Not Human Capital, but People: From HR to People Management

What changes can we expect to see in the role of a Chief Human Resources Offi­cer (CHRO) or Head of Human Resources in the coming years? Which skills and char­ac­ter­is­tics will become more impor­tant for the lead­er­ship role itself? And how can this trans­for­ma­tion be success­ful­ly achieved at manage­ment level and across the organisation?

The ‘People Manage­ment Trend Barom­e­ter 2030’ by PwC, the DGFP and the Univer­si­ty of St Gallen attempts to answer these questions¹. The study thus focus­es on the year from which the largest cohorts of the baby-boomer gener­a­tion will reach the stan­dard retire­ment age². In this Valdivia Lead­er­ship­Im­pulse arti­cle, we present the key find­ings – supple­ment­ed by some econom­ic aspects from anoth­er, recent source³.

People manage­ment – a term that helps shift our thinking

Where people are primar­i­ly referred to as ‘human resources’ or ‘human capi­tal’, it is easy for only certain char­ac­ter­is­tics of employ­ees to take centre stage. ‘People manage­ment’ places the empha­sis else­where: any employ­er wish­ing to be success­ful today should view employ­ees first and fore­most as people, and demon­strate this through open, fair lead­er­ship and a flex­i­ble, employ­ee-focused work organisation.

Such an approach to “people manage­ment” also makes econom­ic sense. Even as the short­age of skilled work­ers eases, the costs of high staff turnover and loss­es caused by demo­ti­vat­ed employ­ees remain⁴. Elements such as New Work, pay trans­paren­cy and a genuine­ly prac­tised Employ­er Value Propo­si­tion are deci­sive factors in employ­ee engage­ment and the inter­est of job appli­cants – and thus, ulti­mate­ly, in the resilience and future of the company.

Topics and tasks of grow­ing importance

As early as 2022, some tasks and topics with­in people manage­ment had already gained in impor­tance for the study partic­i­pants compared with the pre-pandem­ic peri­od. By 2030, they expect­ed a marked increase in impor­tance for

• Trans­for­ma­tion and change manage­ment (+23%)
• Data and tech­nol­o­gy manage­ment (+22%)
• Devel­op­ment and career plan­ning (+22 per cent)
• Staff train­ing and skills manage­ment (+21 per cent)
• Cultur­al devel­op­ment (+21 per cent)
• Employ­er brand­ing (+20 per cent)
• Talent manage­ment (+18 per cent)
• Lead­er­ship devel­op­ment (+18 per cent)

Small­er increas­es were cited for: recruit­ment (though still the most impor­tant topic over­all), work­force plan­ning and health manage­ment. Perfor­mance appraisals, staff reduc­tions and outplace­ment appear to be declin­ing in importance.

Skills for people manage­ment in 2030

Accord­ing to the study, the new or increas­ing­ly impor­tant tasks in people manage­ment will also require new or expand­ed skills from those in charge in the future. A sharp increase was expect­ed for

• Digi­tal knowl­edge (+30 per cent)
• Big data and people analyt­ics (+29 per cent)
• Will­ing­ness to exper­i­ment (+26 per cent)
• strate­gic think­ing (+20 per cent)
• vision­ary think­ing (+17 per cent)
• change manage­ment (+16 per cent)
• empa­thy (+15 per cent)

Partic­i­pants predict­ed a more organ­ic devel­op­ment in terms of network­ing, gener­al lead­er­ship skills and diplo­mat­ic skills; expe­ri­ence in human resources, on the other hand, could become 20 per cent less impor­tant by 2030.

Time for emotions – a prereq­ui­site for change

These predic­tions paint a new picture of HR lead­er­ship, one that encom­pass­es a broad under­stand­ing of digi­tal­i­sa­tion and AI. The more the impor­tance of digi­tal func­tions and process­es grows, the more impor­tant it becomes to keep a close eye on the people work­ing with­in the organ­i­sa­tion and the work­ing culture: social and emotion­al skills will be in high demand in the future.

In partic­u­lar, the – increas­ing­ly frequent – changes with­in organ­i­sa­tions should not be viewed mere­ly as organ­i­sa­tion­al process­es. Every change also has an emotion­al dimen­sion for employ­ees. Under­stand­ing and taking into account the human expe­ri­ence of these neces­sary changes is what trans­forms factu­al change manage­ment into trans­for­ma­tive people manage­ment.

