2026 Chief Human Resources Officer Priorities Snapshot
As workforce complexity accelerates across U.S. health systems, Chief Human Resources Officers are balancing talent shortages, rising labor costs, and evolving employee expectations. Drawing on The Academy’s latest CXO Priorities Survey, this report examines the 2026 strategic priorities shaping CHRO decision-making and benchmarks their performance against peer institutions and other executive leaders.
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Key Takeaways
HR leaders are now AI-first. AI strategy is tied for the number one strategic priority among CHROs — a striking signal that human resources executives see themselves as central players in their organizations' AI transformation, not just recipients of it. This aligns with their emphasis on change leadership (#8 priority) and strategic workforce planning, suggesting CHROs are preparing to reshape how work gets done, not just who does it.
The biggest performance gaps are in areas CHROs aren't yet prioritizing. Outsourcing/offshoring is the top improvement opportunity but ranks dead last (25th) as a strategic priority. Similarly, early career training ranks 2nd for improvement opportunity but 21st as a priority, and workforce diversity ranks 5th for improvement but 24th as a priority. This pattern reveals a set of underinvested areas where CHROs recognize significant room to improve but haven't yet elevated them strategically.
Workforce strengthening is CHROs' greatest strategic strength — and that's a major shift. After years of workforce crisis in healthcare, strengthening the workforce now sits firmly in the "strategic strengths" quadrant, with the lowest improvement opportunity score (2.0) among all 12 shared priorities. CHROs feel they've turned the corner on retention and recruitment, freeing bandwidth to focus on the next frontier: cost management, revenue capture, and technology-driven transformation.