feel valued or overlooked shows up directly in their performance.
"Feeling valued, appreciated, heard, seen, it makes all the difference in their performance," Porath said. "It helps them retain focus. It predicts things like creativity and helpfulness. Also, it reduces turnover."
Porath's research on workplace disrespect shows the same pattern in reverse.
"People don't perform nearly as well," she said. "They are hijacked in terms of their focus and their attention on tasks. They make more mistakes. They are less creative, less helpful, less likely to stay with the organization, and, unfortunately, sometimes more likely to get even with the people they feel are not valuing them."
Porath said HR may be especially prone to this dynamic, given the nature of the job.
"They certainly have training in people skills and know what to look for," she said. "They may be primed to understand what would be good management or leadership, good behaviors between colleagues."
Psychological safety is turning into a performance metric
The report also found a sharp divide tied to psychological safety. HR teams at organizations that prioritize it are more than 12 times as likely to say they're exceeding their goals.
"Engagement and performance are two sides of the same coin, is something that I feel deeply," Hurcombe said. "When I think about psychological safety, high performance depends on that, because you need to be able to surface problems. You need to be able to challenge different assumptions. You need to be able to ask for help when you need it."
The pattern Hurcombe described extends well beyond HR's own ranks. Global employee engagement fell to its lowest level since 2020 this year, according to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026 report.
Hurcombe said psychological safety has to be demonstrated, not just talked about.
"Leaders need to also show that, not just tell, because we can say, I want a psychologically safe environment," she said. "That's great. You can say that, but you need to show it through your actions."
Porath's advice for HR leaders navigating this themselves starts with who they can turn to at work.
"Ideally, they have a boss or someone they can go to," she said. "But if that's the person making them feel undervalued, that's a real issue. Talking to a mentor, or someone outside the workplace, can help."
Porath said it also comes down to something more personal, building resilience that isn't tied to any one relationship.
"If you're not thriving at work, you really want to try to thrive outside of work," she said. "That could be trying to get that kind of sense of value, but also creating a better sense of vitality and learning and growing outside of the workplace, because we know that you bring that stronger, more resilient self back into the workplace."
That same idea, that people and business outcomes are linked, extends to how Hurcombe sees the role itself.
"It's about how the roles of people functions are changing," she said. "AI is really making people strategy such an important part of the business strategy. They're not disconnected. They're actually deeply tied to hitting company results as well."