New Work – Culture with the Help of AI

Tech­nol­o­gy, and digi­tal­i­sa­tion in partic­u­lar, do not mere­ly lead to change – they also create or enable ways of work­ing that support a flex­i­ble and self-direct­ed work culture. Compa­nies should recog­nise this connec­tion as a key element of their people manage­ment, as a modern work culture will be a deci­sive compet­i­tive factor in the future. Specif­i­cal­ly, the follow­ing could become wide­spread from 2030 onwards:

• Trust in employ­ees (75 per cent), partic­u­lar­ly their abil­i­ty to organ­ise their own work with­in flex­i­ble struc­tures and via digi­tal plat­forms (73 per cent),
• consis­tent­ly high perfor­mance (70 per cent) based on vision and inspi­ra­tion (69 per cent),
• a posi­tive dynam­ic (64 per cent) and agile work­ing meth­ods (60 per cent),
• digi­tal­ly support­ed, time-flex­i­ble and loca­tion-inde­pen­dent work­ing (50 per cent and 38 per cent respectively).

Trans­for­ma­tion – also neces­sary in the cost structure

Howev­er, the trans­for­ma­tion of the HR func­tion is also under cost pres­sure. A recent Kien­baum study³ shows that the func­tion has so far been heav­i­ly capac­i­ty-driven. Around 72 per cent of costs are attrib­ut­able to staff, whilst IT and tech­nol­o­gy account for just over 8 per cent. At the same time, day-to-day oper­a­tions tie up almost 60 per cent of resources. Strate­gic areas such as work­force plan­ning or organ­i­sa­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion, by contrast, each account for around 4 per cent.

Here, too, howev­er, tech­nol­o­gy – and AI in partic­u­lar – can help to unlock produc­tiv­i­ty poten­tial in people manage­ment – but only if process­es and capac­i­ties actu­al­ly change. In prepa­ra­tion for the chal­lenges of the coming years, it will there­fore be sensi­ble to analyse the HR department’s costs and produc­tiv­i­ty in detail. This will enable greater automa­tion of stan­dard­is­able tasks and, where neces­sary, the stream­lin­ing of process­es that have evolved over time. In turn, strate­gic initia­tives can be priori­tised and resources direct­ed specif­i­cal­ly towards trans­for­ma­tion­al tasks.

Conclu­sion

The year 2030 marks the start of a three-year peri­od during which a large propor­tion of the baby boomer gener­a­tion will be retir­ing from work­ing life. Compa­nies must there­fore adapt even more close­ly to the younger gener­a­tions and their chang­ing needs, whilst at the same time harness­ing the poten­tial of immi­gra­tion. A key means of achiev­ing this is to create work­ing envi­ron­ments that enable posi­tive expe­ri­ences and the person­al devel­op­ment of employees.

Modern people manage­ment contributes to this by enhanc­ing the employ­ee expe­ri­ence and invest­ing in devel­op­ment and career plan­ning. Key tools for this include the compre­hen­sive inte­gra­tion and use of digi­tal support – for exam­ple, through AI – and the creation of a contem­po­rary, flex­i­ble work­ing culture. Above all, howev­er, people manage­ment at lead­er­ship level should drive its own trans­for­ma­tion in terms of emotion­al, social, tech­no­log­i­cal and strate­gic compe­ten­cies in order to shape the wider trans­for­ma­tion in a cred­i­ble manner.

Sources

• “Trend Barom­e­ter: People Manage­ment 2030 – At the Cross­roads of Tech­no­log­i­cal and Cultur­al Trans­for­ma­tion”, Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers / Univer­si­ty of St Gallen / DGFP – German Asso­ci­a­tion for Human Resource Manage­ment, 2023
• Accord­ing to the Feder­al Statis­ti­cal Office, the German cohorts with the high­est birth rates will reach the stan­dard retire­ment age primar­i­ly between 2030 and 2033 – Source: desta­tis, Febru­ary 2024
• “What HR Costs Compa­nies – HR Cost Study 2025”, Kien­baum / DGFP – German Soci­ety for Human Resource Manage­ment, Febru­ary 2026
• High staff turnover leads to redun­dant onboard­ing process­es, addi­tion­al work due to handover arrange­ments, recruit­ment and appli­ca­tion process­es, as well as the loss of exper­tise and even customers as a result of staff leav­ing. Accord­ing to the IW Report 19/2025, a lack of employ­ee reten­tion cost the German econ­o­my 113.1 billion euros in 2024. – Source: ‘Gallup Engage­ment Index 2024’ (Gallup Inc.) in ‘Are they all unmo­ti­vat­ed? Work moti­va­tion and employ­er loyal­ty in Germany’, IW Report 19/2025, German Econom­ic Insti­tute, May 2025

(Image source: Valdivia Consult­ing GmbH in coop­er­a­tion with new office GmbH)