Leadership

How CHROs Drive Transformation from the Factory Floor Up

Manufacturing doesn’t move without people. Today’s CHROs are leading from the trenches.

November 13, 2025

The Manufacturing CHRO Is No Longer Watching from the Sidelines

In many factories, when something breaks, it’s obvious. A machine stops. A light flashes. The line goes down.

When people systems such as succession planning, hiring pipelines, or leadership trust break, it’s quieter and slower, but it becomes obvious over time. You start to see delays in filling key roles, rising frustration among teams, and leaders struggling without the support or readiness they need. What seems like a slow leak eventually affects performance, morale, and momentum.

To address these challenges, CHROs in manufacturing are stepping out of their role as back-office administrators and emerging as decision-makers whose choices shape productivity, safety, and culture in real time. In Korn Ferry's 2025 CHRO survey, CHROs reported that they now spend most of their time advising the CEO and leadership teams.

We call this the CHRO+. In practice, it means HR is no longer separate from business strategy. It is now a critical enabler of business strategy.

From Hiring to Helping Set the Direction

The best manufacturing leaders know that hiring the right people isn’t enough. You also need to be at the table to ask the right questions when major business decisions are made.

C-suite executives are asking questions such as:

What workforce capabilities will we need if we shift to more automation?
How do we fill today’s gaps while simultaneously growing future-ready teams?
Are our frontline roles still designed for the work we need now, or for the way it’s always been done?

The CHRO+ helps answer these questions. They understand workforce strategy as part of business strategy, and they help connect one to the other.

“Today’s CHROs aren’t just shaping the talent agenda. They’re helping to shape the entire strategic direction of the organization. This means having a seat at the strategy table, where they’re influencing decisions that impact everything from corporate culture to the bottom line." says Laura Manson-Smith, Global Leader of Organization Strategy Consulting at Korn Ferry.

Filling Roles and Building Leaders

In many factories, leadership is earned through years on the line, hard-won credibility, and deep operational knowledge. That matters, but it’s no longer enough on its own.

Manufacturing leaders must also be agile thinkers, strong communicators, and people developers. They need to navigate shifting technologies, lead across diverse teams, and make decisions that balance output with well-being. These skills can be learned.

This is where the CHRO+ plays a crucial role. They’re shaping what leadership looks like in the plant of the future.

That includes:

Defining the right capabilities for success beyond technical know-how. Those capabilities include critical thinking, problem solving, emotional intelligence, coaching ability, and collaboration.
Building development pathways that are visible, accessible, and relevant to day-to-day operations.
Redesigning plant leadership roles to reflect today’s realities. Think less command-and-control and more influence and enablement.
Using data to guide growth, spotting who’s ready now, who could be ready with some support, and what the gaps really are.
Creating environments where supervisors feel psychologically safe so they can focus on learning to lead better, not just manage faster.

The shift here is from replacement planning to readiness planning. It’s not about who’s next in line anymore. Now it’s about who’s prepared to lead well when the time comes.

Addressing Labor Shortages with Long-Term Thinking

It’s hard to find skilled workers, but hiring isn’t the only factor to consider.

Successful CHROs are looking more deeply into why people leave, how teams adapt under pressure, and what it takes to build capabilities from within.

They’re partnering across functions to:

Launch job rotation and apprenticeship programs that align with actual business needs
Create clear, visible career paths, even for frontline and hourly roles
Avoid overhiring by planning for agile teams that can shift with demand

Fewer people on the floor calls for smarter workforce planning. When teams are stretched thin, it’s not a lack of care that slows things down. It’s a lack of capacity. Planning ahead helps ensure the people who do show up have the tools, support, and structure they need to succeed.

Trust as a Business Asset

When there’s friction between HR, supervisors, and shop-floor workers, things slow down. Communication breaks. Morale drops. Safety slips.

CHROs who lead well in this space do more than launch culture initiatives. They build trust in small, visible, consistent ways:

They show up on the plant floor and listen to workers directly.
They embed coaching into daily operations.
They communicate with frontline workers about what’s expected and what’s possible.

Preparing the Workforce for the Future

CHROs don’t have to predict the future, but they do need to prepare for it.

That means:

Using data to spot where gaps are forming before they become urgent
Bringing in talent from other industries to challenge assumptions
Designing learning that happens on the job, not in a classroom, so people build skills as they work

The future of manufacturing talent won’t be built in classrooms. It will be built on the job, with leaders who are willing to coach and workers who are supported to grow.