The deal underneath work
Work has always been a deal. You trade time, energy, and health; the organization trades money, some level of safety, and a place to belong. In early communities, that meant contributing effort and risk in exchange for resources and protection. In industrial economies like Canada, it turned into wages for labour under the guardrails of law: employment standards, health and safety, and human rights. The power imbalance was obvious, but at least the terms were blunt. Employers owned the capital and called the shots; workers sold their labour and, over time, governments stepped in to prevent the worst abuses.
Then the world went global. Talent became mobile, competitors could poach across borders, and capital began outrunning regulation. The simple, transactional deal didn’t go away; it just got wrapped in a new layer of promises: culture, engagement, purpose, perks. That is where the modern HR story starts to wobble.
When HR became “strategic”
We asked HR to grow up and become “strategic.” Dave Ulrich’s model – strategic partner, employee champion, change agent, functional expert – has been hanging over the profession since the 1990s. For almost thirty years, we have been saying HR needs a seat at the table. You would think by now we would either be past that conversation or admitting it didn’t work. Instead, in 2025, McLean and Company published its HR Trends report, and the signal was subtle: for the first time since 2020, HR’s role as a strategic partner did not grow. Almost half of HR organizations now have a formal HR strategy, up from 37 percent the previous year, yet HR’s influence has plateaued.
So what happened?
Part of the answer is that we professionalized the optics, not the deal. As labour markets tightened and “talent” became the working language, HR was loaded with engagement surveys, values campaigns, employer branding, and “people and culture” rebrands. Consultants and vendors moved in. They ran proprietary research, published thought pieces, and used them to sell platforms, workshops, and frameworks. HR became the buying centre for engagement and culture products.
The investment versus the outcome
The spend is real. Benchmarks consistently place HR and L&D costs in the range of $1,200 to $2,500 per employee per year, with total HR costs often between 1 and 2.5 percent of revenue in North American organizations. Engagement, recognition, and wellness programs routinely run into six or seven figures annually once licenses, consultants, and internal time are included.
You would expect, given that investment, to see a clear shift in how people experience work. Instead, the independent data is underwhelming. Engagement continues to sit in the low twenties globally. In North America, roughly a third of employees describe themselves as engaged, while about half are disengaged.
Engaged teams perform better. That has been established for years. But at a system level, the accumulation of surveys, portals, and programs has not materially shifted the outcome.
That is not because the science is weak. Across large meta‑analyses and longitudinal work, including Gallup’s Q12 research, the pattern holds: highly engaged teams deliver stronger profitability, higher productivity, and lower turnover than their peers. Evidence‑based HR frameworks extend that logic: by combining peer‑reviewed research, internal data, professional judgement, and stakeholder context, decisions improve.
For a function with as much accessible research as HR, very little of it appears in day‑to‑day decisions. What tends to pass for “evidence” is vendor‑backed content, internal pulse data, and whatever everyone else seems to be doing. HR, as it is typically staffed, was not built as a research‑driven function; it was built as a people‑responsive one. Empathy and communication were selected for. Analytics, economics, and critical thinking were not prioritized to the same degree.
The constraint inside the role
The mandate that followed is difficult to hold. Keep people engaged; do not push too hard on pay; avoid pointing directly at managers; and do not escalate issues that disrupt leadership narratives. When HR brings evidence of pay gaps, workload, leadership behaviour, or emerging AI-related risks, it is often deferred rather than acted on.
From the employee’s side, this simplifies. HR enforces policies, participates in terminations, speaks about well-being, and communicates restructuring plans. Over time, that pattern shapes how intent is interpreted. Surveys indicate low trust in HR, with many employees viewing it as aligned with management rather than with fairness.
From inside the function, particularly for people who engage with the research, the pattern is visible in the data. Turnover, exit interviews, and internal surveys tend to point in similar directions. Manager engagement has shown signs of decline, which matters more than the number itself given how much variance in team outcomes sits at that layer. At the same time, AI tools are being introduced into hiring, assessment, and performance decisions without consistent validation or governance, even as regulatory scrutiny over bias, monitoring, and data use increases. The response expected from HR often remains modest. Run something. Keep it manageable.
What “take two” requires
The last few years complicate the picture. From 2020 to 2024, HR’s role expanded. Formal strategies increased, and the function was central to navigating remote work, shifting expectations, and a tight labour market. Then the momentum stalled. The focus shifted back toward internal development and retention, alongside a renewed expectation that HR demonstrate value through data while remaining viewed as a support function.
Now the pressure returns again. AI is moving into core workflows. Engagement has declined. Managers, the layer relied on to carry the system, appear to be disengaging themselves. Regulators are paying closer attention to how people make decisions. Executives are again asking HR to operate as a business partner.
The pattern is familiar. The conditions are not.
If there is a “Take Two,” it is less about redefining HR and more about how it operates. For HR, the shift is away from programs and toward evidence. Not as a concept, but as a way of working. Knowing where the credible knowledge sits, understanding internal data in detail, and being able to connect decisions to observable outcomes.
For leadership teams, the adjustment lies elsewhere. Expecting evidence while filtering out uncomfortable findings leads to predictable results. Titles without authority, or accountability without trade‑offs, do not resolve that tension. The shift tends to occur when leadership decides it wants visibility earlier rather than later, even if that visibility introduces pressure.
For employees, the dynamic is already familiar. Messaging changes. Programs rotate. Decisions are experienced where they land, not where they originate. Credibility accumulates slowly and erodes quickly.
“HR at the boardroom table, Take Two” only changes anything if the work in that seat changes. Less emphasis on programs, more attention to the underlying deal. Fewer signals, more follow‑through. Less distance between what is known and what is acted on.
This is the position the work rests on. HR has one of the deepest evidence bases in management, yet in many environments it still operates as a function shaped by trends and internal constraints. That gap is not abstract. It shows up in cost, turnover, execution, and how work is experienced day to day. The organizations that navigate the next cycle more steadily will not eliminate that tension, but they will reduce the distance between what the evidence points to and what the system allows.