Business-literate HR leaders cut risk and accelerate measurable growth. Here is a Q&A with Katherine Loranger, chief people officer, Safeguard Global.
Why do you believe HR will be seen as an essential strategy function in 2026, especially in places where it has not already?
Modern HR sits at the center of how companies grow, adapt, and compete. CEOs recognize the importance of this function, with many citing the availability of key skills as essential for growth, and 45% even doubting the viability of their business without major reinvention. More than 80% of executives say business and people agendas have never been more intertwined. The best HR leaders understand that a strong people strategy is a business strategy, and that value is created when talent, structure, and culture are aligned directly with organizational goals. In a cross-border, global labor market where distributed teams, skills shortages, and regulatory complexity are the norm, HR’s ability to connect these dots is a secret weapon leadership teams will rely on in 2026.
As someone with wide experience leading HR across regions and business cycles, how do you define the strategic role of HR in today’s business environment?
The simplest way to explain it is that HR is not just one thing, but an amalgamation of many types of functions. It’s people, payroll, compliance, risk, learning, and recruiting, all coming together to create a strong, overarching strategy that places value on performance, engagement, productivity, and retention of institutional knowledge. That engine must run well for the company to function, but it just scratches the surface.
Strategic HR is about shaping outcomes. It means designing global teams and roles that align with business objectives, anticipating capability gaps before they impact customers, and equipping managers to optimize day-to-day performance while staying compliant.
There’s plenty of recent data to support this shift. Deloitte reports that 81% of business leaders now see HR professionals as co-creators of business strategy. Gallup data shows that highly engaged, well-managed teams deliver 23% higher profitability and experience significantly lower turnover than disengaged teams. The challenge and opportunity for HR and learning & development (L&D) leaders is to demonstrate — in a business language other departments understand — how their work improves growth and helps manage risk. The best CHROs will approach their roles in 2026 as business leaders first, supported by deep-people expertise.
Why should every HR leader have a foundation in business, not just people management?
HR is about much more than hiring. At its core, business literacy in HR means understanding risk, evaluating ROI, and knowing how to prioritize initiatives in line with overall business objectives. It’s asking questions like, “Where should we invest to get the best return in our people function? What are other functions focused on, what are their goals and risks, and how can we bolster them?” That’s not “warm and fuzzy” HR—that’s business. And when we think this way, we stop running isolated “HR projects” and start leading business initiatives that happen to be about people.
Hiring is a powerful example of where that mindset shows up. There’s a significant bottom-line impact that has been magnified as the U.S. job market tightens. The average time-to-fill for both executive and non-executive roles is roughly a month and a half, and extra-large organizations are stretching this number past two months. These delays stall revenue plans, push work onto already-busy teams, and raise risk as projects slip. Business-literate HR leaders can model the financial impacts of these delays, shorten decision cycles with finance and operations, and choose where to save time (e.g., sourcing, assessments, relocation).
Without a clear understanding of business metrics and financial consequences, HR teams can overlook the price of getting it wrong. The US Department of Labor’s often-cited estimate that a bad hire can cost up to 30% of that person’s first-year wages might actually be too low, if you consider other aspects like manager time, missed milestones, and churn among overburdened teammates. And while most executives say their people strategy aligns with business goals, fewer than half report using talent metrics in ways that improve the business. That statistic alone speaks to HR’s opportunity to differentiate, grow into a business partner and ensure that “people decisions” are treated as core business decisions.
What does business literacy look like inside a modern HR team?
Business literacy within an HR team is evident in the way people think, the questions they ask, and the insights they bring to conversations. These HR teams are comfortable reading a profit & loss (P&L) statement and demand forecasts, and they can explain the cost of turnover or a failed hire. They rely on workforce analytics instead of gut feel, understanding where losses occur, which roles create the most value, and where succession or skills gaps put growth at risk. They link programs and initiatives like leadership development to outcomes such as productivity, quality or revenue, rather than simply measuring completion or attendance rates.
Disengagement and turnover cost the global economy $8.8 trillion USD a year, underscoring how vital it is to connect talent decisions to measurable results. When HR operates as a consultative partner, credibility quickly earns influence. Executives stop seeing HR teams as colleagues who need to be briefed and start treating them as allies who can help anticipate and shape what the organization will need next.
What needs to happen to create a successful partnership between HR and other functions?
We must bring HR into workforce planning and hiring conversations early as a partner, not as an afterthought once roles are already scoped and budgets allocated. When this happens, it serves as recognition that the business is not basing hiring decisions on financial forecasts and product roadmaps alone. Considering that 81% of executives see work increasingly performed across functional boundaries, it’s clear that success depends on close collaboration between HR, finance, and operations.
In practice, this involves weighing talent implications alongside product roadmaps and financial forecasts, rather than adding them later. This comes together in regular talent and risk reviews, where HR brings talent insights, finance shares scenario models, and operations outlines demand forecasts.
These meetings will require alignment on shared metrics like time-to-productivity, quality of hire, internal fill rates, and attrition for critical roles, all of which should sit next to revenue, growth and margin charts in leadership dashboards. When HR and other leaders operate from the same information set and cadence, hiring decisions become more balanced, weighing immediate needs against long-term capability instead of defaulting to the fastest or cheapest option.
What routines should modern HR leaders establish if they want to be seen as great business partners?
One simple routine is a monthly or quarterly talent and risk review where HR, finance, and operations jointly review upcoming product launches, seasonal peaks, and strategic shifts, then decide whether to hire, upskill, automate, or redesign the work. Research shows organizations with mature, data-backed talent processes and onboarding are over 100% more likely to improve retention and engagement; these structured reviews are one of the mechanisms that build such maturity.
Another powerful way to reduce the chances of a failed hire is to have a simple pre-requisition kickoff before any critical role goes live. In a focused, 30-minute conversation, the hiring manager, HR business partner and finance lead clarify the business problem the role is meant to solve, the outcomes expected in the first 90 days, and the budget, location, and role-specific flexibility parameters. When those points are clear, the job description, sourcing strategy, and interview criteria move beyond a rote hiring exercise, thereby reducing the risk and cost of mis-hires.
Treating onboarding explicitly as part of the hiring strategy rather than a checklist step is critical. Strong onboarding programs connect new hires to expectations, tools, people, and feedback and have been associated with an 82% improvement in retention and productivity gains of 70% or more. Since managers account for a significant part of the variance in team engagement, equipping them with a clear 90-day plan is central to protecting the hiring investment. These routines make up the organization’s planning rhythm and consistently demonstrate that HR is focused on outcomes the business cares about.
HR as a catalyst for growth
When HR leaders are fluent in the business, they no longer need to earn a seat at the table. They are already embedded in the conversations that determine how the organization grows, protects itself, and competes, becoming architects of the organization’s future. Armed with data and focused on helping their peers make better decisions, HR aligns roles early, strengthens talent and risk reviews, and creates onboarding experiences that accelerate value to the business. The organizations that will win are those where HR is recognized and empowered as a business function.
Katherine Loranger is chief people officer at Safeguard Global, where she leads the company’s people strategy, culture, and global talent agenda. With more than two decades of experience across HR strategy, business partnership, talent acquisition, and learning and development, she helps Safeguard Global hire and develop high-performing teams while managing workforce risk. Katherine partners closely with the executive team to align people decisions with growth, measurable impact, and operational excellence.
