What is the difference between a CPO and CHRO?
HR folks are rebranding.
As the remit of human resources has exploded outside its traditional parameters, more HR professionals have pushed for chief people officer titles vs. the traditional chief human resources officer. Often these have been used interchangeably over the years, as most have assumed the branding is a matter of industry preference.
But it turns out, it’s far more nuanced than that.
HR experts say there has been a marked change in how many professionals choose alternate titles since the working world shifted to respond to the pandemic. They want to press the fact that modern workforces need modern language – that given people management is a more fitting term to describe modern workforces than “human resources.”
Naturally, not all businesses will favor their HR people rebranding and many of the functions needed within HR – like payroll, bookkeeping, compliance and other administrative tasks we traditionally associate with HR – remain core.
But others want their titles to reflect how their remit has mushroomed over the last few years. And they believe the CPO title is more reflective of that than CHRO.
“Over the last decade, this role and discipline has transformed to be very people-centric, very oriented around setting employees up for success and building a stronger culture to yield business results,” said Jelena Djordjevic, chief people officer at home services company Thumbtack. “Traditionally, it was very oriented around compliance and performance management. For people who grew up in the space, there is still an affinity around HR as a craft, but there has been a transition to naming the function people.”
Like most things, that trend was accelerated by the pandemic. HR execs were suddenly expected to manage vaccination plans, respond to social justice movements in 2020, and maintain culture and employee well-being during the period of enforced remote working. Then came the economic uncertainty of 2023, the avalanche of layoffs, managing return to offices, and now – integrating generative AI.
“There’s just been a lot of massive tectonic shifts, some for better or worse, where the people team really has to be in the driver’s seat of it,” said Djordjevic, nodding towards the pandemic, layoffs, RTO, and other newer workplace challenges.
Djordjevic was promoted from vp of people to chief people officer this April. “The people team is an umbrella for a handful of different functions, inclusive of our HR business partners, our recruiting team, our DE&I team, and our employee experience team,” said Djordjevic. “It’s just much more people-centric. I did not want to be a CHRO.”
She’s not alone in refusing that title. In fact, some CPOs are going as far as requesting culture, employee engagement, or human experience in their title too. For example, at people management platform WorkHuman, KeyAnna Schmiedl is the chief human experience officer, something the company chooses purposefully.
“At Workhuman, we use the language of human experience vs. human resources, because it gives the most accurate reflection of what our entire team is responsible for in the organization,” said Schmiedl. “In choosing this title for our function, and for my role, we’re reinforcing that we’re a partner to the business, but also to our employees throughout their entire journey at the company.”
Jamie Aitken, vp of HR transformation at workplace software solution Betterworks, agrees that while CHRO has been the traditional term, we will continue to see an increase in these modern titles.
“What it says to me is how HR wants to see themselves in a particular organization,” said Aitken. “There are new, more modern terms than CHRO. Maybe that’s reflective of what the HR function is like in a particular organization.”
And it’s important to note how far the people part of the business has come in recent years. Monica Pool Knox, who has been both a CHRO and CPO, says she remembers when HR folks celebrated the move away from “personnel” in their titles that evolved into CHRO. Now the industry is seeing another change.
“People were very proud it was HR and not personnel,” said Pool Knox. “This idea of evolving to people is fair game. For companies who have always had the CHRO title, I wouldn’t say ‘Oh there is something wrong, they’re not being innovative,’ I just think it’s worth reflecting and thinking on. Nomenclatures change over time. That’s not unusual.”
But one thing that is arguably more important than their title is who this person reports to and where they sit in an organization chart.
“If they report to the CEO, that’s where they need to be,” said Aitken. “If they report to the chief administrative officer or the chief financial officer, that is also telling because it reads that they are seen more as traditional HR administrators as opposed to a strategic partner to the business.”
Pool Knox seconds this: “I don’t think vp of HR is interchangeable with CHRO. A CHRO or CPO is somebody with the same peers as the rest of the C-suite. Your leveling system is identical.”