As organizations redesign work around increasingly sophisticated AI technologies, a heavy expectation sits on HR’s shoulders to reshape roles, responsibilities, and structures, guide change across the business, and supply workforce data for decision-making. With this, HR’s remit is expanding into work design, transformation, and workforce intelligence.
The HR job market already reflects this shift. AIHR’s HR Trends 2027 report finds the market is repricing HR capabilities, with demand rising sharply for some and falling for others. The shift has several causes, including advances in technology, changing business needs, and changes in how HR creates value.
Many HR teams are still building the capabilities this new work requires. Only 50% of teams believe they collectively possess the right skills to deliver impact.
The key question is, which HR capabilities are gaining the most value, and which capabilities should HR functions focus on building first?
The market is drawing sharper lines between types of HR work
Demand is growing for HR work that changes how an organization runs and falling for roles focused on execution and coordination. Over six months, AIHR’s labor data analysis shows demand rising 65.4% for Organizational Effectiveness Specialists and 21.6% for Change Management Specialists. HR Service Desk Agents (−38.3%), HR Administrators (−29.6%), and Senior HRBPs (−14.9%) moved the other way.
“As AI handles more of HR’s routine work, the market is rewarding a different set of capabilities: the ability to redesign work, lead change, and bring judgment to complex decisions,” says Erik van Vulpen, Founder and Dean of AIHR.
In practice, organizations need fewer people for execution, such as answering employee questions and processing admin, and more for work that helps the business change how it operates. Organizational effectiveness and change roles sit at the center of that work. They depend on diagnosing how the organization functions, redesigning structures and processes, and helping people through change. For HR leaders deciding which capabilities to strengthen first, these are a strong place to start.
The divide between execution and work that changes how the business operates shows up even within a single role. Over the same six months, demand for Regional HRBPs rose 16.4% while demand for Senior HRBPs fell. Regional HRBPs typically sit close to a specific business area and advise its leaders on complex people decisions. HRBP roles that lean more on coordination are under pressure, even at a senior level. And many HRBPs are still in those roles: Gartner found that only 51% of leaders say their HRBPs are involved in important strategic discussions. What the market rewards is the judgment, business context, and advisory skill that close partnership requires, more than the title or seniority attached to the role.
The capabilities gaining value are hard to hire
HR leaders are discovering it’s not as simple as making a list of emerging capabilities that HR teams increasingly need, then going to the labor market and hiring for them. Several of the capabilities and roles gaining in importance have small talent pools, with a low number of available professionals per job opening - the average number of candidates with a profile matching a single vacancy.
For example, AIHR’s labor data analysis shows that an HR Technologist role has just five professionals per opening, a Head of Digital HR has 25, Head of People Analytics has 28, and a Change Management Specialist has 35. Compare that with a Senior HRBP, which has an average of 650 available professionals per opening.
For capabilities this scarce, hiring alone won’t close the gap. HR leaders need to look internally and build these specialized capabilities within their existing teams.
Many HR teams still have gaps in related capabilities
Building capabilities internally starts with knowing where a team stands. Many HR teams will find gaps in the skills their expanding role depends on. AIHR’s Future-Ready HR Skills research found digital agility to be the lowest-rated HR competency and data literacy the second-lowest, especially when it comes to applying insights to business decisions. Business acumen also develops unevenly, even among experienced HR professionals.
The bottom line is, HR teams are being held accountable for increasingly complex business decisions, but their capacity to deliver is still developing. Although 60% of HR professionals claim they feel confident handling data, most are unable to interpret or apply insights. Similarly, 73% of HR professionals rate their business acumen highly, but commercial fluency scores remain low.
It’s important to note that experience alone does not bridge these gaps. Digital and data skills show minimal growth even after more than 15 years of work experience. This confirms that strategic capability relates more to the level of exposure within a role rather than the seniority of the role.
The in-demand roles in areas such as organizational effectiveness, change, C, and analytics, lean on the same data, digital, and business skills where HR teams score lowest. With experience doing little to close that gap, HR leaders will need to make deliberate choices about which capabilities to build first.
What this means for building HR capability in 2027
The current state of the labor market can paint a challenging picture and push HR leaders into a flurry of action, but trying to build all of these emerging capabilities at once is an overwhelming and impossible task. Instead, HR leaders should choose a few capabilities to build and develop first, based on the specific work their function will be asked to carry out over the next year.
So, how can HR leaders confidently prioritize which capabilities to build first?
There are three things to consider:
Where business demand on HR is growing
The areas in which the HR team is currently the weakest
The capabilities that are the hardest to hire for
Once those priorities are clear, the focus shifts to how to build them. Dr Marna van der Merwe, Lead, Global HR Insights at AIHR, sees hands-on experience as the starting point: “Broad training on its own rarely closes skills gaps. Capability grows when people work on transformation projects and workforce decisions. Training is most useful when it’s tied directly to that work.”
A final word
Organizations already expect their HR team to help redesign work, structures, and decisions, and this is set to increase in 2027. Whether HR will be able to succeed in this role largely depends on the capabilities it builds now.
Consider what your business will need from HR over the next two years, and which capabilities does your team need to start building now to deliver this?
